Better Living Through Creativity - Part One

Looking to bring more creative spark into your life? Fantastic! Here's some fun tips and tricks!

#1: Wear hot pink patent leather pumps to business meetings. 

#2: Have a glass of wine with city views while working late.

#3: Make sure you have at least one comedian in your entertainment circle. 

#4: Have interior designer girlfriends who help you rock the Ikea.

#5: Make sure you live near the best graffiti artists. 

#6: Run production on all the leadership and innovation conferences you want to attend. 

#7: Send inspirational notes to your coworkers and besties.

#8: Have coffee meetings in nature by the river. 

#9: Color your hair hot tamale red. 

#10: Have friends with pink hair.

#11: Raise some heck with the monks down at the monastery. 

#12: Make sure your girlfriends have creatively compatible kicks. 

#13: Cook amazing meals with fresh local-grown produce from Dekalb Farmer's Market. 

#15: 

Remember that its none of your business 

what other people think about you. 

You are a ruby.

The Best Networking Event Ever

I really like networking events now. Yep, I just said that. Leverage ATL, hosted by Ted Griffith and his crew of social innovation rockstars, kicked off one of Atlanta's - and yes, I actually mean this when I say this: best networking event I have ever been to. Done.

I am not a fan of networking events. They're typically pretty cold, kinda stale and gotta call it - sometimes pretty crusty. Sound familiar? "Hey! Over here! I don't know what I want in life, but here's a recap of my history and skills - you figure me out. Just please don't ask me about that questionable gap on my resume. But let me prove myself to you in hopes you will need me some how, some way. I need you to need me. Here's my card - call me maybe."

Like all people, I just want to be seen and heard for who I really am, and desperate is not a message I feel good about conveying. So when you find yourself standing in circles surrounded by bright, illuminated people who are listening to your ideas and your passion - placing your skill set in service to your heart - and relating in a way that doesn't feel forced, contrived, or manipulated, guess what? You are now building real relationships. And frankly, real relationships are the only relationships that have ever gotten me anywhere worth going in business.

It also helps when you're relating as peers and making jokes about the bye-gone days of pulling out back-pocket elevator pitches and shoving business cards down people's throats... Tons of laughter at a networking event - who wold have ever thought we'd see the day? I mean, I did, 'cuz I've got that futurist thing going, but right there: that was when I realized, these guys are really onto something.

It made me think: what if all those out-of-work over 60 folks, or the long-term unemployed, or all those newly-graduated, job seekers could experience a more inviting, encouraging, warm, networking atmosphere like this? What if more people asked, "who are you as a person?" before asking, "so what is it you do?" How many less people would go home feeling down about themselves? How many more people would feel like they could get back up from that hard fall and go out there and make that next career happen? How many more people could walk away from a networking event feeling like, even if they didn't get a job, they actually made some real friends along the way - people they could share in the journey with, people who could relate.

No one feeling alone.

All around, it was an vibrant, warm, fun, engaging atmosphere filled with amazing people doing incredible things - and more importantly: we got stuff done. Connections were made breathing more life into aligned visions, collectives were formed, ideas were spread, and new relationships were built. Towards the end of the evening, after the drinks set in, the music got a little louder and haaaay, there was something of a little party-party going down. Woot! Woot! Count me in for the next round - best networking event ever. 

Business Model Generation

I went to go visit my friends over at Jayan Films yesterday - an established, Atlanta-based film company owned and operated by a fabulous all-female leadership team. I've decided that when you have that much creativity and charisma in the room jamming on visions, you've moved from simple "brain storming" sessions to downright "soul storming." Can I get an amen! We pulled out our nets, went butterfly chasing, and caught a few big ones, so next round: we're breaking out the mind maps and the storyboards, after some time spent marinating.

Anyone who knows me knows that I think in models and patterns, so the book Jayan's CEO, Kelly Andrews, lent me was worthy of a little deacon dance. Business Model Generation: A handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers in business model innovation. I won't give away too much detail here, but I'm back in my labs, working on a model that changes everything in and around advisory services. Can't wait to gnash on this one and write up a book review. Now to find the time to read; I may have to head off to the Conyers Monastary to get my think on.

