Today is the Jewish holiday of Purim. It is a holiday for turning your world upside down --by dressing up in costume, putting on a funny play called a Purim "shpiel," and, more radically drinking so much you can't tell the difference between Haman, the villain of the Purim story, and Mordechai, the story's hero.
Like Carnivale, and other holidays that take place this time of year, this is an opportunity to let loose, and try on new identities, new practices, and new mindsets.
It is a one day holiday --nicely bound and in that way, rather safe. Whatever you try on, you only have to do it for a day. And there really is no follow up step.
I think this is something we should build into our lives more -- at least once a year, if not once per quarter. It is a very different practice from making a resolution, for example. It is easy and fun and disruptive. It is a game rather than an obligation. And it is a useful way of climbing out of your box during this period of turbulence.
It would be nice if this practice was adopted in public life as well. Imagine what might be learned, or gained, if Republicans and Democrats engaged in this kind of experimentation once per quarter?
What would you try on if you were going to turn your world upside down for a day?
Monday, March 1, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Risk and Innovation
My husband and I have been in a very long process of adopting a baby --so long that it can safely be called a saga. Almost five years long. So long that our investigation of the many pathways and possibilities for bringing a child into our family have filled a whole file cabinet.
And being on this path involves a huge amount of risk analysis: what do I not know about the health background of the birth parents? what might the impact be (in international adoption, which is where we started, but didn't end up --due to risk analysis) of time in an orphanage?
It also involves constant innovation and creativity; how can I re-imagine the path I'll take to parenting? In all the ups and downs along the way, how can I keep seeing the possibilities?
Risk and innovation are two sides of the same coin. Both involve asking "what if?" Both require acute imagination of circumstances different from the comfortable present. Both require heightened awareness. Both are about being attuned to bits of evidence on the edge of our radar screens.
Yet while one brings us into the staid world of insurance, and emotions of anxiety, the other brings us into the wild world of design, and the buzz of possibility and play. In organizations, the people who worry about risk are often different from the ones who are responsible for innovation.
I think these should be more integrated, both in organizations and inside each of us.
How can we embrace both of these sides --as leaders? As parents? In our relationships?
And being on this path involves a huge amount of risk analysis: what do I not know about the health background of the birth parents? what might the impact be (in international adoption, which is where we started, but didn't end up --due to risk analysis) of time in an orphanage?
It also involves constant innovation and creativity; how can I re-imagine the path I'll take to parenting? In all the ups and downs along the way, how can I keep seeing the possibilities?
Risk and innovation are two sides of the same coin. Both involve asking "what if?" Both require acute imagination of circumstances different from the comfortable present. Both require heightened awareness. Both are about being attuned to bits of evidence on the edge of our radar screens.
Yet while one brings us into the staid world of insurance, and emotions of anxiety, the other brings us into the wild world of design, and the buzz of possibility and play. In organizations, the people who worry about risk are often different from the ones who are responsible for innovation.
I think these should be more integrated, both in organizations and inside each of us.
How can we embrace both of these sides --as leaders? As parents? In our relationships?
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Clearing the Shelves
I spent a good part of last weekend clearing my shelves of books to give away to Good Will. This was long overdue, but until that moment, I had been unable to do it, even though i haven't touched many of those books for years, if ever. At least 85% of my wall of books was devoted to past professional eras --a vestige of sorts, of my life as an academic specialist on international relations and the former Soviet Union. I realized that while I have clearly moved on, and haven't worked in that area for over ten years now, I was clinging to it as part of my self image.
I parted with titles like, "The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict" published by Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1961, Dmitri Volkogonov's "Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy," (a tome that weighs several pounds), a dense volume called "The State and Political Theory," by Martin Carnoy. Also included in my purge was a book called "The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense," which some well intentioned person (possibly my mother) had given me probably a quarter of a century ago. An issue of the journal Global Governance, from 2003 got tossed, and a copy of the 2003 Writers Market.
