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creativity transcending work life

The one clear thing Part 3: the essential work

December 17, 2010

There has been a bit of a gap between parts 2 and 3 of this little series on clarity so let’s recap. These thoughts stem from a year of struggling with some complex challenges especially culminating at the end of the year. I have learnt much from this experience and am distilling this here as a form of clarity for myself and others.

My experiences this year taught me that it is very easy to over-complicate things. Keeping things simple is a very powerful cut-through tool to keep a focus on solving issues. So my suggestions for moving forward are to find the one clear thing that is the essence of what you are trying to do or solve. The one clear thing emerges for me as:

  1. Finding the single question to ask that will answer much in its wake
  2. Identifying the essential work that needs to be done to answer it
  3. Putting in place the daily steps to get there and keep moving

Let’s think here about the essential work. Once you have identified the single question to ask, then you need to identify the essential work to be done to answer it. The key word here is ‘essential‘. It’s so easy to get side-tracked and over-complicate at this stage. So, at this point, identify the essential work that needs to be done to reach your goal or answer your question.

Examples of questions to ask at this point to identify or begin the essential work include:

  • How do we isolate the critical work to be done?
  • What data would provide clarity?
  • What tools would really help move through this block?
  • What’s the one change that would make the biggest difference?
  • What are the essential priority tasks to be completed now?
  • What is the immediate step forward to achieve this?
  • What’s the one real block to moving on?
  • Which critical people could help solve this issue?

Focused thought on these or similar questions can help you move through issues that are often quite simple and apparent but have become complex and muddy. If we can step away for some higher level thinking and rise above the detail, we can get a clearer view.

Talking to critical others can also be of great assistance: trusted friends, coaches, mentors, external customers and other stakeholders. Sometimes we are simply too close. A quick, sharply focused survey might assist for feedback to get improved clarity.

Mind-mapping, brain-storming and other problem-solving tools can also be of great value at this point. I have had a lot of success with Appreciative Inquiry as an overall framework for moving forward through complex situations as it focuses on the positive and what the future might look like. The four steps of Appreciative Inquiry are in themselves tools for identifying the essential work and getting a roadmap for moving forward.

Looking for the essential work, the key question and how to answer it, can also help overcome resistance, as complexity and murkiness are in themselves engaging and can stop resolution of issues. You can find yourself easily stuck and doing a lot of busywork and conceptualising and achieve very little.

What’s the essential work for you at present? How can you progress it?

Image, The sky is clear now by vincepal from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

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transcending work life

Gems #11 Managing complexity

November 14, 2010

Some recent gems about managing complexity.

While working on ‘the one clear thing’ series of posts and also while managing much complexity at work this year, I have been reading and reflecting about complexity: how we make things complex, how we can make them simpler and what enables this. Here are three great recent posts on this topic:

1. Pruning for Better Growth – Dr Monique Beedles

Part of the search for simplicity and clarity may relate to cutting back: weeding out , uncluttering the physical and psychological space and deciding where effort is best directed. Dr Monique Beedles says:

It seems counterintuitive, to cut something back in order to help it grow – but any gardener knows that a good prune is essential to healthy growth.

Are you, your blog or your business trying to be all things to all people? Maybe it’s time to review what’s really important and where to focus strategy and effort. See Monique’s article, a beautiful clear statement in itself, for some powerful questions to help review the focus of your business.

2. It’s complicated! Or is managing complexity simpler than you think? –  Australian School of Business

This excellent article discusses mindsets for managing complexity. It recognises that the old hierarchical, command and control models of leadership may not serve us in increasingly complex and competitive environments. The shift is to new leadership models that focus on creative problem-solving and the enabling of others to be solution focused.

Steve Vamos, president of the Society for Knowledge Economics (SKE) and the former chief executive of Microsoft Australia says:

The focus of modern leadership should be around breaking down complexity – or “making the complex simpler”…

Some of the key strategies discussed are around the concepts of:

  • the need for clarity of purpose
  • people understanding their place in the business
  • being solution-focused
  • the re-emergence of generalist leaders with strong problem-solving skills
  • the value of conversation and story-telling
  • the 80/20 rule and how to use it drive focus of effort
  • managing ‘wicked’, seemingly impenetrable problems with a new mind-set
  • bravery in tackling ‘wicked’ problems
  • strong leadership as the enabling of others to find solutions
  • persistence

Suggested approaches for superior leadership and the programs that develop it include: social entrepreneurship, design theory and innovation strategy. These skill-sets are seen as critical to encouraging different ways of thinking and promoting new solutions.

