Episode Notes

I like going below the surface to understand what makes people who they are. I love all the stuff. The successes, the failures, how people overcome challenges and setbacks, what brings people joy, and all the transformative moments that shape our character and entrepreneurial lives. I love being part of people’s evolutionary process and connecting them with people and resources.

An unexpected package arrived on my doorstep during last week’s epic snowstorm. It looked like someone covered our neighborhoods with soft-serve ice cream and swirls atop the snow drifts—remnants of severe winds. The storm hit the Midwest. A whopping 11.3” of snow fell in Golden Valley, leaving us a winter wonderland view.

Inside the bubble-wrapped package were a note (You’re in the book!) and a signed early copy of Joanne Lipman’s book, Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work. Oh, how I love books. The smell. The purple book cover, yellow-colored hardcover, and binding. The chapter headings, content, and print. Everything.

My mind went to the beginning of 2021. I received a call from a pioneering journalist and author. Joanne Lipman was the voice on the other end of the phone line. I didn’t know of her at the time. She listened to my 2018 podcast conversations with Art Fry, the inventor of Post-It Notes. Joanne said she was writing a book about the power of reinvention in life and work and wanted to interview Art. She asked if I could connect the two of them.

 Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work provides a toolkit to make meaningful transitions in life. It is chuck full of case studies, personal interviews, and the latest research on how people reinvent their lives and how they work. Joanne is a brilliant storyteller and avid researcher.

I quickly opened to the Acknowledgement section on p. 282, where I am mentioned. “To podcaster Nancy Meyer for putting me in touch with Art Fry.” Wow! Tears snuck into my eyes. Joanne took the time to acknowledge me in print.

Then, I flipped to chapter 3, Eureka!, where Art Fry’s story unfolds. Joanne described both the journey of Spencer Silver, who invented the 3M glue he couldn’t find a use for, and Art, the intrapreneur at 3M, who came up with the Post-it notes idea while singing in his church choir. Art used Spencer’s glue to improve our lives. I use Post-it notes almost every day! The ‘aha’ moment for both of them was years in the making, and Joanne outlines Art and Spencer’s journey beautifully and accurately in her book.

Back to the beginning of the book, I immersed myself in reading every word. Her book is divided into two parts; the disparate ways in which we pivot and navigate change when we have no choice. After hundreds of personal interviews and academic research papers, Joanne observed a specific pattern when people pivoted in their lives and careers. This particular pattern, she suggests, could be a Reinvention Map. Although the pattern seems straightforward on the surface, like Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, it isn’t.

There are four aspects to reinvention she tracks through history. We start with a search, then we struggle. An event causes us to stop what we are doing before a solution emerges and a path forward is revealed. She outlines variables as when you are on a post-traumatic growth path after a traumatic experience. The order is reversed. We start our reinvention with the traumatic experience/struggle, search for ways to understand what happened and struggle more before we stop and find a long-term solution.

An area of reinventing we would like to avoid if we could is the ‘struggle,’ but it is inevitable. It is how we gain new insights. I include an example Joanne highlighted of how to address a struggle. I hope you find it useful. I have done this exercise throughout my life as a therapeutic purge. A way to let go of my failures instead of allowing my failures to take up residency in my body. Professor Melanie Stefan took it to a whole new level.

Melanie Stefan posted her Curriculum Vitae (resumé) of Failures on Twitter in 2010. Joanne states, “a CV detailing all of your failures can signal whether you’ve reached the kind of impasse you should power through or whether you’ve reached a solid wall and need to quit.” It can reveal things about yourself. Melanie changed careers after detailing her failures by posting rejection letters around her room. Visibly documenting her rejections helped her change her career. It was a constructive way of dealing with setbacks. “She was rejected from 9 Ph.D. programs and rejected by five journals, and her dissertation remains unpublished seven years later,” writes Joanne. Melanie is now a Professor of Physiology at the Medical School in Berlin and head of a computational neurobiology research lab. She became the heroine on her path to land on her feet. 

Joanne has a plethora of examples that gave me a broad swathe of how people have reinvented themselves. The discovery of Penicillin evolved out of something Alexander Fleming wasn’t looking for. She cites Winston Churchill’s adage: “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” This saying is handy, especially when our failures seem to be all we see.

It is time to take stalk of your failures. Create visual art from your failures, poetry, journal entries, a wall of rejection letters, or a Résumé of failures. Identifying failures takes the sting out of failure and helps us connect with our humanity, know when to shift directions, and permit ourselves to discover something new.

The release date of Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work is set for March 21, 2023. You can preorder Joanne Lipman’s book HERE.    DOWNLOAD

NEXT STEP: Challenge yourself and do the Conscious Attentive Leadership Mentoring (C.A.L.M.) Activities, below.