Archive for the ‘Karen Muses’ Category

I met with a former client today – I love hearing stories of how people are moving forward with the work we’ve done together. Doing versus being was a big part of our conversation … how we need both in the practical combining of our spiritual energy and creation of things.

What struck me about our conversation was how people coming from very spiritual perspectives can be uncomfortable with language like ‘making things happen’ and practical topics like ‘making money.’ Similarly,  people coming from practical perspectives, especially financial, can eschew language such as ‘being as a way to create value’.

I believe now is the time for these two perspectives to come together.

Think about it: How often have you seen the practical entrepreneur who acts without regard for matters of the spirit and heart – that becomes a callous, shallow (and not very effective) doer? Or the spiritual devotee who reads, and reads books, but isn’t investing their beliefs into practical endeavors?

Doing without being, and vice versa, results in a life lived without courage and risk taking. Both extremes are hiding out in ’safe houses’ of tradition – either focused on ivory tower intellectual pursuits or seeking safety in the daily grind where doing is the caffeine of the high achiever.

How about doing that is inspired by our being? That is infused with our creative passions and sense of purpose?

How are you living your live by both being and doing?

Hi Everyone! It’s good to be back on the blog! We took an unexpected break from writing when we realized that we had a huge opportunity to shift our single product delivery of IAM Career SMART! to a multi-product, community, social networking experience. We literally made this transition in 6 weeks. And it’s been a whirlwind…

Have you ever had the experience of just know when something is right and then you dive in 100%? That’s what happened to me.

Six weeks and one day ago, I had a conversation with George Tran (www.socialmarketingman.com) that catapulted me forward what feels like light years.  I was talking with George because I was frustrated with the Learning Management System (LMS) we were using to deliver IAM Career SMART!.

The old LMS felt like a lemon. It worked ok – we were trying to make a go if it – but we couldn’t seem to get traction. Ok, honestly, we didn’t try very hard. We released the product on the old site, had a lukewarm response, and then I asked myself where I was holding myself back.

My honest answer to myself: I didn’t feel like the LMS was a solid platform on which we could build our business and I wasn’t feeling the love from the people providing the LMS. As a matter of fact, my experience with them had gotten to the point that I was weary with every interaction with them. Not a good sign.

Enter George Tran. In one 1.5 hour conversation I was lit on fire. I saw how everything I had been working toward with the IAM material could be supported by his Social Sam platform. Our values of abundance, living life in beta, being real and transparent, building relationships with people, giving people lots of access to information and free help – plus purchase when people were ready -  was supported by this product. I also discovered a word to now use when describing IAM: a movement.

From here things just came together. Now, I’m feeling really grateful for the ‘old LMS’ experience. We learned a ton about what we wanted – and what we didn’t want. We are grateful for the incredible functionality available with our new system, and for the multiple people supporting the system and the many, many positive customer service experiences we have already had. George likes to call these ‘wow’ experiences. We’ve been wowed.

So, we’ve gone from lemons to lemonade, and we’re savoring and enjoying the lemonade more than you can imagine!

You can checkout our new site at www.iamlearningcommunity.com. We are waiting for a credit card processing bug to be fixed, and then we will launch to a core group of what we’re calling Seed Members – people who will help us launch and found this community.

Check it out … if you are a hummingbird, I know you’ll enjoy! (Watch the video on the front/home page and you’ll find out what I’m talking about…)

The Essence Map is a tool we have found useful in helping people to shift more and more into being at their best. It’s a tool I’d like to use to help transform how we conduct business, bringing with us the best of business, leaving behind once and for all those practices that deplete people, resources and the planet.

We use the Essence Map to talk about what is essential, and thus focus on the essential versus focusing on drama.

One of the tricky aspects of Focusing on the Essential is that it’s looking at something intangible. It’s like putting your trust in the wind: you can’t actually see it but you can see the effect it creates. How do you put your trust in something like the wind?

