Curiosity & Transition: Are these related?

Posted on March 8, 2012 | 3 comments

“Our girls are all smiling,” I beamed as I turned to another chaperone last Friday evening well after 9:00pm.  The girls were 2nd and 3rd graders who were taking part in a Girl Scouts‘ Overnight at the Museum of Science, Boston.    My animated observation came during an interactive session at the Mathematica Exhibit; a project that involved blocks, a piece of paper and the challenge of making a bridge to support a large object.  Really?  Even late on a Friday evening after a week of school, countless after school activities, and hours-of-fun since our check-in for this incredible Overnight the girls had a curiosity and energy that I rarely witness…let alone live. Continue reading →

3 Comments

Posted in Observations on Transition

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Does Action Trump Everything?

Posted on March 1, 2012 | 4 comments

“I have a piece of paper that I’ve kept for more than twenty years. On it are two questions.  ‘What do you want?‘ and ‘What are you willing to do to get it?’”  said Sylvia Ferrell-Jones,  President and CEO of the YWCA of Boston.  Ms. Ferrell-Jones is a community leader who is advancing Greater Boston’s understanding of social justice and change.  She and I happened to be guests at a dinner party of a mutual friend.   Her comments emerged during a discussion among attendees about her organization’s goals: to serve Boston’s neighborhoods where health, education and safety inequities are most significant.  It is against these formidable challenges that she measures progress. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in "Transition" Book Reviews, Observations on Transition

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Transition Approach: certain versus confident

Posted on February 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

I remember a great NPR piece from the summer of 2009.  I was driving in traffic, my typical  commute. Eight miles in 55 minutes.   The discussion’s topic was leadership.  The reason it caught me was that it described leadership in two simple yet separate buckets; certain or confident.  It hit me because I think that every leader I have ever worked under would think of herself or himself as confident when in fact they were more often certain.  I wonder if this simple dichotomy works in transition as well?  Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Observations on Transition

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Valentine’s Day and Transition: A Common Link

Posted on February 16, 2012 | 5 comments

It hit me yesterday as I was fielding a call from a former colleague who happens to be in transition.  She was reeling from what sounded to me as a normal twist in a job pursuit cycle.   Maybe you’ve seen this movie too.  You finally find a target company or role that is perfect for you but the cavernous void created by online recruiting puts obstacles in your way.  My friend’s plight was amplified by a heaping tablespoon of self-criticism.  Even if it wasn’t Valentine’s Day one might suggest that there were two answers for her; networking and chocolate. Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in Observations on Transition

Tagged , , , , , ,

Barriers: Real or Imagined? (Take 2…)

Posted on February 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

“There was no money,” said my mother in response to a question I’d asked her last week about my grandfather. “He was pre-med at St. Bonaventure‘s,” she said.   My grandfather was a 1st generation American whose Italian immigrant family had settled in upstate New York close to the turn of the 20th century.    His father died when he was very young leaving a family of 6 children.  His mother remarried.  Tony – as my grandfather was lovingly known – never went on to med school. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Observations on Transition

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Barriers: Real or Imagined?

Posted on February 7, 2012 | 1 comment

1 Comment

Posted in Observations on Transition

Conversations: A critical transition tool

Posted on February 2, 2012 | 3 comments

I was reading the New Yorker this week and was struck by an article by Jonah Lehrer called, Groupthink: the brainstorming myth (The New Yorker, January 30, 2012 pg 22+).   The article was interesting in that it completely upended the notion of brainstorming as a productive tool for creative problem solving.   Brainstorming?  My kids, 1st and 2nd graders, even know the approach.  Continue reading →

3 Comments

Posted in Observations on Transition

Tagged , , , , , ,

Little known transition attributes: courage & silence

Posted on January 26, 2012 | 3 comments

“I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on,” said Steve Jobs in his much-quoted commencement address to Stanford University in June 2005.   He was speaking about dropping out of college and then hanging around campus to explore courses that appeared interesting to him but Continue reading →

3 Comments

Posted in Observations on Transition

Tagged , , , , , ,

Trials, experiments and transition

Posted on January 19, 2012 | 4 comments

This week a conversation from almost a decade ago popped into my mind.  In it I was speaking with a brainy friend of mine who was a coder at Microsoft.  He and I were talking about how small teams of coders were independent but highly linked.  For example, one team might be given the challenge to build the “slide show” function for Powerpoint; another might be given the “inserting pictures” function.  Each group would work on their own piece.  Every night they would run a routine to integrate all of the code written that day by the various teams.   Sound groundbreaking?

Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in Observations on Transition

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Voices of Transition #3: A transition journey….

Posted on January 12, 2012 | Leave a comment

“From now on you’ll be traveling the road between who you think you are and who you can be,” said a letter addressed to Anne Hathaway in her role as Mia in the Princess Diaries, a 2001 movie that my 8-year-old daughter and I enjoyed over the holidays.   Hathaway went on to read more of the letter by saying, “the key is to allow yourself to make the journey. Courage is not the absence of fear but the judgment that something else is more important that fear.”

I frantically jotted down this exchange.   It seemed more profound than the typical Disney “G” rated movie.   Maybe I’d had enough of turkey and relatives? Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Voices of Transition

Tagged , , ,