I want to break down the 5 pillars of productivity in preparation for a seminar I’m given on this on Sunday at The River Church. (If you’re in the neighbourhood, you are welcome to come – 2:30pm this Sunday.)

Before we begin: productivity vs creativity and the creative’s problem

Ahead of discussing the 5 pillars, I want to make an observation on the problem that we are trying to solve. Most of us have too much on our plate. We are inundated with ‘stuff’ and struggle on a daily, weekly and yearly basis with getting the things done that we need to and/or want to.

Of course, in the end, most stuff comes about right. But I wonder whether we reach anywhere near the potential that we could if we were more organised.

Further more, whilst everything might be alright in the end, the stress levels that we are living at with the weight of responsibility that most of us have crushes and paralyzes us. So whilst we might get to the end of the year with the stuff done that we needed to, it is with the price of exhaustion and the neutering of our creativity.

Yesterday Esko Kilpi challenged me that we should not use the word productivity for humans, but rather the word creativity. My good friend Robin Dickinson also talks about developing a strong NO and not filling out time with so much that we aren’t focussed on the present. Both of them would say that productivity – trying to squeeze more and more out of your day – is a foolish and inhuman pursuit and we should rather seek to have creative whitespace in our days.

Whilst I certainly don’t fall into the other side of the ditch – working 18 hours a day is not working smart – I am working in an environment where I have a lot to do and oversee and my days are on the fuller side as opposed to the free side.

Furthermore, anyone who is ‘creative’ knows that creativity requires discipline. And productivity requires creativity. The two are intrinsically linked and I wonder if it isn’t just a semantic game playing them off against each other.

The 3 values of this balanced life

Thus my premise for productivity, revolves around some core values that are a healthy balance of creativity but also reality:

1. Integrity. That you become a reliable person, to others and to yourself, and that you do what you say you will do.
2. Efficiently effective. That you become efficient, giving the time to tasks that they require in order to give you time for creativity, and that your creativity and thinking time is effective. This also denotes control and mastery of what of you do.
3. Healthy. That you have balance between work and play (not just work, not just play), between enjoying rights and managing responsibilities, and that you enjoy a clear mind. This is freedom.

I think that whether we call it productivity or creativity, these three are good qualities that span all spectrums.

Last week I did an interview on leadership, community and social media with Adrian Swinscoe, which I thoroughly enjoyed and you can listen to here.

At the end of the blog post in which the interview was posted, Wendy commented and talked about a situation where others might regard her as a leader, but she doesn’t think she is one herself – and asked if this is a problem. I think it is, and so I responded. Here’s what I responded with, and it’s important to post here because I believe it is detrimental to not see yourself as the leader that you are:

Leadership expert John Maxwell maintains that there are 5 levels of leadership – the lowest being “position” which is being a leader because of your position, but nothing more. Then each level on top is about being a more influential and regarded leader beyond the position that you may or may not have. (link to the framework: http://hubpages.com/hub/John-Maxwell-defines-5-levels-of-leadership

Very often, poor leaders are those who only ever exist on the “position” level. People follow them because they have to. I’m sure we all have known someone in this position, or even been this person at some point in our life! The next level is “permission” and this is where people follow you because they have given you permission as a leader to do so – regardless of whether you have a position or not. You don’t have to have a position for people to give you permission to lead them.

Often at this second level, people regard us as leaders more than we do ourselves. This is because when we are aspring and unsure of our leadership, we are more aware of our weaknesses than our strengths, so when we display leadership we don’t see it because we are more caught up with the mistakes we made or what we could’ve done differently.

This is a natural stage of leadership and is to be expected – but leaders must grow through it. If they dont, and continue to not see themselves as leaders whilst others do, these others will loose respect for them and the leader’s stature will be diminished in their eyes. Imagine if you respected me as a leader, but I kept on telling you I wasn’t a leader. At first you’d try to encourage me, but after months of this, you’d begin to see me as less of the leader that you once thought.

