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

One comment really stuck at as having a lot of gold in, from my dear friend Robin Dickinson. (It’s not the first time. He’s been doing this for a year now…)

Before I quote the comment and share my thoughts on what he said, it’s important to point out in the spirit of curation that Robin’s blog is the best self-focus and business development blog that I engage with, and also a model community for many to follow on what Robin and I call the ‘comment driven blog’.

Robin has innovated a few things on his blog. First of all, the comment driven blog post as mentioned above, 2 minute ‘Black Chair‘ videos, and more recently, the start of the Sharewords community through a blog post that has had over 1,000 comments. This blog post is in my opinion an internet phenomena, and a shining example of a value-based approach towards social media (and one that I follow.) I thoroughly recommend that you subscribe in your RSS and get acquainted with Robin on Twitter.

How A Master Maintains

The point is that Robin is someone who continually obtains – but is also the best I know at maintaining. So when he left this comment, and with such focus, I listened. Here it is (original link):

“what practical skills and tips have you learnt to keep things maintained?”

Quick list, in no particular order:

* Have a long-term plan (3-5 year horizon);
* Know what really pays the bills and stick to it;
* Have a life outside of work;
* Pace yourself;
* Know when and what to automate and delegate;
* Max-min key processes: design for maximum result for minimum effort;
* Measure and track key business indicators;
* Take full control of and responsibility for the numbers – the finances;
* Understand WHY you are doing what you do – have a solid rationale;
* Understand how to achieve and stay diamond focused on what really works.

My takeaways: there is balance here. Practically, I can see that Robin splits his days between obtaining new and maintaining the old, and I can see that when it comes to maintenance, he maintains the fun stuff and he maintains the essential and sometimes boring stuff too. The real winner is that he harnesses the power of a habit that has a strong focus.

Your Leading Thoughts

I’ll be honest with you – my daily routine has become a bit unbalanced as of late. When I’m in balance, I find I am far more productive, but out of balance I work harder but find I punching a lot of air and tend to be unfocussed and less productive even though I am working more.

• How balanced are you? How so you balance obtaining with maintaining?
• And how can we help each other to become more balanced?

Photo courtesy of han s’

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

Robin’s Thoughts on Maintenance

1. Exposure

It’s vital that people know there is a world far larger than the one that they live in. When I am working with teenagers who live in poorer neighbourhoods, it’s always interesting to see the mindset that ‘there isn’t life beyond their street.’ Unless we expose people to more – they’ll never know what options they really have.

The way I like to expose people is to show them people who have more and people who have less. I’ll take them to areas of depravity, I’ll take to see people who have lot less than they do who have then become successful, I’ll show them people who have little but are happy, and I’ll show them people who have little and are sad. This can be done, of course, abroad (which does wonders for getting them out of their usual environment) – but I find it powerful to also show them people living in their own city who fit this description.

Then I’ll take them to places and people who have more. I’ll take them to luxury places, business meetings, to meet very successful people in a range of industries, etc.

And then finally, I’ll always strive to show them something new everyday.

All of this serves to shift their thinking, and also should help with humbling them a bit and realising how privileged they are, and also how hard they need to work if they want to be successful. (I say this, because humility and hard work seem to be two traits that are becoming rarer and rarer.)

2. Insight

If I had to list the important traits that I want someone to have, top of my list would probably be self-insight. To know yourself – to really know yourself – with depth and clarity, understanding your weaknesses and strengths, understanding how you work, what makes you tick – and not just in general, but with great precision and very specifically is an asset that will take you far.

Giving insight is hard work, especially because it requires cutting into someone in order to reveal themselves to themselves. By cutting I don’t mean I shout at them or demean them – of course not – it means knowing how to use a surgeons knife to make an incision that makes them see more clearly.

Sometimes this is not met with joy. Sometimes people are up for it, and then sometimes the same people have too much too deal with, and so you need to know when to pick your moments.

