Gavin Baker

TED talks are one of my favorite things in this world.  I love learning and their vast library of interesting speakers helps fill the void that is my curiosity.  They always teach me something new and and the talk of Ben Saunders and his challenge to get to the North Pole is no different.

Just about every video brings a challenge.  This challenge statement I pulled from this video wasn’t about dreaming big goals (although you can find that here) or about the struggle of leadership (certainly captures it) what I pulled was what is the dream that motivates you (starts at 3:15).

Not the conceptual dream to change the world, which I certainly have, but the dream that plays in your head like a video.  That mental file that you reach for when you need inspiration when times get tough.  This is the video that is how you visualize your accomplishment happening (it may be reality or not) – it could belike  Saunders and a video of him holding up a ski pole with a Union Jack flapping in the wind, or for the lacrosse team I coach it’s a video of the clock running down in the state championship with the scoreboard smiling in our favor as our team rushes the field with a bit of “We are the champions” playing in the background.

But when I think about that video that motivates me it’s pretty simple.  It’s not of cars or houses, not of offices or interviews.  There isn’t any music playing, but it zooms in from a black screen to a shot of me standing in the front of group of people, maybe a classroom, maybe a conference but standing and sharing to a group of people what I’ve learned in my success.  It’s a short clip, maybe 15 seconds, but it is what gets me excited to create and excite to excel.  I want to have the street cred to teach on the lessons I’ve learned in business and to help others gain the success they envision.

What does your video play like?  Please share it in the comments.

Do you ever have those times in life that seem to have themes?  My theme would be watching videos online, I watched two videos that made me think recently.

1.

I watched a video of Randy Nelson, Dean of Pixar University talking about some points of focus from Pixar.  One of the things they teach is improv and understanding that a key to successful improv is making your partner look good.  Wow! that blew my mind, I can count on one hand the times that I have done it for my coworkers, but with that core value of making your partner look good, everyone wins.  It was a great talk and the best quote from the clip was:

the core skill of innovators is failure recovery not failure avoidance

For me is was key because I want to try new things all the time, I want to promote change, but when I get on the edge of that metaphorical cliff I want to back down, I want to avoid the failure that could happen. That’s not to say I don’t jump anyway, but not often enough.  Instead I should consider some ways I can recover if it does fail and go with that in mind.

2.

I watched Penelope Trunk give a great honest talk about networking to students at Cornell.  And can I be honest? I’ve always had a personal love/hate relationship with her.  I appreciate her honesty, but at times I think she’s way too sarcastic and way too “this is about me”, but here’s the thing about watching her speak, I grew to like her and I declared it to the public with this tweet.  She appeared genuinely interested in helping the students at Cornell become better networkers.  From basic advice like, put your name tag on the right side of your shirt to if you reach out to her and you don’t hear back, just try harder.  As I watched I tweeted during watching it and I came out the other side appreciating her a whole lot more.

What have you watched recently that made you think?