It hit me yesterday as I was fielding a call from a former colleague who happens to be in transition. She was reeling from what sounded to me as a normal twist in a job pursuit cycle. Maybe you’ve seen this movie too. You finally find a target company or role that is perfect for you but the cavernous void created by online recruiting puts obstacles in your way. My friend’s plight was amplified by a heaping tablespoon of self-criticism. Even if it wasn’t Valentine’s Day one might suggest that there were two answers for her; networking and chocolate. Continue reading…
Barriers: Real or Imagined? (Take 2…)
“There was no money,” said my mother in response to a question I’d asked her last week about my grandfather. “He was pre-med at St. Bonaventure‘s,” she said. My grandfather was a 1st generation American whose Italian immigrant family had settled in upstate New York close to the turn of the 20th century. His father died when he was very young leaving a family of 6 children. His mother remarried. Tony – as my grandfather was lovingly known – never went on to med school. Continue reading…
Conversations: A critical transition tool
I was reading the New Yorker this week and was struck by an article by Jonah Lehrer called, Groupthink: the brainstorming myth (The New Yorker, January 30, 2012 pg 22+). The article was interesting in that it completely upended the notion of brainstorming as a productive tool for creative problem solving. Brainstorming? My kids, 1st and 2nd graders, even know the approach. Continue reading…
Little known transition attributes: courage & silence
“I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on,” said Steve Jobs in his much-quoted commencement address to Stanford University in June 2005. He was speaking about dropping out of college and then hanging around campus to explore courses that appeared interesting to him but Continue reading…
Trials, experiments and transition
This week a conversation from almost a decade ago popped into my mind. In it I was speaking with a brainy friend of mine who was a coder at Microsoft. He and I were talking about how small teams of coders were independent but highly linked. For example, one team might be given the challenge to build the “slide show” function for Powerpoint; another might be given the “inserting pictures” function. Each group would work on their own piece. Every night they would run a routine to integrate all of the code written that day by the various teams. Sound groundbreaking?
Voices of Transition #3: A transition journey….
“From now on you’ll be traveling the road between who you think you are and who you can be,” said a letter addressed to Anne Hathaway in her role as Mia in the Princess Diaries, a 2001 movie that my 8-year-old daughter and I enjoyed over the holidays. Hathaway went on to read more of the letter by saying, “the key is to allow yourself to make the journey. Courage is not the absence of fear but the judgment that something else is more important that fear.”
I frantically jotted down this exchange. It seemed more profound than the typical Disney “G” rated movie. Maybe I’d had enough of turkey and relatives? Continue reading…
A 2012 Challenge: Innovation
“Workers are dropping out of the labor force in droves and they are mostly women,” boasted a front page New York Times headline just before New Year’s. “They are not dropping out forever; instead, these young women seem to be postponing their working lives to get more education.” What can I say? It caught my eye during a rare moment of peace over the holiday vacation. Continue reading…
Leading with gratitude….
“I lead with gratitude,” said Roland “Boot” Boutwell, an effervescent spirit who last Monday evening led a thought-provoking program on the Winter Solstice for The Friends of the Fells. The group is a not-for-profit association that supports a 2,500 acre nature reserve that was established in 1894 about 8 miles north of Boston. I’d venture to call him a naturalist. Although I’d really be selling him short with such a description. Continue reading…
Is there a choice you need to make?
“Make the right choices now. Don’t choose out of negativity,” said Marion Jones, former five-time Olympic medalist and the morning’s keynote speaker at the Massachusetts Conference for Women on December 8, 2011. Continue reading…
The Best Holiday Tradition…..
“Moms get to define holiday traditions,” said my friend Pam as we sat at Starbuck’s having a coffee almost two years ago. I was on the cusp of transition; going from a full-time ‘extreme‘ job into a consulting status for the same company. Truth be told I was somewhat catatonic. Continue reading…