If ever you’ve doubted that meaning and satisfaction can be found in any job, read this article about a guy whose job it is to clean up dog waste.
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Conversation ideas at work
The CEO Refresher has an article that suggests ten conversation topics in organizations. This builds on the idea, that conversations are the way that human beings think together, as explored by Margaret Wheatley in Turning to one another.
An excellent way to conduct the discussions, would be circles of conversation. This is a very simple method that promotes deep discussion and deep listening.
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Quote
If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? […] Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?
– From Life of Pi by Yann Martel
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Want to understand others? Imitate them!
According to this article, there is a very concrete, neurological link between empathy (the ability to identify with other peoples emotions), and the tendency to imitate others.
A team at the University of California has conducted an experiment that used Magnetic Resonanced Imaging (MRI) to measure brain activity in subjects who were either observing other peoples facial expressions or imitating them. The areas of the brain stimulated by these two activities were found to be similar, but when the subjects were mimicking the expressions, there was an increased activity in the parts of the brain responsible for regulating emotions.
From the article: Even if someone has suppressed most of their ability to empathize, Iacoboni says, anyone can become more empathetic. “If you want to become more empathetic, you have to try to look at how people act and move their body and their face. Try to mimic it a little bit, and you will feel internally what other people feel.”
This seems to validate one central tool of NLP, which is to create a rapport between the practitioner and the subject, by mirroring the subject.
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Democracy in business
Fast Company has a short piece about Traci Fenton, the founder & CEO of World Dynamics. She works as a consultant to promote democracy in organizations, based on a belief that “Never has there been a more important time to consider how organizational democracy can transform corporations AND produce the hard (and soft!) results stockholders, employees and customers are craving.“
I couldn’t agree more. As a founder and former leader of a company that was run democratically, I can safely say that it is a great way to work. I can only hope that Traci is right, when she claims that “Democracy is inevitable. The companies that get this will lead their industry and ultimately build a more democratic world.”
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Meeting Meg
Last night I had the pleasure of meeting Margaret Wheatley (or simply Meg) for the first time. I was part of a circle conversation about leadership, arranged by my good friend Carsten Ohm. Meg is the author of (among others) A simpler way and Turning to one another.
We had a very diverse group in the circle, and as always the discussion was deep and intense. Megs presence gave the discussion an added dimension, because she could use her background and experience to point out the deeper roots of the discussion at a few critical points.
We started from the definition of a leader, that they use in the Berkana Institute, namely that a leader is someone who wants to help (or someone who wants to contribute to positive change).
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Positive psychology
In 1998 Martin E.P. Seligman decided to teach an undergraduate seminar in positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. This was based on his idea “that psychology should turn toward understanding and building the human strengths to complement our emphasis on healing damage”.
Simply put, the seminar focused on what gives people positive experiences. Themes included kindness, play, life as art, flow and more.
His experience is described here, and apparently it was extremely positive. One student put it like this: “Positive psychology was a course that seemed to grab all of the young burgeoning psychologists in the room by their throats and say ‘Hey! The world should be smiling a lot more than it is! What are you going to do about it?’”
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Book reviews
You can see a list of all the book reviews on the site so far. It’s quite a mix, but mostly it relates to new and better ways of working. Of better and more “natural” ways in leadership, organization, change, psychology and learning.
If I had to pick the five books from that list that have influenced me the most, I’d go for:
++ Harpo Speaks
Harpo Marx’ autobiography.
++ The fifth discipline
The book that defined the learning organization.
++ Birth of the chaordic age
Dee Hocks autobiography, the story of Visa and the definition of chaordic organizations all in one book.
++ Nuts!
The story of Southwest Airlines, and their crazy and succesful employees.
++ A simpler way
Presents a simpler, more positive and truer way to look at the world and at organizations.
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Generosity in action
My good friend Lars Pind runs a company, Collaboraid, which embodies generosity in a number of ways. They develop e-learning software based on an open source platform, which is generous in itself, since they spend time and energy not only on creating solutions for their customers (among which you’ll find MIT, Heidelberg University and Greenpeace), but also on improving the platform itself.
And now they’ve taken it a step further, and have arranged a two-day conference about the technological platform for anyone who’s interested, and people are coming from all over the world. Cost of participation: Zero! They spend a lot of time arranging this event but won’t make a single buck on it. They do it simply for the sake of the community, and because they think it will be fun.
What does it signify, when a company does something this generous?
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