by tashmcgill | Aug 28, 2017 | Strategy
I have always cared about helping people change the way they think. It’s like a scientist setting off a chemical reaction – the beauty of what emerges is both planned and organic. At best, changing the way you think is a chain reaction that enables you to see and engage with the world differently, to wrestle and live differently and to find your way to a more authentic self. Living into that authentic self matters, because the world needs you and I, to be our fullest expression. We each have something to offer the world and each other.
Often it is through pain or unexpected circumstances, transition and brokenness that we find the path to growth. These are the moments we become resilient as much as learn resilience. There are plenty of tools to help through that process, that I have used myself in the quest for wisdom. Books, therapists, mentors, guides. Exercise and meditation.
But it’s the moments when I find myself needing to take a deep breath that I need something small, digestible but hopeful and pragmatic to center me again. Just to help me re-engage my mind and be thoughtful for a minute. But it has to be gritty and real. There’s no room for trite in my life and probably not in yours. We’ve seen and experienced too much, right?
And that’s where this project was born. I was looking for something that I could read for 2 minutes in the morning or in a coffee break that would help me continue to keep growing but that really spoke to me.
A long time ago, I was a minister. That was my job, curating experiences and opportunities for people to engage spiritually, intellectually and emotionally with the world around them. While it’s no longer my job, it is still my vocation – to care for people, the whole of them. The all of your messy, chaotic and beautiful self.
So here’s my offering – a short journey for 30 days into Thoughtful, from September 1 – September 30th, 2017.
I’ll send you an email with a reflection from my private journals, this blog and lessons I’ve learned from wise advisors and mentors on the way. And if it helps you, then share it. You can read more about Thoughtful here or subscribe below.
Please share this with others who may also be encouraged or find it useful.
by tashmcgill | Jul 24, 2017 | Strategy
I first knew I wanted to be a writer the moment I defined my life purpose; to help people think differently by communicating and sharing different ideas about how to live. Recently that’s evolved to the idea of living by design.
Writing is bigger than words on paper or screen. It’s designing a story. Creating the narrative, understanding the players. It’s also taking into account the ideas of others and changing variables that affect the outcome. It’s the same skill set that enables me to facilitate a room full of senior corporate stakeholders and wrangle 4000 teenagers at a time. Listening, understanding, reflecting the emerging story I hear and designing a way forward through creating, evolving, testing and shaping the story based on the outcome.
What’s the outcome you are living towards?
There is a difference between author and writer. People frequently use the metaphor of ‘author’ to talk about how we create and shape our own paths. It’s a powerful idea to think we take our future and our narrative into our hands as simply as pen stroke to page or keystroke to screen. I have a few ideas about this difference and the use of the metaphor.
A writer is skilled at understanding, translating and then communicating the thoughts and ideas of others into meaningful narrative or work. This is the work of design, the link between story and strategy.
An author is one who creates and develops the idea, the plot or the content of the work towards a pre-determined outcome. There is a role for authorship in our lives, as we determine unique outcomes but I’m not sure it’s enough. Moving towards the outcomes you desire requires a proactive writing of your story, or what I call life by design. Adapting to the context, circumstances and characters that exist outside of my control. I’m engaged in authorship but I am not an author. I’m writing my story and designing my life as the variables move around me.
With all that in mind, I’ve been thinking on the following points
- We develop authorship over time
The ability to create, develop and communicate (or execute) unique ideas and futures of our own is something we learn. The societal framework we live in across the developing and developed world is a series of pre-determined paths. Those who choose to create their own paths inevitably experience a learning encounter or drastic change that precipitates new solutions or pathways. Therefore, authorship is a choice and not a necessity.
- If we choose authorship, we must be collaborative
We are creatures wired for relationship at an individual and collective level. Our lives are not as singular in focus as the plot of a novel or the arc of a TV series, not as concrete or resolved as the script of a movie. We interact with hundreds of individual ideas in a day and have to live amongst our own needs and desires as well as the desires of others. Therefore, authorship of our personal stories must include those we live in relationship with – an intersection of unique storylines.
- We are authors of an evolving narrative
Our world view craves systematic thinking and process. Anything that simplifies data and our ability to rely on programmed responses (you can read more about categorization here) is a natural fallback. Therefore the challenge of authorship is how to deal with a changing context and the variable data we have to process. In the truest sense, an author has absolute power over context, character and circumstance. We can wind our plot towards the pre-determined outcome. That’s the truest problem with the metaphor because real-life authorship is a constant re-writing of the story with uncontrollable context, characters and circumstance.
It’s this evolving narrative that makes the practice of writing or designing our story even more powerful than the metaphor of authorship. Design works with variables and evolving contexts to help us continue moving towards the outcome. But it also gives us permission to change the outcome over time and redirect our energies and strategies should our context change.
