Archive for category: Technology

Seeing Divorced Families in a New Paradigm

Rob and Family

The man with the funny hair has a name, and his name is Rob Pinna. He is the Team 1 Team Lead for the Denver/Salt Lake City based team in Landmark’s Team, Management, and Leadership program. Ask Rob who he is and he will tell you – dad, husband, entrepreneur.

Rob’s journey with Landmark began in 2007 when he completed the Landmark Forum after being introduced to it by Annie. Along with his wife, Katherine, Rob began the Team, Management, and Leadership Program in August 2013. Though Katherine chose to withdraw from the program after completing the first weekend, Rob continued on, both fully supporting each other in their choice.

As dad, Rob has not only brought the new model of communication to his three kids, Renee, Nicole, and Jackson, and step daughter, Peyton, he has also brought his kids to the new model of communication. Both Renee and Nicole completed the Communication: Access to Power and the Advanced Communication Course: The Power to Create during Rob’s first two quarters on Team.  Family conversations now show up inside the new model of communication, with authenticity and the ability to be straight with each other with no significance.

With Jackson, Rob has transformed his relationship to saying no, a gift for any parent. In the past, saying no to Jackson would bring up feelings of anger, guilt, and blame, as if to say, “How dare you ask me!?!?” Saying no to his son’s request was like saying, “No, I don’t love you.”

Now, he is able to say no powerfully by realizing he is responding to a request, and saying no does not diminish, alter or devalue his son or his love for his son in any way.

As husband, Rob is making a difference with his wife, Katherine, as well as ex-wives, Betsy and Arlene. Betsy completed the Communication: Access to Power course in Rob’s 2nd quarter.

As entrepreneur, Rob is making a difference for thousands of other families as the founder of Cofamilies – dedicated to helping divorced parents raise great kids. Cofamilies is a coparenting calendar and mobile checkin application that coordinates schedules, finances and joint parenting decisions.

Rob has also made Cofamilies his Game in the World, taking on a different aspect of building the business each quarter. In Q1, the Cofamilies’ iPhone app was created. Q2 saw Cofamilies become investor-ready. Now in Q3, Rob is creating a Cofamilies’ service for divorce coaching. Though Rob is no stranger to entrepreneurship, finding himself back in this particular saddle has been a challenge.

After watching his very successful business go belly up in the early dot.com days, Rob stopped seeing himself as someone who could run a large company or be responsible for other people’s money. He took himself out of the business creation game and became a business consultant, helping others successfully build their businesses. Though very skilled in this role, Rob realizes that without his entrepreneurial spirit, his ability to contribute is diminished. Through his first two quarters in the TMLP, Rob has seen the limits his past business experience imposed on the success of Cofamilies. Instead of being focused on building a successful company, Rob’s focus was on not failing, losing money, or letting anybody down. He was afraid to step up to the plate and swing the bat, all the while comparing his level of success to that of his peers.

For those who attended the February 2014 TMLP weekend, you may remember Rob on stage doing jumping jacks as he attempted to say and be the Denver Team possibility, being free to play. With fear of failure in the background, Rob was anything but.

Now, halfway into the quarter, Rob finds himself getting in communication anytime he is disempowered and using recreation in all his conversations which has him free to make requests and not make the response significant. There is no winning, no losing, no failing, just freedom; the freedom to play big and know, if he swings and misses, there’s another swing coming.

This is also showing up for other team members.  The team just completed a home run Communication: Access to Power course in Salt Lake City, where a number of Denver-based team members traveled over the mountains to coach and support the course, some stopping along the way to play on the ski slopes in Utah.  This represents a huge victory.  A few years ago there were no communication courses or team members in Salt Lake City. Now, Salt Lake City is adding new communication courses to the calendar each year and new team members each quarter.  With a near capacity Advanced Communication Course scheduled for June in Denver, the team is poised for growth and, like their Team 1 Team Lead, Rob Pinna, free to play.

 


 

Author and Interviewer: Brian Weinberg

Brian is an alumni of Landmark’s Team, Management, and Leadership Program and currently lives in Boulder, CO where he works as an electrical engineer in the aerospace field.  When he’s not sitting at his desk, he is usually sitting on a meditation cushion or bicycle seat, or writing poems and children’s books on the backs of napkins and receipts. Brian is passionate about organic food, real nutrition, and music, and is currently developing his skills as a songwriter and musician.

