Bamboo In The Wind

Oversight is something that is often just felt. It feels reassuring. You are at your best, most productive. Oversight with enough proximity helps secure your perimeter and continue experimentation. And there is adequate space to maintain the sanctity of privacy and freedom. Creativity thrives in an environment that has oversight. The vibrant culture is an outcome of the oversight surrounding the action. It is hindsight, a realization that is institutionalized to become a culture. Someone in your surrounding has to assume the responsibility for providing oversight. Define how far to go. When to stop.  It lifts the spirits, raises confidence, and allows for risk-taking.  Too much oversight creates dependence. Too little of it makes the environment risky. But the right amount of it can surprise you with a stunning performance. The progressive, innovative efforts were the doings of those who conceived them. But they were also the doings of silent oversight the passers-by offered. ...

It is not a surprise that you don't have takers. Work to gain permission from takers had to start a while ago. If you are looking to offer what you have to someone without their prior permission that is unlikely to work. It starts with focusing on the first few you care about and want to help. Knowing that the first few trust you goes a long way. Because you will know that their feedback will likely come from their heart and care for you. If they do not seem to like your work, you better stop and focus on bringing out something else to them. And if they pick up your work and find it to have what they need, you are in the game. It is very likely these few happy campers will bring in a few others to look at your work. Going small audience rather than mass scale is the best way to build connections and gain permission. Building an asset is the best way to get followership. You develop connections and gain trust when the asset is valuable.  If you need takers for what you have now, you...

Versatility shows a willingness to adapt. You are more open to adjusting your ways in concert with the situation. The skills you deploy change as per the mood of the audience and situation. With versatility, monotony vanishes. It is helpful to dent your own image of yourself and show your other sides. You always have them buried under the weight of your expectations. Versatility is evidence of one's creativeness. The ease and speed at which you can seamlessly adapt make you negotiate your own world effortlessly. When you are versatile, your utility tends to be high. You are deemed flexible, and you can fit in more situations than those who are rigid. In times of change where technology brings advancements at a rapid pace, it is hard to keep up with your rigidity. After all, who would want to deal with stagnation, the shrunk pool of opportunities? The rigidity was a good choice when the industrial mindset required your to have predictable work and measurable earnings. In the vastly ...

Have you ever been bullied by the feeling of disengagement? At some point in your personal or professional life, disengagement has run over your enthusiasm for remaining plugged and being part of  constructive action. Disengagement comes from situations you face. You are involved in something with intent and commitment and encounter something bothersome. It is contrary to your belief or does not fit with your effort. You aren't prepared for a roadblock at that juncture. Unable to tackle it, you feel trapped! The reaction is to make do with it.  You sometimes call it a compromise. Ignorance is another one. Letting it be.  In some ways, it is a unilateral walk-out from an unfavorable situation. The hope is by distancing yourself, you can get others to bend backward. To stall them from further action until they notice your pain.  Disengagement is thus a reaction to something hard to resolve on your own. What more? You hope to make others re-engage with you expecting a t...

Endeavor to search for problems and find their solutions is the game everywhere. What about the takers? Their pain points, what ails them, what is hurting them? That is the hard part. Understanding the takers' views and seeing through what provides them the relief is a difficult job. Something that cannot be avoided if the solution has to work. Validating it with a small audience is the way to know that a genuine need is spotted. The problem appears natural, and takers are eager to see someone alleviate their pain. Theoretical problems and launching efforts to solve them have become ever easy. Easy access to capital and stories about the vitalities of why solutions are needed aggravates the problem of unclear problems taking up mindshare. Stories as told in glass houses hardly matter. Often stories are imaginary. They apply to some scenarios but are vastly irrelevant to many others. Early takers are the real deal. They are the ones with real needs. And yet, they are walked over for...

Well, you are not bothered about inconsequential mistakes. Especially one-off, inadvertent human errors that don't harm you. Genuine mistakes. As Confucius, the Chinese thinker, says, "A man who has committed a mistake and does not correct it is committing another mistake." He is right. Mistakes have the potential to harm you. They can sometimes inflict irrecoverable damage.  Many mistakes happen because you are unclear about what you want from life. That is a big unknown most face at some point in their life. You then encounter the expression of insecurity, fear, sadness, unhappiness, anger, stress, and disappointment. The best approach is to respond to the unknown with intent and rigor.  Warren Buffet said, "The best protection against inflation is investing in your skills."  Inflation brings hardships and uncertainty. And having skills positions you to respond. Skills bring new opportunities to achieve what you want from life. Even when odds don't look in...

You have preferences. You have rules. Preferences tend to be a bit softer on you. You act based on your mood. Preferences are flexible. Rules are meant to be obeyed. You make rules because certain things are non-negotiable. One can make rules about anything that supposedly improves their situation. Rules help in breaking undesirable habits.  In the absence of rules, you second guess yourself when faced with temptation. It is easy to fall back on behaviors that are easy and provide instant gratification. In the short run, preferences outweigh. They provide the pleasure of being in the stream with the flow. Comforting self is of utmost importance. Rules are meant to be hard to keep up with. They feel like a tiring swim against the flow. They have the power to hop over temptations. Complying with the rules builds a resilient practice. Rules are the basis for providing structure to anything you do. The right set of rules opens spurts of productive actions with intent. And yet, they sti...

Rush has problems all over it. It is a sign you do not have a clear idea of what you are involved in, where you are in it and how far you are from where you need to go.  You know that you are supposed to be where you need to be, and you are not sure if you can reach there faster. Rushing is a reaction to chaos that arises out of poor planning. Rushing makes you make decisions with a short-term outlook. We think your immediate near-field visibility is the broad picture of what we are set out to do. Feeling the rush? You need to take a deep breath. Climb up the terrace. Look down in your front yard and get a good measure of the chaos in front of your house. Picture yourself in there from a distance. You will notice you are fire-fighting one thing after another. You are trying to win the adjacent without knowing whether that will lead the chaos to stop. Hoping that it will. Take a top view you will notice how poor your battles are. Understand the broad picture and then turn the run in...

It is very satisfying when we get things done. It does not matter if the results were what we needed. We got it done. It's satisfying that we made progress. We moved from an earlier state to a new one. That is what counts. We now belong in the new surrounding. We will now encounter new experiences. We will be received differently in our new position. That is what we needed.  Unlike in a snake and ladder game, we now need to figure out what the next dice roll will be. It sure will bring more surprise, more experience, and more confidence. First, get something done. Now. 

No matter how hard you practice, preparing for primetime requires a composed mind. You need to carry the belief that you have all the tools in your repertoire. Primetime is all about being out there and performing your act in the company of co-participants and audiences. You need to go with an open mind to adjust your performance to tune into the mood of the audience you care about. Adapt if something requires change. Experiment runtime, surprise yourself and others if need be. Enjoy the primetime. Allow for mistakes and embrace adjustments when they do occur.  Primetime is not about winning the performance. It is about showing your best effort. It is also about appreciating that you have the opportunity to seek attention from your audience that came to see the act. They want to see a competent performer. Sure. But they are looking for a connection from someone who understands why they are there. They will be happy that you cared and know what they need and tried to bring some fun,...