Invitation To A Field Trip …

One of my favorite school events as a child involved sporadically crowding into a rusty old yellow school bus for a field trip …

I grew up in a rural area with limited cultural and social activities. When you live on a farm, outside a small town, far from any large population areas, life has a very stable and consistent sameness for the most part. This meant that field trips were valued, not just for whatever lay at the other end of the trip, but for the social aspects of getting out of the classroom and going somewhere.

Something has to happen to feed our inquisitive young minds and introduce us to the larger and more complex world …

So I and those connected to me by age and geography would pile into a creaky old yellow school bus and off we would go. Our destinations varied, but always involved going somewhere we did not live, to see, hear, taste, and touch things we did not usually experience. Then we would talk about what we had experienced.

Some trips were short, maybe a couple of hours and we would be back in the classroom, while others might start very early in the day, cover many miles, and end after dark as we wound our way home, physically exhausted, but mentally stimulated by the larger world outside our small rural community.

As I grew to adolescence, field trips only became more desirable, and not just as a break from the daily routine. The social aspect became huge … How else was I to meet strange and exotic girls from far-away places like Kirksville, Hannibal, Ottumwa, or Keokuk?

I began to rate the value of a field trip by the possibility provided to connect with someone somewhere else. The more possibilities, the better the trip …

It was all about connections then and it is still all about connections for me today …

Today’s field trip is not THAT kind of field trip, although you may receive some of the same benefits of connection with others. “About Breaking The Rules” is my guest post published today over at the Lead Change Group and I invite you to journey there to read my thoughts about the challenges in Under New Management, a fascinating and very useful new book by David Burkus, who is now officially one of my favorite authors.

While you are visiting the Lead Change Group blog, I invite you to look around at the other posts from a wide assortment of strong and articulate leadership development thinkers. You might learn a thing or two, and even make some new friends.