Preparation WITH Action

Posted on June 30, 2010 by Scott Gould

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6skbTUknac

If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

I had a phone call a while ago with someone who basically wasn’t doing any action because they were in preparation. Whilst I say myself that if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail, I believe there is a difference between preparation with action, and preparation for action.

Let me explain:

Preparation for action believes that you need to create a masterplan and therefore need your key relationships and connections in place before you can do anything. It believes that all action will be based purely on this preparation. It says theory defines reality.
Preparation with action believes that everything is fluid. As I described yesterday, you can’t predict what will yield a return in your life – and that preparation in a vacum without action is like trying to create a master plan and predict every turn without understanding that once you begin acting, everything changes. It says reality defines theory.

The reason why I’m thinking about this is because my 18-year old brother Todd is at a cross road, as are many young people. People his age have been paralysed with too many choices, and the trait of our generation (I’m 26) is that few get into a working habit and settle down with focus. Of course, not that you have to be settled into a day job – but these guys also generally lack the self insight to know what skills they are amassing – and therefore find themselves at 30 without that fundamental knowledge of themselves, and then having to start all over again and reboot their working life.

The truth is these guys have a wealth of transferable skills, but no one to help them see that (because often they can’t see it themselves). I am concerned that we have a stronger focus on a process of “College, Uni, Gap Year, Job”, that when it breaks, people freak out, and that also skips the whole point of learning skills and leadership through action!

The lie that we’ve created for Todd and others is that you need to follow the trail of University education and everything will be OK. But I continually have graduates asking for my advice and asking to do internships with me because they have no experience and no one will hire them. They’ve been preparing for action – not preparing with action.

Preparation with action is a mindset. It just requires you to think “DO”. I keep telling the young people I work with to start doing what they love now. If they want to be film makers, don’t wait to college to ‘learn’ – start making films now! And the same with practically every other career.

My advice is two fold:

Do. (Well, Do Talk Do)
Rather than thinking “Uni, gap year, job, work my way up”, think “Where can I get the next transferable skill that I need to learn?”

Your Leading Thoughts

What would be your pieces of advice to the people in Todd’s position?
Is there a framework you know of that is more fleshed out than this that I can share with my interns?

Another look at Scattering Seeds

Posted on June 29, 2010 by Scott Gould

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NigmIlPr9k

If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

This is a quick clip of me on Tuesday 15th June in Helsinki, chatting about how Like Minds Conversation Helsinki came together. I wanted to show it because I’ve having another thought about value vs volume and also about spreadability being like scattering seeds.

The point is that Like Minds in Helsinki came about through a chain of events that I could never have planned. In actual fact, it came about because we asked 1000heads to partner with us for our Like Minds Conference in February, but without charging them – so essentially promoting them for free. We loved what they were doing and just wanted to use the platform that we had to give them more exposure.

Of course, our relationship began to flourish from that point. One connection then hooked onto another, and before we knew it, we’re in Helsinki running a Conversation and also a Summit with the tourist board of Finland.

Value vs Volume

The value play says that rather than seeking to grow through shallow touches with lots of people (therefore volume being required to turn a profit), we seek deep relationships that have far more yield. This is contrary to most internet and social media marketing which is purely about volume. However with my story of Helsinki, I want to reevaluate this a little.

I’m not sure if you can predict which relationships will be valuable and which won’t. We’ve all been let down by people we had expectations of, and then been surprised by others who have exceeded our expectations. This is church, in business, in work, in life, in family – in relationships of any kind.

This means that if I carefully plant my few seeds in a few select locations, am I not leaving room for this exception equation. You’d invest in the ones who you predict will yield the most return, and leave the ones that you predict would not yield a good return. And then problem with that is as we described above – your expectations aren’t always right. People surprise you – either by letting you down, or coming to the fore.

In my mind I am beginning to see that we need both the value and the volume play. Spreadability is like scattering seeds – and you don’t know which of those seeds will yield what. But by scattering a volume of seeds, you create room for expectations to be both let down and exceeded.

This volume-based scattering is like the training ground where value-based relationships then come to the fore. Something that my social sales funnels make room for.

Your Leading Thoughts

We all acknowledge this effect – synchronicity – is the product of planning?
Can you predict a value based relationship?

Where to Begin…

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Scott Gould

Hey guys.

I’m sorry for not sooner getting back to writing after our time in Finland with Like Minds Conversation Helsinki. Part of it is that I just don’t know where to begin. So I guess a good place to start is to first thank those who put in much of the hard work, my team:

This is Jonny, James, Rachel, Jon, John, Jason and Claudia. The oldest in the photo is me (26), and the youngest is James (15).

All of these guys are punching well above their age. Jason, for instance, who has worked with me for almost a year now, and on all the Like Minds events thus far, is personally known by everyone of our Like Minds Alumni – a collection of 50 industry leaders like Mel Exon, Olivier Blanchard, Molly Flatt, Maz Nadjm, John Bell and the rest.

