- What role do imagination and creativity play in your chosen profession and in your current industry, organization, and job? In your other roles (citizen, parent, partner, single person, homeowner, gardener, cook, athlete, whatever)?
- What are some specific creative challenges you face currently?
- What would you like to make?
- What are some areas within your industry or profession where innovation most needs to happen?
- What types of solutions would transform your industry or profession?
Tag Archives: Think Pond
What is a Think Pond?
Think Ponds are fluid associations of diverse individuals who bring their imaginations, knowledge, and skill sets, along with their dreams and passion projects, into a community of their own design. Creative energies converge, expanding possibility. Obstacles are flattened as complementary skills combine and available resources broaden. Timelines contract. Promising ideas stay out of the trash. Connections proliferate.
For individuals, a Think Pond is a next generation platform for shaping and strengthening four essential lifelong enterprises: 1) Dream chasing, 2) Life-embedded learning, 3)Solution-crafting, and 4) Venture launching. Making the most of these enterprises will both improve your competitive edge and increase your level of fulfillment with the work you do in the world.
For the greater good, an evolving ecosystem of Think Ponds is a wellspring of creativity and collaboration that can increase the sustainability of innovative, socially valuable programs, incubate new businesses, and activate unrealized human potential.
The Four Enterprises
Do you think of a career as a sequence of jobs with progressively higher pay and greater responsibility? What if you reimagined your career as a set of four lifelong enterprises that you continuously create and expand and refine. Merriam-Webster defines an enterprise as “a project or undertaking that is especially difficult, complicated, or risky.” In other words, I am talking about endeavors that continue whether you are employed, unemployed, or under-employed. Whatever your circumstances, you keep these four enterprises alive because they supply something you need.
I think everyone need to pursue these four lifelong enterprises, regardless of the individual’s passions, aptitudes, credentials, employment experiences, assets, and constraints:
Dream Chasing. Using your imagination fully. Paying attention to the sensory experiences, images, and cultural expressions that swirl around you and mindfully pursuing those that awaken your mind, heighten the intensity of your emotions, and enrich your soul. Exploring possibilities, envisioning your desired future, and inventing the kinds of endeavors that will both fulfill you and make a positive difference. . . .
Life-Embedded Learning. Taking advantage of the numerous learning opportunities afforded by books, media entities, technologies, community resources, and people in your sphere. Continually investigating what you know and what you think you know. Consciously developing and applying new skills, adapting existing knowledge and skills in new areas, and finding greater depth of meaning and significance in the people, environments, and experiences you encounter.
Solution Crafting. Looking at your life from different perspectives and seeking ways to synergize your assets and talents. Bringing an artistic sensibility, design thinking, and surprise into whatever you produce. Continually generating divergent ideas about how to look at and respond to circumstances, problems, challenges, opportunities, and desires–both individually and collaboratively. . . . .
Venture launching. Thinking about and testing ways to carry your ideas and solutions forward into the marketplace for your profit, into the public sphere for the good of others and the enrichment of the culture, or just into a wider conversation for their continued development and enrichment.
The Multidimensional Meaning of “Presence”
By Deborah Vrabel
What do we mean when we talk about our “online presence?”
I think it’s multidimensional. It means:
- Be there.
- Pay attention.
- Adapt.
- Lead.
Being there. Woody Allen once said that “80% of life is showing up.” That quote captures the most literal meaning of presence It’s raising your hand and saying “Present!” when the teacher calls your name–whatever your academic preparedness or intentions to participate, you have cleared the first hurdle. You are there. Sometimes that simple kind of presence—being there with no distinction, no defined role, nothing unique to say or do—is all that is needed or required. You show up.
Occupying space–whether physical or cyber–is only the beginning of presence though.
Being Present to the Moment. To be present is to be mindful. When observing, it is noticing even the tiniest things. When interacting, it is listening carefully. When working, it is being invested and “in the moment.” In other words, you are present when you are doing what you are supposed to be doing.
Showing “Presence of Mind.” To be present is to think quickly and respond appropriately and competently when something unexpected happens—whether a threatening situation, an awkward moment, or a good opportunity.
Having Presence. Finally, presence describes an outward demeanor some people have that enables them to capture and hold attention and admiration. Ask ten people to think of someone they know who has “presence” and describe that person in one word or phrase, and you could easily receive several different answers:
“lights up a room” … “commands attention” … “star quality” … “elegant” … “poised” … “shows grace under pressure” … “unruffled.”
I would contend that part of what gives them this demeanor is the inner quality of attentiveness, as described above, along with self-confidence, purpose, and inner strength.
I think all of those forms of presence are relevant to anyone who wants to share ideas, build a movement, or sell a product online.
You need to be “there” in the search engine and social media milieu. You must show up with meaning and over time. How many times have you heard the plea “Like us on Facebook” and then found a page that serves no discernible purpose and seldom changes? I know I have created a couple of those.
You need to be “attentive and mindful” in the online world. That means learning from others, commenting on other people’s work thoughtfully, noticing things and making your own conclusions.
It means being relevant–which is impossible without paying attention to what’s going on around you–both online and off-line–and taking your opportunity to jump in and participate.
Doing all that will develop the kind of presence that people notice, admire, and find reassuring. It will help you develop self-knowledge and a voice that commands attention. You will be poised to respond with online offerings that resonate.