In case you missed it

Happy Friday from the comfort of the air-conditioned classroom out here at Ridge Motorsports Park, one of my homes away from home.

It's been a very busy season, context-switching back and forth between my growing consulting, coaching and leader development business, Red Currant Collective, and my pro and personal life in motorcycles (hear more at The Moto Curious wherever you listen to podcasts, including Apple Podcasts or Spotify).

Today is really strange for me: I'm here at the track for a track day while there's a MotoAmerica round happening out in Brainerd, Minnesota. This is the first MotoAmerica round I've been home for since we started the team last season, but this track day landed as a mandatory on my calendar before the MotoAmerica schedule was published, so Chris hit the road solo and I'm here representing at our home track. It's been oddly nice to have this time to just be still and think slowly, this morning

odd to say while I'm at the racetrack, I know

but it's true. I'm working today in a non-riding capacity, and it's too busy for me to sneak out for a session but not so busy I can't sit down and get some writing done, so here we are.

I'll try to keep this one quick – to just share a few developments you may have missed since I haven't made time to tell you about them!

Red Currant Collective is growing

Many of you are here because we've been acquainted professionally, so here's a quick update on Red Currant Collective. We're experiencing a rate of retention and referral I'm really proud of, and honing our toolkit for a tiny bit of scale.

For folks who still scratch their heads and ask "but what do you do?" our work is focused on helping status-quo-challenging organizations, leaders and teams set and operationalize to achieve big, bold goals. We work specifically with organizations whose success depends on improving performance on consequential non-revenue measures of success that impact human lives: improved customer outcomes, risk reduction, and improved employee experience and retention are a few common themes.

How do we do it? In most settings we blend consulting, 1:1 and group coaching, and learning and development to help clients execute-to-learn. We're almost always working to enable key leaders and a program core team to take the reigns and run their own aligned goal program.

We measure our success in a few unconventional ways:

1. Spontaneous exclamations by participants of phrases like "this was a great use of time," "that was painless!" and/or "we're done already? Can we take some more time for this?"
2. We also listen for feedback that leader and teams have more time to think; and improvements in their organizational "noise-to-signal" ratio.

If you'd like to keep closer tabs on Red Currant Collective, you can join our (low-volume, high-value) email list. Here's a sample, sent today, reflecting the tension that nearly every client I'm working with is feeling at this point in the year!

• Are you experiencing "growing pains" in your organizational goals?

Ultimately, it's incredibly rewarding to have my professional life focused on my personal vision:

A harm-free world of work, where everyone can live and labor in their zones of genius and joy.

When I mentioned a tiny bit of scale, my focus is to continue working with large / corporate organizations about as much as we are right now, but to add more opportunities for individuals to work with us and benefit from the same practices our corporate clients do, at an individual scale.

Meet Thinkydoers™

One of the ways we're doing that is by creating connection among other Thinkydoers™ – deep-thinking changemakers – like us. I'm trying hard to overcome my perfectionism and just publish some of the tools, resources, playbooks, and frameworks I work with every single day with my corporate clients, in a form that individuals can benefit from them at more scale. I'm making a little bit of progress on that on TikTok and also, by sharing pieces of the work we're doing via the Thinkydoers podcast (available wherever you listen to podcasts).

Awhile back we shared a two-part series I'm really proud of:

1. The Downsides of Managing Up: via Apple Podcasts or Spotify
2. Replacing "Managing Up" with Self-Management: via Apple Podcasts or Spotify

I'm trying to wrap my head around doing some more casual / less scripted / more conversational episodes, so please help me out:

1. What would you like to hear me talk about in a short (10-20 minute) podcast episode?
2. Or even better: what would you like to come talk with me about on Thinkydoers?

Drop me an email with your thoughts!

Yes, I'm "the lady from TikTok"

I'm receiving endless crap from my husband and team for how often people (often, ten-year-old boys) walk up to me in the MotoAmerica paddock and exclaim, "You're that lady from TikTok!" based on our CW Moto TikTok.

I was having so much fun with the team's TikTok that I started one for myself. (There may be a Thinkydoers spin-off eventually, but for now I'm just me.)

@saralobkovich

The Strategy Inside Everything

I was incredibly nervous and excited to join Adam Pierno for an episode of his podcast, The Strategy Inside Everything. Months ago, Adam asked via Twitter:

"What could you accomplish at work if you weren't afraid to lose your job?"

I don't remember what I said, and I can't find the tweet with a quick search, but whatever I said landed an invite to join Adam for a podcast episode talking about fear.

And friends: I had a freaking blast.

We didn't actually talk about anything I had planned. And there are, naturally, things I wish I'd said differently. But it was so much fun to have a conversation like that with another strategy-brain. It was also really surreal. As a long-time listener, who looks up to a lot of Adam's guests as "virtual mentors," it was pretty rad to find myself invited to that particular cocktail party.

Alright. That's enough for one Friday afternoon when nobody's looking at their email.

May your weekend activities replenish your energy and bring you some joy. Drop me a note if this sparks any questions or thoughts, share with a friend if you like, and thank you for sticking around despite my lack of regularity here!