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Reposted from Tim Richardson
How High-Achieving Leaders Avoid Burning OutMany executives are running on what one CEO called “about 20% battery” – and trying to lead billion-dollar decisions from that state. In my latest Pausitivity article, I share a personal story from a luxury resort turnaround and three simple ways leaders can use the power of the pause to protect their performance, their people, and their lives outside of work. In 2001, I took an assignment with a Four-Star/Four Diamond luxury resort to help them get the coveted AAA Five Diamond and Five Star rating. I was onsite working with the leadership team two to three days a week while continuing to speak to corporate and association audiences across North America. I loved the work, but it was all-consuming. I was there early most mornings leading leadership training, facilitating problem-solving teams, and overseeing a tired orientation which needed a major overhaul. I also visited and benchmarked other top resorts, traveling to The Breakers Hotel, The Four Seasons, The Ritz-Carlton, and The Phoenician, which had what we wanted – Five Stars and Five Diamonds.
The resort had recently completed a multi-million-dollar renovation, and the staff needed a shot of inspiration and a vision that it could achieve what had eluded them – international recognition and top industry ratings. There was a significant financial bonus for me if the objective was achieved. The plan was for me to be there two years to help lead the effort.
About nine months in, I began having trouble sleeping. I was going all the time. My waking hours were consumed by my plans at the resort while still managing my speaking business.
I was feeling disconnected from my wife and our young family. I was burned out. How about you? Are you feeling burned out? You are not alone. It is a top concern in corporate America. Burned-out leaders affect morale. Burned-out leaders are disengaged from their loved ones. Burned-out leaders are ineffective.
Today, burnout isn’t just a private struggle; it’s being recognized as a top concern in corporate America and a strategic business risk. Recent surveys show that a large percentage of executives have seriously considered quitting in the last year, and many report operating at what one CEO described as “about 20% battery” most days. When the people making the biggest decisions are this depleted, it’s not a wellness issue – it’s a performance and valuation issue. Burned-out leaders affect morale. Burned-out leaders are disengaged from their loved ones. Burned-out leaders are ineffective.
The good news is that a different rhythm is possible. The “power of the pause” is not about slowing everything down; it’s about inserting intentional breaks so you can speed up in the right direction. Here are three practical recommendations for executives:
Daily Micro-Pauses (2–5 minutes, multiple times a day) Build short, structured pauses into your day – between meetings, before big decisions, and after difficult conversations. Stand up, breathe deeply, step away from your screen, and ask one simple question: “What matters most in the next hour?” These micro-pauses clear mental clutter, reduce reactivity, and improve the quality of your next action.
Weekly Strategic Pause (60–90 minutes, no interruptions) Block one recurring time slot each week that is non-negotiable. No email, no phone, no meetings. Use it to zoom out: review your top priorities, scan for where you’re over-committed, and decide what to stop, delegate, or delay. This weekly pause creates space for better strategy, sharper focus, and fewer “emergency” pivots later.
Quarterly Reset (half-day or full day, away from the office) Once a quarter, schedule a larger pause specifically for reflection and renewal. Go offsite, unplug, and reflect on questions like: “Where am I depleted?”, “Where am I reactive instead of intentional?”, and “What do I need to change in my calendar, commitments, or boundaries for the next 90 days?” This reset helps you realign your energy with your values and your most important work.
When I finally stepped back during that resort assignment, I realized the real problem wasn’t just the workload – it was the absence of intentional pauses to think, to breathe, to focus on my family, and to be honest about what it was costing me. An earlier wake-up call and one candid conversation about scope and support might have kept me in the role longer and helped us reach the ambitious goals we’d set together.
No bonus or recognition, however prestigious, is worth sacrificing your health, your marriage, or your presence with the people you love.
The right kinds of pauses – daily, weekly, and quarterly – don’t dilute performance; they protect it. They sharpen your decision-making, extend your leadership runway, and allow you to win in your career without losing yourself in the process. That choice is in front of every leader reading this today: keep pushing at “20% battery,” or pause on purpose and lead from a place of clarity, energy, and alignment.
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Reposted from Zenitel
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SAVE THE DATE 2026 AAM Annual meeting and MuseumExpo Where: Philadelphia May 20-23, 2026
This is your final call to join thousands of museum professionals at AAM 2026 in Philadelphia, May 20–23. Experience the largest museum conference in the world, where leaders, creators, and changemakers are coming together to explore The Museum Odyssey. Early Bird registration ends tonight
Don’t miss out on:
200+ sessions, presentations, and workshops with immediate takeaways for you and your museum
350+ exhibitors showcasing solutions you can actually use
The largest gathering of museum professionals in the world—all exploring The Museum Odyssey as America marks its 250th anniversary
What you'll explore: Museums as Timekeepers, Travelers, Chroniclers, and Seers; plus new this year, a track dedicated to foundational practice and emerging strategies.
