Musings on creativity, community, storytelling and leadership
For all those suffering from Imposter Syndrome (you know who you are!), this week’s manifesto is for you… Corbett Barr’s Expert Enough.
Expertise doesn’t come from a piece of paper.
Life is richest when we become good at a lot of different things.
Know-it-all, Jill of All Trades, and Renaissance Man are compliments.
Pulling again from the speakers I was fortunate enough to witness at the 2012 World Domination Summit, this week’s manifesto comes courtesy the amazing Danielle LaPorte - A Credo for Making it Happen.
Don’t let perfection become procrastination. DO IT NOW.
Launch + Learn. Everything is progress.
The universe is always expanding, and that includes YOU.
All hail the manifesto!
Maybe it’s the typeface, or the layout. Or the bite-sized inspiration these one-pagers bring. Whatever the reason, and despite Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ imprint on the term, ‘manifestos’ have always stirred something in my soul and pulled me in. I tag them, bookmark them, print them, tack ‘em up and use them as visual reminders in my office.
So, why not start aggregating the ones I love here?
As mentioned in my New Year’s ‘Seed Sower’ post, I’m a big Brene Brown fan. So who better to kick off this manifesto binge! Here’s Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly Leadership Manifesto
We are hard-wired for connection, curiosity, and engagement.
We crave purpose, and have a deep desire to create and contribute.
This is not my blog confession that I’m leaving the word world to go elbow deep in dirt (although I must admit, that does sometimes sound tempting.)
This is about a recent revelation I made about a principle and purpose in life, and the path of how I got there.
Over the past several months, I’ve been privileged to be part of the CEO peer advisory group Vistage. In a fortuitous twist of fate, my membership in an Idaho Chief Executive Group began the month that my agency co-founder decided to leave the business.
If there ever was a time for peers to provide counsel and insights – this was it.
Boiling the experience down to its essence – it was raw, emotional, scary, infuriating, eye-opening, empowering and…ultimately uplifting.
I have found that often when we are the most vulnerable, we gain the most insights into our strengths. A tip of the hat to the amazing Brene Brown for sharing that truth and that, “Vulnerability is the cornerstone of confidence.” (If you haven’t experienced her Power of Vulnerability TED Talk, go there now.)
During our Vistage Group sessions there was frequent talk about identifying and staying true to your North Star – that point beyond your horizon that guides your day-to-day actions and aspirations. Admittedly, I struggled with this concept. It was difficult to raise my head up and think beyond the immediate business opportunities and obstacles in front of me.
And I truly felt that my personal North Star needed to be something more. More than just a reflection of my company’s business goals and brand promise.
Then in a bit of serendipity, I found it.
I am forever in debt to the leader of one of our community’s non-profits, who when we met for a casual conversation stated, “We invited you here because you’re a seed sower in this community.”
A seed sower.
Like pulling on my 16-year old pair of Frye boots, trying on ‘seed sower’ just felt right. And as Prasaid Kaipa wrote about North Stars for wise leaders, it felt like it embodied a noble purpose,
Smart leaders make New Year resolutions and set quarterly milestones, charting progress against ambitious plans and goals. Wise leaders, however, take a different approach: they root themselves in a noble purpose, align it with a compelling vision, and then take action — not just for that year, but for the rest of their lives. That noble purpose becomes a North Star, giving direction when the path ahead is hazy, humility when arrogance announces false victory, and inspiration when the outlook seems bleak.
I am a seed sower…
….of stories that highlight community and potential
….of ideas that spark and inspire
…of connections and relationships that lead to something more
…of opportunity for those around me
Seems like a damn good purpose for 2014 and beyond.
Happy New Year.
Thou shalt do Epic S#@! that actually matters.
Thou shalt have a Strategy but be open to Serendipity.
Thanks to Jonathan Fields for the much-needed reminder as we head into 2014.
Tools that enlighten and apps that empower,
Cool things I loved for more than an hour.
They’re on my list ’cause of knowledge each brings,
So here are a few of my favorite things…
Organize Thyself!
