I was catching up on my backlog of reading the other day and came across this article in the December 2009 edition of Inc. Its about the latest craze in attending conferences - The Unconference. What the heck is an Unconferece?
Basically its a traditional conference, except there are no pre-determined topics nor speakers. Those in attendance determine what is going to be talked about. Now, there are some logistics involved, but the bottom line is - the participants toss out ideas, questions, theory's, etc. and then someone steps up to be the facilitator of that session.
I think this is a great conccept and would love to attend one if they are ever in my area.
To read more, go to - http://www.inc.com/magazine/20091201/welcome-to-the-unconference.html
How about you? Have you ever gone to an Unconference?
Still with me? You are probably thinking I have lost my mind right....actually seeing my future office, with a huge tree and stream in it no less. Trust me - kind of freaked me out too. But stay with me, it will eventually start to make sense.
In my posting on Oct. 29th, I told you about a tree that I look at pretty much every day. I had no clue how that tree would play such a big part in my vision planning and be used as such a huge metaphor for my business. Until a few days ago.
I'm standing at the bus stop waiting for my daughter like every other day, looking around, and there it was - like a smack upside the head, or a light bulb going off - a different tree!
Where I stand, I face the street. Behind me is a house. This house has a beautiful tree in its front yard. Has been there for many years. So why am I seeing it for the first time just now? And why another tree?
The differences between this tree and my original tree are so dead on to where I am at in my business and in life, that it truly gives me chills at times.
As a reference point, the original tree, I now cal Future Tree. The new tree I just realized was there is my Current Tree.
Future Tree has a thicker trunk that is lower to the ground. From there, three thick branches go off in different directions leading to more branches and eventually leaves.
Current Tree has a thinner, taller trunk, with a few thick branches going off to tiny branches then leaves.
To any "normal person" this would not be a big deal. To me - I couldn't believe what I was seeing. My business is the Current Tree. I am the trunk that goes up high off the ground, my team is the thicker branches and our clients are the leaves. What this signifies is that I am still doing the majority of the work, my team is supporting me pretty well, and there are healthy clients. But my intention has always been to step away from the day-to-day operations and simply "run the business".
The Future Tree, with the "team branches" closer
to the ground, signifies what I want my business to grow into. Where my team is supporting more of my
business.
Needless to say I had to run home and call Coach Ginny with this "a-ha" moment!
In my next post I will go into what else I have learned about the differences in these two trees and how they represent my life just as much as they do my business.
To Verizon Wireless:
I just got off the phone with your customer support. I am trying to give you money and she is telling me she cant take it because my upgrade month is not here. What?
I want the new Droid phone. I am willing to pay the $199.99 and an additional $29.99 per month (for the unlimited data plan) in order to do it. But she is telling me I cant because my month (04/2010) is not here.
Do you realize that you are turning down money because you wont allow people to switch phones in the middle of their contract.
I am UPGRADING, not downgrading. I am trying to give you money not take it away.
You really need to re-think your plan rules and customer service on this one.
-Kristi Pavlik-
So how do you take a vision, or a part of it, and make it into something less metaphoric and more realistic? To be honest, I didn't have a clue. How was "my tree" going to help me with building a vision for what I wanted my business to look like in 5-years?
Time for another visualization exercise......
This time around, Coach Ginny had me focusing on what exactly did I want my business to look like. The hardest part about doing this exercise is getting out my own way. It's not easy planning out something, doing the "what if time and money were not a factor" game. I always want to say, yeah, but.... Forcing myself to not go there is not as easy as one might thing. I work with my clients all the time to help them to see the bigger-picture for their businesses, why is it so hard to do it for myself? (I'm sure there is another blog post in this sentence alone.)
I like using visualization as a technique because it does allow me to think on a bigger scale. Once I really start to put myself out there and allow for bigger-picture thinking, it amazes me what I see. This time around I could actually see the reception area to my physical office space. Now this got my attention, as I work virtually, from home. Never crossed my mind to have an actual office building.
In my vision, when you walk into Adonai Business Solutions, LLC you are transformed to a place of tranquility, calmness, "all is right with the world" type feeling. There is a real stream and yes, a very real tree just off to the left. You can sit by the tree if you choose, or simply just bask in its glory.
When walking up to the receptionist desk (which is large and curved - not sure how that plays in to all of this, but thought I would mention that anyway) you notice a mural of a tree on the wall behind her. The branches and leaves are words that encompass what Adonai and our clients are all about. There is a bible verse towards the bottom of the trunk - John 15:5. My favorite painter, Thomas Kinkade, painted this one-of-a-kind mural for me. If you know anything about his paintings, you know that this mural is full of life and light.
To the left of the receptionist desk is a hallway that winds around the building. The various offices are down this hall. However, this particular vision exercise did not reveal what the rest of my office building looks like. Maybe I'm just not ready to go there yet.
In my next post I will go into what I have learned about "my tree" since the last visualization exercise with Coach Ginny and what I learned about myself that I hadn't realized before.
As I talked about in my first few posts, Coach Ginny took me through a visualization exercise that showed me and my family by a stream. If you recall, I saw myself sitting, leaning up against a tree. My initial vision was a close-up view, so all I could see was a small portion of the trunk of the tree.
Before I go any further with this, I need to back up and share with you how every day I sit at the bus stop, waiting for the kids, and stare directly at this huge tree. I have been doing this two times a day for six-years now.
I love this tree - in the summer it has lots of leaves, full
of life. In the fall it is absolutely
beautiful with the bright orange and red colors. In the winter you can see all the
limbs and how they intertwine with each other. And in the spring, the tree
"pops" and starts to come back to life.
Other than looking at this tree and watching it go through its seasonal changes year after year, I never really gave it another thought. That was until one day last year it dawned on me - wow! the changes this tree goes through is very similar to what my business goes through. Professionally I am hopping in the summer, really shine in the fall, but start to fizzle out in the winter. Then in the spring, things start to pick up again.
In my second and into my third session with Coach Ginny, I was telling her about this tree and how it was a visual metaphor of what my business goes through. The really cool thing about this is that my stream vision, the one where I am leaning against a tree - well, you guessed it.....once Ginny had me take a look at my vision from a higher view (looking down on the bigger picture) I was leaning against that very same tree. The business component to my vision was there all along - I simply had to look at it from a different point of view.
In my next post I will go into how Coach Ginny and I took the "tree component" of my vision and moved it inside, to a physical office space. And how Thomas Kinkade (yes the painter) has a starring role in my vision.
