My First Year in Lines (Pete)

Taking a cue from Kathryn Greenhill's meme, here are the first lines from the first posts for each month this year. (The fun thing about this, is I forgot ever having written most of it. So if I ever repeat myself, that's why!)


January: Thanks to Amy for tagging me in the "Five Things" meme.

February: Check out this amazing video,"Web 2.0... the Machine is Us/ing Us," created by Michael Wesch, Assistant Cultural Anthropology Professor at Kansas State University.

March: Zuula (http://www.zuula.com) is a newish metasearch engine that I’ve been enjoying.

April: Maria Palma over at "Customers are Always" recently posed the question, "What would make you stay loyal to a supermarket?"

May: I had the mind-blowing pleasure of attending Imagination to Transformation, the Mid-Atlantic Library Futures Conference, on Monday and Tuesday.

June: File under, "Tootling one's own horn" In this case mine.

July: A few months ago I started taking Improv classes in Philadelphia on Monday nights.

August: As requested, here's the link to the Wiki that supports the Magical Mystery Tour: http://librarygarden.pbwiki.com

September: If you get any invites from Quechup, delete them immediately.

October: David Lee King has offered up a new song/video Social Digital Revolution.

November: In my last post on The Human Touch I discussed how a warm, caring human being trumped a crappy, highly inconvenient system.

December: I started a little meme on Twitter on Thursday, which David Free picked up on and posted about over on his blog, David's Random Stuff.

Five Questions that will improve your effectiveness

I recently stumbled across a wonderful little book called Leadership Simple: Leading People to Lead Themselves, by Steve and Jill Morris. It's based on Dr. William Glasser's "Choice Theory" (which suggests, among other things, that the only person whose behavior we control is our own) and Glasser's "Reality Therapy" (which suggests that we choose our actions and we are responsible for our choices.)

The authors use a fictional case study written in narrative format to illustrate the process of "Lead Management", or "self-evaluating, and leading other to do the same." The principles are also presented in bullet-point format in an appendix, which makes it very easy to quickly review the main points.

The Lead Management process involves walking oneself (and later others) through five basic questions:

1. What do you want?
2. What are you doing to get it?
3. Is it working?
4. What else can you do?
   (I like to throw in an extra one here: "What am I willing to do")
   
5. What WILL you do?
   

The authors suggest that when using the process, we spend the majority of our time on steps 1-4, thinking, talking, analyzing, generating options and generating more options. Finally, we decide what we WILL do and commit to an action.

I've realized that in the past I've sometimes rushed through steps 1-4, failing to think deeply enough and generate enough options. But more often I've spent too much time on steps 1-4, enjoying the process of exploration and never getting to a commitment to action.

What appeals to me about this process, and the underlying philosophy, is that it is deeply grounded in personal responsibility. Consider this quote from the book:

"You are accountable for the meaning you place on the information you receive. for what you want, and the behaviors you choose to get what you want."

And this one:

"People are going to do things. Events will occur. In essence, whatever happens outside your mind is information. You get to choose what that information means, what importance you place on your perceptions of that information, and how it fits with what you already know."

One value in adopting this perspective is that it takes us out of victimhood. We can't simultaneously take responsibility for the meaning we ascribe to events and to the behavior of others AND feel like a victim. This is highly empowering. Victimhood, whether experienced individually or as an organizational or professional culture or belief system, gets us nowhere. When we perceive ourselves as victims we are less likely to invest our energy in trying to change or influence events. However, when we take responsibility for our perceptions and the meanings we ascribe to them, we become grounded in a place of power, and we are more likely to make conscious choices regarding our behavior. We are more likely to take concrete steps and try to exert our influence on outcomes.

The commitment to action (the "what we WILL do") is the final step in the Lead Management model. The process, however, is circular. This means we can choose to go back to earlier steps and re-evaluate what's working, what's not, and generate more options. We may even decide to re-evaluate at step 1, and look at whether or not we still want what we originally wanted. We may discover that our original goals have shifted over time in the light of new experience and knowledge.

The Lead Management process is designed to beused for self-coaching and the coaching of others. But I think the process of working through the five questions could also be effectively used to guide decision-making for departments and organizations by re-phrasing the questions:

1. What do we want to achieve? (What is our mission? What is our goal?)
   
2. What are we doing to get achieve our mission/goals?
3. Is it working?
4. What else can we do to achieve our mission/goals?
   ("What are we willing to do")
   
5. What WILL we do?

Over the past year I've been acting as a personal coach to a friend/colleague (and as I move into 2008 I will be doing more, and will begin receiving formal training from a professional coach.) Coaching, as opposed to mentoring, is about asking questions, not giving advice. So far my experience with coaching (both as a coach and coachee) has been very positive, and I can see how the five questions of the Lead Management process could be integrated into an effective coaching session.