Brian Weinberg2

 

Leaving Apple, Pursuing a Dream

There are few people who leave a solid, productive career at Apple to start their own company.  Todd Beauchamp is one of the few, leaving Apple to fulfill the dream of starting his own company, In2Technologies.  That company has just come out with a consumer electronics home theater product called Unity, and it has already won an award for innovation.

Todd is a highly accomplished acoustic engineer. After working on projects for the US Navy, he joined American Technologies Corporation, ATC, in 1998.  At ATC, he was responsible for research and development of their advanced, cutting edge audio technologies.  Todd is the co-inventor of one of those, LRAD – Long Range Acoustic Device, which is one of the first devices  ever to project a concentrated beam of sound waves. It is used for hailing and signaling, and in the military and commercial sectors as a non-lethal deterrent.  It became famous for when it was used against pirates by the Queen Mary and other ships, and will be present with security forces at the London Olympics this summer.

At Apple, he ran the audio lab for the accessories group, responsible for anything connected to the iPod or iPad, and he worked on the final acoustics of the first iPhone.

He was responsible for the ubiquitous white Apple earbuds, the company’s highest shipped product ever at over 200 million units.

Todd completed two years of the Team, Management and Leadership Program in 2011 in San Jose. Kimchi Chow interviews him on his experience of the program and how participants can get the most out of it.

How did you come up with this business idea, and in which quarter?

The idea came from a dream I’ve had since 2004. I then faced some hurdles during that time, so I stopped. When I was in my 2nd quarter of Team, I brought this back as my project, and I pursued it throughout my 2 years of being on Team. Each quarter I reached a major milestone to fulfill my dream.

My project is about a product called Unity, a new home theater platform. It provides a great way for people to enjoy their audio & video everywhere in the world. As you know, music and  movies are a huge part of our culture, and cultures throughout the world. I see an opportunity to provide a way for people to connect with their music & video.

 When did you make the transition to creating a company that is now internationally  recognized?
In  April  2011  I  completed  the second year of Team and left Apple at the same time.  I started my own company and brought this product to introduce to the world. Now I have a small team working with me. We just won a 2012 Innovation Award from the Consumer Electronics Association. We were named number 8 of the top 20 companies in the world in innovation for 2012. There are about 30 articles written & published in Fortune Magazine, Business Week, USA Today, Fast Company, CNET, Home Theater Magazine (June 2012), etc. All that press has potentially reached 30 million viewers as of today.

You shared with Team San Jose recently that you want us to do a project that’s worth doing. A project that will impact thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people, for several generations.

Unity Home Theater System and Tv Stand

 

 What do you suggest we do to get in touch with that big vision, since most us tend to propose small projects that impact only our personal lives, or at most impact less than a hundred people?
Most of us when we come onto Team, we still see the world as we have to do things by ourselves. When you take on the Team Design Statement of “Building teams and teamwork in any situation”, what seems impossible when you do things by yourself will be possible when you build team around it. We have so many concerns that are getting in our way that keep our project small. One suggestion is to write down all of your concerns about your project on paper. Play the “what if” – let your mind wonder, “what if all of these concerns were gone?”  What would be  possible if you now create what you’re going to do from nothing. The most important part here is getting connected with the outcomes- visualizing the experience of people, the positive impact of your project in people’s lives. When you connect with the positive impact, it will help you deal with your concerns and get them out of the way. You will know when you connect to a project worth doing when you feel very emotional about the impact it can bring.

Once you connect with the impact, use the Team 1 & Team 2 Design statements to build teams and cause leaders around the world to fulfill that dream, and it will become a reality.

What is the process that you used to overcome the challenges or concerns that you’re facing while building this company? Could you give us some specific examples that worked for you?
My old way of my being would be to fire people who don’t perform, and find someone new. My new way of being is to re-empower team at all times, so that we as a team will get the dream fulfilled. By having the project that’s worth doing, it pushes me to use all distinctions from the Landmark Forum to the Communication Curriculum- when-ever or whatever is appropriate, to move the conversations forward and be successful. 

Understand that every person on this planet   has   a   story about the world that can get in their way. Once in a while, their story pops up and they are not at their top performance. This understanding allows people to be in their humanity. Just be with them, recreate the experience, and re-empower them.

