aron
@aronshelton
aron
@aronshelton

How to Citizen: “To citizen” is to show up. We just assume there’s something for us to do, and we don’t always know what that is, but we have an orientation toward, “Put me in. I don’t have to lead, but I have to be a part of the thing.”
Number two: “To citizen” is to invest in relationships with yourself, with others, and with the planet around you. We have inherited a story of separation of all these things, and they’re actually all one. The quantum physicist will tell you that really in a short sentence. So that myth busted.
“To citizen” is to understand power and all the different ways we have it. Eric Lou, I call him one of our founding guests, founder of Citizen University. He says: power is just the ability to get somebody to do what you want them to do.” And we have different ways of doing that. Physical force is obvious. Money, especially in this society, is pretty obvious. Ideas, sharing them. You’re very powerful, Krista. Putting our attention on something, we give power to what we give attention to, and we can choose, within default settings and design incentives, but we have the power to choose what we give our power to with our attention.
Fourth of four of these principles is: “To citizen” is to value the collective. We do all these things out of a sense of collective self-interest, not just personal, individual self-interest. Valerie Kaur was our very first guest for How To Citizen.


metalabels and
The Lifestyle era was not about creating culture; it was about attaching brands onto existing cultural contexts. It was not about shaping people; it was about sorting consumer demographics into niche categories. The new order we are entering into reverses this. For some organizations, culture has become the product itself, and products have become
... See moreI post this quote from Peter Block's book "Community" every year. It doesn't get much attention because it's not built for social media: it's thick.
But there really isn't a better explanation of the "why" behind the work I do, and its encouragement for communities to move away from blame, apathy, and entitlement and towards possibility,
... See moreThe art of project management includes the dance between velocity and possibility.
If you describe the outcome with specificity and remove as many variables as possible, you’ll get the work done with more speed, higher reliability and less cost.
That velocity, though, might encourage us to recognize that all sorts of options are available. There are countless chances to make the project better and to find new opportunities.
Exploring the possibilities in moments of high velocity almost certainly ensures that costs will increase, reliability will be impacted and you’ll miss deadlines.
That’s because possibility is the art of being willing to be wrong. It’s exploration. It’s far easier to explore on foot than it is on a high-speed train.
The best time to explore is before you scale your investments, your commitments and the size of the team.
We seek both velocity and possibility, but not at the same time.