I keep on saying, over and over and over that firstly, it’s all about people, and that secondly, one is too small a number to achieve signficiance.

Well here are the guys who are helping Like Minds be significant - most recently by using our international platform to promote the incredible work being done in Helsinki.

That last sentence made an important distinction that you might’ve missed – so I’ll make it clearer: Like Minds is about using an event to promote a community, and not about using a community to promote an event. If one is too small a number to achieve significance (and it is), then you need to partner with the communities around you to build something of shared value to everyone.

It’s far too easy to crucify people on the altar of running the event that was built to serve people in the first place. In other words, the event is made for people, not people for the event.

In building participatory events (or attendee-centered events as they are known), you have to be very prepared in order to make it as easy as possible for your participants to learn, but you never sacrifice their learning at the expense of standards or protocol.

I have lots of things that I want to talk about that I’ve experienced over the last 2 weeks. It’s the amount of stuff that has happened and that I’ve learnt that has literally paralyzed me from communicating it. But – I must get it down. I’ll post some of it at the Like Minds site, and then carry out some deeper analysis on the topics and ideas here that we can then munch over and discuss.

I also want to, again, thank you for your support and encouragement. I felt it everyday that I was there.

Yours,
Scott

In A Year…

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Scott Gould

I started this blog of ours a year ago today. Since then, well, awesome things have happened.

A year ago I never thought I’d be running an event in Helsinki today, or meeting the incredible people I’ve got to meet, or spend a day consulting Finland on their Social Media strategy.

But more so, I never thought I’d appreciate people I’ve never physically met so much.

Thank you guys.
Scott

Building The Kingdom: Generalists and Specialists

Posted on June 15, 2010 by Scott Gould

We’ve been discussing the mini-series of “Building the Kingdom”, which has been a very insightful time for us to hear from one another on what it takes to build something that is strong, influential and significant. Notice I don’t say successful, which has personal and financial nuances, but rather I say significant, which instead speaks of legacy and making a difference to others.

Today I want to discuss something that came from our church leadership team, and is something that we have been thinking about and working out over the last 9 months.

A Leadership Dilemma

Despite having pioneered a number of successes over the last 7 years that I have been self employed, 6 months ago I found myself again in an all too familiar situation: I hadn’t built team, evidenced by these core symptoms:

I was doing a lot of the final production work that was being delivered in my areas of responsibility
I kept attracting people to myself who weren’t team builders themselves
I wasn’t regularly adding people into my teams
I wasn’t getting past the issues of scaling my areas, due to a lack of team
I was the bottleneck for at least 70% of the tasks being done in my areas of responsibility

The diagnosis? I was a perfectionist. Or rather, I was a specialist.

Specialists

If it’s focussing on one particular task or element that you often find yourself doing, tinkering over one cog in a machine almost obsessively, then you may well be a specialist.

Specialists are those who have a perfectionist, often creative, streak and tend to over focus on something in order to master it. They can multi-task, but they find it hard to have too many priorities in general in their life at a time, and often when a few interest or ‘fad’ is found, the old interests are cast aside.

As a result of their ability to focus deeply on one thing, they can produce at a high level of excellence in their interest. This is why I find most academics, creatives, athletes, geniuses and such are specialists.

Generalists

If it is organising multiple parts of a project, having an instinctive ability to put people to task, and bringing an idea to fruition, then you’re likely to be a generalist.

I think most people who are ‘born leaders’, and tend to be the typical number 1, are generalists because they see the bigger picture. If the specialist is obsessing over the function of a single cog, it is the generalist is overseeing the production of the machine – or rather it’s ability to produce.

Generalists tend to think with the end picture and with result, whereas specialists (myself) are more motivated by things being done right and in their perfect order.

Putting Them Together

For team building you need both generalist and specialists, and they need each other to achieve significance. As it’s said, one is too small a number to achieve significance:

A generalist, the natural team builder, needs the specialists to perform the expert and intricate tasks, in order to achieve an end result
A specialist needs the generalist to focus their work and link it together with other specialists, in order to achieve an end result

Nature and Nurture

The big question then, coming back to where I found myself 6 months ago, is can you be a specialist and become a genrealist, and vice versas?

Having discussed this concept with our church leadership team 6 months ago, I gained the self-insight that I am a specialist by nature. Every since I was a kid, I’ve had a fascination with order and doing things right, and focussed obsessively on my creative endeavors to make them the best that I could.

However the dilemma was facing me: I wasn’t building team. Through gaining the self-insight into myself, I was able to deduce two things:

I have influence with people because I have focus, expertise and a good track record
I can learn anything that I decide to specialise in by obsessing over it

Therefore, I decided that I could turn my obsession onto becoming a team builder, and expand my influence into building my team.

