Poem for a Sunday Morning

THE FOURTH SIGN OF THE ZODIAC (PART 3) I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same. So why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over. And to write music or poems about. Bless the feet

You do not have to be good

In memory of poet Mary Oliver, who died one year ago today, I offer a reflection I wrote in 2016 on her poem, “Wild Geese.”  I tacked this poem onto my bulletin board a few days ago. It’s been staring at me ever since, trying to help me understand, to see in a new way.

Make Other People Powerful

This is what the best leaders do. They discover, with relentless curiosity, each team member’s sweet spot – what they are especially equipped to do – and then they create the conditions for them to do it freely and expansively. Like the arousing final lines in Hafiz’s great poem, the “beautiful rowdy prisoners” are at

Becoming a Person

I don’t want to start a philosophical or theological debate about this so let me offer a caveat at the outset: when I distinguish between a human being and a person I am distinguishing between the common accident of birth all Homo sapiens share and how some turn that accident into an intentional, conscious life. In my experience there

Poem for a Sunday Morning

WEAN YOURSELF Little by little, wean yourself. This is the gist of what I have to say. From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood, move to an infant drinking milk, to a child on solid food, to a searcher after wisdom, to a hunter of more invisible game. Think how it is to

The Lightest Touch

The Lightest Touch {David Whyte} Good poetry begins with the lightest touch, a breeze arriving from nowhere, a whispered healing arrival, a word in your ear, a settling into things, then like a hand in the dark it arrests your whole body, steeling you for revelation. In the silence that follows a great line you

The Poetry of Management

As I set out to plan my Management 302 curriculum for the fall 2019 semester, I felt an urgency to treat the class as if it could as easily be taught in a humanities curriculum as in a business school. Management 302 is a required course for all non-management majors. That is to say, it

Poem for a Sunday Morning

Atlas {Kay Ryan} Extreme exertion isolates a person from help, discovered Atlas. Once a certain shoulder-to-burden ratio collapses, there is so little others can do: they can’t lend a hand with Brazil and not stand on Peru.

My Daily Bread, Part 2

“Your output depends on your input.” {Austin Kleon} While consuming my “daily bread” yesterday, those daily emails from writer’s whose perspectives I admire, I realized that I had not been as comprehensive as I had intended to be. I rectify that today by adding to the mix a couple of “weekly bread” resources who inspire

A Clarity of Purpose

My thinking and, more importantly, my feeling about organizational leadership and change has evolved in powerful and unexpected ways since I began working in the field in 2001 and writing about it on a regular basis in 2007. I have always attempted, if sometimes haltingly and ineffectively, to bring a humanistic and personal perspective to my writing