It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Here’s the challenge:

1. Take this weekend to firstly rest and refreshen. Enjoy your loved ones, meet new people, go for a drive – whatever it is. Be sure you something that helps you get a bit of perspective. Mine is a drive in the country.

2. Then get out paper and pen, and write down the deepest things in your heart that you aren’t moving towards like you know you should do.

3. Pick one and write down the very next action, with a due date.

4. Surround yourself with comrades that are also in the arena, for accountability and encouragement. You’ll need them both.

5. Do it. And don’t listen to a single word from any detractors. (If you need to get over failure, read this from Olivier Blanchard.)

Your Leading Thoughts

• What is it?

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Get In The Arena

Change is the essence of growth. To not change – that is truly destructive. Change means we are fresh, focussing tighter. Something that Julien Smith spoke about on his blog recently too.

Of course, the typically participator at this blog is someone who is changing regularly. My question then is how do we change?

As you know, I’m a stickler for a good framework. I need a model or process that I can repeat. So I wonder what we are doing to regularly change – is change something that we are intuiting or do some people have a structured approach?

Perhaps the best book I’ve read on this recently, and one of the best altogether, is Switch by Chip and Dan Heath (affiliate link). This book was doing the rounds, so I jumped on the bandwagon and was not disappointed.

They have three key points: Direct the rider (decision making), motivate the elephant (emotional motivation), shape the path (situational optimisation).

I’m starting to use this (and their sub points they have too – best if you buy the book and read) and it’s proving quite useful. I’ve been doing these three for years, but now I am more clearly understanding the why of why I do them, and can better direct, motivate and shape myself!

Your Leading Thoughts

• Do you have a relentless pursuit for something ‘more’ that requires to change often? What does this look like? Why change?
• Does your frequent change mean you often leave things unfinished?
• How do you change? As in – how do you do the process of change?

Photo courtesy of AndYaDontStop

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Change is the Essence of Growth

Think Olivier Blanchard. When Olivier talks about brand management and social media management, people stop talking and listen. When he’s finished talking, people start repeating adapting what he’e said. Why? Because he’s the authority on it.

Now I wrote sometime ago on 5 ways to use Twitter as an Active Authority, but a comment on Wednesday made me see this in a new light, and I’d like to open up the discussion.

On the discussion about the myth of the personal brand, Codi Spodnik commented:

I am re-entering this space after a 5 – 6 year stint as a stay-at-home-mom in a small metro area. I do want to start my own consultancy, sharing the experience I gained before motherhood, helping clients find the right fit for executing their products, helping them articulate their needs and strategize solutions….. still working on the details.

But I have found this space to be cluttered with this talk of “personal branding.” To me, it has the appearance of a cult of Self. After perusing my local “experts” and similar consultants all over the web, I am finding the same talk and catch phrases, regardless of their level of actual experience or competence. I was really struggling with finding a way to create my own genuine identity without engaging in this practice or having that appearance.

I totally feel where Codi is coming from, and so I wanted to get your feedback for her so that she can glean insights from the wealth.

What I want to know is this: If you had to start again, what would you do?

I know what I’d do: I’d create content on a focussed subject that provides people with very clear and practical takeaways, and then engage with anyone who interacted with me or the content at any level, and do my best to help them make the content work for them.

Your Leading Thoughts

• How about you? If you had to start again, what would you do?

Photo courtesy of Emiliantha

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

If You Had To Start Again

We talked a while ago about ‘building the kingdom’ – looking at how a strong team is made up of individuals who strongly compliment one another. This is the type of thinking that I’m saying our youth aren’t getting so much of. It requires putting down your ego, and making others kings instead of yourself – being a kingmaker. Contrary to this, most young people want to be the king. Hey, I did, you probably did too.

My concern is, however, that the ‘be the king’ message is way out of hand, and I think it most subtly appears in the whole personal digital brand movement.

What I mean by this is that there is an inordinate emphasis on image and being ‘the social [insert area] guru‘, complete with logo, branded blog, branded avatar, slogan – and then complete lack of actual work. The idea of beefing yourself up is something that Jim Connolly is actually debating right now and is well worth getting in on the discussion.

Again, I’ve been here and made this mistake MANY times. For years I had the issue of having a better logo than actual business, and for years I made myself look bigger than I was. Thankfully, I’ve grown and balanced out somewhat through the mentoring of you guys and others.

But many young people lack this mentoring, and to be honest, we so focus on content online that it makes sense that it would be there starting point, rather than actually creating substance. It seems following is more important than delivering.

