Salima Nathoo

Executive Consultant. Leadership Coach. Design & Futures Thinker.

Salima Nathoo

Here’s Why YOU Didn’t Think of That

Dear Smart Humans

Dear Smart Humans,

In my work around “Conscious Disruption” I talk about first Showing Up – without apology or permission in the full glory of ourselves. We are so keen to edit, so quick to hack where the shortest path to success doesn’t require a detour. We put our life and intellect on a diet, starving ourselves of sleep, laughter, oxygen, connection.

This is based on an old paradigm that looked at industrial era hustle.

Today with our knowledge of the brain and advancements in neuroscience, we are ignoring what’s easy and right; what makes sense. We do this in favour of hard work, resistance and futility. Then we look at the fresh-faced entrepreneurs who do it all while giving back and giving inward to holistic wellness that makes their bodies and brains produce what we label as genius.

The next time you ask yourself, “Why didn’t I think of that?”, reframe what it is you are actually asking.

Welcome to the age of mindfulness and collective intelligence where hustle is an act in the best interest of health and humanity.

 

Fabulous Has No Fear,

salimaname

 

#NoHustleWasted

5 Steps to Being Fabulous in the Workplace and Beyond

The Art of Being Human

It’s been an interesting few months as I’ve reconnected with parts of myself that I had shelved in favour of what I thought I should be doing, how I thought I should be living and who I thought mattered (on paper). The funny thing is, I didn’t think I was THAT person. After all, I’ve been doing work with clients and in a community around Authentic Leadership for the last few years. While part of the work of emotional intelligence is knowing we’re all at difference places in the journey towards being more of who we already are, I somehow managed to go missing-in-action. To find my way back I had to call myself out. When it came down to the moment of truth, the moment I looked myself in the minds eye and said “time to disrupt yourself”, I realized that meant something entirely different than what I had imagined. Disrupting myself meant being myself. Period.

 

Step 1

Know it. Be it. Share it. Own it. Tyra Banks, a fellow ‘word wizard’, has come up with the concept of “Flawesome” – owning oneself as awesome because of and not in spite of flaws. I finally started living this by staking claim to my truth in this blog post. That was Step 1.

 

Step 2

Prove your intentions to your self. I did this by entering the “I Have Great Genes” Plus Size Modelling Contest. I have 240 votes as of now and there are still four days left to cast a daily vote. Two hundred and forty times in a single week, someone has thought of me with respect and taken great care in their life to vote, and in many cases to share words of encouragement and support.  240 times – Thank YOU.

 

FriendshipJimMorrison

Step 3

Gain more clarity on what you bring to every encounter, professionally and personally. As a consultant and entrepreneur, this awareness has raised the game . No wonder I had a challenge identifying my brand and finding my voice through a website and blogging! I was on the path to digital ventriloquism. There’s a silent club of folks out there that are mouthing what others are saying then clicking their own publish button. Not rocking the Member’s Only jacket helped me discover some powerful things about myself:

  • I breathe to ideate, design, create, share, reflect and write. My best decision has been to surrender to this rather than fight the battle best suited for the gladiators of detail. It’s a hustle to remain focused on where I can create value with the greatest amount of ease and joy.
  • Sometimes the best course is not staying it. Sometimes its getting a GPS so I can focus on the joy of driving my dreams and arriving at my destination ready to rock n’ roll (so I don’t veer off course and join the workplace circus as a ventriloquist ;).
  • I’m finding myself being less and less concerned about the mundane of the Ivory Tower jungle and losing myself in the conscious chaos of the creative world instead.

 

MembersOnlyJacket

Step 4

Make it Happen. This is about the intentional hustle of getting sh!t done. Doing it. Writing, publishing, writing, publishing, being a better writer. Giving – thanks, gratitude, knowledge, time, resources, stories. Asking…with integrity and humility. I have to ask because if I don’t, I’m choosing to take the long-way when I’ve already found the shortcut – meaningful relationships.

Let it Happen. This is a difficult one because it means letting go of the people, opportunities and relationships that are not part of the new design, by trusting your gut and going with ease. If there’s no ease, I’m merely trying to wade in the water at high tide. It’s also about allowing things to align and embracing a great thing instead of resigning to complacency. If I don’t let the magic happen everyday, I won’t know a good thing if it showcased itself to me in flashing neon lights.

Step 5

 

  • …is happening at this very moment. I hit publish, you are reading this and I am thankful you are taking the time to listen in and tune in to yourself.

 

When Fabulous Has No Fear….YOU are possible.

Now go be great and let me know how I can help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

salimaname

#FabulousHasNoFear
#NoHustleWasted

 

 

Design Free or Die Hard

In Brief

“…a brand needs to know what it believes, and this way it can behave and communicate in ways that are that much stronger” — Nicolas Bordas

 

AND I WOULD ADD IN WAYS THAT ARE MUCH MORE HUMAN

We must all view our unique creation as an act of design. We must value engagement in any capacity from a consumer perspective, be it with an app, with knowledge or the person scanning your rewards card at the local grocery store. Experiences no longer happen to us, we happen to them and we co-design them based on how we show up to an encounter with people, process, technology and art.

WE ARE SMARTER OUTSIDE THE SILOS OF A FUNCTION-BASED CUBICLE FOREST

Boxes are not meant to serve as workspaces that create a maze instead of amazing opportunities to collaborate. Boxes are meant to be understood from the inside, inspected from the outside and redesigned in a way that makes the lives of the masses more fun, enjoyable —basically more awesome.

