In January of 2009, I took my family to visit Disney World in Orlando, Florida. While there, we experienced something profound in the way that Disney treats its different fan bases.
Linchpin: From Theory to Reality
About 9 years ago I was working for the then CEO and president of ISO Healthcare, David Tanner. While I worked for him, I learned a number of valuable lessons that I’ve taken with me, and one of them was this: Add value at every level.
Sharpening the Saw: Mental
About mid January most of my team at work took a 2 day course on the principles from Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The 7th habit, Sharpening the Saw, refers to the process of scheduling time for personal growth, relaxation, health and exploration. He breaks the areas we need to focus on into 4 groups, Physical, Social/Emotional, Mental and Spiritual.
When we got to the 7th Habit, we broke the room into 4 groups and each group had to come up with ideas on how or where we could find ways to continue to progress in our area. My group, of course, had Mental as our topic. This is the list of ideas we came up with. After class, I wrote them up and emailed them to the entire group so that the others could follow up on them if they wanted to.
Touched by Violence
This is a phrase I’ve heard used before to describe situations where a person or place has endured a violent episode. Right now the phrase feels inadequate. Dainty, even. It certainly doesn’t live up to the task at hand. This post is especially for those of you who have been with me for more than a couple of years. If that’s you, then you might remember that in December of 2007, Manessa, my then 16 year old sister-in-law had run away from her home, and many of you worked with me to help my family and I find her. What we didn’t know then is that she was actually running away from a man who was hurting her; a relative who wintered with the family, fooling everyone and hiding his activity with her from everyone including her mother. About a year later, Manessa found the courage to tell her mother what had happened. The police and courts got involved after that, and after pleading guilty to lesser charges, he was released on 6 years probation.
Linchpin: Are You Indespensable?
I’ve recently started reading a preview copy of Seth Godin’s Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? I’m hoping to make a few updates between now and finishing it, but I wanted to just drop a quick post and let you know that this book is really resonating with me.