By Al Mills If you are a seriously nerdy Star Trek fan you might recognize the title of this blog entry. It’s from the second season of the original Star Trek series and Captain Kirk is incapacitated while an inexperienced officer commands the Enterprise. Predictably, the inexperienced officer makes an absolute mess of things and the experienced Captain Kirk rushes to the bridge, and shows why his experience is so valuable. He diffuses the situation […]
Category: Leadership Development
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (and everything else)
By Al Mills Christmas 2024 is upon us. It seems to me that every year it comes faster and faster, hardly taking the tree down one year, and then putting it up the next. From the time I was a kid, I loved setting up my train set under the tree with a small village. I loved setting up the train scene which looked like a Christmas straight out of the 1950’s. On top of […]
Build a New House
By Al Mills In 1979 my parents purchased a farmhouse and an orchard field in Nova Scotia. The house had been empty for a couple of years and it showed. It was like a time capsule. In the basement was a large wood furnace and a closet full of preserves in glass bottles (most of which fell victim to plinking sessions). Dark wainscotting lined the hallways and equally dark were the banister and stairs. Upstairs […]
Herding Cats with Volunteers
During the 2000, Super Bowl, Budweiser produced a commercial featuring rugged cowboys herding cats. It was a hilarious look at the tough-man image contrasted with cute and dainty cats. The funny point was the old joke about how futile it is to herd cats. For those of us who have had the privilege of leading volunteers, it might be a pretty valid comparison; leading volunteers and herding cats seems to have about the same likelihood […]