My friend was recently speaking with her spiritual Teacher about the amount of illness and death those close to her are experiencing. Her Teacher showed empathy, then said:

“Well, you know how it’s going to end. The question is how you will use the time between now and then.”

It struck me when she shared the story – yes, I do in fact know how it’s going to end (this iteration of life, anyway). Sitting with the question, “what will I do between now and then?” seems that it should be easy – but in fact I find it quite challenging.

Easy because it’s not hard to answer the question, “what matters most to me?” Difficult because there are so many ways to pursue those things, and I find myself moving in many directions, often distracted. The question then, I guess becomes: what gives me the most joy? And what will allow me, at the end of it all to know that I’ve lived and loved well, and perhaps made a small difference in the lives of others?

I took a “think day” earlier this week (I’ll be doing lots more of those) to consider those questions as they relate to Imago. It was more than useful; it was clarifying and offered me the chance to not only notice what matters most, but to be accountable to those things as well – and create a plan.

I was inspired by an e-book that’s been sitting on my desktop for the past few months, a co-op resource created by Seth Godin. In it, over 70 thinkers (“big names” and “small”) meditate on the question, “what matters now?” and have some intriguing answers. You can access and download it here or by clicking the image below.

What most matters to you right now?

.

“We are all at the mercy of our wild monkey minds. Incessantly swinging from branch to branch.”

Those of you with a Mac are fortunate: you have access to a beautiful writing environment called Ommwriter. Ommwriter is a simple text processor and a humble attempt to recapture what technology has snatched away from us today: our capacity to concentrate. And it’s free.

Since I have a PC, I’ve created my own virtual “paper environment” by downloading Dark Room and tweaking the colors. I’ve found the blank screen to be soothing and the perfect environment to allow words to flow easily. It isn’t the same as Ommwriter, but it will do until they come out with a non-Mac option. Check it out!

.

Is Web 2.0 the magic bullet when it comes to communicating with those who are invested in our efforts? Of course not. The digital divide and lack of access to technology is a huge issue and concern that many of us are currently addressing. And then there will always be those who will want you to pick up the phone instead of send an e-mail, who prefer to have a chat over coffee instead of over instant message, or who will enjoy your printed newsletter but delete the e-mailed one.

So what’s the important lesson for your organizational communication strategies?

Howard Moskowitz may have the answer. His research revolutionized the food industry when he declared to Prego in the early 1980’s, “There is no perfect spaghetti sauce – only perfect spaghetti sauces.” He went on to help Prego develop a line of four spaghetti sauces when they had  originally intended to create one. Ever wonder why we have multiple kinds of mustard, soda or cereal? Thank Dr. Moskowitz.

Ultimately, it’s on us to figure out how to meet people and engage them in ways that make sense for them – and then do it. So, I like to think that Web 2.0 is one kind of spaghetti sauce and coffee conversations is another (by the way, there’s a fun anecdote about how we like our coffee in the video below).

At a recent TED conference, Malcolm Gladwell (best selling author and staff writer for the New Yorker) gave the talk below about Dr. Moskowitz’s work.

How do you take your spaghetti – or better yet, your conversation?

I enjoy wordplay (as you may have noticed in my previous post about the fabulous tool, Wordle), so I don’t mind telling you that some days I let a word or phrase play over and over in my mind searching for new meaning in it.

Think about the paradigm shift when “disease” becomes “dis-ease” or “enjoy” becomes “in-joy”.

So it is with “letting go.” You can think of the phrase as we often do, as in letting something (or someone) leave our lives or consciousness. Or, you can flip it to mean letting GO – as in “letting GO happen.” Framed in this way, letting go becomes extremely proactive, allowing new things or experiences to grow and manifest.

I can’t imagine a better way to visualize this flip than Madonna’s Jump video, which features gravity defying Parkour. En-joy!

The following video may be a bit tongue in cheek, but in all honesty, it isn’t that far off. There has been much conversation in recent months and years about the importance of acknowledging and learning from the full range of experience on the continent of Africa, and supporting the innate capacity of all Africans to help themselves and create their own solutions (as all humans can and do).