Books are like artifacts; sometimes you keep them for show -- to yourself, as much as to others. These earlier parts of myself were precious; they spoke about an earlier passion, like photos of an old lover. I remember the pleasure I felt when I added the classics of Soviet Studies, Russian history, and several other subject areas, to my shelf, treasures I had found in old bookstores. At the time I thought I might need them for my career of teaching and research; but as important, (or moreso), I placed them there as show to students or colleagues perusing my shelves -- that I was a true expert; the impulse of the collector.
As I added books to the discard pile I felt increasingly buoyant and encouraged. These books were weighing me down; they were taking space -- a physical representation of how my prior professional self remained too present in my life.
I held on to one shelf for each of my previous areas of focus --nationalism; international relations; Eastern Europe; Jewish; holocaust/World War II; Russian and Soviet Literature. The one topic I couldn't reduce to one shelf was Soviet politics and foreign policy --my original grad school focus. Maybe it is because I had such a good collection of these books; no need to ask why.
The operative question was: which of these can you leave behind, and which do you want to ship ahead, in case you might need them some day? This question is iterative, I think; I may revisit in a few years, and toss some more. But for now I have made space for the professional self I now am.
I keep looking at the space I cleared on the shelf, pleasantly empty now, but waiting to be filled with new topics, new curiosities and new artifacts. My long transition from my past life feels more complete.
If you are in a transition, try this as an exercise:
What is most essential on your shelf?
What is expendable?
What can you leave behind, and what do you want to ship ahead?
I parted with titles like, "The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict" published by Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1961, Dmitri Volkogonov's "Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy," (a tome that weighs several pounds), a dense volume called "The State and Political Theory," by Martin Carnoy. Also included in my purge was a book called "The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense," which some well intentioned person (possibly my mother) had given me probably a quarter of a century ago. An issue of the journal Global Governance, from 2003 got tossed, and a copy of the 2003 Writers Market.
Books are like artifacts; sometimes you keep them for show -- to yourself, as much as to others. These earlier parts of myself were precious; they spoke about an earlier passion, like photos of an old lover. I remember the pleasure I felt when I added the classics of Soviet Studies, Russian history, and several other subject areas, to my shelf, treasures I had found in old bookstores. At the time I thought I might need them for my career of teaching and research; but as important, (or moreso), I placed them there as show to students or colleagues perusing my shelves -- that I was a true expert; the impulse of the collector.
As I added books to the discard pile I felt increasingly buoyant and encouraged. These books were weighing me down; they were taking space -- a physical representation of how my prior professional self remained too present in my life.
I held on to one shelf for each of my previous areas of focus --nationalism; international relations; Eastern Europe; Jewish; holocaust/World War II; Russian and Soviet Literature. The one topic I couldn't reduce to one shelf was Soviet politics and foreign policy --my original grad school focus. Maybe it is because I had such a good collection of these books; no need to ask why.
The operative question was: which of these can you leave behind, and which do you want to ship ahead, in case you might need them some day? This question is iterative, I think; I may revisit in a few years, and toss some more. But for now I have made space for the professional self I now am.
I keep looking at the space I cleared on the shelf, pleasantly empty now, but waiting to be filled with new topics, new curiosities and new artifacts. My long transition from my past life feels more complete.
If you are in a transition, try this as an exercise:
What is most essential on your shelf?
What is expendable?
What can you leave behind, and what do you want to ship ahead?
Improvising Life
I'm back to this blog after a long hiatus. And probably because my improvisation muscle was weak. I became too planful in this space, and lost my ability to build on the unexpected, the core capacity of improv. Improvising may be the central skill we need in this period of unimaginable change.
Last night I went to an improv class at Quick Thinking Improv
..I've meant to do this for years, but finally located the class and went because I wanted to check it out for a client. As is so often the case, what I'm working on with a client is a growth opportunity for myself.
