I just spent at few days in NYC at the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums Conference.  I had the opportunity to visit several sites including a behind the scenes tour of Ellis Island and The Statue of Liberty.  After the visit, I dug up the Sonnet by Emma Lazarus:

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Visiting these sites is a personal experience.  I think of my Grandmother coming through there alone as a teenager.  I think of her bravery, courage and quest for a better life.  I think of what America stands for:  Freedom and Liberty.

What does freedom or liberty mean to you?  For my family, it meant you could start with nothing and own a large farm after a life time of hard work.  For me, I started a business in a garage, renovated chicken coop and barn loft and now have a multi-million dollar business.  I also started with nothing as in my family you were on your own when you became an adult.  For my ancestors, it meant leaving a more repressive government and coming to a country that stood for self reliance and private property.  Having the liberty to individually achieve more and to be rewarded for your investments of self sacrifice (e.g. my grandmother never saw her family again), hard work (e.g. I’ve worked more hours in the last 25 years than most of the people I know), working smarter (e.g. making the proper financial decisions), … is why people have been flooding here for centuries.  I am very grateful to have had this opportunity.

When I walk through these sacred sites, my heart swells.  The opportunities America has brought to so many is overwhelming.  I fear the loss of liberty and freedom in our future.  Will self reliance, hard work, self sacrifice, risk taking, … be rewarded or punished in our future America?  Do the people have my grandmother’s courage to create something out of nothing?  Has our society become too entitlement oriented instead of self reliant?  What does liberty and freedom mean to you?

I like to gauge success with measurements.  We ask our clients what success looks like in measurable terms before we start the interpretative design process.  We set those as success factors on our projects.  I believe defining things in terms of a quantifiable number brings clarity to expectations.  Clarity helps make the target clear, eliminates communication problems and is good management practice.  Peter Drucker said what gets measured gets managed.

Many people believe there are some things that cannot be measured.  I have the book How to Measure Anything by Douglas Hubbard.  He defines measurement as a set of observations that reduce uncertainty where the result is expressed as a quantity.  Measuring eliminates uncertainty.  He says, “If you find out more than you knew before, then you have performed a measurement in the strictest scientific sense.”

At Taylor Studios, we have many measurements.  These include typical business measurements like net income, gross profit and revenue.  We also measure utilization rates, web site traffic, time goals, overhead per employee, customer satisfaction and much more.  Today I was discussing how to measure the quality of a design with my Art Director, Jason Cox.  Jason created a quality assessment for fabrication several years ago.  We are now creating a quality assessment form for design.  The form has several check boxes that must be met before we allow the design to go out the door.  They include:

• Does it fulfill the client’s needs and expectations?
• Does the design match the Central Theme?
• Is it easy to service?
• Was our design process and ADA followed?

I asked Jason how do we measure creativity.  We talked about how I might find something creative and he will not.  Isn’t creativity subjective?  Jason helped clarify this by adding standards like: is the exhibit clean, concise, well organized, legible, inviting and provoking.  This type of thought process helps bring clarity to creativity.  This eliminates a moving target when we are evaluating creativity.

Illustration Received an "Excellent" on our Quality Assessment

I agree with Douglas Hubbard in that you can measure anything.  I think the problem is that many people don’t want to be measured.  With measurement comes accountability.  It’s easier to say we’ll leave early tomorrow morning than it is to say we will leave at 7:00 a.m. (a measurement of lateness).  There is also the risk that you will utilize the wrong measurement or a measurement will cause unintended consequences.   We avoid this by using a combination of measurements and keeping an eye on the behavior measurements cause.

Obviously, you need to ask why you are measuring something.  Douglas mentions asking several questions to help reduce ambiguity including:  why do you care, what decisions would be different if this measurement turned out to be higher or lower than expected?  We use our quality assessments to manage quality control.  They are also used in employee evaluations.

What measurements do you use to define success or clarify a problem?

I met with a financial planner this week.  I was told to come armed with my goals and dreams.  When we first started chatting he asked how things were going.  I started talking about Taylor Studios.  He abruptly said, “No, what are you doing for you personally.”  I mentioned a ski trip I took last year and horses.  I love to spend time on my farm and with my horses.  I love being outside.  Riding my horses through the woods or fields is one of life’s best gifts.  I also enjoy the challenge of training a horse.

Betty & Lexi

People often talk of having balance in their life.  I don’t subscribe to the usual definition of a perfect balance between work and life.  I encourage people to find their bliss.  If you love what you do, it is not work.  Not everything I do at Taylor Studios is fun.  I don’t particularly like paying bills.  However, last week I got to drive through the beautiful hills of PA.  I saw elk!  I saw snow covered hills, beautiful farms, lots of wilderness and met some great people.  I put in a 50 hour week.  Do you call that work?