The same conversation needs to happen here in the U.S., too. And, luckily in some quarters, it is. How often do we in the nonprofit and philanthropic community, while having the best intentions, see ourselves as “saving” or “giving voice” to those “less fortunate?” I have long respected the work of John McKnight, and was forever changed by the perspective shift I gained from reading his book  The Careless Society. Check out his work through the Asset-Based Community Development Institute for tools that could radically change how you engage in community change work.

The Nonprofit Quarterly has devoted its summer issue to exploring the role of nonprofits in immigration issues. From the editors:

“Every nonprofit has a stake in how our nation deals with immigrants, including “unauthorized” or “undocumented” immigrants…with the recent increase in enforcement efforts, the delay of the immigration reform discussion in Congress and the passing of Senator Kennedy who was a pivotal advocate for rational Federal policy, it’s an important time for us all to pay attention and take action.”

In order to make this issue of the journal as accessible as possible, NPQ has dedicated webspace to host supplemental web-only articles, updates and resources. You can access the site here.

Please forward liberally to your friends and colleagues.

Ever find yourself needing to step back and take a break from a project but feel like you can’t do it because there’s just too much to accomplish?

I’m learning the best thing I can do for myself in those moments is to step back, even if just for 5 minutes. The perspective and energy I gain is invaluable, and the work comes easier once I’ve let go of trying to control it. It’s true: sometimes you have to go slow to go fast. And it’s as simple as closing your eyes and focusing on the breath.

Want a little more? Lime.com has created beautiful online “meditation rooms,” so even if you can’t leave your desk you can still immerse yourself in the beauty of nature.

“Organized philanthropy: It’s not about foundations, necessarily. It’s about the rest of us.” – Katherine Fulton

In this moment of shifts and uncertainty we’re being asked to radically shift how we do business. One could think that means that we need to, in the words of Fulton, “think ourselves into a new way of acting.” In fact, though, she says that there are philanthropic experiments currently happening all around us that are “acting us into a new way of thinking.”

I’m intrigued by this idea because it puts us all in the leadership driver’s seat once again. And when it comes to garnering valuable resources for the work we most care about, or in giving the resources we have in ways that will make the most difference, the driver’s seat is where we need to be.

Fulton talks about five emerging experiments that are “challenging the old assumptions of philanthropy,” including: mass collaboration, peer-to-peer philanthropy; aggregated giving; innovation prizes; and social investing.

This video is well worth the watch, and my guess is that it will spur your thinking and give you something to talk about with your colleagues. I’ll leave you with this quote featured in the video:

“We have lived in this world where little things are done for love and big things for money. Now we have Wikipedia… suddenly big things can be done for love.” – Clay Shirky

As a mixed race person who’s moved between worlds all my life, I’ve been fascinated and often perplexed (still am, in fact) with how we construct identity and find our “people.”

I’ll be honest – both in my personal and professional life, the question of identity has often been a painful and challenging thing for me. But I’ve found that the more I’m willing to lean into the conversation – first with myself, then with others – the more connection I find, and the more easily I’m able to sit with the ambiguity of not neatly fitting in one place or another. My leadership challenge has been to learn to begin to powerfully speak from that place of ambiguity – the middle space – and to develop tools and conversations to support others who find themselves in the middle space as well to do the same.

I found this presentation by actor Sarah Jones to be a fun, poignant and inspiring way to explore the idea of the “middle space.” In the introduction she says, “We’re all born into certain circumstances with particular physical traits, unique developmental and historical contexts – but then what? To what extent do we self-construct and self-invent? What if we could be anyone at anytime?”

I’ve heard it’s possible to know exactly what your leadership voice is and what matters most to you by what words you choose and how often you use them.

Wordle is a really interesting (and enlightening) way to test that theory.  Plug in any text – or link to a webpage – to have the program create a visual representation of the language used. It’s free, in the Creative Commons, and a lot of fun to work with.

The wordle above was created by using the text from Imago’s new quarterly newsletter, Imagine. If you haven’t read it yet, please do. And while you’re at it, you can always subscribe!