Video: Start With Why

Posted on August 8, 2010 by Scott Gould

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA

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

I caught this video earlier this year and all I can say is that it has changed how I run projects and decide what to do. It’s by Simon Sinek on the subject of “Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Action”, after his book on the same thing (affiliate link.)

Simon basically says that great leaders don’t start with WHAT they start with WHY. I can identify with this on so many levels, the most pertinent being the work I do at The River Church in Exeter.

At our church, there are 101 things that we could do – ‘the whats’ – and most times, we’ve done things in the past because others were doing them and they seemed like good ideas. It’s not to say that we just did whatever came into our mind, but when you are running a church you are always looking for new ways to reach and help people, often on a tight budget, and when you see another church have success with a certain activity, you naturally want to emulate it. It’s not a surprise that many of things over the years have failed, probably the most memorable being when we went on TV for a year, which exhausted us and brought little gain in return.

Also, both in church and in my other ventures, there’s always the times when you’ve having a leadership discussion and you focus the whole meeting on a small part of ‘the whats’ while totally ignoring ‘the whys’. I guess the reason is that it’s easier to talk about a ‘what’ because it’s easier to change and more immediate to change.

What this video has helped me do is focus on ‘the whys’ first, and if there isn’t a satisfactory ‘why’, then to by no means look at ‘the whats’. Have you ever worked on a project without really knowing why? Have you found a task keeps changing because you don’t know the why? Have you found you do things without real purpose and direction? This video will help you as much as it’s helped me!

Your Leading Thoughts

Be honest – where are you on this scale at the moment? What are your struggles and victories?
What are you thoughts on the power of WHY? Are there times when you have harnessed it?
If you have already seen this, how has it changed you?

2010: Make Sense, Or Die

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Scott Gould

Everyone’s giving their predictions for 2010. Here’s mine: Make Sense Or Die.

There’s too much content, both online and offline, for everyone to cohabit – meaning those that lack clarity will, by the end of 2010, die. Furthermore those who aren’t making sense probably don’t have much money left to continue not making any sense, so unless they start making sense, they too will die.

This isn’t just bloggers. This is everyone in the industry of Social Media, Social Business, and whatever else you can put ‘Social’ in front of. The BS wears off this year, because likeminded people who know what they are doing are getting together – and guess what – they have more than celebrity status to back their talk – they have their own actual case study proof.

There’s a gravestone out there with a whole bunch of websites and businesses names on it – and the only way to survive 2010 is to make sense.

Making it tangible, here’s the way I see it:

Make sense by providing frameworks, step-by-step actions, case studies and models, or die by producing rehashes of old posts, non-ordered calls to random actions, and posts with toe-deep analysis, while someone else makes the bold move to do the former.
Make sense by being real, having personality, and most of all, being vulnerable, or die by being arrogant, distant, and unhuman, while someone else makes the bold move and has the guts to do the former.
Make sense by showing us how you’ve walked your own talk, with case studies to prove it, or die by being too much of a celebrity or airhead to roll your sleeves up and work, while someone else makes the bold move to do, and profile how they are doing, the former.
Make sense by sharing content that cost you more than time to develop, or die by keeping it locked up while someone else makes this bold move.
Make sense by turning the microphone on other people and giving voice to their stories, or die by keeping it on yourself while someone else makes this bold move.
Make sense by making Social Media make sense to the bottom line and the early majority, or die while trying to be ‘just like so-and-so’ and becoming another cheap copy of an original, while someone else draws the actual paying attraction by doing the former.

Happy 2010. I’m ready to make sense. Are you?

5 Steps For Making Quality Decisions

Posted on August 16, 2009 by Scott Gould

Last week, Olivier Blanchard, inspired by a post from Amber Nasuland, posted a great piece on ‘What Won’t You Compromise On‘. Having written about the same thing myself last week with practically the same title, it was very pertinent as the ideas were fresh in my head and I was still molding my thoughts into some kind of written model.

Suffice to say Olivier has motivated me to take something that has been in my drawer for a few weeks and map it out.

Let me begin by saying that life has inherent value, and no matter how a person chooses to live their life, they are still valuable and precious. The person who drives themselves to be as much as they desire to be, and the person who happily goes through life in simplicity, are both equal in their inherent worth. One may add more value to others (and I’m not saying which one, because driven people often live for themselves), but this does not diminish their worth, and if someone is content to live where they are living at then this also does not diminish their worth. Of course, the issue of opportunity and exposure is another thing altogether that I will address at another time.

Where are you heading?

It is the case that an individual is like a ship on the seas of life, and if they do not purposefully use their rudder and manipulate the natural conditions to move in a decided direction, or use the anchor to stay fixed in their current position, they will be subject to the wind and waves of life and end up wherever they take them.

I have long lived by making what I call ‘quality decisions based on personal convictions’. In other words, I make decisions about what I will do and won’t do, and where I will go and won’t go, long before I ever have the opportunity to enact my decision. I am of the opinion that if one does not decide in advance that they will not compromise an area of their life that they have made a quality decision about, then when the time comes, your emotions will make the decision for you and generally you will find it hard to stand up to your inner conviction. Quality decisions are like boundaries that mark out our land and make intangible convictions into tangible and measurable markers

Amber asked the question, “what won’t you compromise“, and whilst Olivier gave a very eloquent and thought-through answer, I want to examine the process that we go through in order to establish the compromisbables and uncompromisable – in other words, how do we make quality decisions?

The 5 Steps

1. We begin with content. Any decision we make is based on the available content, not necessarily our desire. With many decisions in life, our desires often bow to our knowledge. As a child at school I had no desire to learn maths but the repetition of the lessons gave me content to at least know how much I could spend on penny sweets at the end of every school day. In order to secure not only more knowledge in our content-base, but also experience, we need exposure.