Evernote: You’d think I’m being paid by Evernote to hype their tool, but I’m not, (if I was, I’d use #client or #ad of course!) Instead, I feel it’s my pay-it-forward-duty to tout this cloud-based tool as one killer organizational app. I started out with the free version then moved up to Premium this year as I started to do more than just type notes into it. At its core, Evernote has provided me the perfect platform to track, archive and share thoughts and notes via the cloud. Every client meeting, business development opportunity or team brainstorm is typed into Evernote and I can access it via any device, anywhere. When I’m feeling analog, I can still get those thoughts loaded into Evernote by snapping a photo of the notes and uploading them into my Evernote – where the platform can scan and read my scrawl. But Evernote is so much more than note-taking, and is adding apps and value weekly. Here’s to a 2014 where I try out more of the bells and whistles
Diigo: Hand in hand with Evernote, Diigo is my go-to site for organizing thoughts and content. In their words, a multi-tool for personal knowledge management. In mine, a social bookmarking site on steroids. Not only does it enable you to tag and bookmark websites you want to remember, you can also highlight and annotate those articles for sharing and conversation. Here’s my Diigo library, where I collect posts, articles and insights on a variety of topics that I go back to and search for presentations, trainings and blog posts.
Unroll.me: Exactly what it says, a tool that will mass unroll you from the email subscriptions you’ve signed up for. It. Is. Awesome. I’ll share my shame, my Gmail account had 169 subscriptions. Ouch! There’s also the option to ‘Roll Up’ all those subscriptions you want to keep into one daily or weekly aggregated email to help clean up your inbox. A perfect (free) tool to check out during this cleansing time of the year!
Visualize Thyself
Piktochart: Probably my favorite cool tool of the year is this online infographic design tool. We kicked the tires on it for free for a bit, then just expanded to the agency annual subscription ($168 for the year) for full access to all the templates and ability to customize the look/feel for brands. As someone who just used the tool to put our 2014 Business Plan into an infographic, I can attest to its intuitive nature and ease of use!
Slideshare: Another free site that I drop often when I’m speaking to groups, Slideshare is a great resource and promotional platform in one. Whenever I’m tapped to present on a specific topic, I search Slideshare to see what others have recently presented to help me identify points of differentiation or insights I want to incorporate (and credit of course.) It also provides a great platform to post and share company and personal presentations to bolster thought-leadership cred.
Improve Thyself!
Brainpickings: Admittedly, I have an immense crush on Maria Popova’s brain. She emobdies the best of content curation and her site Brainpickings is one of my favorite stops on the inter-tubes. Every day, there is a nugget that gives me an a-HA moment and is inspirational fodder covering topics from Jane Austen on Creative Integrity to Unusual Words Rendered in Bold Graphics. I also have extreme ‘bio-jealousy’ based on this, “…Maria Popova, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large…”
Coursera / Skillshare / Udemy: This year, I dove into trying out MOOC – Massive Open Online Courses – by signing up for a half-dozen classes on Coursera, which touts that you can, ‘Take the world’s best courses, online, for free.‘ (I only completed Critical Thinking in Global Challenges but really loved Dan Ariely’s A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior.) I did also check out Skillshare and Udemy - which both offer more bite-size packaged classes and workshops that might be easier for tighter timeframes, particularly in the business setting. Most appeared to have a cost, but their focus on specific skillsets has me thinking about how to incorporate this into our agency’s regular Professional Development framework.
Byliner: Over the past year, I’ve realized I’m reading less and less for pleasure or the pure joy of discovery. Most of my feeds are filled with entrepreneurship, leadership, business ownership, daily local and national news and strategic communication content. So, Byliner and Oyster have entered the picture to help me in the serendipity department. Reading outside my comfort zone helps my synapses fire and fuels my ideation. When I stumbled upon Byliner I immediately signed up and am ready to dive in with a daily dose of random literary mindsnacks. Or as they describe it, “Byliner partners with the world’s best authors to bring you the right story for every moment and mood. Perfect-sized fiction and nonfiction for your coffee break, your trip to work, or your evening in. Think of us as dim sum for hungry minds”.
Oyster: Finally, one of my favorite discoveries of the year came just this week. It is somewhat ironic that I saw it as a Facebook Sponsored post, since I hope it will help me spend less time trolling Facebook feeds and more time reading books. It was described as ‘Netflix for Books’ which seems pretty accurate. Essentially, sign up for $9.95/month for unlimited e-access to 100,000+ books with more being added regularly. Merry Christmas to me!
Would love to learn about your favorite apps, tools, platforms and channels from the past year. What ones did I miss out on?
