Earlier this year, my partner Morgan and I said goodbye to our beloved hedgehog, Pumpkin, after an almost five month decline. His death left me reflecting on how I want to live. Here are three things I learned. Remember Mortality The Latin phrase memento mori is typically translated as “remember you will…

We have an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine our work and our lives. Let’s not blow it. — Everyone is talking about what normal will look like in a “post-COVID” world. Discussions abound about “going back” to work. We think that way of thinking misses an enormous opportunity that we all have right now, and we believe that we must not simply recreate work — we must reimagine…

Tips & tricks are great — but how about a method for designing remote collaboration that really works for you? — This post is adapted from our Field Guide available at www.remotefieldguide.co. Why a Field Guide? The nature of work is changing. Remote work is becoming the norm for many of us. More and more teams are having to figure out how to work together remotely, and many are struggling to adapt.

Why knowing — and mastering — your mindset profile is so critical for effective leadership — You’ve seen it before. The way the energy in the room shifts when that one person walks in. That “grump.” That “Negative Nancy” or “Danny Downer” who not only says no to everything, gives reasons why ideas won’t work, and may even be snappy or downright mean, but whose general…

Insights, tools, & wisdom from leaders across the design sprint community — Last week was the 3rd annual Sprint Conference, hosted this year by Google in Boulder, Colorado. Top facilitators, designers, innovators, and change-makers of all kinds convened to share tools and methods for getting the most out of sprints and out of a team in creative collaboration more broadly. Below I’ve…

Introducing the online Stoke Deck — Six years ago, I discovered an unmet need. I was working at the Stanford d.school and frequently had conversations with colleagues about how we might equip ourselves with tools to make our teaching more effective. I wanted to know how people were thinking about their teaching as well as what…

Thoughts on the future of creative problem-solving from across the industry — A client recently asked me, “So what’s next for design thinking?” I shared some thoughts on systems thinking and talked about using virtual reality as an empathy-building tool, and then the conversation continued on to other topics. The question stuck with me over the ensuing days. More thoughts continued to…

How the most effective innovation leaders show up, do great work, and superpower their teams — Take a moment to think of an exceptional leader you know. Perhaps you find this person particularly inspiring or empowering or exceptional at what they do. Perhaps you work for or with them (or have in the past, or hope to in the future). Perhaps it’s just someone you’d follow…

Our approach to producing extraordinary results — I founded Lightshed with a simple yet ambitious mission: to elevate the world’s mastery of effective and sustainable creative collaboration. I believe there’s a better way to work together than most of us are accustomed to, and that better outcomes are attainable with the right approaches. I envision a world…