The result? I’d like to discuss that later, actually. What I’d like to discuss now though, is what I’d like your leading thoughts on.

Your Leading Thoughts

Are you a generalist or a specialist? Why? What’s the evidence for either?
Can you learn one or the other?
Are their General Specialists and Special Generalist? If so, what the two axis in this 2×2?

Like Minds Conversation Helsinki

Posted on June 14, 2010 by Scott Gould

Tomorrow is a big day for me as I leave for Helsinki to hold the first international Like Minds event – Like Minds Conversation Helsinki: Real Time in Real Life.

I am, of course, thrilled. I’m going to be meeting some exceptional people over this coming week, as well as taking with me a contingent of exceptional people to Helsinki to engage in a very exciting learning experience.

This has also been a learning experience for me. I can tell you right away I’ve made mistakes and learned some valuable lessons for the future, mainly about community and how to organise an event over email and phone, without being there. Whilst I’ve spoken at events and planned events around the world, this is the first time I have planned an event from afar. I’ll be sharing these lessons over the coming weeks – probably in video form – which will be good to get your input on too.

Want to know one of them now? Ok, you’ve pulled my leg.

We received a lot of praise and feedback for how well Like Minds Conference 2010 was organised, which I have to agree with. Without being arrogant, it was the most well organised event that I have designed, and it was the best event that I have ever been to with regards to being minute perfect (which is mainly down to my wonderful wife Faye.)

We were pretty prepared for that, but I never knew how easy it was until planning Like Minds Conversation Helsinki. The level of preparation that you need for an international event that you are organised virtually, as opposed to physically, is ten-fold, and likewise communication is ten-fold and the amount of lead time you require, and advance booking of all the elements is also ten-fold. I’ve already outlined how to improve this, and am already drawing up the partnership documents and the event run sheet for Washington DC in September and then Exeter in October now.

My Itinerary This Week

My itinerary is arrive in Helsinki on Tuesday, and then meet with the local press and media as well as locals in general during the day. If you are in Helsinki, let me know. I want to meet you!

Wednesday night I am speaking, as you know, at Dicole Oz on People-to-People (which will be streamed live), and then Thursday 17th June is the big day – Like Minds Conversation Helsinki.

You’ll be able to follow the event live online at http://www.twitterface.com/likeminds, thanks to the wonderful team at Fresh ID, lead by my friends Lisa Qualls and the inestimable Kristi Colvin. Please do support me on the day by tuning in and also engaging on the #likeminds hashtag.

Then Friday I am privileged enough to take our team of speakers and guests and spend a day with Visit Finland, the tourist board of the country, discussing and developing a Social Media plan for the country. I can’t begin to tell you how humbled I am that I find myself in this position – it doesn’t seem real to be honest to think I’ll be consulting a country – and I certainly feel the weight of the responsibility. Of course, the team of people we have is exceptional and I have every confidence that we will deliver a very high degree of value for Visit Finland.

Probably the biggest thing in all of this (and as much as it seems a big deal, I know it’s still a small thing in the grand scheme and all), is that this is all happened quite unexpectedly. This is a theme I want to discuss later – I can categorically tell you that 6 months ago (with Like Minds already underway), I didn’t think I’d be here. And a year ago, I certainly didn’t think I’d ever be here.

And where is here, exactly?

I’m not here for profit. I’m here for a cause. I believe that the connections I am making, and the community I am fostering, will be a force for change, and ultimately, for the spiritual and physical benefit of many.

Photo from Like Minds Conference 2010, courtesy of Benjamin Ellis.

Developing A Strong ‘NO’

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Scott Gould

Last week, Rich Quick posted an excellent comment on this blog, talking saying “NO”. It came in the middle of the discussion of the 5 innovations of the iPad, and that Apple’s strength was by saying no to a lot of things, in order to have a stronger and more defined yes. In actual fact, MG Siegler from TechCrunch wrote the same thing yesterday.

Rich’s comment was so good, and so encapsulated the journey that I’ve been on over the last 2 years (and in particular, the last 2 months), that I’d like to share it with all of you. Consider it a lesson in “No.”

The question to ask yourself as you read is, like Apple, what should you say “no” to, so that you can “yes” to?

If you need more advice on a “strong no” when you’re done with this, then watch this video from Robin Dickinson on the subject.

How Rich Quick Learnt To Say No

By Rich Quick

It’s something I’ve discovered over the course of my business career anyway. The power of “no”.

I come from a sales background. Salespeople love the word “yes”, it makes them money.

I also trained to be a teacher – and both my parents were teachers. (Good) teachers also love to say “yes”. Yes, I can help you. Yes, you did do well on your homework.

