“Eventually I realized that success is not about big hits. It’s actually in the opportunity to improve. How could our sales pipeline be better managed? How could our team be coached on client interaction? Who seems frustrated, who could use coffee? How could our meetings be more efficient, and in lesser quantities? Do we need more plants?”
A interesting piece on the highs and lows of becoming a leader. Irony Doesn’t Scale
(via Jocelyn)
“We start on the path to genuine adulthood when we stop insisting on our emotional competence and acknowledge the extent to which we are – in many areas of our psyche – likely to be sharply trailing our biological age. Realising we aren’t – as yet, in subtle ways – quite adults may be the start of true maturity.”
1 earn trust by giving it
2 hire for EQ, train for IQ
3 eat lunch with your team
4 tell people their work matters
5 be a player-coach
6 feedback in private, praise in public
7 in victory, lead from back
8 in crisis, lead from front
9 walk around and help
(via Farbod Saraf)
This:
“If you start to get stiff, you start to get scared, it’s not going to work, the sled is going to break lose on you and you are going to crash. You have to embrace the speed instead of getting afraid of it!”
(via)
“Although there are some examples of highly engaged communities being developed via technology (e.g., Peloton riders), when it comes to belonging, real connection will most likely come from in-person interaction in real life. But having physical space is not enough: Brands should create spaces, experiences, products, and services that deliberately foster the conditions for diverse people coming together in respectful environments for shared experiences.”
Excellent read: The Best Brands Are The Ones That Build “Belonging”
Uhm, CreativeMornings, anyone? Every month 20k creative types get together in over 65 countries. For free.
“Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.”
– Zadie Smith
“You’re floating in empty space in a universe that goes on forever. If you have to be here, at least be happy and enjoy the experience.”
― Michael Singer
“When I’m terrified, I’m probably on the brink of something that’s pretty rad.”
– Shannon Lee Simmons
“As someone who has decades of experience on the web, I hate to compare myself to the tortoise, but hey, if it fits, it fits. Let’s be more like that tortoise: diligent, direct, and purposeful. The web needs pockets of slowness and thoughtfulness as its reach and power continues to increase. What we depend upon must be properly built and intelligently formed. We need to create space for complexity’s important sibling: nuance. Spaces without nuance tend to gravitate towards stupidity. And as an American, I can tell you, there are no limits to the amount of damage that can be inflicted by that dangerous cocktail of fast-moving-stupid.”
Everything is Hard Again, by Frank Chimero
“The difference between a community and a network is that you belong to a community, but a network belongs to you. You feel in control. You can add friends if you wish, you can delete them if you wish. You are in control of the important people to whom you relate. People feel a little better as a result, because loneliness, abandonment, is the great fear in our individualist age. But it’s so easy to add or remove friends on the internet that people fail to learn the real social skills, which you need when you go to the street, when you go to your workplace, where you find lots of people who you need to enter into sensible interaction with.”
– Zygmunt Bauman, taken from this article: “Social media are a trap”
(via iA)
“The things that you put inside your head are like lego blocks. If you are trying to build with just with one shape and one colour your creations will always be limited. The more blocks you have and the more diverse their shapes and colours, the more interesting castles you can build.”
– Maria Popova
(via consumersbook.net)
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
― Frederick Buechner
I’ve had a pretty remarkable a few days in Los Angeles this past weekend and felt like I got to see a glimpse of the magic that’s inside of me, coming into my true power. I had to chuckle when I found this banner just now. They got it from a Frances Hodgson Burnett quote:
“No one smiled. They were all too much in earnest. Colin’s face was not even crossed by a shadow. He was thinking only of the Magic.
‘Then I will chant,’ he said. And he began, looking like a strange boy spirit. ‘The sun is shining – the sun is shining. That is the Magic. The flowers are growing – the roots are stirring. That is the Magic. Being alive is the Magic – being strong is the Magic. The Magic is in me – the Magic is in me. It is in me – it is in me. It’s in every one of us.’…”
“What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
– Jane Goodall
(via Emerline)
“The art of living is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past and the known on the other. It consists in being completely sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.”
– Alan Watts
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
– Max Planck
From Agatha Christie ‘Autobiography’. Click through to enlarge text.
“The opposite of spare time is, I guess, occupied time. In my case I still don’t know what spare time is because all my time is occupied. It always has been and it is now. It’s occupied by living.”
– Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin on “Spare Time,” What It Means to Be a Working Artist, and the Vital Difference Between Being Busy with Doing and Being Occupied with Living
“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person–without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other.”
– Osho
“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”
– Seneca
“Angst is easy. Doing anything, really doing anything, is harder. Nihilism offers nothing, and yes, I do realize that is its point.
This is a time for sharp edges. This is a time for ruthlessness. This is a time for taking sides. You cannot be neutral when you are under threat.
Do you think you are not under threat? Whose safety have you mortgaged for your own?”
“I think my blocks more have to deal with interacting with the world, or keeping sure that all my work relationships are flowing… you try to understand people and listen. Then to accept that sometimes, some work relationships have a clock attached to them. It’s just like a fruit. It’s harvest time, and then that’s it. It’s really sad, but that’s the way it goes. You just have to hope that you mature enough that you can let go when things like that happen.”
– Björk