Here are some ideas I’ve put together to help us make the business case for Focusing on the Essential. I’d love to see these ideas evolve into something even more compelling and useful – with your help…

1. Look at the benefits of focusing on the essential. Some possibilities:
   • Full engagement
   • Energy
   • Creativity
   • Innovation
   • Health
   • Productivity
   • Focus
   • Sustainability
2. Look at the costs of drama. Some possibilities:
   • Exhaustion
   • Health issues
   • Boredom
   • Stress
   • Distraction
   • Burnout
   • Insomnia
   • Detachment
   • False limitations
   • Low productivity
   • Decreased performance
   • Sabotage
   • Absenteeism
3. Make it personal. What is your personal point of pain? What is the businesses point of pain? Identify a compelling need for change.
4. Paint a picture. Use the Essence Map or some other way of demonstrating the cost of Drama. Emphasize that a different way is needed to achieve results that are liberated from the constraints of Drama.
5. Bring hope. Ask questions about what people want. Access their desire for something better. Be relentless about seeing the Essential Best of each person you work with.
6. Keep it simple. Stay clear by being at your own Essential Best. Drama is confusing and creates complexity.
7. Take a stand. Be a leader for yourself and others – for being at your Essential Best and by coaching and challenging others to be at their Essential Best.
8. Become an expert. Being able to shift from Drama to Essence over and over will give you the confidence to coach and lead others.

People have become confused. Many think that results and money are what is most important. What’s ironic is that when we focus on the essential, money and results are handled, often beyond our wildest imaginings. Now is an incredible time for us – as people remember that time with their families, their happiness, their sense of well being is most important. We have an opportunity to help translate these realizations into a more evolved way of conducting business.

The more clear we are about all of this, the easier it will be to create it – in simple, fun and easy ways!

So what are your ideas for making the business case for focusing on the essential? What gets you confused? What helps you stay clear? I’d love to hear from you …

You’ve heard about drama haven’t you? Is the play or movie you’re going to see a drama or comedy? Or, how about the catchy phrase “save your drama for your mama” – a comment on our frustration with whiny people.  Barack Obama made drama famous by asking people working on his campaign to skip the drama.

I like one of the Urban Dictionary’s definitions best: “making a big deal over something unnecessarily.”

I use the term ‘Drama’ to describe what it looks like when I’m not at my best.  It’s a part of my Essence Map tool – a simple way of guiding myself and others in where we are in the process of waking up to the best of who we can be – ongoing.

Often Drama is perceived as negative. Whiny people are a pain. Who wants to be around someone going through a victim spiral? The Drama of miscommunication creates conflict. Drama in business can be very costly. Who has time or energy for it? Let’s be done with Drama!

And yet I want to encourage people to see the value in Drama. It’s entertaining (to some)! It provides opportunities for learning. It defines the edge of who we perceive ourselves to be. It offers territories of potential growth and new perspectives. Drama is cool!

So what’s the deal with Drama; is it good or is it bad? Neither!

Drama becomes problematic when we get stuck in it (think patterns of sabotage, dysfunction, addiction or victim behavior), when we use it to define our identity (I’m a worrier, busy, overwhelmed), or when we attribute our Drama to other people (how arrogant of you to ask what you want from me).

Drama becomes an opportunity when we can see ourselves as separate from it, when we use it as fuel for our creative energies, when we learn from it by transforming feeling bad about it into loving ourselves.

Making the distinction between Drama and our Essential Best or Essence becomes powerful when we use it to consciously choose where we focus our attention. Thus, one of our introductory workshops is “Focusing on the Essential“. We access our powerful selves (as in power with, not power over) when we focus on what is essential. We fall into being our small selves when we focus on Drama.

So I think one of the most important choices we can make, day after day, is whether to focus on our Essential Best or our Drama. Our focus determines how we feel (happy or sad), what we see (possibilities or limitations), what we know (wisdom or confusion), what we achieve (positive results or struggle).

Now I’m curious. What is Drama from your perspective? How do you make the best of Drama? How do you keep perspective? How do you leverage it? How does it entertain you? Or beleager you? (Is that a word, beleager?) You know – bring you down … I’d love to know!

I presented our “Focusing on the Essential” material to the Raleigh ICF chapter (coaches) this week and had a great time creating new learning with this group of people. It was a super fun experience …

I usually start my sessions with folks by asking what they expect to get out of the conversation … I want people to have skin in the game with me. One person said she “wanted to know what I thought was essential”. I responded by saying I wanted to know what she and everyone else thought was Essential!

So I introduce people to the idea of the Essential by asking, “What does it look like, feel like (in your body), smell like or taste like when you are at your best?” People respond by putting one word or phrase on a yellow/gold piece of paper in the center of a circle, as many thoughts/paper as they’d like. This group generated a huge amount of information. My response to this person’s question: “What you see here is what’s Essential”.