Looking back on your journey, you were in the Team, Management and Leadership Program for 2 years. What are the top 2 or 3 things you would recommend team members get developed in so that they get the most out of this program?
Play the game that is worth playing in each quarter. Get every bit of coaching possible until you are touched, moved, and inspired by the game you are playing – your project.

Get coaching on connecting the dots between your project and your Development Opportunities, and take on all the Accountabilities for the Communication Courses. On each session of your Development Opportunity, look at your project and ask “Where am I stopped in my action items?” Then, bring those concerns to your coach, and bring it to each Development Opportunity session. Use each Development Opportunity as a place where you are trained and developed in the area you are stopped in project, so that you can have a breakthrough  and  are  able  to  move

what you’re doing forward. Take every opportunity to be accountable for something no matter how scary it is. The more you can take on, the more you grow, and that’s why you are on Team!

It’s not about what we have to do or to work at when we are taking on accountability, it’s about giving things up! Giving up the identity of who you think you are, and the conversation  “you are not good enough.” Just give up the poor and crappy listening we have of ourselves. When you give this up, your natural leadership will show.

In what way did the experience for being on Team transform your life?
With my company last week- rather than firing people who hadn’t performed, my old mode of operating, I re-empowered the whole team to play at a level that’s worth playing at.

With my family,  I have learned to master the distinctions from Landmark Education and bring those distinctions to effectively remove 35 years of anger & anxiety between two members of my family in just one conversation.

Todd’s company product, Unity, can be seen here:
http://www.in2technologies.com/engageunity/

Interviewed by Kimchi Chow, San Jose
Transcription and writing by Lindsay Tappero, San Jose
Alumna; writing also by Michael  Pettingale, Seattle
Edited by James Marchand, NY

 

Creating Happiness for Sick Children

By Dr. Parijat N. Goswami, Gujarat Cancer and Research Institute, Team India

Dr. Parijat N Goswami, Professor and Head of Microbiology has taken up a project for spreading happiness to children suffering with cancer. She is keeping the possibility of love, care and enjoyment alive for these children. She has created leaders around her, and they are working as a team with a oneness of purpose amongst them.

On March 23, 2012, Mr. Ramesh Karolkar and his team presented an entertaining drama they produced to convey to parents and children an important message around medical care. The play creates removing the many taboos and superstitions about seeking medical care. It shows how one can get the proper treatment from appropriate hospitals and doctors. The team leader, Mr. Ramesh Karolkar, is the writer, producer and director of the play. The next program in April was a program wherein the children themselves participated by storytelling and recitation of poetry. Children also listened to the poetry and stories created by the team leaders. This was followed by a wonderful birthday celebration for the children including a cutting of a special birthday cake.

The third phase of the project was on May 4, 2012. Around 65-70 children were gifted with drawing books, colouring crayons, pencils and erasers. There was a drawing competition amongst the children between 3 to 13 years old. The best three drawings were awarded prizes.

All of the children participated with zeal and enthusiasm.   Over    twenty    children    did    drawings, coloured with crayons or drew pencil sketches. They all had different ideas, imaginations and visualisations created and put down on paper. First prize was received by Ms. Khushi M. Jadeja, 7 years old. Media coverage was present for the event.

 

Creating Smiles: Dental Care for Kids in Los Angeles

Dr. Jay Grossman, Team Los Angeles

Dr. Grossman is a privately practicing dentist in Los Angeles with a commitment to provide free dental care to thousands of homeless men and women living in the area.  Twenty years ago he started a non-profit program called Homeless not Toothless as a community project in the Self Expression and Leadership Program at Landmark Education. Over the last twenty years, his project has resulted in 2 million dollars’ worth of free dental care to the homeless of Los Angeles.  Upon completing the first year of the Team, Management and Leadership Program three years ago, he had a desire to create a new project that would expand Homeless not Toothless to include providing free medical and dental care for the 28,000 children currently in the Los Angeles Foster Care Programs. Dr. Grossman is currently in his second year on Team.

Having declared wanting to do this new expansive project, he knew he could not do it alone.  One of the things he mastered in the first year of Teamwas how to powerfully share and create opportunity so that someone would want to take an active role in his project.  Dr. Grossman reached out to celebrities in the community. Sharon Stone is an active member of the board.  Felicity Huffman and Bill Macy appear at special events and speak publicly to gather attention from the media.  Many other celebrities came together to throw a huge gala fundraiser, one of the outcomes being the donation from Los Angeles County of an entire building, which is being used to create offices. Dr. Grossman’s team is responsible for staffing the doctors, dentists, and medical supplies.  These professionals are not working for profit, and have their own teams of assistants.

