Slowing Down

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Water lily at Sangsurya, Bryon Bay

Water lily at Sangsurya, Bryon Bay

Slowing down

Today I got a card in the mail. No, it wasn’t a Christmas card (today is Christmas Eve). It was a card from myself. Yes, really.

A few weeks back I had the luxury of attending a five-day Total Balance retreat at Bryon Bay run by the lovely Kate James.

It was an amazing experience and one made possible by the Reflection Leave policy we have at work. This gives all staff an additional week a year to spend ‘reflecting’. (You can read more about our Reflection Leave Policy in this interview with SANE Australia CEO Jack Heath). This policy is truly a gift.

During the retreat we were tasked with writing a card to ourselves that Kate promised to send back to us a month down the track. We were to write to ourselves to remind us of the things we had hoped to take away from the retreat.  I opened the card quite curious about what I had promised to myself.

At the top of the list was “take time to be quiet and slow”.

Wow, timing! The lead up to Christmas is traditionally super busy.  Rush. Rush. Rush. Often we find ourselves stumbling across the finish line exhausted after a busy year. Usually. Surprisingly, that has not been my experience this week. I have noticed the email has slowed appreciably and as my major deadlines have passed I have been enjoying a peaceful week. I have been able to leave work on time and enjoy some quiet evening walks. On one of those walks I was appreciating the feeling of peace, the beautiful early evening sunshine and reflecting on the challenge of slowing down.

So it was a bit serendipitous that my card arrived today and hence this post!

I rush around a lot. ‘Slow’ is not something I do well. Nor is ‘quiet’. But I am working on it. I am excitable; I really thrive on activity, on creating things, on transforming stuff. I have been described as a ‘whirlwind’. But rushing around does take its toll and not just on me. It can be a challenge to those around me too! So I have been working on ‘slow’ and the retreat (and the arrival of that card) was a good way to refresh this commitment.

What do you do to calm yourself when you can feel the adrenalin is pumping way to hard? How do you do ‘slow’?  Here are some of my favorite tips for slowing down. Some of these come from the retreat experience, but others have come from some very special workmates and mentors who have shared their wisdom with me over the years.

Five tips for slowing down

  1. Walk more slowly. Try it! This is surprisingly hard to do when you are pumped.
  2. Talk more slowly. Again, hard to do when the ideas are flowing and you have a million things running through your mind.
  3. Exercise. Find the time. It helps to relieve stress and burns some of that pent up adrenalin; it both stimulates and calms. Yoga and walks are my favorites.
  4. Meditate. This is one I struggle with. I know it takes practice and I will keep at it as the benefits to health are now well established.
  5. Get in touch with your creative side. Art as therapy. Without getting too technical, doing something creative, be it cooking, painting, writing, playing music etc., puts the right brain in charge and allows us to quiet that over-active left-brain. For me this is easier and as effective as meditation, but remember, its not about the end result here, just the ‘doing’.

Happy holidays,

 

 

 

 

The role of entrepreneurship in setting organisational strategy

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Corporate entrepreneurs operate within a company or organisation to “instigate renewal or innovation”, (Sharma and Chrisman 1999, p.18). They will do this by combining materials and forces in new ways. This may involve producing a new product or service, adopting a new method of production, entering a new market, developing a new source of raw materials or even reorganising an industry.

The overall aim is to create or sustain competitive superiority. (Spring and Gillin 2005).

The role of the entrepreneur in setting organisational strategy is to ensure that the organisation builds strategic intent.

“it is the individuals within that innovate”

In an increasingly complex and competitive world, the role of setting organisational strategy is increasingly one focused on innovation and creativity rather than on the traditional strategic analysis. Continue reading →

The different rules for business vs. non-profits

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Every day we are exposed to so much wonderful information. I subscribe to many e-newsletters covering topics across a wide scope of interests including non-profit management, social enterprises, social entrepreneurship, innovation, technology, mental health and social media. I am a member of a number of LinkedIn groups and I find the LinkedIn feeds quite useful. The Stanford Social Innovation Review is one the my favorite newsletters and I love Ted Talks.  I ‘like’ quite a few pages on Facebook and follow many interesting people and organisations on Twitter.

All in all I am constantly deluged with useful information and it is a little scary sometimes to think that I might miss something really awesome with my quick scans of the information streams. I do take some comfort from the fact that the good stuff usually rises to the top across multiple channels, so eventually I will spot it! And so it was with this one.

