TED Community » Sherri Griffin

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Connecting!!! Zig Ziglar said it "if you help enough people get what they want, you'll get what you want." I believe it.

An idea worth spreading

There will always be top and bottom performers but its the 80% left over, those steady middle performers, who have the greatest potential to create the biggest impact.

Talk to me about

my strong action bias

People don't know that I'm good at

being calm & quite. I do a silent retreat annually & reflect in silence daily but because I'm a wild & crazy gal, with enthusiasm & energy to spare people don't often see that side of me.

My TED Story

Began when I asked a guy I work with how he always picks such amazing books to read - he confessed that he reads anything Ted sends him. I thought Ted was a dude who I hadn't meet at the office yet. When my friend corrected me by sending me to TED.com, that was where the journey began. I immediately applied for TEDWomen and WOWOWOW! I am so very excited about learning all things TED. What's your TED story?

Comments

• TEDCred score: +50.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Conversation: Where do our thoughts come from?

  Mar 6 2011: I consider my constant flow of thoughts to be like a hamster on a wheel, "Hammy" basically stays on the wheel until a force like biology and the need to eat takes over, once its clear that the need is being met, the wheel starts turning again!
  
  I've often wished I had an interface with my thoughts that would allow me to print them in real time or share them telepathically but since that's evaded me these past 30 some years, I consider thoughts to lack a physical-ness.
  
  Now thoughts and action, that's physical!

• A comment on Conversation: How to use doodling at work? How does it improve creativity?

  Mar 4 2011: I haven't seen the talk (yet) but I will share that I have been a doodler all of my life so I somehow thought everyone did it.
  
  One day when I was in a client solution kick-off meeting, my creative director spent the entire meeting doodling. Near the end of the meeting he had drawn an incredible picture of our client's key customer. When he saw me staring at it he was defensive and said something along the lines of doodling helped him to think and he WAS listening. It took me a minute to explain I wasn't staring because I felt his behaviour was inappropriate. I was staring because I just realized no one in the room had spent one second thinking about our client's customer. They'd only been talking about satisfying our client. I stopped everyone from leaving, stuck a pencil in everyone's hand and started the meeting over again. Twenty minutes later we'd recreated ourselves, our solution and to date, it remains one of the most profitable programs I've ever put in place.
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  A reply on Conversation: Where do our thoughts come from?

  Mar 4 2011: Julie Ann has asked such a curious question, I love that my brain has dashed off in several directions of how to respond to it! When I lasso the grey matter into some level of logic, I'll come back and contribute. In the meantime, I hope you have fun thinking about it too :)
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  A comment on Conversation: Is happiness an emergent property?

  Mar 2 2011: People often tell me I was born happy. Was I born any happier then others? I'm not so sure about that, what I am sure about is that my positive mental attitude more often then not allows me to be happy in any given situation.
  
  Now let's not call out the guards with straight jackets just yet, I don't mean to say that I only experience happiness, nor am I saying I am happy when things are sad or simply suck. But I do mean to say that in most instances I can find happiness sitting on the sideline watching us, and I've noticed happiness has an open door policy that invites us to walk in and embrace it. I've also noticed that happiness flourishes in absence of judgement.

• A comment on Conversation: Chris Anderson asked a great question about the criteria for standing up for a TED talk. What should it be?

  Mar 2 2011: I value being taken on the journey so for what its worth I'd give top marks to any TEDTalk that (loosely) follows this formula....Make me Laugh, Make me Cry, leave me standing on Dancing Feet!
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  A comment on Conversation: Are Educational Institutions responding to the challenges of teaching and learning in the 21st Century?

  Mar 2 2011: As a lifetime learner, I know the digital age has changed my needs drastically in two areas.
  
  First the speed at which I need new information, today staying on the cutting edge means knowing what I need to know RIGHT NOW. My university programs didn't accommodated my primary need/primary gratification.
  
  The second area my learning needs have changed is the amount of connectivity I need to other learners. Being in a theatre of students being lectured at WITHOUT a Twitter feed or hashtag is such a uni-dimensional experience. When I can enhance my real time learning with thoughts, opinions and experiences from more then just the speaker, I retain more information and assimilate more learning.
  
  If Educational Institutes embraced either of these issues more readily, we'd improve the system and engage more people.
  
  Thanks for a brilliant topic! Cheers!