conferences

We can all learn to speak, and we really should.

I have just had two amazing days immersed in a conference, and I am searching for the right words with which to describe them to you. I’m in a stupor of sensory overload” floating on the words of wisdom spoken by so many, and the energy which swirled around them with such intensity.

I was invited to speak at the 2006 International Cultural Summit put on by the Hawai‘i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, and it was yet another fine example of why speaking is one of the very best things you can learn to do. The perks that come with speaking engagements are just too good to deny yourself.

Besides the obvious ones of meeting new people who are looking for intellectual inspiration (which you can give them), in the case of conferences your presentation is just one of many, and the perk is that you get to attend the rest of them. You bathe in learning you never would have had otherwise. You learn to improve your own craft by witnessing the mastery of others, who readily make themselves available to you, enjoying the camaraderie.

Great, great week at work.

It’s been quiet here on Talking Story because my coaches and I have been out getting the job done, and boy oh boy does that feel good.

Remember MWA3P? (Full index here; read from the bottom if new to you.) We just finished the 3rd of a 4-part teach-and-coach series for a group, and they have two major projects they are applying what they’ve learned to. “What they’ve learned” are new productivity habits connected to MWA business values, and it’s terrific to see how those individual habits now impact group dynamics in project work.

So perfect that Lōkahi is our value of the month to support and coach them at the same time.

With another organization we brought a shorter version of MWA3P to a two-day think tank using three of their strategic imperatives as the subject matter and content of our Project Work Module. The strategic imperatives they chose to work on were somewhat stalled, and the organization is one which has never used cross-functional project teams before because of the traditional silo approach of their business model. Extremely smart, intuitive people. So you can imagine the release of ideas and idea-energy in their doing this for the first time. Those strategic imperatives are not stalled any longer! Incredibly exciting for them and for us.

Again, Lōkahi is meeting their needs as both value and process.

We have a third group we haven’t physically seen for three weeks now, however it feels they are keeping us busier than the other two, just in our trying to keep up with them. We have their current project set up on a Basecamp project management site, and wow, they are rockin’ and rollin’ with new customer service initiatives framed in new work experiences for their management team. To watch Managing with Aloha in action, revitalizing workplaces in the way that it does, makes my heart sing.

For them, Lōkahi is absolutely, positively REAL, and not just a value-of-the-month poster on the wall you stop looking at because it’s hardly more than refrigerator door art.

There were two key Hawai‘i events I missed this week because I chose to schedule this work instead:

Another day at the office

Workin’ it