Do You Know the Six Stages of a Dysfunctional Project?
Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 7 Comments
Sometimes it’s nice to do work things on the weekend–to use the free time you have to get a jump on the next week.
Some projects raise the bar to meet our ability to put in extra time. Don’t give up your life to make your work go faster. You could find yourself living less and less and working more and more instead. And in the end, you might end up a wreck rather than feeling like you’ve done something worth accomplishing.
Project problems can seem like one-of-a-kind things — certainly they’re only related to this awful project, this difficult client, this inexperienced team member. But if every project has it’s problems, then something dysfunctional is happening.
The Six Stages of a Dysfunctional Project
1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment to the Innocent
6. Praise and Glory to the Non-Participants.
How do you spot a dysfunctional project on the horizon?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Two Things Successful People Do to Get Where They’re Going
Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Successful Blog | 1 Comment
Things in Twos
Yesterday Karen emailed to say that she won’t be able to attend SOBCon. Her company is sending her to California next weekend.
Karen has been a good friend to the conference and an attendee since the beginning. This year she was also going to speak with Glenda on accessiblity. Later in the day, I found out that Saul Colt had a similar situation.
It was the kind of news that happens. That doesn’t make it less disappointing. I got two for the price of one.
How did I get to be so lucky?
Two Things Successful People Do to Get Where They’re Going
Yesterday was a day of twos, I had two speakers to replace and two last minute contracts to write up. I had two kinds of people come knocking — people who wanted to help and people who wanted me to do something for them. The event prep for two events came through — two key things were missing. I had two other projects that I wanted to move forward. The details to be handled seemed to be multiplying by twos every time I communicated with anyone about anything.
I had two choices — to take a nap or to keep going.
At about 2pm, I was going through more SOBCon preparations and my eyes landed on the name of man I admire. I got thinking of something simple and profound he once told me.
Successful people do two things to get where they’re going — talk and move.
It only took those two things to get everything back in order.
I’m pleased to announce that Jeff Willinger will be partnering with Terry Starbucker Friday afternoon at SOBCon to bring a spectacular session on the infrastructure of an online business. And a second plan is in action for Karen’s session with Glenda. Can’t wait for that.
Two more things about talking and moving …
- Talking needs to be about the opportunities.
- Moving needs to be invested in a positive action.
Thanks to all of the people who’ve been helping!
What sort of positive talking and moving have you been doing?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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What Robert Hruzek said . . . about Listening for Gold
Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Marketing | 4 Comments
A community isn’t built or befriended,
it’s connected by offering and accepting.
Community is affinity, identity, and kinship
that make room for ideas, thoughts, and solutions.
Wherever a community gathers, we aspire and inspire each other intentionally . . . And our words shine with authenticity.
When We Listen for Gold
Everyone is hungry to be heard, but we don’t have bandwidth to listen to everyone. So we filter to get to the gold … faster, easier, and more deeply.
What are we missing
Here’s what Robert said . . .
Howdy Liz! I liked that “panning for gold” analogy so I took it a bit farther…
I know folks who are always “skimming” for big ideas and world-shaking nuggets. They may (or may not) find one, but the fact is, those types of things are actually few and far between.
On the other hand, if they’d just “shift their sights” even a little bit, there’s a whole bunch of smaller chunks, just lyin’ around for the taking. Tune your sight to the finest setting and you’ll find there’s a ton o’ dust down there at the bottom of the barrel. All we gotta do is drill down to it.
I guess what I’m sayin’ is, we should learn to listen to whole conversations, not just search for, and key on, certain “triggers”.
There are riches at every level.
Robert Hruzek from a comment on April 21, 2009
A successful and outstanding blogger said that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Panning for Gold: How Do You Find Relevant and Valuable Information?
Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Marketing, Successful Blog | 14 Comments
Are Off Course 98% of the Time?
Did you know that an airplane flying from New York to LA is off course 98% of the time?
Just as a driver is always moving the steering wheel to keep the car pointed in the right direction, the pilot is constantly adjusting based on the information he’s taking in — from the instruments, from the crew, from air traffic control, from every source he recognizes as relevant and valuable.
Wise individuals and great companies do the same thing. We get to our goals by constantly adjusting. Yet, for some reason, we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that we or the organizations we work with have control over the forces outside and around us. It’s just not so.
We can manage what’s within our power to manage. But more importantly, we can adjust, innovate, and grow if we if we find the relevant and valuable information about the rest.
How Do You Find Relevant and Valuable Information?
Individuals and organizations that are growing are curious and information hungry. We are personally involved in work and business, but we don’t take information personally. We work through an information gathering process again and again in a spiraling, overlapping, scaffolded fashion. We use the latest listening tools, but even more we use our ears, eyes, hearts, and minds to decipher what is relevant and valuable to their goals.