3. The eight word mission statement – Eric Hellweg, Harvard Business Review

Finally, a great approach from  Kevin Starr, the executive director of the Mulago Foundation which channels investments to socially minded businesses. His focus is around how clearly businesses can summarise their main reason for being through their mission statement.

So many mission statements are wordy, long, unclear and fall flat in the communication of their central message to those that matter in achieving it. Starr insists that companies he supports state their mission statement in under eight words using the format, “Verb, target, outcome.” Some examples provided are: “Save endangered species from extinction” and “Improve African children’s health.”

This is an excellent approach for enhancing personal and business focus. How clear are your personal and business goals? Can you express them in an eight word mission statement? How then can you measure success against the statement?

******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

How are you making the complex easier to manage and solve in your personal and business contexts?

Image, Simple yet Beautiful by pranav from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

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blogging creativity transcending work life

The one clear thing Part 2

November 10, 2010

 

In  The one clear thing Part 1, I talked about the complexity and challenge around me and how the writing of this blog has emerged as one clear thing I can focus on at present. 

Finding ‘the one clear thing’ is the message emerging from all the complexity and multiplicity around me. It can be so easy to get overwhelmed and do the wrong thing or nothing. There is an almost innate tendency to make things more complex than they need to be.

What does it mean to ‘find the one clear thing’? It means keeping the complex simple. It means providing a cut-through to moving on and solution. The one clear thing is emerging for me as:

1. Identifying the key question(s)

2. Beginning the essential work

3. Making the daily steps

 

 1. Identifying the key question(s)

What key question(s) can you focus on, ask, that if answered carefully and consciously, would enable all the rest to fall into place?

This approach enables you to:

  • focus energy and effort 
  • avoid resistance and distraction
  • avoid the allure of complexity

As an example, in a workshop recently, we were working to resolve a complex business issue. The workshop was focused around a single, powerful question honed from a previous workshop of senior managers. It was our task to answer it. It was incredibly hard to keep the group focused but with the aid of a very skilled and dogged external facilitator, at the end, we were able to clearly and succinctly answer the question. We will use these principles to drive future business directions, structure and staff capability development now that we are clear.

Chris Guillebeau also uses the key question approach in his World Domination work to guide goal-setting for individuals and the difference they can make.  In ‘A Brief Guide to World Domination – How to live a remarkable life in a conventional world’, Chris talks about personal goals, ordinary people pursuing big ideas and also through this, making a difference in the lives of others. The key questions he asks you to consider, ‘the two most important questions in the universe’ are:

#1 What do you really want to get out of life?

#2 What can you offer the world that no-one else can?

I have written about this in an early post, ‘Why Transcending?’ and shown how answering these questions helped me to develop my focus here. Read Chris’s Art of Non-Conformity blog to see many examples of people who have used this technique to get them focused on the one clear thing that matters to them in their life’s work. For me now, the key question is reviewing ‘How can my blog work here bring my answers to those two key questions to life?’

Jonathan Fields in a recent post, The Bucket List Lie on his blog, Awake at the Wheel, also encourages us to keep it simple by making a list of one:

A single, meaningful action you’re going to take before the end of the day to move you one step closer to a single, deeply meaningful quest. 

Julie Kay of JK Leadership Development and the wonderful Developing Leaders Online encourages businesses to focus on The single most effective question you can ask in the context of customer service and feedback from clients. It’s a great question because it’s solution focused and provides some metrics for knowing when improvement has taken place.

You can see that the first step identifying the key question is:

  • action oriented
  • solution focused
  • resistance averse

So what’s the key question for you right now, the one clear thing that can take you forward?

I’ll explore the next step ‘The essential work to be done’ in a follow-up post very soon.

Image, The base of Looking Glass Falls near Asheville, North Carolina by Alaskan Dude from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

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blogging creativity transcending

The one clear thing Part 1

October 31, 2010

It’s been quiet here. You may have noticed. Quiet from my side and also the readers’ side. No surprises that the two are linked. There’s been a lot happening. There is a lot of complexity around me at present.

I am doing the Unravelling e-course with Susannah Conway and a wonderful group of women from across the world and there is much delving into deep layers in that space.

