Musings on a Monday Morning from Mike Mullin…

The weekly Newsletter of Without A Vision Consultancy LLC

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May 11, 2020 – At This Latitude it’s the Height of Spring 

Day #61 of the COVIDs here in Central Minnesota.

Good morning!

• How was your Mothers’ Day Weekend?  I hope restful, peaceful, and that you EXPERIENCED gratitude and appreciation.
  • These words of wisdom from my good friend, Katy, mother of young triplets, who is daily out on the front lines of the COVIDs:
    • “Fear does not stop death.  It stops life.  And worrying does not take away tomorrow’s troubles.  It takes away today’s peace.”
• “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”  (Drucker)
• “I can cry, I can scream, but I cannot give up!”  (as seen on a street sign in New York City)
• If you unexpectedly encounter a Cardinal, do you:

1. Carry on as you were;
2. Pause for a moment to take a look;
3. Stop everything to marvel at this feathered creature, watching in amazement until it moves on;
4. Attempt to get a selfie with it, or at least a photograph;
5. Shoot it.

• Because few people understand it — and even fewer apply it — I often try to think of better ways to teach vision or strategic directions.
  • Here’s my latest:
  • (If you’ve never mowed a lawn, skip this next section, you’ll only be more confused.)
    • If your lawn is like mine it’ll never win Lawn-of-the-Year Award in your neighborhood…
    • … and so for the first two or three times mowing the thin, spindly, malnourished grass in the spring it’s very difficult to see where I’ve just mowed unless the shadows are perfect.
    • And so I often find myself guessing as to where my last swath was and where I need to go next…
    • … and though I’m not striving for Lawn-of-the-Year I’m equally not interested in being known for having the absolutely worst lawn, so…
    • …the thing is if you look all the way across the yard — to its horizon you might say…
    • …you can usually spot an intermittent healthy telltale splotch of grass letting you know exactly where you’ve been and consequently where you need to go next.
    • Once you zero-in and focus on that spot in the distance, you have a strategic direction — and the space between it and you will be relatively easy to navigate.
    • You don’t need to see everything right in front of you or around you to achieve a razor-straight path — and a beautifully cut lawn — to the correct destination.
    • Make sense?  That’s vision — and it’s strategic direction… explained as lawn mowing metaphors.
      • Now, you’ll still want to know where you are along the way (tactical) so you don’t hit rocks or branches or baby rabbits, but that’s another topic for another day.
• “In our experience, these five personal practices can contribute meaningfully to the mindset required to lead effectively in transformative times.  They serve as building blocks of personal inner agility:
  1. Pause to move faster… counterintuitive step that leaders can use to create space for clear judgment, original thinking, and speedy, purposeful action.
  2. Embrace your ignorance… listening — and thinking — from a place of not knowing is a critical means of encouraging the discovery of original, unexpected, breakthrough ideas.
  3. Radically reframe the questions… asking yourself challenging questions may help unblock your existing mental model.
  4. Set direction, not destination… solutions are rarely straightforward… lead yourself and your team with purposeful vision, not just achievements… ask, ‘How will we know that we are being successful beyond targets and metrics?’
  5. Test your solutions… quick, cheap failures can avert major costly disasters.  Thinking of yourself as a living laboratory helps make the task of leading an agile, ever-shifting organization exciting instead of terrifying.” (Lavoie/ Riese, 2018)

Looking for more advice? Find 11 ways your business or non-profit can survive COVID-19.

• What do you get when you work with Without a Vision Consultancy LLC?
  • We listen, we learn, and then we customize our response to deliver:
  1. Confidence
  2. Clarity
  3. Coaching
  4. Companionship on your journey… sometimes it gets lonely and it’s good to have a friend.

Please remember to tell others about me; I sure appreciate it.I work with individuals, governance structures (Boards), non-profits, and businesses wanting to be bigger, better, stronger, healthier, happier… yes, all five are possible and best done in concert, but it typically requires a coach (consultant) or a companion to help illuminate the path.At Without a Vision Consultancy LLC — www.withoutavision.org — we LISTEN, we LEARN, we LISTEN some more, and only then do we suggest strategic directions unique to your situation.  We do not bring a one-size-fits-all template, nor the latest flash-in-the-pan solutions, to working with you.As we work with you we deliver and provide an increase in your CONFIDENCE, and CLARITY while providing coaching and companionship for your journey.We bring more than fifty years of experience from all sides of the Board table in thirteen different leadership roles — 26 of those years as a CEO.

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