Transition through a techie lens

What’s your take on social media?  Earlier today I experienced social media deja vu for the first time.  Who knew?   A friend tagged a Forbes.com post on LinkedIn entitled,“The Six Enemies of Greatness (and Happiness)” by blogger Jessica Hagy.   The caption included a few little drawings.

http://blogs-images.forbes.com/jessicahagy/files/2012/02/IMAGE00021.jpg

The Six Enemies of Greatness ( and Happiness) by Jessica Hagy, Forbes.com 2/28/12

The drawings looked and felt like the illustrations that I’d been seeing all week in “The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter Senge.”   What can I say, the drawings spoke to me…. Continue reading…

Transition: How do you start?

“This is an evolution not an event,” I added sincerely as I sat with a colleague on the eve of his first major downsizing.  He was the CIO of a major insurance company.  It was the early 90’s. None of us were fatigued yet by downsizing.   He was visibly worried as he sat thinking through the likely impact of a meeting scheduled for the next morning.   I was on my soapbox of ‘enlightenment through defining a problem correctly.’  I urged him to think about a broader set of actions: the message to the employees who would stay, the required behaviors of his management team in the days and months that followed, his willingness to help those who would be on the receiving end of a sobering message. Continue reading…

Transition: Learnings and laughs one year in…

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…

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…