Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Work

Beyond Work is our line of resources for people and community leaders looking for something new and innovative outside, be it a new job, career change, or personal development outside of work.

  • Matthew McConaughey Inspired Me and 8,000 Other People

    Matthew McConaughey Inspired Me and 8,000 Other People

    I finally had the opportunity to attend an ATD International Conference & Exposition, known as ICE by true ATD-ers. This year’s event in New Orleans featured a stellar lineup of keynote speakers, a broad range of learning sessions, and countless opportunities for relationshipping and professional growth.

    Matthew McConaughey Was There

    Known for his captivating storytelling and unique perspective on life, Matthew McConaughey’s keynote, “Greenlights: Rethinking Success and Leadership,” drew from his personal experiences and professional journey. He shared insights from his #1 New York Times bestselling memoir, Greenlights, which chronicles his life’s pivotal moments and the lessons learned along the way. 

    His speech emphasized the importance of resilience, authenticity, and embracing life’s challenges as opportunities for growth. McConaughey’s engaging storytelling and down-to-earth wisdom resonated deeply with attendees, leaving them inspired to lead with courage and creativity in their own careers​.

    And So Was Artificial Intelligence

    That section about Matthew McConaughey was written with ChatGPT (except for the picture I took from wayyyy in the back). Since I got home from the conference, I’ve been challenging myself to use more AI tools. I’m a Millennial, I’m no Zoomer digital native. 

    I’m excited about the potential of AI in helping HR and TD professionals provide higher quality services, and I’m also bristling at the fact that I’m not very good at using it yet. I like being good at things (set up for the next section on Daniel Pink!), and I’m not good at AI. But I’m trying. That’s probably the biggest takeaway for me from ATD42; none of us in talent development are all that good at using AI just yet, but we’re trying! 

    I Filled Up My Notebook

    I took feverish notes during every session I attended. I’m usually the one just taking pictures of the slides (I still did) and maybe sending myself links to view later. ATD24 was so juicy for me that I had to scribble down everything everyone said for 4 days. 

    My favorite note that I immediately shared with the HPC team was from Daniel H. Pink, one of our all-time favorite authors. He’s cheeky. He grounds his writing in real, relevant research. The quote I wrote down, underlined, and sent to the team was, “Make a To Don’t List”. 

    This is a picture of a notebook held up in front of the stage at a conference. The notebook has the words, "Make a To Don't List" written on it.

    For context, Dan meant that sometimes we get so stuck on “getting sh*t done” that we get in our way. In his own life, his To Don’t List includes things like:

    • Don’t start the day answering emails 
    • If I’m not willing to do it next week, don’t say yes to it 

    Dan also says he keeps a notebook at his desk that is specifically for acknowledging and recording progress. At the end of every day, he writes down 3 ways he made progress. He admits that he never looks at it again, but the act of writing down his progress to close out the day helps him leave his desk feeling accomplished. I’m going to try it, and I hope you will, too. 

    There Was Something For Everyone

    This section was also written using ChatGPT, when I asked it to summarize the conference. It’s a pretty good summary! ATD has something for everyone. 

    Learning Tracks and Sessions

    The conference featured a diverse array of learning tracks designed to cater to various aspects of talent development and HR management. These included:

    1. Career Development: Focused on helping professionals advance their careers and develop others’ skills.
    2. Future Readiness: Addressed the skills and knowledge needed to prepare organizations for future challenges.
    3. Instructional Design: Covered the latest trends and best practices in designing effective learning experiences.
    4. Leadership & Management Development: Aimed at enhancing leadership skills and strategic management capabilities.
    5. Learning Sciences: Explored evidence-based methods for improving learning and performance.
    6. Learning Technologies: Examined the use of technology to facilitate learning in the modern workplace.
    7. Managing the Learning Function: Discussed strategic approaches to managing learning and development programs.
    8. Measurement & Evaluation: Focused on assessing the effectiveness of talent development initiatives.