Walking into the space, in a fourth floor studio on west 18th street, among mostly younger actors, was itself a stretch. It was one of those discoveries you make above the ground floor in New York. We were a motley assortment of people -- I stuck out no more than did the two twenty something and timid Brits on vacation, who the instructor began to refer to as "the girls," or the computer geek by day turned actor by night.
The instructor took us through a series of games and exercises, each one elevating the extemporaneous skill you needed. As he introduced each one my sense was --"I can't." But then you're up there, paired with another fumbling improviser, working on a scene like the following:
One person walks onto the stage from the side and says, "hi George (say--you make up a name), I've got to tell you something." The other player replies "Hi Dr. Jones,(you make up a title, like doctor, or president) what is it?" And then the scene unfolds -- I became a doctor speaking in hushed tones about a cure for cancer; my partner, a stranger until then, was my inquisitive student, and I told him conspiratorially "the cure was all in the mind." The scene went on for a minute or two more. The instructor didn't rate us that highly, but that wasn't the point, of course. (There I go, even as I write this, away from the improvisational mindset, which at its core is about "yes, and.")
You are trained to build on, rather than refute, whatever comes your way. That's how scenes emerge out of nothing; that's how you collaborate with a complete stranger; that's how you access your creativity.
Another core rule is that you don't ask questions. They call this "giving the gift." You hand an idea to your partner, trusting them to take the next step with it. But you have to put something into the mix, even if it is a total flop (I ended up telling a story about monkeys eating peanuts in the zoo, but realized I wasn't sure if monkeys actually eat peanuts!)
The other thing I realized, though this was a re-realization, is how games unleash creativity for me. It is the rules that allow me to get out of the box --they give me permission to be creative. They allow me to say yes and leap into the unknown.
What allows you to improvise?
What gives you permission to step into the unknown?
How many times today can you say "yes and" rather than "yes, but"?
Try an improv class -- you won't be sorry.
Last night I went to an improv class at Quick Thinking Improv
..I've meant to do this for years, but finally located the class and went because I wanted to check it out for a client. As is so often the case, what I'm working on with a client is a growth opportunity for myself.
Walking into the space, in a fourth floor studio on west 18th street, among mostly younger actors, was itself a stretch. It was one of those discoveries you make above the ground floor in New York. We were a motley assortment of people -- I stuck out no more than did the two twenty something and timid Brits on vacation, who the instructor began to refer to as "the girls," or the computer geek by day turned actor by night.
The instructor took us through a series of games and exercises, each one elevating the extemporaneous skill you needed. As he introduced each one my sense was --"I can't." But then you're up there, paired with another fumbling improviser, working on a scene like the following:
One person walks onto the stage from the side and says, "hi George (say--you make up a name), I've got to tell you something." The other player replies "Hi Dr. Jones,(you make up a title, like doctor, or president) what is it?" And then the scene unfolds -- I became a doctor speaking in hushed tones about a cure for cancer; my partner, a stranger until then, was my inquisitive student, and I told him conspiratorially "the cure was all in the mind." The scene went on for a minute or two more. The instructor didn't rate us that highly, but that wasn't the point, of course. (There I go, even as I write this, away from the improvisational mindset, which at its core is about "yes, and.")
You are trained to build on, rather than refute, whatever comes your way. That's how scenes emerge out of nothing; that's how you collaborate with a complete stranger; that's how you access your creativity.
Another core rule is that you don't ask questions. They call this "giving the gift." You hand an idea to your partner, trusting them to take the next step with it. But you have to put something into the mix, even if it is a total flop (I ended up telling a story about monkeys eating peanuts in the zoo, but realized I wasn't sure if monkeys actually eat peanuts!)
The other thing I realized, though this was a re-realization, is how games unleash creativity for me. It is the rules that allow me to get out of the box --they give me permission to be creative. They allow me to say yes and leap into the unknown.
What allows you to improvise?
What gives you permission to step into the unknown?
How many times today can you say "yes and" rather than "yes, but"?
Try an improv class -- you won't be sorry.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Is There a New Normal?
