Category: Capacity

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What’s Your Fuel?

A red car at the front of the pack on a race track.

“The edge is in the inputs.

The person who consumes from better sources, gets better thoughts. The person who asks better questions, gets better answers. The person who builds better habits, gets better results.

It’s not the outcomes. It’s the inputs.” – James Clear

If you are not getting the results you want, sometimes you need to take a break and look at the fuel and resources you are using and how you are trying to achieve your goals. Having the right alignment between resources, processes and the right catalysts can be the difference. The same car that can win the race will be up on blocks if it doesn’t have the right inputs at the right time and a well tuned system. When you are embedded in the system, it’s not always as easy to have perspective on it. That’s where a good thought partner can help you with your discernment as you diagnose and make important decisions about how you want to proceed.

Image by Mika Baumeister.

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Intentionally growing our capacity to navigate complexity

“I began to realize how important emergent strategy, strategy for building complex patterns and systems of change through relatively small interactions, is to me—the potential scale of transformation that could come from movements intentionally practicing this adaptive, relational way of being, on our own and with others…. Emergent strategy is how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for.” from Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy (AK Press, 2017)

One of the important skills of a leader is to identify how to focus on what will make the greatest difference in our work. Often it is in smaller, intentional actions that the seeds for deeper changes at a broader scale.

How you care for and nurture your staff effects how they are able to show up for the work, be innovative, and support your clients. Attending to the subtle but important differences in clients needs and contexts can help you craft better solutions.

It’s not always obvious how to expand your capacity to work in adaptive and relational ways–this is where a coach can be particularly helpful. Most people are not born knowing these things, we have to learn and practice them.