I just updated, actually changing very little, the full description of “My Work” as I head into my 85th year…doing more by phone,email or virtual arrangements, with clients I know well/who know me well!
Less Travel. Often more effective,!!
The basis for the 7th phase of my life!!!
Very fulfilling…. to all.
May 20
May 06
Monday May 7th is my 84th birthday, and hopefully Spring this year is arriving now more definitively also. Winter has been slow to move back off our daily weather screen. A long walk today on the National seashore…… a birthday tradition….. was wonderful despite being a clear example of the two seasons struggling for dominance. Well my sense of this 85th year’s singular, expanding & felicitous cover in my life is quite vivid.
I’m most happy to live it through
Apr 17
Last week I was honored @ the 50th anniversary of the Society of Information Management [SIM], in Dallas Fort Worth, 4/11-13/18. Of the 11 SIM founders I was the “kid”, but the only one with $ and staff. All the others were authors, government officials, full professors, etc., except my boss, who was also a founder, and simply said “Get this done”. So I ran SIM for three years in my budget with two very competent young female analysts, and he approved every thing we decided to do. Twenty five years later a program I designed and implemented in my own business, I re-designed and started for SIM. It was their first program of leadership development, which they multiplied and still do today, now called Regional Leadership Forum [RLF]. There are c. 7 RLF’s in chapter areas, that produce the lion’s share of SIM revenue. Now very many of the Chapter and National leaders are graduates of that program. The 50 & 25 anniversary celebration in DFW, was generously and tastefully done, including two other long standing friends/collaborators, Bart Bolton and Darwin John, both of whom were basic in bringing The Society plus RLF, to it’s impactful position today!! Importantly ready for the challenges of the Future, SIM members face, in every profession!!
Mar 22
Real design, rare in most organizations, is well beyond just putting things together…which is hard enough sometimes. It requires more than a little of basic creativity…..starting almost from scratch…..or what seems like it. That is, a new market, or abrupt shift in organizational culture, a vastly different leadership style. Into such a context, the LLF process has been successfully, not easily, implanted often over the last 25+ years. Two beginning documents [recently updated] are linked here as a combined basis for starting such a design. I’ll follow these “poster” expressions with some audio ramblings….hopefully helping deepen effective understanding!
Mar 16
A longstanding Client, who has become a mentor of me in our process….suggested I add my speaking style, to each website verbal reflection/blog…..which I’ll now do…one more structured, the 2nd a bit more rambling…….personally expressive, if not proof read ready for print. This blog and the most recent one will be my first experiments with that idea. It will be an adventure!
Mar 16
I read recently of the common characteristics ascribed to water: flows around, hardly ever stopped long….grounded as much as possible…..powerful but appearing often calm/quiet….overwhelming @ times…..often present….almost always essential….sometimes hard to reach. There are others……An old Chinese parable of “Fire and Water” is superb. While not much in the current literature about leadership, these analogue connections are strikingly useful I believe. Especially in terms of the need for shifted approaches to leadership situations!! Many appearing to fit well, but beyond some of our capacity to adjust quickly. Authentically. Seamlessly. However it’s an imagery good to keep in our heads to implement when effective. A few days later I saw the award-winning movie “The Sound Of Water”, bringing another broad set of perspectives to ancient & recent expressions of leadership mentalities. Worth pondering as a full set for us all, I think
Some audio discussion of the above,will be added soon to this very brief verbal description of leadership
Dec 27
On Christmas am we were settled in to a beautiful evolving day….sunny, quiet, Cape gentle temperature…”when all of a sudden”, a very high wind – dangerous level – branches flying off the trees into our windows….then a strong fast falling rain, turning to snow…..turning to a “White -out” blizzard….then power outage…………Gripping…… and then over in c. 25 minutes!!!Power back in 30 minutes. I thought it might be hours, minimum, given the date. Did it really happen?!?!? Was it just one rouge cloud?? Went for a happy walk as the day returned to its morning state. On the walk, icy snow pelts cascaded on us, but were also over by the time we reached home?!?!
Like some story of Norse Legendary Thunder-gods hurling lightning into Cape Cod’s gentle mother nature ways……
Been perfect since then….. we’ll all see what the new year brings………..
Nov 01
I always [perhaps like many of us] assumed I understood and actually practiced thinking/being “strategic” in my leadership and management. Two client have been asked [ directed??] to be strategic, and we’ve been in conversations about what does that mean? what do/can others do? how does it mix in with operation or tactics that are soo pressing today.
A list: Post 445 Strategy Ponderables, developed as we explored options. Likely to increase
Oct 28
I’ve been commenting on this giant set of topics, and writing a blog now and then…even two in a row now[ see below]
Seems appropriate in my network …a new poster linked in….”word-smithed” a bit……. almost all counsel today, personal and organization, @ the senior levels leads within an hour or two, leads to some converging set of this list.
The list started as 12, grew to 15, then to 20……….it doesn’t matter what number you use today…it’s growing and impacting more work flows/people/products/teams…..needs to be understodd by many ……anticipated …and applied…continually…. they shapes the entire I.T. focus I believe, especially from the consumer/marketplace view…..
Will explore it directly with some of you
Sep 26
For some many months I have been lecturing on the extent of many [actually increasing] technology trends, most of those on the list were “Science Fiction” topics, just a short while ago. This list is used as a discussion basis in Leadership Learning forums – Post 444 Tech Trends. The crucial implications referenced, are the intense tight convergence, the realization that some really aren’t technology trends, but ideas or processes, that they are changing, in real time, AND provoke at the same time a serious level of concern/planning, and also the naive view that this is a long ways off!! They’re the full brackground now for several major industries…..big Health Care, Higher Education , the Legal Profession, Banking, and Insurance, and on & on. And they represent a framework for everyone’s planning/security/disaster recovery efforts. Welcome to the dialoque. It will be with us for sometime. Those in our profession….Information technology Services….. who have wanted to be more important surely have that option now!
Aug 10
This 6th video, long with the previous 5 videos shown under “teaching videos/photos”[ click above], of my office and what’s in it, manifests, I believe, how I’ve grown and changed, both professionally and personally over time. It’s the framework now, in this giving back phase, the 7th phase of my career, providing a flexible construct to share all my learning’s and experiences helping emerging leaders everywhere discover their own best way of developing others. Little by little I’m adding into the website, materials, documents, photos, quotes, ideas, drawings, etc….whatever might seem useful in that crucial process, from 1983 on. Almost 35 years of intense focus! I hope you can use it your own way, any way you like
Call to chat, or go deeper into any part, or more specifics, if you like
Jun 21
Below, dated 4/25 in a comment about “Being a Fast Study”, a capacity of value for leaders…. that’s been a part of my Leadership Learning Forum Process] LLFP] for years, we actually highlight a skill required today , perhaps more than ever. The same heightened perspective, in the next “blog” [6/7], referencing the Economist’s issue of 5/6 , focusing on “Data”, builds toward the same importance of knowledge and comfort, that many of us don’t have today, about the pace/scope of more “advancing technologies (AT)” than are in my current, 7 months old, list [Poster 444] Post 444 Tech Trends. I’m in discussions, exploration sessions, with clients/network contacts now, about these 13 [acknowledging there are others AT’s to consider – but this list seem more than enough to start for most of us – especially for emerging leaders], and how the 13 combine today with some select leadership capacities[ listed as A- E] that are often not fully operative in some organizations today.
Surely requires more dialogue. The need for which is clearly manifested by the implications referenced in the last blog [6/16] about “Neural Implants!