I've been noticing a pattern in the news and commentariat in the last few months: at the very same time headlines shout --"are we getting back to normal?" --while just beside them others scream --"life will never be the same, so get used to it."
Take this past Sunday's New York Times for example: On the one hand was the article on the front page of the real estate section titled "Honk if You Think it is Over," saying it is exciting to be in NY real estate again -- back to the good old days of stratospheric prices and bidding wars.
On the other hand was a piece in the business section about the fall of the "the efficient market hypothesis," . The efficient market hypothesis said that stock markets were rational. The article was about the discrediting of the model, which many believe is itself responsible for the financial crisis -- "an academic model that offered a false sense of security," in a way reminiscent of Soviet style Marxism-Leninism in the early 1990's. This is just one of the many articles telling us that life will never be the same and that we don't yet have the frameworks to replace the old ones, an unsettling thought.
After watching this pattern I've come to a realization. Both are in some sense true. We each need to hold on to these two sides, the normal and the radically new, even as it begins to feel like an increasingly precarious balance. While we don't want to delude ourselves into thinking we can go backwards into a false sense of security, we also must live from day to day with a feeling of calm and connection to ourelves and our pasts -- to how it used to be.
At the same time, we must learn to be acute observers of the new and the upcoming, constantly opening our minds to the possibility that long held assumptions might need some challenging.
What's difficult is that we don't have good examples of what this balance looks or feels like.
I have found one way to get this -- to really get it --is to try the yoga position "tree pose," --standing on one foot like a stork, with arms raised overhead like a tree swaying in the wind.
You are simultaneously rooted on the ground, standing as you always have, while you concentrate on balance, and the discomfort of being precariously close to falling.
Another yoga pose that I've found helpful is Utkatasana, "awkward chair pose," sometimes also called "powerful pose." It requires you while standing, to sit back as if in a chair, while holding your hands up straight above your head. It is simultaneously extremely awkward -- you wish, every moment you are in it that you could straighten your legs -- but you also feel a sense of power as you remain in the pose and try to rise above your discomfort.
You might not be drawn to yoga, and may well have your own ways of learning this new balance.
What keeps you grounded in these crazy times?
What strategies do you have for challenging your assumptions about the future?
Take this past Sunday's New York Times for example: On the one hand was the article on the front page of the real estate section titled "Honk if You Think it is Over," saying it is exciting to be in NY real estate again -- back to the good old days of stratospheric prices and bidding wars.
On the other hand was a piece in the business section about the fall of the "the efficient market hypothesis," . The efficient market hypothesis said that stock markets were rational. The article was about the discrediting of the model, which many believe is itself responsible for the financial crisis -- "an academic model that offered a false sense of security," in a way reminiscent of Soviet style Marxism-Leninism in the early 1990's. This is just one of the many articles telling us that life will never be the same and that we don't yet have the frameworks to replace the old ones, an unsettling thought.
After watching this pattern I've come to a realization. Both are in some sense true. We each need to hold on to these two sides, the normal and the radically new, even as it begins to feel like an increasingly precarious balance. While we don't want to delude ourselves into thinking we can go backwards into a false sense of security, we also must live from day to day with a feeling of calm and connection to ourelves and our pasts -- to how it used to be.
At the same time, we must learn to be acute observers of the new and the upcoming, constantly opening our minds to the possibility that long held assumptions might need some challenging.
What's difficult is that we don't have good examples of what this balance looks or feels like.
I have found one way to get this -- to really get it --is to try the yoga position "tree pose," --standing on one foot like a stork, with arms raised overhead like a tree swaying in the wind.
You are simultaneously rooted on the ground, standing as you always have, while you concentrate on balance, and the discomfort of being precariously close to falling.
Another yoga pose that I've found helpful is Utkatasana, "awkward chair pose," sometimes also called "powerful pose." It requires you while standing, to sit back as if in a chair, while holding your hands up straight above your head. It is simultaneously extremely awkward -- you wish, every moment you are in it that you could straighten your legs -- but you also feel a sense of power as you remain in the pose and try to rise above your discomfort.