- Listen actively. It’s so powerful to set aside filters that would have us hear only what supports our current world view. Looking for other perspectives, other voices, different, radical, outrageous ideas offers a diverse pool from which to choose and challenges our assumptions.
- Test what you hear. We ask folks who are talking about what they’re saying to confirm that the message we received is clear. Then we ask other folks if that message makes sense in their lives too.
- Adjust and adapt to the new information. We steer. Steering isn’t all controlling. It’s altering our world view to include what we have just learned.
- Share. We make sure that the right folks know. We tell other people. Organizations tell customers, employees, shareholders, prospects, and key stakeholders.
Sounds a little like panning for gold — with each pan we use a finer sifter. With each pan we get closer to what we want to know.
While you’re listening, consider and reconsider what you’re listen for.
How do you find relevant and valuable information?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
How to Focus Your Creative Energy to Build that Dream
Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Successful Blog | 21 Comments
Managing Time Creatively
When it comes to raising barns and building bridges can be a major drain. We have to fit our dream inside, beside, and often outside of the work we do to pay our bills. Just when we find the time to put forward on our sweetest idea, we also find that our minds and our creativity have been overspent.
In Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi outlined The 10 Dimensions of Creative Complexity, which I call the Ten Paradoxes of Creativity. Each paradox describes the ability to use a repertoire of thought and actions between two extremes — where most people show a distinct preference highly creative people prefer “both and.”
The first paradox that Dr. C reported is that:
Creative individuals have a great deal of physical energy, but they also are often quiet and at rest. p.58
What he offered three facts and observations about energy that seem most worth exploring.
- Their high energy due more to their focused minds than their genes.
- They often take rests and sleep a lot.
- Their energy is under their personal control.
Creative individuals learn to manage their energy by trial and error. This highly productive, focus / rest process is something they develop as a strategy to reach their goals.
How to Focus Your Creative Energy to Build that Dream
Managing focus and rest is a high performance skill. Our genes don’t have to align in a certain for us to master it. We start by raising our awareness, seeing the times when our creative energy naturally runs high and when we’re drawn to “a little down time.” Imagine how much more productive we’d be if we got in sync with our personal creative energy?
Here’s some things we might do . . .
- Pay attention to the ebb and the flow.
Granted we don’t have perfect control over our schedules. Still, we often fit ourselves to the work rather than find our most productive times for the kind of work we’re doing.Are you more creative at night or in the early hours? It’s worth it to get up early to take advantage of what you’ll accomplish if you do.
Watch what you do every day and especially on the weekends. When do you naturally rest and when do you naturally play?
Are you checking email when your best ideas could be coming? Save the boring stuff for when your creative energy is lower.
Do you do better if you put your meetings and phone calls in the morning or the afternoon?
Play with the order of what you do until you find you’re breezing through the tasks that wear you out the most.
- When energy gets low, stop for fuel.
When you feel your energy draining, take a break, power nap, or walk around. Plodding on only moves forward more slowly with less efficiency.
How often do you stop for refueling? A few minutes refueling makes the time that follows more productive.What sorts of activities recharge your brain? A well chosen activity can supercharge our brains, our creativity, and our resolve. We recover the time away in higher performance when we return.
If you’ve working on the computer with words or spreadsheets, you might do something colorful that requires not words or numbers.
If you’ve been doing design work, you might stop to do a crossword or read a magazine article. Using the other side of our brain can be the best way to refuel.
- Leave your work at an inviting unfinished place. At the end of a work session, we often hurry or push through to finish up something. Try this instead. Choose a point in the work where a part of the project will be “almost finished, but not quite.” When you return, you’ll finish it quickly and move forward with the extra charge of that accomplishment.
- Plan to be creative.
When a project inspires you, plan large blocks of uninterrupted time to devote as much energy as you want. Keep your creativity climbing faster by making sure you don’t have to stop just when the going is good.Eat well and sleep well before you start.
Set up the atmosphere with minimal distractions.
Make creative work an occasion worth planning.
- Hang with high energy folks..
Spend time with people who energize you. Schedule your “catch up” phone conversations with upbeat friends during hours when you’re mind is lagging.
Ask them about their creative projects. Creativity is contagious. Take advantage of that.
Highly productive creative people focus like a laser beam when they’re working and they take energy from being fully engaged. (See Flow, also by Dr. C.) As soon as they’re not, they rest. That’s how they harness their creativity to produce their dreams.
We can do it too.
When does your energy rise and fall? What strategies can you offer to help us channel our creative energy?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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