At work, there are challenging issues to solve, multiplicity, new systems being implemented, many projects on the boil and a constant search for streamlining and solutions.

At home, there is much change currently and on the horizon as my daughter finishes school. The effects of grief and chronic illness in the lives of my immediate family weave a web of constant challenge. And the dog is suddenly quite disabled and has to be carried from one place to the other.

So yes, it has been quiet here but I do so love this blog, what it means to me and how it tracks my progress and development, my thoughts on transcending issues like I am experiencing now: the cut through, the coping, the methods, the strategy, the passions. I am loving Unravelling at present for also taking me through this in another way; mainly through images, photos, but also writing, connecting with others and a supported environment for creativity and expression.

So to the blog. I have been wondering if I am on the right track. Have I lost my way here? Is ‘Transcending’ the right focus? Am I connecting? Am I lost? I have been thinking about starting a second blog about my work on reading as it doesn’t seem to connect. Whenever I post on reading and book voyeurs, my stats seem to dive and take a while to pick up. But this is important to me – reading as a form of transcending and riding above, crossing over, connecting. Reading has kept me focused for much of my life on the present, what could be in the future and how to get there.

Fortunately today I came across a couple of great posts from Penelope Trunk, originally via the communicatrix and her fantastic Friday round-up which led me to Penelope’s post ‘Being a snob creates too many limits’ about books, love of books, book sorting, reading and many things I am also passionate about. Then at the end, I read these words as if written for me:

You will notice there are not any work-related books. Anywhere. Which is odd because I receive at least one in the mail every day. I don’t save those books because they bore me. I wish I didn’t have to write that. But I think they bore you, too. That’s why you read this blog.

The best advice about how to conduct yourself at work is to know yourself, and get new information—from outside your own experience—about what is possible in the world. And that is what fiction, and plays, and poetry, and this blog, are about.

Hola! Fantastic and that is truly why I write this blog also. I know I am in another place altogether with far, far fewer readers than Penelope with her thousands of subscribers that she has built up, but I recognise the essence and motivation. I also try to connect what I know from work, from reading, from experience and distil it here. ‘The one clear thing’ was the title I planned to write about today and I have my draft of notes around that. It will need to be part 2. The one clear thing at the moment here, part 1, is to keep focus here in moving forward.

So I read some more of Penelope’s blog. I read:

Penelope’s Guide to Blogging which is excellent – great summary advice and links to previous articles Penelope has written that delve into each topic in more depth.

The one of course that attracted me: Don’t Start a New Blog: Stick with the one you have  How come this woman is inside my mind and talking straight to me today? I think she has been talking for a while and I just haven’t been in hearing range. The words that jump out at me are:

But each of us has multiple aspects to our personality. This doesn’t mean you need to start a new blog. It means you need to understand how your changing self integrates with your old self. Your blog is a way to watch yourself change. Your topic is a way to ground yourself. Write at the edge of your topic. That is where things are most interesting, anyway.

So thanks to Penelope Trunk and Colleen Wainwright, the communicatrix for the leads (do so love the communicatrix’s Frrrrriday rrrrround up. It often seems to get me back on track somehow) and to Susannah Conway for the Unravelling experience which is one of deep change right now. I will:

  • write at the edge of my topic
  • explore my topic as a way of grounding myself
  • understand how my changing self integrates with my old self
  • know myself and get new information about what is possible: at work, at home, in creativity, in writing and through blogs, twitter and other connections

That is the one clear thing for today: the writing of this blog as the way forward and the steps it might take from here.

Do you have any other thoughts on blogging and keeping clear on your focus there and elsewhere?

Image, Glass of Water by gfrphoto from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

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creativity transcending writing

The Writer as hero

October 3, 2010

I’ve been reading Chris Guillebeau’s great post, ‘The Agenda Part II: The Individual as Hero’ about how it’s okay to pursue your big dreams, invest in yourself and understandable that you have difficulty explaining the reasons for your quests to others:

 

You don’t have to apologise for pursuing a big dream, because a distinguishing feature of such things is that not everyone relates to them.

Chris talks about the Olympics, marathon runners and other sports people among his heroes. I acknowledge these journey and achievements, but like Chris says, they are not the heroes I relate to. My heroes are writers – their stories are the ones I read, treasure and follow.

