Results for Meetings
I am now completing a small book on result-driven meetings. It builds on work my colleague, Robyn Faucy-Washington, and I are doing with Manatee County, Florida, and other clients on driving togetherness by targets rather than agendas. As part of this work, I am looking at the books and articles, viewing the videos, and listening to the Podcasts reflecting the latest thinking on effective...
“The End of Average”
This is the title of a provocative book by Todd Rose. He makes a compelling case for the variance among members of any category– whether animal, vegetable or mineral. From the introduction: In this book, you will learn that just as there is no such thing as average body size, there is no such thing as average talent, average intelligence, or average character. Nor are there average...
Trust what I do
I just finished reading Trust by Pete Buttigieg. He is amazingly thoughtful and insightful for a politician. One of his points is that trust is best seen in behavior. A short passage: If we think of trust as the belief that someone will do what is hoped or promised, the most basic human way to decide whether to trust that person is to notice what they have done before. Without putting it...
On Categorizations
Greetings. Before the Wednesday whimsey, I wanted to acknowledge the eventful days in our country. In addition to insurrection at the Capitol we have COVID raging, racial injustice persisting, and an economic situation that is widening the gap between those doing well and those doing poorly. My fervent hope is that the country turns from handwringing over its great divides to a way forward to...
The Result View of Trust
My colleague Robyn Faucy-Washington just emailed me the new Give.org Donor Trust Report produced by the Better Business Bureau. Based on surveys, it looks at changes in trust factors that influence charitable gifts. The top-line finding: “The importance of financial ratios as a signal of trust has declined steadily, from 35 percent in December 2017 to 18.6 percent in August...
The Path of the Calf: Part 2
In my last entry, I shared Samuel Foss’s poem, the Path of the Calf. It is cited by me and others who seek innovation as its opposite: getting in a groove and staying there. This week let’s turn that coin over to look at the limits of more free-form traveling. First, consider the value of staying on a path long enough to really learn it. Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers sums up the...
Follow the Cow?
Listen to this excerpt from a wonderful poem called “The Path of the Calf” by Samuel Foss: One day, through the primeval wood, A calf walked home as good calves should. But made a trail all bent askew, A crooked trail as all calves do… The trail was taken up next day By a lone dog that passed that way, And then a wise...
Questions and Inquiry
I just read Doing Justice by Preet Bharara. Here is a passage by this highly regarded former federal prosecutor: People are forever using acronyms they can’t expand, spouting jargon they can’t translate, trafficking in concepts they don’t grasp. They parrot shallow talking points and slogans and other people’s recollections. When you take at face value everything said to...
Empowerment
There’s a nice word. Presumably no one is against it. But the term does not readily lend itself to verification, especially if gradations are involved. Just how will we know if a person is more “empowered” as a result of this or that program? Or is the question irrelevant? Could empowerment be an all or nothing proposition? The question I like to ask of this word and other nice but...