Sharing Tradition

My colleague Camille from reelyActive joined me in decorating my Christmas tree. It will be her first holidays in Canada, and I was glad she accepted my invitation to share in the tradition passed on to me.

Better yet, my American friend Will, a central figure in Startical 1.0, drove up to join me too. The timing just worked out great. And I'm glad Camille and Will got to meet and exchange stories and ideas. They set up the (Incan) nativity scene under my tree, with Caganer in the baxkground (a great reminder of my 2016 work trip to Catalunya - look up Caganer for a laugh about Christmas traditions!).

We ate a great meal together, prepared by Will. And then celebrated the first Advent, another tradition from childhood that I'm glad to keep alive. I got to introduce the pair to stollen and schokoladen lebkuchen and other delicious treats that I grew up on.

Too often my weekends represent an opportunity to catch up on work, generally in relative isolation. This afternoon and evening reminded me how enriching it is to enjoy spontaneous social relations, as well as to share traditions. I couldn't have imagined a better start to my Startical!

TechNoel

Answers to the question from Vaughn and Noor. Art with Eva...

Evolutionary Purpose

Will and I discussed finding the balance of progress and purpose in organisations (startups and otherwise) which reminded me of the book Reinventing Organizations by Frédéric Laloux which was recommended to me by one of my mentors. We found the clip above on YouTube (if you're not familiar with Laloux, it's a nice short summary of his work) and one element stood out for me: what he called Evolutionary Purpose . How I understand this concept is that the purpose (or soul) of an organisation evolves over time, rather than an individual or leadership team directing towards a specific outcome. It's very much in line with the sailboat analogy and the lunch discussion I had with the team. It is very reassuring to me that the people closest to me today all affirmed my feelings on leadership, and interesting that it often took very different paths/context for us to be able to truly connect on the subject.

Sniffles

Of course I pushed too hard and paid the price of feeling that scratchiness in my nose by mid-morning. At best I was gonna carry a mild cold through the holidays. At worst I'd be a write-off for an entire week (which happened to me right after Christmas in 2015). It's not difficult to realise that I pushed too hard. Despite being on Startical with its explicit guidelines , there was just way too much to get done before the holidays. Even my Startical posts for nearly the past week have been placeholders to fill in later. And now that's caught up to me and I'm starting sniffles. The challenge now is striking the optimal balance between preventative care and completing my commitments before Christmas: sending out personalised Owl-iday e-mails including the Owl-iday Special I had worked so hard to create. I think I'll err on the side of preventative care as I really don't want to wrap up Startical feeling sick and useless...

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