How so absolutely real is that!  After visiting India and Nepal, and being immersed in the experience of other cultures brought “the experience of being alive” up front and personal. I saw and felt both the rawness of poverty co-exist alongside the comfort of wealth, and latest mobile technologies being used along side women filling vessels from community water pumps.   It’s those in-your-face contrasts that jolt us into the fullness of being alive.

If we don’t experience the fullness of life personally, we can vicariously.  We see more and more reality TV shows in the US which expose us to aspects of life that maybe outside our own experiences.  For example, where bosses are going undercover into the trenches to experience what it’s like to work in their own companies outside their board rooms; where couples race around the world and experience many difference cultures and environments;  where cooks initiative food revolutions to expose school kids to food that is different from their regular, routine food in the hope to introduce healthier diets that will create greater awareness of what it takes to live a healthier life style, free from fatal diseases associated with obesity.  And there are so many others that open us up to the fullness of being alive.

Awareness is the first step in any change.  If we can suspend judgment and see others as they are, it opens us up to seeing the wholeness of life with an appreciation of difference and what it could be like to be in someone else’s  shoes.  With such awareness, we begin to expand our own perspectives and the experience of being alive, and with that, comes the principle of Ubuntu – I am because you are.

My dream for a more equitable, loving world, where communities can sustain themselves, women increasingly take public leadership roles, in the home, in business and governments, children are literate, and wealth is more evenly distributed is being realized bit-by-bit.  This bit-by-bit phenomenon is growing.  Social entrepreneurs, who believe in patient capital, participatory leadership and mindsets, and social media that instantly spread messages, are powerful facilitators of this positive, equitable trend.

If you too embrace the “fullness of being alive”, with optimism, hope and possibility, how is it showing up for you?

I love the question.  In my practice of Appreciative Inquiry, we say  it’s the question that starts the change process.  A powerfully affirmative question inspires us to share stories about the successes and strengths I already know about and can celebrate.  Moreover, the question leads me to focus on what I want more of.

It is no effort to list what I am excited about.

I am excited that the conversation is widening and we are becoming more conscious of what is importance to us and what we value – more people becoming engaged and more voices are being heard.

I am excited that we are changing policies and introducing reforms to bring greater equity and justice into the world, especially in the financial sector.

I am excited we are taking actions , globally, around all the factors pertaining  to ecological sustainability – energy, transportation, earth.

I am excited when I hear leadership speak from the heart, ethically, and listens loudly.

I am excited that social media is increasing our participation and collaboration across the world and is a force of natural democratization in the world.

I am excited our global conversation is widening because more people are standing up and expressing what’s important to not only them but what’s important for the longevity of all human kind -  the sick, children and elderly who are most vulnerable in our world.

I am excited the natural and human-made unrest and chaos are showing us we how inter-connected we are and we cannot not think systemically.

I am excited that Americans continue to pay attention that there is a world outside the US and it’s a beautiful world to be celebrated and shared.

I am excited that we are learning more about good health and there is conversation and action about eating natural, unprocessed, wholesome food with less sugar and less salt.

I am excited that there is continued conversation about the inhumanity of cruelty to animals.

I am excited that as a human species,  we are evolving rapidly and exponentially to live our lives with heightened and enlightened levels of consciousness.

I am excited we are thinking holistically, and seeing the world through multiple lenses, and listening to the myriad of diverse stories, and integrating the physical with the virtual

I am excited to be alive in 2011 and have this opportunity to tell my story.

I am excited to know if you, too, are moved to answer this question: “What are you excited about?”

(Link to the full interview below)

Q: What do you see as the New Paradigm of Work?

Killian: The new paradigm is about Life. One life, and work is part of that life and increasingly these two blend like fluids. Much of this is driven by the exponential rate of technological advances, automation by machines of routine tasks and the unstable and unpredictable business climate (and in part, planetary climate conditions!) The technologies we use for work and for socializing blend; the devices we use at home and at work blend; our networks blend; our hours of work and home-time blend in a ubiquitously connected global economy; our work spaces blend and even the boundaries between our professional personas and our personal reputations blend. Increasingly, our employers blend as many people become self-employed or work on contract terms for multiple organizations, over time our careers will blend from one life stage to another, much like seasonal workers or the way in which actors work.

