June 5th was a beautiful day for the first Fox Wisconsin Heritage Paddle of 2011.   A group of over 30 paddlers met at the wayside across Hwy 33 from the Fort Winnebago Surgeon’s Quarters in Portage.  We had a variety of kayaks, canoes, 2 stand up paddlers and even a voyager canoe joined up on this first leg of the paddle on the Fox River.

The journey from Hwy 33 to the Portage Canal was about a mile on the winding and fairly narrow Fox River.  When our group reached the Portage Canal we encountered our first of 3 portages. We were also lucky enough to enjoy a historic re-enactors battle performance at the canal.

Check out more of our Wisconsin paddling adventures at www.wipaddle.com

The seed of life is fun to draw. The circles can go on and on and on...

Give Love... :)

In this Ted Talk William Ury offer a simple way to create agreement. The idea of walking together and a story of the Abraham Path in the Middle East is shared in this video.

I love the simplicity William Ury shares in this video.

7 Reasons Why Investing in an Internal Community Makes Solid Business Sense

A community challenges us to bring our best to a situation. We invest in the community and they invest in us. And in that manner, we share our goals to build something that becomes a common cause. When we bring all of who we are, full engagement of head and heart, 7 deeper values and higher outcomes show up in our work.

1. Complete presence — focus. We’re all there — the all thinking business is no longer sufficient. The business is more well-rounded and friendly to the people who help it thrive. Computers can’t smile. Computers can’t listen to the spaces between words. People conceive, design, build, buy and talk what we sell.

Peak performance — productivity. A computer might work every minute achieving great computation effort, but it will only be as good as the people who program it and it will never over-achieve its programming. People invest more, do more, go further for the work we love. People connect to other people who are doing that.

Tolerance — perseverance. We have more patience, time, and energy for problem solving when we directly reap the benefits. Peter Drucker proved that money is a disincentive … it has the most effect when it’s not there or too small. What leads folks to achieve greatness is the payoffs that a loyal community offers: support, feedback, acknowledgment, sense of purpose.

Value and Appeal — compelling story. To compete a product or service has to be useful and beautiful. Simple and elegant, for to the adult and the kid in each one of us. Bringing logic and emotion to a business outdistances the world view of logic alone. Competence and great execution are expected. A loyal community builds in added value in how they tell the story, how they treat the product and the customers who buy it, and how they talk about the company as a value in their lives. What’s more appealing than working with someone who’s not only good but also loves his or her job?

Total Differentiation — identity. An internal community develops it’s own culture and identity. The uniqueness of that common bound shines through in concept and execution. The respect of a loyal community shows in everything it does. It becomes it’s own barrier to entry. The competition can’t knock that off.

Fully Invested and Worth Investing In — market value. Rolling all of the above values into one, nothing beats the 360 degree investment of brains, money, and dreams all in the same direction. Any financial firm worth its salt looks for that combination when funding a small business.

Sense of Worth — authority. Community builds authority. We value what we earn and what we love. That value telegraphs itself. It’s contagious. Customers, vendors, and partners pick it up as well.

A dynamic, engaging internal community where people love what they do and are fully engaged to share their brilliance is one of the primary keys to sustained success in most any business organization.

I've been getting into kayaking and this video looks like a lot of fun to me. I just picked up a similar kayak and look forward to learning some better techniques. Watching this video is inspiration for me.

Do what YOU love! It's super important to success!!!

How can empathy help create new inventions? Watch how Dean Kamen became involved in inventing new limbs for our service men and women.

Inspiring video showing the relationship in nature and numbers

We market and work and connect and create as if just one failure might be the end of us

A lot of creating is learning through failure. Embrace every opportunity to failure because the experience is bringing you steps closer to success if you treat it as a learning experience.