Author: adam

Colorado COVID-19 communications

A case study in crisis communications and effective leadership from Governor Jared Polis

At a press conference earlier this week, on March 30, 2020, Governor Jared Polis gave a great presentation and update on the COVID-19 situation in Colorado.

I was impressed by the honesty, empathy and strategic messaging. It was a breath of fresh air compared to what I typically hear from politicians.

Gov. Polis’s presentation serves as an example of authentic leadership and effective crisis communications. It also shows how you can — and should — speak conversationally, with a personality, and at the same time maintain appropriate tone and professionalism.

In this post I’m going to break the presentation down into its broad components, comment on strategic communications tactics, and highlight the key messages that jumped out at me. I include excerpts below that I edited lightly for clarity, and I added emphasis to sections that particularly relate to my points.

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Antifragile and COVID-19

Book recommendation, insights and inspiration to get stronger during the crisis

I spent most of the past two weeks devouring the book, “Antifragile: things that gain from disorder” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I highly recommend you pick up a copy for yourself and dive in too, sooner rather than later.

I cracked this book open after my Winter Expedition in Iceland and spent most of the past two weeks poring over its pages as I adjusted to COVID-19 changes and hunkered down to figure out my next steps in the new world we’re living in.

Antifragile is a dense and inspiring read that’s particularly powerful and relevant in this time of great disorder and uncertainty.

In this article, on top of passing along a book recommendation, I’m going to list out some of my takeaways and excerpts from the book that I think are particularly useful as we all work through this COVID-19 crisis.

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Collapse in the cold

The wrong way to do the Wim Hof Method, and how it relates to COVID-19

This is not a particularly fun article to write, and we’re not living in fun times right now.

I acted like an idiot yesterday and made a big mistake that put myself and my family in a compromised situation.

Thankfully everyone is OK, and there’s relatively minor structural damage.

Still, I feel terrible and I wanted to share it with you here to:

1) Emphasize the safe practice of WHM,

2) Help me get this episode off my chest, learn from it, and move on, and

3) Offer a lesson to keep in mind as we trudge through the COVID-19 nightmare.

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Ice baths in Iceland

Highlights from my intense week at the Iceland Into The Wild Within Expedition

In this article, I will walk you through some of the most powerful moments and lessons that stuck with me from the Into the Wild Within Iceland Expedition, which ran from Feb 27 to March 5, 2020.

The expedition was centered around the Wim Hof Method (WHM), and it also brought in a mix of other practices like yoga, meditation and therapeutic sound healing.

It was one of the wildest and most intense weeks of my life, and I boiled it down into the following seven sections (which you can jump to as you like using the links below):

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