In this new paradigm of work, where work and life are inseparable, happiness will only be possible if work blends with play, if passion blends with purpose, and if creativity is as vigorously cultivated as profitability.

What about this interview so resonated with me? Annalie offers stories and insights for creating environments where people show up fully so their radiance shines.

And, it takes effort. It is about developmental work – as opposed to problem-solving work. In order to live into the new paradigm, it requires us to:

1. do personal inner work – develop our own inner capacities:
2. identify and invest in the appropriate structures to support and facilitate the development
3. recognize we can only make this shift to a “new paradigm about life” in relationship with others.

To read the full interview, please go to Michelle James’ fabulous blog, The Fertile Unknown and read her full interview with Annalie Killian, in her series of Creativity in Business

It was the “old days”, when life aboard a luxury liner in first class was still akin to what you read about in novels at the beginning of the last century and what we see in movies, such as the Titanic:  opulence, elegance, indulgence, style and sophistication.  I was 7 going on 37 – full of romance and imagination.  I was a princess in my own mind afloat this luxury liner setting out in the Pacific Ocean, crossing the Southern Ocean,  the Indian Ocean, up the Suez Canal into the glistening Mediterranean Sea.  I was 7, which I have since learned is a significant age in human development.  It sets the psychological thermostat for how you internalize beliefs about yourself and your relationship to others and the world.

So that how “change” started for me.  I was princess, aboard a luxury liner, afloat on the widest and deepest oceans, discovering a plethora of amazing realities and an abundant, cornucopia of choices.   I believed I could do anything.  I was Eliza Doolittle of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion aka My Fair Lady. You know the story.  Professor Higgins made a wager that he could transform a young street flower seller from her lowly beginnings to an elegant sophisticated princess, and more importantly have English aristocracy believe it to be true.  We know the outcome of the story – he won his wager.

That’s the magic.

When you believe it, you see it. I believed I could swim across the pool on board that liner, and I did – I almost drowned, but I told myself I would do it and I practiced and practiced by swimming from corner to corner in that pool, lengthening the distance every time until I could swim the distance without having to reach out and grab the side of the pool.  I swallowed a lot of water in the process, but I did not give up.

My love of exotic foods happened in the magnificent dining room of that liner – I learned to love pepper and other spices.  I relished experimenting with food, especially if it were grown up food.  The pepper mill was a new discovery for me as was as Parmesan cheese.  I would ask the waiter to give me copious amounts, as it was so sophisticated. I wasn’t satisfied until my mashed potatoes were totally bespeckled with black pepper.  I learned myself into what I believed myself to be and desired to be.

Fast track to now – decades later. Here I am.  When people ask me my nationality, I say I’m a global citizen. My love of diversity and charting new territory has continued to grow. I consider myself very privileged to be alive today.  In fact, I say, we are the privileged generation.  My start in life was unique, just as all of us have had our own unique beginnings.  I’ve been through lots of change. Just as all of you will have been through lots of change.  Some of the changes I engineered myself, and some I would not have engineered for myself.  The common thread in all these changes: I faced them and embraced them.

There are many other facets to embracing change generatively, and I’d like to name one: the anticipatory principle -  cultivating the ability to hold a vision of the future that we want for ourselves, others and the world at large puts us in the starting gate.  To embrace change we want to be part of is to see it first in our imaginations.  I did as a 7 year old, Henry Higgins did it for Eliza Doolittle and you can do it for you.

Let me conclude here with a favorite quote about what change means to me:  ”I embrace emerging experience.  I participate in discovery.  I am a butterfly.  I am not a butterfly collector, I want the experience of the butterfly.” William Stafford. 1914- 1993.

is changing the way we do business, how we communicate with clients and customers, and the way we buy and sell products. Don’t be left behind.

The Sm@rt Conference delivers one of the best values of any similar conference anywhere bringing together professionals from marketing, tourism, gaming, service industries and nonprofits December 8-10, 2010, in Reno-Tahoe’s amazing ski country.

Who should attend?

Designed for business professionals who want to take their promotions and business strategies to the next level using social media, the sm@rt conference is for:
•    Business owners
•    General managers
•    Marketing directors
•    Digital media marketers
•    Brand managers
•    Media/content providers
•    Advertising and sales reps
•    Professional service providers

Expert presentations

The Sm@rt Conference features keynotes by David Nour and Scott Klososky, and more than two dozen presenters speaking on a wide range of social media topics. I am excited to presenting on a panel of four professionals in the Professional Services Track.

