Fish by Stephen Lundin

Fish

Play:

Work made fun gets done, especially when we choose to do serious tasks in a lighthearted, spontaneous way. Play is not just an activity; it’s a state of mind that brings new energy to the task at hand and sparks creative solutions.

Make Their Day:

When you “make someone’s day” (or moment) through a small kindness or unforgettable engagement, you can turn even routine encounters into special memories.

Be There:

The glue in our humanity is in being fully present for one another. Being there also is a great way to practice wholeheartedness and fight burnout, for it is those halfhearted tasks you perform while juggling other things that wear you out.

Choose Your Attitude:

When you look for the worst you will find it everywhere. When you learn you have the power to choose your response to what life brings, you can look for the best and find opportunities you never imagined possible. If you find yourself with an attitude that is not what you want it to be, you can choose a new one.

External energy is important at the beginning of any large-scale change initiative. To implement a new vision, you must first have everyone’s attention. But external energy is only effective for the short term. Eventually the external energy must be replaced by natural energy in order for the change to stick.

The minute a new way of working in initiated, the gravity pull of old ways begins. In the beginning, novelty can be adequate source of energy. Overtime a deeper and more sustainable source must be found.

Attrition is a fact of life but turnover is preventable.

A vision is made manifest in real time by identifying and bringing to life possibilities that are always present. These become “vision moments” once we take action.

The only way to find our IT inside the vision is to talk about with coworkers. The conversation both must be real and fierce. Real because they require an authenticity that belies pretense or posturing. Fierce because the amount of time we spend at work makes these conversations vital to a satisfying life.

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FIND IT

A vision is often designed to serve multiple constituencies. A vision comes alive only when those who work in the vision community personalize it. This happens when each of us assumes responsibility for finding out IT inside the vision. And we can only find out IT through conversation with other members of the vision community.

The most basic ingredient of any vision is the individual IT. IT is our personalization of the vision. Vision – sustaining energy is released as we seek to find out IT through conversation.

LIVE IT

Every day we are presented with countless opportunities to crate the vision. Once we find out IT we must commit to living IT by living fully the naturally occurring vision moments.

Once we are clear about or IT, opportunities to Live IT are more obvious. We call these opportunities vision moments. Vision- sustaining energy builds as we live as many vision moments as we can.

COACH IT

Keeping a vision alive is hard to do alone because it is difficult to observe ourselves in action and feel the impact you are having on others. Therefore feedback plays a key role. By creating a atmosphere where it is not only Ok but our responsibility to give and receive feedback, we will make the daily adjustments necessary to keep the vision strong. This is called coaching and it is crucial ingredient in sustaining anything worthwhile.

Coaching is the gift we give to each other and to our vision to keep IT strong. Whether it’s about the way we work together, the feedback needs to flow in all directions. Coaching can’t be an ego trip. We only do it for the vision. We coach IT.

Stephen Lundin