In 20 years of working in industry I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly, as well as the amazingly brilliant when it comes to business operating models. I have worked in organisations that have practised new models, to different degrees. The results were some of the fastest growing, and most successful, businesses in history. Social media will, and is, making new models of operation mandatory, rather than optional.

Business needs a new model that is better for shareholders, employees, customers and suppliers. We are striving towards that at Redcatco, and helping businesses that want to do the same, restoring the balance between the different stake holders. If your customers genuinely appreciate your business, and your employees act out of community, then the shareholders will receive all the value that they can handle.

Award Winning Business

A business that is a living example of doing things differently is Justgiving.com. I was at the RSA to see Zarine Kharas, the company’s co-founder, receive the 2009  Albert medal, joining holders that include Sir Tim Berners Lee in their number. She gave a lecture about what businesses need to do to create lasting social value: ”The New Business of Business” (audio and video on The RSA site). Anne-Marie, Justgiving’s other co-founder was also there.

On a show of hands, around 95% of the audience had sponsored someone through the JustGiving site. That’s a very impressive market penetration for a business that didn’t exist a decade ago. There are over 7 million users on Justgiving now, and they have helped to raise over £400,000,000. Yes, I did get the 0’s right. 0.4 Billion, if that is easier on the eye.

I’ve written about philanthropy, and you might remember that I was Caught by CauseWired. That isn’t the topic here. Zarine was on to broader questions and the nature of business:

“Where are the moral questions in today’s economic dialogue?”

Social Separation

She cited the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams’, recent speech in which he  pointed to the downturn as a reality check, but said that we are shrinking away from getting a (much needed) new perspective.

Zarine argued that we separate working and personal lives – Work is what you do to make a living, our good life, our moral life, is lived elsewhere. I would argue that our lives are even more fragmented than that, based on what we see with consumer behaviours.

I find it hard not to observe that social media and the growing popularity of personal-branding is blurring these bounds between work and play. Are you connected to your boss on Facebook? Do you blog at work under your own name? Are you that ’snowboarding marketing’ person?

“What is needed above all is an understanding of how a variety of institutions can together contribute to producing a more decent economic world.”

Business and ethics are not incompatible, they go in hand in hand. That should be obvious, but has been blurred through recent corporate sagas. Ethics build trust, and, ultimately, business is based upon trust. In the same way, art and profit are also not mutually exclusive. Innovation itself is a creative process, and a markedly profitable one at that.

Corporately Responsible

In Zarine’s view, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is a charade. In the vast majority of cases it ends up so divorced from the core business that it becomes almost meaningless, she says. I would agree. Whilst many businesses are doing some well intentioned things, the danger is that one ends up with a situation where “they, over there” are responsible for the social responsibility and tackling issues to do with sustainability. It is the same danger that businesses face when they create “innovation teams”. These are functions that have to be embedded into the heart of the business, as a shared responsibility.

It is time to relook at the purpose of business itself. Zarine reminded the audience that it is a debate that goes back to the reformation. R H Tawney ”Religion And The Rise Of Capitalism” was cited as a must read on the origins of the idea that “The business of business is business, and should be kept separate from the business of society itself.” We haven’t had businesses, as we know them today, forever. There is no reason that they are necessarily part of our long-term future, in their current form.

Business Beyond Profit

The idea of ‘maximising shareholder value’ as the sole objective of the business needs to be thrown out. None other than Jack Welch, famed business champion, himself said that shareholder value is “the dumbest idea in the world“. Profit is a result, an output, not a strategy.

“Your main constituencies are your employees, customers and products.” Jack Welch

It is only when companies move away from the maximisation of profit as their primary goal that lasting value can actually be created. Profit is a by-product of something much greater, argued Zarine, and that is: creating a great product, serving customers, employees and all stakeholders in a balanced way.

“There needs to be a concensus that success is not only measured in profit, not only in growth.”

Perhaps the recent financial crisis can shake us into that? Huge profits. Uncharted risks. Immeasurable destruction of value. I’ve served on audit and disclosure committees of some big businesses. The more deeply I understand modern accounting, the more I see how profit is a short-term variable, manipulable through the magic of accounting, even when that accounting is conducted under strict guidelines. 

“Shareholders need to cease their folly of a relentless quest for growth at unsustainable levels.”

From Business Tactics to Social Strategies

That also means understanding that decisions that have a short term negative inpact on profit can have a long term positive effect. For me this is the essence of strategic thinking: Lose the battle, but win the war. Quarterly profit targets drive behaviours that are focussed on winning every battle. Eventually the company looses the bigger war, with chapter 11 or simple oblivion following shortly afterwards.

“Actions that generate trust generate greater value”

People need to stop seeking the best price, argued Zaraine, but instead start looking a best value, and long term impact. “Cheap” often turns out to be expensive. I know from my experience in running manufacturing functions that this is very true, but little understood.

Where does the change start? Zarine says it must start with companies themselves, and with the behaviour of all employees – how they interact with each other and with others outside the business. That means you and me.

Interestingly, Zarine is unconvinced about the idea of social enterprises. She said, “consider not what a company does, but how it does it,” and was very clear that Justgiving is a business, not a charity. There are profits, which are invested back into  the business, and there is a small profit share for employees.

