mindset

Icebreaker

Quick icebreaker activity for your team. Provide a timeframe (3 months, 1 year, duration of board service term, etc.) and ask each individual to write down an event, milestone, or moment that they are personally looking forward to reaching. Place these on an internal calendar (as best you can) and then acknowledge them as they are achieved, passed, or become evident.

The organization’s highlights are not always the same as those of the individual team members. Recognizing individual milestones helps add a shared sense of service and accomplishment. As an added bonus, it is a nice way to start a meeting and build deeper connections.

Hour of Youth

This moment is the youngest you will ever be, at least in the chronology of conventional time as we define it. What activities and areas of focus are deserving of your current youth? If you map our attention over a day, did we invest it in activities and interactions that maximized our youthful capabilities? We cannot bank it for tomorrow, so how are we spending our youthful resources today?

Earn the Relationship

Transactional human connections might be defined as associations, alliances, tie-ups, interconnections, and links. We earn trust through authentic interactions to define our connection as a relationship. What defines a meaningful relationship to you? How do you add depth and dimension to a treasured relationship? How disconnected are you willing to stretch from someone you trust before the relationship has been repaired or fractured? Is your limit more or less dynamic than a similar journey with an associate or alliance member?

How might we recognize that we earn relationships? How might we acknowledge that we have limited bandwidth and cannot foster limitless relationships? What steps have others taken to merit their relationships with you? What super powers do you bring to a relationship?

We the People

Dedicated to serving others, perhaps start with the perspective of ‘we.’ A marching band of one person might be unique but likely limited in their capabilities. If we work together, we can achieve a level of performance and impact that might not be available to those who focus on their individual status. Even if the stadium is not full, we deliver for those who are looking to engage with what we have to offer.

Sightseeing

When you take your fans on a sightseeing tour of your work, how does it stand out? Are you able to provide ‘behind the scenes’ experiences? Do you curate a remarkable event? Are you able to tour them in a unique manner? Do you have a secret door that gets opened? A surprise guest? A token of appreciation that is customized?

It does not take a lot to make an experience stand out. It is best when it adds meaning to our fan experience.

A Moment in Neutral

Remaining in ‘drive’ is the favored gear of business articles. They recommend how to stay out of neutral.

Neutral is a good gear at the right moment. Encounter an intersection, an unexpected detour, an unanticipated event. Shifting to neutral to assess the possibilities or consider alternatives provides a moment of reflection. Too often, the commandment of ‘just drive’ allows for progress but misses the decision points that add depth and dimension to the journey.

How might we intentionally add ‘neutral’ as a viable gear to our enterprise’s workflow? How might we define it as one of the most powerful moments in an organization’s existence?

Your Pace

Find your pace, it is the amount of effort that you might sustain over the required distance. External factors like terrain, weather, and outside circumstances might dictate the exertion required. When we try to progress by calibrating our pace off of others, we may benefit from the draft or we may find ourselves over or under our ideal pace.

What is your happy pace? How do you know when you are in that zone? Where has it allowed you to travel?

Getting Out

It might be easy to enter. The door is open, the trail looks enticing, the seas are calm, or the new idea is energizing. When things do not proceed as anticipated, things get problematic. Our exit plan is not apparent. The door is locked, the trail has intersections we do not recall, the tide has turned, or the idea deflated our resources.

How might we consider the exit strategy before we launch? How might we leave clues to ourselves as we enter so we can retrace our steps?

Relative

Speed is relative. When running on the promenade deck of an ocean cruise boat, we get a peculiar GPS recording. The ship’s forward momentum might be faster than our average pace, so we progress across the ocean, even when our run changes to walking or standing. Viewed by a passenger sitting in a deck chair, our running speed might be assessed at 8 mph. Seen by a lighthouse tender as the vessel passes close by, we are estimated to be moving at our running pace, plus the ship’s speed. Now, our relative speed might be over 25 mph.

How might we recognize our perspective is relative? We see things from a unique perspective, and our assessment is relative to location. What may feel fast, slow, big, small, daring, safe, lonely, crowded, remarkable, or average is relative.