Aspring leaders must not, on the other hand, over step the mark and act as more of a leader than they actually are! This arrogance is the other side of the ditch.

Your Leading Thoughts

• Do you or have you had to fight this problem in your life? (I have!) If so, how did you overcome?
• Digitally, how does this effect people who don’t realise the influence that they actually have online?

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor Frankl

Then this week, we got word that Like Minds was the “most influential on Twitter” for the whole of Social Media Week globally. That’s quite an incredible thing to have said about us. This is based on the number of tweets with our hashtag and/or Twitter account mentioned, which we led.

However both our debate on social influence and then this stat that we were the “most influential” trouble me. On one hand, I don’t agree with either of them, but on the other hand, there is some truth in them in the way that they are perceived and the end result that they have had. Let me explain a bit more and then let’s discuss it:

Influence is not measured by numbers

My dear friend Trey Pennington wrote a great tongue in cheek post last week on “4 keys to increasing your Klout Score“. The first half is now to get a higher Klout Score, which is a service that supposedly calculates your social media influence.

Then Trey writes in the second half:

THE REAL KEY TO INCREASING YOUR INFLUENCE ONLINE (and off)

None of the suggestions mentioned above has anything to do with real influence. Real influence is complex, multifaceted, and environmentally constrained (time, space, people, place, topic, occasion, etc.). Influence is more significant than two digits can capture (though Klout is necessary nonetheless)…..

Even so, as I ponder the real keys to increasing real influence, the words of Zig Ziglar ring in my ears and reverberate in my heart. A definite key to increasing your influence is found is Zig’s counsel: “You can have everything in life you want if you’ll just help enough people get what they want.”

Don’t worry about increasing your Klout score (or twittergrader ranking or whatever comes next). Just use whatever gifts you have to help other people accomplish their dreams. If you’ll help enough other people get what they want, you’ll have all the influence you’ll need.

But influence is helped by numbers

If you are helping one person, you are influential in that persons life. But if you are helping two people, you have the opportunity to increase your influence.

Note that I said opportunity. Unless you actually do create bottom line influence, it’s theoretical and not actual.

So what do you think influence is?

I lecture on influence and have been reading about it for years, and still I find it a hotly debated topic. Perhaps I just lack a framework

So I’d like to hear the smart inputs of the Friends who hang out here: what do you define influence as?

Photo courtesy of US National Archives

My opinion is that leadership as a skill can be learnt. I would consider much of leadership being wrapped up in teamwork, influence, strategy, and so on, and these are things that you can most certainly learn. I know this because I’ve learnt them! For many years I struggled with leadership and with building teams of people, but through being more prepared and investing in learning these skills, I’ve increased in being a leader.

I would clarify here that I also consider being a manager and a leader as two separate things. Managers aren’t necessarily leaders.

I so consider that, however, there are always people who will carry a far greater ability to lead. Like Churchill, or Alexander the Great, or Jesus, or Steve Jobs.

Are they born with it? I don’t know if it’s whether they are born with it or whether they are nurtured into it a very, very young age through particular circumstances. It’s hard to say.

Hence:

Your Leading Thoughts

• Is leadership learned? Or are you born with it?
• What makes a great leader?

Luckily, I believed that you could learn leadership, that you could learn people skills, and that what one man can do, another can do. So it is that the connected, engaging, Like Minds uniting person you see before you is actually a result of nurture more than nature.

So today I just want to quickly distill HOW for me I learned to become a people’s person, and it’s wrapped up in what are the 4 ways to focus when you meet new people. What that means is this: there are 4 ways that you can focus upon meeting a new face, and each focus is where you put your energy and attention.

As it happens, these 4 lessons are very applicable to our digital selves, and also to brands and businesses:

1. How You Feel About Yourself

This is where many people are when they meet new people – they are so self-consumed that they don’t actually take good notice of the other person. I think we all are here sometimes when we are particularly distracted – perhaps we’re stressed, have received some good or bad news, that type of thing. But some people just live here all the time.