Profit is a sensible goal, when it is not the only goal. Zarine says what has been lost is the central purpose of a business: a satisfying life for employees and a reasonable (emphasis on REASONABLE) financial return. 

Throw Away the Rules to Get Mores

Justgiving have thrown away the rule book, instead they trust people to do the right thing. I know some other businesses that have done the same, and I’ll be writing about them soon. Imagine no expenses policy. No holiday rules. HR people will faint, but Zarine cites other businesses, including Ricardo Semler of Semco, who also run a very different model. Ricardo says the obsession with control is a delusion, and increasingly a fatal busness error. 

“We reach for rules and controls. We all succumb to the temptation. Companies, charities, on and on… …The idea that we can control these things is a vain hope”

It reminds me of something that I first read in a Covey book: Rules can never make up for mores (social norms). To put it another way, you can never legislate for good behaviour. Good behaviour comes from accountability, and accountability comes from transparency. That is one of the reasons that I believe social media can be so transformative in a business.

Justgiving isn’t perfect, and they know it “we fail at this every day.” – Rules become obsolete almost the moment we write them in today’s fast paced business environment. Rules bring out the worst in us, and to that end Justgiving have one rule: to have as few rules as possible. They have even experimented with letting employees set their own salaries.

What ensures that people do the right things? It isn’t rules, that is for sure. Zarine quoted the UK Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, who was recently in hot water over her  expenses. When questioned about suspect claims, she said, “I followed the rules. I sought advice. I followed that advice. I have done nothing wrong.”

Because she followed the rules she had done nothing wrong. Imagine that in the context of trying to build a high-risk, innovative business. In an environment based on mores, shared understandings and values, people come to work to do the right thing. Trust, and peer pressure, combine with the desire to do the right things, to provide the glue that holds people together. Rules, argued Zarine, breed mediocrity. She describes the Justgiving environment in this way:

“We aim to have honest conversations with each other – difficult ones, to endlessly debate how to serve customers better.” Far from being a soft environment, it is a tough one, “Decisions are made on facts, not on egos; [it is a place] where innovation happens without fear of failure.”

New Structures – Beyond Command and Control

They don’t have an org chart for the business, they work in project teams which dissolve and reform. People you have relationship with hold you accountable, not distant managers. I would go along with Zarine’s view that the structures of the Victorian age and the production line are not appropriate for the Internet era.

This all sounds simple, but is very difficult in practice. We are educated to be compliant, rather than questioning, but innovation starts with questioning, and compliance does not breed trust. Creating a more ‘open’ organisation is a long journey. It took over seven years for Semco. One audience member asked how this might work in their National Health Service trust. There are definitely challenges.

When people feel themselves to be highly accountable to their peers, when they are motivated by a sense of involvement “That’s when they perform to the best of their abilities, out  of respect for and commitment to their team, to their customers, to their shareholders. Where they have a meaningful say in the business, they do not have to be told what to do.”

Adam Smith, 250 years ago, recognised that an economy requires other values and commitments, such as mutual trust and confidence, in order to work.

“We don’t need ethics workshops or corporate citizenship lectures, just good old fashioned trust and the freedom to do the right thing.”

Get Innovating

Social innovation is open to all businesses that truly want it. Whilst employees might be more geographically dispersed than they once were, the technologies exist to re-integrate them and rebuild the relationships and trust that are so essential to running an effective business. Those relationships can be extended beyond company boundaries, to build effective communities with customers, partners and shareholders. Social media is making businesses more accountable than they have been in living memory. Consumers are becoming activists and campaigners, and what goes on inside of the walls of a company no longer remains there (see Dominos Pizza – Why Everyone is in PR Now and Employee Engagement Matters).

The best way for businesses to respond, is to embrace the new communication media that the Internet has enabled, and use them to build trusted relationships and to transform the business.

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In some senses, this post is a part II to raising finance for your business. Tuesday’s TechCrunch Geek n Rolla event brought together business start up hopefuls and experienced old hands from around Europe. The passion and enthusiasm of TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher in supporting the European start up scene is a joy to see. The scene needs more of that.

Update: Mike has other talents too, as we found out at the after party (thanks to @Itamarl for the video):

Here are the highlights and key take-aways from the event, at least the ones that caught my ear:

Andrew, of Huddle, gave an invaluable talk on “Hiring a group of peers” with points that are good ancient valley hiring wisdom:

• Have 100% agreement on hiring decisions – if anyone is in doubt, best to say no, and say no early.
• If in doubt, don’t hire – however tempting.
• Personal referral beats all other forms of hiring, by a mile, even finding people via Twitter.
• If you have to use recruiters, pick just one or two to work with, and build a quality relationship.
• Paying below market rate is a false economy, people will come and steal your good staff.
• You don’t always get the right team in the first place. Get over it.
• Follow the correct procedures – make sure you have staff trained in HR, the ROI is compelling.

Andrew talked about Huddle’s desire to create “a place I’d want to work at” :- great people + nice surroundings = WIN. Hard to argue with that! Reminds me of an old post from a Mike Smith on startups and hiring. It is so important and so hard to get right.

I’ve written a separate post on Joe Drumgoole’s “get off of my cloud” – it is good to see the topic of cloud computing for start ups getting some air time, done right it is a brilliant success-based cost model. 

