My Year of Hopefulness - Find Your "T"

This morning on the plane home I read an article from Stanford's Social Innovation Review entitled "Design Thinking for Social Innovation" by IDEO's Tim Brown and Jocelyn Wyatt. In the article the talk about looking for team members who have their own "T". The vertical line of the "T" is each team member's unique skill or knowledge that they bring to a cross-functional team and the horizontal line of the "T" is a shared set of characteristics that all of the team members share: empathy, respect for the unique talents of others, openness, curiosity, optimism, a tendency to learn by doing, and experimentation.

I like this approach to team-building because it inherently incorporates diversity into the structure of a successful team while also making sure that team members are cut from the same cloth at a very basic human values level. I also think it's a healthy recipe for building out friendships and relationships in our lives, as well as a good strategy for building a family. It's a formula for accumulating a set of good-hearted, talented people. And isn't that the kind of people we'd all like to surround ourselves with?

How does one go about building a personal "T"? Can empathy, curiosity, and optimism be taught or are these traits we must be born with? Can we build an education system that instills and nurtures these values into our children at the very beginning of their learning years? I'd like to think that we're all born curious, and I'd like to think that our natural creative, empathic nature is so strong that even if we have lost our way, these tendencies can be recovered and strengthened.

And what about that vertical in the "T"? How do we discover what makes us special? Is that something special about each of us something we are born with or is it something that we learn? And can it be changed throughout our lives? I believe that the answer is a resounding "yes" on all counts. My special trait is my storytelling, my writing. While I have a natural inclination for this, it requires practice. I certainly wasn't born knowing how to write well. I needed to put a lot of time and effort into it, though because I enjoyed it and saw a rapid rate of improvement with my practice, I was encouraged to become an even better writer.

I've seen this same pattern with every person in my life: my brother-in-law who is a fine painter, my friend, Kelly, who is a master project manager, my friend, Ken, who is a beautiful dancer and a gifted physical therapy assistant, my friend, Brooke, who is one of the most promising young acting talents on television, and my friend and mentor, Richard, who is one of the most successful and talented fundraisers in the nonprofit field. Incidentally, they all have a fabulous sense of humor and are some of the kindest people I've ever met.

I suppose that there are Mozarts and Einsteins among us, walking around, born brilliant, born as prodigies. I just don't know any. All of the brilliant people in my life, and I am very fortunate to have many, have found and leveraged their "T" because they have worked hard at something they love. And they're better off for this because their hard work also gives them the empathy and appreciation they need to be not only brilliant, but to be imbued with hearts of gold. Their "T"s are apparent in every part of their lives. They give me an example to strive for and are my greatest reason for hope.

Examiner.com: An Update with Amanda Steinberg of DailyWorth

Since I first featured Amanda Steinberg, Founder of DailyWorth, the site has grown considerably. DailyWorth is a website that helps women manage their finances, though the information is incredibly valuable for men as well. I recently caught up with her to ask about the site, her business, and how she's managing change.

Check it out.

My Year of Hopefulness - Everyone Can Draw

"If you think you can't draw, too bad. Do it anyway." ~ Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, in his book Change by Design

I've been lamenting for some time that I can't draw. I'm a much better writer than visual artist, and this is exacerbated because I am an auditory learner, not a visual learner. Thank that's weird? You're right - auditory learners make up only 20% of the population. Add it up and it's easy to understand why I don't have any natural ability to draw, nor have I ever really had a desire to learn.

And then I read Tim Brown's excellent book, Change by Design, that explains his philosophy on design-thinking and the future of the field. He talks about mind maps, schematics that illustrate ideas though visual depictions rather than through written briefs or powerpoint presentations. This is a kind of drawing I can get into. Think of them as multi-dimensional tree diagrams blending pictures and words to illustrate ideas. Rather than just working left to right and using the basic construct of option A or B to progress from problem to solution, a mind map starts with a question that takes the form of "How might we ( fill in the blank)?" for a specific population. For my program with Citizen Schools, I will be asking the kids I work with to solve this dilemma with a mind map "How might we build a public school curriculum for the graders to encourage creativity and entrepreneurship?"