3. Giving

We have to show our young people how to give. More specifically, how to give:

• Their time (their attention and effort into something or someone)
• Their talent (their resources and skills)
• Their treasure (their finances and investments)
• Their tongue (their words, language and encouragement)

I strive to help learn how to give and then when to give and when not to give. You all know that I learned from Chris Brogan about focussing in on the person in front of you – there are also times of course when you should not give, and the danger is that if you teach people to be giving, you need to help them with the maturity to develop a very strong no. This creates focus.

Your Leading Thoughts

Those are my three top things that I think we need to give. I’d like to know what yours are – but more specifically;

• What is the top thing that you think we need to give?
• In your experience, what we do think we need to give, that young people actually already have?

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

Three Things We Need To Give

One particular thread was very insightful, along the lines of remembering people’s names. As I said, it’s something that Chris did really well, and I’m making sure I’m as good as I can be at. You can’t underestimate the power of knowing someone’s name. In fact, one person even said the most important word in the world to anyone is that person’s name.

I just wanted to pick out a few practical tips:

Malcolm Sleath wrote:

The technique is a variation of what Chris has described. I take a sheet of paper and draw a simple map of where everyone is sitting. As they introduce themselves, I pay attention and write their name in the right place on the plan, and then one or two words of what they have said. Like Chris, I look at the people when they are talking, and just focus on the content instead of making judgements about it.

Once I have my map, during the early part of the meeting, I let my eyes go round the room, saying the names of the people in my head as I look at them. In the first half an hour, I make sure I do this a few times. Then, I play a little game and look at people at random, to see if I can say their name in my head.

The result is that when I do speak, I can remember who has said what and relate my contribution to theirs so they feel included. I come across as a much better person than I really am (I’m just as self-obsessed as the next person.)

Chris Brogan wrote:

* I look directly into your eyes when getting your name… AND/OR
* if I’m meeting you in person for the first time, but know you from the web, I double-up on my memory of you by looking into your eyes and saying your name as I greet you.
* I I repeat your name a few times, and make sure that others around me have met you. This lets me repeat your name.
* I store the moment as best as I can by not allowing my head to be distracted with other details. I try to shut out all the “what next” bits.

Sy Taylor wrote:

One of the best techniques I ever found for remembering something is close deletions. So to remember that term I’d write “To remember things I use [...] deletions”

Then set that as a reminder for 3 days time. Just as you’re about to forget, something like that hitting your subconscious buries it in. Our brains are ‘use it or lose it’ lumps of elastic learning capability.

Alastair Banks wrote:

I’ve always focused on this too – remembering people’s names, their partners names and interests is incredibly important – as you say, it shows you care. Chris does this on a new level and has made a big impact on my life since meeting him at Likeminds earlier this year.

Me? I introduce the person I’ve just met to someone else. Saying their name out loud is better than saying it in your head, and I can then link your name to the memory I have of introducing you to someone too.

Your Leading Thoughts

• What practical tips can you share with us that you use to remember people’s names?

Photo courtesy of bemky

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

What’s In A Name?

Since when I got into working with youth in 2003 when I started the Feedback youth charity, to today when I have youth interns working with me all the time (as per the photo to the left), I have noticed how directionless our young people have become. The irony is that the blessings of our knowledge economy have created an abundance of choice and open treasure chest full of opportunity, travel and exploration to these young people, which in turn has paralyzed them. Let me explain:

Because we are in a knowledge economy, fewer and fewer people are learning trades and instead studying soft subjects. We focus on gap years, sandwich years, extended studying at college (or high school if you are American) even up to the age of 21 – studying without obtaining any Higher Education accreditation – and then facing, whether they take an undergraduate course or not, the problem of a considerable lack of experience.

Cue my 18 year old brother, Todd. He has just finished two years of Further Education media studies, which he now regrets and is considering taking another two years of FE study. Whilst the opportunity and diversity of subjects available is a good thing, the amount of choice that he faces paralysis him. It’s good that our young people have so much more to engage with and formally learn, yet the plethora of choice has two major problems:

1. It delays decision making
2. It does not identify transferable skills

These are two of the fights our young people face – let’s look and them, as well as add another.

1. Delayed Decision Making

It’s a lot of pressure to force a 16 year old to make decisions about the rest of their life – yes – but it is equally detrimental to not teach decision making techniques and remove as many decisions as possible, therefore denying the essential lessons of discipline and responsibility.

