PULSE is working with someone to include more presence for us on Social Media.  What I need to know is what kind of information would serve our readers.  What do you need from us on Social Media?

We have a Face Book Presence and a Twitter Presence.  AND we are still so new at how to use them and how to understand the power of them that it makes my head spin.

It reminds me of working with someone who is hearing impaired.  They can sort of hear bits and pieces and they will contribute, sometimes forcefully to a conversation when they think they know what was said.  In fact they may have the details and therefore the intent of a comment wrong and yet they hold on to their idea passed on their perception of the situation.  

With social media I can’t hear what is being said.  To me it is still NOISE.  Therefore when I do comment it may or may not be appropriate.  I totally relate to people who have lost some capacity to deal with the world and are forced to try.  I have no capacity for comprehending what is going on in social media.  The more people you talk to the more confusing it gets.  Everyone approaches it differently and it seems to serve different purposes for different people.

I DON’T GET IT>>>>> We follow someone so that they will follow us.  We retweet other people’s tweets.  Will someone please tell me what the end game is???  He who has the most followers wins???  I know that even that is not static but moving.  All I see on my twitter site is my friends tweets and retweets.  I AM NOT LEARNING ANYTHING.  And I am frustrated.  Someone please help….  If you can help a relatively intelligent, relatively knowledgeable person UNDERSTAND what is going on in Social Media, you may be able to change the world…..

I have a newish car that I call Scarlett.  She is beautiful even with the slight hail damage that I am waiting to have fixed.  I felt ill the day I was driving home and the skies opened with golf ball sized hail.  There was nowhere to hide and Scarlett came away dimpled.  I was grateful to have her to protect me.

Anyway…Scarlett has GPS and helps me get to where I want to go when I don’t know how.  I appreciate that about  her.  She is helpful and protective and she and I are learning from each other.  One thing that sometimes happens is that Scarlett’s directions don’t match what I know to be true about the road systems her in Alberta.  There has been lots of construction here over the past year and new roads have opened up that I don’t think she knows about.  When I take her down a new road, she thinks for a moment and then says “Recalculating the route…”  and comes up with a new plan for me to follow.

I like that about Scarlett.  She isn’t angry or confused she just recalculates and we move on.  I wish it were that easy for people.  I have noticed that for some people it is.  They just CHANGE their plans…. no issue.  For others it seems impossible to recalculate or move away from the original plan.  These people demonstrate a loyalty to a plan that is fierce and can be destructive.  It is sometimes difficult to understand this need to stick with a plan unless you ask the questions about the significance of the plan and then ask about other paths to get there. 

A plan is just something to base change on.  That’s what a friend of mine always says.  I’m guessing that like Scarlett, he recalculates the route and keeps moving toward the destination.  He also says “order, counter-order, chaos” … you can change the plan once but not twice is what he is telling me.

People should be more like cars….

Sitting in an airport wondering about delays…. Why do they happen and why do we not plan for them… Okayu why do I not plan for them. My day is planned to the minute and when a plane needs a new windshield it does blow my plans. Now I will be late for the webinar in Calgary.

Things happen for a reason! I firmly believe that. I am sitting here waiting for the reason to become clearer … I don’t want to miss the webinar. I don’t want to let my colleagues down but I am curious about the universe and how it unfolds. This is my opportunity to practice finding the opportunity in the crisis.

Reframe, reframe, reframe. Switch it to the positive. That is the opportunity today. With any kind of luck I will get to San Diego sometime today.

It is great to be at the office early and to have the sun shining in Calgary.  It has been a wet summer here and many people are complaining about the lack of summer weather.

Complaining fascinates me.  It seems to take up time in conversations and to what end?  We can’t change many of the things we are prone to complain about i.e. the weather, the sports teams, the traffic, etc.  What I have noticed is that a complaint is a give a way as to the BEACH – Beliefs, Expectations, Assumptions, Concerns and Hopes – of the complainer.  It tells you what they feel strongly about and what bothers them.  It indicates, if you are listening carefully, what’s missing for them.  Sometimes it is power and control that they are seeking, some control over some aspect of their life.  Other times it is peace and an easy way of being.  Or they are looking to find a perfect world where everything complies to the standards as set for weather, teams and traffic.