(First published 12.23.13 on Red Sky’s Blog)
This is a post six years in the making. It seems fitting to finally write it on ‘Women’s Equality Day’ (aka the 93rd anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment.)
Six years ago, I was working for someone else but had just-below-the-surface drive and ambition for something more.
Today I am a CEO, founder and owner of my own company.
I am driven, ambitious, competitive, direct, outspoken and full of opinions I am completely happy to share with those who want to hear them. (And sometimes, those who do not.)
Because I believe in my voice, have confidence (still growing, admittedly) in my expertise and a desire to make a dent in the universe.
But until recently, the mantle of ‘female business owner’ and feminist was not one I felt comfortable taking on.
Blame it on my good fortune to grow up middle-class, raised by a working mother, supported by parents who emphasized higher education and in the era where Title IX gave me the opportunity to compete on sports fields so I grew to understand and embrace competition in other fields.
I never felt that I had to overcome anything or right any injustice because I was able to achieve whatever I set my sights on. The only obstacles I saw were ones I put in front of myself through self-doubt or not working hard enough.
![photo[2]](http://jessflynn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/photo2.jpg)
So when I became a business owner and my stepmom proudly sent me this poster, it didn’t resonate. The Art Nouveau painting by Evelyn Rumsey Cary is an iconic woman’s suffrage poster from the early 1900′s. I hung it on my office wall and appreciated its beauty, but not its message nor history. My mother-in-law and aunt-in-law were equally supportive and effusive in their praise of my business ownership, sharing their pride in what I had accomplished, reflecting on how rare it would have been to do so in their time in the professional world at my age.
I felt like a fraud. Here I was being held up as a woman business owner and yet I felt that being a woman had nothing to do with what I had accomplished. I started feeling a debt, a responsibility that I couldn’t quite verbalize.
Then I started seeing that I, and the other strong, vibrant, intelligent women I work and collaborate with weren’t always the equals I thought we were.
Yes, we could vote.
Yes, we could work.
Yes, we could buy our own houses and get our own bank accounts and loans.
But it also became very obvious that we still fell far below equality when it came to elected and appointed leadership at the local, state and national level; that the experts called on in the media and showcased as thought-leaders were way out of balance male; and that subconsciously, a disrespect of women as leaders still permeated our society.
This was brought home recently when a male peer that I admired referred to a group of women leaders – CEOs, Executive Directors, state Senators and Representatives – as ‘girls’.
So today I say I am a feminist, because I do support equal political, economic, and social rights for women. And I believe with all my heart, soul and brain that adding women to any conversation is vitally important. It is not that a woman’s voice is better than a man’s – it is that it brings a different perspective. And that matters.
My pledge moving forward
I became enamored with this concept of creating collisionable opportunities once I heard Tony Hsieh of Zappos drop the idea.
Through planning and design, it is about creating points of bottleneck, tension and intentional collisions of humanity.
Through those collisions – you are accelerating serendipity in the hopes those unplanned moments will spark creativity and ideas.
Whether inside the office (which you can do by decreasing the amount of physical/individual space employees have) or outside the building (by decreasing the number of entry points, putting a shared distance between where they park and work).
Tony is planning out these opportunities for collisions and serendipity in the development of the Downtown Project in Las Vegas.
We are a group of passionate people committed to helping to transform Downtown Las Vegas into the most community-focused large city in the world. We are doing that by inspiring and empowering people to follow their passions to create a vibrant, connected urban core.
Our primary goal is to help to create an environment that encourages serendipity…the opportunity to unexpectedly collide with people from different backgrounds. Serendipity encourages people to connect with each other, exchange ideas, and accelerates learning
Here’s Tony’s slideshare presentation on the project.
This idea came full circle at the end of the day when I was introduced to the geek-artist Leo Villareal (my moniker for him), who is the visionary behind The Bay Lights So inspiring from both an artistic and public project perspective.
But what resonated the most had to do with the true public component of the piece – and its visibility from San Francisco’s Embarcadero. Leo eloquently shared how part of his desire was to create a conversation piece for the public. So that those watching and enjoying the piece would have a shared experience with the stranger next to them, leading to a conversation and exchange of thoughts and opinions. And perhaps that serendipitous sharing of thoughts could spark something else.