For me, there is something incredibly heroic about the writer’s life and journey. This is because it is my goal: to write and publish work of value that speaks to others: poetry, novels, creative non-fiction. This blog is part of that goal – getting me writing and connecting with writers – but the real goal is larger and more compelling, hard to explain, talk about and justify, but I know it’s what makes sense and connects the dots for me. I know it’s elusive and also very hard work, but it’s when I am writing that I feel truly alive and myself. So today, following Chris’s lead, I celebrate the writing heroes who inspire me.

My writer heroes fall into two categories:

  1. Published, famous writers whose books I read and biographies I study assiduously
  2. My blogging heroes who are all out there creating now and inspiring me

In this post, I’ll concentrate on the first category; next post, I’ll talk about my blogging heroes also writing books right now and documenting their journey.

My published and famous writing heroes’ lives intrigue me for their romanticism, their lyricism and their commitment to craft and writing practice. They embody what I aspire to. They are mostly women; today’s list of my key writing heroes is all women. Their stories of how they strived to balance work, family, creativity and their craft are often difficult journeys. There are themes of obsessive love, drugs, alcohol, mental illness, suicide, struggling to make ends meet, trying to write while making a living, reclusiveness and withdrawal. There are also themes of: success, achievement, the pursuit of perfection, hard work, constant crafting, connection with people, being in the literary milieu of an age,  publishing and public readings attracting many.

For these heroes, it was mostly a battle for their creativity to be expressed in the works that endure. I am grateful for their determination, their quest and the lyricism of their work that speaks to me over the years. It is because these heroes understood the ‘big dream’ and lived it that they mean so much to me. I celebrate these six heroes:

Daphne Du Maurier

I love Daphne Du Maurier’s sheer prolific work, diversity, narrative and story-telling skills and her dedication to her craft. Her unique vision created historical fiction, psychological thrillers such as ‘Rebecca’ and ‘The Birds’ and wonderfully innovative works such as ‘The House on the Strand’ which blends historical and psychological fiction together in a narrative about experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs way before it was fashionable. I am absolutely in awe of Daphne’s writing skills and writing life. My journey to Fowey in Cornwall where she lived was a pilgrimage and to be there taking the ferry across to Fowey and walking the narrow streets was thrilling. There are some excellent pictorial memoirs of Daphne Du Maurier’s Cornwall and the country that inspired her.

Suggestions to read: Rebecca, The Birds and other stories, The House on the Strand, Pictorial memoirs: Daphne Du Maurier Country – Martyn Shallcross; Daphne Du Maurier’s Cornwall – by Daphne Du Maurier.

 Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf’s novels are wonderful but I especially am inspired by her non-fiction, essays and diaries. ‘A Room of One’s Own’ is sitting here in front of me on my rolltop and is never far away. ‘Three Guineas’ is a favourite thought piece on war and also women; Virginia’s writing on women and writing excite and support me as the pioneering work they are. These works explore the barriers that women face in attempting to produce literature and help to understand the challenges in the dream of being a writer especially as a woman.

Suggestions to read: A Room of One’s Own, Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf: Women and Writing (The Women’s Press collection)

Sylvia Plath

I love Sylvia Plath’s poems for their genius, craft and power. Her poetry has had the most impact on me of any poet and I am thankful for her body of work and what she achieved in such difficult circumstances. I especially love the books that shows Sylvia’s mind at work as she edits and crafts her poems, the precision of it, the artist at work.

Suggestions to read: Sylvia Plath: Collected Poems, Sylvia Plath: a Critical Study – Tim Kendall (Faber & Faber) – for some wonderful copies of original drafting processes on poems

Emily Dickinson

I love Emily’s reclusiveness, her unique voice, her secretive commitment to her craft, her pearls created. The sheer volume of work created without an immediate audience is staggering showing a complete commitment to her individual vision and style. The story of her life is fascinating and worth a read for the contexts in which she was creating the work we now know and value.

Suggestions to read: The Life of Emily Dickinson, Vols 1 & 2, Richard B Sewall (Faber & Faber).

Elizabeth Smart

‘By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept’ is one of my favourite books for its sheer poetic power. A novella, ‘a cry of complete vulnerability’ as my copy says on the back. The story of Elizabeth Smart’s life is about balancing love, writing, creativity, children and a fight for self-expression. The narrative of her life is about ‘the experience of being a woman artist in the middle of the century.’ (Sullivan – below p xi) I wish she’d written more but I know it was difficult with how life played out and the choices she made, but I treasure ‘Grand Central Station’ as a classic novella in the style I would like to write in.

