Are you hitting the gate?

Work has a different pace

than a 2 minute downhill Olympic ski race.

Relax into your daily performance

and you will sustain work for an entire career

while constant and never ending improvement

has you chasing pots of gold

at the end of rainbows.

If you give 110% you are giving more than you’ve got.

If you go the extra mile you will pass your destination.

And even if you go the extra yard you will end up out of bounds.

Burning the midnight oil is too much focus on toil

without a restful lack of focus, called sleep.

Good is good enough

without having to go to great

and you don’t have to burn out to avoid fading away.

Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are

for exquisite employee engagement

preventing you from missing

your four year old daughter’s surprise birthday party.

Rat races are only for rats

and work does not have to be a myopic focus on going downhill fast.

Perhaps stronger is lower and slower not

Citius Altius Fortius

…

Photo Credit: Creative commons ski photo from Flickr.

Management 2.0

Command and control
lose their seat
to conversation and collaboration.

Organizations humanize into communities
while impositions
quiet respectfully into invitations.

Hierarchy is redrawn on the napkin
into a matrix.

Leadership levels
while mastering management
means
shifts happen.

Our white space decade ahead
invites us to get morph from management
than we ever imagined.

…

Photo Credit: Chair Series; Red on Flickr

Citius, Altius, Fortius

Is there a torch within your workplace

lit with the flame that burns within

while also being passed along?

We need  Prometheus like people  at work

with the courage to steal fire from Zeus

and champion human kindness.

Catch a flame and pass it on

swifter  higher  stronger.

As you carry the torch the torch will carry you.

Two roads diverged…

Flickr Creative Commons Photo Credit: Two Roads Diverge.

Let me tell you a tale

about the disengaged.

A tell tale sign is

you are told not asked,

you are fringed not foreground,

work is an energy drain,

not an energy gain,

you would rather be anywhere else,

yet you seem stuck in place.

And you have to stay

because of

the pension

the economy

the fear

the benefits

or just the plain inertia of it all.

It is time to tell a different tale

where you are connected

in the foreground

gaining energy

and making contributions.

If that tale cannot be told

get your tail out of there

you only have so many days to work

and when you work in the those days

and those days work for you

it makes all difference.

…

by David Zinger

Like a bird on the wire ~ Leonard Cohen

We need more music

in our workplaces.

Not insipid elevator tunes,

ear bud iTunes isolation,

or another recruiting video in the form of a lip sync office dance party.

Rather, music that joins and moves us.

Don’t

blow your own horn,

trumpet out a new program,

or drum something into us.

Teach us to hear and make the music

that resides within us, between us,

and from the results of our efforts.

Let’s orchestrate a

co-created symphony of heartfelt work.

with  Zander-like shining eyes,

goose bumps on our arms,

and notable work taking us from wire to wire.

Flickr Photo Credit:  Make Room For A Little one!

Passchendaele progress?

How do we manage change

while barely changing ourselves?

We are caught in no man’s land

charging out of trenches

to who knows where and

we can’t go back.

Yet we are not moving forward.

We keep our heads down as

barrages of tips and advice on

critical success variables

innovative strategic planning

killer app tactics

process improvements

lean approaches

and mutating technology

explode over our heads

while 3 more  screens scream,

“LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME.”

Face down in the mud

We hear the management consultants bellow out

the latest 55 rules of success and the

200 competencies we need to achieve them.

Or they send us anemic marching orders

dressed up as a large font 100 page parable book

about moving cheese or learning 5 secrets.

Perhaps it is time to just stop in the muck

See where we are and if we really need to

storm the next trench.

Let’s look ahead and look carefully at what we leave behind

before we race head long into a Passchendaele parade.

A poem about the flood of work

Work flows like a raging river

washing over sandbags of effort

all sense of calmness washed away

and “where the hell is that file?”

Our stress management skills

no longer hold back the flood of

demands, threats, conflicts and hassles.

Even a broken paper clip can snap us into stress.

We are mired knee deep in irritation

as our heels sink into the mud and the shine leave our shoes.

We grab a late latte lunch

to make it past 2:30 without dozing at our desk.

We must craft a raft.

A raft of resilience fused with equal parts of

calming breaths, realistic expectations, and human kindness.

Using NO as our rudder to steer away from

turbulent waves of relentless work.

When the water recedes,

will the cherry blossom bloom?

by David Zinger

Photo Credit Flickr Creative Commons: Chrysler Building in Cherry Blossom

Wednesday at Work Poem

Our organizational problems

stem from being so vertical in a horizontal world.

Elevators of rank, privilege, and delusion

traverse up and down the corporate hierarchy

giving the illusion of height over width.

Even our page views are portrait not landscape.

We need to move horizontally

to be in touch with each other.

Can we dwell on the level

rather than taking it to the next level?

Whatever deluded us to think

our title, role, or function put us above or below anyone else?

I love the limitless stretch of expansive prairie

as we see forever in all directions

never hearing, “look out below.”

In a flap

Can you spare some change

for organizational transformation?

Will our rigid cocoon pyramidal structure

morph into a vibrant butterfly of co-created conversations?

Will we become what we are capable of becoming,

Or get stuck on a stick on inertia,

Overtaxed capacity leaving barely enough energy to change toilet paper rolls?

If you want change

You must determine what will die

Because daring to only want more is a recipe for diminished energy to make anything happen.

We must let go, loosen up and say no

Let the ending lead to the beginning

To transform our no into a constructive yes

of a conversational co-created authentic community

that cannot be reigned in by some static org chart

putting people into boxes and communication into lines.

Pause to hear the flapping of distant wings.

[Photo Credit: Lime butterfly on Flickr]

Wednesday at Work Poem

Embedded Inside TRUST

Don’t Strut,

Don’t Rust,

Don’t Rut,

Just Trust Us.

Wednesday at Work Poem

When did it become
the way of work
to hate
our work
our organization
and our peers?

The daily distaste for work
crumbled our contributions
into gritty crumbs
lacking nourishment
for body, soul, and self.

Is this what we get paid for?