Who you'll meet: Thousands of leaders, creators, and changemakers solving the same challenges you face.
from IFCPP pre-conference partner Majestic Collaborations, Co-Founder Matthew Kowal
Build Your Cadre. Then Come to New Orleans.
All events are events. Whether it’s a museum gala, a campus incident, a protest, or a street festival, the same operational systems come online. Someone is watching the entrances and exits. Someone is managing communications, guest flow, and accessibility. Someone is thinking about power, contingencies, and what happens if the plan changes mid‑stream.
IFCPP members live in that reality every day. You care for people in places. You understand duty of care not just as a legal phrase, but as a daily practice that balances safety, service, collections, and community expectations all at once.
Learning From People Who Do This at Scale
I was reminded of that when I presented our Train for Strain program with Christopher Singh, Senior Security Manager at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the Met Gala, Christopher’s team is responsible for A‑list Hollywood stars, museum guests, demonstrations, and film shoots, all happening at the same time in the same building. It’s a vivid example of what many of you know well: multiple systems — security, hospitality, public image, collections care — all running under strain, with no room for error.
Across IFCPP and ASIS, I’ve met many professionals doing this kind of work quietly and consistently. You are often the bridge between cultural institutions, city partners, and the public when things are ordinary — and when they are not.
The ReadyWhen Foundations Certificate, taking place in New Orleans on April 18–19, 2026, was built with this reality in mind.
What ReadyWhen Offers
ReadyWhen combines three elements that matter for IFCPP members:
On day one, participants move through rotating learning stations at French Quarter Festival, looking at the event through different lenses: access and egress, communications, power, food and water, crowd movement, partnerships, and more. On day two, we shift into the National WWII Museum, using classrooms and site visits to zoom out to the whole cultural district and zoom back in to specific operational and emergency management questions.
The aim is not another plan that sits on a shelf. It’s a way to make operational knowledge and emergency thinking live in the same conversation.
Who You Might Send
Every organization is structured differently, but almost all of them have a small group of people who “run the place” on the most complex days. Those might include:
You can come on your own or send a small cross‑functional team of three to five people. The benefit of sending a team is that they get to see the same environment from different angles and return with a shared language. The benefit of coming on your own is that you can embed yourself deeply, then start building that shared language back home.
If possible, consider inviting a senior leader as well. ReadyWhen includes content for executive leadership on how preparedness frameworks can expand institutional capacity, attract funders, and align safety with mission delivery. Having decision‑makers see the work alongside you makes it easier to justify future investments and policy changes.
A Delegation Model You Can Adapt
In Denver, Youth on Record is sending a four‑person delegation: their Executive Director, Senior Events Coordinator, and two emerging young leaders who are already involved in venue and festival work. They used a simple internal application process, made a shared investment in travel and tuition, and set a clear expectation: bring what you learn back to the organization and the broader community.
That model is easy to adapt:
Why Now
New Orleans is a city that understands the connection between cultural life and emergency readiness. French Quarter Festival and the National WWII Museum are not abstract case studies; they are real operations with real stakes and long histories of collaboration with city partners.
This first ReadyWhen cohort is capped at about 60 participants and is already more than half full. IFCPP members are exactly the kind of practitioners this was designed for: people who already think in terms of systems, risk, and the safety of people and places.
If you see your work in this description — or if you can immediately think of three or four colleagues who do — this might be the year to step into a new kind of learning environment.
by Matthew Kowal, Majestic Collaborations
Bring Your Team, Build Your System
How sending a small, cross-functional team to ReadyWhen in New Orleans can become a practicum for how your institution shows up when it matters.
All events are events. The logistics don’t care whether it’s a museum gala, a campus emergency, or a neighborhood street festival — the same systems come online. Someone handles communications, someone monitors safety, someone manages accessibility, someone decides what happens if plans change.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably one of those people. The one everyone turns to when a decision has to be made in real time. Maybe you run the building, maybe you lead operations, or maybe you’re the person who quietly keeps the whole thing standing. Either way, you’re closer to sparking lasting institutional change than you might think.
This April, during the ReadyWhen Foundations Certificate in New Orleans, you can bring that system — your system — into the same room. You can come on your own, or with a small internal team of three to five people that spans your core functions, and spend two days using a massive live event as a practicum. First, you study “the event” itself in rotating learning stations throughout French Quarter Festival. Then, you step back the next day to unpack specific elements at The National WWII Museum, zooming out to the whole cultural district and zooming back in to concrete topics like communications, power, access, and crowd movement.
