The Potentiality

John Horn's Website for Community Builders

Feature

Why You Should Invest in Boredom

Seth Godin, as he often does, captured our relationship with boredom perfectly in a recent blog post: “…the market has figured out that we simply don’t like to be bored. And so there’s more stimulation, more options and more noise…

Five Simple Ways to Build Everyday Vitality

Everyday vitality means cultivating “the feeling of aliveness and energy that lies at the core of well-being.” According to Samantha Boardman, psychiatrist and author of Everyday Vitality, investing in energy inoculates us against disruption, unpredictable hassles, and micro-stressors that erode…

Three Tips for Creating Thriving Communities

Happy communities are more inclusive, productive and sustainable. Logically, great leaders should put happiness and well-being at the centre of any strategy for building positive communities at work, at school, and in their neighbourhood. Here are three tips for creating…

How to Give a Proper Apology

Saying sorry is hard and most of us suck at it. Apologies are uncomfortable, difficult and they can be embarrassing. They can also be healing, transformative and satisfying. They help us have better conversations in our worklife, too. Great apologies…

10 Things we Need to Make Work From Anywhere Happen

This Wall Street Journal article was bouncing around the Internet earlier this week. CEOs and Executive Directors from Vancouver to Nairobi to Singapore are evaluating the impact of Covid-19 on work, particularly the emerging reality of our “work from anywhere”…

Governance

The world is less democratic than it was 15 years ago. Peoples’ growing malaise with democracy has been a disturbing trend that dates back to the 1970s. The way we govern our communities – neighbourhood associations, corporate boards, regional elections…

Six Professional Lessons From Six Movie Side Hustles

We tend to remember Indiana Jones as a Nazi-fighting, world-saving, rough-and-tumble adventurer, not as a Professor of Archeology. We tend to remember Erin Brockovich as a feisty, community-minded legal aid who held corporations accountable, not as a single mom. And…

What Comes After Burnout?

Burnout is a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity. Due to factors such as recognition (or lack thereof), workload, and safety, nearly one third of Canadians are…

Finding a Job is Just Like Dating

Around the world, career practitioners continually search for meaningful, engaging and inspiring metaphors that will, among other things, drive clients their way. Powerful metaphors also help people better understand their work search, too. (Friend and colleague) Kimberley Rawes and I…

Sociocracy

Sociocracy is a system of governance and constant decision making that unlocks the potential of highly democratic, often member-led communities. It seeks to create psychologically safe environments and organizations through human-centric approaches and radical transparency. People feel included in decision-making…