I might add here that online, this is where I think a large number of bloggers and tweeters live. They write from a very condescending perspective, only ever talk and link to their own stuff and so on.

Likewise, a lot of businesses market at this level. They brag about their features and their product without much regard to how others might feel about it.

2. How You Feel About The Other Person

If you’ve ever met someone and immediately there’s something about them that is our of the ordinary – either their appearance, their attitude, something they said – and you couldn’t get it out of your mind, then you’ve experienced this second way to meet people.

You do get some people that continually exist here – they are very much about how they felt about a person and their reactions to meeting someone new are only based on their own feelings. So it logically progresses that anything they say in meeting this person is to change how they feel themselves about this person.

I find that online we get people doing this in comments a lot. They respond to someone based on how they feel about what they said in the comment (normally a criticism, right?) You can spot it a mile off.

I’ll be quite honest with you – I’ve spent a lot of time here and sometimes regress when I face criticism myself. It’s an easy thing to do, and I would continue to do it were it not for my knowledge of these two better ways:

3. How The Other Person Feels About You

I would say that I spent a lot of my life here. I desperately wanted to be valued and so I would be focussing on what others felt about me. You know what this is like: saying things you think they want to hear, making your actions about how they’ll perceive you and so on.

Needless to say, this is a very, very taxing approach. And digitally it causes burnout. I can’t tell you how exhausting is it blogging and tweeting endlessly so that people will perceive you as some kind of Robert Scoble. I remember in July of 2009 and I was desperately trying to get into FriendFeed so that people would perceive me as an expert and hire me. I spent countless hours saying a lot of stuff and got nowhere with it. Why? Because I was all about how people felt about me, and not about:

4. How The Other Person Feels About Themselves

I wrote sometime ago that Social Media 101 was making people feel special. There is a saying in our church that people don’t remember what was said, they remember how they felt, and this is true for life. Scientifically, if you meet someone and make them feel great, they’ll remember you in a great light.

I remember when I learned this principle at 18 or 19 years of age, and it turned my life around. I began to focus on other people when I met them – being interested rather than seeking to be interesting – and it made a world of difference. Not only did it help me meet more people and more quickly connect with them, but it also changed my whole outlook on life. I now no longer try to ‘meet people well’, I just love finding out about them! It’s not a trick, it’s a genuine desire to find out about people!

When we use Social Media in this way – focussing on how people feel about themselves by encouraging them, providing them with utility and things that enhance their life (rather than getting us click throughs) you’ll find that you engagement goes through the roof. Your numbers might not, but then numbers don’t matter so much when you are adding real value to people.

This is something that my friend Robin Dickinson is exceptional at. He has spent hours helping and valuing me, and I have found so much energy and strength from our relationship. I’ve got his back whatever he does! In fact, you can check out his Sharewords post which is the perfect example of how to use social media to focus on others feel about themselves.

Your Leading Thoughts

• Where do live on this scale? Where is your focus when you meet new people?
• What lessons have you learned that could help the rest of us with meeting new people, either digitally or physically?

There’s no surprise then that I was also jealous of people – wanting what they had, because I couldn’t have it.

I’m talking here about things like someone fulfilling a part of their life’s calling, achieving a career succes or financial success, being daring enough to just do that thing you’ve always wanted to do, travel to a certain place, and so on.

Then came the precious day when this clip below got up out of being a victim and into being a victor. It’s a short part of the film The Edge, staring Anthony Hopkins and Alex Baldwin as two men who get lost in woods and are hunted by a bear. After loosing one of their comrades to the bear and being faced with what many would consider an impossible situation, there comes this scene:

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

How what one man can do, another can do

I want to encourage you today that it is true – becuase I have tested in my own life again and again – that what one person can do another can do.

It first begins with acknowledging that what you want to achieve can be done. If we can fly people to the moon, if people can do extraordinary things like they do, if miracles can happen like I’ve seen and witnesses, then it can be done.