    Networking and Expo

    The ATD Expo was a major highlight, featuring exhibitors showcasing the latest tools, technologies, and services in talent development. It provided attendees with hands-on experiences and the opportunity to explore innovative solutions that can enhance their organizations’ learning and development programs.

    Additional Highlights

    • Preconference Learning: Offered intensive workshops and certificate programs for deep dives into specific topics.
    • Career Center: Provided career coaching, resume reviews, and networking opportunities to help attendees advance their professional journeys.
    • Virtual Experience: Ensured that those unable to attend in person could still participate in key sessions and network with peers virtually..

    How is Your Soul? 

    The theme for ATD24 was Recharge Your Soul. I absolutely felt recharged when I left, so much that I couldn’t stop talking about it (still can’t). 

    Robert “X” Fogarty asked us in the opening session how our souls were doing, and I can’t speak for anyone else, but I needed to hear that. So much of what we do in HR and Talent Development comes from the soul. If the soul’s not doing so hot, the impact isn’t there either. 

    X started Dear World, and I totally recommend checking it out. At Horizon Point, we are People First and we put People First, and we believe that people’s stories are important. Dear World is all about using stories to inspire and connect people. Take a look at their work, and also ask yourself, “How is your soul?”.

  • Cicadas, Vision Boards & The Northern Lights

    Cicadas, Vision Boards & The Northern Lights

    On Saturdays, my husband and I often go hiking. On those walks, we talk about the future, both the distant and not so distant. We are quickly approaching being empty nesters which brings on a whole new meaning to what’s next? We talk about our almost grown kids, aging parents, careers, and what 10-years down the road looks like. It seems the years go much quicker with every passing trip around the sun. This past Saturday, as the cicadas sang all around us, I thought about where I was 17 years ago (the last time they visited, when I was a mom of toddlers) and where we’ll be the next time they arrive. One recent work meeting helped me visualize what might be up next!

    The HPC team enjoyed a fun afternoon of creating vision boards during our most recent quarterly planning meeting. We were led by Lana, creator of Money & Merlot. She walked us through creating a vision board & encouraged us to dream big while also making sure our dreams were attainable. We thought through what we’d like to accomplish this year, the next few years & 10 years and beyond. We included fun pictures of successful work, time with family and friends, future homes, pets, travel, and more.

    In all honesty, I do not see myself as super creative, but the process was simple & it was so fun to dream about the future! When you are in the thick of life (raising kids and paying bills), you sometimes forget about why you do all you do & the fact that you are slowly creating the life you’ve always dreamed of. My daughter is home from college for the summer, and we all spent some time searching for the Northern Lights this past weekend. I love having all my ducks home, even if I only have a few more years of having the whole family under my roof.  With all the hustle and bustle of life, I was reminded this Mother’s Day weekend that taking time to create a vision while enjoying the present is so important.

    What are your plans for the future? Check out How to Use a Vision Board to Achieve Your Goals from verywellmind.com to learn more about vision boarding and stay tuned for the HPC team’s vision board reveal, coming June 2024!

  • Swinging for the Fence to Slow Productivity

    Swinging for the Fence to Slow Productivity

    We swung for the fences and came up short…
    Yeah, you win some, you lose some, it ain’t always home runs
    And that’s just the way life plays…
    Morgan Wallen

    A few years ago, I was facilitating a DiSC training session with one of my colleagues. We use a motivation checklist tied to the DiSC Personality Model to emphasize that different things motivate different people.

    We always encourage people to ask a peer what they think motivates them. Based on the behaviors you observe in another person, “What do you think makes them tick?” is the question we ask. I asked my colleague during the session to comment on what she thought my top two are. 

    She immediately said, “Well one is, ‘Taking on new challenges.’” 

    It wasn’t one of the top two I had marked.  Actually, in going through the checklist, it really wasn’t one I had even considered. 

