The Baby is Ready
Every birth – in fact, every creation – has a gestation period.
In the Northern Hemisphere, this week we passed through the Vernal Equinox into the official beginning of Spring, that season of blossoming, new growth and birth (or rebirth) of many forms of life. It also marks the passage from a preponderance of the dark of night to the increasing light of day.
Both of these images – gestation and birth – are appropriate to me (David) because, after years of field-testing, nearly a year of planning and writing, the new book 3 Vital Questions: Transforming Workplace Drama is ready to be officially “born” on March 26th.
My wish for readers of the book is that its insights help to provide a clear path to transform drama in the workplace into empowerment. I want to see teams creating outcomes in service to their customers/clients and all stakeholders seeking to build a conscious organizational culture.
This new book has, in some ways, been 30 years in the making (one vital question per decade?) and is the culmination of my experience and study of human dynamics, leadership, and organization development, which I share about in detail in the Introduction to the book.
As I enter the “twilight” of my career (though I expect to be active in the work for many years to come), this book represents what I feel called to convey and offer for our individual and collective conscious evolution in the workplace – and beyond.
For I am strongly convinced that our old default ways of thinking, relating and taking action has long passed the peak of its effectiveness. This is true for us societally in most developed cultures and, thus, impacts all of us globally as human beings. For more on this perspective, I invite you to watch this short video of a portion of a recent interview.
For those who are familiar with The Power of TED* (*The Empowerment Dynamic), the 3 Vital Questions® (3VQ) frameworks “transcend and include” that earlier work and applies them to organizational realities and possibilities.
TED* is written as fable on “self-leadership” and was born out of my own personal experience of feeling victimized by certain realities in my life and being graced with an epiphany of a more empowered way of living. It is a foundational principle to us that leadership (and that means all of us!) begins with self-leadership. How we lead our own live has everything to do with the quality of leadership we bring both our personal and professional lives.
While I would love to say that we had a “strategic plan” for TED*, the reality is that we “just followed the breadcrumbs” as people began applying it in their lives and, to our surprise, in their organizations.
Donna and I have been richly blessed with the growth, success and spread of TED* over the years. People continue to write to share how the book has changed their relationships at home, at school, and at work. I have been humbled by the stories people have told in their letters and emails. Some have brought us to tears.
With the publication of 3 Vital Questions, I return to my professional roots to apply the way of thinking, relating and taking action in the context of where many of us spend the majority of our waking hours: at work.
The gestation period, writing and publishing of 3VQ, which our team lovingly refers to at times as “Threevie,” (think Stevie) has been a labor of love with a deep sense of purpose . At times it has been a challenge, for the vision it puts forward for how our organizational cultures could be sometimes feels idyllic. AND I am fully committed to its possibility!
Like TED*, 3VQ is a teaching story involving Lucas, a first line supervisor in a large organization, who finds himself in a series of conversations with a custodian by the name of (surprise!) Ted. Lucas discovers that a neighbor and senior manager in the organization also has had a similar experience with Ted and she (Kasey) emerges as a mentor to him as she shares how she has used what she learned from Ted. Lucas also shares and applies his learning at home, with his wife (Sarah) and two children.
Modeling this way of being in life is vital for the generations of children and workplace associates to come.
It is my hope that, when our granddaughter (born at about the time the manuscript was complete) comes of age and enters the workplace, the ways of thinking, relating and taking action set forth in 3 Vital Questions will have become the norm, rather than the exception, in a great many organizations––and in our personal lives.
So, the baby is born! I invite you to join me in the celebration! Along with its birth comes our new website, www.3vitalquestions.com. 3VQ is available for preorder on Amazon, Indiebooks, and other online retailers. It will be ready for direct order beginning March 26th, from your local bookstore. 3VQ will also be available as an e-book and as an audiobook on Audible.
Donna and I would love to hear from you – or invite you to add a review on Amazon – and would welcome photos of you on Facebook or Instagram with “the baby.” And we hope you enjoy our picture of our granddaughter, who appears to have something to say about 3VQ!
(P.S. Like any new parent or grandparent, I can go on and on about this baby, so I want to acknowledge that this is a much longer edition of “TED* Works!” than usual. Next week we will return to our normal length.)
