Forgive me if explaining my box and ladder metaphor feels like I’m explaining a joke…

Metaphors have great value in that they allow us to make our own meaning, and they often provide visuals that carry much more meaning and convey it much more quickly than what we can squeeze into a more left-brained, tangible explanation of an idea. Feel free to keep whatever interpretation and rich connections you had made of my box and ladder story as Kyle did. What follows is my unpacking of what boxes and ladders mean to me and what boxes and ladders actually look like in our lives, so that you can find your hard corners and stiffnesses that are keeping you stuck.

Read more..

Most mornings I wake up and start my day with an adventure. This adventure usually has something to do with darting through the woods, cycling over the mountains or swimming in the lake near my home. I am often asked during the course of the day about my morning workout, and a recurring question is, “How far did you go?” This is a question I often can’t answer with objective data, because I generally don’t keep track of distance, time or any specific numbers during my morning adventures. Instead of data, I focus on enjoying the journey and improving the quality and richness of my experiences. The principles of enjoying the process of whatever I am doing and keeping an open mind to new possibilities and experiences are the fundamental guides for the other parts of my life, as well.

Read more..

We’ve grown up in a world where we’ve been taught that, to be safe, successful and happy one day, we need to pick a box – you know, a label, a thing we want to be when we grow up, like an accountant or a nurse or a lawyer.

We want to be safe, successful and happy. So we peak into a few boxes, and then, when it’s time, we make our choice and we climb inside a box.

Of course, it’s a box shape – and most of us are other shapes, and so some of the corners hurt and sometimes we feel squashed and pinched in. But we’re relieved to have found our safe box. Because that means that we can start to do the thing that everyone says will get us happiness and success… climbing to the top of the ladder.

Read more..

A big, warm welcome to those of you who are coming over from

Read more..

This post is part of a series of posts on how to problem-solve and negotiate change the agile way, rather than using traditional goal-setting and productivity techniques. The posts in the series so far are:

* How to use your whole mind to problem-solve and negotiate change.
* Kicking off the problem-solving process: The problem with problems
* A Step-by-Step Process For Ring-Fencing And Unraveling a Messy Problem

As I showed in the first article, there are 4 steps to solving a problem and negotiating change, and we’re now at the second level, highlighted in red, where, having pin-pointed the specific problem, we’re ready to ask, “What do I want instead?”

Read more..

It’s been a bit over a month since I left Cape Town, we’ve moved into our new flat in downtown Calgary and I’m loving my new, spacious, sunny office! Andy and I totaled up all our addresses we’ve had since we got married 10 years ago and we were rather taken-aback by the number. How many times have you changed your home in the past 10 years? Can you guess how many homes we’ve had?

Our current home is our 11th address in 10 years! Looking back, we seem to move in cycles, with 2 years of lots of moving, followed by two years of relative stability, staying at one address. Over the past 15 months we’ve enjoyed time in Cape Town South Africa, London UK, a USA roadtrip (Colorado, Utah and Wyoming), back to London, back to Cape Town, two Eastern Cape roadtrips, back to Cape Town, on to Calgary and then a few trips to the USA and within Canada (Arizona, Texas and Vancouver). Phew! We’ve loved every bit of it, AND we’re both feeling ready for some (relative) stability again. Perhaps a few years in Calgary at one address? We’ll see…

Read more..