Faster Than 20
Workouts, Tools, and Community for Leaders of High-Performance Groups
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Workouts, Tools, and Community for Leaders of High-Performance Groups
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I have lived in California for most of my life, and so the importance and scarcity of water is engrained in me. Several years ago, my friend Kate told me that she and her husband had made it a practice to capture water from their shower in a five-gallon bucket as they waited for it to warm up. They would then transfer the water into a rain barrel in their garden. I loved that idea, but our bathroom is tiny, and the thought of storing a large empty bucket there seemed challenging. Nevertheless, the idea stuck, and over the years, I pondered different possibilities. Last month, I was passing the
In my last blog post, I wrote about ways in which friction has been beneficial to my work and how, in this world of AI, we still have choices as to when and how we try to eliminate friction. I closed my post with the question: What are areas in your work or in your life where adding friction might actually help you? The post and the question resonated with several of you and led to some great comments and conversations. Odin Zackman reminded me of the most fundamental friction in our work: Conflict. Much of collaboration work is about navigating conflict. One of the great benefits of the Tuckm
Much of my work is about making it easier for groups to achieve their goals. Often, that entails finding ways to eliminate friction. But sometimes, the best way to help groups achieve their goals is to add friction. Consider exercise. Most of us don’t live in a world where we need to lift large weights above our heads or run long distances to get from one place to another. Technology has eliminated that friction in our lives. But many of us voluntarily reintroduce that friction, because we realize that it makes us healthier. When I’m co-designing meetings with others, I use a template that hel
Facilitation isn't just what happens in the room. Time and care invested in the meeting's design can be far more impactful.
Last month, I went to New York and D.C. to attend two meetings that, on the surface, could not have been more different. The first was a tour of land owned by Black farmers in rural upstate New York, which I was attending specifically to see The Center for NuLeadership’s inspiring project, The People’s Land. The second was a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the similarly inspiring Intellipedia, held in an “undisclosed,” high-security NSA building in Maryland. The fact that I had been invited to either of these meetings felt unlikely and was reason enough to go. What I didn’t expect was r
A few weeks ago, my Winter cohort of Power and Love for Managers had its final session in Oakland. We closed the training with appreciations, and one participant said how much she valued being in an “intentionally intergenerational space.” That comment struck a chord for me. It was an accurate description, but I had framed my goals around diversity more generally and around experience rather than age. I’ve been pondering why I haven’t been more explicit about bridging generations in my work, when it’s been an important value for me from the beginning. I started going down this professional pat
A few years ago, I took an introductory class on Bonsai, the art of growing miniaturized trees in pots. The first thing they taught us was that, with the exception of tropical species, trees needed to be kept outside. Why? Because trees sleep during the winter, and if they are constantly kept awake with artificial light and heat, they will eventually die. It made sense once I understood the reasoning, but I would not have intuited this on my own. I’m clearly not alone, judging from the countless number of posts on various Bonsai forums from folks who are mystified as to why their trees, which
Nine years ago, I found myself hiking through the Kentucky Appalachians foraging for ginseng with my then 75-year old mother. She had met a dealer in Los Angeles who spent half the year in Kentucky foraging for the precious root and who occasionally brought others along on his expeditions. My mom wasn’t in the best of health, but she decided she wanted to do this, and when she gets an idea in her head, she is stubborn and resolute. I was worried about her physical condition, and I also found the idea of trekking through the Kentucky woods in autumn irresistible, so I offered to go with her. Ou
Card by Lindsey Elias. Photograph by Dharmishta Rood. In a time of destruction, create something. A poem. A parade. A community. A school. A vow. A moral principle. One peaceful moment. —Maxine Hong Kingston, The Fifth Book of Peace (2003) Earlier this year, my partner and I were spending an evening with friends, enjoying a beautiful dinner. We mostly avoided talking about current events, but eventually, one of them asked us how we were grappling with our nation’s turn toward authoritarianism and our federal government's attack on much of what we care about and believe in. In truth, I was deal
Four years ago, I started organizing a small end-of-year gathering with other Bay Area collaboration practitioners to celebrate and make meaning of the year together. We would spend the first few hours of our session mapping how our individual years went using an exercise called Journey Mapping, then we would share our respective stories with each other and toast the end of the year with libations and snacks. It was a lovely ritual, and it became an annual tradition. This past year, we couldn’t do a face-to-face gathering due to the pandemic, so we decided to do it remotely instead. Going remo
