I grew up believing that anything worth having was worth working hard for.  This seems to be in my way of taking on new, big business ideas.  That is, the belief that it will be too hard to do.  Not that I mind hard work, I actually value working hard and the fruits of that labor bring with them a sense of great accomplishment, but does everything have to be hard?  No.  That’s no way to live.  So, my new mantra, thanks to my dear friend Ken Kesslin, is to seek what feels easy for me and build that!  To that point, Ken sent me this delightfully wacky video by Fred Grazton that I highly recommend you check out.  It will make you smile!

Highly entertaining, and on-target skewering of the education systems on our planet today, Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk is well worth the 19 minutes it takes to view it.  First of all, he’s funny.  Second of all, if you are any kind of leader or educator, mentor, coach or teacher, this will resonate for you!  A few of my favorite quotes are below, and the video is embedded for your viewing pleasure.  Enjoy!

“Creativity is as important in education as literacy”

“We are educating people out of their creative capacities”

“if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original — if you’re not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this, by the way. We stigmatize mistakes. And we’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Picasso once said this — he said that all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it.”

“And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can’t afford to go on that way.”

“creativity — which I define as the process of having original ideas that have value — more often than not comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.”

But by far my favorite story he told was the tale of Gillian Lynne. She’s a choreographer and everybody knows her work. She did “Cats” and “Phantom of the Opera.” She’s wonderful. He asked her, “Gillian, how’d you get to be a dancer?” And she said it was interesting; when she was at school, she was really hopeless. And the school, in the ’30s, wrote to her parents and said, “We think Gillian has a learning disorder.” She couldn’t concentrate; she was fidgeting. I think now they’d say she had ADHD. But this was the 1930s, and ADHD hadn’t been invented at this point. It wasn’t an available condition. People weren’t aware they could have that.

Anyway, she went to see this specialist. So, this oak-paneled room, and she was there with her mother, and she was led and sat on this chair at the end, and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes while this man talked to her mother about all the problems Gillian was having at school. And at the end of it — because she was disturbing people; her homework was always late; and so on, little kid of eight — in the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian and said, “Gillian, I’ve listened to all these things that your mother’s told me, and I need to speak to her privately.” He said, “Wait here. We’ll be back; we won’t be very long,” and they went and left her. But as they went out the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk. And when they got out the room, he said to her mother, “Just stand and watch her.” And the minute they left the room, she said, she was on her feet, moving to the music. And they watched for a few minutes and he turned to her mother and said, “Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn’t sick; she’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school.”

“She did. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was. We walked in this room and it was full of people like me. People who couldn’t sit still. People who had to move to think.” Who had to move to think. They did ballet; they did tap; they did jazz; they did modern; they did contemporary. She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School; she became a soloist; she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet. She eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School and founded her own company — the Gillian Lynne Dance Company — met Andrew Lloyd Weber. She’s been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in history; she’s given pleasure to millions; and she’s a multi-millionaire. Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.

Here’s his TED talk for your enjoyment:

Okay, this just is just fun and silly, but ya gotta love a musical spoof, especially when it’s well done!  It’s only just over 2 minutes long, so give yourself an amusing break and check this out, no matter which side of the political divide you find yourself:

Huh?

Bear with me.

I spoke last week at a Young Professional Leadership Group meeting about the importance of SELF leadership, which is especially foundational at the intersection of leadership and business development.

You know how you get in a zone when you’re speaking, and you say something unplanned, unscripted, and unrehearsed — and it makes an impact?  Well, I had one of those moments with this group.

We were talking about leadership and guiding others. I was extolling the virtues of having permission and then letting people know what you like and how you like it, asking for what you like, etc. and out of my mouth I hear the words, “It’s like sex”.

Well, this meeting was at 7am and not only did that comment wake everyone up, but it caused me to blush.  Which ended up creating an openness and intimacy in the group dialogue, much to my surprise. Authenticity, baby!

Anyway, I got the following e-mail comment from one of the participants later that day: “Have you read the book “Fascinate” by Sally Hogshead?  If not, I think you will find it very beneficial with your work.  Whether you knew it or not, you used the lust trigger in a very effective manner this morning.”

I did not know that! I thought it was an embarrassing blunder!  Lust trigger.  Who knew?

Here’s what Amazon says about the book:

“What triggers fascination, and how do companies, people, and ideas put those triggers to use?

Why are you captivated by some people but not by others? Why do you recall some brands yet forget the rest? In a distracted, overcrowded world, how do certain leaders, friends, and family members convince you to change your behavior? Fascination: the most powerful way to influence decision making. It’s more persuasive than marketing, advertising, or any other form of communication. And it all starts with seven universal triggers: lust, mystique, alarm, prestige, power, vice, and trust.

Fascination plays a role in every type of decision making, from the brands you choose to the songs you remember, from the person you marry to the employees you hire. And by activating the right triggers, you can make anything become fascinating.

To explore and explain fascination’s irresistible influence, Sally Hogshead looks beyond marketing, delving into behavioral and social studies, historical precedents, neurobiology and evolutionary anthropology, as well as conducting in-depth interviews and a national study of a thousand consumers, to emerge with deeply rooted patterns for why, and how, we become captivated.”

Of course, I bought the book!

Well, we got a lot of snow here in Maryland.  Historical, record-breaking amounts of it, in fact.  We had 3 blizzards in 2 months, the last two just 3 days apart.   Saturday’s (blizzard #2) dumped 33 inches on us, and then Tuesday’s dumped another 15 inches.  Yeah, we don’t exactly have the infrastructure to handle that much snow around here. It’s not like we are Denver, or Boston.  We’re DC for heaven’s sake!

I couldn’t resist sharing some of the humorous images that have popped up during the “snowmageddon” of 2010, just so you can get a sense of the mood around here as we dig out…

Do you spend your life in front of your computer screen?  Check out this hilarious video!  Some days I feel just like this!

Okay, this post has nothing whatsoever to do with leadership or business development, it was just sent to me via email and it made me laugh out loud, so I’m sharing it with you.  Hope it brings some giggles to your day as well!

Random Thoughts for the Day:

1. I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

3. I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.

5. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

6. Was learning cursive really necessary?

7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on #5. I’m pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

9. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.

10. Bad decisions make good stories.

11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren’t going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.

12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don’t want to have to restart my collection…again.

13. I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

14. “Do not machine wash or tumble dry” means I will never wash this — ever.

15. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Damn it!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What’d you do after I didn’t answer? Drop the phone and run away?

16. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

17. I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

18. My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day “Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?” How the hell do I respond to that?

19. I think the freezer deserves a light as well..

20. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lites than Kay.

Great leaders know when to assert authority and when a course correction is the better choice.  Check out this video about a submarine captain and his Homer Simpson experience at sea (D’oh!). So, is perception really reality?

Every leader, business owner, and sales person knows that it’s all about the numbers.  A leader of one of the business units at DuPont that I coached recently sent me this cartoon, which made me laugh out loud! 

Nailing the Numbers