The next step requires us to take ownership. If you can take leadership of your life and responsibility of your situation, without looking to others as the keepers of your successes or failures but become responsible for them yourself, and get into the driving seat of your future, tearing up every excuse and not accepting them any longer, then there’s no telling where you’ll go.

As the the top comment on this clip on YouTube said, “In 2002 I was down, and out, hooked on drugs going no where. I literally repeated this to myself over, and over, and in 1 yrs time my life completley turned around. I have been drug free since, and my life is an enjoyment today.”

I wasn’t hooked on drugs like this person, but still to this day, I repeat it to myself again and again: what one man can do, another can do.

Here’s to a victorious 2011,
Scott

The trouble with New Years’ Resolutions is that they have a lot of bad PR – namely that they aren’t worth the hot air they’re spoken by – and whilst we have ever intention of starting on January 1st with a whole new outtake on life and a brand new daily routine, we all know in the back of our minds that it won’t last.

What I want to share with you today is a simply mindset change that will help you achieve the change you want to make in a year, without experiencing resolution cut-out or just plain burnout from the 52-part routine your day now consists of.

1. Your Vision For The Year

Every year I have a vision for the year – an overall statement that will guide what I do. Last year my vision for myself was “a leader of teams, not a doer of things”, as I was the bottle neck for way to many projects because I was the one doing all the work. Instead, I had to make 2010 about being a leader of teams and not a doer of things if I wanted the projects to become significant.

I find a vision is more helpful for an overall year that a list of 50 monthly goals, because the vision helps you make quick decisions (does this fit in with my vision for the year?), and also is more a guiding vision than a list of objectives that, if they aren’t fulfilled, can discourage your greatly.

2. Change Your Mindset: The Vision Is For The End, Not The Beginning

Once you have your vision statement – mine for 2011 is “Fatherhood” – then here comes the most important shift that will change the way your approach this year.

Rather than making the vision about what you must be from January 1st, your vision is actually what you want to have integrated into your life by December 31st. In other words, it’s not about making 10 immediate changes to your work habits and setting wildly outrageous goals for exercise, family time, professional achievements and spiritual development on a week by week basis. Instead, it’s taking the pressure off and relieving this intensity by setting a picture that you want to move towards, rather than a marker that you must already be at. The vision is for the end, not the beginning.

If you think about this, this is just common sense. I can take a year to fully integrate a new routine in my life, but I am unlikely to get it into my life tomorrow. This is what the Apostle Paul was talking about in Philippians when he said “not that I have attained on been made perfect, but I press on towards the goal.”

3. Work Backwards In Quarters

Once you’ve got your vision as where you want to be by the end of the year, work backwards and set an objective for each quarter.

Too often we set a vision but then never layout a path to get there, and the mistake I’ve made is by setting the vision and then having a few key objectives that I didn’t make time sensitive, and as we all know when it comes to getting things done, you need a due date.

Now I’m not saying that these objectives become to-dos on our to-do list. But what I am saying is they are timed and measurable markers to help us move towards our vision. So my first of 4 objectives is to “have a daily routine for my life, for life”, by which I mean a daily routine that I can be happy with for the rest of my days and works at my optimal level, with room for adaptation. This is my first objective, so of course, it’s tied to the first quarter (due: end of March!)

By having this overall quarterly aim, I am still avoiding the intensity and weight of a totally changed life from day 1. In fact, it’s not even an intensity per month, but per quarter. I also think that if your vision needs more than 4 quarters to get to, it’s too big for the year.

Once you have your objective, you can then break it down into some smaller goals to help you get there. But don’t make too many – we want to keep this simple as you already have enough complexity in your life.

4. Develop A Daily And Weekly Routine

I recently taught a group of leaders that I mentor about daily and weekly routines and was surprised to find how none of they really had one. So whilst I am indeed talking to early adopters and suspect many of you do, I will still go over how I suggest it’s done.

First thing is that simplicity is the key. I have no interest in creating more work to manage my work. I need a routine that is basic, adaptable and easy to complete so that I don’t get discouraged.

