All the cool thoughts today...

I heard several ideas that popped out at me today. Have you ever been writing or typing something and all of the sudden the word you are looking at doesn't look quite right? As if it suddenly transposed itself into a Martian word and it is completely incomprehensible? I don't know why this happens.

Sometimes ideas do that too, but just the opposite. Sometimes somebody says something and it stops, takes shape and hangs in the air in a way that I can grasp it. That happened three times today...(a very unusual ratio)....so I thought I would share.

Michael Lagocki (of a previous post) was in my office today talking with our team about leading people in emergent decision-making processes. After the talk, he and I hung out and he said something stunning. "Compelling dreams beat burning platforms." The context was sustainable energy. As in "what if the conversation was 'Wouldn't renewable energy be a really cool thing?' instead of 'Emergency! We're running out of oil." I love the idea of giving someone something to jump toward than focusing on what they are jumping from.

I also watched a video of Erin McKean's talk at TED. She said a lot of wonderful things about dictionaries and words and where things are going. She said that "paper is the enemy of words" --which is a mindbending thing to think about in the context of dictionaries. However, the idea she said that I absolutely had to write down was from the story of the Velveteen Rabbit. She said "Love makes things real." Again, the phrase simply jumped out as true.

Jason McKelvey delivered the final profound thought of the day. "Hooters doesn't serve owl." Yep. Definitely something to noodle on.