Random Ideas from Charlotte

Ever since I thought of starting a blog, I dreamed of one day writing and posting my blog while travelling. Today I get to fulfill that dream on a plane as I travel back from a conference in Charlotte, North Carolina to my home just north of Toronto, Canada.

As the plane ferries to the runway to take off, my mind is full of ideas from conference sessions and the images of a city quite different from mine. Even though I have not drawn any conclusions there is a rich association of ideas.  

I love this place where the potential of ideas and images exists, and where I do not have to make them practical yet. The time for practical will come but for now I am happy to just let the ideas and images combine with each other in one way, then come apart and recombine in another way.  

One of these random idea combinations involves three images. The first is a picture of one playground manufacturers futuristic playground equipment. The second, modern art from the Mint Museum of Design. The third, a piece of public art in the financial district in Charlotte. I am taken by the three dimensional structure inside the structures.

A repeating idea from the conference sessions was that we need to challenge the mindset of 'we have always done it this way'.  How about taking a risk on even one new idea and seeing how it works out. I am guessing that the artists and playground designers understood this. 

My airplane is now in the air and I am watching the lights of Charlotte get smaller and smaller. It is amazing how different everything looks from thousands of feet in the air. When you look at things from far away, more things can exist in the picture at the same time.

How about people? Why did someone design and make these sculptures on the streets of Charlotte or in the museum that will stand unchanging for generations?

What are they trying to tell us about themselves? About ourselves...?

Another conference idea was that there is no everybody.  That is easy to believe looking at the sculptures above. 

But we need to make assumptions when we set out to serve a community. At the conference I heard that household structure and the generation that people belong to are emerging as the first factors to consider when we try to understand people's choices.

Fun keeps people coming back. But you need [boring] processes and data to be able to continue to deliver fun.  To the participant, fun may seen to be spontaneous and random.  To the organization offering the fun, fun is the result of deliberate actions and staff culture.

Or how can things that are all white look so different?

I could keep on combining random ideas and pictures for hours... until things emerge and gradually take shape. I hope that this sparks some random thoughts of your own.  You never know what may emerge.

Perspective

If you have ever studied art, you know how important perspective is. For example objects farther away look smaller but may actually be the same size or bigger than objects which are closer. Similarly, an object may appear to be different shapes depending upon the angle we view it from. 

Our sense of visual perspective allows us to make sense of a bewildering array of shapes and sizes and put what we see into a context for us to make decisions. Other areas of our perspective are not as easy to keep in context. In fact, some common perspective distortions may be undermining your progress towards your dream.

1) Perspective of progress - most people automatically pay more attention to what is happening right now or what is about to happen than what has happened in the past. This is beneficial when you are facing a crisis, but presents a distorted picture when you are looking at how much progress you are making towards your dream. A distorted perspective of progress over time will leave you feeling better or worse than you are actually doing. Both are dangerous. 

You can learn to recognize distortion in your perspective of progress by tracking your progress regularly using a timeline or by cultivating a relationship with a mentor to give you feedback. 

2) Perspective of cause and effect - the further removed in time the effect of people's actions are from the actions themselves, the more difficult it is to link the two. This delay may lead to effects that catch people off guard. You might have heard yourself say that you just didn't see it coming. 

In order to recognize this distortion, it is helpful to consider time frames for change. Ask yourself in advance how long it will take for the full effects of your actions to play out. 

For example, in tight times you might decide to take resources away from the future growth of your dream. Typically you will see a slight improvement in immediate results as you concentrate more on the present. In this short time frame, your action would be seen to be a success. 

However, as you take away resources, you may start to see a reduction in growth as time passes since you cannot continue to produce as much with less resources. In this time frame the success of your initial action may be questionable.  

Finally, over an even longer time frame if you do not replace the resources you took away, you may see an even greater reduction in growth due to discouragement or burn out. From this time frame, the action may be seen to be an outright failure.

