A Guide to Taking Charge of Our Lives

THE SPEED OF CHANGE offers up many challenges and opportunities.

We live in an ADD world. With literally billions of bits of information bombarding us every day the new currency is attention and the new survival mechanism is to ignore. In order to survive this cacophony of chaos we’ve become experts at the art of marginal listening by ignoring low priority items.

We are connected but lonely. Our smart-phones, tablets, and virtual meetings have increased our productivity but reduced our human connection. Gossip and political correctness have gone up while our ability to have face-to-face healthy conflict has gone down. We’ve gotten scared to trust and we’ve become soft to confront.

We’re losing our top talent. As Baby Boomers continue their retirement at an alarming rate the younger generations haven’t replaced them fast enough. The economic and innovative engine that Richard Florida calls the “creative class” is shrinking and migrating to new spawning grounds.

There is, however, good news. Venetians didn’t know they were shaping what later would be called The Renaissance, and the changes today in society and leadership are no less dramatic or full of opportunity.

The key is breaking bad habits and developing new ones. We can’t play it safe and hope life will just hand us great opportunities We have to create them. And it starts with our self-awareness, by;

• Knowing our life stories and how they’ve shaped us, and use those stories to engage others,
• Develop the ability to say no and set boundaries,
• Define our leadership brand by identifying what we really believe in, for people don’t follow us for what we do, but for what we believe in.
• We have to disrupt our play it safe thinking. And it starts by engaging ourselves in a journey of self-awareness.