Joe Stepniewski, Skimlinks, talked about monetisation for start ups – I can’t seem to find that word in my spell checker… Revenues perhaps? . Joe reminded the audience that CPM has taken a 6% drop in the last year, but performance marketing has gone up. The changing numbers and dynamics mean that ad-funded start ups need to paddle faster just to stay where they were. You need lots of traffic. Lots – A million impressions a month is needed just to cover the cost of a desk in London (about £500/month).

The lesson? Don’t rely on advertising – CPMs are the lowest they have been for years, and dropping. Go direct (if you are going to go with advertising) and look for monthly tenancy from targeted sponsors. Choose ones that you are passsionate about and create interative promotions where the audience participate. A note to marketing managers and businesses looking for promotion: There is huge opportunity for you here. SAP and others have done very well off of sponsoring blogs.

Joe strongly encouraged start ups to look at affiliate schemes, which I’d hope he would, given Skimlinks business. They have low barriers to entry, are quick to get going, and work with lower traffic volumes. It is also a more level playing field, as small sites can get the same deals as larger ones. Social Media and user generated content can convert well, since user opinions and recommendation drive the buying decision. Forums and Twitter convert very well. Again a note to outbound marketers: don’t miss out. Affiliate marketing encourages sites to be more considerate of their users. A very good thing. More in Bash’s post on TechCrunch.

Jof Arnold, Gymfu.com, gave an insider’s view of developing apps for the iPhone and marketing via the iStore. It isn’t as pretty as it looks, with multiple platforms to develop for and the intricacies of the Apple approval process. People are already gaming the system, and there are lots of pirate installs on iPhones. The peak revenues mean that it is still too small a market to really interest VCs. Self-funding and Angels are the way to go here.

Leisa Reichelt, Disambiguity, spoke about user experience. She’s been a long-time favourite blogger for me. Her key points apply to all marketing, not just to user experience:

• Step 1: Pick an audience.There is no such thing as “the general public”.
• Step 2: Know your audience. Don’t assume, and beware of stereotypes. Find them. Watch them. Talk to them.
• Step 3: Design for your audeince. e.g. use customer personas. Having some ‘pretend’ customer identities, based on what you learnt in step 2, is a great psychological hack to shape and improve your thinking. Question every product and design decision against your users’ needs. Hire a (good) designer to make you a style guide.
• Step 4 Think big and think small. Simple things like moving a button can make multi-million dollar differences. Likewise, don’t loose site of the ‘big stuff’ either.

The panel on getting more women involved in tech start ups has been amply covered almost everywhere. I started using computers in the 70’s. Things are better now, but we still aren’t there. Sophie Cox, of Worldeka,  made some good points about the sexualisation of youth culture. In the UK we have an issue with getting people involved in tech, regardless of gender. I find the falling numbers on science courses alarming. Paul Walsh didn’t make the panel, so he was replaced by a banana in a bin. No, I have no idea. Anyway… A future topic for a blog post.

William Reeve, experienced entrepreneur and investor, talked through his LOVEFiLM.com experience, with some sagely advice in his slides:

• More cash doesn’t mean more customers. It is how you use it.
• Can you afford success? If your costs are ahead of revenues, do some creative thinking
• Boot strap cash - cash flow beats money.
• Choose your partners well to manage your cash flow.
• Look for performance based spend.
• Think about your burn rate. How much cash you are consuming each month controls your future.
• Pick the metrics that matter, and manage tightly against them – if your key metrics slide has 50 things on it, you need to re-think it!.

Lesley Eccles, Co-founder of Hubdub shared their experiences of launching, and tackling the US market from the UK. Think: lots of flying, careful with the humour, and find good local partners. Ian Hogarth, Songkick.com, stated the importance of focus well:

Focus is working out what your start up is best at, describing it accurately, and nailing that thing.

As a VC once said to me: focus like a laser beam. Dissipation of effort will rip success out of your hands. Ian pointed to a good wiki with a list of free/opensource tools for start ups: startuptools.pbwiki.com. He also made a point, as did Mike Butcher, that networking with other start ups is key. This is something the valley does well – sharing experience, supporting other companies. We are social here in Europe, but don’t seem to be as good at leveraging other people’s experience.

Nick Halstead, Favorit, talked on Funding and how to handle Angels should be compulsory reading for anyone looking to get funding that way. Angels are hard to spot – they don’t advertise themselves – for very good reasons – and they can be both difficult and rewarding to work with. There are angels that have fins rather than wings, you have been warned. Likewise, Fred Destin, Atlas Venture, gave some solid advice on dealing with VCs. Key take away: You need to build a relationship and credibility. Dropping a business card isn’t going to get you anywhere.

I’d agree with Alan Patrick’s take on the event. I see encouraging signs of greater maturity and experience in the UK’s tech startup scene, and that is a very good thing. It would be nice to think that in the next few years we’ll see some successful exits, which will free up cash and experience for the next, even bigger and better, wave of UK-based start ups.

Next up… Feedback on the start up pitches, and tips on pitching.

