What does it take to win Olympic gold in women’s ski cross?
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Business & organizational development, Change management & wellness, Creativity & innovation
On the last day of the Every Woman conference I got to listen to Ashleigh McIvor, the first Olympic gold winner of the women’s ski cross at the recent Winter Olympics. She’s tall and lithe and she had some surprising things to say.
How often do you think she thought about winning gold?
Would it surprise you to learn rarely. Yep, she rarely thought about winning gold.
Rather she broke it down. She focused on winning the next race. Then the race after that. Then the race after that. And so on and so on.
Her focus plus her ability to break down a monumental goal made for success.
Like the picture below, which I took when I was driving back home from the conference, the change between the greenery and the snow covered mountains in the background looks drastic. In reality it only looks drastic from afar. Up close the change is incremental, step by step.
Like life.
Have a change that you need to make that seems drastic? Break it down into incremental step, like Ashleigh McIvor and mother nature.
Tags: ashleigh mcivor, change management, creativity & innovation, every woman, olympics, vancouver, winter olympics, women's ski cross
What does it take to say ‘good job’?
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Business & organizational development, Human resources
I was shopping in Costco yesterday and saw the above sign on a cash register. At the bottom of the sign was written ‘Great job everyone! Let’s keep those sales up!!!!’
What’s wrong with this picture?
Certainly not endeavouring to raise money for a good cause. Certainly not spurring each other on by keeping track of who raised how much.
Certainly being referred to as Operator FT-57. Ouch! Sounds robotic.
And before you cry privacy, yes I get that. But what would be wrong with referring to the person (’cause it ain’t no robot bringing in the bucks) by their first name.
I’d be tempted to search out the person at their til and say ‘way to go, great job, keep it up _______ (insert name here).’
With today’s stress levels at an all time high staff need all the motivation they can get. I’m thinking the above wasn’t all that motivational for the Costco staff. Yet for a slight change it could have rocked.
What are you doing that unwittingly demotivates folks?
Daniel Pink has some surprising things to say about motivation, check out the TED video below and if you like it pick up his latest book ‘Whole New Mind’ (it’s great).
Can you solve the candle problem?
Tags: costco, creativity & innovation, employee development, motivation, motivational, training & development
Shiny Object Syndrome – why it’s hard to tell the difference between styrafoam and gold
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Business & organizational development
What does a teenage run away, Buddhist monk, Geisha girl and Bill Gates have in common? They’re all connected to Christine Comaford whom I heard speak recently at the BCHRMA annual conference. Don’t know her? Here’s some background:
- she ran away at 16
- she’s a high school and college drop out
- she was a Buddhist monk
- she trained as a Geisha for a short time
- Bill Gates calls her “super high bandwidth”
- Bill Clinton has thanked her for “fostering American entrepreneurship.”
I took away tons from her workshop including what she calls Shiny Object Syndrome . We succumb to Shiny Object Syndrome when we get pulled off our path, our vision, our dream by something irrelevant, off topic, and unhelpful.
The challenge is whatever is pulling you off our path initially appears seductive, attention grabbing and highly interesting, that’s why it’s shiny.
Alexandra Samuel, who blogs for Oprah, says to stay on path we need to have strategic tunnel vision.
I say we need to be able to distinguish between two kinds of shiny.
Golden Nuggets:
- A golden nugget is something that catches your attention and makes you detour but in a good way. You’re still going to reach your dream, your vision but the path you take changes because of a fantastic resource, connection, or unusual idea you’ve come up with.
- Nuggets are great. They’re valuable and lead us to our goal, just in a different way.
- If we don’t pay attention to nuggets then we can be too rigid, sticking to a path for the sake of the path, not the destination.
Styrofoam:
- Styrofoam is deceptive, it glitters in the sun but it’s trashy and terrible for the environment.
- Styrofoam leads us off path and not in a good way.
- Examples of styrofoam shiny are complaining about not having enough time (Tim Ferris of the 4 Hour Work Week says lack of time is lack of priorities), vegging out for hours on tasks that aren’t strategic or not having a dream or vision in the first place.
Tell the difference between gold and styrofoam and you’ll be strategic, focused and flexible.
Tags: 4 hour work week, alexandra samuel, BCHRMA, christine comaford, creativity & innovation, four hour work week, oprah, strategic, strategy
Kindness doesn’t have to be huge, hairy and hard to reach (or teach)
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Social Responsibility
Lloyd giving me a hand at the recent Northern Voices conference. Notes his t-shirt: code is poetry (Photo by KK)
Some things are complicated. Some things are complex. Some things though are simple. Deceptively simple.
Like kindness.
I love Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s Thought Bubble – Kindness video for that reason. It’s not huge and hairy and hard to reach. Rather it’s simple, soft and within our grasp. It’s also easy to teach. Kindness is the ultimate ‘lead by example’.
Spoiler alert: I love that she marries the guy in the end.