All the while, Dr. Grossman is still the owner and a practicing dentist in his own office, where he works twenty hours a week and confidently lets the office team manage the rest.  His practice wasn’t always this free and easy.  Between his first and second year in the Team program, he was involved in a serious auto collision.  The accident took him away not only from his project, but also from his dentistry practice for a year and a half.  Thanks to the distinctions he learned on Team, Dr. Grossman’s practice continued to flourish.  “Now I’m in a place where I’m clear that it’s going to powerful with or without me.”

Dr. Grossman is looking to raise a million dollars, and open the doors to his newest dental clinic in February 2013.  He produces powerful results in his own practice, three businesses that he is either CEO or President of, plus running the non-profit Homeless not Toothless.  He has learned to take on multiple businesses and manage them with minimal breakdowns.  On how he runs five corporations having three to over a hundred team members, he says: “I can’t say it’s always easy but I’m clear there’s always a solution to get out of it…and to me that is one of the biggest breakthroughs, the ability to deal with whatever the gap is that I’m playing for in a powerful way that doesn’t slow me down.”

For more information on how you can participate, visit the website www.homelessnottoothless.org

 

Interview by Kimchi Chow, Team San Jose

Written by Lindsay Tappero, San Jose Alumna and

Mike Pettingale, Los Angeles

Bringing Expert Cardiac Care…

The important issue we addressed is that the majority of the rural population is deprived of timely medical care because of the lack of local doctors in the villages. People also cannot afford the cost of medical treatment. To have a simple medical examination, patients have to travel long distances to reach the urban healthcare centres. This would mean that the patient and/or the attendant will have to lose a day’s wages and spend additional money on transportation, boarding and lodging. These constraints force the population to ignore timely medical attention and it can become too late for a patient’s recovery or even  survival. If a patient has a cardiac problem, the first step in diagnosing is to take an ECG. Since there are no qualified doctors in many villages, diagnosing health problems isn’t possible, and without an ECG machine diagnosing cardiac issues is also impossible.

Local health professionals at the Community Health Centres supply the first level of medical care. In this project we are training these health workers to operate trans-telephonic ECG machines. Now when a villager complains of a health problem, as a first step in screening the patients they take the ECG of the patient with the machine. The ECG is then sent to a cardiologist situated in Bangalore. The doctor in Bangalore analyses the ECG. If the patient is diagnosed with a cardiac problem, depending on the location of the patient, they either direct them for medical treatment to designated hospitals in Malaysia or offer surgical treatment at an affordable cost in Bangalore.

Many voluntary organizations conduct regular medical camps so we partnered with them.  Lions International, Sanjaynagar club, Bangalore together with Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences and Bharat Scouts and Guides are conducting both Eye Camps and prevention and awareness programs of the H1N1 virus. Our team is joining hands with them and setting up a telephonic ECG facility in one village on the Medical Camp day. The location of this is Amruthur, a village located 120 kilometres from Bangalore. Amruthur also has a Community Health Centre and hence we can offer the use of telephonic ECG to the whole population in and around Amruthur village. The ECGs taken by these machines will be sent to a Tertiary Cardiac Centre in Bangalore, Narayana  Hrudayalaya. There they will analyse the ECG free of cost and, if required, will extend medical care to the needy at free or very affordable price.

We had around 500 patients visiting the camp. They were given a general medical check-up with a focus on cardiac issues and eye care. The patients were also given preventive medicine to fight the H1N1 virus.

Because of this project, from now on all the villagers in that area have the ability to get their ECG checked at this Community Health Centre. The cost charged to the patients is Rs. 10.00 per ECG as compared to Rs.200 – 400 in places like Bangalore. [10 Rupees is$0.18 US, 400 Rupees is $7.18 – ed]  For  this  low cost they are getting  an  expert opinion on their heart condition within five minutes and don’t have to travel a long distance to see an expert. Everything happens right at their doorstep. More importantly, the tertiary hospital has come forward to offer free or subsidized cardiac treatment to these patients who cannot afford to pay for the treatment.

