The Potentiality

John Horn's Website for Community Builders

Creativity

How to Show Love at Work

Expressing gratitude, joy and affection at work boosts productivity and creativity. One effective method is using gratitude jars. Here’s how to show love at work (or school or your community): Create a table with two columns: one for names and…

Three Metaphors for Modern Organizations

The workplace is like a factory: a hyper-efficient, soul-crushing assembly line where creativity is bolted down with automated machinery and lean processes. Workers create value as cogs in an industrious, uniform way. In some warehouses, they maximize productivity by peeing…

Career Advice from Your Favourite Holiday Characters

The holiday seasons are upon us and we’re awash in the magic of Christmas, Hanukah, Love Actually, my parents’ Awesome Semi-Pagan beliefs, and, of course, Festivus. As we share stories of holiday joy with friends and family, it’s important to…

Five Productivity Lessons from Espresso

I love coffee. It’s delicious, chock full of life-enhancing antioxidants and fosters connections and collaboration, too. After spending a few weeks in Italy last year, I developed a love of espresso. In addition to the concentrated caffeine boost that a…

A Carbonara Haiku

All the carbonara. Hosting, connecting, friendship. Fueling the cycling. – A haiku the underscores how sharing good food with good friends builds healthy and connected communities that are sustainable for the long term

A Father Son Nature Haiku

“The Mango Tree” So many mangos. In the wind it waves hello to the mountains below. – A haiku co-created by my youngest son and I (we went on to write, like, seven more haikus and all I can say…

How to be Consistent like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (SGA) is one of the most consistent high-performers on Earth. He has scored over 30 points for the NBA Western Conference’s top seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in 40 games this season and, to underscore how he’s a model…

The Definitive Community Love Evaluation Framework

Today is Valentines Day and love is in the air. But how much love, exactly? To figure this out, I created a simple tool that helps me evaluate how much I love different parts of my life. I call it…

Three Creativity Lessons from Kindergarten

I’m learning a lot about kindergarten. A novel part of COVID worklife for my wife (who is her own woman) and I is that we get to teach our oldest son kindergarten. Feeling swells of exhaustion, inspiration and humility each…

Holiday Gift Ideas from The Potentiality

During the holidays our team at The Potentiality likes to keep things loose, festive and chock full of helpful ideas to make Christmas/Hanukah/Solstice a legitimate community building experience. We’ve recommended gifts, shared career advice from holiday characters, recommended gifts again,…