Brian@GrowthWorks

The Girl Effect...

Some will disagree with the change. Others will even scoff at the significance of the gesture.

The News: The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) is closing the Bush-era loophole in the Title IX legislation that some argued made it easier for colleges and universities to avoid complying with requirements to provide equal opportunity for female athletes. (NYTimes)

I say it's a good day for the planet.

The world can be an unfathomably unfair and hostile place for those born female.

• I spoke about leadership issues in the finance industry this week with a female executive who said it takes a thick skin for women to get ahead in her field because of the offensive bawdiness some of the boys still bring to the workplace.
• I learned at the world premier in Minneapolis of a documentary film, Power and Control: Domestic Violence in America, that a woman is assaulted every 18 seconds in America by the man she loves.

Kudos to those in the Obama administration who guided the DOE to this decision. It's a step in the right direction. A question for all of us, though: What can each of us do to help clear the path for the success and well-being of the girls and women in our lives?

Full disclosure: I have a daughter. She's in the Peace Corp. Yup, I'm biased, but I think she's pretty amazing. (Callie's Blog) And I'm posting this article and link in part because I want her to have a great life, but also because I believe the investments made in her so far have helped make the world a little better place. But I would have written this article no matter what, because I believe investing in girls makes the world a better place for my son, too.

If you're looking for ideas or inspiration about something you could do, check out this video (Email Subscribers Click Here to View):

Make a Difference,

Brian

Visit GrowthWorks Inc. for info about my work helping business leaders break the habit of doing the same old things the same old way...

5 Lessons about Learning and Leadership... Courtesy of a Daughter with No Fear of Fish Heads

I have long believed that if I listen well, kids have a lot to teach me about being a better grown-up, a better leader, a better person. My son and daughter have been schooling me for years. The most recent lesson came in a handmade card for Father's Day, celebrated today in the US, sent by my daughter, Callie, who is working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tzactza, Peru.

DISCLAIMER: If you want to score big points with a parent, send a note like the one I'm about to share with you. I'm proud and touched to have my daughter giving me this much credit for my parenting (and I had only an instant of suspicion that she may be about to ask me for something big). I know it may seem like I'm nominating myself for some good daddy award, but I really am putting this out here because of the wisdom I'm hearing in her words.

THE BACK STORY: You need a bit of background to understand the "inside" story on the fish heads that show up in the first paragraph. When Callie was 15 we took a family trip to Spain. When we ordered our first meal at a restaurant in the Plaza Mayor, near where I lived when I was a college student studying abroad, I warned that the fresh-caught trout would come with head and tail attached. Everyone thought I was joking; they had never seen that in their American upbringing. But I wasn't. After the initial shock it was not that big a deal. Trout is a delicate creature. Everyone ate with no major problems. But a week later at a restaurant in Nerja, along the Costa del Sol, Callie ordered another variety of fish that had a much bigger, more intimidating head. She got a bite or two into but couldn't go on. I was eating a delicious...wonderfully blackened swordfish steak I was planning to savor sloooowly...bite... by... bite. I was a bite or two in when I realized to make life right at that moment it would be Callie eating my swordfish. And, to enjoy the punchline, you need to know there is an animal many kids keep as pets in the US that are a delicacy in the Peruvian diet, and we'll be sharing meals on a visit with Callie soon...

The Lessons

I'll lay out the lessons here all-official-like with headings, bullets, and indents, but they'll mean more when hear them in Callie's own voice below.

On Learning:

• Try new things, even when they're scary.
• Whenever you can, laugh instead of getting angry.
• Look for solutions instead of despairing over things that aren't going well.

On Leadership:

• Stand by the people you're trying to teach and lead. They will need your help.
• Be ready to teach... and also be ready to keep learning.

Callie's Version of Lessons about Learning and Leadership

NOTE: The outside of this card is a head and shoulders photo of Callie holding a small camp-fire-grilled fish in two hands, with head and tail attached, and looking as if she might swallow it whole...

Happy Father's Day. Thanks, Callie.

Make a Difference,

Brian

Are You Highly Creative?

The numbers are not in your favor...

When tested for creativity, somewhere in the neighborhood of 98 percent of 5-year-old kids score at the  highest levels. Test them five years later and about 30 percent still shine. Test the general population of adults? Sadly, less than 5 percent can still let ideas fly, according to research by George Land going back to the 60s.

A lot of the work I do helping teams change, improve and innovate comes down to getting grown-ups to act more like kids again. Be curious. Be playful. Every once in a while turn off that ever-so-adult voice in your head that makes us take things sooooo seriously all the time.

Something happens as we grow up that turns up the dial on our ability to think critically, and turns it down on the ability to entertain alternatives to the way things are usually done. That's why we break out the Playdough, Slinkies, bottles of bubbles, Mr Potato Heads, Legos... to remind people that sometimes we have to break some paradigms and let go the restraints that lock us into doing the things the way they've always been comfortably done -- and hoping for different results.

Once, we were all kids... and all creative. With a little practice it's not that hard to get back there.

This video is targeted at entrepreneurs; that's the market served by its producer (Grasshopper Group). But if you could use an inspiring reminder about believing in big things, chasing dreams... watch it. It will be two minutes and 19 seconds well spent. With a little refresher, we can all beat the odds...

Make a Difference,

Brian

Jaw-dropping Glimpse of Future Technology...

Cross a Maes and a Mistry and what do you get? Bedazzled.

This video starts out a bit slowly, but stick with it. Patti Maes runs the Fluid Interfaces Group out of the MIT Media Lab. Pranav Mistry is, Maes says, "the genius" student behind the amazing technology they demonstrated in February at TED, a conference that brings together innovators and big thinkers in the worlds of technology, education, and design.