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It’s a big week in London this week, and it’s not just me saying that, it’s a quote from TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher. Yesterday was SeedCamp, today is Geek’n'Rolla and last night I chaired the Mobile Monday London session on “Financing Your Mobile Business in a Credit Crunch.”

Raising Finance

Raising finance is an almost inevitable part of running any business, large or small, in good times (to fund growth) or in bad times (to get through). It is something to understand, whether you are a new employee or a seasoned CEO. This post captures some of the discussion and my thoughts from last night’s diverse and talented panel, that included:

• Chris Padfield, from London Business Angels.
• Carl Uminski, long time entrepreneur (CTO of Overture, TruTap co-founder and involved in Flirtomatic).
• Pamir Gelenbe, from Newton Moore – entrepreneur and VC.
• Rose Lewis, from Pembridge Parnters LLP – again with a VC background and businesses finance experience.

The evening kicked off with presentations, including Vodafone launching their mobile clicks competition in the UK, a session on business modelling, an overview of the DKTN and also Gateway to investment - www.g2i.org – a scheme which helps prepare businesses for funding.

Customers Consulting and Product

A lot of the discussion centred on customers and consulting. Customers are clearly an important piece of the funding equation. Paying customers not only provide revenue to fund the business, they also provide evidence that the business has a credible proposition. Clearly something that is important to potential investors. While a single customer doesn’t prove you have a business (almost anyone can sell something to someone once), a few key references are a good indicator that you might be on to something.

Some businesses are funded pre-revenue, as was the case for many of the businesses that I have been involved in. If you are developing patent-able technology, or a product with a long development cycle, then clearly you are going to need funding to get through to first revenues. However, with changing development models and costs, and the more modular nature of Web 2.0 technologies, it is becoming the exception rather than the rule in the web and social technology space. Businesses are getting customers on board with early versions of the product, and after that seeking funding to accelerate growth. That means less dilution for the company founders – since the company will have a higher valuation, you don’t have to give as much of it away to raise money.

The general consensus from the panel was that web-based businesses really do need to get customers before they go for funding. With the cost of prototyping applications being so low, early development can be self-funded. Customers are key to showing that there is a market for the offering, rather that it just being a ‘good idea.’

There is a temptation for technology companies to slip into being a consultancy business, rather than a product business. Not that there is anything wrong with a consultancy business, but it has a very different valuation and structure to a product one. Consultancy can provide short term cash, but products provide revenue streams that can more easily be leveraged and grown, once up and running. Many businesses do start with consultancy and use that to build expertise and IPR that leads to a product – it takes great skill.

Timing and a Plan

The session on business modelling, and a few questions from the audience, brought up the issue of business plans. I think it was Pamir who said: “Business plans are like sausages, if you knew what went in to one you wouldn’t touch it.” In my experience, that is very true, but you still need them! Rose pointed out something that many people I speak to seem to miss: “Once you have raised the funding, what are you going to do with it?” She likes to see a 90 day plan detailing how the investment will be used.

Timing for investment was another central topic of discussion, and its always a tricky one. There are pros and cons to going early of going late, but Pamir reminded us of the truism: “The time to get money, is when you don’t need it” – If you don’t need funding, you can be more selective about who you get funding from. That gives you the opportunity to choose “better quality” money.

Not all cash is equal.

Just as some customers are a better source of revenue – either because they are prepared to be references or can help with critical product issues -  some angels and Venture Capitalists are going to be able to bring more relevant expertise and contacts into your business. It isn’t just about their money, in fact almost anything but. Also, remember that headline valuation is one thing, but terms are another. Sometimes the terms of the funding can kill you down the line, or at least greatly limit your options.

If you ask a VC for money you get advice, if you ask a VC for advice you get money.

Much of the art of investment is about controlling risk, and that came up as well. As a business person you need to manage your risk, but you also need to manage (and reduce) investor’s risk. 

There are lots of different options for raising money. There are 15-20 key groups of Angels  in the UK, a smaller number of VCs (with funds that are active), then there are banks, competitions (ike Vodafone Clicks) and grants – many of which are regionally specific in the UK. Banks are clearly putting money into businesses, but generally only into larger, mature businesses. If you already have VC funding, then venture debt is also an option. It’s newer and more esoteric, but can be advantageous in certain circumstances – I’ve had good and bad experiences with it. 

Be Innovative

There other ways of funding your business too, and you can be really innovative in ‘raising funds’ – sometimes adjusting cash flow, for example moving to success-based cost models for sales and marketing, or choosing suppliers that will work in ways that free up your cash.

Although we don’t say it so much on this side of the Atlantic, the recession is great for entrepreneurs – Brits talk about it more conservatively. In down times there is more talent available, sales and marketing costs are lower and things are more open to negotiation – for example office space. If you are driven by costs, not revenues – usually the case for early stage start up – then hard times can be good. Not so great for businesses with big established revenues and high margins. 

A big thank you to Farhan for liberally tweeting notes whilst I was chairing – another great use for Twitter, real time session notes.