Our team is very happy to be a part of having served over 500 patients and to provide the facility of tele-ECG for many more patients in the future. This will have a great impact on the cardiac health of people in the region.

I’d like to take a moment and acknowledge Mrs. Saroja Naidu. Even at the age of 85 years, she is a source of self-less service, compassion and energy. She is a noble lady, a social worker, the president of the Lions Club of Sanjaynagar, and also the chairperson of Bharat Scouts and Guides, Karnataka.

Excellence with Impact

Tim Meyer, a participant in Landmark Education’s Team, Management and Leadership Program in Vancouver, has created ‘Excellence with Impact: Saving Lives’, a project designed to give cancer patients and their families knowledge and power in dealing with a cancer diagnosis, building teams to bring next-generation diagnosis technologies to people:

LOVE AND LIGHT

lovelight

Marshall Muller- Team Detroit, Team 1 complete

Marshall Muller’s passion is renewable energy; he’d worked in it all his life and always wanted to make an impact in the world. He had invented a process for creating solar cells at half the cost. However, before he could finish, Marshall was laid off as a research scientist and ran out of money for his solar cell invention.  This is when he used the knowledge he gained from the Team Management and Leadership Program. 

 

Instead of quitting, Marshall persevered and created a Game in the World called Love and Light, where affordable, renewable energy would be available for all people, bringing the lowest cost solar panels to everyone. Using the Team Management and Leadership program, he created a complete management team and enrolled them in his mission to make this outcome a reality. 

 

Once the team was set, they began to create a business plan and develop a portfolio of patents. After two years of working to implement Love and Light, the team has an investor and is on the road to signing a two million dollar deal that will expand and enable the development of this transformational solar energy technology. The next steps for the team are to go from development to manufacturing, the next level of producing results.  

 

Marshall believes that sharing Love and Light with the world will bring about understanding where we see it is possible to come together as caretakers of our planet.

Joyful Tribe Restores Salmon

Jeanette Dorner is a Landmark Forum graduate and a participant in the Team Management Leadership Program. She is also the Salmon Recovery Program Manager with the Nisqually Tribe in Washington State. The program she has created, “Joyful Tribe,” has led to $3.5 million in donations for resoration projects in the Nisqually watershed that help revive salmon populations. The projects have included the contruction of logjams that raise the water level to the nearby floodplain, and the return of dead salmon to the waters to provide nutrients for younger salmon and nearby vegetation.

Part of the project has involved a huge tree planting project near the watershed, since salmon thrive in shady conditions. This year, over 19,000 trees have been planted in the Nisqually estuary as part of the project. 

Dorner has used her team building skills in the program to coordinate a powerful team of people to manage all the programs and volunteer activity, increasing her staff from five to seven this year.

To read more about the salmon resoration efforts in the Nisqually watershed, visit the Eatonville News web site. 

TMLP Participant Causes Global Innovation Conference

C.K. Lin, a participant in Landmark Education’s Team Management Leadership Program and Associate Director of International Research Advancement at University of California, Santa Barbara, has assembled a team of visionary leaders, researchers and educators who are committed to building high-impact enterprises on the cutting edge of Technology and Education.

This team came together earlier this year in Taiwan, thanks to the sponsorship of six universities there, to have the first international Convergence of Global innovators conference–A series of lectures for 300 Taiwanese innovators addressing everything from nanocomposites for photovoltaic devices to synthetic materials for in-vivo diagnosis and treatment of diseases. These subjects may seem esoteric, but they have impacted a variety of key scientific endeavors, including the next generation of computers being made by IBM.

The conference series which began in Taiwan is designed to bring innovators together across oceans, borders and disciplines to discuss the challenges facing the world today. The Convergence of Global Innovators is dedicated to this mission because they believe that researchers can accomplish more by working together and that change happens when ideas are matched with means. Meetings have happened so far in Taiwan, British Columbia and Singapore and a meeting in China is being planned for later this summer. Here are some of the specific objectives of the Convergence of Global Innovators:

  • Transforming international collaboration into a competitive edge
  • Inspiring the next generation of research
  • Fostering the global mindset of higher education
  • Obtaining a deeper understanding of tomorrow’s technology

For more information on these technologies, go to http://globalsolutions2008.com/blog, or join the global innovators at http://www.ucsb-cogi.com.


PAGE TOP