My brother has no need to make a decision. He can go to University with a loan of thousand of pounds (more money than he has ever handled) that basically feels like free money to him, because the repayment date is in the distinct future, where he tells himself “I’ll be rich then.” There’s also no consequence and little responsibility here.

I want to see young people taught how to make quality decisions. I want to see them learning decision making at a younger age by having to make smaller, more incremental decisions. It is ludicris to drop the weight we do on 16 and 18/19 year olds out of nowhere, expecting them to make life changing decisions, without prior training.

2. Not Identifying Transferable Skills

I spent a good deal of time with my brother the other day helping him see the core transferable skills that he has learnt over these last two years – otherwise he was of the mind that they had been a waste of time.

I want to see all teenage activity clearly communicate at the end of the day what transferable skills and lessons are being taught – because most young people I know lack the fundamental self insight that is needed to be a success in the knowledge economy.

Here is the crux: whilst the knowledge economy affords incredible opportunity that the average person has never seen before, as far as history is concerned, it also requires greater knowledge (because after all, that is the currency, right?).

3. Realising They Have More, and Need More, Than Money

Social giving is changing. The world is changing. When I talk about young people giving towards a cause, they immediately say to me that they have no money. My response is always the same: is money the only thing you have to give?

I teach every intern who works with me that we have four things that we can give: Our Time, Talent, Treasure and Tongue.

Time is your effort and energy, your hours in the day. Talent is your gifting and resources. Treasure is your money. Tongue is your influence and word of mouth.

Our default mode is to give our treasure – often because it really requires the least of us. But I often find that charities could value more from someone’s Time or Talent or Tongue, than they could their Treasure. Again, this is knowledge economy thinking – but we haven’t passed it through to our youth.

We have to get our youth to understand that money isn’t everything. Because currently, many of them do.

Your Leading Thoughts

This post represents a new angle that I’ll be exploring on this blog about real empowerment and investment in people. It might be a rough ride at times, and there will be some hard questions, but we need to ask them if we want to be agents of change. I’ve got a lot more to say, but today I’d like to get some feedback and hear your leading thoughts:

• Are you a young person, or do you know / have a young person who faces these situations? What is your counsel to them?
• If play the “what if” game – then what if we don’t get this right with this next upcoming generation? What will happen to our economy?

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

The Fight Our Youth Face

If you can’t see this video, click here, or watch on YouTube.

When we had Chris over for the Like Minds Conference in February, I had the pleasure of watching Chris operate and also spending some time with him too. I have no doubt that many cynical Brits were waiting to see if he’d walk the walk and be as social as he tells everyone to be. What I got to see was not only ‘Yes, he does!’, but also how he does this.

I haven’t shared this until now because I didn’t want to a fame monster, and I’m not writing this now for copious retweeting, but because there is one thing that he taught me above all else that has been of life changing value for me these last 4 months since February, and it will help you too. It’s changed my relationships, my business, my church and my marriage.

At the end of Saturday night at the Summit at Bovey Castle, I had been so impressed with how Chris had valued each person so highly, remembered everybody’s names, professions, details, and engaged in such valuable and meaningful discussion with so many people.

Now I’m good with connecting people, but Chris did it at a level that I’ve never seen before. People who he met once on Friday morning, he remembered the names and details of and called them by name Friday evening.

When I asked Chris how he did this, he looked at me and just said “I genuinely just love people.”

In two words, Chris Brogan taught and modeled for me this: love people.

How?

I learned from Chris to love people by valuing the person in front of you over playing on your phone. (He didn’t use his to tweet, not once, and there was kick ass wifi.)

I learned from Chris to love people by closing your laptop when someone walks in the room, and focussing my attention on them. (He did this to every person when he was working.)

I learned from Chris to love people by remembering their names and life details without fail. (He didn’t get a name wrong.)

I learned from Chris to love people by giving them your attention – all of it – no matter who is in the room. (He never excused himself from a conversation)

And finally, I learned from Chris to love people by valuing people equalling and forgetting about the power plays and games that stroke our egos. (He never ended a conversation so he could speak with someone else.)

