Lessons from the High Sierras—Taking Stock of 2013

Dec 12, 2013

Lessons from the High Sierras—Taking Stock of 2013

Dec 12, 2013h in Family, Leading Change, Personal Transformation by David Sibbet 2 Comments

Bishop-OwensRiver&Range - Lessons from the High Sierras—Taking Stock of 2013 I always spend time in the dark of the year thinking through what is lying deep in the soil of my life that will spring forth in the next cycle of the sun. This year I’ve drawn deeply from the lessons I learned as a boy growing up on the East Side of the Sierras in Bishop.

This is a picture of where I grew up, a bit out of town to the north near the Owens River, close to the mesa where I went on my first vision quest in 1986. I know in the very fiber of my being that valleys and mountains are not separate, but completely interdependent ideas. And so are grief and love, freedom and constraint, hope and depression, life and death. This has been the deep lesson of 2013. I’d like to share some of these reflections for those of you who are following my journey.

Jan 07, 2013

Visual Leaders Launches: New Year Begins

Jan 07, 2013h in Cognition & Communications, Collaboration Strategies, Leading Change, Strategic Planning, Visual Leadership books, Visualizing by David Sibbet 1 Comment

At The Grove we are officially launching Visual Leaders today. This means that Amazon is shipping; it’s in the stores at Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million. And one person wrote from Canada that he saw it in Toronto in its “World’s Biggest Bookstore.” Richard Narramore, my Wiley editor, writes that he’s already let a contract for a Chinese translation. The process is a bit like having a baby. In between the nine months gestation and a life time of living with the result is this one moment in time. Print is static. Life is dynamic. One has to imagine all this, whether reading words or looking at pictures.

This image from a Nike meeting captures a bit of this feeling. Can you see the book as a satellite orbiting a fluid environment of issues and challenges?

EmergingIssuesMuralFragment

Dec 18, 2012

How to Be a Buoy in a Sea of Possibilities

Dec 18, 2012h in Cognition & Communications, Collaboration Strategies, Leading Change, Organization Development by David Sibbet 0 Comments

Fast Company excerpted my new book Visual Leaders in their recent on-line edition. The article features my observations about how to deal with social media by thinking about messages as being buoys in a foggy sea of possibilities. I shared a set of principles that are elaborated on in the article. Click here to read.

Aug 08, 2012

Visual Leaders is Happening

Aug 08, 2012h in Cognition & Communications, Innovation, Leading Change, Organization Development, Systems Theory, Visual Leadership books, Visualizing by David Sibbet 5 Comments

A third book in my Wiley & Sons trilogy on visualization is nearing completion of its first draft. Wiley agreed to print the book in full color, and I am having a terrific time loading it with examples of how leaders of all kinds can take advantage of what I’m calling the visualization revolution.

VisualLeadersCover8-3D - Visual Leaders is Happening

This cover image illustrates the big picture focus of the book. It’s written to help leaders and managers increase their visual IQ, learn to work with visual practitioners, and guide their organizations in become more literate visually, in both face-to-face and virtual environments. I am making sure there are lots of practice exercises and suggestions for new leaders.

As with Visual Meetings and Visual Teams, I have been able to not only write the book and do the drawings, but design it myself in InDesign. I’ve actually moved to doing the writing in InDesign, so that from the very first drafts I can see what I’m getting on each page. It’s a thrilling process to be able finally to create in both text and graphics. If you want to read the TOC, click on the images and they will expand.