    But as I reflected, I realized how off my self awareness might be.  She was spot on. I’m always swinging for the fence. On top of that, I very rarely wait patiently for the next pitch. I take on as much as I can, always ready for the challenge of knocking it all out of the park. 

    Too Many Balls 

    Following my sabbatical almost three years ago where I said no to everything for almost eight weeks, I came out refreshed and ready to swing for the fence again. I slowly but surely started picking up balls. One at a time, we added client after client, one of which is sucking the ever living life out of me right now. I picked up volunteer board seat balls. Thinking that the flexibility my husband now had given his change in careers would allow him to help out with the softballs of three kids, I said yes to more. Yes to travel, both personal and professional, yes to training for a marathon. Yes to a 17 year old from Costa Rica living with us. 

    Not only is my disposition to always swing for the fence, I am also always juggling a lot of balls trying to hit them all out of the park. Balls I’m trying to help others hit out of the park. I realized on one random Tuesday in April, I had dealt with ten different people calling me in crisis- or perceived crisis- needing my help. None of them were family, all balls I had picked up doing apparently what I’m good at.  As my husband has said, “I swear you have a sign on your forehead that reads, ‘Please spill your guts to me. I am here to help!’”

    But then a curveball invariably gets thrown. And two softball sized ones- one professional and one personal- hit me like a ton of bricks this spring.

    As I told my team, “I can juggle 18 balls at a time, but throw me 19 with a curve, and I want to drop them all.  It makes me realize maybe 15 balls is where I should have stopped.  I never should have picked up 16, 17, or 18 to begin with.  

    If I had never picked up those three, I could have handled the softballs, but by not stopping before it got to be too much, I seemed to be ill equipped to function given the big two.  

    I immediately went to, ok, sabbatical time again!  I need eight weeks of nothing! 

    Grand Slams

    For our second quarter planning meeting, you better believe “Sabbaticals” was on the agenda.  Unlike last time, everyone saw it and everyone brought it up before it was even time to discuss it. Everyone on the team has been in the business of picking up lots of balls too. We love to play the game, leaning into our mission, but it can get exhausting. 

    At our yearly planning meeting three months prior, we had worked hard to see where everyone was with current projects and what people wanted to grow in and what people wanted to divest in. I had named these things for myself too, already knowing in January that there were some balls that I wanted and needed to throw out.  But sometimes divesting in things takes time.  And I am trying to exit on some of them gracefully.  And I really wanted to equip my team to lead on some things they were capable of doing even better than I could, but there was inevitably some training involved in that. 

    We’d made plans for transitions. I communicated to boards I served on that I would not be serving another term- find a replacement! I’d be done with my bucket list marathon at the end of April. My so-stressful-I-can’t-sleep-at-night looming client issue would come to a peak at the same time and then be easier (or so I thought). 

    But by April, I was ready to say, “Forget gracefully!”  Every ball I’ve got is being thrown to the curb!”  

    “And that’s just the way life plays….”

    Right after this, I find myself heading to Oxford, Mississippi for a Morgan Wallen concert. You see, he is my daughter’s favorite musician. For Christmas, we had surprised her with tickets to his concert at Ole Miss in April. At the time, I wasn’t aware of how difficult the time between Christmas and April would be. The last ball I really wanted to have to juggle over that weekend was to be away from home again. 

    But she was ecstatic, and we weren’t going to miss it. After four hours in the rain listening to not one, not two, but three opening acts, he finally came on stage. A few songs in, he transitioned to my daughter’s favorite song, ‘98 Braves.  

    I felt the slow creep of the lyrics speaking to me:

    We swung for the fences and came up short…
    Yeah, you win some, you lose some, it ain’t always home runs
    And that’s just the way life plays…

    The personal issue got even more pronounced while I was gone.  The client issue came to a head right after I got back, and it was shared with me that it would get even more intense over the summer and into the fall. 