Now maybe it's a bit early to be making New Year's resolutions (although tech support people are already wishing me a "Merry Christmas") but maybe I can set a New Year's Intention:

1. What do I intend?
   I intend to learn to effectively coach myself and others.
   
2. What am I doing to get it?
   Setting up agreement to be coached by (and trained by) an experienced professional coach; Setting up agreement to coach a colleague.
   
3. Is it working?
   TBD...
   
4. What else can I do?
   Read books listed on coaching bibliography provided to me by an experienced coach.
   
5. What WILL I do?
   TBD... Share my coaching experiences on Library Garden!
   

TechnoratiTags: leadership, lead management, coaching, choice theory, reality therapy, libraries

Meme: Twitter is Like...

I started a little meme on Twitter on Thursday, which David Free picked up on and posted about over on his blog, David's Random Stuff. I thought I'd add a little (brief) backstory and fill in some of the tweets that David missed. (One of the interesting things about Twitter of course, is that depending on who we follow or who follows us, we all saw - or didn't see- different responses. )

Like David, I'm not naming names, but I thought it would be interesting to add timestamps to give everyone an idea of how this played out chronologically. I think there were some brilliant comments, so I hope the authors step forward and take credit.

Brief backstory: Janie Hermann and I were chatting about the lack of recent posts on LG and Janie jokingly suggested that maybe Twitter, the great sucker of time, was to blame. I threw out the comment that "Twitter is like therapy... without the progress." Janie suggested (dared?) that I share that thought on Twitter. I thought it might make for an interesting meme so seconds later (at 11:10) I threw it out there to the 50 or so people in my twitterverse. This is what transpired:

• NEW TWITTER MEME: TWITTER IS LIKE... (I'll go first) Twitter is like therapy... without the progress. (11:10)
  
• Twitter is like ADD without the Ritalin (11:19)
  
• Twitter is like Jaiku.... I'm bad at analogies (11:23)
  
• Twitter is like whippits (11:24)
  
• Twitter is like a celestial bulletin board. (11:24)
• Twitter is like a crack addiction without all the mugging, prostitution, and running from the cops. (11:26)
  
• Twitter is also like Paris Hilton: slutty and unfortunate. 11:26)
  
• Twitter is like your drunk uncle at Christmas, sometimes you want the madness to stop, but you still wanna see where it's going. (11:30)
• Twitter is like passing notes during class. (11:31)
• Twitter is like [name redacted] - You don't like it until you try it (11:32)
• twitter is like the background noise of the universe, kind of a low murmur that lets you know you're not alone (aww!) (11:37)
• Twitter is like cheating on your blog (11:38)
• Twitter is like crack for procrastinators. (11:41)
• Twitter is like sex without a condom. Sure it's fun, but you will probably regret it later. (11:42)
• Twitter is like.... so. y'know. ... What was I doing? (11:43)
• Twitter is like compressed infobursts, effin ay! (11:45)
• Heck, Twitter *is* compressed infobursts (11:45)
• Twitter is like an inside joke: no one gets why you do it unless they do it (11:46)
• Twitter is like sucking out my braaains... (11:46)
• Twitter is like being stuck in a massive kaleidoscope- ooh something shiny! (11:56)
• Twitter is like drinks with @dwfree - makes you feel all nice and warm inside (12:04)
• Twitter is like drunk sex w/ a friend: not nearly as intimate as you expected it to be, but still sexy & satisfying. (12:04)
• Twitter is like drunk sex w/[the person who just posted about drunk sex.] (12:09)
• Twitter is like being in a room with your "friends", saying something really loud, and hoping that someone hears you. (12:18)
• Twitter is like having 10 IM windows open at once. (12:27)
• George Costanza: "It's like going to the bathroom in front of a lot of people and not caring." Jerry: [pause] "It's not like that at all." (12:28)
• Twitter is, like, another reason I, like, totally, looove innovation (12:39)
• Twitter is like a party in my phone! (12:39)
• Twitter is, like, totally awesome. (ok really i'm done. lunch over) (12:43)
• Twitter is like the sound a tree makes when it falls in the forest -- whether anyone is there or not. (12:48)
• Twitter is quotidian packet hops (12:51)
• Twitter is like finding out your favorite candy bar now comes in smaller easier to eat packaging...for free (12:55)
• Twitter is like is like a bus full of crazy people talking to themselves. Except you get to choose who is on the bus. (1:12)
• (Twitter is instant gratification.) (1:12)
• Twitter is like a dry skin condition. It itches, and the more you scratch it, the more it itches. (But it feels soooo good to scratch...) (1:22)

Tags: twitter, libraries