Do you believe in miracles?

Do you believe in miracles?

Another way to phrase the question is: "Do you consider yourself lucky?" That was the question Parul posted in a LPG meeting a couple of years ago. Several of us answered: "Yes."

And I remember saying: "I expect to be lucky."

I didn't know it at the time. I was in fact mouthing off the Golden Leadership Triangle: the foundational LPG principles of iteratively working on Habits, Competencies and Projects.

The most basic habit is: Be Proactive. One way to be proactive is to "Begin with an End" and look for positive signs of progress--not longing for these signs, but continuously develop competencies and do projects that would lead to progress. But don't be picky about what those positive signs have to look like because God (the universe) works in mysterious way.

Here is an example.

Last year just before my retirement from IBM, at a special Toastmaster meeting organized by Rich and run by Mike on leadership and collaboration, Mike posted this question to the team, "What is your life purpose? And how do you know if you are making progress?"

When it came to my turn to respond, I said: "I will know when I am making progress toward contributing to building a "flat world" when I find and work on some human potential development projects".

Somewhat in jest, I added: "And you will know that I am making progress if you see me on the Post Bulletin."

A year later, I open up the Post Bulletin last night and found that there is something there that talks about, no, not me directly, but the work I helped do.

You see I have been helping Diversity Council build a web-based fund-raising event, which we call Non Event.

I knew that we were going to roll it out in November but had no idea that PB was going to have front-page article on it.

As I do LPG, the lessons I learn repeatedly are: Begin with the End in Mind, step by step (First Things First), develop the skills, do the work and deliberately, proactively and optimistically look for signs of progress. These positive signs do not have be exactly what you thought they would be like but you will know them when you look for them.

Next LPG meeting, we will recap and discuss the power of Golden Leadership Triangle.

What about you? Do you believe in miracles?