Register early and save!

Early registration is $595 and is available until Nov. 1 (on-site registration is $750). Register today!

All of the AI Principles are evident in her story.  She opens with examples of the Constructionist Principle: how words create worlds and the role we all play in co-creating our realities and defining each other.

She advocates the need to honor the wholeness, possibility and potency of ourselves and each other.  She asks us to open ourselves up to and embrace our adversities, rather than sweep them under the carpet.

She reminds us from her own story that we live up OR down to others’ image of us, and how positive imagery leads to positive outcomes.  She is such an example of nurturing the human spirit, keeping hope, seeing the beauty, valuing curiosity … and so much more.

I highly recommend this video.

There is always more than the eye sees: a splendid metaphor to shift our perspective on what seems to be “nothingness, emptiness, wastefulness, blackness”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVjF_7ensg

Peter Drucker wrote in his 1967 classic, The Effective Executive. “To make strength productive is the unique purpose of organization. It cannot, of course, overcome the weaknesses with which each of us is abundantly endowed. But it can make them irrelevant.”  So if, in fact, a key task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths, then imagine the possibilities of strengths connected to strengths?  What might that look like and why might that be worth striving for?

For leadership to create an alignment of strengths, it most likely means looking at organizations with new eyes.  What if we were to look at organization not as problems to be solved, but as miracles to be embraced?  What if we were consciously to look for the good and hold up the achievements and the successes; to invest generously and respectfully in inquiring into existing organizational strengths and assets?  What if we were to invite people to tell their stories of when they felt most energized, enlivened and valued at work.  And we listened.  Really listened.  What language would employees, customers, vendors, media be using?  Is it uplifting and positive?  What stories are they sharing about their experiences with the various products, services and people?  Are they focusing  on what works well, and what they want more of?  If yes, that’s great, as such language creates upward spirals, and there’s the broadening effect of noticing more acutely what works.  As a consequence, you are more likely to enact your capabilities and your potential. Performance improves, since it is more energizing and creative to have people talk about what they can do and what they aspire to than the reverse.  Two maxims come to mind:

What you focus on grows.

People support what they create.

To connect strengths to strengths and to see anew, with an appreciative eye,  and to facilitate the leadership capability so that it creates flourishing organizations is work that is meaningful, joyful, rewarding and essential.

The decade beginning 2000 was a good decade for me.  I married a wonderful human being in 2000; we have enjoyed great fun and a wide range of intensely pleasurable physical experiences; we have grown together and independently through many stimulating, engaging intellectual learnings;  and we have both experienced deeply meaningful emotional times.  We have traveled a lot and created a home we love. I am blessed in my relationship.

So, in this last decade, I have continued to change, as has the world around me.  A dominant and exciting force that is enabling this rapid growth rate of change is social media. We have new and additional ways in which we communicate and connect with people and we have many more topics and stories to share.  My sensitivity has been even more heightened as to how alike we really are across the globe.  How vulnerable we all are, and how much more we can become together.  I have been moved by so many stories shared in private and in public places – face-to-face, virtually, in books, on TV, in film.  All my senses have been sharpened.  For example, in Italy, I savored during and for months afterwards the landscape and the smells and sounds; the sensations and the tastes:  I admired the art work and architecture and imagined what it was like when armies of ancient Rome traversed the land battled against the Carthaginians and the Gauls;  I imagined the beauty of the Etruscans, even before the Romans, and then I imagined what life may have been like during the Renaissance when art and commerce flourished.  History and culture revealing how peoples continue to shape the future and leave their legacies.

I experienced similar emotions and wonderings while traveling in India and visiting Kathmandu Valley in Nepal.  My curiosity and interest is always aroused to learn how people get to where they are and what has shaped their current situation.   What are their stories?  My own birthplace, Australia, has untold stories that the land longs to share.  The more stories we can hear of all peoples on this planet, the richer we all will be.

I love to find the themes and connect dots.  What keeps coming up for me?  My filtering system is constructed to find the beauty, the goodness and what truths endure across time and space.  Horror and evil also endure across time and space. They co-exist.  History and the arts are full of co-existence. The victories of love overcoming fear, and good overcoming evil and beauty overcoming horror is the human story.