What Young People Say About The Myth

I want to share two good pieces on this to get our mind juice flowing a little. The first is from Daniel Agee, who wrote “Make Me King” recently:

I have a photographer friend who is determined to be the most well known photographer on the face of the globe. He is underselling workshops and speaking at as many conventions as he can. He is getting his name out there with abundance. He’s been turning down actual photography work to speak about his photography.

The problem is, his photography is mediocre at best. Where he shines is the experience his studio offers. While he is fighting to show how great he is and how much he can help others, he’s killing his own studio. By no longer walking the walk, he’s become an annoying bastard that must likes to talk about how great he can make your studio. His priorities are shot, and if he’s not careful, it will kill his business.

Instead of being the best, he’s trying to show he’s the best.

These people are too concerned with being king. One day, they’ll realize being king isn’t what’s important. It’s about making a kingdom worth being king of, not making yourself king.

Then, Annie Syed said this in a comment:

Moreover, I am discovering that the internet is really round and there is almost an incestuous circling of the same old people, again, and again, and again. Like really? How about you (not *you*) step out of your comfort zone and perhaps change the flow. I do see it happen here and there and it is refreshing. I see you in that line of creating a new momentum. And when I do, I am a religious zealot trying to “convert” others unto these humans. But for the most part it is disappointing.

And you know what is most disappointing is this masquerading of “I can help you” which is really another way to sell your services, product, book, etc. Now, you may be saying, “Well, Annie, people have to make money. We can’t live in a free-for-all society.” I agree. But just keep it authentic. And if you “truly” have no desire to connect with another beyond the talk of the product (or “work”) then state that too. It’s okay.

I guess my biggest realization is how rarely people tap into the humanity of one another. This doesn’t mean one has to spill all their personal stories. Not at all. But here we have a medium like the world wide web, shouldn’t it be beyond a reflection of how “business as usual” is happening on Earth? Or am I right that it is just a reflection of how we function on Earth?

Your Leading Thoughts

• Where, culturally and historically, do these false images come from?
• Rather than trying to modify behaviour, what are the roots behind this thinking, and how do we shift those mindsets?

Photo courtesy of francistoms

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

The Myth of the Personal Digital Brand

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:

1. Do. (Well, Do Talk Do)
2. 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?

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Preparation WITH Action

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.

When someone asks me if I can drop my prices to help them out, I want to say “yes”.

When someone asks me to do a quick fix to their site this afternoon or work over the weekend, I want to say “yes”. (money’s money, after all).

And when they want me to do something that’s a little bit outside my expertise, like a custom CMS or some social media consultancy? I want to say “yes”, of course.

But actually, I’ve found that the more I say yes, the more likely I am to let people down.

So, someone phones me up and asks me to do a quick change to their site this afternoon. No problem, I say. But then the other project I’m working on gets pushed back.

Or I say “yeah, I’ll do a custom online shop for you”, but then there’s a problem that I’ve not come across before – because it’s outside my comfort zone – and the project ends up costing more that we’d expected and taking longer.

So I’ve actually found that “no” is often better than yes. Especially if it’s followed up by a good recommendation.

No, I can’t do a custom online shop. But let me give you the number of a company who can.

No, I can’t fit your work in this week, because that would mean pushing back another client’s work, and that would be unfair.

No, I don’t want to advise you on social media strategy. Give Scott a call instead.

It’s about managing expectations.

It’s better to keep 3 people happy, than to let down 3 people out of 5.

This is what I think Apple are doing with the iPad.

What’s better: To release an iPad that can multitask .. but keeps crashing. Or to release one that can’t multitask (yet) and never crashes?

It’s about managing expectations.

Apple don’t want to be the IT guy who says he’ll be in this afternoon and doesn’t come in for 3 days. They want to be the guy who says he can’t do it for 4 days and sticks to his word.

Photo courtesy of nicholas nova

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Developing A Strong ‘NO’

I work about 14 – 18 hours every day, including Sundays, no exaggeration. I spend about the equivalent of one of those days meeting up with people, an hour per appointment. Some of these are people from Church, but most are people who meet me on Twitter and want to say hi, as well as local business people. Having raised £100,000 for the local economy through Like Minds, I care about my city, and spending time with people is part of the investment that I’m making to boast our city’s standing as a hub of Social Media in the UK.

Needless to say within an hour, you get a lot of good advice. So recently when I said to these local people that we need to turn all free advice and counsel I’d given into a business relationship, and provided a clear list of services, I was rather shocked when only 3 responded with some kind of positivity.

It’s a sobering lesson. You can spend all your time helping people at your expense, and get nothing back. Cue the countless number of Social Media Solos who are pumping at Twitter, networking, blogging, giving out plenty of help, and then sit with nothing in the ‘in’ column at the end of the week. What do you do?

