FORWARD21 is a weekly email with top hand-picked forward thinking human and workplace resources for 21st-century executives, leaders, and change agents.
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First Things First
Welcome to the new format of my email newsletter, which will now be published on a more regular weekly basis. In addition to bringing you new Exploring Forward Thinking Workplaces interviews, I’ll be curating new and existing content from all my 125+ interviews with pioneering business and thought leaders including my 5 Minutes to Process Improvement Success interviews.
I’ll also be including additional hand-picked resources that will help you discover new pathways, make better decisions, and be the forward thinking leader in the room. My goal is to make this a valuable resource and one of the emails you open and read every week.
Please let me know what you think of the new format, and I welcome any suggestions that would make it a more valuable resource for you.
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The Future of the Workplace Book
Read this work. It certainly shook up my understanding of what can be.
Tony Heath
I really liked the above quote from Tony Heath that he shared in a recent social media post when Apress announced the release of my new book, The Future of the Workplace.
I think it nets out what my work is all about — helping people and organizations see that we can do things a lot differently and a lot better.
If you haven’t had an opportunity to explore the book yet, here are some additional comments that have been posted on social media:
Thank you for pushing the critical thinking and the practical actions that lead to human-centered workplaces that inspire all of us to be in the constant pursuit of finding better ways!
Jim Haudan
Chairman and Co-founder, Root, Inc.Congratulations!! on a brilliant book that I know has come from real life experiences of experts in the workplace — enhanced by your unique ability to synthesize, distinguish and expand on as practical wisdom. What an important work this is — as the Future is literally here now.
Dianne Collins
Author, Do You Quantum Think?After reading a handful of your interviews, I can hardly wait to read the rest. You are so good at drawing new awareness through people, Bill Fox.
Sue Elliott
CEO, Easier Way, Inc.3
Words Shape the Future
“Words will shape the future of your company, your industry, and our society. And the words we choose now are especially important as organizations face turbulent changes in competition, technology, climate, and geopolitics.”
How the Right Business Language Can Catalyze Change
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Buzz Words and Corporate Speak Create Cynicism
“We all kind of laugh at it, and people roll their eyes. But the other thing is that it creates a division between the human being and the working person. If I go into a meeting and everyone is speaking corporate speak, it creates a separation between myself and my professional self. I’m supposed to speak a different language. This way of speaking isn’t my language. All of a sudden, I realize I have to be somebody other than who I am.”
What is the most important leadership skill you possess?
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We See the World We Describe
It’s important to highlight a crucial principle that runs through the forward-thinking approach: “We see the world we describe. American Leadership Forum Founder Joseph Jaworski and author of Synchronicty explains:”It is through language that we create the world because it’s nothing until we describe it. And when we describe it, we create distinctions that govern our actions. To put it another way, we do not describe the world we see, but we see the world we describe.”
Cutter Business Technology Journal, Dec 2017, page 10
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The Power of Words to Give People Control
“Basically, the way we give people control is by changing the language. For example, we use a device called the Ladder of Leadership. Basically, there are seven layers and the safest path of least resistance is when someone comes to you and says, “Tell me what to do,” and when there’s an applied tell me what to do you just tell them what to do. It takes psychological strength to resist telling them what to do and to say instead, “Well, what’s your take on the situation or what do you see here or what would you do if you were me?” You need to jump track to the next higher level.”
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We See the World We Describe
“As I considered the importance of language and how human beings interact with the world, it struck me that in many ways the development of language was like the discovery of fire—it was such an incredible primordial force. I had always thought that we used language to describe the world—now I was seeing that this is not the case. To the contrary, it is through language that we create the world, because it’s nothing until we describe it. And when we describe it, we create distinctions that govern our actions. To put it another way, we do not describe the world we see, but we see the world we describe.”
-Joseph Jaworski in (Synchronicity, 2011)
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RECENT POSTS BY FORWARD THINKING WORKPLACE CONTRIBUTORS
Work That Matters Starts with Matters That Work by John Bell, CEO (Past), Jacobs Suchard on the Apress Blog
6 Ways Successful Leaders Display Their Human Side by Marcel Schwantes, Founder, Leadership from the Core on the Apress Blog
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BOOKS
“Words are not things—they are the representations and symbols we use to view, think about, and process our perceptions of reality and they are the means of sharing these perceptions with others.” -Judith Glaser in (Conversational Intelligence, 2014)
How Do We Tap into the Best Conversations that People Could Have?
Paul McMahon released his new book Shy Boys. One reader commented: “You’ve made the seemingly ‘untouchables’ in our industry, reachable. You’ve made them more human.”
Is Upside Down Thinking the Key to Moving Forward?
In Closing
Thanks for reading. If you like this newsletter and want to support it, please consider forwarding it to someone who’d like it or, even better, consider buying a copy of my new book The Future of the Workplace or one of my Be a Workplace of the Future Series books.
If you’re seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe at forwardthinkingworkplaces.com.
To your great work life & success!
Bill Fox
FORWARD21 is a weekly email with top hand-picked forward thinking human and workplace resources for 21st-century executives, leaders, and change agents.