So, “no” come unnaturally to me. Continue reading →

Transparency in 2012

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Scott Gould

This week began interestingly when I commented on a Telegraph article on the iPhone 4, which had it’s ‘10 reasons not to buy the iPhone 4‘, none of which were factually grounded.

I commented saying that it was poor journalism considering it was false information, but the shock came when my comment was promptly deleted. What followed, as you can imagine, was a storm in a tea cup of accusation to the writer of the article and the Telegraph when it was clear they were not just deleting but actually EDITING a large number of the comments that people were making.

Of course, we all know how poor this behaviour is, but I want to look at it in the light of another post by Vikki Chowney at Reputation Online the week before, looking at a recent example of crisis management from Starbucks.

Starbucks’ Facebook page was jacked and a large number of offensive messages were broadcast to it’s 7.5m fans. Starbucks got to work and deleted the comments (which took a long time), but then received criticism for removing all presence of these messages without acknowledging what had taken place. Vikki asked me for my insights, but I think our friend Olivier Blanchard made a great comment in which he said what I was quoted as saying better:

Deleting a comment because it is “inconvenient” is a big no-no. You can’t do that in this space, as Nestle found out. However, deleting (or not approving) a comment because it is purposely offensive and malicious is absolutely fine. I wouldn’t bury the deletion though. It doesn’t hurt to state that one or several comments were deleted because they were offensive and violated the the rules of acceptable behavior on the community page. That takes care of the transparency issue. Starbucks shouldn’t sweat it, though. They did the right thing and acted responsibly in this instance.

Here’s my point: Transparency in 2012 will mean documentation of every action.

You can’t just change anything anymore. The Wikipedia model, that every change (no matter how miniscule) is documented is going to become the standard.

For the Telegraph, this means that if you really must moderate and eject comments that touch your brand, then you need to put them in an ‘eject section’ that can be perused if users so wish. (By the way, watch this and tell what is difference between Nestlé and Telegraph?)

For Starbucks, it means and me and Olivier pointed out, you need to acknowledge the incident at the least.

Your Leading Thoughts

How do you think this will effect bloggers like myself? Like editing pages and posts?
How do you think this translates into deleting tweets, etc? Does this mean we have to think a lot more before we tweet?
Most importantly: Why is transparency becoming a big deal?

Building The Kingdom: Knowing Me, Knowing You

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Scott Gould

My friend Robin Dickinson had what I described as the greatest blog ever recently. His post “Share Words“, in which he gave hands on advice on assisting people with their own share words – short phrases to help him share what they are about – to every person who commented. The best bit was how the community began helping one another with their share words, and to date, there are 697 comments.

To be a king maker, you have to know your kings. The strongest teams are those who know each other inside out, and can maximise each other’s strengths and minimise each other’s weaknesses. This is why Robin’s share words are so important, because they help us know each other.

Knowing you, and you knowing me, means that we don’t compete with each other but we complete each other:

When anyone asks me who to speak to about digital publishing, I tell them it’s Andrew Davies and Ed Barrow at Idio.
If anyone needs measurement and integration consultancy with Social Media, I tell them they need to speak to Olivier Blanchard and attend Red Chair in London later this month.
Anyone who is overloaded I tell to read Robin Dickinson’s blog immediately and start developing diamond-focus.
Those who want Social Media advice and are in Bristol or Cheltenham I tell to speak to Chris Hall and attend Media140 in Bristol this month.
Any person who wants to really impact on a social scale I hook up with Stephanie Rudat and the exceptional work she is doing, or point to Jeff Hurt and Dave Lutz to learn how to improve learning.
For those wanting to take their organisations beyond marketing, I refer them to Ann Holman.

And likewise, these people are plugging people into me who need the strengths that I have.

The Multiplying Effect of People-to-People

When we talk people-to-people like this, we encounter a multiplying effect. A scripture in the bible that confounded me for years was “One can put a thousand to flight, two can put ten thousand to flight.” I never understood how 1+1 could equal 10, but then I began to realise that if I spend my day doing what I am best at, and let others do what they are best at, then I no longer have to waste my time and neither do they. My day becomes more productive, and our combined productivity equals a 10.

The big question of course is “do you know me?” – or rather – “do I know you?” The volume-based game that most are playing online booms with a resounding “No” because everyone is too busy building their own super personal ego brand, complete with logo and 30 day programme, that they don’t have the time nor the inclination to get to know you.

However people-to-people is not a volume but value play and we must know each other – and know each other well. Without this, we do not understand each other’s strengths and therefore don’t achieve this multiplication of strengths.

The answer then is plain: know me, and enable me get to know you.

Note: this is an active pursuit, and the one of a leader. Followers not necessary.

Your Leading Thoughts

How do you get to really know people, practically?
How are you managing those relationships successfully and ensuring that you build deep, value-based relationships rather than getting sucked into the volume game that most people play?

P.S. If you have no idea what that photo above is about, watch this.