When Helping You Is Hurting Me

I’m right behind the mantra of being helpful. I help people all day everyday and am not inclined to stop. But what do you do when helping people is hurting you? What do you do when being that useful and helpful person comes at a high cost that isn’t being recuperated?

1. Create a limit. Otherwise, you’ll burn out. Control how many people you can see in a week, how much advice you can give, etc.
2. Create mass help. I always point people to my blog, or other people’s blogs. No need to sit down with me if you can read it in 5 minutes.
3. Set some homework. Some people just want the magic formula that no one can give. So I set a little bit of homework. If you aren’t prepared to read up, then I’m not prepared to meet up. This clears out the jokers.
4. Dig deep. Cultivate deeper connections with the relationships you already have. Scale the levels of communication. Connection trumps community.

One of the best posts I read this last week was by David Riley on the PROBlogger site, called “Poor bloggers focus too much on blog posts“. If you’re stuck in the helping / blogging / creating side, and it’s hurting you, read this.

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

When Helping You Is Hurting Me

I’ve decided that most of the content consumed on a daily basis is the digital equivilent of frozen ready meals that get warmed and served up in 5 minutes, before being forgotten, having added no nutrition value to the body, and being dropped out into the toilet a day later in the chain of useless bodily consumption.

The irony is that I’m posting content to declare a war of sorts on content, but hear me out: today I’m beginning a collaboration project that you are all invited to.

Do Talk Do

The other day my friend Robin Dickinson said “DO-TALK-DO: continual talk without action lowers your credibility. Far better to talk about the action you took.”

When people ask what collaboration looks like, I’ve now got an answer. It’s this. Collaboration is that we do something. We talk about it’s successes and failures. Then we go and do again.

There’s twice as much doing as there is talking. And the talking is based on action, not theory.

Here’s How It’s Going to Work

I’ve been speaking to you in the comments, on Twitter recently, and face to face with many of you, about a collaboration project. About connections over community. Today it begins. This is how I see it happening to start with:

1. We’ve all done something. So we arrange a time to talk vision – probably on a bit conference call – along the lines of a rough agenda. If you haven’t done, don’t come.
2. If no one responds in the comments and on Twitter to this – then fine – I’ve clearly got it wrong. I’m not going to push it.
3. The aim is that we move ourselves from being content creators to those who make it happen. Goodwill and all that.
4. Put your name in the comments below if you’re in, with contact details.

Want more info? Like what we’re actually going to collaborate on? I don’t have it. The whole point is that this isn’t me, it’s us. And we don’t yet know where we are going.

Let it begin.

By the way, thanks to AJ Pape who inspired me no end last night with a short call where he showed me all the ideas he had ready from Like Minds. You can see them in the picture above. He’s already onboard. Thanks AJ.

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Do Talk Do – What Collaboration Looks Like

Let’s be honest today.

The feedback is coming in from some events running right now – SxSWi, SMWF and some reviews from Like Minds, and something is clear to me: we still are thinking top down.

Yesterday Valeria Maltoni posted “SxSWi in Quotes“, which comprised mostly of people saying their favourite thing at South By SouthWest (SxSW) was, lo and behold, meeting people. Chris Brogan made similar conclusions in his commentary entitled ”We Could Do So Much More“, when he negatively saw people not connecting, as well as panels that weren’t attendee centric. Some how it seems the people come for the people, but the event isn’t organised for this.

Update: Jay Bear has added his thoughts on SxSW today, which also echo the same sentiment. Jay writes that “the feeling of community, and ‘we’re all in this together’ is slipping away.”

Social Media World Forum (SMWF) struggled at the beginning of the week with criticism over the same old content, and poor focus on the attendees. From what I’ve heard, this wasn’t just the event organisers, but the general attitude of many involved (all all levels: sponsors, speakers, delegates) who saw it as another event to push their content – and from what I’ve seen on the #smwf hashtag, this does seem to be true.

The feedback we had for Like Minds was overwhelmingly positive, but the criticism came, and I’m very mindful of it, that there was still lots of talking heads and not enough application. Despite our innovations with the Like Minds Lunchtime Talks, I know many people still didn’t connect and get what they needed to go and implement on Monday morning. More theory than action.

Even at the beginning of the year at the Media140 Meetup in January, there was a point where Glenn Le Santo stood up and broke the broadcast from the panel and actually started some open, honest, two-way communication – which turned it into, again from what I heard, an exceptional evening.

What’s Wrong?

The whole point of Social Media is that it is supposed to be social. Non-broadcast. Non-vertical. But… Social Media events are very broadcast, very vertical, and aren’t social.