With all things kind in mind, here’s some reasons to say thanks:
Thanks to Lloyd Budd of WordPress fame who helped me out something fierce and magical (in my eyes) at the recent Northern Voices conference with some tech headaches I’d been having. That’s him above doing his magic while I look on in awe. He was gracious. He was smart. He was hugely helpful. He was kind.
Thanks to Julie Szabo from Capulet Communications, my social media mentor. Every month we meet she pours her wisdom into my social media starved brain cells. I used to feel like a giraffe on rollerblades trying to cross a frozen wasteland. Now I feel smarter and more able to navigate what once was a social media swampland. Julie’s incredibly savvy. She’s a keen listener. She directs her wisdom to what I need both in the moment and for future success. She’s kind.
Thanks to a friend who many moons ago was kind enough to rescue a bedraggled me. I was soaked from a bike ride in the rain and this person swapped out clothes while washing and drying mine. This person gave me some passes to a pub I loved. This person lent me a bag for the first ocean kayak trip I was about to embark on. In short, this person was and continues to be incredibly kind. One of the kindest souls I know.
That’s one of the reasons I married him, my husband Doug.
Kindness. It’s simple.
Tags: amy krouse rosenthal, capulet communications, creativity & innovation, julie szabo, kindness, Lloyd Budd, northern voices, perspective, thought bubble, wordpress
Putting fun and evaluation in the same sentence
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Business & organizational development, Human resources
A picture I took in Brazil recently.
Evaluation terminology is enough to make you want to hide your head in the nearest toilet. And flush.
Program logic models, median, mean, outcomes, indicators, activities, outputs, baseline, denominators, dissemination, focus groups, inductive, deductive and the list goes on (and on and on).
Yet, program evaluation can be incredibly valuable and necessary.
I’m teaching a workshop today called ‘From Bureaucratese to Evaluease: putting fun and evaluation in the same sentence’ at the SPARC Community Development Conference.
Here’s the absolute basics:
- know what you want to know
- know what Important People want to know (e.g. funders, community members, participants)
- do 1 & 2 BEFORE you start asking questions
- do 1 & 2 BEFORE you start asking questions
No, that’s not a typo.
I repeated myself because if you don’t know 1 & 2 then I can guarantee you’ll default to asking a bunch of questions and once questions get asked they demand to be answered. And here’s the kicker – whether you need to know the answers to those questions or whether they’re good questions or not.
So figure it out. Like toilets.
Want some practice? Figure out what makes for a good toilet.
Seriously, write down 3 indicators for a good toilet. Three ways you’d judge whether a toilet is good or not. Then see if this hilarious powerpoint makes the grade.
Because if you know what you want to know then you can more easily judge success (or lack of it).
Tags: activities, baseline, deductive, denominators, dissemination, evaluation, focus groups, indicators, inductive, learning, mean, median, outcomes, outputs, program evaluation, Program logic models, training & development, united nations
Business or pleasure? Why do we have to choose?
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Business & organizational development, Creativity & innovation, Human resources
“Business or pleasure?,” said the guy who was sitting beside me on a recent flight. “Business,” I replied.
But I got to thinking. What does that say about business? That it can’t be pleasurable? That we can’t have fun or have ease when we’re working?
Let’s face it, the old adage ‘put your nose to the grindstone’ involves blood. Imagine sticking your snoz on some sandpapery moving surface. Ouch with a capital ow.
Here’s to business AND pleasure.
Want to read an example? Check out Danielle LaPorte’s of White Hot Truth ‘Today is an epic day.’
Want to see an example?
Check out the video of John Nese owner of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA. Now here’s a guy who’s mixing business and pleasure.
I’ll toast to that.
Tags: business, danielle laporte, Galcos Soda Pop Stop, grindstone, John Nese, learning, white hot truth
Those who laugh last (up to 7 years longer)
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication, Humor & comedy
Having a happy disposition affects how long you live, up to 7 years longer than grumpy folk.
Researchers at Wayne Statue University in Michigan looked at 230 pictures of major league baseball players from 1952. They categorized the pictures according to how much they were smiling and their laugh lines. They then looked at life expectancy.
Players who were in the ‘no smile’ category lived about 72.9 years compared to those with had the biggest grins who lived 7 years longer to an average age of 79.9. Remarkable how a slice in time from someone’s life (a mere snapshot) was adept at predicting longevity.
Laughter and smiling are universal. We learn to laugh before we learn to walk or talk.
The ancient Greeks were onto this when they built their hospitals beside the theatres. They knew that patients got better faster if they watched comedies while they were convalescing.
Today we call it bio-psychoimmunology – a mouthful meaning our brains aren’t nearly as smart as we think they are. Laugh or smile even when you don’t feel like it and the benefits to your psyche and your body are the same. Your brain can’t tell when your laugh is real or not and regardless, releases a flood of hormones that make you feel better, lowers your blood pressure, massages your internal organs and more.