Here’s what they wrote:

• Energy – Tingling, Radiating, Full of
• Magic
• Contributing
• Making a Difference
• Motivation
• Laughing
• Connecting with someone else
• Play
• Being real
• Exuberant
• Happy
• Full
• Easy/effortless
• Breezy
• Warmth in my heart and gut
• Open
• From within
• In flow
• So interesting!
• Joyful
• Juicy
• Satisfying
• Fun
• Whole
• Well-rested
• Grateful
• Smiling
• Clear
• Heartfelt
• Content
• Clear channel to my talents and strengths
• Sharing
• Sense of well-being
• Asking questions
• Fantastic
• Great
• A bright sky with the wind blowing through the apple blossoms
• Powerful
• Irresistible
• Dark chocolate
• Worthy
• Relaxed
• Glowing
• Exciting
• Natural
• Me
• Clicking
• Raw
• Productive
• Creative
• Shine
• Active
• Attracting others
• Full of possibilities
• Free
• Intuitive
• Energized and powerful like a mountain stream
• Spontaneous and joyful like a mockingbird’s song
• Amazing
• Light
• Light, weightless, and effervescent like a down comforter with 1000 thread count sheets
• Connected to center/core of self
• Calm
• Attentive
• Grounded
• Confident
• Sparkling
• Peaceful
• Jazzed

This list is very consistent with what I’ve seen group after group, individual after individual, over the last 5 years I’ve been working with the question of ‘what’s essential’ ~ equating it with being at your best.

My proposal is that nothing is more important that living from, being at, focusing on whatever  we individually define as ‘being at our best’.  It’s when we are the most happy and productive. It’s when we see things clearly. It’s when we know we are bigger than any problem we might encounter.

As we discussed this as a group, we reached a place of saying “this is so obvious!” Why, oh why then is ‘the essential’ not obvious to everyone? Why do so many people focus on other things (we like to call these things drama) that don’t lead to being happy and productive?

I have my own ideas about this, but I’d really like to see what you think. What words would you add this list of what it looks like to be at your best? And why is it, that people don’t make being at their best more of a priority?

Personally, I like to hang around people and businesses that make being at their best a priority. It’s more fun and brings out the best in me. Are you one of those kind of people?

I’ve been venturing out into the world of blogs more and more and wanted to share a few finds related to career that align with where the IAM learning network is headed:

Career Renegade – Jonathan Fields is working to “level the playing field” of work after recovering from being an overworked securities lawyer.

Illuminated Mind – Another Jonathan who just quit his day job with the mantra “liberation”. Makes me wonder why so many people think of traditional work as a prison.

Escape from Cubicle Nation – Pamela Slim is clearly working to stay in integrity with who she is as she also ventures into new territories in how she works.

Brazen Careerist – Penelope Trunk is on the ‘out of balance’ side of the work/life balance equation and she’s openly working through how she’s finding her way. Great modelling as we’re all learning what equillibrium looks like.

I’ve notice myself sitting with a question as I think about the great work these folks are doing: what are they moving toward? I’m more clear about what they are moving away from.

So I’m curious:  what are folks wanting to create as they move away from the confines of the old ways of working?

The Future of Work

I was excited when I saw the cover story of Time magazines May 25, 2009 issue. “The Future of Work: Throw away the briefcase …” As I read the enclosed series of articles, my excitement waned. This was old news!

Some of the topics they did cover that I agree are an integral part of future work include:

• Doing what you want instead of following a standardized path: career customization
• More high-end talent and less commodity-type folks
• Returning professionalism to business schools (ya think?!)
• The inevitability of age diversity in the workplace
• Women’s transformational leadership style – engaged, motivational, more collaborative, less hierarchical
• Creating employee freedom as a compelling business strategy – work flexibility is key to a flexible workforce
• Green jobs – working on things and in ways that sustain the planet
• Collaborative decision making with culturally diverse people
• The end of perks like health care coverage and retirement
• The end of the career ladder
• The end of the cubicle life – telecommuting is a way to save

Yawn. Yawn. Yawn! All of this is true, and where are the new edgy ideas? I wanted to see something much more inspiring …

For example, I say:

The future of work is about asking the right questions, not about having the right answers.

Like:

• How do we thrive in constant change?
• How do we create less hierarchical and more collaborative groups?
• How do we work with people who are culturally different than us and love it?
• How do we create systems and structures that are more fluid, that support a more fluid workplace?
• How do we develop skills that allow us to be flexible, adaptable, and open?
• How do we create people and businesses that are more healthy and sustainable?
• How do we create a sense of safety and security when traditional ways of doing this are crumbling?
• How do we shift from standard career paths to personally customized careers?
• How do we work in more personally satisfying ways, while at the same time discovering ways to better serve others?

I could go on. And I’m wondering:

What questions do you have about the future of your work?

What answers do you have to some of these questions?

What do you find inspiring when you think about the future of your work?