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

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

It’s a discussion I’m sure many of you have had: whilst you respect your community or audience and want them to run with ideas and bring value to the table, you don’t trust them enough to give them full ownership, either because they might get it wrong, or they might not keep it up.

The reason why this discussion is important for us is because all of us are asking: how much do I govern it?

Guidance and Governance

I see two mindsets, at either end of an upside down triangle (much like this). On the left, we have guidance, which is a hands-off approach that says ‘go for it’, and at the extreme, will let anything happen. On the right, we have governance, which is a sign-off approach that says ‘hold on it’, and at the extreme, will let nothing happen.

In my head I’ve got these two terms pretty together. I know what I think they mean – something that I explained sometime ago in this post on where I see PR going this year.

For me, guidance is the new way of thinking. It says that with good leadership, I can guide people without needing to govern them. However, I’m beginning to rethink this, just a little.

You don’t need me to tell you that either mindset, at the extremes we have listed above, becomes a real problem. But in balance, each has important strengths that we need that often create the same goals. For instance:

• Guidance creates unconferences that destroy the speaker/attendee divide and get us learning together in a de-centralised way
• Governance creates a smooth conference feel that has many controls in preparation to deliver a powerful learning experience, in a centralised way

Or lets take Open Source Software. By definition, it is about guidance – an openly available code base that you can modify and do whatever with for free. Yet, there are some rather strict guidelines and learning curves that govern Open Source – meaning that the average person probably won’t get round to using much of it in their life.

Governance is also not a negative thing. Governance provides a safety that a guidance mindset can’t. It often provides structure that guidance can’t too – especially on a larger scale. As much as we bash schools and the education system, there is a certain problem with scalability of new learning methods.

You see where I’m going here.

Guiding and Governing

Here’s what I’m beginning to realise: there are somethings that have to be governed, as much as I want to make everything open. For instance, in church I’m always going to govern the doctrine. But I don’t govern the way that people live – I can only guide it.

If we go back to our starting example – organice growth has to come from guidance. You set a vision, you set the end goal, and then you let people move there and even beyond there. But what underpins this and maintains the ground that you have won organically is a governane mindset – setting policies, procedures, structure.

This means that we need to be guiding, and then we need to be governing.

Your Leading Thoughts

• I think you can also say the same about innovation vs duplication, or even social vs broadcast. So, tough question, but do we err too much on the side of guidance, innovation and social without acknowledging how much broadcast, duplication and governance is really at work?

Photo credit

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

Are You Guiding Or Governing?

Here’s a thought to kick off the week: is it easier to obtain than maintain?

For example: I find it easier to start and lead something, than managing it once it has been bult. Like Minds is always growing (check out our latest addition) – so I’m not so much maintaining it as I am obtaining new ground every month.

This is a hack I use. I know that I have energy and motivation to obtain, so I always focus on growing the things that I’m leading – or setting targets to obtain.

Faye, however, is far better at maintaining – so in many ways we compliment each other. Of course, we also can both step into obtain or maintain at any point if it is really required of us. This balance has been so useful for everything we do as a team.

Your Leading Thoughts

My question is – to you guys who participate and engage here – which are you? Can you obtain and maintain, or just one? What tricks do you use?

Photo: Like Minds Summit at Villa Kataya

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

It’s Easier To Obtain Than Maintain

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

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

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

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:

1. I was doing a lot of the final production work that was being delivered in my areas of responsibility
2. I kept attracting people to myself who weren’t team builders themselves
3. I wasn’t regularly adding people into my teams
4. I wasn’t getting past the issues of scaling my areas, due to a lack of team
5. 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:

1. I have influence with people because I have focus, expertise and a good track record
2. 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?

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

Building The Kingdom: Generalists and Specialists

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’

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.

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

Building The Kingdom: Knowing Me, Knowing You