Three Things We Need To Give

Posted on July 17, 2010 by Scott Gould

Thinking on from our discussion last week on The Fight Our Youth Face, I wanted to share the three things that I believe we need to give to the young people around us. Working with interns everyday, these have been the basis of what I’ve been doing for 7 years.

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?

The Fight Our Youth Face

Posted on July 10, 2010 by Scott Gould

The more and more time I spend with young people (having just graduated from that class when I turned 26 last year), the more and more I realise how big a fight there is that they face – and they don’t even know it yet.

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:

It delays decision making
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. Continue reading →

Copy and Paste

Posted on September 17, 2009 by Scott Gould

In setting the context for today’s post, it helps if I take a moment to shamelessly promote the good work a bunch of us have started with Like Minds. Last week I went from having a great idea, commitments from some speakers, and the help of a really great co-founder (Drew Ellis, take a bow) – to having a kicking website, paying sponsors, expert panelists, and best of all, actual paid bookings. It’s been a momentous seven days or so, but it would’ve been impossible if I wasn’t standing on the shoulders of giants.

You see this past week I’ve written copy, created press releases, and masterminded panels, but none of this thinking has been original on my part. It has been a case of finding those who’ve already done it, and copying and pasting. (Thank you, Media140.)

Of course this isn’t a secret. In any industry, you first find your voice by listening to the others around you, finding out how you are similar to them, and then once you have some confidence, establishing how you are different to them. In the digital industry this just happens far faster, and the advent of social media has made this ‘adaptation’ way of working quite the norm as long as your attribute the original author.

There is, for some people though, something unsettling about this, and I want to uncover it. In my mind, it’s about this:

The Truth and Lie of Experience

There is an understanding that the person with experience is not at the mercy of the person without it. I agree. Experience certainly trumps theory, and my first year of business has all been about gainly costly wisdom where there was once just mere knowledge.

Yet a lack of experience does not mean that we are left without any clue. The whole point of parenting is to guide the child’s decision making by providing ‘inside knowledge’ of life. Fast forward twenty or thirty years, put yourself around some great mentors, and it’s the same thing – you are getting insider knowledge.

The amount of pain I’ve avoided, mistakes I’ve sidestepped, etc etc has been reduced by copying and pasting the experience of others. Sure, I’ve had my fair share of failures, and I’m glad I have – but I often wonder how far I would’ve gone without the luxury of borrowing others’ experience.

In turn, providing others with your experience is then what blogging is largely about. That’s what wikis are about. That’s what church and the Bible is about. Knowledge share. Experience share. Copy and paste.

The question, then, is two fold:

Are you copying? If so, from where? If not: find people who you not only respect, but want to mimic in a small way. This means in person, through social media, through books and biographies, through documentaries, etc.
Are you pasting? If so, to where? If not: begin taking time out to think. Map out your life and see where you could be pasting in advice and experience from others.

What I’m thrilled about is in addition to the mentors in my life, I’m also copy and pasting from wonderful people who’re commenting on this blog. In particular, Robin Dickinson and Jim Connolly. You guys are great.

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