09/23/2017: Travel Log Entry #4Week 4 brings about the next leg of the journey on the path towards Creative Leadership, looking at how to bring ideas to fruition.
From the introduction section of Making Ideas Happen, I think I have aspects from both Chad and Risa, and I am trying to become more like Jonathan. In comparison to Chad, I share a tendency to end up more on the disorganized side, which reminded me of a previous reading, talking about innovation coming from more of a mad scientist setting. On the other hand, I tend to embrace technology more than Chad, though some I try to keep at a safe distance, like keeping up with family on social media but avoiding posting. Like Risa, I've gone through a lot of career changes, and also have lots of half-started projects. Looking up to Jonathan, I agree with his analysis that successful innovators need to be adept at switching between ideation an execution modes, and I have heard a similar philosophy from Adam Savage, the creative leader I mentioned in the introduction week. From John Cleese's speech, I liked his structured approach to come up with creative ideas, and I learned about some of the research around the study of creativity. So far this semester, I've been pretty good at sticking to deadlines, which is always a good motivator, but what I picked up from this speech is looking at the start time as well. I also think he has a good point in not getting stuck in closed mode and getting too focused on the results or a specific task, which I think is easy these days with bite-sized pieces of social media bombarding our Facebook feeds. In structuring the time to develop creativity, I will try to follow his method to set this up, allowing enough time to settle down and push the trivial items out of our heads, but still setting a hard deadline to meet and embracing the discomfort in the anxiety of not knowing a solution on the path to coming up with a creative solution during that time to avoid jumping at the first ideas. Looking ahead at the next sections of Making Ideas Happen, here is where I fit within the 3 tools:
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09/17/2017: Travel Log Entry #3Week 3 of Creative Leadership took a trek through nature, and I also took a bit of a detour on this route.
After reading through the weekly overview, I watched some of the videos and some quick reading. Ultimately, I started off with activity 3.2, looking at natural models of leadership. I've embraced the pattern of doing the blogging at the end of the week, as more of a reflection at regular intervals. In researching the 4 models of natural leadership, I found it interesting that for humans, multiple models may work, depending on the situation or type of organization, and we can consciously choose which one might fit best. In nature, the structure of the organization is all performed out of instinct and learned behavior, and the best working model is chosen from natural selection. In addition to the 4 models we looked at, I have also been thinking about the decayers, as mentioned in the introductory video. What role do scavengers/opportunists play in the bigger leadership picture? In blogging and reflections, I am pretty satisfied with the selected blogs I'm following. I might swap out the Daring to Live Fully blog because there are a lot of banner ads and some pseudoscience-y elements, like the wellness shots. Otherwise, the map was a nice way to journey back to some previous trips, and it made me realize that I haven't really been on a long backpacking trip in years, even though it's something I self-prescribed. Looking forward, I liked some of the aspects talked about in the natural leadership PDF's in 3.3. One that stuck out to me was from the BCI publication, where they talked about leaders in sustainability as "Positive Deviants". As a nerd, in DnD, I've always gravitated toward Chaotic Lawful characters, which fit this description well. Maybe these fictional/fantasy locations will end up on my map! 09/10/2017: Travel log entry #2Where am I at after week 2 of my journey towards becoming a Creative Leader?
Looking at the timestamp on this entry, I am definitely feeling a bit humbled this week, just like the hummingbird, and trying to be mindful that this may be my best effort at this time, even though it may be like putting drips of water on a forest fire. One big surprise this week that stands out to me was in the Sir Richard Branson interview. Coming from looking at the old, stereotypical models of leadership, I had a picture in my head of a big business mogul in that old model, so I was blown away hearing how humble he is ( even joking about his own dyslexia). Specifically, hearing that one part of his philosophy is to focus on the positive accomplishments of others really resonated with me, because I think it's really easy to fall into the trap of being over-critical. I also liked the discussions on the transformation of the leadership model. I thought part of the discussion resonated well with the Leading Clever People article, and that the model of leader may need to move to glorifying the team instead of the single leader, especially as the Clever People tend to work around or ignore the traditional levels of hierarchy. I think this helps to emphasize the importance of differentiating between leadership and management. To summarize the week, it was inspiring to examine some of the most famous leaders of our time to get a sense of where our journey is going, even though I may be progressing one drop of water at a time. 09/03/2017: Travel Log Entry #1
From some of the initial reading, as an introvert, I appreciate the change in focus from the hero leader to a host. We had a similar discussion at a workshop this summer where teachers should be “a guide on the side” vs “a sage on the stage”. My fear in this area would be not being able to make a change. I can see myself falling into the hero mentality, just because that’s been the cultural norm, or the way big leaders have been portrayed in the media I’ve been exposed to. |
AuthorAlex Wong, MASD Student Archives
December 2017
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