As so often happens, as I was reading Tim's book, I saw an interview with another Tim whom I greatly admire, Tim Burton. He was discussing his views on drawing and creativity and echoed Tim Brown's sentiment. "Every child believes he or she can draw. Too many adults have found their creativity beaten out of them." And this brings me back to my long-held belief that I have only just begun to fully articulate: it is much easier (and effective) to help children maintain their creativity through to adulthood than it is to repair the confidence of adults who believe they have no creativity at all.

The truth is that I've lost confidence in my ability to draw, believing that my creativity is relegated to writing and developing products and not at all to drawing. The Tims helped me realize that I am selling myself short. Somewhere inside me is a visual artist of some sort yearning for a paint brush (or crayon or chalk or colored pencil) and a canvas (or piece of paper or blank wall or empty piece of sidewalk).

So here I go with another resolution to live a more authentic life: even if it's not good, I'm going to draw a little bit every week with the help of my mind maps. I'll let you know, or better yet I'll show you, how it goes by publishing the pieces to this blog. Stay tuned as I re-teach myself to draw.

The image above is not my own; I'm just starting to draw so my pictures aren't this good - yet. It is the image created by Tim Brown for the table of content of his book Change by Design. It can be found here.

My Year of Hopefulness - More Thankful Than Ever

"A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all the other virtues." ~ Cicero

This Thanksgiving is a particularly special one for me. All week I have been with my family in Florida, playing and laughing and cooking, grateful for all of this time with them. I've never spent this much time with them over the holidays. In a year that has been so difficult, in a year when I came very close to not being here at all, I can hardly think of something I'm not grateful for. This Thanksgiving was a big milestone for me because I have been using it as a marker to a time I wanted to get to, a time when I would be in a position to make some big decisions about my life going forward. And this week I have - applying to a PhD program, formulating my own business plan, signing up for a full yoga teacher certification course. Life is looking grand from this side of Thanksgiving.

Today I am very thankful for my family and friends and mentors, people who have not only been supporting me through this difficult year, but also encouraging me to get the most out of my time here.

Earlier this week Weez and I went to the grocery store to do some Thanksgiving shopping and we talked about the fire in my apartment building. I told her how that event really eradicated any fear I have about all aspects of my future; when you almost don't get a tomorrow, every day is gravy so I might as well get on with doing exactly what I want to do with my days. No more compromises. There's no sense in waiting. She agreed, as has everyone in my life that I've talked to about this experience. That fire made every day Thanksgiving for me.

I'm grateful for my health and my ability to imagine a new future with new dreams. Surprisingly, I'm thankful for all that I lost this year because it has made me so grateful for what I have. It cleaned out my life and made room for a drastically better future than the life I was living. It made me realize that a lot of good can be created from something terrible so long as we have the right attitude, so long as we embrace the idea that everything we live through can be an opportunity for learning, for strength, for love. It's this learning, strength, and love that I am most thankful for and I plan to use this thankfulness to bring these new dreams of mine to life.

My Year of Hopefulness - It Takes A Village, or an Army

I've been having a great time in Florida with my niece, Lorelei. I can hardly believe that she'll be 2 in January. I wrote about her on this blog the day that she was born and she has appeared a number of other times in my posts. It's fun to watch her learn and change. My sister and brother-in-law are tired pretty much all the time - Lorelei is always on the go and always curious. She's also somehow inherited insomnia from my mom and I.

While many people say that it takes a village to raise a child, I'd add that it requires a very large village, or in many cases an army. It's amazing how many things Lorelei gets into. Everything from electric outlets to cabinet doors to chairs that are a tiny bit too tall for her. She needs feeding and changing and washing and activities that teach her reading, her colors, her numbers, etc. And the list goes on. She needs an eye on her constantly.

