A recent trip to the Mayan ruins in Chichen Itza, Mexico with my nephew Auggie Heschmeyer and my wife Katie made me think about what it means to deliver an authentic customer experience. Those thoughts led to this video…
Authentic Customer Experience
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Brainzooming Brown Backs Brainstorming
Mike Brown’s Brainzooming post on May 27th was a brilliant defense of brainstorming. Brainstorming is a useful, powerful technique when used the way its inventor, Alex Osborn, intended it to be used. Brainstorming, as Mike Brown nicely put it, is a tool for divergent thinking: expanding the range of possibilities considered.
If you’d like to know more about brainstorming, consider downloading my little ebook: How To Run A Brainstorming Session That Works. If you’d like to know more about Mike Brown and Brainzooming, go to http://www.brainzooming.com.
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Walking a Labyrinth
The May 15th edition of American Way magazine contains an article about labyrinths: Walking in Circles. I walked my first labyrinth in New Harmony, Indiana. Since that time I’ve walked labyrinths in St. James Church in London, England; Unity Village in Lee’s Summit, Missouri; Canyon Ranch in Lenox, Massachusetts; and Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, California.
The labyrinths I’ve walked are all modeled after the medieval labyrinth found in the famous cathedral in Chartres, France. These labyrinths are not mazes; you don’t get lost in them (at least not physically). They’re unicursal, a single path. There’s one way in and one way out.
The path of the labyrinth twists and turns. When you think you are making progress toward the center you suddenly find your self walking further from it. And when other people are walking the same labyrinth, you sometimes see them coming toward you and then see them walking from you.
The labyrinth is a symbol of the twists and turns of life; a reenactment of every hero’s journey; a walking meditation. A labyrinth walk can be a brilliant journey to better self-awareness.
To find out more about labyrinths, go to http://www.labyrinthsociety.org.
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Don’t Be a Nowhere Man
Brilliant Blogger Jan Harness produced yet another interesting post yesterday–Creativity Tips: Forget Your Phone. She wrote about how she had forgotten her cell phone and that allowed her “multi-tasking brain” to breathe a sigh of relief. She then mentioned that once-upon-a-time, in the days before cell phones and mobile phones, many homes had but a single landline phone. And when you used that phone, you listened to the person speaking or talked to that person. That was it. Besides doodling on a note pad, there wasn’t anything else you could do. You single-tasked; you did one thing at a time.
On Sunday night, Andy Harris (the brilliant fellow who designed this website) tweeted a link to an article he had just read concerning the negative effect multi-tasking has on productivity (http://bit.ly/bVKWmH).
Andy’s reference and Jan’s insights made me think of the Beatle’s song: Nowhere Man. The opening lyrics are–”He’s a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land.” The internet, cell phones, texting, twitter, email, and social media allow us to be anywhere at anytime. The limits of time and space have evaporated. (I read and produced emails on a recent flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta. The former sacred solitude of air travel is now gone). We now live in Nowhere Land and run the serious risk of becoming Nowhere Men and Women.
Edward de Bono, the creator of Six Thinking Hats, says the enemy of thinking is complexity because complexity leads to confusion. He recommends that we keep things simple and focus on doing one thing at a time. When we do that, we change “nowhere” to “now” “here” and regain the sense of time and space we need to exercise our brilliance.
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Silence is Golden, part two
A few years back I participated in a marketing workshop conducted by Seth Godin. It was held at what was then his business space: a loft north of New York City next to a commuter line. About every twelve minutes or so, a train would roar by and Godin would stop speaking, sometimes in mid-sentence. He told us that he would do that and he was true to his word.
It was one of the best workshops I ever attended. The silent pauses (silence due to lack of speech) allowed time for his words to be digested. It enabled my thoughts to find links with his: to probe them, examine them, and shape them. I received information rather than streams of data.
In our rush to do more with less and cram more activity into every available minute, we do our selves an injustice. Thoughts take time to fully form. Time, silence and self-reflection.
“All men’s miseries,” wrote French philosopher Blaise Pascal, “derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”
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Silence is Golden, part one
I was in London the week all U.K. flights were cancelled due to the ash caused by the eruption of an Icelandic volcano. I’ve been to London many times and this time I was struck by how much more quiet it was without 3000 jet take-offs and landings each day. It was amazing.
Today I read this passage in Sam Keen’s book In the Absence of God:
“The absence of silence makes it almost impossible to appreciate the toll chatter and noise has taken on us…we literally can’t hear ourselves think.”
When I facilitate creative thinking sessions, I encourage participants to spend time thinking about ideas before they enter into brainstorming or other techniques that involve group participation. This is a simple request, but it is not easy. We’re used to developing ideas by bouncing them off of other people or listening to what they have to say to be inspired.