I learned at Christmas time, a dear colleague, whom I haven’t communicated with since 2002 has Stage 4 cancer in her brain and has very little time left in her present form.   Going about my business (busy-ness), I thought about her a lot, but didn’t call.   After Christmas, I learnt her condition had worsened.  I felt remorseful that I had not acted on my best intuition to call her when I wanted to.  I actually feared I had missed my opportunity to let her know I cared for her.  I had weak excuses, like a 14 hours time difference, Christmas was an awkward time, etc. etc.  Finally, I did call and our conversation was truly meaningful.  I also send the flowers I had been thinking about sending for four days.  I decided that moving beyond thought to action would be my commitment to myself in 2010.  To move beyond dreaming and thinking into action – action that serves others, and in doing so, serves me.

All plans can change.  So when the world changes around you, what constants provide you with a sense of safety or equanimity that enables you to go on?  The tiniest belief in oneself helps; some hope for a future; the support of others.  I have been in that state, when I had no self-confidence, despaired of any future and indifferent to the support and love of others.  How I’ve pulled myself out of such low points is my story and some parts of the dark story I am not proud of and some parts I am.  I realize the parts I am proud of are when I found the inner strength to shift my perspective enough to make a different choice.  Through the tears and the pain (both physical and emotional) I could sense a faint awareness that I wanted to feel/do something different.  In such times, I open up enough find an inner resource that offers a glimmer of hope and possibility that I am willing to admit there is a different way and I will do something about it.  I also believe that having experienced the intense discomfort of chemotherapy and radiation, that in the future, and if in a conscious state, when faced with death I can have the same experience.  I will find an inner resource that offers a glimmer of hope and possibility that I am willing to admit there is a different way and I can find it.  I know I will seek peace and love over fear.

What is your story?  What victories, celebrations and joys have you experienced in the past decade?  In telling your story, what have been highpoints of your first ten years in the 21^st century?  What will you remember with a smile on your face, a warmth in your gut, a tenderness in your heart?  What are you most grateful for or even a little bit grateful for – personally and professionally?  Who have you met in the past 10 years that has influenced your life in a good way?  What have you done for others that you know has been of service to them?  What thoughts may inspire you for action in 2010?

In the city of Kolkata, an anti-noise campaign has started and Sunday has been declared a no honking day.  To quote the police commissioner of Kolkata, Guatam Mohan Chakrabarti, “...city police are embarking on a major campaign against noise pollution in general and bursting of high decibel firecrackers in particular.”

“After some progress in the campaign, we want to observe Sundays as no honking days. Motorists in the city often honk without reason.  Most of the time this is a manifestation of their impatience.  Sundays being no hurry days, drivers can desist from honking.  This would substantially reduce noise levels in the city.  Over time, the city has got noisier and at some busy crossings, it is completely maddening.”

What is also relevant in networked India is that this campaign has begun on a virtual plane on the blog kolkatacops.com.  The Police Commissioner continues, “enforcement alone cannot make the difference.  Only awareness can bring down the overall noise levels.  Since we already have a blog, we cannot have a better vehicle for such a campaign.

“We are inviting environmentalists and doctors to air their views on the ill effects of high-decibel fireworks on health and the environment.”  In addition, he wants to invite historians “to tell how and when the noise level increased to such a level”.  Furthermore, “sociologists should speak  on what social implications this sudden spurt of noise pollution may have on our social life.  We would like to have the views of economists if they can quantify the environmental damage and the financial loss incurred by this noise spurt.”

The Police Commissioner has not forgotten the common person.  He does not want the blog to be “an airtight zone for expression on one-way views.”  He is hoping for a range of views from regular citizens as well.  “We expect that eventually science, logic and enormous goodwill would prevail.”

Among already eminent citizens who have blogged, here are two comments:
“It is surely a good move, but I doubt if drivers will follow it.  In civilized countries, drivers do not honk unnecessarily, but here this is a custom.  Drivers should be trained properly.” Dr. Dulal Bose, Ent specialist and former sheriff of Kolkata.

“It has become a habit here to blow the horn unnecessarily.  If drivers stop doing this, noise pollution levels will come done.  For this, we need a mass awareness campaign and this is a good initiative to start with.” Devang Gandhi, cricketer.

Enthusiasm and passion can be transferred virtually, so here’s to the Kolkata cops.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Pilots and cabin crew exchange punches on flight (telegraph.co.uk)