You might not be drawn to yoga, and may well have your own ways of learning this new balance.
What keeps you grounded in these crazy times?
What strategies do you have for challenging your assumptions about the future?
The Not Very Good First Draft
Well, I've been away for awhile and I'm hoping this post will get me back on track with this blog. Really. Maybe I should take the tentativeness out of that last statement: it will get me back in the groove of regular writing.
Blogging should be fun, the antidote to perfectionism in writing. It is a wonderful example of a task that can only be "good enough." After all, it is often time bound and responsive to something or other fleeting -- usually news, or a moment of insight that passes.
As I've written here before, I've been learning something about goal setting these last months. It needs to be forgiving, even as it stretches you forward to break through inertia. Getting here to this page is half the struggle. The other half is the first few words and sentences -- taking that small step into the unknown in the not-very-good-first-draft that is the pre-requisite for any pursuit.
Phew...How many times to I have to relearn that one?
What is your mechanism for writing those first lines, for busting through inertia?
How can you remember, day after day, to relentlessly, but compassionately, push yourself to set and accomplish new goals?
Blogging should be fun, the antidote to perfectionism in writing. It is a wonderful example of a task that can only be "good enough." After all, it is often time bound and responsive to something or other fleeting -- usually news, or a moment of insight that passes.
As I've written here before, I've been learning something about goal setting these last months. It needs to be forgiving, even as it stretches you forward to break through inertia. Getting here to this page is half the struggle. The other half is the first few words and sentences -- taking that small step into the unknown in the not-very-good-first-draft that is the pre-requisite for any pursuit.
Phew...How many times to I have to relearn that one?
What is your mechanism for writing those first lines, for busting through inertia?
How can you remember, day after day, to relentlessly, but compassionately, push yourself to set and accomplish new goals?
Thursday, April 23, 2009
small steps into the unknown
I often see parallels between physical challenges, like biking up a big hill, doing a yoga tree pose, and intellectual/emotional challenges -- like embarking on a new marketing campaign, or doing a new piece of writing. My newest insight, which I thought I'd share, was in my first pilates class, which I took last week.
As I got to what I thought was the end of a set of particularly painful abs exercises, the instructor pushed on to one more set, this time with a challenging new twist. The details aren't important, but I plunged forward into a pretty feeble rendition of the new twist. And as I fumbled along and lost my balance, I had the insight -- sweating there on the floor: you need to fumble and flail before you can hope to be on the path to mastery. It isn't as if I hadn't learned and re-learned this countless times in the past, but I suddenly saw the process slowed down into micro steps.
I realized that I could hold on to the image of that moment next time I'm resistant to stepping into an unfamiliar idea, creating a less than wonderful first draft, or picking up the phone to make a difficult call. If I don't allow myself to fail, I wil never begin. I left the class feeling virtuous that I'd made it through, committed to returning. And in the retelling to myself, I remembered the success more than the failure.
What image of flubbing on the way to success can you remember and hold on to?
As I got to what I thought was the end of a set of particularly painful abs exercises, the instructor pushed on to one more set, this time with a challenging new twist. The details aren't important, but I plunged forward into a pretty feeble rendition of the new twist. And as I fumbled along and lost my balance, I had the insight -- sweating there on the floor: you need to fumble and flail before you can hope to be on the path to mastery. It isn't as if I hadn't learned and re-learned this countless times in the past, but I suddenly saw the process slowed down into micro steps.
I realized that I could hold on to the image of that moment next time I'm resistant to stepping into an unfamiliar idea, creating a less than wonderful first draft, or picking up the phone to make a difficult call. If I don't allow myself to fail, I wil never begin. I left the class feeling virtuous that I'd made it through, committed to returning. And in the retelling to myself, I remembered the success more than the failure.
What image of flubbing on the way to success can you remember and hold on to?
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