Writing or designing an evolving story might look like the art of nudging, to see where your organic growth takes you. Or if your current context is painful, you might like this reflection on being in the graft. Maybe you are at the very beginning of recognising the life you’re meant to live. Your story is in infancy. Welcome aboard!
A few reflection questions to consider as you engage in life by design:
We develop authorship over time > Where or what are the learning encounters or drastic changes giving you opportunity to develop your own authorship or begin designing/re-designing your life?
If we choose authorship, we must be collaborative > Who are your collaborators? They might be authors, teachers, spiritual leaders or family/friends. They should definitely include people you share physical space (face time) and aspects of daily life with. How might you invite them into collaboration?
We are authors of an evolving narrative > What are the variable contexts, characters and circumstances in your narrative? Which of them cause you anxiety or pain and which bring you joy? How might you engage differently to empower or disempower those variables in your life?
by tashmcgill | Jun 24, 2017 | Strategy
Storytelling was the original design practice. Through oral histories, fables and proverbs we told stories that met human needs for learning, remembering and envisioning the future – the ‘what might be’ and ‘how might we’ that has been the essence of innovation and design from the beginning.
Here’s the TLDR:
- Storytelling inspires ideas and creates a vision for the future that requires design
- Design is the process of making outcomes and as that outcome changes the human experience (or the story) more designs are required generating momentum
- Momentum is what powers growth and change but we require ways of harnessing that momentum into meaningful direction, this is called navigation
- Navigation gives you the ability to harness your momentum towards meaningful direction but that direction is decided by the biggest picture outcome – focusing energy and momentum towards an idea of the future. I call this strategy
- Strategy is best conveyed through storytelling, conveying outcomes from measurable data into meaningful insights allowing for our original stories to change and adapt as we solve the ‘beyond the beyond’
From storytelling we begin designing. If stories generate ideas, it’s design that brings them to life – functional and meaningful existence. Our design outcomes generate momentum. New stories and design outcomes emerging as one innovation leads to another .. I call this the ‘beyond the beyond’.
As sailors we learn the practical skills of navigation and harnessing momentum before we head out of the harbour. It’s the uniquely hireable and desirable ability to ‘get it done’. It’s when we leave the harbour we need the ability to read the stars and the currents to find our way to new shores or familiar places.
Momentum creates a new need; for navigation. The ability to harness and steer your momentum in the best possible direction. But to be truly powerful, the skills of navigation require a compass point. As sailors we learn the practical skills of navigation and harnessing momentum before we head out of the harbour. It’s the uniquely hireable and desirable ability to ‘get it done’. It’s when we leave the harbour we need the ability to read the stars and the currents to find our way to new shores or familiar places.
The navigator, the helmsman or sailor who can get you around the course is not always the tactician. From navigation we come back around to strategy, how we plan or agree our destination on the map. This brings us back to storytelling as a design exercise.
…the story is both the outcome and the strategy to get to the outcome.
When I work with people in strategic planning, marketing strategies, product roadmaps and content design – I use principles of storytelling and design to get us to a functioning, future-focused roadmap to the future. What stories from the past can we grasp hold of and use to inform our future innovations? What new quadrants are there to be explored but what resource do we have to get there? What might we discover and what might we learn as we go?
So we arrive back at the beginning of the process – designing outcomes through storytelling, where the story is both the outcome and the strategy to get to the outcome. Coming up with a plan is never enough, you need a compelling story that engages and helps steer the momentum whether you are telling the story of your organisation, product or your own life.
Storytelling > design > momentum > navigation > strategy > storytelling.
by tashmcgill | Jun 17, 2014 | Community, Culture & Ideas, Strategy
As kids, we’re taught that honesty is simple. Tell the truth, it’s better that way. We learn that honesty is black and white, everything is either true or untrue. We learn that lying is usually a tactic employed while trying to cover up something else. So we get schooled in confession – the act of coming clean.
Truth is so much more than confession. Confession (and honesty) is like a doorway for truth-telling. It’s opening a door for truth to take a more prominent and transformational role in your life. Honesty is a philosophy, a habit, a way of speaking and sharing – it is a practice. A way of engaging with the universe and others, but it is not a substitute for truth.
When people talk to me about their search for identity, for meaning and purpose or when they talk about their relationship and work struggles, often I find myself observing the bigger truths that people avoid through focusing their honesty in the wrong place. Honesty has become a series of trade-offs we make to fake intimacy and avoid discomfort. It’s not how honesty was meant to transform us or weave us together through sharing our victories and struggles.
Honesty might be admitting you’ve had a tough day at work. Truth is admitting you’re not making it any easier fo (more…)
