I started a new job as an creative recruiter about five months ago. It’s been a STEEP learning curve but with an awesome team also really enjoyable. I’m focused on the interactive space which means in today’s world, I’m knee-deep in user experience designers, interaction designers, visual web designers, and email producers.

I recently saw this slideshow from the founder of Foodspotting, Alexa Andrzejewski, and thought it combined nicely user experience design and entrepreneurship–two topics very dear to me.

When executive leadership at the most reputable companies in the world are under fire for poor business practice and lying, I shake my head in disbelief. It’s no longer new news, but I continue to be astonished–primarily because I bought into the lie for so long. How can we as a society have let this continue? Is it simply the way the world works?

With money such a part of our survival experience in modern society, how can we change the control it has on our behavior –so people make decisions that are optimal for humanity as a whole?

Most recent public spectacle:

Rajat Gupta, former head of McKinsey

Business is definitely not a gentleman’s game and rife with true locker room antics. Which other business men of stature will be caught with their pants down? Can’t wait to see…

TEDWomen and its sponsors (AOL and Blackberry) are running a contest where they will select 4 people to attend the conference based on submissions of their BIG IDEAS in 500 characters or less.

Here is my submission:

Approach business with unconditional love. Many business decisions are acts of selfishness. Conducting business that looks past the self happens when one heals personal trauma and feels positive vibration in the body; life choices become bigger than one’s pocketbook and how decisions affect the greater world is critical. Imagine financial reform guided by love or a criteria to lead national initiatives a combination of motherhood and financial savvy. I am a strategy consultant and yoga teacher.

I recently read The Razor’s Edge by M. Somerset Maugham. I loved it. This book was written in the 1940s and touches on many themes that we deal with today in the 2010s — the life journey we embark on, the search for what we feel will fulfill us, our most pressing need — for some the answer is social status, others financial security, others self-destruction and for others simply happiness through finding peace.

We work within the human condition. Our basic instincts and desires while living in society do not change that much from generation to generation — how we express them certainly does and the tools and technologies we have available advance.

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the social capital markets conference, SoCap 2010, in San Francisco, CA. Pretty exciting meeting — a lot of people really committed to putting their efforts behind projects/companies/organizations focused on helping humanity.

Part of me thinks there is some ego involved. Frankly, it feels good to help other people — so for overall quality of life, the social enterprise sector is a good thing to be a part of.

These videos from Panahpur, a UK organization with a history as a charitable trust now focusing on impact investing, describe well the holistic intention behind social capital — the pressing need for Generation Y to do good; yes as a backlash to the greed inherent yet socially supported by Generation X and the Baby Boomers. The pendulum is swinging.

I don’t know from Kevin Burgess on Vimeo.

Six Tenets of Innovation:

• One conversation at a time
• Go for quality
• Be visual
• Build on the ideas of others
• Stay focused on topic
• Defer judgment

These statements are found written across white board walls in the Clark Center’s Brainstorming Room at Stanford University.Talking about an innovative bio-design course, this article further describes the room:

“All four walls double as floor-to-ceiling white boards where team members can jot down notes and diagram ideas gleaned from their research. A cabinet contains low-tech items that can be used to make rough product mock-ups, unexpected things including sparkly purple pipe cleaners, Play Dough, and even life-sized plastic replicas of a human spinal cord and a leg. For more advanced prototypes they can move next door to the Prototyping Studio to work with glass beakers, drills, cutting forceps, a furnace, and microscopes.”

I love the description of this room; encouraging collaboration, the use of bodies and hands to play with materials, and helping thoughts evolve into visceral experience. Let’s all think with our hands and bodies! Let’s find the opportunity in the un-said, but in the felt; in the electricity of interaction and engagement.

Is art work? Or, is work art?

At times, I think it’s one and at other times, the other.

I came across SEED Media Group’s logo and the description of its creation:

Designed by Stefan Sagmeister, our logo reflects society through the lens of science. The logo takes its inspiration from nature’s phyllotaxis structure, a Fibonacci-derived algorithm present in a multitude of settings, from the face of a sunflower to the alternating leaves on a plant to the architecture of highways. Depending on its context, the logo adapts and changes color to reflect its cultural surroundings. Our logo brings “Science is Culture” to life.

This logo, and the inspiration behind it, represent to me several things (1) art in the form of logo design (2) a corporate identity that is infused with meaning (3) the consideration of work as art by intertwining corporate purpose with artful expression.

May we all consider our work, whether in a business, philanthropic, or political context, as art.

Lewis Pugh shares his experience of swimming Lake Imja at 5,300 meters in the Himalayas, under the watchful gaze of Mt. Everest.

Lewis has a radical mind shift, realizing that to complete this swim, he must change his mind-set. At that altitude, his aggressive approach of swimming as fast as he can across the water does not work. Instead, he must swim with great humility.

A mature man can “shift his mind-set.” I find older men, through life experience, have learned that aggression can cause pain and loss. Approaching with compassion, respect, humility — can create positive outcome, success, loving relationships and engender commitment. Consider the Dalai Lama’s approach.

Try approaching any task moderated with respect and humility — in business, life and love!

The backers of Singularity University, some of the most influential technologists on the planet seem to think that yes, technology is a logical answer to solving the world’s problems.

Check out this recent exposition from the New York Times.

I argue that advances in technology + moral fortitude are the appropriate combination.

Ultimately, we are humans behind any technology. And, as humans we are  the beneficiaries, or not, of any technology.

I recently read this article too from the New York Times — over fifty years ago, the executives at Bell Telephone were concerned that their rising management who were mainly trained as engineers, didn’t have a broader world view to effectively manage people and steer the company. So, they partnered up with the University of Pennsylvania and started the Institute of Humanistic Studies for Executives. They felt: “A well-trained man knows how to answer questions, they reasoned; an educated man knows what questions are worth asking.”

The moral compass available to the human being is what makes us unique as a species — along with our ability to reason and our emotions.

Let’s make sure we continue to go after the right questions — in our quest for technological prowess.

Do we really need to live hundreds of years? Can we more adequately focus our attention and money on applying technology to support comprehensive moral programs that benefit broader humanity in the now?

Anyone who’s started a business (or even thought about it) goes through a wave of emotions throughout the process. With little sense of stability until solid cash flow from ongoing sales or secured funding, there are times when you can really feel like a surfer with a broken board at Waimea.

Here’s a great post by Cameron Herold via Tim Ferris discussing the entrepreneurial roller coaster from Cameron’s Backpocket COO Series. He suggests certain actions to take given the emotional state of the CEO and the organization’s position within the business cycle.

Harnessing emotion for strategic action is the most efficient methodology for aligning organizational growth with human-centered leadership. Sometimes strategic planning is the most productive action while at other times it’s talking to the media, and at other times taking a few deep breaths and applying Feng Shui principles.

Action with emotion behind it is very powerful.  As human animals, we feel emotions all the time. So, being strategic with the actions we take given the emotions we’re feeling is a very prudent use of time!

This article was recently published on Social Edge, “It doesn’t take an MBA – or does it?“.

In the budding industry of social enterprise, I find an MBA immensely helpful. The combination of passion, commitment, and desire with strong management technique is essential. One without the other is inadequate, while together very powerful. In any MBA program, managing people, resources, and partners is openly discussed and studied. Every social enterprise must consider these topics.

Now you certainly don’t learn everything in an MBA program. Can leadership be taught? And I certainly did not learn much about sales, but I find myself selling/pitching everyday.

I find the skills for being a successful entrepreneur are akin to that of administering social change — innovation, leadership, risk-taking, the ability to “sell” — your vision to potential partners, funders, and employees.