Matthew’s Blog

How To Lose Friends and Infuriate People in the Regent Business Review.

examples:

#1 When an employee is in your office to talk with you, don’t hesitate to answer your phone.

#6 Pay people less than they’re worth. Give raises based on factors they cannot influence or, for more fun, based on their performance relative to one another.

#13 Hold lots of meetings and make sure they have an unfocused agenda. Allow the conversation to meander aimlessly, permitting one tangential comment to give license to the next. Never cut off a rambling participant and if anyone has a good idea, compel that person to assume responsibility for a new committee to pursue the idea. End each meeting with no action items.

I met up with my friend Jim Cohen last night whom I hadn’t seen in six months and he asked me how I was doing and what I was up to and I responded - ALIVE. To which he sent me this poem by Dickinson which pretty much sums it up. Gotta love poets.

To be alive — is Power –
Existence — in itself –
Without a further function –
Omnipotence — Enough –

To be alive — and Will!
‘Tis able as a God –
The Maker — of Ourselves — be what –
Such being Finitude!

~Emily Dickinson 1924

The Radical Leap, was just that for me. Though I’ve called myself a leadership coach and have been in leadership positions since I was 10 years old. I didn’t really awaken to what it really means to be a leader until I read this book.

 “A pro does as well as he can within what he has set out to do, and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can’t help doing.“ Leaders can’t help being leaders.

This book is about EXTREME leadership. Extreme leaders see leadership as an extreme sport ala street luging, hang-gliding or surfing. They see wiping out as a victory. When a leader steps into the OSM (Oh Shit Moment) and succeeds people follow. Since extreme leaders don’t see wiping out as failure, they get up and go after it again in a different way. They live in the pursuit of the OSM.

“Let me put it bluntly – If you are using all the buzzwords, reading all the latest books, and holding forth at every meeting on the latest management fads, but you are NOT experiencing that visceral churning in your gut, NOT scaring yourself everyday, NOT feeling that Oh Shit Moment like clockwork, then you are NOT doing anything significant – let alone changing the world – and you are certainly NOT leading anyone else. But you sure look snappy in your big baggy pants.” ~ from the Radical Leap

 

I discovered while reading this book that liking something and/or even being excited about something wasn’t enough to be a real leader. You have to LOVE what you do. I mean LOVE IT!

I love the Coaching Industry.
I love creating places of expansion for people.
I love Business done right.
I love connecting Soul to Work.

This Love generates the Energy which overrides the fear and inspires Audacity which will lead to and provide the Proof. This is the Radical LEAP of leadership. My newfound zest, passion, audacity, love, and energy for the MCA and what we are up to are a direct result of reading Radical Leap: A personal lesson in extreme leadership by Steve Farber. 2004 Dearborn Trade Publishing. ISBN:0-7931-8568-8

No, the kitty is not dead. Morguefile, refers to photographs that were taken for another purpose say for a news article that weren’t used for an article.

Isn’t this the sweetest thing!

The web is an amazing journey sometimes. While researching a restaurant I ran across this hometown mecca of resources which also listed blogs so I randomly clicked on one which propelled me to a whole new world.

the mecca: Cursor.com - Twin City Media Portal
the blog: City of Squirrels - I couldn’t resist
the new world: Gukanjima - Battleship Island - an abandoned 1 mile long coal mining island which once boasted a population of over 5000 people. Closed in 1974 Now forbidden to land. Very eiry photographs and to think places like this exist and did exist. If you visit wander around the site to see the 1974 pictures as well - a kind of before & after experience.
an online photo journal: 28MM a photography magazine
a stock art resource: MorgueFile.com

After 21 days of rain in May I was beginning to think someone had moved me back to Tacoma without telling me. I discovered something this morning that the rain had concealed from me. The sun, my trusty celestal wake up alarm, has been rising a lot earlier these days. Lo and behold was I surprised to find at 4:30 this morning to find daylight peaking around the room. A warm muggy night had turned into this soft breeze, birds chirping and morning glow.

4:30 is early even for me. But I had wandered out to the florida room (don’t ask me?) and lay down on the couch to smell the Spring air, and let the breeze wash over me. And take a snooze.

6:30 is all it lasted until I had to get up and go for my morning revival walk around the lake. The Peonies (giant blooming flowers and extremely fragrant which are a new thing for me) were starting to bloom. Cardinals and robins zooming about. Lean muscular urban rabbits darting across the path (more than enough green things to eat these days).

AND the pinnacle being a floatilla of ducklings with their mother.

I want to feel good
I want to feel god
I am feeling good
AND I am feeling god

Be well

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Ladybugs came to the ladybug picnic

On my joyful jaunt around "my" lake today I ran across a ladybug picnic. A gaggle of women who had awakened probably before the crack of dawn (which is 5:30 these days) to have a coffee/breakfast social on a pier on "our" lake.

Sitting on the ledge as I passed was this two foot tall ladybug.

They were joyful and playful and I asked if they were having a "Ladybug Picnic" - and they said "Why sure!"

What a way to start the morning.