Bamboo In The Wind

How do we prepare for anything we do? How clearly do we plot what outcomes do we expect vs what outcomes we might receive? It is important that we know our need and want. And then it's vital that we know whether we have a supply of planning, required participation, and a recipe of how to get something done together in place. Dissatisfaction stems from ill-prepared efforts. Our trip to a great destination may not fructify if we don't plan, get someone to accompany us, or if we don't assign duties to fellow travelers that will get them interested in the plan. A start-up may have a great idea. However, it will not solve the relevant problem and generate customer delight unless there is a good plan about what to build first and who might be the best participant in the exploratory phase. And then we need a galvanized leader who brings the whole effort together. Dissatisfaction is a backward movement because of underestimating what it takes to progress the effort we are undertaki...

The choice reflects freedom. We choose because we decide to. There is inherent control when we make a choice. And that is a good thing. Making a choice gives us the agency we need.  Industrial work has mostly focused on taking away from us the agency to decide. This is the most important reason we do not associate work with responsibility. Early-stage efforts struggle with loyalty and cannot get the footing because we do not hand authority over those we join hands in where we want to go. Offering Choice is a highly powerful tool to retain control and make people feel empowered. Making choice is a road to participate with ownership, responsibility, and decisive participation. Organizations that nurture the culture of delegated choice-making will go a long way in creating something meaningful and something that solves real problems.

Difficulties are practical. Unavoidable. Depend on what skill we possess. Depend on how we apply experience. Difficulties persist until we get to the root of what caused them. They persist until we build a neutral opinion about what they require us to personally do.  Thus difficulties are resolvable when we have an acceptance for them without any biases. Have an open mind to understand what is in our control. Have transparency to seek some else's feedback about about us, our approach detached from what appears difficult. Difficulties are realities of life. There are multiple forces that cause them. Our best shot is the accept them. Do the best we can to understand those and take actions that fully are in our control to minimize their impacts.

Stumbling? No worries. It's common. No one gets it right the first time. When we start out, we tend to falter. Our expectations of what would happen do not turn out correct and we feel the block. It all appears to be a dead-end and the end of the world. Such stoppages are all in our minds. What if we kept just a little room to say to ourselves, "Oh that does not seem to work. Never mind. Let me try that".  Trying that instead of this is a powerful way to restart when we feel blocked. In fact, it is a hallmark of an entrepreneur or a bootstrapper. They want to keep doing the next best thing that is available. They do the next right thing as they perceive and do not hesitate to test those out in the market. Can we keep doing the next right thing forever? Of course, we can. Of course, we should. Because we rarely have a good idea of what is likely to work. What is likely to receive acceptance. Through doing the next right thing we start unraveling our needs, our limitations,...

Our biases make us interpret everything around us in a way we have been raised to think about them. If we are taught to respect elders and if someone is seen not to respect elders, we think it's wrong behavior. What if we see this circumstance only through the lens of our prior beliefs? The circumstance of disrespect may stem from the disagreement in point of view and the elderly may be countered by the younger person with a different logic. Such a circumstance does not amount to wrong behavior. All it means is there is a differing point of view between the two people regardless of their age. And that they are dealing with their different backgrounds and different experiences of the same situation. Biases create expectations and expectations are always unilateral. Clearly, circumstances are based on biases. Undoing biases is thus a very powerful tool that makes us see things rather neutrally. It takes the practice of empathy to remove our biases. It takes guts to take personal crit...

Having a rhythm is an essential aspect of being productive. Rhythm gives us predictability. Doing certain things at certain times, doing certain things at a certain pace, doing them for a particular time, with particular people. Rhythm allows us to mentally prepare for what is to come next. We are on board with what is to come up. Why is that important? Our resistance to getting involved, engaging, do anything is largely due to our mental unpreparedness. We own things, interactions, and decisions when we are mentally willing to get involved which oftentimes is simplified by just having a rhythm. Rhythm teaches us the discipline of being there for a certain cause that affects us. Rhythm can look like a regimented method of forcing us to do something. But in reality, it's just a habit of developing notes to ourselves to tell us how we plan to divide our day into productive spurts of activities. For instance, 30 minutes of walk in the morning, writing for 20 minutes after breakfast, a...

Intense efforts are usually based on foresight, tremendous focus, and rallying like-minded people to the cause. It's not a surprise that communities tend to exhibit energies, and care for collective wellbeing with an eye on the cause they are together for. Such camaraderie reflects the culture of the community. A sense of belonging is unmissable and everyone is willing to throw themselves lengths and breadths for the common cause.  Communities (and early-stage organizations) have the power of creating impactful ripples and contributions. Communities (and early-stage organizations) tend to have one thing in common. They have an internal culture that resists any change. So when they feel the need to grow and expand, their resistance to keeping the status quo is most evident. Embracing change means,  the view of insiders and those outsiders eager to become the new insiders is at play. The collision often means that the intense cause for which the effort was organized begins to di...