All nine of the PULSE BEACHs are identifiable in complaints.  (Power, Peace, Perfection, Connection, Success, Differentiation or Creativity, Detachment, Security and Excitement)  Listen and learn what people are looking for and identify it for them if you can and if it is appropriate.  Watch them think and then smile.  It is a great way to make their day and yours.

Good morning, Calgary.  Enjoy the sunshine.

We are in Paris at the Westin.  A company I will call XYZ Company is here too. I thought it noteworthy enough to comment here on something that I have noticed about the attendees.  There are probably 3-5 hundred representatives or employees of the company here and ALL of them are tall, muscular males.  Gladiators!!!  Interesting …  they fight the management fight. I found a word on their website that describes one of their services that I had never heard before –  “wargaming”.  I understand it to be part of the simulation activities.  hmmmm.

Sooo, I think what they do is create advantages for companies in competitive markets.  The problem is that more and more we need to be collaborative markets where everyone ones if the game is to continue.

I am troubled by the gladiator image and approach.  I think that I may have some ideas from my work that would add value to the management strategies that they have in place but I am not sure they will see it that way.  Given the criteria I saw on their webiste, I am guessing that both gain thinking is not necessarily part of what they do.

Is business still war???  Are we still in deficit thinking mode???

Working together is a simple idea with alot of power in it.  There are ways to have your needs AND my needs met.  There are always ways to identify unique and common criteria for a future together and create a sustainable plan of action. A company needs to reflect the diversity of their clients.  The scary thing is that I believe that XYZ Company does….  CEO’s – the kind that have been raking in bonuses on the backs of little people – also look like gladiators.

I could be dead wrong about XYZ Company.  They are obviously successful. The only hint of a crack in the armour was in the elevators where people were less guarded and seemed genuinely concerned with what was going on at the meetings, with the company and with their clients.  Still hyped on success brings success, they were showing a brave face to each other but the body language when the elevator doors closed was different.

Gladiators, keeping their sponsors happy, going for the kill.

Where are the peace makers???  Where is the diversity in the world of business and in the world of consulting?

You can’t leave the peacemaking to the non-profits.  They can only do so much.  “Love Difference”  for example is working to unit organizations around the Mediterranean.  It promotes intercultural dialogue but the true power of intercultural dialogue is in the business opportunities that are created.

The success stories we do not hear enough about are there.  Volkswagen has built a plant to assemble cars in the middle east on the border between Israel and Jordan.  Workers from both regions work side by side.  When the livelihood of the warring parties is earned collaboratively then a real difference can be seen.  Business has a vital role to play and a very large hammer, economic advantage, to play it with.

Nietzsche said “You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.”  Doesn’t everyone have chaos in their soul? No really?  I need to know.  Is your soul not chaotic?

Mine is always dancing, whirling from peace to fear and back in a rhythm that almost seems predictable.  Not knowing the pattern leads to fear and the downward spin that is lifted to an upward spin by some seemingly random event that is coincidence or not, synchronistic or not.  Hard to tell where it will go next … chaos in the soul ….

What of this dancing star?  The writing is fun and at time I can see the birthing of ideas into words and sentences and paragraphs and chapters and books and I know the pain associated.  I also know the joy of completing a work that has sat on the end of my tongue for many years waiting for my life to find a room for the birthing process.

Our new book, “Princpals: Faces of Change” is out and we sent a press release about it to 30 or so radio and tv stations.  We also ran an ad in a Talk Show Host Magazine.  The interest has begun.  I had an interview this week and have another one scheduled for next week.

