Top 10 Productivity Tips

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Scott Gould

On yesterday’s post Ian Mcleary shared his 10 top productivity tips. Very useful:

1. Sort out my to-do list every morning
2. Start at 7 every morning.
3. Review my 99 day goals every week
4. Review my stats every week
5. Keep my CRM system up to date
6. Bring my laptop to meetings and be productive when waiting for people before meetings.
7. Do the GYM at least 3 times a week at lunchtime. The GYM helps me think and makes me more productive.
8. Avoid the laptop 1 day a week. You are more productive with 6 days work not 7.
9. Group my tasks by context, if I’m on the phone I try to do the phone calls all at once.
10. Make sure I’m doing 1 to 9

I’d say those are pretty good - although point 10 is blatant cheating.

Your Leading Thoughts

Dont’ worry about 10. What are your top 3 productivity tips?

And then, and then, and then

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Scott Gould

Whenever I talk with too much certainty about what I’ll do then, and then, and then, I know that I’ve become arrogant and lazy.

One of the gems from the Like Minds Summit back in February was short term execution with a long term goal. In other words, it was “there’s where we want to be, but let’s execute this first.”

So, essentially, there’s no “then,”, there’s only “now.”

Your Leading Thoughts

Do you have similar traits when you get too confident and become complacent? (Or is it just me?)
When did you learn that execution was more important that ideas?

Photo by juicyrai

Video: What One Man Can Do For God

Posted on August 29, 2010 by Scott Gould

A lot. Mix faithfulness with tenacity and you see this one man did amazing things, not for himself, but for God:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdspKNEzH54

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

This video convicts me as a Christian, as a marketer who understands that what should drive us is a genuine love for people, and finally as a human who wants to do the right thing, even if there’s no return. There’s no telling what someone can do when they don’t care who gets the credit.

Your Leading Thoughts

Let’s crack open the discussion – we know each other well enough – how does this video inspire you? As a marketer, as a person, and what about as a believer in something?
Lessons we can draw – what are they?

Photo by Leland Francisco

What Is Social? Well…

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Scott Gould

What with starting work this week on a manuscript for a book – “Social” being the working title – I want to share some of the content that I will make up the backbone of the book that I haven’t made public until now, as it’s been reserved for paying clients only.

[slideshare id=5063806&doc=whatissocial-100826163537-phpapp02]

If you can’t see the above slideshow, click here, or see it directly on Slideshare.

This is a short 12 slide presentation that explains succinctly what the difference between social and broadcast as – as mindsets before they are media – and then three lessons that we draw that help us understand social.

Social is a big topic for me. Everything I do keeps coming back to it – whether it’s learning, event design, social media, marketing, church, relationships – social is right in there. And it’s not that social is a new thing. Far from it. Social is our original and default method of communication. As our default method, it also is ruled by our default physical limitations (how loud we can speak, etc), and it is from these limitations that we create broadcast, which is a one way extension of what is socially created, for wider reach.

My basic premise is that we have social innovation and broadcast duplication. Social is the fluid conversation that is a real-time co-crated product. Broadcast is the recording of that conversation and duplicating it so more people can hear it. In social, the conversation can change. In broadcast, it does not.

What the book will then lead into is a discussion of the Social / Broadcast Matrix, and the three social strategies. And true to these three strategies, the book will function on one: socialised channels, socialised content and socialised culture. In other words, it’ll be available everywhere you’ll want to consume it, it’ll be full of UGC (i.e. YOU), and it’ll be open for you to use and build upon.

(You can watch a video of me discussing Social on a larger scale here)

Your Leading Thoughts

Do you see holes in my premise? Given I’m basing a book on this, I need you input!
How would you like to contribute to the creation of ‘Social’?

I’m Back!

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Scott Gould

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnyKNHc__g4

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

Hello friends – I am back from Spain (36°C) to the glorious English summer of clouds and rain. Certainly I am very, very rested and relaxed. I did no work except on the first two days, and for the majority of the holiday I didn’t even know what time it was as my watch and phone were out of sight!

A year ago after my summer holiday I said I felt re-envisioned, which was just before we launched Like Minds. This time, I feel like I’ve got a bit more re-prioritised.

Getting perspective, getting away and seeing things with fresh eyes, is a wonderful byproduct of a holiday. I find that month-on-month, we add things into our life that often are very unproductive, but we take them on because they demand our attention, and we get into the tradition of doing things for the sake of doing them. Many times we don’t even see this happen.

Or we find we are putting disproportionate amounts of time into the things that don’t yield the return that we should be putting more time into.

What I’ve found is that because a holiday STOPS you doing the little things like this, you are forced to reconsider what the priorities are.

Your Leading Thoughts

I’m keen to know how you get perspective and how you find holidays help you.