This is not a generic workshop. It’s a deliberately designed practicum built from hundreds of hours of Art of Mass Gatheringsconvenings and the combined experience of people who have collectively logged more than a century in cultural resilience, emergency management, and live event operations — including the teams at Performing Arts Readiness and Majestic Collaborations. A structured set of online micro‑credentials in crowd safety, emergency power, food systems, accessibility, and incident command wraps around the fieldwork, so you leave with both lived experience and a targeted course of study that shows you’ve done serious work at the intersection of culture, safety, and emergency practice.
When Every System Runs at Once
I got to know Christopher Singh when we presented our Train for Strain program together, and it crystallized something I’d already felt working with IFCPP members for years. That series drew more than 120 registrants who were hungry for practical, real-world examples of how cultural institutions manage strain. ASIS was an essential partner in that work, helping gather professionals who sit at the intersection of security, operations, and public trust.
Christopher is Senior Security Manager at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, overseeing emergency preparedness for one of the world’s most complex cultural institutions. At the Met Gala, his team manages A-list Hollywood stars, museum guests, demonstrations, and film shoots — all happening at the same time, in the same building. That’s not just “a big night.” That’s what it looks like when multiple systems — safety, hospitality, security, public image, collections care — are all running at once under heavy strain.
People like Christopher, and many of the professionals I’ve met through IFCPP and ASIS, care for people in places. They understand duty of care not as a legal phrase, but as a daily practice: protecting staff, visitors, and collections while multiple levels of activity, needs, threats, and delight are unfolding simultaneously. This is why the IFCPP conference and organization is beloved and it’s worth staying the whole week if this is also your function.
ReadyWhen was built with that reality in mind. The goal isn’t to add one more plan to your shelf, but to offer strategies and operational integration that work for your everyday events as well as your worst‑day emergencies, and to package that learning in a way that reads as serious, intentional work to peers, partners, and funders. The content draws from some of the most active practitioners at this intersection in the U.S. right now, and it’s designed less as a one‑off training and more as a way to make learning stick inside your institution.
A Template You Can Steal
In Denver, Youth on Record is sending a four-person delegation to ReadyWhen — their Executive Director, Programming Director, and two emerging young leaders. Together, they’re building long-term capacity for safety and operations leadership across their city’s cultural venues.
Youth on Record is doing something bigger than a single training trip. They’re treating this as part of a workforce development strategy — preparing young professionals who will carry operational, safety, and resilience roles into venues, festivals, museums, and sports facilities for years to come. The delegation they’re sending now is a seed for a future bench of people who understand both culture and crisis, and can move between those worlds.
Their approach is straightforward and portable: an internal application process, shared travel and tuition investment, and a clear promise to bring what they learn back home. It’s a clean way to align professional development with civic readiness — and a glimpse of how a single program can ripple through an entire local ecosystem of venues and institutions.
If you lead a cultural institution, university arts program, venue, or city cultural office, you can borrow this model. Start by asking a simple question: On our most complicated days, who really runs this place? Then write down the names you think of from:
That list is the beginning of your cadre — the people who already make things work when it’s busy, messy, or uncertain. ReadyWhen gives them a shared set of reference points and a common training language.
Invite Your Executive Leadership
And if you’re not the top decision-maker, bring your big boss along for this one.
The ReadyWhen program includes dedicated content for senior leaders — how preparedness-based frameworks can expand institutional capacity, attract funders, and align safety with mission delivery. For executives, it’s not just a training trip; it’s a chance to see how their organization fits into the broader resilience picture of their city and to hear, in real time, how their own staff see the system.
When leadership and frontline operators go through the same experience, it becomes much easier to make the case for resources, policy changes, and long‑term investments afterward.
What Might Be Different After
We’re capping this first ReadyWhen cohort at about 60 participants, and we’re already more than halfway there. Some people will come alone; others will be part of a small internal team. The throughline is the same: a commitment to bring the learning back into the way your institution actually works.
What happens back home will look different for every organization. But you can reasonably expect a few things:
Once you’ve walked a complex event as a learning environment, and tied that to a focused curriculum, it’s hard to unsee the systems. That shift in perspective is where better decisions and better coordination start.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably the one who can make it happen. Look at your org chart. Notice who already finds each other when things get complicated. Maybe that’s a small group you can bring. Maybe, this year, it’s you. Either way, get yourself into the room in New Orleans while there’s still space, and let’s study what’s really going on when an entire cultural district comes to life.
ReadyWhen Foundations Certificate April 18–19, 2026 – New Orleans Learn more & register → About the New Orleans program with IFCPP
Reposted from Abigail G Manning
Autopilot Leadership Audit
January was about choosing the road less traveled.
February is about noticing when you’ve stopped making choices and end up on autopilot.
Sometimes, autopilot is great. There are contexts where it keeps you and your team safe. Operational autopilot can allow you to rely on training, repetition, and disciplined safety protocols. Allowing muscle memory to take over when there is no room for hesitation or second-guessing. Just like the trust I was able to have in the jumpmaster who kept me safe on my tandem skydive back in 2022.
