This month I’m talking about teamwork. That thing we all talk about but don’t always practise but we should, because good teamwork makes everything better, easier, and more fun. (And hint: if it isn’t good teamwork, it isn’t teamwork at all but something else masquerading as teamwork.) …

I’m as guilty as anyone of paying more attention to the little screen in my hand than to the world around me. But there’s a little voice in the back of my head that chirps up periodically and reminds me to look up, look around, notice. Because noticing helps me find beauty in unexpected places, and the extraordinary in the ordinary. And besides: who knows what magic lies just beyond sight if only I pay attention?

If there’s anything we need in the workplace (and in the world in general) it’s clarity. Every day we encounter words we think we all understand, but many of them – words like leadership, sustainability, best practices, respect – are abstractions. Abstractions that are so embedded in our vocabulary that we don’t see how subjective and ambiguous they are. And this gets us into big trouble. So I’ve appointed myself CCO – Chief Clarity Officer – and put myself in the service of making the abstract more concrete and bringing fuzzy ideas into focus. Here’s why I think it matters.

Kindness. It’s a quality that feels like it’s in short supply these days – at least if you pay too much attention to the news or spend too much time on social media. Everyone seems to be yelling at everyone else or calling each other out in public. Politicians are actively working to divide us instead of bringing us together, and ginning up their “base” by behaving in stupefyingly cruel ways. Governments promulgate laws that seem expressly designed to make people’s lives harder (billionaires exempted). The notion of a “kindler, gentler” society feels very far away.  

Yet that’s not the whole story.

Welcome to blog post #1 on my new website! The website has been a long time in the making, and it represents some major shifts I’ve been making in my work. These shifts have been taking place slowly and quietly for a long time – and then, as for so many other people, accelerated dramatically during the pandemic.

I don’t know about you, but a lot of folks I know told me their priorities changed significantly during the long months of lockdown. Things that had felt important, even urgent, in the “BC” (Before Covid) time just didn’t seem to matter so much anymore – and things they had ignored or suppressed started moving to the fore. A lot of us started re-evaluating: what did we really want to do? What no longer felt purposeful or relevant? I suspect many of us had been asking those questions for a long time. I know I had. But now we had more time on our hands to think about them. And the questions demanded answers.