The image of The Blue Marble, taken in 1972 by the Apollo 17 crew on its trip to the Moon, is one that changed the view of the Earth forever. It is an iconic picture, and one that has appeared in zillions of places and seen by billions of people:

This image of our planet has inspired so many people to care for Mother Earth, and has been used for recognizing Earth Day and in so many other tools to drive awareness of our planet over the years. And perspective will show that we need to continue to focus on our world. (You can read a bit about its history here, in a nice article on the Adobe Create newsletter site that stimulated me to post this blog. That article also talked about the Stuart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog, of which I still have a copy (1971) on my bookshelf.)

Images can be inspirational. Images can help to end wars (like Vietnam) or generate charity or to basically influence people and performance.

On that note, I keep communicating about an image that could similarly affect workplaces, in particular the issues of improvement, engagement, innovation and communications. That image is this one:

along with the simple idea is that we can find all sorts of things to improve if we just step back from the wagon and talk about what is or might be happening. Talking through the illustration is easy and bombproof. Facilitating a workplace improvement process that involves and engages people is very straightforward, as well as cheap (we sell a $25 toolkit with the image and the worksheets.)

Anyone can help change their world!
It is about having relevant conversations!

Pass this on if your manager needs to better involve and engage the people in your workplace. Gallup shows that 34% of people are actually engaged in US businesses and it is generally lower than that in other countries (2016). We can do better than this if we just focus on making things work better.

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.

 
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

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Scott’s blog on themes of People and Performance is here.

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