A Conversation With Me and Andrew Pickering

Posted on August 25, 2010 by Scott Gould

I had the pleasure last month of having a conversation with Professor Andrew Pickering from Exeter University, on the subject of “where do good ideas come from?”

The conversation was the latest in a range of interviews at Imperica, a smart new project by the renowed Paul Squires which “tracks a number of disciplines, wraps them all together, finds the interesting angles, then talks to the people behind them.”

The conversation began with a discussion of how accesible ideas are today, which made me say that I think ideas are harder to actualise because of the false confidence that an abundance of them creates, and ended up touching on many things including education. Here’s an extract:

Are we seeing a shift from intellectual rigour to the more technical display of “doing things”?

AP: During my lifetime, the number of young people that go through university has increased enormously. When I was an undergraduate, it was 10% of the population. Now, the target is 50%. That change implies a change in what university education, is. So, if you pick the cleverest 10% and tell them to sit around for three years, they can very probably go deeply into something. I studied Physics. If you just pick half of the population and say that “We’ll give you an education”, then education is going to be something else. The ratio of students to teaching is much higher, so you can’t give people that kind of personal attention and engagement.

Education itself has been reconceived since Mrs. Thatcher’s day. Now, it is seen as a way to fit people into the economy – to produce useful cogs for the industrial machine. Learning for itself is not a priority of the Government. So, higher education becomes industrialised, and produces an industrial product.

SG: The irony in that, is that we’re a knowledge economy – we’re not even in an industrial economy. And, yet, you’re right, the industrialised approach, turning out people who then become knowledge workers…

AP: It’s an industrialised conception of knowledge… not for its own sake, but “useful knowledge”. Physics isn’t all that useful, but engineering is. I don’t think that’s anything to do with the Internet, but the Internet feeds into this trend that already exists. The same goes for research; funding is made increasingly conditional on producing useful knowledge. How are “users” going to benefit from this knowledge?

Read the whole interview between Andrew and I here.

Your Leading Thoughts

Are ideas more accessible today, in your option? And if so, what are the repercussions of that?

Using Social Media to Extend and Enhance Offline Events and Experiences

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Scott Gould

Wow, that’s a mouthful. And that’s exactly what I’ll be discussing at the unGeeked Elite Retreat in Chicago on May 12 – 14, 2011.

How does Social Media extend offline experiences? Sure, you can get a long list of resources that will make your event what is called a ‘hybrid’ (a virtual and physical event), but how do you know which ones are the priority for you, and what is the strategy behind those tactics anyway?

In 2004 I was running a youth organisation that I started called Feedback. We’d already discovered that by putting bands in the show they’d bring their fans along, and that would increase our numbers, but it was when we latched onto MySpace that we discovered the ability to increase participation virtually, aside from the physical limitations of our monthly events. (You can see some old footage on our old MySpace profile still today!)

This really is the benefit of Social Media as an extension of an offline offering. An offline event or experience is typically a single point in space, time and matter, but through Social Media, it can be extended in all three of these areas.

We then need to know how to extend those three in a way that is meaningful and relevant to ‘the why‘ of the offline event in the first place. Perhaps the most helpful element in this is Joe Pine’s model on The Multiverse (For a fuller discussion of this, you read our discussion on ‘virtually present‘)

There are 8 possible configurations of merging time, space, matter with non-time, non-space, non-matter. Joe presents a video on it here, which I would recommend you watch should you have a spare 50 minutes to get acquainted with the future.

Space: virtual / physical. This is the mix between being physically there, and being virtually there. Being virtually there means that you don’t have to be restricted by:
Time: linear / non-linear. This means that I be at the event before the event, during the event, after the event. You get the idea. This also means that I lift the restriction of:
Matter: real / bits. This is about what things are made from. You can be in the same physical space but then still still experience bits – digital data – with which you can then contact those who are virtually present.

It can get very complex, which is what my talk certainly won’t be. I’ll be keeping things simple by getting back to the three core Social strategies that we’ve talked about recently, namely Socialising Channels, Socialising Content, and Socialising Culture. (I think things are easier to remember in threes, don’t you?)

I don’t want to share much more, but there’s a good taster for you here, and I’ll be sharing more of the content over the months, as we’ve got quite a bit of time until May!

Your Leading Thoughts

What’s the best example that you know of, of Social Media extending an event?
What would be you dream usage of Social Media as an enhancing of an offline experience?

Legendary photo courtesy of Benjamin Ellis

Producing Proof

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Scott Gould

My good friend Munya Hoto once told me that we live to produce proof. I like that. It means that we live to produce physical proof of what we believe.

When I started out as a consultant two years ago, I had some proof, but it wasn’t clearly documented. The first thing to do is certainly to produce proof (and once you have, that doesn’t separate you from most), but actually producing that proof in a way that someone get’s it is hard work. Many of us have successes, but still there isn’t the knowledge of those successes that we’d like.

