Wigley and Associates

I’ve been doing consulting work the past few weeks for ChartHouse Learning - the FISH! Philosophy company. Last night, while reading one of their books, FISH! Sticks, I came across a poem titled The Journey by David Whyte. I’ve been aware of his work with organizations since he published The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America in 1996.

I noticed on the Poetry and Work section of his website that one of his presentations is called “Life at the Frontier: Leadership Through Courageous Conversation.” A quick search on that phrase led me here where his upcoming presentation in British Columbia is described:

Every human life and every organization has a central conversation for which it was made. Staying close to that conversation, especially amid the rising demands of work, leadership or relationship takes a form of personal discipline and one might even say, personal mastery. The ability to return to the central conversation and then follow it, no matter the outward difficulties, seems to be an essential ingredient in human happiness and fulfillment, and tellingly, in the success of our work or business.

In the stress and complexity of the postmodern business world, David’s approach is to significantly reframe leadership through understanding it not just as doing but as a series of courageous conversations - with others, with the future, between different parts of the organization, with coworkers and customers and always as a foundation with our sense of self.

The outer conversations create a way of inviting others into the work and living buoyantly with stress and complexity without being drowned by it. From a very personal point of view, the courageous conversations have to do with our own nature, the inner shaping of our sense of meaning and our possibilities for present and future happiness. This also includes the way we hold the conversation with those close to us.

A quote on the ChartHouse website proclaims

“The world’s favorite hobby for employees is boss-watching.”

After reading that, as well as the role that conversation plays in the “find IT, live IT, coach IT” process espoused in LeaderFISH!, it makes me wonder to what extent Whyte would believe that leadership blogging can effectively capture and leverage some of those courageous conversations that the boss has.

Even more radically, would he believe that a leader can foster some of these courageous conversations with and among employees via the private, web-based “weapons of mass collaboration” tools that organizations are increasingly using?

I’ve been doing some work for Doug Grove at Grove Landscaping, customizing his website a bit and coaching him on his landscaping blog. His site was originally designed by Michael Blaha, Organic Arts. Doug and his company has been serving the southern Twin Cities metro area since 1983.

Doug’s a natural born blogger and he’s a community-oriented guy, too. Both are evidenced by this post titled Gimme Shelter: The Amerman Pavilion where he talks about all the people and organizations in the Northfield area that had a hand in that project, even a competitor. Welcome to the blogosphere, Doug.

I just finished producing episode #5 of a podcast called On the Pegs: Trials World Radio for a client, the Trials Training Center (TTC) in Tennessee. I’m also the co-host of the show. It’s all about the world of motorcycle trials (wikipedia entry), a sport I’ve been competing in since 1975 via my local trials club, the Upper Midwest Trials Association (UMTA). We’ve had a weblog on the site, natch, for several years.

Each show consists of a brief monologue by me, a news segment in which I have a phone conversation with TTC owner Dan Brown, a phone interview with the president of a local trials club, and then one or more interviews of professional riders and key industry figures. Shows have all been 45-60 minutes thus far.

We try to do the phone interviews via Skype because the sound quality is much better than a regular phone line. Dan does many of his interviews face-to-face, capturing the audio with a digital audio recorder. I use Pamela for Skype to record my calls, Camtasia Studio to edit the audio, Propaganda to do the mixing, and Hipcast to publish the podcast. I use Feedburner for the show’s RSS feed and the show’s listed in the podcast section of the iTunes store (search using the term ‘motorcycle’).

We have a theme song for the show (Music, Motorcycles and Money by Gary Dean Jennings, courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network) which I partially play at the opening, overlayed with some engine sounds, and again at the closing. I also use a snippet of music from the song to mark each of the transitions.

It takes me approximately 10-12 hours per episode, including putting up extensive show notes with links and photos. I also post info about each episode on various weblogs and discussion forums.

The show was launched with three advertisers/sponsors. They’re mentioned at the beginning and end of each show, featured on the show’s home page and in each of the show notes (posted to the TTC weblog).