Here is an exercise that can be used in many settings. I used it as part of a leadership conversation based around how leaders job is to make things 'easy' for those whom they serve. Here are some guiding principles:

• If doing anything new (or any incremental change), start with something that is both simple and easy. 
• If working with a system or process that is already simple and easy, decide if it can be automated (computers are good at simple and easy things) or if it is better to add complexity without sacrificing the ease.
• If something is simple but hard, spend effort on making that simple thing easy.
• If something is complex and hard, don't reduce the complexity. Instead reduce the difficulty.
• If something is complex and easy, it's in the right spot.

It was nice to see Elm Street Books in New Canaan, CT carrying Make Yourself Clear. The store manager asked me to sign a few copies and added an 'autographed copy' sticker to each one. That's a nice move.

I wanted to represent the relationship between two rigid organizational units. I found that using a rounded rectangle with varying opacity was helpful. I duplicated the same shape and then just changed the color around for each one. At the end I used the alignment to make things look a little tighter.

I had read bits and pieces of Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline, but only recently had the chance to pore through the entire work. It's a perfect balance of scholarly writing and accessible approaches. It is one of the required texts for a class I will be teaching this fall at the Columbia School of Professional Studies.

As a strategic planning exercise, I was asked to watch and react to a talk by Ian Symmonds about some field work he had been conducting around emerging trends in independent schools. The video can be found here.  I made a sketch note as I was experiencing the talk (above).

Steve and I were thrilled to be guests on Donald Kelly's Sales Evangelist podcast. Read the excellent summary and listen here.

Explain Everything now supports importing .iwb files - a "common file format" used by interactive whiteboard providers. I found some old .notebook files from my SMART Board days, saved them as .iwb and imported them into Explain Everything very easily.

This is a quote from a Sports Illustrated article which Steve forwarded me about Peyton Manning midway into his tenure with the Denver Broncos.