MentorFactor

And Then There Were Four

I am the oldest of six children. Early this morning, just past midnight, my brother, John David, the youngest of us, made his transition. While I'm so very sad this morning, I know that this was a release and a blessing for him.

John was plagued with health problems his whole life. He was born only one of his kidneys was functional and never functioned at 100%. He has had over 30 surgeries in his life, including one where our sister Margaret gave him one of her kidneys. In 2009, his hip needed to be replaced, so he was given a DePuy hip--the one that was later recalled because it throws off cobalt into the blood stream. By the time it was recalled, his good kidney had failed. John was on dialysis. He couldn't get the hip replaced because he didn't have a good kidney; he couldn't get a new kidney because of the defective artificial hip. His health has steadily deteriorated over the past couple of years.

John was always a happy-go-lucky guy with a big smile and an even bigger heart. He was quite the fisherman. I remember the moment fishing became his passion. Daddy had taken John, Mike (my other brother), and me deep-sea fishing. John was very young, 7 or 8. No one was catching anything. I remember the captain whispering something in John's ear. If you have ever been deep-sea fishing, you know, when you deep-sea fish, you have multiple hooks on your line. A few minutes after the captain whispered in his ear, John reeled in his line. There was a fish on each hook. Everyone on the boat was stunned that this little boy caught all those fish. From then on John was a fisherman in his soul. Broadway Elementary School only had one book about fish. John had it perpetually checked out.

John is survived by two little boys, Josh and David, who will miss their daddy terribly. My sisters, Joan and Margaret, have been John's angels for the last couple of years, managing his affairs and being there for him every step of the way. I am so grateful to them for all they did for John.

This is a picture of John at Thanksgiving in 2011. Josh is on his left; David is on his right. Be at peace, dear brother.

Zentangle: A Tool for Presencing

Back in May 2012, the lovely and talented Andrea Ames asked me if I wanted to see her latest projects. Knowing what a master quilter she is, I said "Yes" with the expectation of seeing some of her amazing quilting designs. This was not to be.

She pulled out a small portfolio-like book and began to show me what appeared to be amazing doodles. She explained to me that these were NOT doodles, but Zentangles. She had been to the Masters class and, in true Andrea-form (Andrea NEVER does anything halfway), she is now teaching this truly remarkable art form.

When I returned to Atlanta after seeing Andrea, I sought out a Zentangle class and am now hooked.

Now, all of you know how goal-driven I am. I preach visioning, goal setting, and having a process to monitor goals. It doesn't matter how you get there, if you don't know where you are going, and all that.

Zentangle is the antithesis of this thinking. It is totally "now" thinking. The "tangle" is created one line at a time in a way that is akin to automatic writing. It is a very meditative (i.e., Zen) process. Often I don't know what the final product is going to be until I'm finished.

Anyone can create Zentangles. You don't have to know how to draw; you just have to push your high school art teacher out of your head. The real beauty in the practice is that there are no mistakes.

I've begun to use Zentangle as a way to wind down at night when it is too early to go to bed, but too late to start another project. It calms the mind and brings order.

If you are interested in checking this out further, go to www.zentangle.com for more information.

Here are a couple of the ones I did during the holidays:

 

While I often take issue with the mythology surrounding all religions, I have to admit the music inspired by the stories of religion is just beautiful. I'm loving listening to the holiday music on Pandora (tune in to the Manheim Steamroller Holiday music) this year.

Book Beginnings--Part Deux

After receiving some of your comments about my last post, I realized that I should initiate my own flow space before writing. Otherwise, the message gets muddy!

I decided to open the book with one of the powerful stories I collected when I did my research. I had given my participants ananonmity and had to get his permission first. He has given me that permission now, so I'm putting this out to the world again.

Here is the first part of the introduction to the book, which includes his story. What follows this is a discussion on "flow" and "decision making." For now, I just want to know if this makes you want to know more. Let me know what you think about this.

Thanks to all.

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NEW WORKING TITLE: Riding the Wave of Action: Achieving Success and Well-being through Flow-based Decision Making

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Chapter 1: Introduction

The Dancer Becomes the Dance

Consider an activity you enjoy. You are working toward clear goals and receiving feedback in some form. There are many opportunities for decisive action. Action and awareness merge. You concentrate on the task at hand to the exclusion of all information, except that which is necessary to the activity. You experience a sense of control. You are unaware of your own consciousness. Time has no meaning or is distorted: It slows down; it speeds up; there is no awareness of time. You do the activity for the sake of  the activity.