Maybe the question of balance is too personal for society to push a general definition onto others.  If you are passionate about your work and you find happiness in overcoming work’s challenges, isn’t working endless hours at your bliss, your balance?  Maybe other people in your life are not happy with your definition of balance?  Maybe it isn’t a balance question but a relationship question?

Actions speak louder than words.  If you want a different balance in your life make it happen.  I spend most weekends hanging with the horses.  You can often find me with them in the evenings, too.  When the weather warms I’m determined to leave work by 4:00 a couple times a week to enjoy more outdoor horse time. I also love many other things like reading, taking photos, country drives, skiing, travel, etc.  I just wish days were longer so I could pack it full.

What is your perfect balance?  Do you follow your bliss in life?

Check out my farm.

Betty & Smokey in Pursuit of Trespassers

On Friday, I had the opportunity to listen to Edgar Papke speak about how leaders use conflict to create opportunity.  He said great leaders do three things over and over again:  create change, confront conflict and strive for self-knowledge.  Many people struggle to confront conflict.  If the leader is not good at handling conflict it will cause dysfunction.

When you think of the words:  conflict, confront and argument are they positive or negative?  If you think all three are positive you probably have a healthy approach to conflict.  Conflict is two opposing views.  Great teams approach conflict as an opportunity.  Confronting is about telling your truth.  Until you get the truth on the table you will not make progress.  An argument is a position based on fact and sound reasoning.  Creativity and innovation come from scientific arguments.  With all of these words it comes down to how you approach it.

The ability to approach conflict successfully can lead to extraordinary performance.  Not only will this skill help you in your professional life, it can also improve your personal life.  If conflict is approached in the wrong way it can lead to lack of accountability, distrust, fear, unhappiness, anger, etc.

Some common approaches to conflict that will not lead to success are:

• The need to win and to appear right
• Convincing at all costs
• Defending my point of view
• Maintaining control
• It’s my solution
• Blaming the other person
• Not accepting responsibility
• Unaccountability
• Lack of confrontation
• Withholding
• Avoidance
• Seeking unlimited affirmation
• Leading questions
• Keeping it to yourself
• Covert challenging
• Lack of inquiry
• Withdrawing
• Attacking
• …
• …
• …

How do you approach conflict?  Do any of these look familiar?  The title of Edgar’s lecture was The Biggest Elephant.  It is something that the leader is not confronting.  What are you not confronting?

I was told by one of my staff members that blogs with pictures are better.  Here is a picture of me confronting my fear of speaking in front of large audiences.  This was at the Inspiring Women Gala.  I believe it was a crowd of over 650 people.

Posted by: Betty

Taylor Studios has completed many exhibits on watersheds.  Two of our current clients, Cleveland MetroParks and Wichita’s WATER Center, have content that is primarily about water.  Often the word watershed comes up in our conversations.  When we are discussing watersheds it is defined as a river basin or the entire geographical area drained by a river and its tributaries.  It is an area characterized by all runoff and some ground water being conveyed to the same outlet.  When I hear the word watershed, I don’t immediately think of tributaries.  The image that instantly pops into my head is of a little shed on my childhood farm where the well head was housed.

This is the farm I grew up on.  I didn’t live here, but my horses did.  Plus we had cattle, sheep, geese, etc.  We often put the steers in the lot in between all these barns.  We fed them well for market.  We had a couple tanks in front of this shed that I helped keep full of water.  The water pump was inside that little shed.  It was an old fashion pump that had been retrofitted with a wood contraption and a motor.  This large wood contraption would move up and down and you would have to avoid it.  In the summer, wasp lived in the little shed.  I would dash in and out very quickly to plug the pump in.

The silo is where we stored silage.  Silage is a smelly, cut up corn mixture.  All winter long I would climb up that silo to scoop truck loads full.  Then you would back the truck up to troughs in the cow lots to fill them shovel by shovel.  In the summer, we would fill the barns with hay.  I loved these old barns.  They had been around when the farm was operated with horses.  There were old stalls with horse names carved into them.  I still have an old yolk I found in one of these barns.  The barns provided a lot climbing territory for a kid.

There were also beautiful pastures that covered acres and acres.  We would have to fix fences all summer long.  I also walked around and sprayed weeds to keep the pastures in good shape.  I knew these pastures like the back of my hand.  I spent hours and hours riding my horses there.

The word watershed brings a flood of images to me.  Do you have a word that triggers memories for you?  As story tellers we have to remember everyone brings their past to the exhibit.  How can we best engage them with these varied pasts?  How can we engage the inner child?

Posted by: Betty