Friendship do a whole lot of good to us. It boosts our morale, keeps us honest, and helps us understand ourselves better. Friends cover for our weaknesses, fill our gaps make us learn from each other, and make us excel in what we are good at.  Friendship teaches us to forgive. We learn to forgive ourselves more so than anyone else. This is a great ability to develop. It makes us act with a rational mind and balanced thinking. Friendships make us live happily, and keep us healthy and grow through our collective life experiences. Mentorship is a form work friendship that has similar potential to grow us as a person. Real mentors help us see through our inadequacies. They open us to realities of us rather than play into our view of ideal us. Mentorship is rarely a forced relationship. It's develops into one, if one is patient like we are with friends. There are no hierarchies, no age bar or no similar work experiences. Friends and mentors cut across, education, language, experience, h...

Overemphasizing data is hardly useful. Turning data into information is costly, especially if we are not planning on deploying information to some use. Knowing how the job market in US or Europe or Africa is doing is of no use if that information is irrelevant to the local market where you are. Knowing that information more accurately is even more futile and keeps you away from putting information to some use. It is resistance to doing our actual work.  Data can be turned into evidence which manifests into useful information for what may be missing and places where we could act to have what is missing. We call such call to action as making decisions. When data corroborates situations or problems in an understandable manner we are expending our time on doing the right things. However, when we tune into the stream of information, we are forced to swim the flow that we don't want, or need. Knowing how the video post was received, the number of likes to accomplishment posts. Such infor...

There is a tendency to do more, frequently, with an expectation that others want us to do more. This is a serious energy killer. It gets us focused on what others might ask of us rather than what we would have wanted. We overestimate what is to be done and then expend energy doing something that may not turn out as impactful as it could have been. What if we instead chose to keep our eyes and ears open and noticed what makes engagement a lot less self-gratifying and more rewarding and engaging for us and for those around us? Doing just enough so that there is room for us to hear a reverberation of what we did, a response, feedback, a comment that provides us an engagement opportunity? In a rush to get things we don't realize what is the value we are generating as a result of doing those. Are there recipients eager to see your ship out so continuously - especially when what is meant to be for others right from the go? So while putting our work out there is important, knowing how to ...

Not knowing is uncomfortable. Why is it so? We feel rudderless, directionless, fearful. Overcoming the fear of the unknown requires getting to the bottom of what we mean when we say we do not know. Right from childhood, our upbringing brings biases of all kinds. How relationships, societies, and workplaces work. We rarely learn deeply from how nature works. No matter our mood, seasons show up on time. The daily bloom of flowers follows a pattern. There is no conflict with the surroundings. No one has to assign them a job to have daily produce of flowers. Trees and plants don't focus on whether someone gives them space. They explore the places for growth and eventually find their own space. Why do people struggle to find their space? Often it's due to fear of the unknown. Not knowing has repercussions - so we strongly believe - of creating poor impressions, and being less respectful in the eyes of others. It's the perceived damage to our reputation and want of constant recog...

When we are in a tight spot, we tend to need some morale boosters. Sort of a reassurance that says things will work out if we just do what we are doing.  Reassurance implies we just need to keep our march because it takes us to the destination we are looking to go. It's often just hoping and with no basis. Reassurance means someone has to soothe us despite our feeble attempt. Reassurance is thus futile and offers no push for creating alternatives. Encouragement means that someone sees us doing what we want. It may not be the right path but it is a sincere exploration, and experiment that provides a basis for whether that is the right path. We are more educated due to such exploration and encouragement comes from someone who noticed us in your journey. Encouragement does not say we are guaranteed to see success. It tells your attempt is a good one, sincere and it will let you discover your path with alternatives hence it's vital for your eventual self-fulfillment and fuels self-...

Care is an important aspect of how we feel about what we do. Caring about something reflects the involvement in action in front of us. Involvement is often an indication of owing the task at hand. At a subconscious level, we have full acceptance of what we want to do and exactly how we need to go about it.  Involvement also means that we know the owned task has beneficiaries who will get positively or negatively influenced by what we do. This understanding generates attention to minimizing the pitfalls of our actions. Such attention means caring about something. Care means involvement which generates attention and helps generate an outcome that people are likely to be supportive of, they see that it is something that is wanted. Repeated care has the power of generating the feeling of want from those who benefit. Followership of someone's work, behavior, and teaching are dependent on the care embedded in how that is done. At work, the subject matter knowledge someone possesses rarel...