This whole education program “Race to the Top” that Obama is implementing is helping us because the book is about principals implementing mandated change in schools and increasing the results on standardized tests.  It is a good book about five different men who take five different approaches in five different settings and get similar results.  Conclusions:  There is more than one way to improve a school.

I love the way the book tells the stories through metaphor and how it emphasises the significant role educational leaders like principals play in the race for the top.  They lead from the hallway and their influence is felt in every classroom.  What they focus on gets done.  What they value gets valued.

It has been twelve years since I went back to school in September, but as schools get ready for the new term, I hope they have the leadership they need to create learning experiences for kids that will make a difference in the lives of the students and in the progress of the country.

Isn’t it interesting when things happen to you  and you don’t have an explanation until something else happens to you?  Ususally that something else is that other people have the same or related experience.  Both of you have meanings that you attach to the event until you talk about it together and then the meaning changes and people stop and consider  …. “Is this an intervention of the divine sort? or coincidence?”  As my friend Carol is wont to say …”Coincidence… I think not!!”

Things that are coincidental in their occurance gain meaning in their sharing. If we were all to share our coincidences what amazing things we could learn about the universe and how it works, about the strength and power of intention and the whole experiment that is the collective consciousness.

I am getting philosophical.  I think it comes from having watched most of season one of “The Big Band Theory” over the past week.  I love Sheldon and the way his mind works or at least the way minds of the writers on the show work. I am certain that the randomness and the synchronicity of coincidental events is potentially explainable.

Diamonds are a girls best friend.  They are valuable and symbolize love and devotion in some cultures.  They are hard and can cut glass.  There is so much about diamonds … their beauty and their strength … that is celebrated in our society.  When we use a diamond shape or a rhombus as it is known in mathematics to represent an idea it has both beauty and strength … cut and brilliance… wholeness.

Integration …. I think that is what I really want to write about here.  When something is integrated …. when it has taken the external pressures applied to it and become a stronger whole … hardened to a brilliance and sophistication to rival any diamond, that is when you know you really have something of value.

Recently my husband bought me a 3 Karate Diamond…. UNCUT.  It is beautiful but not recognizable as the diamonds that we know and tend to value.  A Diamond in the rough.  I was intrigued and pleased and immediately impressed with the metaphor we so often use for people who haven’t quite met their potential.  What potential are you hiding?  What about your neighbour?

Interesting theme that runs through the literature … brain research… psychology….physiology… almost every field of study known to man expresses this sentiment…

I had an interesting experience about 8 years ago when I went to Australia.  My cousin is into geneology and she insisted that I visit another cousin of ours while I was there.  So I looked him up.  He had left Canada for India many years before and had eventually moved to Australia and was living outside of Sydney.  I called and he met my husband and I at the train station.  We had a fabulous visit and near the end he mentioned that he had written a book.  I begged a copy. He only had a hundred or so left and they were tagged for practitioners of something called Colour Puncture.

It was a lucky string of events.  Jack’s book was informative about the rise of the practice of colour puncture which is a healing method using prism of light on acupuncture pressure points.  It was also an enlightening journey for me as I followed the story of his live and that of my family.  Jack’s mother was my grandfather’s sister and so was his stepmother because his dad married his wife’s sister when the wife died two months after giving birth to Jack.  I was fascinated by the book, be colour puncture and the history I found in it.

I could not find practitioners of colour puncture in Calgary which was disappointing.  The good news was that Jack, after our amazing visit, returned to Canada to visit other members of our family.  The bad news is that as he was on his way back to live in Canada, he took ill and died suddenly in Sydney.  He wrote his own eulogy.  I treasure the copy of that I received from his wife.

Further good news arrived recently announcing the publication of his book Osho, India and Me by Jack Allanch.  I have just started reading and I am so enthralled by the wisdom and the humour.  Jack was obviously a very speacial man and I am happy to have been related to him.  I am again learning about  him and myself at the same time.  I recommend the book for anyone who is looking to understand the theme above – We are all capable of much more than we think we are.

Thank you, Jack.