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Tortoises. That’s it. Tortoises. We all need to be like tortoises. I’ve been listening to what John Cleese has to say in the video clip here, which is what got me thinking about them. I have to admit, it wasn’t where I started thinking. You might not associate tortoises with creativity or learning, but they provide an interesting illustration. This ten minute video features Mr Cleese, at the grand age of 69, talking about creativity, competence and learning:

A Tortoise Enclosure

John Cleese talks about creating an enclosure, a safe space where it is safe for the tortoise – our creative mind – to come out of its shell without its head being knocked by a passing object. An oasis in which we can be creative – free from interruptions and distractions (like the constant drip of incoming emails and other interruptions):

“You have to create boundaries of space, and you have to create boundaries of time.”

Boundaries, and the space that results from them, are essential. For me, that means taking a walk out of the office – either in my local woods, or wherever I can get away to. For others, that might be closing the office door or putting in ear phones and playing music.

After space, the other dimension is time. Creating time boundaries, a defined starting time and a stopping time, is actually great for productivity and creativity. After a brief twitter exchange with Amanda Rose (organising the Twestival for charity:water) and Bastian Lehmann  I realised I haven’t specifically blogged about time boxing (although it is the idea behind “…see what you can do in an hour“). Setting aside a fixed chunk of time enables you to focus on getting something done.

Learning New Things

The talk touches on learning, and that is really my subject here. John says:

“To know how good you are at something requires exactly the same skills as are required to be good at something.”

He then states that in reverse: if you are not good at something, you lack the skills to know that you are. A much better way of stating something I often have to tackle: We don’t know what we don’t know.

“Most people who have no idea what they are doing, have absolutely no idea that they have no idea what they are doing.” John Cleese.

The Science of Lifelong Learning

Behind his usual dry humour, he is making a very serious statement. Learning, life long learning, is an essential skill. We need to be like tortoises, not like hares, when it comes to our education. I was brought up in a generation where we hared our way through school, and for the privileged few, university. A learning sprint, then work. The pace of change in society and business, and the speed at which new knowledge is being created, means that is no longer sufficient. Learning must now be a life long process. Like the tortoise, we need to plod on, in a steady and sustainable way. As John Cleese says, again with his unique humour:

“I try, today, to learn something new. Each day I want to learn something new – because I am very, very old… and I’ll be dead soon. So, I want to be as well informed as I can possibly be, when I die.”

Part of what drove me to start Redcatco was the concept of build learning organisations empowered by technology . Disparate communities linked by what is often called collaboration or social software today.

Businesses need to be places where people learn new things everyday. The only sustainable way for that to happen is as a result of people gaining knowledge from each other by sharing it. Those learners then build on that knowledge and share it in turn. That process is at the heart of innovation and development, from design and marketing to effective sales. I believe that learning best takes place in a social context (and Bandura and a number of other Psychologists would tend to agree).

This week I attended a panel at the RSA on the subject of life long learning, looking at what new research, especially in neuroscience, can tell us. There are lots of questions: What is the scope for lifelong learning, and what are the best methods to support it? We live in an ageing society, where people are staying in the work force for longer and longer periods of time. Can we still learn, even when we are old? Is the explosion in brain training (from 10 minute newspaper mental workouts to Kawashima’s brain training game) based on good science?

The speakers included Andrew Pollard, ESRC Institute of Education; Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL; Paul Howard-Jones, University of Bristol; Usha Goswami, Centre for Neuroscience in Education, University of Cambridge; Matthew Taylor (Chief Executive of the RSA); and was chaired by Tom Schuller, Director of IFLL -  the Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning. The session was recorded – will be on the RSA website in due course. You can read Matthew Taylor’s blog post on the evening too. 

From my own investigations of brain plasticity (the ability of the brain to adapt and change), I know that understanding has changed dramatically in the last few years. Developments like Project Prakash (which restores sight to people who with life-long blindness) has shown that our brains can learn and relearn significantly later into life than previously thought. 

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, UCL institute of cognitive neuroscience, asked if it was meaningful or helpful to reduce accounts of educational events to neural level. All the current “brain training products” are sold with the promise, but there have been no randomised, controlled trials on most of them. She talked about an article from Weisberg et al, “The Seductive Allure of Cognitive Neuroscience“, from 2008 which shows an interesting psychological phenomenon: we are suckers for pseudo science. We fall victim to specious explanations. Adding “brain words” into a bad explanation made people believe it more. Sarah-Jayne finished her talk with a slide of images of developing brains. While scientists used to think brain development stopped early in life, scans show that the brain actually continues to develop for decades. 

Andrew Pollard argued from a very  different perspective, saying that we need to acknowledge the place of biography and identity in the learning process. It can’t just be studied at the neurological level, although such study does help – a point that all the other speakers seemed to agree with.

Matthew Taylor hypothesised that neuroscience will make a huge difference to our lives. The only threat is that there is too much hype around neuroscience. By the way, the same could be said for social media and Web 2.0 as well. What are the things that give us a desire to learn? “Collaboration and the use of technology are the meta-learning skills that will be critical to life long learning.” We can learn from arcade games. If we get up to 85% we are motivated to try again. How many people in schools are at that point? We need to keep ourselves at the point where we are doing well, but know we could do a bit better. Then we are motivated to try.

Usha Goswami, centre for neuroscience, University of Cambridge (who specialises in developmental dyslexia) talked about the developmental origins of flourishing. It is a well know list, including warm, responsive, contingent care and a family embedded in social network. I think that actually extends out to businesses that want to be learning organisations. They need to be supportive environments, with good networks into a broad community that can support their learning.