3) Perspective of ourselves and others - we tend to compare our insides with the outsides of others. This may play out in two different ways. First, we may conclude that others are more capable than we are because we are aware of our own inner uncertainties or nervousness while we see in others the confident image they project in public.

Second, we may judge other's failures more harshly than we do our own because we are aware of our inner motives behind our actions but we tend to only see the actions of others. 

The answer to this distortion in perspective is to take the lead in being open and transparent with others, while showing curiosity. You will find that others will usually respond in kind and that lays the groundwork for a more meaningful (and honest) interaction. Even if they don't, you can have the satisfaction of knowing that you acted with respect and integrity.

Seasons: Planting and Harvesting

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of recognizing the seasons as we pursue our dreams. There are many seasons in life.  As we walk into our dreams, there are some seasons that we should become familiar with - like planting and harvesting, building up and tearing down, and holding on and letting go.  This week I am going to focus on planting & harvesting. 

When you have a dream but you have very little to work with, that is a sign that you need to invest in planting and harvesting. The purpose of planting and harvesting is to bring about growth and multiplication to move forward into your dream. 

"Planting and harvesting is the right strategy for small beginnings."

Let's break this down into four steps and make it practical:

1) Planting and harvesting begins with seed - something with the potential to grow, and soil - an environment for the seed to grow. There is no point in entering the growing season without seed and somewhere to plant it. If you are not sure what these are, you need to look to see what is at hand. Chances are, everything you need for your first planting, even if it is small, is already at hand.

Here is an example of seed and soil from my experience. As I was looking at starting The Daniel Mosaic, what I wanted to do was help people put the pieces of their dream together. The seed was my thoughts and experience with strategy. The soil was the blog and my network of friends, family and colleagues.

2) Once you have seed and somewhere to plant it, the ground need to be prepared  for planting. At this stage, it is easy to dream of the benefits of harvest and ignore the hard work of preparing the ground and planting the seed. Remember, what you plant is what you can expect eventually to harvest. This is true both in what you plant (when you plant wheat, you will harvest wheat, not corn) and in the quantity (if you plant one field, you will harvest one field, not five).  

At this stage you need to evaluate how much time and effort you have spent preparing for the success of what you have to plant. Some questions to ask yourself:

How much research and planning have you done? Have you written it down?

Have you sought out meaningful feedback from others?

Have you tested your idea, looking at it from different perspectives?

How much have you practiced?

Is the timing right?

Do not be deceived, what you sow, that you will reap. 

3) In between the planting and the harvesting, there is always a delay. What we have planted needs time to germinate, to grow and to mature (remember what we learned about growth curves). It may also need tending. This delay can be frustrating to those who are expecting fast results. Just like different species of plants take different amounts of time to go from germination to being mature, so it will be with your dream. 

One of the key opportunities during this time of waiting and tending is to plant a range of seeds, like empty containers, so there are more chances to see what will succeed. Consider what ideas will support what you have already planted. Are there actions that you can take that will strengthen the success of what you have already started?

4) Finally, there comes the harvest season.  The key thing about the harvest season is to be prepared for how much has grown and to pay attention to timing. If you have spent time preparing the ground, planting and tending, then you should also invest in preparations to reap the results. There is often only a short window of time to benefit from what you have planted. You need to be watching for it.  

Heritage tomatoes from our garden. Photo: Heart's Ease & Thyme

One unexpected thing about the harvest is how much work it is. I experienced this when I became responsible for applying for grants at one of my positions.   At first I thought that the hardest thing would be getting the money, so I spent a lot of time developing a grants strategy and writing solid grant applications. I soon learned that it was relatively easy to get money for good projects. What caught me off guard was how much work it was to administer the grants program after being awarded the money. I spent much more time with funding agreements, communications, reporting and audits than I spent preparing to get the money.

I see a lot of people who have a good idea. Some of them take the next step and do a reasonable job preparing the ground and planting at first, but give up halfway through the growing season. What I don't see very often are people who see the whole season through. The results may not be spectacular the first season, but those people have positioned themselves for the next season of planting and harvesting to be even better.