I see it as a focal point, something people can gather around. People who have never talked to each other are suddenly talking and it’s literally creating community. It’s almost become a digital campfire
Synapses are definitely firing now on how to create these collision opportunities in my own world – both within my agency and my community.
(Not quite the same as being there – but here is a live web cam to get your Bay Lights fix, as well as a Vimeo channel)
While I was listening to the live stream of the Aspen Ideas Festival (because my track had not started yet so I couldn’t be ‘in’ the room) I inadvertently heard the theme to what I’m going to be experiencing
Planned Serendipity
Leave it to Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh to drop the knowledge on his Theory of Serendipity: creating collision opportunities in planned environments so that you can accelerate serendipity, and therefore collaboration, creativity and idea generation. (more on this concept when I tackle his Downtown Project)
While I don’t think I’ll be head on running into people around the Aspen Institute campus (tho I might, because I am socially awkward in foreign locales and also quite the klutz), I do see the collision opportunities. Hell, even before my track has started I’ve been close enough for some amazing OH moments with Justice Elena Kagan, astronaut Anousheh Ansari and a table of folks from the CDC.
Plus – the lineup of ideas I’ve selected for the 3.5 days takes me out of my comfort zone and into different fields. Here’s the plan so far:
Featuring House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Henry Paulson on Sustainable Urbanization, Eric Lander of the Human Genome Project, Playwriight Anna Deavere Smith, Violinist Robert McDuffie, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, and Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan
Mankind Illuminating the Cosmos at the Planetarium
Artist Leo Villareal discussing his light sculpture in San Francisco
Sunday, June 30
Andrew McAfee, Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, fmr FCC Chair Julius Genachowski & Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton
RPI President Shirley Ann Jackson, MIT Director Andrew McAfee, MAYA Design CEO Mickey McManus
Master Storyteller & Consultant Kendall Haven
Legal Affairs Editor of The New Republic Jeffrey Rosen, Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu. (This is underwritten by Booz Allen Hamilton, which I find awesome & timely
Three PhD candidates from MIT Media Lab present their research.
CCO of Jawbone & CEO of fuseproject Yves Behar, CEO of Nest Tony Fadell, CEO of Flipboard Mike McCue, CEO of Path Dave Morin
Los Angeles USD Superintendent John Deasy, CEO New Classrooms Innovation Partners Joel Rose
Author Lea Carpenter, Author Ben Fountain, Author Karl Marlantes
Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman, HuffPost Editorial Director Howard Fineman, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, Finance & Economics Editor of The Guardian Heidi Moore, WSJ Weekedn Review Editor Gary Rosen
Monday, July 1
Live show with John E. Deasy, Anand Giridharadas, Steve Inskeep, Shirley Ann Jackson, Joel Klein, Madeline Levine, Paul Tough
CEO OF MAYA Design Mickey McManus
Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman
CEO of ESA Michael Gallagher, CEO of Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars Jane Harman, CEO of Dreambox Learning Jessie Wooley-Wilson
Fmr CEO Viacon Tom Freston, CEO of Moby Group Saad Mohseni, CEO of Season of Cambodia Phloeun Prim
TED Curator Chris Anderson
National Geographic Fellows Sean Gerrity and Chris Rainier
Tuesday, July 2
Williams College Senior Lecturer Susan Engel
Associate Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer
PepsiCo Chief Design Officer Mauro Porcini
Jane Harman, Author Courtney Martin, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards
It’s early and I’m airport-bound.
Destination – Aspen.
Not for a celebrity jaunt – though I am sure I will see a few rich & famous folk.
I’m headed to the annual Aspen Ideas Festival, “…a conversation-packed exploration of some of the most important ideas and pressing issues we face.”
How can you not be energized by a description like that? The issues on tap, the mix of conversation opportunities and the amazing speakers on the lineup awed – and intimidated – me.
This is year two of my quest to attend gatherings that challenge and expand my thinking.
Last year? World Domination Summit.
This time around, more inspiration than domination.
Ideas, pure and simple, can be inspirational. They can plant seeds where none existed. They can morph an existing thought into quite another. They can introduce us to worlds of thinking we have never considered, thought about, imagined… And that’s why we like to share them!
Here’s to serendipity, planting seeds and doing epic shit.
Jess Flynn calls herself an ‘accidental entrepreneur’, embarking on her journey to … more
