From college volleyball, I’ve learned that you play, you are promoted, you are given a position because of your running tally of two events: opportunities taken and opportunities missed. When you take advantage of those opportunities, your reliability is noted and often rewarded. When you miss them, you fail the test.

Join us for the Founders Space New York Roundtable, where founders gather to share knowledge and work together to solve problems.

Zappos recently sponsored the installation of a new advertising program on the shoe bins at security checkpoints in airports across America. Knowing Zappos’ passionate and out-of-the-bin (so to speak) culture, my guess is that an employee going through a security check point thought “What a great place for a Zappos ad”, and a few weeks later, there it was. What could your company be if you thought outside the bin or the box or whatever constrains you to doing some version of what you have always done?

David Whyte and the founding members of the Institute for Conversational Leadership – Craig Fleck, Ciaran McMullan and Walter Berghoef, extend an invitation to a launch event: The Foundations of Conversational Leadership on Whidbey Island, Washington on November 16, 2010.