2. Content, however, is not enough for a quality decision. Clarity makes content relevant by realising requirements, responsibilities and return. Lack of clarity produces ignorance; there is an understanding of content but it has not been fleshed out with reality. When I, in arrogant ignorance, made decisions about my ability to perform Shakespeare, I had content, but no clarity. I vastly overestimated my own ability, basing my perceived capacity to perform solely on a pound of knowledge, where an ounce of experience would’ve faired me far better. Graduates face this problem all the time; whilst they may have astounding content, they often lack the reality of clarity in comparison to their peers who have work experience.

3. The next step is conviction. This is far deeper than feeling or emotion, both of which change over time, in accordance to circumstance, and also depending on what mood you are in and how under-caffeinated your are. The conviction to love my wife runs deeper than the emotions of anger and frustration, which if they had their way by themselves, would ruin the marriage. A conviction, then, may take years to build. But it also may take seconds. What I do know is I have experienced both. The love I have towards my wife has grown over 8 years, whilst my conviction regarding the relevancy of the experience economy happened over the course of 20 minutes as I watched Joe Pine at TED communicate his thoughts with crystal clarity. Of course the former is a greater conviction than the later. As in the instance of a fight in a marriage, a conviction runs deeper than temporal emotions, but it also is a highly emotive thing and can inspire you to great things. When I consider all the great people I look up to, they were filled with conviction. Thomas Edison said he tested no fewer than 6,000 combinations to create the lightbulb – I bet he had depressed days, but his conviction was stronger than those temporary emotions.

4. In order for conviction to be sealed, a quality decision must be made. A quality decision takes the intangible conviction and makes it tangible. My conviction that I love my wife informs a quality decision I have to consciously not turn my head to look at an attractive woman. My conviction and belief in Jesus informs a decision to pray, read my bible, and write down notes in my diary everyday. My conviction that people are precious results in my conviction to spend time pastoring and mentoring certain people every week without fail – as I have done with hundreds of people over the last 9 years. Decisions that are made without conviction are fine for everyday activity where no conviction is needed. But life decisions that are not based on this process lack a spine and will gleefully change when the circumstances or emotions do. A businessman with passion but without conviction is a dangerous thing, because passion will fade, but conviction runs deeper.

5. Finally, a quality decision enables that most precious human resource, action. Not only does action solidify the decision, but also assists in the negotiating and tweaking of your decisions. Action, then, acts as a review tool. The reality is that we will compromise on most things, not necessarily because we weaken in our conviction, but because we learn about ourselves as we act and therefore can adjust our decisions to be more effective and efficient. It is better to act upon our decisions and adjust them, than wait for the perfect set of convictions and decisions.

So to wrap it up:

Content –> Clarity –> Conviction –> Quality Decision –> Action

This isn’t just something I’ve pulled from other bloggers onto a page. I have lived this message for over 12 years and tested its worth. It has served me well and I hope it does the same for you.

Photo credit Kyknoord

Switching Off

Posted on August 3, 2009 by Scott Gould

I’m currently reading The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris, and amidst the mixed reviews I’ve received, I’ve been enjoying it and found this gem while I was skim-reading last Saturday:

An abundance of information has created a poverty of attention

Now being a marketeer I love ideas that spread, so a saying that rhymes like this is right up my street. But I also find it overwhelmingly true. In my rant last month on the commoditisation of content, I made the ascertion that we are drowning in content. Tim says it far more beautifully, and reveals the consequence of our high level of media consumption: attention poverty.

So let me get down and get real. I wake up at 6am every morning and, as you know, pray and read my bible. But recently at 6am, I wake up and I’m thinking ‘blog’. I actually have a rule for no work between the hours of 11pm and 7am which I call the ‘eleven-to-seven’ rule – but last month I have all too often worked during those hours. When I’ve picked up a book to read, or fancied going for a calming walk, I’ve ended up flipping open the laptop and going through my to-do list.

In short, I’ve found that I’ve been unable to switch off. And it’s because I have so much information during the day, my mind is buzzing when I want to rest.

The whole point of me blogging is to sharpen my thoughts by using them to help others, and I know that you learn just as much (if not more) from the scars as you do from the successes. In exchange for my vulnerability, and the jabs and pokes I’ll get for my honesty, I’m asking a favor from all of you who read this – whether by RSS, as a note on Facebook, by email, or if you’ve stumbled here by mistake…. I want you to leave a comment and share with me how you switch off.

So if you’re not on my actual website, then click here, and let’s talk about this!

The Most Precious Human Resource: Action

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Scott Gould

Content is a commodity. Take your pick of entertainments, places, ideas, tinned foods, holiday destinations. The thing with content is it can be digested very easily – most often like soft porridge oats that require no chewing – and requires little action.

Action. The most precious human resource in the world. It is the people who have acted upon social injustice that have changed our world. Those who started with doing just something that have shaped our history. It those who acted upon a dream, a vision, who pulled what was previously thought impossible into the realm of realirt.

Amidst the commoditisation of content, the measure of clarity is its ability to provoke this invaluable resource.

If I could say one thing to every person (and particularly, every blogger) in the world, it would be this: you are educated above your level of action, and before you learn or blog another thing, I want you to simply use the information you already have and unleash your actions.

But because I can’t, I’ll share with you how I have learnt to help those around me activate action. It’s all about an IDEA:

Inspire – show them what part they can play, not necessarily in the whole world, but in their world.
Decision – help them see it starts with a decision to do.
Example – point them to a great example. Better yet, be the example.
Action – ask them write down right there and then the next step… and commit to do it.

As one wise man succinctly put it two thousand years ago, “don’t merely listen: do.” Here’s to a generation of acters.