Sobering if it weren’t so funny. The old adage ‘put on a happy face’ has some merit after all.
Tags: biopsychoimmunoloyg, health, humor, Humor & comedy, laugh, laughter, learning, longevity, michigan, wayne state university, Wellness
Because Laughing Matters
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Human resources, Humor & comedy
I’m teaching a workshop on Friday called ‘Because Laughing Matters‘ at the Every Woman conference in Whistler, British Columbia. This is a topic dear to my heart. And if it’s not dear to your heart it should be because:
- humour is strategic, it primes the brain for learning – when we’re laughing we’re using the most sophisticated part of our brain, the same part of our brain we use for critical analysis, creativity and innovation
- employers need help acknowledging how strategic humour can be – according to Chuck Hamilton of IBM it was only 40 years ago that the Ford company fired an assembly line worker for laughing on the job
- great leaders enable their staff to laugh on average 3 times more than average leaders (from Daniel Pink’s Whole New Mind)
- the ancient Greeks were onto something – they built their hospitals next to their theatres because they realized patients who were convalescing got better faster if they watched comedies
- it’s universal and a universal one at that bridge – we all laugh, in fact it’s one of the first things we do – we learn to laugh before we learn to walk or talk
- suffering is optional – if we feel threatened or unsafe or uncomfortable we get busy downshifting to the most ancient part of the brain, the part we have in common with reptiles. It’s what Seth Godin calls our lizard brain. Ain’t no learning happening then (unless you call getting ready to fight or flee learning).
Please join me at the conference and we’ll laugh together. Because laughing matters.
If you can’t join us then I invite you to find a reason or two to laugh that day.
After all, if it’s good enough for Buddha it’s good enough for me.
Tags: chuck hamilton, creativity & innovation, Daniel Pink, every woman, Ford, humor, Humor & comedy, IBM, laugh, laughing matters, learning, lizard brain, seth godin, whistler, Whole New Mind
Heaven doesn’t need harmonica players
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Social Responsibility
Andy Mackie, a retired horse trainer, had 9 heart surgeries. The resulting 15 prescriptions caused more problems than they were worth so he stopped taking them. That’s a lot of dough for a lot of drugs. So what did he do with the money he saved?
He figured he’d live for only about a month or so so he spent what time he had left doing what he loved. He bought a ton of harmonicas and started teaching kids how to play, for free.
A funny thing happened. He didn’t die.
The next month he bought more harmonicas, taught more kids.
Several more heart attacks, one more heart surgery, 11 years and 16,000 harmonicas later he’s still blowin’ the blues. When asked why he thinks he’s still here, he says he guesses heaven doesn’t need harmonica players.
Now that’s inspirational.
The image of Andy is by Jesse Joshua Watson, an artist from Washington. Check out this short video about a book he’s writing for children about Haiti.
Tags: andy mackie, haiti, harmonica, inspiration, jesse joshua watson, learning, music
Viagra, sex tapes, clarithromycin – 6 reasons why spam works (unfortunately)
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Business & organizational development, Social Responsibility
“Viagra, sex tapes, lesbian dating in cleveland complaints against adult dating sites. Clarithromycin is a macrolide antibiotic. It is cast-off to regale multifarious kinds of infections.”
Say what? If you blog you’ll no doubt recognize these as spam comments. Before I got a spam filter I was getting up to 80 spam comments a day which equalled wasted time, brows furrowed in frustration and occasionally a foul mouth as I vented.
So why do people take the time and effort to spam? Six reasons:
1. Casting a million nets to catch a few fry is worth it: it’s gotta work if people keep sending it out. Unwittingly folks click on it and get splashed with the foul stuff.
2. It’s the opposite of permission marketing: spammers don’t care if they make people mad, their barometer for success is the tiny few who click on the links and buy
3. Spammers aren’t writing their own operating manual: they’re operating under someone else’s misguided sense of success.
4. Technology and the global economy makes it possible: Spammers are even paying others to pass online security tests known as captchas (a loose acronym for ‘completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart) – those annoying blurry words you have to fill in online to continue buying something.
Folks in India, Bangladesh, China and other countries are slaving away entering captchas. Lucky for us it doesn’t seem worth it as the job is so boring, productivity declines and thus some outsourcing companies are declining further work.
5. Spammers’ definition of success is low: it’s not about creating a relationship, adding value and making a difference, rather it’s about pissing people off, creating shock value and making a quick, sleazy buck
6. Spammers are playing on your and my egos: the strongest draw is I want to believe that those comments are real, that I’m reaching out into the Internet ether and folks are reaching back.
Keeping my ego in check and getting spam blocker akismet has made a difference. And you? How do you deal with your spam?
Tags: akismet, blog, blogging, captchas, learning, outsourcing, permission marketing, productivity, spam, spammers