Lorelei is lucky - she has so many people in her life who watch out for her, who love her, and take care of her. Every day, I think about how lucky she is, and how many kids are not so lucky. I think about how many kids don't have a village much less an army. Some don't have anyone at all. This is where we can all come in.

This Fall, I had the opportunity to volunteer teach at one of the best high schools in New York. When I told a friend of mine about the choice I had to make to do that assignment or work on my own program in East Harlem, she said, "Christa, those kids in that high school are fine. They don't need you. They have plenty of advantages. Whether or not you're there won't matter to them. It will matter to those kids in East Harlem. Go where you're needed."

Every day, we have a chance to be a part of a child's village, and it's most important for us to begin building a village for kids who don't have one at all. This might be the greatest challenge of our time. We can be that village, that army, with a small donation of time or money or concern. If we have any interest at all in the future of our planet, in the future of our own children, we have to stand up for other kids who need us.

The Journal of Cultural Conversation - Lessons in Spirituality and Why I Hugged a Tree Yesterday

This is a post by my writing pal, Laura, on her latest adventure in Peru. Enjoy!

I grew up in a very Catholic household. Before my super cool mom married my equally remarkable dad, she was a nun. I won’t elaborate – that should explain most of it.

For the full post, click here.

My Year of Hopefulness - Learn by Doing

This week Michael Sandel at Harvard talked about Aristotle's Politics. Sandel compares the art of politics to playing an instrument, telling a joke, and cooking. Theses disciplines cannot be learned just from a book or by watching others. Great political orators like great musicians, comics, and cooks must be actively engaged in their craft, practicing consistently, to become masters of it.

Social change is the same way. We can read and write about social change. We can study it. We can be inspired by others who are actively generating social change though only by rolling up our sleeves and participating can we understand the particulars, the details, needed to create change. Change requires trial and error, a variety of approaches, and practice.

In the coming weeks I'll be attending the final projects, called Wow!s, for this semester's Citizen Schools afterschool programs. Attending these sessions will give me an idea of what I need to put together for Innovation Station, the afterschool program for 6th graders in East Harlem that I am building around the concepts of innovation and entrepreneurship. I will learn so much by attending these Wow!s, though I know that this Spring I need to get in there and test the methods myself. I'm looking forward to the practice.

My Year of Hopefulness - Personal Statements

Today I began writing my personal statement for my PhD application to Columbia. I have been thinking about it for a week. Usually writing comes very easy to me. It's something I love and a skill I work on every day. The words usually come faster than I can type them. Several times I have sat down to write this personal statement and starred at a blank page for a long time, closing my laptop with nothing to show for my time.

What is it that's getting to me? Why is it that putting fingers to keys to write this personal statement is so tough? I can talk about why I want to get my PhD; I know my dissertation topic and I know what I want to do post-PhD. So why is this personal statement giving me writer's block?

In one to two pages I have to explain who I am and what I'm most passionate about to people who barely know me. Every word counts. Because of the critical importance of this piece I was editing before I even started writing. I let my quest for perfection get in the way of telling the truth, plain and simple.

While I need perfection before I click the 'submit' button, I was forgetting that the first draft, along with the second, third, and thirtieth can be far less than perfect. A final piece that shines from beginning to end is composed of bits and pieces of glimmer from the many drafts that come before it.

Life's the same way. Love's the same way. Careers are the same way. We usually don't get things perfectly correct the first time around. It takes a lot of trial, and error, and trial again. It takes the courage to fail, to follow a dream as far as it will take us. And many times our dreams dead end and we have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and start all over again. Life, love, and careers take many drafts, and in each new experience we gain a little piece of magic, a little piece of awareness that will get us a bit closer to our own version of perfect. The trick is to never call it quits until we get exactly what we want.

