Three Switches Of The Compassion Mindset: An Origin Story

Lately I’ve been feeling nostalgic about the good old days before Covid. From our inception in 2008, Next Element’s headquarters were in the historic Newton Train Station.  In Fall of 2020 we ended our lease and moved out, anticipating that we were probably never going back to that way of working. I struggled to let go of this space and the memories it held for me. For several months after our team went fully remote, I still came to the office and worked alone because I wasn’t ready to let go.

Creating A Space For All

We had a wonderful space with tons of character where we made so many memories and hatched so many great ideas. We created that space to include and energize all different personality types, stimulate creativity, and feel like home. Here are a few of the “features” we enjoyed.

• Windows on four sides allowing sunlight and views at all times of day and in all seasons. This included seeing, and hearing, dozens of trains coming through town. We had a love-hate relationship with the trains!
• A bathroom where people were encouraged to write on the walls with permanent marker; sharing their bits of wisdom with others.
• A metal palm tree covered with lights to celebrate our partner Sandy Gieber’s Brazilian heritage and also just for fun!
• Plenty of comfortable furniture, pillows, and lap blankets.
• A formal, professional training room, and a more casual and relaxed training room.
• Access to toys, games, white boards, and other props.
• A common kitchen where people could gather and socialize over coffee, tea, snacks, and the our favorite sweet treat, Hershey’s Nuggets.
• A vision board.
• One window without a screen where we could crawl out onto the roof to show guests the “skyline view” of Newton during parties.

If you are reading this and you were ever in our office, will you share a memory by commenting on this post?

Three Switches Origin Story

One of the most significant ideas that came out this space was the Three Switches of The Compassion Mindset, which is the foundational model of our new book, Compassionate Accountability: How Leaders Build Connection and Get Results. Here’s a little reenactment 0f how it went down.

Capstone and Prequel

This book is both a culmination of 15 years of creative work, research, and experience at Next Element, and a prequel narrating the original vision, values and behavioral framework upon which our company was founded. We pioneered the concept of Compassionate Accountability®. nearly 10 years ago, long before it was popular. Here’s one of my early posts, Seven Steps for Taking Someone Off Your Naughty List. We’ve been teaching, testing, refining, and measuring outcomes for these principles for a long time. We’ve seen the difference they make in our client’s lives. With this book we hope to magnify the reach and take our mission of bringing more compassion to every workplace to the next level.

Will You Help?

Will you help us build momentum for this movement? You can help amplify the message in several ways;

• Pre-order your copy today.
• Consider buying multiple copies for friends, your team, a nonprofit organization in your community, perhaps a board or committee on which you serve. Depending on how many copies you purchase, you could get a free keynote presentation from me. Click her to learn more about volume specials.
• Write a review and post it on Amazon.
• Engage and share our posts on LinkedIn and Facebook.
• Invite us to come speak to your association, company retreat, or other event.

Copyright Next Element Consulting, LLC 2023