This feeling is called “flow.” Simply stated, “flow” is the idea that “the dancer becomes the dance.”

 

Joel’s Story

September 11, 2001, started out to be a beautiful morning. Joel Kanasky, Firefighter for FDNY Rescue Company 1, was teaching a scuba diving class when he heard about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. He arrived around 40 minutes after his Company had been deployed. The South Tower had just fallen. He entered the lobby of the North Tower looking for his crew. He approached a battalion chief—according to Joel, “a tough old Marine-coot”—who was later killed that day. The chief gave Joel an order to get some hydraulic jacks and some torches, because there were steel beams pinning some firefighters in the hotel.

Joel and two other firefighters were getting the equipment together and heard people yelling, “RUN!!!” He didn’t even think about it. He dropped all the gear except one tool, which was still in his hand, and took off across West Street. He found a door and broke the window. He dove through dropping to his hands and knees. He took the first left into what turned out to be the ATM lobby in the North Tower. He proceeded to crawl to a back area where he thought life was going to end. He was totally incapsulated in, what he called, “some crazy dust.”

He kept thinking about all the young, new firefighters he had trained over the years and how he told them, as he guided them through their training in the burn building, “Keep your head. Keep breathing. Stay low. Calm down. Slow down. It will be fine.” He said he thought these were crazy things to think about, but it worked like magic and helped him stay calm.

There was another firefighter named Thor with him. He heard Thor say, “This is probably it.” At that moment, Joel saw a touch of light toward the end of the hallway. He said, “We have to crawl that way.” They crawled out of the ATM lobby into the back of the American Express Building, where was enough fresh air there to breathe, but he still thought this was probably the end.

He didn’t have a breathing apparatus because his original task was to get rescue equipment. Thor had one, but there was so much debris in his face piece that he couldn’t breathe through it.

Joel had no sense of time. While 47 minutes had passed between the collapse of the South Tower and the collapse of the North Tower, it felt like the blink of an eye. His first awareness that time had passed was noticing a man cutting bologna and making sandwiches with a loaf of white bread and a big jar of mustard on a garbage can on the street at sunset. He said it felt as if he had just walked into the North Tower lobby just after the South Tower had collapsed.

Joel’s observation was that training and always being prepared gives you the ability to respond in the right way without regard to the passage of time. He knew this repetition helps us make decisions that enable us to remain fully in the present. This is hard to do because we struggle for future goals. The present is the only thing that has no end.

Joel was the sole survivor of FDNY Resue Company 1 that fateful day.

Joel is a firefighter. He loves what he does. He works in a special operations company in New York City, where his primary function is to save firemen. "That’s my responsibility. We are there when firemen get in trouble. I think I’ve been to many firefighter fatality rooms in 20 years. It’s been tough duty, but by the same token, we pulled out 15 or so who are still alive today…[Being a firefighter] was always a desire and a love. I thought it was a calling. It has been spectacular. A lot of terrible times, but a lot of great times. Even with the bad times, it’s still good. It’s the greatest job on earth."

Joel operates “in the flow.” His strength comes from within, from his marriage, through his love of service to his community, and through the firefighter-family culture.

...[more to come]

Book Beginnings

Dear Readers--

I have begun to respin my doctoral research and resulting dissertation into a book. This will be my first book (except for my dissertation, of course). Sometimes I feel like the proverbial writer sitting at the typewriter with a pile of crumpled paper at my feet, because I can't get past the beginning paragraph. I go from wondering if I should take a matter-of-fact approach or go for the emotions? Should I make this a book about organizational development or target the self-help market?

After reading Tom Koulopoulos' new book, it occurred to me that I don't have to do this in a vacuum any more. The lone writer approach is denial of being part of the world I want to impact. The observer cannot be separate from the observed, and all that.

Hence, this post, and my request of you. I would love your take on my initial (actually, it is about the 5th) pass for the introduction to my book.What I'm posting is the first couple of paragraphs. Does this draw you in? Do you want to know more? Is it a downer? Does it ring true...or not? Please post your comments, or contact me off-line.

One more thing: The working title for this project is "Flow-based Decision Making: The Impact of 'Being in the Flow' on the Ability to Make Decisions." I realize this is beyond boring, but, being the technical communicator that I am, I have a hard time with fluffy, sexy titles. I would love ideas about this, too.