    Again, the thought, just throw the balls away. All of them. Quit swinging.

    Then, as I was unwinding the evening after my client engagement, I got a call from my husband. “He’s hit a grand slam! Cortez hit a grand slam!!” Drew was almost in tears. Our brown eyed boy who after seven years of baseball with us, had finally hit one over, and a grand slam at that!  His mother was in tears, I was in tears.  

    Seasons of Life 

    It takes some time for me to moderate the pendulum swings in my life. I preach moderation, but I often don’t practice it. And when I’m swinging for the fence all the time with too many balls, I get to a breaking point. I want to quit. 

    But, as I reflected I realized, I think I’m entering a season in my life where I can begin to honor the seasons of the game.  

    As Emily Freeman says so aptly, “Just because things change doesn’t mean you chose wrong in the first place. Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you have to do it forever.”  

    I’ve realized I’m in the season now where I would rather see someone else hit home runs. I get more joy and satisfaction from the win a teammate gets than I do experiencing it for myself. Like the speaking gig they are invited to instead of me. Like the colleagues who are about to land a very big fish or two that could substantially change their income (we pay a commission on business anyone lands) at a season in life where income is being sucked out like a vacuum. Kids in college ain’t cheap. For someone else to serve in that board role and learn.  

    It used to be that if our brown eyed boy was going to make it to a game or a practice or anything for that matter, we were going to have to take him.  After almost seven years, his mom takes him to most things now. She has stepped up to the plate and she is helping him knock it over the fence. It is a joy to see the evolution of their journey. 

    Most importantly, there is no greater joy than to see my kids well and excelling. Although Cortez isn’t our biological child, his successes and my three biological kids’ successes are more important to me than almost anything. Faith’s- our Costa Rica 17 year old- successes are important to me. The wonderful team I get to work with everyday at HPC are all so important to me.  And when I say successes, hitting a real grand slam isn’t what I mean, although the hard work and commitment that goes into hitting them is. 

    I’m ready to throw the balls for others to hit, not hit them myself. And I’m ready to be happy with a single, especially if it knocks in another run.  I’m not ready to stop stepping up to the plate or step up to the mound, I just need to modify my game plan. 

    And maybe you do too. 

    “When we want to give up, maybe what we need to do is open the door to doing things differently, not doing something different all together. “

    Mary Ila Ward

    “Slow Productivity” 

    For me, doing things differently is looking like a shift from choosing an all or nothing pace. A pace defined by what Cal Newport describes in his book titled the same as “Slow Productivity”.  His key pillars include: 

    • Focus on fewer things
    • Work at a natural pace
    • Obsess over quality

    Maybe I’ll take a sabbatical before 2024 is over, maybe I won’t (everyone else on the HPC team will be taking one in 2024-2025). I will be taking the summer to practice slow productivity, where I focus on the fewer balls that matter, namely, helping others succeed at the game, working at a pace that is more reasonable by saying no to the things that aren’t for me in this season, and by obsessing over the quality of relationships that are most important to me. 

    What Really Matters?

    In that same DiSC training, where I realized my self-awareness was totally off the mark in the challenges I take on, I also realized maybe I wasn’t totally self-aware illiterate. 

    The second motivator my colleague picked for me was, “Helping other people succeed.”  I had picked this one too. 

    I think my swinging for the fence can get in the way of me helping other people succeed sometimes. Especially people closest to me. It comes from a motivation to take on new challenges coupled with a desire to fix things. I’m looking forward to watching others hit it out of the park- by throwing the ball well, taking the bunt to advance the runner in front of me, or simply cheering from the stands- realizing that taking on challenging situations may just come in the form of helping others put in the work and patiently waiting seven years or more for the dividends to come. 

  • How To Toss Around Ideas

    How To Toss Around Ideas

    Today I saw a giant raccoon throw light bulbs to people at Space Camp. That’s a real sentence. 