Suggestions to read: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, By Heart: the life of Elizabeth Smart – Rosemary Sullivan (Flamingo)

Edna St Vincent Millay

I love Edna St Vincent Millay’s romantic lyricism, her sonnets and her commitment to form. She was amazingly well-known in her time – the most famous poet of the Jazz Age and the image of  ‘the new woman’. She was incredibly committed to her art and lived an extraordinary life for her times, taking many lovers of both sexes. Her poetry was widely celebrated with her poetry readings often sell-outs with around 1600 people attending in some cases and her collection of sonnets, ‘Fatal Interview’ selling 35,000 copies in the early weeks of release in the middle of the Depression. The beautiful  photo of Edna St Vincent Millay when young surrounded by blossoms graces my desk here and inspires me.

Suggestions to read: Savage Beauty: the life of Edna St Vincent Millay – Nancy Milford (Random House)

These are my heroes, my heroines. I didn’t seek out for them to be all women but they are. I love them for:

  • their commitment to their craft and art
  • the narrative of their writing lives
  • their passion and love for writing
  • the works they have created
  • the lines that make my heart sing
  • the ideas that support me

Especially I love them for being my heroes, the female role models of the ‘big dream’ of writing because they understood it and lived it. 

Image, Vintage Underwood Number 5 typewriter by emilydickinsonridesabmx from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

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creativity poetry transcending

Gems #9 Shining light on yourself

September 27, 2010

Some gems about shining a little light back on yourself…

Just at the same time as Chris Guillebeau is enjoying great popularity with the publication of his book, ‘The Art of Non-Conformity’ , he writes an excellent post shining the light back on his readers. That’s one of the reasons I love Chris and his work: expect the unexpected. I always get such a wonderful blast of fresh thinking and often the reverse of current trends; hence his specialty, ‘nonconformity’, I guess.

In his post, What’s your message? Why not share it? Chris starts by referring to the current trend in social media of talking about others more than yourself. Chris turns the spotlight squarely back:

..ultimately people will follow you because you are doing something interesting, not because you are good at passing on other people’s messages.

A point very well made with much relevance for blogging, tweeting and much of life really:

Be interesting. Be yourself. Do something worth talking about.

Chris then encourages readers to comment about their message. There is much to learn and enjoy in the responses as people focus back on their message and reflect it out again.

Danielle LaPorte’s post on ‘The initiated woman’  shone a light on a very deep place and I knew exactly what she was talking about. It starts with bleeding, vulnerability and giving of the quintessential:

she’s bled from poor decisions that sliced her esteem wide open; and from unguarded boundaries being obliterated; and she’s bled willingly because that’s what you do when people you love are anemic or have been hit by life — you give them your blood. Here, I have lots, it’s fresh and warm. I’ll make more.

And it moves from there to describe a place where the outcomes of experience become a wisdom and strength that can help others. Read it – it is the most beautiful piece of writing. It reminds me of the wonderfully understated words from the song ‘You’re a Heathen of Love’  by Marian Bradfield:

‘Cause experience in a woman never goes astray.

And because Chris says ‘tell us your message’ and ‘be yourself’ and because Danielle says:

She’s so tender she prefers to whisper about her true nature, or write a poem. Abstract. Protected.

…here’s a poem from me. It was written and crafted during my time in Sage Cohen’s highly recommended ‘Poetry for the People’ classes and was featured along with the work of my fellow students on Sage’s ‘Writing the Life Poetic’  blog.

Narrative

She starts up high, facing north

towards slow mist,

watching the sea wash

into the rain’s drift below.

She is called to the beach

as if to a baptism, bride-like,

white as the air, stepping

down the rough rock stairs.

She narrates her life,

writes as she walks,

as if the sand and shells are

the bones of her story.

And the pieces connect her:

an imperfect white oval shell,

a fig leaf from a canopy,

the sketched black lines

of a creature’s moving home.

Cool and tight limbed,

she ends in another place,

as if washed by waves,

her contours, clear and shell-lined

as the Borromean grottoes

of Isolabella,

her white shining lights

coming home.

 

Image, Inishowen Mirror by Janek Kloss from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

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