New research will and should be more interested in the emotional self regulation system. Early capability makes later learning more efficient. So  enhancing early capability at the outset of learning also increases the complexity of what can be learned. Small differences in perceptual systems can make big differences in the developmental trajectory. Think about a ship going off course. 1 degree off course, caught early, makes little difference. If it isn’t caught for a long time, you are miles from where you need to be. Early intervention is important – something else that extends out to be a business truth as well.

The interventions which promote cognitive reserve and resilience education might surprise you. It is a case of use it or loose it, another reason that we should be lifelong learners like John Cleese – learn something new everyday. Another very significant factor is physical exercise. Yes, you heard it. Before you go chasing after those cognitive enhancing drugs, get out for a walk or a run. Neurocognitive activation or cognitive training may be useful (i.e. brain games), but it really remains to be determined. What is known is that poor nutrition and poor quality of sleep can impair cognitive function. So, if you want to learn well, eat well and rest well too.

Paul Howard-Jones,  University of Bristol,  asked if brain training can help. There is research to show that practice on a cognitive function can improve that cognitive function, the bigger question is does that generalize out to other activities. Does your executive team being great at Sudoku mean that you are going to be better at strategic planning? The ACTIVE Study (Willis et al., 2006) showed some improvement in  ”fluid intelligence.” That is a good indicator of how well you will do academically.  Jaeggi’s results showed that some training improved working memory and fluid intelligence, so there is the possibility to produce brain training products that do work, but products on the market today have insufficient published evidence. Again, Paul noted that exercise helps with learning, academic achievements and motivation. Psychology is the link between neuroscience and education.

The Q&A was lively, with Peter Cook asking about “learning, unlearning and relearning” for businesses – something institutions like banks are going to have to do quite a bit of after recent events. One point that came up is that if you believe that there are hard neurological limits, you are actually less likely to reach them. Disposition and agency (believing in and taking responsibility) are critical learning factors. Likewise, learning is better when there are discussed objectives and clarity.

The word education literally means to bring on, in the sense of “to bring out” or “lead on”. It is something that we can continue to experience, and to expect for others, for the duration of our working lives, at the very least.

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Interstitial time is a wonderful thing, used wisely. In today’s action-packed world, gaps and pauses are increasingly rare things. A gap in a market often signals an opportunity, although sometimes the gap is there for a good reason. Either there isn’t a demand, or the economics don’t work out. Gaps between projects or jobs can be an opportunity to pull things back to order, and to reflect on things, but they are there for a reason too.

After every difficulty, ask yourself two questions:

‘What did I do right?‘ and ‘What would I do differently?‘

- Brian Tracy

The gap between Christmas and New Year is a time of reflection and planning for me. It is a time for going a little slower, a time for looking back over the year. A space to think about what I have learnt and what has been achieved. It is a time for looking forward to the year ahead too, thinking about goals and new projects.

The transitions and pauses in presentations and speeches are one of the keys to a great delivery. The transitions and pauses in life can be used to the same effect. The gaps aren’t there simply to cram more things into. Sometimes they are meant to be gaps. Pauses to be appreciated. A chance to notice little things that would otherwise be missed.

It is hard to make many predictions for 2009, other than that it will be very different from 2008. The world will remain competitive, but the terms of that competition will shift subtly. Knowledge will be as important as ever, and social software will continue to become an increasingly central part of our personal and work lives.

The shifts will remind us that people are more important than systems and processes. That communities create more sustainable change than individuals. That reflective learning wins out over blind striving, in the long run at least. Notice the little things, because the little things are often the ones that cause the biggest changes.

Love the gaps. Use them well. Even if it wasn’t a great ‘08, you can still plan for a fine ‘09. Plan it well, but leave some gaps.

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Malcom Muggeridge once said, “All new news is old news happening to new people.” Economic times are tough and many people are rightly concerned about what 2009 holds. This is at least the third ecomonic down turn I have experienced so far, and they don’t get any easier. What is to be learnt?

Every time the cry of “this time it is different” rises up. And it is, in lots of ways. Every time declaration of “this is the end of X, Y and Z” rings out. It rarely is though. One of the odd things about the way we experience change is that it feels huge as we go though it, but small looking back. Our senses and our society are highly attuned to detecting change. That’s how are are wired, from the neurons in our brain to the newspapers on the news stand.

Meanwhile, powerful homeostatic forces almost always pull us back on to much the same course. Real change happens slowly, and for good reason. TechCrunch cries “The End Of Venture Capital As We Know It?” – the piece, partly based on an essay by Paul Graham, has caused the usual storm in the blogosphere. Jof Arnold has done a nice job of posting a rebuttal. VCs and Angel investors are certainly struggling, blows have been felt even by big name entrepreneurs like Doug Richard. Does that mean the end of the VC world? Of course not. Models are shifting – for example Scott Dig has an interesting post on crowd sourced investment, but scroll down to Fred WIlson’s comments on that same post and you’ll see that he has been using variations of these ideas for some time. He argues that the wisdom of crowds doesn’t replace the need for experience and expertise in the long run.