With only $350 in off-the-shelf gizmos we all own, this team put together... well, watch the video... And then, no matter how overwhelmed you may be feeling about our world gone crazy Facebooking, Twittering, LinkedIn-ing, Ning-ing, and social networking 24/7/365, OMG, I dare you to pretend this stuff is all a fad.

Make a Difference,

Brian

P.S. Thanks to my GrowthWorks partner Gerry Sexton for sending me my link.

Recommended Reading... A Designer Takes on His Biggest Challenge Ever | Fast Company

This is an article about David Kelley and his "design thinking" firm, Ideo. He and the company are the rock stars of the innovation industry. -- Brian

A Designer Takes on His Biggest Challenge Ever | Fast Company

P.S. I'm not selling anything here, but an annual subscription for 10 old-fashioned, hold-'em-in-your-hands-and-read-them-anywhere-you-want-issues of Fast Company is less than $10. I get more value than that just looking at the covers...

Posted using ShareThis

Finding the Expert Within...

We're all probably better than we think we are...

My trigger for this is Charles Handy. He is one of my inspirations when it comes to leadership, innovation, and just plain living life with head squarely planted on shoulders. His newest book is Myself and Other Matters More Important. When Gerry Sexton and I were writing our book, Leading Innovation: Creating Workplaces Where People Excel So Organizations Thrive, I was into Handy's Beyond Certainty. In that book he said that when he first grasped the significance of the discontinuity of change in his life (i.e., we don't move on straight lines into the future, so there's no predicting what's next), he felt as if he had been waylaid and misguided by all his previous education.

The main lesson he had learned up to that point, he says, is that the "experts" in the world -- the teachers, scientists, politicians, religious leaders -- had answers to all questions. His job as a student, if he had a problem or a question, was to find the expert with the answer.

That belief, he says, was wrong -- and crippling.

"It never occurred to me in a world of uncertainty," Handy says, "that some problems were new, or that I might come up with my own answers. The world is not an unsolved puzzle waiting for the occasional genius to unlock its secrets. The world...is an empty space waiting to be filled."

That's a powerful mind shift.

Make a Difference,

Brian

Why, Daddy?...

When my son, Sean, was 3 years old, he asked me a question that 17 years later still rattles around my head almost every day, and reminds me of how important it is to keep questioning the status quo.

A Question that Grabs You By the Seat of Your Pants...

He used to toddle down from his bedroom in the morning to keep me company while I got ready for the day. When I slid aside the shower curtain he'd be sitting on the closed lid of the toilet reaching up to hand me my towel. Sometimes I wouldn't have heard him arrive. While I worked my razor he played with handfuls of shaving cream. And then while I dressed he would stand nearby the closet, watching as only one with great curiosity would watch.

That morning he watched me pull a pair of pants off a hanger, step into them, latch the waist clasp... then pull down a shirt, put it on, unbutton my pants, tuck in my shirt, and re-button my pants.

He looked at me, his head tilted a bit, smiling, and asked, "Why don't you put your shirt on first?"

Almost every morning when I dress I relive that moment and hear that question. First, I smile. Then I remind myself:

• Beware of doing things the way they have always been done merely because that's the way they have always been done. There are always other ways. Maybe better ways. Even a child can see that.

Make a Difference,

Brian 

The Luxury of Learning... and the Gift of Sharing

One of the luxuries of the work I do is that I get to be constantly learning -- reading, researching, talking to people, trying to find new ways of looking at old problems, and drawing unique connections between all the diverse threads that weave my life.

On good days, I find some really cool stuff. And I get a little smarter or newly inspired. When I do, I like to share the links with others who might also find them useful of valuable. This Blog will be one of the ways I think I can do that more effectively.

An Inspiring Music Video

Today, my friend Layne Kennedy a gifted photographer/artist and all-around-good human being sent a link to this inspiring music video. If music moves you in any way, watch: Stand By Me performed by musicians around the world at Playing for Change. Hit the "Click to Play" button on the video screen.

Make a Difference,

Brian
bmcdermott@growthworksinc.com

Do Something Different... I'm Starting a Blog

Gerry (my partner at GrowthWorks) and I created a Leading Innovation workshop this year based on our book. We delivered the training for a high-tech company to its top 400 managers around the world. At the end of day one of each session I gave the participants a homework assignment:

• Do something different... and pay attention to see if you notice anything special...

It could be as simple as driving a new way to work. I did the assignment 19 times in Berlin, London, Sydney... And I was rewarded every time.

In Boston, I had forgotten overnight to do the assignment. When I woke, slightly embarrassed and panicked about not completing the work... how could I expect others to get anything out of the exercise if I wasn't doing it myself... I decided i would sing in the shower. But I'm not a morning person and didn't really feel like singing. So, I thought, "I'll just tell the group I sang int he shower." But there was no reward in faking it. So I sang. And my mood shifted instantly... for the better.

In Singapore,I decided to work out in the fitness facility without listening to my iPod or watching TV. With 2 minutes and 6 seconds left on the clock on the elliptical trainer I was ready to be done, but time seemed to be moving so slowly. would it everrrr end? And to that point, no reward. I played a game; decided I wouldn't look at the timer again until I was confident it was under 2 minutes. When I looked back I expected to see 1 minute and maybe 30 seconds. It was 1 minute 59 seconds. I thought, "7 seconds is a lonnnnng time." And that set me off thinking about a book I've been wanting to write but have been postponing "for lack of sufficient time."

My reward for doing some different and paying attention for anything special in that fitness room in Singapore? I realized I can get this book done in small pieces. I don't have to swallow it whole. I got started again that night.

Enough for now. I've scheduled 15 minutes to make a few preparations for a book-related research trip I planned in my spare minutes. I fly next Wednesday...

Make a Difference,

Brian

bmcdermott@growthworksinc.com