(Reposted from LinkedIn, June 11, 2015)

translated this means “the craft of life.”  

When you dive deep into the word techne, it talks about “the art of managing” and “careful shaping.”  

In a conversation with a coaching peer some time ago, I was reminded of how important living a soulful life is to me. 

Deep down I’m an artist; I crafted my life through many disparate expressions of art – carefully shaping with many mediums.  

At work I’m an enterprise transformation coach.  This position allows me to be soulful in my day-to-day productivity – (coaching people to transform their work processes we know requires both art and science) and yet, I also contribute to both technical and business value. 

As an SPC 5.0, I have been trained to scale large enterprise using Agile. Yet my disparate soulful experiences with people taught me “how to” get a successful Digital Transformation moving.  

SAFe encourages us to execute on three pillars – respect for humanity; building things via an efficient and natural flow, and immediately putting into practice new learning – from past mistakes; I like working within these concepts.  

Thomas Moore, a leading 21st century philosopher, writes in his book, Care of The Soul, “Soul is not a thing, but a quality or a dimension of experiencing life and ourselves.” 

I respect people over new process every day because you cannot deliver one without having understood the other.  I have really thought about – what these concepts mean outside of automation, decomposition of scope and evolutionary architecture.   

In the SAFe philosophy I’m responsible to walk the walk of the three pillars to be respectful of people to maintain a natural unrestricted flow, and to engage in retrospection and adjustment around the new things I learned.  

I love effectively putting them into my practice on a daily basis. 

I have to say I enjoy living through all three of those concepts but my personal favorite is “Respect for People.”   

To me, respecting others is to honor the intrinsic value they bring to the table:

• To look at their different views without judgment
• To encourage autonomy and self empowerment – even when it means more work for me
• To see others as equal to my own self worth – despite age or hierarchal status
• To personally practice self respect and mindfulness – so I can respect others with the same
• To really listen and last but not least-  to be polite and kind when sharing knowledge

– these characteristics to me describe  being soulful.   

My soulful life is a daily walk; but to reach my soul potential – my fate, my destiny – may take me a lifetime’s journey – integrating techne tou biou to cross the bridge of destiny. 

I hope in some small way my work in corporate brings some important change for humanity; I have always been interested in fate and destiny and believe what is meant to be will always find a way to occur.  Small things have great affect – like the butterfly. 

As an artist I endeavor to carefully shape my soulful walk to someday come upon the joy of seeing my journey’s destiny….