This Ted Talk is from Dan Pallotta and it is fabulous! It has long frustrated me that the Not For Profit sector in general has been slow to recognise the value of branding and marketing and understand the need to experiment, innovate, take risks and accept failure. This talk though has given me a new perspective.

Dan talks about the very different rules for business (for-profits) vs not-for-profits and how these that stand in the way of the organisations within this sector being able to fully realise their mission. Dan discusses four of these in his talk. We are now, more than ever, aware of our scarce resources and the increasing belt-tightening at Government level. We are also well aware of the scale of the issues that confront us. The general thrust of Dan’s talk is that we are going to need to change the way we view this sector for it to grow to the scale required to make an impact on the issues that matter to us.

Thought provoking…enjoy!

 

 

Playing around with Google Insights for Search

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Today I have been playing around with Google Insights for Search.

I’m new to this tool so I thought it would be interesting to learn how it works and I started by exploring something of interest to me. I thought I’d take a look at the trends around the search term of ‘mental health’ in web searches. I started with a worldwide focus.

The numbers on the graph which is created (see below) reflect how many searches have been done for the search term ‘mental health’, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time.
You can see that over time it appears our relative interest in searching on ‘mental health’ has declined. It is important to note that although the line is trending down this does not necessarily mean less people are searching out ‘mental health’, but rather its relative popularity as a search term actually decreased percentage-wise.

What is fun about this tool is that it gives you the ability to view the changes over time and across different regions. If you take a look at the Regional Interest chart you can press ‘play’ and watch how the numbers have changed over time in different areas. It is interesting that in both Australia (99) and the UK (100) interest in searching on ‘mental health’ is stronger than in the US (74) and Ireland (56) for example. The analysis also tells us the ‘mental health services’ is a more popular search term than ‘mental health care’. Zooming in on Australia we can see fairly consistent results since 2007, although there has been a slight decrease during 2011. What is interesting is that there seems to be drop in search popularity over December and January each year – a time I would have thought searches might increase in popularity, given that Christmas can be a stressful time for many people. I guess more of us are interested in other things at that time! Also of interest is that in regional terms, the National Territory shows the strongest interest in searching on ‘mental health’ relative to other things and Western Australia the least interest. Meanwhile, searches worldwide on Wellbeing are trending upwards and this term seems to be relatively more popular in Australian than other parts of the world. It also seems mental health is searched more than mental illness and ’Psychiatric’ as a search term is relatively more popular in the US than Australia. By playing with other terms we can see that ‘depression’ is as interesting to Americans as it is to Australians and within Australia there is consistent interest across all states in this term. Relative interest in ‘anxiety’ is increasing over time in both the world view and across Australia and interest is strong both in the US and Australia. It seems it is the symptoms of anxiety that attract the most search interest when looking at the topic of anxiety. You can add multiple search terms and search multiple regions for comparisons. For example here is a graph of the terms ‘heart disease’ vs ‘mental health’ vs ‘anxiety’ worldwide.

Given I am new to this tool I am not sure exactly how much we can rely on this data, but I did find it interesting and I can see that it might be helpful when we are considering how we might choose key words or meta tags for our websites and campaigns. It might also be useful in giving us some insight into the relative likelihood that one term might be more useful than another for attracting searchers to our campaign or cause.

Food for thought…

 

I did it myself! Using YouTube to teach yourself how to build a WordPress Blog

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I have been playing around with web sites for a long time, but I am in no way what I would consider competent. In my jobs I have had to learn various content management systems but lately I have been working mostly in WordPress. Today I thought I would share with you my journey to setting up my own page in the hope that it encourages others to have a go at doing this themselves. (’cause there is clearly not enough websites in the world!) I am assuming you have a little knowledge of WordPress, but if not head over to YouTube and search out ‘getting started with WordPress‘.

I cannot tell you how exciting and enjoyable it is to build your own page. I know mine is nothing special in the big scheme of things, but it is special to me and it’s been lots of fun to do. So lets get to it…

Continue reading →

The allure of the Derwent pencil…

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When I was a young girl Derwent pencils were something special. Very special.

They came in boxes of 12, 24, 36 and the ultra special, aspirational 72.

I could never afford the pack of 72 but I did buy the smaller packs, saving up my pocket money until I could afford them.

To me my pack of new Derwent pencils represented possibilities. Shiny and new, round, smooth and beautifully sharpened.They were full of  potential, ready to be applied to new creative projects; to put colour and form to ideas.

As such the Derwent is a great representation for when I am now with life and career.

I am in an exciting period of transition Continue reading →