My daily routine goes a little bit like this, which Chris Brogan posted this week – so have a watch:

The key points to add in addition to Chris are 1] I have a set bed time and wake up time as my body loves this, 2] I know what food makes me feel better in the morning, so I eat that! 3] I have a rule when I can use a computer from – in order to force me to disconnect, and 4] my daily routine is more basic than this, but the idea of sectioning time is what I want to get at here.

My weekly routine is even more basic. On a Sunday, I mind map the projects that I am doing on my iPad (I’ll discuss this another time), and based on that mind map, I allocate slots of time to work on those projects in my diary, like appointments with myself. This leaves no whitespace in my calendar and thus that time can’t be taken up with other things like meetings and so on. It also means I have made that commitment with myself, and then can make commitments with others based on what I can get done in those time slots. This means I have accountability with my teams.

5. Get Things Done

If you haven’t read Getting Things Done, then rather than buying the book, you can read this summary by Olivier Roland. This is the very summary that changed my life two years ago. There’s also a fuller summary here. It’s important that you have a daily system for the work you do, and whilst I would assume you as an early adopter do, there are so many people that don’t that I don’t want to assume.

Over To You: Your Leading Thoughts

I always ask for your thoughts to build to this post, as there’s more wisdom in the comments than in my brain! I’m keen to know:

• How do you plan for your year? How have you learnt to make every year count?
• What is your vision for this year?
• What tools can you suggest others here use that you have found indespensible?

Also, I’m so passionate about productivity and being efficient and effective that I’m really keen to help with any questions that you have – so please, ask away.

Yours,
Scott

Photo courtesy of HKD

Luckily, I found this article yesterday from The 99% on The Top 5 Qualities of Productive Creatives (And How to Identify Them!), in which Jocelyn Glei lays out 5 qualities that I think apply not just to the creative industry, to to creativity and leadership in general.

Quickly, the 5 are:

1. Communication skills
2. Pro-activeness (initiative)
3. Problem solving
4. Curiosity
5. Risk-taking

I’d suggest you read the article yourself, as Jocelyn not only lists and describes the 5 qualities, but she shows you how to test for them too.

The Qualitites That I Want

After struggling, as I said in starting, to get down my most sought after qualities in people, I think this list is pretty much bang on. Initiative, or pro-activeness, is certainly my top quality and I see it as the bedrock of the others. If someone has initiative I can deal with their issues and build up their strengths as opposed to someone who just isn’t moving in their life despite having a great set of strengths already. One of the primary roles of a team player for my teams is to lighten the leader’s load – to lighten my load – and people without initiative do the exact opposite and increase my load because now I have to continually ‘work them’ to get them to work.

Communication and problem solving are two different skills but both joint second for me. Communication is a no-brainer – someone with poor communication slows the team down. Problem solving is perhaps similar to initiative, but I would see it as a distinct creative quality that shows lateral thinking. I know people who can take the initiative, but they can’t problem solve.

Curiosity and risk-taking are at the lower end of my list and I’m not sure if I would keep the list at 5 qualities to keep them in – I might just make mine 3 and remove them. Or I might replace them with something like loyalty, faithfulness, trust worthiness, etc.

Your Leading Thoughts: What Are Your Top Qualities?

1. What is your list of 3, and then your list of 5?
2. If there had to be ONE top quality above all others, which could you make it?

Photo courtesy of Cishore

Every week contestants will tell the boss how good they are at selling, how they’ve taken on ‘feedback, how they can ‘control people’, but you’ll never hear about leadership.

If I had 16 people contending to work for me at £100,o00 a year I wouldn’t be looking for skills that I could hire in for less. I’d be looking for leadership – the ability to lead people, lead markets, lead change and lead organisations.

I would say the reason why is because we can easily and lazily point to the tangibles of how much we sold. But it takes detail and observation to show how you’ve lead. It’s harder work, but far more valuable, and the rarest asset around.

Your Leading Thoughts

• What word do you never hear on The Apprentice?
• Why oh why is leadership the never spoken word?