During the discussion at the recent screening of Us Now, JP Rangaswami gave an example that grounded things for me. The Q&A had wandered on to the topic of how everything has been changed by the Internet and “Web 2.0″, specifically the power of crowd sourcing. J P took the example of his pacemaker. Would we be happy to have surgery performed on us under the direction of the wisdom of crowds? A wiki page or message stream set up so that everyone could chip in during our surgery? I think even the boldest of technology early adopters would turn a little shy at the prospect.

At times like these, we must be careful not to over generalize new ideas, just as we must be careful not to dismiss them without inspection. My maths teacher once proudly proclaimed “You can draw any number of lines between two points on a graph”, in just the same way you can draw any number of conclusions from a couple of news stories or blog posts.

I am seeing more and more people putting new names to old ideas and telling us that things have changed. Shallow opinions, unsubstantiated by research and fact, propagating like they are received wisdom. I hear people saying that there is no need for experts anymore – we can Google for all the knowledge we need. I have to say, I really don’t want to meet these people during any medical incidents of my own.

Experts are good at working things out, drawing on experience. Crowds are good at providing seed information for decisions. In his book “The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few” James Surowiecki makes the point that crowds are wise only as long has they have diversity, independence and are decentralized, otherwise they can become very foolish. The blogosphere has a tendency to centralize (eg Digg) and amplify a select few, who can become imitative – something else that Surowiecki cites as a cause of the failure of their wisdom.

With mainstream media entering the blogosphere the brutal fight for eyeballs and associated advertising revenue is causing some independence to be lost too. Folks, let’s keep our hats on. We are still human. Society is still society. Enough 2.0 good, 1.0 bad stuff. Enough “everything has changed”. That is 2 legs good, 4 legs bad territory.

Most of us don’t have a direct influence over the macro-economic factors that surround us, but we can control the micro-factors of our direct environment. If we don’t, then it is that environment which is controlling us, rather than the other way around. So, read widely, find diverse opinions, and add your own opinion into the mix if it is different to what you see. Understand, as best you can, the provenance of what you are reading and the author’s motives.

The Web has put some good new tools into our hands. For better or for worse, we can control what we read, more easily participate in debates (if you are in a start up, you might want to join this one: ”How does the government support technology start-ups in a downturn?” and the one on TechCrunch UK), and we can read around a topic, rather than taking just one person’s opinion. No-one ever got smart from one blog post or a thirty second Google search.

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It is always good to get an experienced opinion, so when Hermione Way asked if I had some questions to put to Michael Smith on Techfluff.tv I got typing. Michael Smith is co-founder of firebox.com (turnover £12m) and CEO of Mind Candy. I squeezed two questions into my 140 characters of twitter message:

@bmje: What defines the difference between a good and a bad startup? What are the most important things in hiring a team?

Michael’s answer:

…so I would say that the most important thing for a start up is people.  One of my mantras is to hire slowly and fire fast.  It is absolutely critical that you have a great team around you that believe in the product and are passionate about it.   As soon as you get a few people who are “average” or only “quite good”, it can affect the whole team; it can damage the dna of the whole business as you go forward.  So it is critical that you keep a very high bar there.  There are lots of other things that are important.  Focus – not getting too distracted.  So many different directions a start-up can go in but you have got to remain very very focussed on your core business.  A great quote that Danny Rimer uses – some great American entrepreneur said this “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” – and I totally agree with that.

Or, to quote a US company chairman I worked with “focus like a laser beam”. You can see the whole first episode of techfluff.tv here including a must-see British version of the elevator pitch: the escalator pitch. If you are in the position to be hiring staff, you might want to read Keeping Notes and Hiring Good People, which expands on Michael’s points.

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A confluence of thoughts on innovation and questions running around my head, so it must be time for a blog post. Innovation is further up the hype-o-meter than social media in UK business.  Everyone wants to be innovative, and quite rightly so. There are innovation conferences, innovation consultancies and innovation workshops springing up all over the place, of varying quality. Innovation is a core survival skill, isn’t it?

Where Does Innovation Come From?

Actually innovation comes from taking risks, and opening yourself up to making mistakes. That doesn’t sound like a survival instinct. Survival is about not taking risks. That is one of the reasons innovation is such an anathema to businesses – failure is an almost inevitable consequence of innovation. On average 4 out of every 5 start ups fail. New projects usually fail. Inventions often don’t work out. That is just statistical fact. I might have evaded the odds from time to time personally, but the fact still remains that not all risks pay off.

Where Does Innovation Go?

Innovative startups turn into cautious businesses as they grow, in order to survive. Then, when new competition appears, innovation because critical once more. How do you go back to being innovative again? Listening to Phil Smith (of Cisco Systems) and Ian Smith (of Oracle) today, at the Thames Valley Innovation Day, provided a perfect example of big companies looking to do just that. But the kind of “submit your ideas here” initiatives they mentioned don’t create innovation – they are just idea-harvesting – they move innovation from one place to another. In their case it does keep ideas within the business, rather than seeing them head out, to be the next start up they end up buying back. Sadly, there won’t be much innovation if no-one is coming up with good ideas to collect and execute.

