Once upon a time (this week on Wednesday to be exact), in a city among the hills (Atlanta), a part-time cashier spotted an envelope just off the curb of the park-and-ride deck at the international terminal of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Puzzled, the cashier picked up the envelope and found it stuffed with $7,000 in cold… Read more »
Author: Aimee Juarez
Reality Bites… Without Meaningfulness
Two decades ago, actress Wynona Ryder donned a graduation gown, stood at a podium and, as Lelaina Pierce in the movie Reality Bites, gave a college commencement speech that, in a few sentences, managed to probe two extremes and the ambiguous space in between. “And they wonder why those of us in our 20s refuse… Read more »
A Journey into the “It” World
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a Zen-seeker. I enjoy temporarily turning off the rigid, left-brain linearities of my MBA, academia, and journalistic writings for the sake of finding inner harmony and balance through meditative practice. For me, this practice is as simple as sitting quietly for five minutes without engaging any lingering thoughts… Read more »
In the Right Light
I’d never heard of artist Aaron Rose until I stumbled across him online this morning while looking up quotes on the topic of perspective. “In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary,” Rose once said. While it’s unclear whether he uttered these words in one of his films or wrote it down… Read more »
It’s a Small, Intricately-networked, Less-than-Perfect World After All
I drove up to the Epcot Center park gate and something seemed different. The parking lot looked worn and shabby, and a lone security guard was manning the gate. It’d been about four or five years since I’d last visited Epcot and I’d heard there was construction going on in the parks, but this stripped-down,… Read more »
Systemic Leadership, Anyone?
For some time now, I’ve been on a diet. Not a food diet, a news diet. I’ve made a conscious decision to purposely stay away from all the CNNs, CBSs, ABCs, NBCs, FOXs, and any other local stations or cable networks peddling news on the small screen as much as possible. As a former print… Read more »
“I’m Spiritual, But Not Religious”
I’m spiritual, but not religious. I say that quite often and it’s also something I hear quite often, typically when I’m getting to know a new friend or an acquaintance and the topic turns to spirituality, meaning-making, defining a sense of purpose, or just pondering the mysteries of a vast and mysterious universe. Whether it’s… Read more »
11 Weeks as an Action Researcher
We had been following the blue Mercedes for almost 10 minutes up and down the streets of an upscale Miami neighborhood on that hot July morning before its driver, a middle-aged man accused of swindling private investors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, slammed on the brakes bringing his car to a screeching halt…. Read more »
Humanizing Machiavelli and His Concept of a Good Leader
I’m going to make a bold, sacrilegious assertion in a sea of humanistic theorists: I believe Niccolò Machiavelli had it right when he defined leadership 499 years ago. …Well, he did, in a bare bones sort of way. At the very least, he set a foundation for the plethora of leadership theories that exist today…. Read more »
What Isn’t Being Said?
When people get together, a lot of things tend to go unsaid. These “things” typically include thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and assumptions about themselves, about other group members, or about the way the group engages. Organizational consultant Robert J. Marshak put that theory to the test several years ago during a workshop he helped develop at… Read more »