We are usually unaware of the energy we emit. The emission of energies reflects the state of matter and in us humans' state of mind. We are what we experience, internalize, and respond to. What we experience, acts as a stimulus to how we feel and eventually how we respond. What we don't realize is this between stimulus and response there is space. It's vital to be cognizant of that space. The absence of space between stimulus and response creates a reaction. The presence of space between them creates a response.  There is a subtle and yet very important difference between the two. The reaction is usually a spontaneous expression of how we felt as an individual. A response comprises of consumption of our feelings, understanding of facts and circumstances, and internal check of validity and relevance of our action. The reaction thus creates emphatic energy around how we felt. Response creates accommodative energy around what is the right thing to do. The same situation makes ...

In the olden days, hideouts were used to protect from hazards of nature or from dangers of the wild. Hideouts are often safe houses where you take shelter for good resting and secure dull moments. These are places where you express your thoughts to yourselves and bond in your close circuit. These are often quiet places where you experience growth. Hideouts are what we choose when we feel insecure, feel stuck and need to take a breather, and have the urge to go back to the drawing board and rethink the attack plan. Our ability to put experiences into perspective can go haywire when we misinterpret what is going on around us. When we realize our understanding is not right our first reaction is to find a hideout. Shed our insecurity in there and we start feeling a bit of relief. We breathe better and start feeling our own self and then we can think of what went wrong and what is the next best course of action given the situation we are in. Often our hideouts are in the form of resorting t...

We fourish when we are in a conducive environment. A conducive environment is the one that makes our minds un-cluttered, our enthusiasm is at its best, and our decisions flow swiftly. When the environment is conducive, we tend to take calls that yield action, intended results, and a positive impetus for ourselves and others around us. So, a conducive environment is present when we have the intended outcome. The opposite of a conducive environment is an adverse environment. It makes us skeptical, fearful, and unenthusiastic, and thus our decision feel stuck being unsure of the outcome. However, it's important to understand our surrounding environment is made up of natural things and man-made ones. Our own perception of a man-made environment often plays on our minds when it comes to determining what is a conducive environment and what is an adverse one. There are simpler ways to lead. Ensuring that we focus on keeping our own environment suitable for our enthusiasm during the intera...

A flexible mindset is an enabler to a forward motion. We act because we adapt. We adapt whenever we have a flexible mindset towards perceived roadblocks. Roadblocks are reflective of feeling stuck. It is often just a reaction to unknown situations that generate uncertainty. So, the biggest enabler to a forward motion is dealing with uncertainty by creating one place to start acting - whether a right action or not - starting to act is tremendous progress. Often uncertainty stems from expectations about what the known situations should look like and being in situations where our perceived definition of the situation does not match with where we are. It's like being in a new house with stairs that we are not used to. We wake for a drink of water through the night and find ourselves missing a step feel suddenly. Our senses become alert and react protectively. All due to a feeling of being in a lesser-known territory with an unfamiliar layout. In such an uncertain, seemingly unknown sit...

For daily matters, it is efficient to make decisions that are attested by public wisdom. Cross-sourcing them makes sense. Often the experience of others counts. When we value someone with count on their experience of being in situations similar to ours. When accepting their leadership in our mind and adopting their best practices of handling work and life situations. But there are instances where are unique situations that only we face and understand. Such situations warrant us to make our own decisions and importantly own those. When making our own decision, it is a good idea to remember the following: Others have no or low emotional connection with our situations. It's important to read the situation in an unbiased manner. Do the homework about possible approaches that can yield a positive outcome given the situation we are in. Give approaches second thought. It's useful and uncovers any blind spots we have not thought about. Make decisions wholeheartedly and be prepared to o...

Having experience in the tech world is a funny thing. Only the person knows how sincere they were when something is experienced as part of doing work. With the advent of the internet and free content available over the internet, the experience can easily be faked. You can claim to know things and yet have never done any of those very things. This creates a false impression of a rising knowledge economy that lacks real experience. When was the last time you really did the thing that will mean technology prowess? Many resumes are thus becoming an ideal way to represent what you think you will have wanted to do and experience. If those resumes were an honest articulation of the projects you have done and what habits you have toyed with then that would be far more valuable than the fake resume that portrays that you know it all. Resumes are not trusted by those creating those and they are not trusted by those who use them for recruiting good help. In the creator economy, no one else is a j...

It's unimaginable that we act with bias. It's so ingrained in us to act with our pre-conceived notions that they become the only acceptable ways of doing things. Right from childhood, we are told what is right and wrong. Through the constant process of judgment, we take sides of what we deem right or wrong. There is little evidence of why certain things are to be judged right or wrong.  In addition, we also often think by sheer growing age we have enough experience to pass judgment about right or wrong. Bias is an end result of our years of set thinking, unwillingness for external input,  our religious beliefs, our educational system, upbringing in our family settings, and what we draw from societal exposure. Bias in any field and subject is presumptuous unless it's corroborated by relevant experience, evidence, and rational thinking. Unbiasing ourselves thus is an important decision-making tool that strengthens our rational thinking. It takes efforts to question what histo...