Thank you in advance for your help. Here goes:

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

We are living in a world that is more connected than it ever has since the beginning of time, and yet we are feeling more and more isolated. If you have spent any time trying to find work in this environment,  you know exactly what I mean. We fill out forms online, we upload our resume or CV, and click the submit button. And then we wait. There is no one with whom we are allowed to follow up, and there is no response. Everyone is so busy and overworked, no one wants or has time to meet on a one-to-one basis. The time to communicate with another human being is reduced to abbreviated words in texts on our smartphones. (This is resulting in the morphing of language at a rate of speed never before imagined. But that is fodder for another book!) As a result, our individual, as well as our collective well-being is suffering at a rate that is eventually going to impact both individual societal health and our very existence.

In the United States, for the last half century, most people have managed to live in the middle to upper portions of Maslow’s Triangle, but in recent years, have found themselves slipping to the two base levels. When we are constantly worried about how to pay our basic bills and we are looking for work or in a job that is unsatisfying, we are thrown into a space that causes us to be negative. Those negative thoughts then perpetuate our situation. The resulting spiral facilitates bad decision making.

This is a book about you and how you make decisions. It is designed to suggest a new way of being. Each of us has to take responsibility for changing our situation. All it takes is a decision to change. Simple, huh? Change is never simple. It takes courage to trust in the idea that the Universe always works toward the positive even in the direst of situations. Some people use their religious or spiritual beliefs to reinforce this thinking; others use scientific evidence; others know intuitively that personal well-being lies in a space we call “flow” or “being in the zone.”

Someone once described to me the way to get to “Source” (what some call “God") as a wheel with spokes, with Source in the center. On the wheel itself, there are an infinite number of points from which the path to Source is a straight line to the center on its own individual spoke. I love this image, because it validates all spiritual and non-spiritual belief.

This book is an examination of decision making as part of the flow experience, with the ultimate goal of individual and societal well-being. The support for the ideas herein comes from my research in the fire service, which I use as a model for decision making in the “flow.” I combine this work with my Master’s research in managing conflict from a place of authenticity and thirty years as an information technology and human interaction consultant, entrepreneur, teacher, and international leader in the field of technical communication.

Tom Koulopoulos' New Book: Cloud Surfing: A New Way to Think about Risk Innovation, Scale, and Success

I have been reading Thomas Koulopoulos’ books since 1997. Each
successive book has built on the previous in an evolution of thought and, yet,
each appears as fresh and new, as if it was the “ah-ha!” moment of the previous
iteration of what was running through Tom’s brain at the time. Tom is NOT one
of those authors-of-business-books who writes the same book over and over. He
has gone from good to great in his writing style, which is much the way he
speaks. (If you have never heard him, go to http://www.tkspeaks.com.)
His message is elegant, intelligent, thoughtful, logical, and rings true. I
have enjoyed watching—and participating—in this amazing process of evolution. “Cloud
Surfing: A New Way to Think About Risk, Innovation, Scale, and Success” does
not disappoint in this regard. As the technology and human behavior changes,
Tom’s vision advances.

To begin with, “Cloud Surfing” is a wonderful primer on how economics
has evolved over the last 150 years. However, Tom points out that we can no
longer rely on the lessons of the past to predict the future. The cloud represents
a place and time we have never before experienced. We do not know the full
impact the cloud will have on the world. To illustrate this paradigm shift, Tom
asks hard and thoughtful questions, such as, “What if the context
changes?...What if all fears you have today about the way in which the Internet
can create risk were eliminated, while all the ways that the Internet creates
value were increased?” What if, indeed!

The world is becoming hyperconnected where all
systems—economic, social, political, and individuals—are linked together and,
most importantly, influencing each other in one big Gordian Knot of complex
communities. The number of connections is increasing exponentially daily. The cloud
is what will enable these connections to work in harmony with one another. Tom
touches on the fearfulness of individuals in open systems and how this fear may
manifest in the various systems. Then he effectively busts the twin myths of
security and control.  It will be
interesting to watch, over the next 20 years, the “control” dynamic exerted out
of fear by governments, corporations, our education systems, and individuals
who try to impose rules and laws or who “drop out” or refuse to engage.

