A thought.

My boss sent this out to my colleagues and I last week. I thought it was a nice thing to ponder as we look to creating 2011. And ... I still owe you all the good report from Frosty and Elf Rita's trip last month as well as a few pics from our stellar 2010 art auction!

Bigger or smaller?

Every decision we make, every encounter we have... we get a choice.

Are we opening doors or closing them?

It's so tempting to shut people down, to limit the upside, to ostracize, select and demonize. It makes things a lot simpler. Not seeing means you don't have to take action. Not opening means it's easier to announce that you're done. And not raising the bar means you're less likely to fail.

Just about all the things we treasure in our world were built by people who were intent on making things bigger, enabling things to be better, opening doors for us to achieve. The line between a realist and a optimist is hard to draw. And both might be self-fulfilling.

[Please don't confuse this with the issue of focus. Focus involves eliminating options until you have so few moving parts that work actually gets done. You can be focused but still think bigger.]