Follow Michael Bungay Stanier on Twitter.

“To improve you have to have mistakes. That is the problem with improving. You have to accept that problem.”
~ Rafael Nadal

With Wimbledon underway, this little gem from Rafael Nadal seemed right on the money.

It cuts to the heart of one of the tensions of doing more Great Work. Safety, comfort, reliability and familiarity all lie in the Good Work zone. Risk, uncertainty and error lie in those unmapped parts of your Great Work.

You’re not trying to leave Good Work behind. You can’t, to misquote Jack Nicolson, handle just Great Work. But you’re looking for the best mix for you, now, between Good and Great.

And to do more Great Work, you need to make mistakes.

Where do you want to improve?

Where do you want to make a mistake?

(The answer’s the same.)

Follow Michael Bungay Stanier on Twitter

By “three” I mean “six”. (I haven’t posted the Grab Bag for a couple of weeks, and I’ve got a backlog of cool stuff to share with you)

1. Woulda Coulda Shoulda

My friend Paul Williams of Idea Sandbox riffs on this topic, with a particularly fantastic illustration of just how…blunt a choice this really is.

2. The triumph of the default

Kevin Kelly, who I’m coming to realize has the brain the size of a large planet, and another brilliant post. It’s not just machines we should be thinking about. It’s what defaults are WE set on?

3. What should a Gruffalo look like?

A big question. Here’s the answer from the Gruffalo creator, Axel Scheffler

4. Your so called “priorities”

Merline Mann’s one of the other big brains of the internet – a productivity and creativity curmudgeon. Actually, the description of the gruffalo fits him pretty well…

This is a fantastic rant about the insanity of a big priorities list.

5. Change resources

I love hanging out with people who make me think and make me laugh. In Toronto, that group includes the members of NextGen Leadership. They’re smart, experienced, funky people who’ve come together to form a loose collective of smarts. Here’s a list of articles and resources they’ve shared on making change happen in organizations. There’s an article from me there too about three counter-intuitive truths about coaching in organizations.

6. You Matter

Seth lays it down.

7. The funkiest flight attendant ever.

This almost makes me want to fly again. Almost.

Follow Michael Bungay Stanier on Twitter

With it being Helen Keller’s birthday this weekend, it seemed perfect to release my interview with Steven Rothstein. Steven is the ninth president of the Perkins School for the Blind – most famous for being Helen Keller’s school, but most extraordinary for not resting on its laurels. Perkins is extremely active supporting people who are visually or hearing impaired, not just in the United States but internationally and Steven is a great force and great champion for the school. I heard him speak at an education conference, and was very much inspired by what he had to say.

Before joining Perkins, Steven worked in government, private business and non-profit human service education, including being co-founder of the Citizen’s Energy Corporation, which is a non-profit organization providing millions of dollars in energy and medical benefits to low-income citizens nationally and internationally. In this interview we:

• Hear the the story of Perkins and some of the amazing work they do
• Learn how Perkins moved from being a US-centered organization to working internationally, and the importance of working through local cultures.
• See how they choose which battles to fight – and which ones to let go
• Uncover the deep belief that drives all of Perkins’ strategic decisions

You can listen to this interview here: http://www.findyourgreatwork.com/interviews/featured-interview-steven-rothstein/

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
~ Helen Keller

There are people who are in business. And then there are people like Dixon Thayer, who are REALLY in business…

Dixon was a key player in the merger between Kimberley Clark and Scott Paper. He led a New Business Operations for Ford Motor Company then led a leveraged buyout of that division. He was then called in to become the CEO of i-Trax, a struggling solutions provider in the health care sector which he turned around and sold to Walgreen’s, a major drugstore company in the US. And he leads his own advisory business, AB3 Resources.

So this is a man with serious, high powered business experience, and some great stories to tell. That’s why it’s such a rich interview, and in it he shares:

• A business challenge in Mexico opened up Dixon’s imagination to what was possible (and why he went in the opposite way than people expected)
• The power of “positive disrespect”
• The three things on his leadership score card and the three fundamental elements of a strategic plan
• His 90 Day Top 5
• And why a company leader needs to identify and navigate paradoxes

You can listen to the interview or download it as an MP3 here: http://www.findyourgreatwork.com/interviews/dixon-thayer/

Follow Michael Bungay Stanier on Twitter.

“The one predominant duty is to find one’s work and do it.”
~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

And that would involve showing up and writing on the blog, wouldn’t it Michael!

(Thanks to those of you who wrote asking where I’d got to)

If you had to sum up, in a single sentence, what your work was … how would you do?

I think for me it’s this: helping make ideas for a better life understandable, interesting and doable.

Let me know your Work (your Great Work) in the comments…