However, there is a difference between operational autopilot and leadership on autopilot. The nuance is important to understand.
Autopilot leadership is insidious. It settles in quietly, when routines replace reflection, when decisions are delayed instead of made, and when “this is how it’s always been done” feels easier than questioning what no longer fits. If left unchecked, the effects are lasting. Most leaders I work with aren’t stuck because they lack capability. They’re stuck because habits that once served them are still running the show. The most successful and exceptional leaders are the ones who continually develop their skills and remain open to growth. Keep reading below for a short insight guide to increase your awareness of autopilot leadership, how to combat it using my ThinkSayDo skills, and download my free worksheet, The Autopilot Audit.
Reposted from Museumsclasses.org
Still time to enroll
Collection Protection - Are you Prepared?
Does your museum have an Emergency Operation (Disaster) Plan? This course will get you started making a plan for your museum. Disaster planning is overwhelming. Where do you start? Talk to Amanda about how to get going. Use the checklist to determine your level of preparedness. What do you already have in place? Are you somewhat prepared? What can you do next? Help clarify your current state of readiness and develop future steps to improve it.
Join Amanda Benson for MS002 Collection Protection - Are you Prepared?
Date: March 9, 2026 - to learn more and begin writing your Emergency Operation Plan.
Early Bird Discounts Available for Full Length Courses
An Early Bird Discount is available for anyone who signs up for a full-length course from museumclasses.org 30 days prior to the start of that course. Sign up for a full-length course up to 30 days prior to its start and save 20%!
For our course list or to sign up: http://www.collectioncare.org/course-list To take advantage of this discount, you must enter coupon code EARLYBIRD at checkout at collectioncare.org
Reposted from AAM
Early Bird Ends March 6th!
Save over 20% on your registration to the 2026 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. There are only 2 weeks left to save on registration during Early Bird and secure your experiential workshops and event tickets selling out fast.
Get Your Free Ticket to MuseumFest
How do you make the largest gathering of museum professionals even better? MuseumFest: Historic District Philly. Closing out the Annual Meeting, this brand-new event brings four iconic historic sites to life with pop-up performances, living history, and surprises. AAM 2026 attendees receive a free ticket during registration thanks to the generous support of the William Penn Foundation.
Volunteer Opportunities Now Open
If you need a little help getting to AAM 2026, consider volunteering. AAM 2026 volunteers receive a complimentary day pass for 4 hours of volunteer time or a full conference registration for 8 hours of time.
ARSL 2026 Conference
ROOTED IN COMMUNITY 9.16-9.19.26 Montgomery, AL
#ARSL2026 is the conference built for rural and small libraries—where planners and presenters truly understand shoestring budgets,
small spaces, and limited staffing, along with the unique opportunities for innovation and collaboration that come with the territory. Every session is packed with practical takeaways you can bring straight back to your library, no scaling down required. This year's theme, ROOTED IN COMMUNITY, captures the strength, connection, and resilience that define small and rural libraries. We celebrate the creativity and determination that grow from shared roots and empower our libraries and communities to thrive together
Important Upcoming Dates:
Feb. 18 ... Conference Scholarships Open Mar. 6 .... Conference Session Proposal Applications Close Mar. 10 .. Conference Scholarships Close May 5 ..... Early Bird Registration opens Jul. 8 ....... Early Bird Registration closes Sep. 1 ..... Advance In-Person Registration closes
Stay tuned for more important dates & deadlines!
Excuses age. Excellence Evolves
Excuses roll off the tongue easily.
“I don’t have a degree.” “Our competitor has better prices.” “We don’t have updated technology.” “I didn’t have enough time to prepare.” “We don’t have enough staff.” “I’m too old.”
That last one?
Tell it to Elana Meyers Taylor, who at 41 captured her first Olympic gold medal in monobob at her fourth Winter Games. Tell it to Kaillie Humphries, 40, standing right beside her on the podium. Tell it to Nick Baumgartner, who won gold at 40 and competed in his fifth Olympics at 44 in Snowboard cross – a young person’s sport. Tell it to Lindsey Vonn, who came out of retirement and fought her way back to world-class competition after pausing competition for six years. Tell it to Rich Ruohonen, a first-time Olympian at 54.
What can we learn from these “old” athletes?
“I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” The room erupted and Reagan won 49 of 50 states and 525 electoral votes. But beneath the humor was truth: Age, when paired with discipline and adaptability, becomes an advantage. Experience compounds. Wisdom sharpens. Perspective steadies. Age is not the liability. Excuses are. The Question Isn’t Your Age. The question is this: Are you evolving? Are you protecting your energy? Are you sharpening your edge? Or are you rehearsing reasons? Excellence doesn’t expire. It adapts. And so can you.
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