City Council 16-Sep-2014: Roads & Park Usage Policy

Eighteen people attended the council meeting. Most (14) were from Windsor and were there to add their voice to the discussion on park usage policy. One resident stayed through to the end. A fair amount of emails had been sent to council members prior to the meeting regarding the development of a park usage policy. Specifically, these message voice their opposition to using Windsor Meadows Park for any organized sport activities. I had expected this to be a contentious meeting but it was not. Although people had divergent views everyone was respectful. I would count this as one of the better council meetings. Thanks to all who attended.

Windsor Meadows Park, 4.2 acres, pavilion, basketball court, playground 

Are We Wired To Succeed in Isolation?

I recently finished a short book by Steven Smith & David Marcum entitled Catalyst (no longer available), which I highly recommend to everyone. In it, they reference a study done by New York University Professor Evan Polman and Kyle Emich of Cornell where the following question was posed to 137 undergraduates:

“A prisoner was attempting to escape from a tower. He found a rope in his cell that was half as long enough to permit him to reach the ground safely. He divided the rope in half, tied the two parts together, and escaped. How could he have done this?”

Half the students were asked to imagine themselves as the prisoner locked inside the tower (“prisoner group”). The other half were asked to imagine someone else trapped in the prison (“imaginary group”). Forty-eight percent of those who imagined themselves trapped in the tower escaped, while sixty-eight percent of those who imagined someone else solved the dilemma (the prisoner unwound the rope and tied the strands together). Three more related experiments in the same study found that participants were more creative or had better solutions when thinking of someone else. The only variable was the switch from me to we. [p. 40-41]

In the specific experiment, students who pictured someone else being in the tower were 42% more likely to solve the problem than those who imagined themselves in the tower.

Here’s another interesting reference from Catalyst [p.46] regarding me-centric v. we-centric behavior:

Tribal Leadership coauthor Dave Logan discovered that 76 percent of company cultures are me-centered. The more me-centered the culture, the worse the company’s financial performance.

I found it comforting to know that we are wired to be more successful in solving problems when we are serving others. Could it be that Christ’s commandment to love our neighbor and serve others comes with the hidden blessing of being more creative? It makes me wonder what other hidden blessings are waiting to be “proved” with respect to these or other commandments.

Links:

• Catalyst: How Confidence Reacts With Our Strengths To Shape What We Can Achieve And Who We Become (no longer available), Steven Smith & David Marcum, 2014
• Decisions for Others Are More Creative Than Decisions for the Self, Evan Polman & Kyle Emich, 2011
• How thinking for others can boost your creativity, Christian Jarrett, Research Digest, March 2011
• Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright,
• Mark 12-30-31
• Matthew 25:44-45

City Council Work Session 4-Sep-2014: Park Usage

The primary purpose of this meeting was to review and discuss the types of activities that would be appropriate for each city park.

Work Session 

1. North Utah County Aquifer Association Project.
   The engineer involved in creating a report discussed the aquifers in N. Utah County and how they can be recharged, reviewed with us his report, and discussed a pilot recharge project being conducted in the AF debris basin. It was an interesting report.
   
   
   

City Council 2-Sep-2014

Thirteen people attended the council meeting. Three stayed through to the end (sometimes there are none). For me the most interesting part of the council meeting were the public appearances. I was very impressed by Brandon and the follow-up he has done on dealing with complaint about the disc golf course. I especially enjoyed Devirl’s remarks after receiving his certificate. They were very positive regarding the direction the city is moving.

APPEARANCES

1. Public Comment: There were about 13 people in attendance. 3 stayed until the end.

• Brandon Balkman gave a short report on the Disc Golf course he helped establish at Beacon Hill Park. I was very impressed by the amount of time and effort he has put into this and continues to put into it. He shared with us a map of the course.
  
  
  
  

A Spectacularly Successful Failure

In 1998 I was involved in launching a new product which fell flat in spite of a very successful start. At the time, I was the global head of marketing for a small public company. We had developed a prototype of a USB authentication token we called the iKey which, although it looks very familiar today, at that time it was a novel form factor.