Maria Grzanka: Getting Organized Using the Principles of Lean

Posted on by Pregame Magazine
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Maria Grzanka is a continuous improvement instructor, facilitator, and coach with 20 years’ experience practicing Lean, primarily focused on business processes. She designs and facilitates custom workshops for organizations and coach leaders in developing a continuous improvement culture. On February 27, Maria will lead a project management workshop at Pregame – here’s a preview! What is Lean? My definition goes like this: Lean is a collection of principles, values, and tools pointing toward a common goal: to create an environment where it is safe to do the work; where we continually learn to solve problems and to progress as a team. […]

The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level by Gay Hendricks

Posted on by Elyse Stoner
jump into business

The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level by Gay Hendricks, PhD Harper One, 2009 The Idea When something good happens to you is your response, “I don’t deserve this” or “Well, that was a fluke” and then, consciously or subconsciously you sabotage yourself, your idea or situation? Gay Hendricks calls this phenomena the Upper Limit Problem and shares his philosophy of why we self-sabotage or constrain ourselves in his 2009 book, The Big Leap. The title refers to Hendricks idea that many of us need to recognize the four hidden barriers that stand […]

Don’t Let Your Business Run You

Posted on by Amy Green
business tips

The biggest mistake I made when starting my own business was letting the business run me rather than running my business. I hope to help others avoid that mistake by sharing some of my experience and what I learned starting my company, amy green design, which is now just over two years old. At the start of my business, I was doing everything, and I mean everything, on my own. From designing brochures to my website to taking all cold calls to drafting every drawing myself, it was all me. That meant the business wasn’t scalable, that I didn’t have the bandwidth […]

Lisa Kolodny Johnson: A Career Powered by Great People + Strategic Brands

Posted on by Halina De La Rosa
lisa kolodny johnson

Marketing and branding wizard Lisa Kolodny Johnson is about as well-diversified in her field as they come. Her career has bridged a multitude of industries and included working for Playboy Inc. and NBC-owned iVillage, which has undoubtedly earned her a well-respected and esteemed reputation. Currently, she is the Senior VP of Marketing and Business Development at Indagare Travel, a boutique luxury travel agency headquartered in NYC.  On top of overseeing all aspects of her current full-time managerial marketing and communication position at Indagare Travel, she is a dedicated mother, wife, and mentor. Her badassery knows no bounds. Kolodny-Johnsons’ humility, despite […]

September 2019: Career Journeys

Posted on by Ciara Pressler
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This month’s topic was meant to be Business, but a theme emerged from our contributors: the ambiguous, unexpected nature of career opportunities. Whether you’re building a career or growing a business, comfort with the unknown is a definite success skill. The business environment changes so rapidly that resilience may be one of the biggest factors in whether challenges crush you or usher you into your best chapter yet. In the Kickoff Session, our intro-to-Pregame business coaching session at the Clubhouse, one of the top reasons people come to us is to determine when to take the big leap from working […]

Your Culture is Killing You

Posted on by Lisa Wagner
Taped Shut Bronze Angel, 2019 Patina bronze 25 x 16 x 18 inches

If you’ve brushed up against corporate hiring practices lately, you’ve probably encountered the concept of Culture Fit—the idea that you should screen job applicants so that you only hire people whose beliefs and behaviors will integrate smoothly into your organization. It’s true that hiring people who don’t integrate well with your company culture can be highly disruptive. If you bring highly-competitive people into a highly-collaborative environment, or order-takers into an initiative-driven system, the outcome can be as hard on your existing staff as it is on the misfit new hire. However, Culture Fit can also be used as a proxy […]

Culture Feature: 50 Contemporary Women Artists

Posted on by Ciara Pressler
50 Contemporary Women Artists (@50cwa)

50 Contemporary Women Artists is a one-of-a-kind compendium that features a selection of women artists and architects who have made groundbreaking contributions to contemporary art. Profiling an international cross-section of artists, 50 Contemporary Women Artists presents fresh perspectives on feminism and notions of cultural power. Using a variety of mediums, the artists in this book address themes of social, cultural, political, environmental, and psychological issues. Heather Zises, Pregame Magazine art editor, created this book with John Gosslee three years ago. The idea came from a special Women’s Edition that John’s magazine Fjords Review ran in 2014 where Heather served as guest curator. […]

May 2019: Arts & Culture

Posted on by Ciara Pressler
Perfect Baby Showroom, 2014 Mixed media installation of baby dolls, acrylic, wallpaper, electrical, metal, LED lights, neon, foam, cotton, cereal Dimensions variable

I have a confession to make. I only read nonfiction. Seriously. Over the past five years, I can only recall one fiction book I’ve read, and that was on vacation. Even biographies seem laborious. I am so hungry to learn, so dedicated to continuous evolution, that time spent in a printed story seems wasted. (Somehow I forget to apply this logic to my Netflix queue.) Of course, I’m completely wrong. Stories are the language of our humanity. They communicate deeper meaning more effectively than any literal description ever could. Stories are how we persuade, how we remember valuable lessons, how […]

5 Steps to Finding Your Optimum Mix of Money and Meaning

Posted on by Marissa Johnson
The Lost Poem #3

Is money the goal anymore? Or, in the age of insta-famous self-helpers, is personal fulfillment and living “on purpose,” the goal? What has finally become clear to me is that the goal is actually both, and the particular mix of money and meaning that is right for each of us is personal.  There is no formula. All one way, cash is king. The problem with putting dollars at the pinnacle of the goal chart is that satisfaction from attaining cash will always be elusive. What we actually want when we put money in the God seat is the experiences we […]

Featured Artist: Truong Tran

Posted on by Pregame Magazine
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Truong Tran lives in San Francisco and teaches at Mills College. He received his MFA from San Francisco State University in 1995 in the field of writing. He is the author numerous volumes of poetry. He is a self taught visual artist whose work has been exhibited in venues including the California Historical Society, California Institute of Integral Studies, SOMArts Gallery, Telegraph Hill Gallery and The San Francisco International Art Market Art Fair, Avenue 12 Gallery and The Peninsula Museum of Art. The Process of Art Making On days when I am not working as a poet and teacher, I try to […]