Yet the ideas we develop alone, in the deep silence of our being, are our most authentic ideas. And when it’s time to share ideas, the ideas we’ve authored become a golden gift to the team.
When you’re alone and not in a team situation, occasionally it’s worth turning off the TV or the radio or the iPod and sit in silence. You’ll be trading stimulation for inspiration.
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Brilliance is Focused, part two
Dan Sullivan heads an organization called The Strategic Coach. His organization helps business owners better run their companies and their lives. Several years ago I attended an extensive Strategic Coach program and one of the best take-aways was a simple method for discovering unique ability. Since brilliance happens when we express our unique ability–this was important stuff.
Here’s how I began my discovery (and how you can begin yours). The first thing was to consider all the work, chores, hobbies, sports and other activities that I did. The next step was to decide at which of those activities was I incompetent, at which was I competent, and finally, at which was I both competent and highly energized.
At some activities, try as hard as I might, I’m just not particularly talented. To be blunt, I’m lousy at them. Filing and organizing my office are two activities I find painful. I put those activities off until things are such a mess I can’t even function. I have received training in how to do those things, but it was of little help. Try as I might, these sorts of activities repeatedly lead to failure, frustration and stress. They’re just not me.
At other activities, such as gardening and home repair, I’m competent – I can get the job done. I can even do a masterful job at these activities. But they take lots of effort; I have to work at them. When I’m done doing them, I’m exhausted.
Finally, there are those activities at which I am highly competent and love doing. These activities are easy, effortless and enjoyable. They don’t tire me, they energize me. Facilitating a creative thinking session, putting together a presentation, and public speaking are examples.
Dan Sullivan suggests that it is here we find our unique ability. I suggest it’s here we activate our brilliance.
The trick to success and a life of satisfaction is to fill as much of your day with unique ability activities as you can. To do that you may need to find people for whom your incompetent and competent activities are their unique ability. Get the balance right and you have formed an energized, focused, brilliant team.
Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg, the infamous captain of the Caine, instructed his crew: “Aboard my ship, excellent performance is standard, standard performance is sub-standard, and sub-standard performance is not permitted to exist – that, I warn you.”
Focusing on activities that are our unique ability will ensure that brilliance is our standard performance – this I advise you.
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Brilliance is Focused, part one
Brilliance happens when we express our unique ability. That means two things: we have to know what our unique ability is and we have to apply it. More often than not, brilliance brings value into the lives of others but it is not dependent upon the approval of others.
The March 26th, 2010 edition of The Week magazine reported “A New Jersey woman is on a mission to become the fattest woman in the world.” She currently weights 600 pounds and holds the Guinness World Record for being the fattest woman to have a baby. Her goal is to reach 1000 pounds.
Although this woman is focused and her goal is unique, I would not consider weighing 1000 pounds to achieve a Guinness World Record an expression of brilliance. Eating 12,000 calories a day is not a unique ability–it’s unhealthy behavior. Weighing half a ton produces no positive value other than a mention by Guinness World Records, and that value is intrinsic to neither the woman nor her deed. It depends on the approval and the acceptance of another, namely a Guinness World Records adjudicator.
So what, precisely, is brilliant behavior? As mentioned above, brilliant behavior is a positive expression of our unique ability. If you’re not quite certain what your unique ability is, we’ll look at a simple way to determine unique ability in Part Two of “Brilliance is Focused.”
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Personal Pain as an Event and not a Master
Spring has sprung in Kansas City and it was a delight to leave the office late this morning for lunch. More delightful than the weather was my lunch companion: Carlton Logan. Although still a young man, Carlton has had a wealth of experiences–many pleasant and many not so pleasant. What makes Carlton brilliant is his ability to glean wisdom from those experiences.
While discussing his life-coaching work, Carlton mentioned something that stuck with me. He said that many people who come to him have had profound tragedy and personal pain in their lives. Some people never get beyond it; they feel that the wrongs they have encountered have “ruined their lives.” Carlton said no matter what the wrong, no matter what the evil someone has lived through–it is an event that happened in the past. It doesn’t control you. To allow it to control you is to make yourself a victim. And when that is the case, there is no hope. There is no future. Carlton admitted he can’t help people with such an attitude.
The people Carlton can and does help are those willing to move forward with their lives. Those willing to make the future better than the present. If you’re looking for a good coach to help you with your life, get in touch with Carlton. Carlton brings the best out of people. He’s a true Brilliance Activator.
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1400 Years Later–The Answer’s The Same: Leaders Need Their People