Sunday Best – September 29, 2024
I’ve been thinking this week about org charts versus organisms.
There’s a place for both, of course, but sometimes we presume that lines and boxes are the only way to organize work. And when the work is merely complicated, this may be so.
But the world – and therefore the work – is alive and complex, full of swoops and swirls and feedback loops. When that’s the case, we might need some different models.
Fewer bosses, more servant leaders.
Fewer ladders, more pathways.
Fewer transactions, more relationships.
Less proclamation, more inquiry.
Less shouting, more substance.
With thanks to the amazing Wellesley Centers for Women, whose 50th anniversary inspired these thoughts, and so much more. I’m honored to be affiliated with this influential and courageous organization.
Sunday Best – September 22, 2024
Autumn moonlight –
A worm digs silently
into the chestnut.
– Matsuo Basho
Sometimes we’re delayed at the office.
Sometimes the clouds roll in.
Sometimes we’re just looking down.
But once in a while,
we glance skyward
just in the nick of time.
Sunday Best – September 15, 2024
Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
– Wendell Berry
This past week was full of work at the root layer, away from the tactics of day to day tending. We took walks. We made big posters of our observations. We studied beaver dams. We planted a tree. We consulted scientists. We thought bigger, deeper thoughts. We met smart and serious and wholehearted new colleagues. We asked better, more informed questions. We sought out farmers and poets as teachers.
Dear friends, in our buzzy noisy world, there never seems to be time to tend to our foundations, the layers that make everything else possible and worthy and strong.
There is always time.
*** Quote from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front. Every time I read this poem, a new line leaps out to stop me in my tracks.
Sunday Best – September 8, 2024
Friends, if we find ourselves sitting at home in the pouring rain, tempted to scroll through social media instead of accepting a one in a million invitation that involves the tiniest inconvenience of a few miles’ drive in exchange for a heart-opening, attitude-adjusting, hope-generating concert featuring three of the most talented, generous artists alive, plus a stunning double rainbow bonus as the clouds part for the sunset….
Dear ones, let us not hesitate.
Let us not scroll.
Let us accept the gifts we are offered.
With whole-hearted joy.
Sunday Best – September 1, 2024
It’s always wonderful to return home after some time away, and yet a teensy bit of me is always wondering what has gone astray in my absence. This time, all seemed well, until I came upon a weird folded-up leaf on one of my bushes. Usually this is not the best discovery, as it means something creepy has decided to make the leaf its home.
I gently peeked inside the folds, and found a nut! My very first hazelnut, to be precise. Everyone knows the old saying that you plant nuts not for the next generation, but for the one after that. Let’s just say, between the deer and the winters and my own laissez-faire approach to caretaking, these nuts have been a long time coming.
I’ve been noticing a lot of nuts lately – from scientists to analysts to business leaders, people who have worked towards a worthy vision for years, refusing to compromise the integrity and beauty of their work even as all around them others were taking shortcuts in the name of efficiency or user-friendliness or monetization. Whether it’s compute power or economic alignment or social ethos or mystical wherewithal, the stars are finally aligning.
Somehow, slowly but suddenly, nuts are everywhere.
Long may we flourish.
