Project 52: Week 21 (4/15/24)
Gerald Doyle
Human Centered Design and Innovation: "You know, I believe it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous. Yes, much better. People forgive each other more readily and become more humble, ..." Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
Our invitation and reflection ...
"Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but most importantly, it finds homes for us everywhere." ~ Hazel Rochman, 1995
"Migration has been politicized before it has been analyzed." ~ Paul Collier, 2005
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. ~ Emma Lazarus, 1883
“When seeking to discern our vocation, there are certain questions we ought to ask. We should not start with wondering where we could make more money, or achieve greater recognition and social status. Nor even by asking what kind of work would be most pleasing to us. If we are not to go astray, we need a different starting point. We need to ask: Do I know myself, quite apart from my illusions and emotions? Do I know what brings joy or sorrow to my heart? What are my strengths and weaknesses? These questions immediately give rise to others: How can I serve people better and prove most helpful to our world and to the Church? What is my real place in this world? What can I offer to society? Even more realistic questions then follow: Do I have the abilities needed to offer this kind of service? Could I develop those abilities?”
~ Pope Francis
“for the sake of one child, I would have founded the Society.”
~ Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat, foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart
“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall; it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad.
We are delighted to continue with a year-long offering of an introduction to career development for individuals and communities. ~ Gerald Doyle
Evans & Burnett: Odyssey plans
As you will have read elsewhere in this series of articles, we regularly recommend to our Tri Cosain careers journey participants Dave Evans and Bill Burnett’s book, Designing Your Life, including especially the exercises the authors (E&B for short) recommend to help people take a designer’s view of life and career.
After encouraging people to express their Workview and Lifeview -- (and view of their Ministry) and to complete a Good Time Journal to explore things that capture their engagement, sense of flow, and energy levels (see other articles in this series), E&B invite their readers and student to create three different maps of their life and career over the next five years. They call these Odyssey Plans, after Homer’s Odyssey, to reflect the fact that each of these visions may reflect journeys with many twists and turns before arriving at an eventual destination.
E&B’s invitation is to draft the three visions independently, not making any plan, only a thinly-refined version of one of the others. This approach reflects the designer’s commitment to creating as many divergent ideas as possible to develop innovative solutions. It also builds on E&B’s sense, with which we concur that we have multiple streams of identity and intention within us. Finding creative ways to explore these different streams openly and with curiosity is a great way to discover and discern pathways that resonate with us most deeply: those intentions and identities that reflect our Deepest Truth.
E&B’s Odyssey plan map is quite simple and brief to complete: they suggest
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As usual, E&B offer free access to their creative Odyssey Plan template here.
There are many ways to generate alternative plans, but one scheme they offer as an option is as follows:
Once we have created (and retained for future use) three independent and creative Odyssey Plans, we have the foundations to do further exploration through experimenting and prototyping before making the decisions we need to make as our careers unfold. E&B go on later to explore how that experimentation can be done, as will we.
As E&B suggest, it can be particularly fruitful to share your Odyssey plans with others, perhaps your colleagues, mentors or members of your MasterMind group (see other articles in this series). We learn much more about our ideas by explaining them to different people, and of course, others add diverse perspectives on our journey that we would not be able to see on our own. In dialogue, we can return the favor of shared insight to them. The rules of engagement for these conversations are not to criticize or evaluate but to listen, encourage, reflect, build, and clarify.
As always, I am delighted to accompany you on this journey and the related explorations that are calling to you as you craft and draft your Odyssey plans, as with all other aspects of your Tri Coasain career journey.
Monday, 15 April 2024
Gerald Doyle
Resources:
Doyle's note: A work-in-progress: thinking about how Designing Your Life might be framed across various faith traditions.
Tri Cosain materials are developed with my colleague and friend of 40+ years, Scott Downs.
Copyright Scott Downs and Gerald Doyle, 2023/24
Residing in Chicago, Gerald Doyle provides ministry placement research and consulting for Career Services at the Catholic Theological Union ( Herbert Quinde and Christina Zaker ), as well as career services and coaching to students, families, and community members at Wolcott College Preparatory High School ( Miriam Pike, Kelly Ramos) and through the The Tyree Institute.
He advises several tech companies, including Upkey ( Amir Badr ) and GetSet Learning ( Eva Prokop ); he has also joined TSI - Transforming Solutions, Inc. ( Dan Feely )in their Higher Education and Career Services practice.
Scott Downs, a former investment banker, management consultant, and entrepreneur, now works as an Agile coach, seeking to call forward great leaders and great organizations based on great cultures. He is a consultant with Expleo Group and is an associate of the TrustTemenos Leadership Academy.
Scott and Gerald are co-founders of Tri Cosain, a practice that weaves inspiration, learning, and career for leadership in life and work. Gerald and Scott co-authored 9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work, Conversations of Inquiry, and several other volumes in the Tri Cosain series. Their work embraces equity, inclusion, diversity, and well-being as foundations for personal leadership.
Human Centered Design and Innovation: "You know, I believe it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous. Yes, much better. People forgive each other more readily and become more humble, ..." Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
8moIsabel Perlin All the best for a beautiful weekend. Essentially, this is what we talked through. Three plans for the future.
Human Centered Design and Innovation: "You know, I believe it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous. Yes, much better. People forgive each other more readily and become more humble, ..." Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
8moAl Nunez Good morning PHOENIX! Looking ahead to your 70s, what are three possible scenarios? Me: 1) apprenticeship in a bakery 2) accompanying individuals of all ages along the arc of their career, life and learning trajectories 3) learning a language a year