 

The earth is not flat, so there’s no excuse to think this way in the workplace no matter what you signed for on the dotted line. The more you “NO” the better. ~ Salima

 

Original Post: Nicolas Bordas, Vice President at TBWA/Europe and President of BEING Worldwide: HTTP://OW.LY/PP0Y7

Death by Conference: When Smart People Use Comic Sans

Learning

Dear Speaker,

Here’s the deal. If you get a stage to share your knowledge, it is your duty to humankind to influence the way people think, live, believe and behave — not just talk about yourself/product/service. Knowledge is only power when it enables others to invite simplicity, ease and greatness into their life. Knowledge is not a stockpile of information you think is so important that every gold nugget you’ve acquired over the years needs to be squeezed into an hour on a podium with a lapel mic. Information dissemination when not consciously designed is just complexity. Complexity is ego. Complexity is a form of intellectual trickery and deceit. Complexity is the enemy of learning.

Every encounter be it in a physical or virtual classroom, social media or a passing conversation, is a platform whose best use is to make someone’s life and therefore universal existence, better. It’s what we all want at the end of the day — better sleep,wealth, health, influence, life insurance, gas prices, thighs. We don’t want to climb the hero soapbox and and take the caped crusader’s stance, no. No we do not. We want to knock that box right out from under you so we can sit around the proverbial fire and share stories of coffee stained dress shirts and torn pantyhose, then take time to figure out what it all means. We don’t want to be like Mike, we want to be Mike or Michaela 4.0.

Dear Attendee,

What if you forked out thousands of dollars to attend an industry event —flight, hotel, Town Car, expensive sushi, fancy socks, designer suit. Dollars you deducted from your fake-it-till-you-make-it fund thrown at the chance to gain know-how, network and finally say NO the next time your boss says, “Yes, but…”

What if this, a key part of your own hustle for happiness —is to be attained by sitting in the front row in a middle seat, listening to a person who enjoyed the sound of their own voice and took pride in the chaos of mismatched colours and the unskilfully animated collision of Comic Sans, Calibri and Times New Roman Bold fonts in the name of learning?

What makes you different, lining up with your branded boxed lunch and vendor swag, than the assembly line workers with their faded jumpsuits, hair nets and lunch pails?

Dear Speaker,

Don’t be a foreman when you can be a foreseer. Value is derived from setting a big vision, not from deathy by clicking. If you’re creating your own presentation materials are you really utilizing your time most effectively, gaining momentum on the maximum value generation track?

What makes you different, queueing with your designer labels, Blackberries, VIP badges and small PC laptops than the assembly liners with their faded jumpsuits, hair nets, candy striper gettups and lunch pails?

Dear Participant,

Yes, you are participants, not attendees. You are an active part of the problem and solution. Learning or lack thereof does not happen to you unless you let it. Want to truly be a hero, rise above the rest, save your family and the world? Complete the evaluation form like a boss, like it’s the template for designing the leader of your dreams, the job of your dreams—like your life depends on it…because it does.

DEAR ALL CONFERENCE GOERS: Speakers & Participants,

What really makes you different…from each other? Nothing, until you CONSCIOUSLY CLICK.

Sincerely,

Fellow Conference Participant and Learner

salimaname

Elevating Human Potential: My Focus at #HRTech Conference

Learning

Hope, determination, excitement and courage are in the air here in Las Vegas aka Sin City, the home of eternal Elvis impersonators and chapels that change lives in ways that only Hollywood can best depict. Here’s what I adore about the life force and energy beast of this city sitting on the fringes of sanity in the heart of the desert – the moment you land at the airport, you arrive at a level playing field. Take that in for a moment. What happens here usually stays here (according to the Las Vegas brand) and as we learned through the movies, one can be anyone or anything they would like to, or no one at all. This is the exciting part of attending a conference in Las Vegas – the air of anything is possible. No holds barred, no boundaries on our imagination and our only responsibility being to embody this during our journey.

We are at a confluence of innovation and human potential at the Annual HR Technology Conference (#HRTechConf).Technology has been developed and platforms have been designed, tested and await the reaction of those who will write, talk and lead new ways of living on the clock and off. The greatest of blurred lines is the one that appears between work and play in the social HR sandbox – MY sandbox and for me, this event is all about learning – in every sense of the word, starting with enterprise learning.

Collective is the New Intelligence
Copyright 2013 Salima Nathoo

My curiosity at #HRTechConf is guided by the pursuit of answering these questions:

As we continue to have unprecedented access to a growing reservoir of knowledge while being inundated with the noise of useless information…

  1. How do we create Lean Learning opportunities in the workplace?

  2. Who are the disruptors designing and facilitating the types of exchanges and encounters that create best places to work while pioneering the new frontier for employee engagement and getting sh!t done?

  3. Which platforms are fundamentally changing the way we cultivate lasting relationships with the art and science of knowledge acquisition – creating love affairs with micro learning?

My hustle:

Conscious Disruption – “Show Up (check). Be Curious (check). Raise the Game.” (let’s talk – I’ll be in the blogger’s lounge or at your booth).

salimaname

A Day of Reflection and Remembrance

The Art of Being Human

The World in Our Hands

“Democracy must be nurtured in ways that are practical and flexible. Pluralism must be embraced, so that it exists both in fact and in spirit. A diverse, engaged civil society will advance these values.”
— Excerpt, Where Hope Takes Root

Dear Community,

I’m a former New Yorker, a 9/11 survivor, and an Ismaili Muslim. I am blessed to have walked away that day, physically unharmed. But no matter how many years that pass, I will never forget the sight of all the falling stars we couldn’t catch. And sometimes on this day, I feel like I’m still trying to catch myself.

Embrace today. Love, hug, thank, be thankful and carry light in your heart for all of humanity that has and continues to needlessly suffer.

I am grateful for pluralism, freedom, and the friendships of the familiar & of the chance encounters that deepen my awareness about the responsibility of being human.

salimaname

 

#FabulousHasNoFear