I was recently talking to someone and found myself using the green room as an analogy for a period of waiting. Green rooms came into being in the world of theatre; they are rooms backstage where performers hang out while they’re waiting to perform, sort of like a theatrical lounge room. I used to be…
Dictionaries provide useful definitions of creativity. Wiser souls offer their own wonderful interpretations – e.g., Ken Robinson describes creativity as “…the process of having original ideas which have value.” Mulling over how I play with and apply creativity, in my life, I’d like to share my version. Recently, I’ve been in reflection/musing mode. Mostly through…
I wish I’d taken my phone with me on my walk beside Merri Creek early this morning. I would have liked to get a couple of photos. One was of a cyclist who had zipped his whippet snugly into his backpack. The idea pleased me: I feel that all cyclists should have a whippet in…
I’m not new to digital technology for communication. I’ve been on social media now for about two decades. Starting with Facebook in Feb 2006, followed by LinkedIn in 2008, blogging, Twitter and then Instagram. I’ve had a personal email account since about 1994, and I’ve been using email in a work context since about 1992.…
Making creative work can be a lonely business, certainly for people working by themselves on a book or composition or artwork or some other solo enterprise, but even for people who are a part of a small team of collaborators who are just – ‘just’? – seeing the same people and hearing the same voices…
I never wanted to work for the United Nations. I didn’t understand exactly what they did or their value. I came across them while living and working in Rome, after having decided to stop off there for a while during a backpacking holiday in the early 90’s away from my home country of Australia. There…
A reflection one year on from Surviving bullying in the workplace I was crouching in the corner of the living room last week and it dawned on me that my old workplace was perhaps the most insincere place I had ever been in, let alone worked in. I wasn’t crouching, crying or scared. I was…
Feedback is a tool that is commonly used in organisations as a mechanism for growth and change. It’s typically expected that a manager or team leader will give feedback periodically on an individual’s performance to help the individual grow and develop, and also for the team and organization to better develop. This isn’t an article…
The COVID-19 pandemic created conditions in which experimentation was a useful way to figure out how I might do things differently in my workscape. It is said that ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’. In Jan 2021, I found myself contemplating a year ahead without clarity of what steps to take. In 2020 I had…
“The perks of being unavailable” is the title [1] of a podcast episode in the series, What’s Essential by Greg McKeown. Greg and his work came to my attention last year when I read his book: Essentialism, The discipline of doing less. A key takeaway for me from the book was about boundaries. In particular,…
When I followed through on my career change from organisational consultant to ‘tradie’ (i.e. builder) late 2019, I had no real clue what 2020 had in store (pandemic and all). I would probably still have made the same choice, which is more of a testament to how much I had bottomed out than a reflection…
A few years ago, whilst I was in an L&D leadership role at a large organisation, a graduate approached me in the kitchen. She got straight to the point, “I’ve been here for nine months and I haven’t had any learning” she said. I asked what she meant. What transpired was she hadn’t been sent…
Apparently, I am difficult. Apparently, people at work ‘walk on eggshells’ around me. Apparently, it’s ‘my way or the highway’, that my team are scared of me, that my clients find me inflexible. That I appear detached at work meetings and do not hang about for drinks and socialise at, or after work. That I…
The ‘pandemic of 2020’ has disrupted our personal and work lives. For some, this disruption has been to be cut adrift, to be untethered, from an organisation or employment. So much daily structure, personal identity, and validation comes from having a job. To be adrift is functionally unsettling: routines are lost; skills are not used;…