Your Leading Thoughts

• I’m sure you’ve learned similar things from someone in your life – who? How did they model this to you?

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

What I Learned From Chris Brogan

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’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0WQEKHp0yM

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

This incredible series, Tower Block of Commons, gave me great insight again into perception. It doesn’t matter what the reality is. If the everyday person has a perception that our government spend all day arguing in a room and having two homes, then it doesn’t matter what really goes on.

Because the perception is broken, The House of Commons and the common man have nothing in common.

You want to know why it doesn’t matter? Because people don’t care about your reasons. Unless you care about theirs.

When I watch that video above (and the many other instances over the series), I’m looking at a members of parliament who are making the following fundamental flaw: They are seeking to be understood, rather than seeking to understand.

Could the woman in the video above see the MPs point of view? Sure they could, if the MP would give a little and understand their situation first. Because that’s all the woman wanted: to be understood.

Seek commonality. Put people first. Be impressed, not impressive. Understand, rather than trying to be understood. Help rather than trying to be helped.

Your Leading Thoughts Please

• In 3 steps, how can we find commonality?

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

Tower Block Of Uncommons

It’s easy to tear things down. I learnt as a young boy that there’s little effort and lots of joy to wrecking things. But building something takes time and hard work.

It is easy to criticise and get the attention for being vocal. It’s hard to build behind the scenes, or deal with situations offline, rather than publicly point the finger.

There are some people – film critics, politicians, journalists - whose job is to criticise. They do it because because it is their responsibility, and they do it with accountability.

But online we find little accountability.

We find people who enjoy criticising without being accountable. They have freedom at the expense of the others who are busy, not bulldozing, but building. These critics are never found rolling up their sleeves to fix the problems that they are so vocal about.

These guys are more impressive then the people who get lost in Without A Trace. Other than a username, you’ve got no way of finding who they are, and they’ve got the joy that nothing they say will effect their work, their relationships and their reputation.

Meanwhile, the rest of us have put everything out there, and made everything public as we build.

Building isn’t a public affair

Behind the scenes, under scaffolding, inside the building. Bulldozing attracts attention, but building is an inside job. There’s no room for glamour here. I was mystified for a long time why people didn’t privately email me or call when they had a criticism - because this way, we can work on it together and get it fixed, which is surely their goal? But many don’t want to make things right, they just want to get the kudos for pointing out what was wrong.

I think we need to commit to becoming more personal offline. We all have phones – and guess what – they make phone calls as well as email and tweet. Lets start picking them up and talking to each other, and start building together.

I’ll be quite honest – I don’t take criticism too well – but I’m getting better. But what I don’t do is bulldoze. If you are doing something I think is out of line, I’ll call you and help you resolve it.

Does this mean we don’t criticise?

No, it doesn’t. We need bulldozing. Old buildings and thinking needs to come down.

But I think it does mean that as a community we should become smart about who we retweet, respond to, and give voice to. These people without names and bios that I mention above enjoy too much free reign, while they bulldoze the efforts of those who are building – and too many just blindly retweet them.

As a community, we need to stop giving voice to those who are not accountable.

And more importantly, we need to develop deep relationships with those people who can speak into our lives and bring criticise and direction. The ones that, because we trust them, give them the room in our lives to bring the bulldozer and break down what needs to go. These are the ones who will roll up their sleeves.

So, who’s building?

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

Are You A Builder Or A Bulldozer?

Also, every Christmas my friends and I at The River Church have families and students over for Christmas lunch who are by themselves, or just want to be around more warmth than usual. I always come away having made new friendships and love being able to make Christmas happen for someone else.

If you’re overworked, not enjoying the fruit of your labour, or just caught in commercial Christmas stress, then please take some time out and get around the real cause for Christmas – giving to those who have none. I personally find that more refreshing than any amount of sleep.

You also need to get the rest, because in case you didn’t know, 2010 is going to rock. See that tree there? That’s the Christmas Tree at Bovey Castle – home to the Like Minds Summit in Feb 2010. It’s going to be amazing.

So, Merry Christmas, one and all. And let me repeat again that this is a time for giving to those who don’t have.

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

Give This Christmas