The cloud enables the move to open and transparent systems
driven by the value of data. The cloud is zeroing out costs, by fostering a
pay-as-you-go, scalable, collaborative social economy. As a result, value
creation is accelerated. By aligning value with risk, you can scale your
infrastructure, people, and systems in direct proportion to your success. The
current paradigm is in structured markets and organizations. This doesn’t work
in fast-paced markets. We are moving toward a more organic, self-organizing
model of doing work. Disruption happens when the outliers create big ideas
because they don’t “know” something won’t work. The cloud is a disrupter, but
we keep trying to retrofit the cloud into familiar patterns.

The future is about influence. The cloud facilitates the
ability for individuals, enterprises, governments, and education systems to
exert influence. The value of that influence will be based on reputation,
trust, and integrity. Hyperconnectivity will replace the old models of teaming
that don’t work anymore. As the children of today reach working age, they will
introduce a way of thinking that will result in a restructuring of how we think
of intellectual property and the patent process, because they understand that a
collaborative model enables creativity. The cloud will facilitate an inversion
of the current power structure.

We are in the midst of a “perfect storm.” Work has become
placeless, ageless, weightless, and complex. Tom examines a number of cloud
based organizations, which are already working in this space, such as Elance,
LiveOps, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, InnoCentive, and NineSigma. “We are
experiencing a democratization of ideas without historic precedent and with
little sense for how profound the shift may be.” This social economy is
resulting in a collaborative workforce that could conceivably span five
generations which could hyper-jump innovation with its diversity and richness
of ideas.

The cloud has enabled a new way of creating value chains, to
the point of developing new, virtual currencies. Cloud-based trading has the
effect of busting monopolies. Classic marketing analysis doesn’t work anymore.
The key to survival is continuously rebuilding the value chain to drive
liquidity. Operating in the cloud is the same as operating in the “now.”

Tom goes even further—beyond the traditional conversation about
the impact on commerce—and discusses the impact of the cloud on modern warfare
and on our traditional brick and mortar education system. He talks about how
living and working in the cloud affects us as individuals. The cloud will enable
situational awareness at an individual level, turning the classic decision
making process taught in business schools on its head. In the cloud, decision
making is based on relevance, not recall.

Knowledge work is changing from focusing on content to focusing
on the work itself. What will enable this is the “case concept,” where the case—not
the file folder—contains all the components of the work product and facilitates
collaboration globally. This is the vision that some have trouble getting their
head around (including me), but Tom does a wonderful job of illustrating the
concept.

Tom’s Afterward is a view of 2020—only 8 years from now. He
validates one of my own predictions about the impact of a gaming generation on
expectations of value creation, education, conflict management, healthcare,
government, and living in general. The cloud is in its adolescence, but the
potential for the betterment of the human condition is more real than ever
before.

This book is amazing. It will make you think and dream and
create. And, when you share that creation, you become a part of the community
of cloud builders who are creating the future. Dr. Peter Drucker, Tom’s mentor,
once said, “The only way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Why an Education in the Humanities Matters

By LYNNE H. ROFF, student in the Transformative Studies program, which is an online doctoral program. Lynn lives in Homer, Alaska.

via blog.ciis.edu

Awesome and insightful blog from one of my brilliant classmates!

Swamp Fox

One of my Georgia Smoke Diver/firefighter friends, Phil Chovan (a.k.a., "The Wizard), sent me an article called "A New Kind of Warfare:"

Do you remember the American Revolutionary story about “the Swamp Fox”? In this article, our traditional military is like the British Red Coats and the TOCs (Transnational Organized Crime Groups) and Drug Cartels are the Swamp Fox. If you remember, in that story, Britain lost…and the practice of warfare changed forever!

This has potentially huge ramifications with regard to the fire service. The need for the ability to think critically and be situationally aware is elevated beyond my original thinking. The potential for disaster is staggering. For example, will there come a day when firefighters and EMTs need to be armed??? What will this kind of “new warfare” do to the service-based orientation of the fire service?

This is so out of the consciousness of the American public. Our refusal to be mindful about our place in the world will catch us by surprise and ultimately alter our way of life whether we choose to participate in the transformation or not. In the meantime, the folks who take care of us (e.g., the firefighters, the police, the EMTs), whose budgets are being consistently cut, are put at risk beyond their original charter.

The Technical Communicator's Role in the Facilitation of High Reliability Organizations

High Reliability Organizations (HROs) are organizations that are able to perform at maximum capacity in situations and environments where there is extreme potential for error and disaster. Examples of HROs are the fire service, the police, the military, hospital emergency rooms, and air traffic control systems. Most business organizations, with a few exceptions, do not have the same level of potential for error and disaster. However, in recent years, we have witnessed negative corporate transformation at a magnitude that actually has resulted in disaster in the form of a tanked economy and a rapidly shrinking middle-class.