The Journal of Cultural Conversation - A Tico Life for Me

My latest post is up on The Journal of Cultural Conversation - a description of my incredible trip to Costa Rica.

"The first time I learned Spanish, it was to satisfy a school requirement in 7^th grade. The second time I learned Spanish it was for love – my first boyfriend in college was a Venezuelan and I wanted very much to know and understand his culture, especially the language. Now in the process of learning Spanish for the third time, it is to improve my own life and the lives of others."

To read the full article, please visit: http://www.thejcconline.com/a-tico-life-for-me/

Laura is in Peru this week - we passed each other in the skies over Miami. She recently posted a piece about her arrival there: http://www.thejcconline.com/live-from-machu-picchu-chatting-with-locals-coca-tea-and-hugs/

My Year of Hopefulness - Unquestioned Answers

While in Costa Rica, I continued reading Lynne Twist's book The Soul of Money. So many of her sentiments about the use of money, sufficiency, and abundance have resonated with me. At the end of one particular chapter she challenges readers to explore not unanswered questions, but unquestioned answers. I have not been able to get this term out of my head. I spent a long night in Costa Rica, tossing and turning, wrestling with the unquestioned answers in my own professional life.

Since going to business school, I have been on a track - to pay back my loans, to believe that I must make a certain amount of money in my single paycheck, to climb, climb, climb as high as I can in the field of business. We hear so often that there are not enough women at the very top of business world, that people from my socioeconomic background are under-represented and needed in large corporations, as are those who embrace empathy and innovation and change. Up until now, I assumed that these sentiments were a given, answers to timeless questions and concerns in business, and that I must heed this call.

With this latest economic downturn, these very things that I have held to be true without question are now up for scrutiny. Everything is up for debate. I went to an innovation conference several weeks ago, hosted by Roger Martin of the Rotman School of Business. My former boss, Bob, invited me because he knows of my deep interest in change and design. Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO and one of the panelists at the conference, discussed the dilemma of big business today as it relates to change. IDEO runs workshops throughout the year that are training sessions for business people to encourage more creativity within their companies. They are wildly popular events, and there's only one problem with them. "Once people open up their minds to the world of design," Brown said, "they can never go back. Many times, attendees of our workshops leave their jobs shortly after they complete the sessions. They can't accept a life in typical big corporations anymore. They know better."

Big corporations have been trying so hard to make innovation and change a part of the culture, or at least trying hard to pay lip-service to change. The difficulty is that only a handful of corporations really believe in the power and necessity of change. Target, Apple, Nike are among the few. By and large most big corporations just want to return to the good old days of fat profits, zero regulation, and big, big bonuses. Those individuals who really want change, innovation, and design to be incorporated into the fabric of a company get too frustrated with bureaucracy and the slow, lumbering gait of a company strangled by its own size. And so, they leave for smaller, more nimble, freer pastures. Who could blame them?

These are the brave souls questioning the answers that business has for so long assumed to be universal truths. Now, the truth is not quite so clear as it once was. The people who have long-benefited from business as usual (so much so that BAU has become a common acronym in their lexicon) are getting very nervous because their lifestyle is being threatened by those asking why, those who are questioning the 'given' answers.

For those brave enough to ask why, their dilemma now lies not in how to get their ideas heard by the ones who phone it in, but whether or not it's even worth it to ask why at all. Many are leaving to build their own dreams, to bet on themselves rather than on a big corporation. The world of business should be afraid. To survive in this new economy, corporations need the questioners much more than the questioners need the big corporations.

I laid in my bed, realizing that these questioners are the next great breed of entrepreneurs, the next batch of people who are on the verge of jumping from the safe, secure cliff and changing the world as we know it. And then I asked myself the question, "Will I be brave enough to count myself among them?" I waited long into the night for an answer to come from the darkness, and with the sun my own heart rose up to speak a quiet, strong, clear "yes".