I think the thing with proof is that one man’s proof is not another man’s proof. I was talking to a friend the other day and offering some insights in their business. Whilst they are greatly respected, no one really knows exactly what this person does and therefore doesn’t purchase or promote their services. To him, there was proof, but to others, there wasn’t.

Michael Meyers, my pastor, and I were talking the other day and he made the exceptional observation that everything you say before the event is an intangible. It’s only after the event that you have something tangible. That is sooo good – because don’t just all of us focus on before the event, rather than after the event? “I can do this, we will have this, we have got this going on, I am able to deliver this for you,” etc, etc – but this is all intangible speak. Rather we should be saying “I have produced this. I have done this. We have made this happen. Do you want it too?”

Before the event is intangible, after the event is tangible.

This is why my friend saw they had proof but others hadn’t. He’d seen what he’d done before – the tangible parts – but he couldn’t communicate it in a tangible way.

Michael went on to say two further things which illustrate what you need to do, which I thought were gold:

1. Pick up the proof

After you’ve done it – after the event – you have to pick up the bits that prove you did it. The testimonies, the videos, the reviews, the blogs, the Facebook comments and the best tweets.

I’ll be honest, this is something I’m bad at because I’m exhausted after the event. His tip is to introduce a team of people whose sole responsibility is post-event PR. I’ll be giving it a go over the coming months, so I’ll let you know how it goes.

2. Publish the proof

Once you’ve picked it up, you need to publish it. This is where Social Channels help. Scatter that proof, baby. Have it on YouTube, the blog, the static pages, on Flickr, on Twitter, on Facebook. Make sure every channel has proof – because people are always looking at various channels and might never see the whole picture.

Your Leading Thoughts

I’m bad at producing proof and need to get better. If you are successful at this, what tips can you share?
This does fly in the face of the myth of the over the top digital personal brand, because they often lack proof. How do, however, produce proof without bragging?

Interesting image courtesy of Austin Kleon

The Key To Creating A Compelling Experience

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Scott Gould

Branding used to be all about market differentiation. When I saw your logo, read your brand promise, and used your products, the idea was that I felt different about your offering than I about your competitors offering.

That’s the way it used to be.

Today, we switch on the TV, and it’s often a hard job remembering what goes with what. That car advert that was great, but was it Ford or Citroen? Look online and place two recruitment companies next to each other, and what’s the difference between them, other than the logo? Both promise me work, both claim to be specialists, and both offer me the same service.

Essentially, they are offering the same products and the same services with different wrappers.

As my friend Joe Pine says, the next economic offering is now experiences – a customised service that is so compelling, so unique, so distinct, that the customer cannot help be caught up in the experience of it. This is what consumers want (see the video about it here), because gone are the days of appealing to need, and here are the days of appealing to emotion.

This of course is all well and good but a tad unpractical, because ‘create an experience’ is not the most useful of instructions, not is is obvious what an experience is, not what the word even means for varying industries. It’s easy to know what an experience is in the realm of theme parks, but what about online shopping or publishing?

Creating An Alternate Reality

The key to creating experience is in creating an alternate reality.

The virtue of most experiences is that they are different to our normal life. Most memorable experiences were memorable because they were not regular events. It stands to reason then that if by engaging with you I experience something that is not the norm (in a good way, preferably), then I remember it – and the more compelling, innovative and relevant to me it is, the more of an experience I have.

The way that I do this is figure out what the norm is, or what “the world” is that most people are living in with the particular industry I’m focussing on. Then, I create a world where all the negatives of that don’t exist, or where the positives are accentuated. So, if I wanted to be controversial: “ScottGould.me is a world where blogs have deep discussion, in a world where most blogs have no discussion.”

More examples

Geek Squad: th:e alternate reality that they create is a world where any computer problem is no problem, in world where most computer problems are big problems.
iPod: the alternate reality that it creates is a world where music is anywhere you are, within three clicks, in a world where music is on a CD, in album, on a shelf.
Disney World: the alternate reality that it creates is a world where happiness is everywhere, in a world where happiness is not everywhere.
The River Dream Centre: the alternate reality that we create is a church that you feel at home at, in a world where most church services are alien to people.
Amazon Prime: the alternate reality that it creates is a world where you get any book in the world tomorrow, in a world where you have to wait.

Some of these are experiences that are reliant on you being at that juncture in space, time and matter, and others are not, which is why I added Amazon Prime in. We’ll get into this more in the coming weeks, but remember what we’ve already discussed about the best experiences often being the ones that you don’t experience directly, like the anticipation for a movie or Apple product release.

Next time you reasses your products and services, consider if you shouldn’t start standing out by customising them into an experience that creates an alternate reality.

Your Leading Thoughts

You might well already create alternate experience realities. I’d like to know what they are…
How do you think this translates into social media and mobile technology?