Perhaps I should say that they aren’t social enough – and stop being so polarising - but I’m not talking about the social aspect that happens around the content. What I mean is that the foundational concept of the event is not social, it is broadcast. It doesn’t need to be, but it be. And I have a few thoughts why:

1. We idolise content, so the organisers give it.

People who say event organisers do it for money haven’t organised an event. The reason why we are so heavy on broadcasting content is because we so idolise content above comments.

This is another contradiction that irritates me, that we focus on the content not the comments – which is again broadcast over conversation.

2. Speakers and panelists want their 5 minutes.

“Screw where the panel is going, I want to say my bit on what I did” is in the back of many minds, and then out goes the idea of ‘what is helpful to Joe Bloggs in the audience?’ This is why we have our panels planned at Like Minds – because value needs to be thought through. Otherwise, everyone just says the same thing.

And to be fair – why shouldn’t the speakers and panelist get their 5 minutes? Given how much we worship content, it makes sense they’d want to get theirs out too.

3. Much of the audience wants to make money tomorrow with Social Media.

When people say that “it didn’t help me”, what they really mean is “it told me Social Media is hard work and didn’t tell me how to make money from Twitter tomorrow.” They are also the ones with business cards that they throw in everyone’s face…

Of course this isn’t just an issue with Social Media events – it’s an issue with Social Media itself, namely that we focus on content far more than action.

This is top down. It’s not audience centric, it’s author centric. I could so easily use Like Minds to push my personal purposes, but I don’t. I chose to not be author centric.

Solutions?

First: Can we not be a Social Media conference, but a conference that uses Social Media? This distinction alone changes the whole way you promote the event, because Social Media becomes a means, not an end. Therefore you can relax about whether you trend on Twitter or not. Yeah, it’s nice when you do, but it doesn’t actually make a shred of difference.

Second: Drilling down even further, our aims need to shift from providing more content to promoting more connections. Seeing as we already know more than we do, our aims should be to unite people not with more knowledge they don’t use, but with like minded individuals with whom they can make things happen. Seriously – for how much longer can we continue to preach to the converted?

Another way to say this would be to simply to say: make events about people, and action.

Third: We must dare to be different. We’re running the same 1950s conference model with 21st Century ideas. The unconference model is a step towards it, but these tend to be poorly organised and not accessible to those who are newcomers. I consider ‘unconferencing’ to be a part of the event as whole, but not the whole event, as I describe in Creating A People-To-People Conference.

I began to feel the echo chamber effect in December. I guess now it’s really echoing. The days of events riding on the back of Social Media and expecting to just succeed are over – at least for London anyway.

The Change Begins With You

As I described, I think this is stinking thinking that we’ve all got a little of. Stuck on the content wagon.

The first way to break it? Go away and do something.

What do you think?

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

The Issue With Social Media Events: They Aren’t Social

• How many more case studies can we read?
• How many more times can the same common sense be reinterpreted in 5 different points?
• How many more summarises and digest emails can we look through for the same content packaged in new ways?
• How many more comments can you leave saying “Great post”?
• How many more events can you attend?

Lessons from Church

I’m an assistant pastor at my church. We have similar issues: How many sermons can you sit through? How many times can you come to church and hear the same basic principles (change, love, give, help) said in different ways?

There comes a point when you realise you are preaching to the converted. At this point you realise that it’s no longer about what you say, it’s about what they do.

Check out the diagram below. I’ve adapted it from Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren (affiliate link) so that the language is more business orientated.

It’s pretty obvious, but let’s break it down.

• The Crowd are the people in your general vicinity. This could be your city. In Social Media this used to be everyone on Twitter. But now that people follow so many other people, your crowd is probably those that either you follow or who follow you – people that you are linked to, but don’t engage with. These often are not aware of you.
• The Community are those who in my case use the #likeminds hashtag and attended the last Like Minds Conference. You may speak with them occasionally. They are aware of you.
• The Connected are the ones that you speak with semi-regularly to regularly. You comment on and subscribe to their blogs. Sometimes you collaborate with them. They are engaged with you.
• The Committed are those you speak, discuss, update, collaborate and work with regularly. They are builders with you.
• The Core are those with whom your life is share. They lead with you.

You see the change here. At the crowd level, you aren’t aware of each other. At the core level, you are leading with each other. The difference is action.

The tipping point is going from community to connected.

If you feel you are preaching to the converted

Then stop preaching. Instead, start working with them.

A few ideas for you to turn community into connections.

• Schedule a skype call and get talking about your passions.
• Agree to work together on a small project
• Go out of your way to refer or make an opportunity for them
• Do something extraordinarily special for them
• Meet them

How about you? Are you preaching to the converted?

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Preaching to the Converted?