    Sprocket, loveable mascot of the Rocket City Trash Pandas, threw Horizon Point stress balls – made to look like light bulbs – to attendees of the 2024 Launch Tank Competition. It was a wild and wonderful moment. But let’s back up. 

    John Kvach and his Singing River Trail team partner with LAUNCH and Innovate Alabama to host a business pitch competition for entrepreneurs in North Alabama, known as Launch Tank. “Our vision goes beyond the competition,” Kvach says. “We want to connect as many entrepreneurs to the Singing River Trail as possible, making North Alabama a better place to live, work, and play.”

    This year, Horizon Point supported Launch Tank as a Seed Sponsor. If you know Horizon Point, then you may know that Give Back is one of our operating values, and each year we intentionally earmark a portion of the budget to financially support an initiative or two that we believe in. So, this week’s blog is all about celebrating the innovation happening in our own backyard.

    Horizon Point is a Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB), and we proudly support entrepreneurship and small business initiatives in our state. Mary Ila is an Advisor for EDPA’s Alabama Launchpad. I get to serve on the selection committee for Decatur Morgan CEO for high school students interested in entrepreneurship. We partner with The Catalyst, The E-Center, and the Alabama Network of Entrepreneurial Women. We believe in equal opportunity, and it’s a joy to support opportunity networks. 

    When Launch Tank Co-Chair Lisa Mays said she might throw our Horizon Point light bulbs to people, we didn’t know John Kvach and Sprocket would start throwing them on stage. We also didn’t realize how symbolic it would be to throw light bulbs at an event built on innovation until Lisa said, “They’re like ideas! We’re just tossing around ideas!” We could not have said it better ourselves. 

    We are so grateful for programs like these in our backyard, and it’s an easy decision to Give Back to Singing River Trail Launch Tank. After all, who doesn’t want to catch a light bulb from a raccoon? 

    Want more? Check out the featured clip below or this article from WHNT. See the full list of finalists from Quad Cities Daily. 

  • Open the Door to New Experiences

    Open the Door to New Experiences

    3,098.0 miles away

    Traveling 3,098.0 miles away from my home to live with the Ward family and shadow Mary Ila and HPC surely is a completely new experience for me. Since February and until May, I have been in the United States. This is the longest time I have ever been away from home and family.

    In one of the training sessions I got to shadow Horizon Point, we did an exercise where we selected two things that motivated us at work, and two others that did the complete opposite. The two that least motivated me from the list were “being in charge” and “being in a constantly changing environment.” 

    When I showed Mary Ila my choices she looked at me and laughed, “Well, you sure kinda threw yourself into a constantly changing environment when you came here!” I answered laughing as well, “I kinda had to do it”.

    Hello I Am Leaving My Comfort Zone name tag sticker to illustrate bravery and courage in going beyond the familiar to new experiences and growth

    It’s necessary

    I am a big routine/agenda kind of girl. I like having a constant routine because that way I feel productive, but I have learned over my 17 years of life that many times we have to step out of our comfort zone to learn and remember some lessons, adapt, and also open paths for opportunities. An important and true thing to bear in mind is that most of the time those lessons and opportunities will only come to us once we are willing to take the step and experience new unknown things. 

    I am so glad that I said yes to Mary Ila’s offer to live here and shadow her and her team because I have surely learned a lot. This experience I would have never been able to have if I stayed in Costa Rica waiting for college to start. Was I scared? Yeah. When I woke up after leaving my parents and brother at the airport, did I feel weird? Sure. Did I know what was going to happen next? Oh, a hundred percent no! However, has it been worth the new experience so far? Oh a hundred percent yes!

    Before I came to the United States, Mary Ila gave me the book Dare to Lead by Brené Brown. There is a quote that I think is all about new experiences. It speaks to the importance of opening the door to new things. “The courage to be vulnerable is not about winning or losing, it’s about the courage to show up when you can’t predict or control the outcome.” You just kinda have to do it!