March Community Call - Free 

Keeping the Passion Alive at Work, and the ways we inadvertently stop innovation from happening

March 9^th, 9amPT/12pmET for 75 minutes

A recent Gallop Poll indicated that 84% of Americans are unhappy with their work. Yikes! Such a waste of human creativity and passion. And sometimes, even in environments where we are passionate, when scarcity is strangling the work place, we can find ourselves suppressing that passion or withholding the fullness of our gifts. Come explore where you are fully engaged and where you have, in some way, given up or dampened the fullness of what you have to offer. Our scarcity based culture has a way of stealing our passion. If you have employees or lead others, explore how, without even knowing it, you might be sending messages that lead your people to not give all they can. We will reveal how cultures are designed to re-produce themselves and inadvertently stop innovation and new ideas from entering into an already established system. Come tap into our most potent re-source: human beings' passion and care sourced from our conversation of Exquisite Sufficiency.  Join in a lively and passionate :-) conversation. 

Register here.

 Upcoming Event

Exquisite Sufficiency: Source Your Passion and Move to Effortless Action

2nd Annual Passion Into Action Conference

Grass Valley, CA

April 29^th and 30^th, 2011

Jennifer Cohen will lead a workshop designed to get you at the source of creating a dream for your life and for the world that is juicy, alive, and potent enough to heal a planet. This all weekend conference outside of Sacramento and close to Tahoe National Park creates a space for the women in their community to meet, network and explore ideas on how to work together on one another's projects and strengthen their community. Most important, the content of the event will hopefully transfer ideas into action. The event showcases real women with real solutions; mixing local and non-local leaders & visionaries, artists & musicians, mothers & grandmothers, teachers & students, homemakers & business owners among others.

To learn more and to register, please click here.

Why Creativity is Important to the Bottom Line 

Bringing Creativity to Work - listen to this community call from February 23^rd

Creativity is not just for artists. Any of us can bring creativity to work, any work. And not just in the domain of soft skills, but we can also be innovative in our products, our process of going to market, our ability to attract the best and the brightest employees and keeping them. All of this impacts the bottom line.

And this is not lost on the 1,500 CEOs IBM interviewed in its most recent Global Business Services division survey. According to its findings, chief executives from around the world - 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide, believe that - more than rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision - successfully navigating an increasing complex world will require creativity. Tony Hsieh, online shoe store Zappos.com CEO and author of Delivering Happiness knows this. He found the balance in his leadership between profits, passion and purpose to build a $1 billion dollar business in less than 10 years. Creative employees are happy and happy employees produce profits. And, then there is Fast Company's Most Innovative Company list with Apple leading at #1, because how else does an iPad get made and lead the market in next generation computing?

If we start with the assumption that creativity is at the heart of a successful work life - and life in general - what are the practices that make up this life? Many of us are still shaking off the dust of the Industrial Revolution, where it was more likely we saw our creativity as separate from our humanness. In this new digital age, where almost anything is possible, how do we reconnect with the flow of creativity that is integral - and we'd say, inherent - in our humanness?

Start with these inquiries:

• What is creativity to you?
• What are your creative outlets?
• Where do you find creativity at work?
• Does your work inspire creativity?
• If structure shapes reality, how does your work space help or hinder your creative juices?
• How does the structure of your day, your routines, help or hinder your creative juices?

Here are some personal practices to experiment with to enhance your creative life. What else would you add to this list?

• Media Fast
• Electronic vacation - e-mail/smartphones
• Establishing routines
• Being open to new things
• Hitting the reset button when you need it
• Completion rituals
• Visioning
• Create an alter and sit by it

Here are some practices that can be experimented with at work. What do you already do that generates a creative context at work?

• Quiet time - as important as any meeting on your calendar
• Hold meetings where all must stand
• Create fun and celebration rituals
• Allow for thinking time
• Allow for ideas to rise and be discussed
• Add a completion/review process to your product development or service delivery
• Create a work altar
• Take time to actually listen
• Wait a moment before you act
• Vision and create from the future

Creativity might be one of those paradoxes that invites us to both have the discipline of routine as well as the discipline of doing or thinking something new - to exactly shake up those very routines. Tell us what works for you and what you discover as you take on creativity as a practice, send an email to shea@sevenstonesleadership.com.

Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

You can check out the author on TED talking about Creativity, Fulfillment, and Flow here. What does make a life worth living?

Spacious Body: Explorations in Somatic Ontology

By Jeffrey Maitland

This book is gorgeous, a dream for someone who loves both the body and deep thinking. Maitland is masterful as showing us the wisdom of the body self as a unified field of experience, not a machine for our use and misuse.

The Body Has a Mind of Its Own

By Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee

It's official: body and mind are not separate. In fact, in this book, it becomes clear just how integrated a neurobiology we are. Great somatic science for the layperson and anyone wanting to understand the foundation of how to make lasting change.

The Generative Leadership Program (GLP) is designed to enable people to take their leadership impact and the performance of their organizations to the next level. GLP is a multi-year program that sets a standard of professionalism for management and leadership.

In 2010 we wrote over 80 blogs about suffiency and enough. We have created an edited volume called Exquisite Sufficiency: A Continuing Journey. They go on sale this week for $8 that includes shipping. Click here to order your copy.