Good Planning

A good plan should be like your favorite pair of jeans, neither too tight nor too loose. Too loose and you end up with your butt showing and that only works in the street not in the boardroom. Too tight and when the right partner/opportunity comes along you can’t dance/move. Or eat. A few holes […]
Handle Your Elephants

This past month I’ve been working like mad to pull together reports and proposals for clients. I have a small team and we’re all buzzing. There’s building a business and then there’s doing the business. I love all of it. especially my purpose now – to support leaders in the arena – People hire me […]
Joy

What brings me joy? Seeing people flourish. Watching people use their gifts. No, not celebrities. Not in fancy productions. Just up close watching people grow into their skins, fill out a role, find direction and purpose. I LOVE encouraging and supporting that quest. My brother used to make fun of me. “You’re all ‘be all […]
Innocence and Loss

We try to protect our children – some of us. Thinking some realities are too harsh to introduce to our children. Wait we think. Let’s wait. Wait. Until they are older. They don’t need to know this yet. We call that period before they know that everything that matters is fragile and subject to loss, […]
Hospitality / Soulful Living

Today I’m thinking about all the investments I’ve made in other people. The events and parties and dinners and fundraising receptions I’ve hosted at my house at my expense. And three years of Sunday@Six gatherings. One of the things I love about true hospitality and generosity is it delivers a kind of immediate satisfaction. There […]
Starting Places

Five years ago, Judge Ed Emmett rang me up as I was juggling two phones trying to get information about which of our centers were flooded and which were dry. As then CEO of BakerRipley I was thinking past the immediate emergency of drastic flooding and stranded people, trying to inventory what assets we had […]
BLANK CHECK

HOW WE SPEND OUR TIME Love/passion — or even the illusion of it — will make us do crazy things. So excited we are by this possibility of being understood, of being appreciated, of being of service, we enthusiastically hand over metaphorical (and sometimes literal) purse strings to our lives. Handing over our time and […]
Builders

Here’s an observation – I’ve noticed that those full time “calling out” probably never built anything. Not an institution or a city or a building or a business … I’m not as patient as I once was. Sometimes listening to critics makes me want to say “get back to me after you’ve tried to build […]
What a Roar

Who cares who buys Twitter? I’ve got some real questions here. I often wonder why we care who owns Twitter or Facebook. Do we know or care who owns the cell company? Or the company that made our devices? Or the streaming services that we spend hours in front of? They are all making choices […]
Figure It Out Leadership

This morning talking with a woman who has spent her life (and most of her money) working to change the juvenile justice system – while also trying to wrest each individual child from its jaws when she could. I have this long list – so many of us spent decades on the long game and […]