There is hope, however. It comes in the form of a model extracted from existing HROs. This model is driven by setting expectations, communicating those expectations, setting up systems that support the work of contributing individuals, and fostering a culture of mindful decision making and critical thinking.

Once again, technical communicators find themselves in a position to be change agents in our organizations. Over the next two months, I will be presenting the ways that technical communicators can contribute to positive organizational transformation through our core competencies in message development and information design and organization; our service-orientation; and our ability to attend to detail while retaining our 40,000 foot vision.

Please join me for an interesting new look at the future of technical communication. I will be giving this presentation in a variety of venues, including a webinar for for Acrolinx on April 3, a webinar for the Society for Technical Communication on April 18, 2012, and a presentation at the STC Summit in May in Chicago. Please join me for an interesting new look at the future of technical communication.

Ways of Knowing

Last week (November 6-11, 2011), I attended the Georgia Smoke Divers (GSD) training in Dalton, GA. My head is a jumble of concepts, experiences, connections. I need to get my thinking out of my head and organized. (There is a book in there somewhere!) I begin the effort by relating a very intense, personal experience that added a dimension to my own knowledge base beyond my wildest dreaming.

On Monday (Day 2) when Smoke Diver candidates were learning in environments that were relatively safe, Smoke Daddy David Rhodes (GSD Incident Commander--a.k.a. Rhoadie) asked me if I wanted to go into the burn building. I immediately said, "No!" But I began to think about it. How could I possibly have any way of REALLY knowing what firefighters contend with in their decision making without experiencing the environment in which they operate? I knew that this would probably be the safest day to attempt something like this and that Rhoadie wouldn't have offered if he thought I'd be in danger, so I changed my mind.

Within a matter of minutes, the word was out that I was going to go into the burn building. The guys found a suit that would fit me. One of the firefighters, Captain Charlie Long, Johns Creek GA Fire Department, offered to take me through the building. Various instructors helped me don the gear (which weighed about 60 pounds) and show me how the breathing apparatus worked. The suit was huge and bulky; the boots were about four sizes too big; I could hardly walk. Charlie got in my face and told me that if I removed the mask while we were in the building, I WOULD DIE! He handed me a thermal imaging camera and we entered the burn building.

The building was so smokey and dark, I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. Immediately, I realized these guys work with limited senses: they are blind; the gloves they wear limit the sense of touch; the mask prevents the senses of taste and smell; the sounds in an incident often obscure or distort sounds with meaning. The experience is absolutely disorienting and frightening. I hung onto Charlie for dear life. Within a minute, I said to Charlie, "OK. I'm ready to leave." But Charlie told me to scan the room with my thermal imaging camera. He said, "What do you see?" I realized I could "see" with the camera. Although, at one point, I realized the person I was seeing was actually my own reflection in a mirror.

After a scan of the room, I once again said, "OK. Let's go." Charlie said, "Oh, but you have to see the burn room." We inched our way down the hall and into the room with the fire. Charlie told me to point the camera at the ceiling. The camera told me the temperature on the ceiling of the burn room was 650 degrees. At the mid-point of the room, where our heads were, it was about 300 degrees. I was beginning to feel my internal temperature rise. I said, "OK, Charlie, time to go." Charlie said, "We can't go back the way we came. Another team has come in behind us. We have to go down the steps to go out." DOWN THE STEPS???!!!! I fought hard to keep calm. For two days, I had been listening to the instructors work with the candidates on regulating their breathing. I consciously began to breathe very slowly and deeply. This help to calm me. We moved slowly to the top of the steps. Charlie put me in front of him. I had to find the top of the steps by feeling my way. It took an eternity to get to the next floor, but I made it unscathed.

There are multiple levels to this experience. Taking it at face value, the experience was one to cross off my bucket list. At a deeper level, I realized that I was making decisions moment by moment to stay calm, to breathe, to keep moving forward even when I don't know what is in front of me. But the ultimate lesson came from Charlie Long. By keeping me focused outward, Charlie kept me from turning into myself. When we turn inward, we become closed systems. Closed systems implode on themselves. Having someone to help keep us focused outward is invaluable, but we need to be situationally aware in those moments when we are alone to motivate ourselves to be outwardly focused.