I was in tears and, at the same moment, utterly surprised at my reaction. Crying? I was watching Iron Lady, Meryl Streep‘s Academy Award victory lap in which she portrays Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1979-1990. The movie caught me off guard. The twist for me came in the movie’s lens into Mrs. Thatcher’s life; the view is of her nearing dementia with life ‘highlights‘ told in retrospect. A wave to young children who were pleading with her not to go as she sped off to the Conservative Party‘s leadership. An aging person alone washing out her tea cup in the sink of a lovely, closeted London home. Adult children operating on the periphery. Why did it hit me so? Continue reading…
Transition’s detractor: ourselves?
“You kept saying that you ‘didn’t want to go’ but you kept walking backwards so I didn’t stop you,” said an affable guide during a debrief session about my performance. The event in question was rappelling down a sheer rock face during a 10-day Mountaineering Course with Colorado Outward Bound. Did I mention that I had never camped before? Continue reading…
Knowing when to act…
“What if you did nothing for twenty-four hours?” said my friend Marla as I related to her an incident that had me close to coming undone. Her calm advice couldn’t have been more foreign to me at that moment. I was in a leadership role that I believed compelled me to act. To address. To solve. To direct. What was this ‘stand down’ approach? Could it possibly work? Continue reading…
Transition: Crafting an approach
“I wasn’t interested in leading a double life,” said AJ a former colleague of mine who co-founded Infuse, a not-for-profit entrepreneurship program for inner-city high school students in Silicon Valley. Her dual risk arose because she works as a program manager at Infinera, a publicly traded optical networking company. It’s easy to get inspired when speaking with AJ. She is a bundle of energy and passion. Aside from being enthused about her work at Infuse I’m fascinated by her dual dilemma ‘approach.’ Continue reading…
Voices of Transition: Choices and Learning
“I got a sense of breathing for the 1st time,” said Shannon Breuer, a former Sunoco executive who shared with me her truly inspirational journey through transition as part of Novofemina’s Voices of Transition column. “I had no idea how much I was going to grow…I feel so fulfilled.” Continue reading…
Risk and Failure
“I finally got around to reading your interest card,” said Andrall Pearson former President and COO of Pepsi Co. and my professor during a second year course at the Harvard Business School. His quip came as he leaned on my desk with hushed tones moments before class started. The card, an arcane pre-Internet system – think index card – held a few sentences authored by students to convey our interests to professors. On my card I’d divulged my dream of running an emerging business. That day the class was scheduled to discuss a 1980’s-style emerging business, Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT). OAT was founded in 1978 by a high school anthropology teacher in her three-story house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My little visit from Andrall was my heads up, referred to as a soft-call, that I would be leading the class’ discussion that day. I had about a minute and one-half to prepare. Continue reading…
Goldman Sachs and Transition: anchors and aspirations
“I want to go with crazy good,” said Sal, an animated presenter at a meeting at my children’s school a few nights ago. By crazy good I interpreted him to mean a ‘good’ outcome juiced up with steroids to make it an ‘exceptionally’ good outcome. “I am always trying to think about the ‘stretch’….use my imagination to think bigger,” said the authentic youth leader as he was trying to engage a desperately tired audience of parents. “Why not?” he posed. Continue reading…
Curiosity & Transition: Are these related?
“Our girls are all smiling,” I beamed as I turned to another chaperone last Friday evening well after 9:00pm. The girls were 2nd and 3rd graders who were taking part in a Girl Scouts‘ Overnight at the Museum of Science, Boston. My animated observation came during an interactive session at the Mathematica Exhibit; a project that involved blocks, a piece of paper and the challenge of making a bridge to support a large object. Really? Even late on a Friday evening after a week of school, countless after school activities, and hours-of-fun since our check-in for this incredible Overnight the girls had a curiosity and energy that I rarely witness…let alone live. Continue reading…
Does Action Trump Everything?
“I have a piece of paper that I’ve kept for more than twenty years. On it are two questions. ‘What do you want?‘ and ‘What are you willing to do to get it?’” said Sylvia Ferrell-Jones, President and CEO of the YWCA of Boston. Ms. Ferrell-Jones is a community leader who is advancing Greater Boston’s understanding of social justice and change. She and I happened to be guests at a dinner party of a mutual friend. Her comments emerged during a discussion among attendees about her organization’s goals: to serve Boston’s neighborhoods where health, education and safety inequities are most significant. It is against these formidable challenges that she measures progress. Continue reading…
Transition Approach: certain versus confident
I remember a great NPR piece from the summer of 2009. I was driving in traffic, my typical commute. Eight miles in 55 minutes. The discussion’s topic was leadership. The reason it caught me was that it described leadership in two simple yet separate buckets; certain or confident. It hit me because I think that every leader I have ever worked under would think of herself or himself as confident when in fact they were more often certain. I wonder if this simple dichotomy works in transition as well? Continue reading…