Business is cool kids. 

Bon Jovi Community Restaurant

What's a sustainable business?

Its neither a non-profit nor a for-profit, its an LC3, a low-profit limited liability company - a newly created entity type that bridges the gap by providing a structure that facilitates investments in socially beneficial, for-profit ventures while simplifying compliance with the IRS for program-related investments.

Bon Jovi's Soul Kitchen is a great example of a sustainable social enterprise: there are no prices on the menu; customers donate to pay for their meal and if they are unable to donate, they may volunteer to work in exchange for their family's meal. How's that for social impact?

No handouts. Community-building. Efficient. Self-sustaining. Social good. More creative capitalism. Got innovation? 

Future of Business, The Feminization of Culture

We are witnessing the feminization of our culture. 

Look around you: are women wearing more pinks and purples, wearing their hair longer, on the cover of more magazines... are they earning more degrees than men, starting more businesses than men, raising more bars? Are the giving, compassion, transparent, social, and innovation trends in some mysterious way being born out of a woman's inherent nature and her new access to money, power, and influence? The answer is yes. The new evolution of Eve, backed by women with money, power, and influence, will be a deep and strong shift.  

So welcome to the future of business, where you will become increasingly familiar with and accepting of words such as “feeling,” “creating,” "experiencing," "being," and “knowing.” A future where a person's values, intuitive ability, range of interests, creative faculty, and ability to integrate new ideas and connect seemingly unrelated dots, will be just as highly regarded as their ability to provide sound logic and reasoning and specialization. A future where traditionally feminine qualities such as giving, creativity, and compassion will indwell a company's DNA and be guiding principles spelled out in more company mission statements.

We will see boardrooms become dens and even the most sharply-dressed executive suite will have more warmth, comfort, laughter and creativity. Statements like, “I feel” will be heard sounding down conference halls and bouncing off walls right alongside statements like, “the numbers indicate." We will see more space and ease in even the most boiler-room professions, and the need to prove oneself at all cost will take a backseat to the passion, purpose, and spark a person conveys in his or her thoughts, words, and deeds. We will even see the high tech and deep sciences - persistently male dominated fields - come to acknowledge and accept the breath of inspiration as valuable input to and an accelerator of high innovation. 

We will see very large, global MNCs with traditional, hierarchical business models scale down in numbers, becoming engulfed by the revolutionary rise of women-led businesses, a space which will experience tremendous growth in the coming years fueled by the dissatisfaction with and inflexibility of traditional business models and the democratization of funding, which could herald the end of venture capital as we know it. 

We will see traditional business models become integrated and interwoven with decentralized, flat, and self-forming business models, turning ladders to lattices and giving more employees the room to manuever, and ebb and flow in their careers as their life needs change. There will be more career fluidity in even the largest organizations, with lateral moves made more accessible and given greater support by management. No longer will it be a simple straight line to the top, instead it will also include an evolution of upwardly mobile experiences, culminating at the top.

We will see a future where HR departments no longer simply fill roles based on a historical account of skill and experience (as if swapping out a piece part on a machine), but we will see the valuation of non-specialist learning resources: resources with their passion, values, and accelerated learning capacity out front as differentiators, allowing companies to form teams based on aligned visions and values and “swarm” projects and initiatives, raising the organization capacity to learn while performing and remaining agile enough to maneuver against economic head winds.

We will also see less people on the roads between the hours of 9-5, reversing the trend of rising congestion, and will see more people trickling in and out of work throughout the day, moving with their own biorhythmic energy, cycles, rhythms and life needs. 

Over the next decade, we will see the equalization of masculine and feminine energies in the marketplace, with a strong and deep bend towards the feminine for the next 5 years, polar balancing at the 5-10 year mark. What does not fit a woman's natural needs and desires will fail if it cannot adapt in the coming market. More macro trends on the feminization of culture to follow.