We all face difficult situations at work and in life. The context in which we operate also plays a role in rendering what we see different. I often talk about the importance of culture in an organization. That goes to context - people watch the walk.
Culture and environment are especially important today, because the best way for many organizations to get out of where they got stuck is to make the pie bigger - not fight over whatever smaller slice anyone can get their hands on.
This is also innovation-thinking.
Chris Guillebeau wrote his thoughts about expanding the pie. I echo many of his sentiments on a very personal level and I can tell you that a life of true abundance take tremendous courage to live. Chris quotes one of my favorite people - ultra marathon runner Dean Karnazes. If you haven't read his book Ultramarathon Man do pick it up.
In thinking about his question - what can be done to move from scarcity to abundance within my professional life, a few things come to mind.
- Mentoring would be good - you don't need to create a program, just join a person at your office or in your personal network (one good use of Twitter?) and help them out.
- Helping others - without being asked, without needing to take credit. Even better when they cannot pay you back in influence, etc.
- Listening - amazing how this applies to about anything valuable. To put it with Hugh - Real men don't need to solve a problem all the time (even in a blog post). Real men can just listen.
- Appreciating the difference between "what we stand for" (which should never change) and "how we do things" (which should never stop changing) - directly from Jim Collins.
- Remaining curious - this also means believing in yourself enough not to take yourself too seriously.
This is something that has worked well for me. Whenever I feel the crushing weight of the world on my shoulders, it's usually because I put it there. Instead of doing more of what has (clearly) not worked, I do something else.
That involves reaching out to my team, often expanding the view of what could be done, and my definition of team as well. Wisdom often comes from discovering that we're all connected and success depends on us all working together.
Is it time to circle back and expand our horizons to make the pie bigger? Wasn't that the promise of social media? With a caveat - we cannot all be experts at everything, can we?