At the same event, Sir John Chisholm talked about QinetiQ, what was once the innovation engine of the UK defense industry, now a private company. Innovation is about “thinking new things”, he said. It isn’t so much about innovators, as it is about having an innovative environment. To that end, Cisco is moving from a command and control management structure to a more distributed ‘tribal’ model, with mini-boards responsible for smaller areas of the business. It was sobering to note that the current down turn is at least in part due to (poor) innovation in the financial markets. It was financial product innovation that enabled huge amounts of capital to flow into economies, funding innovation and growth in a way not seen in any previous civilization. Sadly, it was not sustainable innovation.

“Most new things don’t succeed. That’s just a fact. The more radical the invention, the lower the statistical chance of success.” Sir John Chisholm.

How do you innovate then? Consultancy ?WhatIf! came close to hitting home. In a very entertaining talk, they spoke about the issues of fear and the “yes, but…” mentality which can kill innovation at birth. Our attitudes, the behaviour of others, and the organization around us are all key components in enabling innovation.

How Do You Keep Innovating?

From my perspective, there is a simple thing we can do to foster innovation, and it is this: Ask stupid questions. Time and time again, when I get involved in a new business, I end up asking ’stupid’ questions. Of course the questions aren’t really stupid. Questions are a tool to check assumptions, and to fill gaps in our knowledge. They have other uses too, but for stirring innovation, challenging questions are the golden dust that brings things to life.

Have a “stupid question” allowance for yourself, and for those around you. Questioning challenges the status quo. Questioning enables us to fill gaps in our knowledge. Start asking questions, it isn’t a stupid thing to do, it is the beginning of innovation.

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Hang on to the furniture, this post is going to be a bit of a ride. I’m holding Tom Watson and his CauseWired book responsible. I normally read a book very quickly, I’m almost legendary for my tree digesting abilities. I read. I mark with scraps of paper. I digest, note and move on.

 If you look at my copy of CauseWired, you’ll see that I’ve marked more than one or two pages out, and if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve been reading it for quite a while. Reading. Thinking. Reading.

It is worth remembering where I am coming from here. I got into the Internet because I was captivated by the power it had to connect people, and the things that happened when it did. I saw technology as a tool for creating positive change.

The companies I have worked for have lead me into commercial business. I’ve worked to create markets, fund companies, sell companies and buy companies, but in parallel to that I’ve also served on the board of trustees for a charity and run with the occasional social cause. I’m no expert on philanthropy or social action, but I do see it as an essential balance to the activities of the commercial world. It is something that the commercially-minded should be actively engaged in. It is no coincidence that some of the richest people on the planet are the greatest philanthropists.

CauseWired, or rather “CauseWired – Plugging in, Getting Involved, Changing the World,” to give the book its full title, makes a big claim. It is about changing the circumstances of others, through your own actions, something that Tom Watson knows about. This particular Tom Watson isn’t the UK MP (here), he’s this one, the US journalist and media critic (fuller bio on the Changing Our World site). There is a link between them, I’ll come back to. The book charts how social networks, like Facebook and a range of more specialist sites, are changing the world of charities/nonprofits and social causes.

Let me take this post as an example of the new dynamic social media (and social networking) is creating. I found out about the book via twitter, got details via a blog post and contacted the publishers via email. I started following Tom, via twitter, as I was interested in his work. Through Twitter I realised that Tom (US) knew Tom (UK), who I’ve followed on twitter since the New York Digital Mission.

 I usually post pictures of my travels to photo-sharing site Flickr, and recently posted one of my good self reading CauseWired. Tom commented on the photo, tweeted about it and linked to it in a post on his blog [I hope you are still managing to follow the thread!] The Amazon site picked up that blog post, and so, currently, there I am reading in a picture on the Amazon page for the book (here). I’ve just put that link as my Facebook status update, and… To be continued.

Now, none of that has changed the world, although I’m hoping that someone who reads the book as a result will. However, there are now a few hundred people who know we have a shared interest and skills that can be brought to bear on a cause. Connections and conversations on this kind of global scale would have been unlikely before the web, or more specifically before social media came to the web. Activists can amplify their efforts, create awareness and join forces with like minded individuals. That, in essence, is what CauseWired is about: How new communications technology is revolutionizing the flow of money and talent in the third sector.

The book weaves a course across the short history and global geography of the CauseWired phenomenon. The introduction felt a little long, but I have been buried in much of the subject matter for a long time so that may just be me. Once I was through that, I started busily scribbling notes and pondering deep thoughts.

Reading the book was like seeing from the other side of a two way mirror. I know the technologies and many of the causes that Tom uses as examples, but in telling the inside story, he brings them to life with a new freshness. The smaller examples in the book are even more interesting than the larger ones. Traditional broadcast media often leads the rally for the big causes. Social media has created the bandwidth for the smaller ones to emerge, the ones that don’t get big media air-time, in their early days at least. That is a qualitative change in the way that things work.

The big take aways and aha’s for me:

• There is a big difference between being aware or interested and engaged and active.
• We’ve been doing this stuff ‘forever’ – I remember charitable activity on the Bulletin boards in the 80’s – it is the tools and scale that has changed.
• This is yet another inter-generational fault-line.
• The shift from anonymity to authenticity is high-impact. “On the Internet no-one knows you are a dog” was 90’s. “I am…” is the 00’s.
• The powerful stuff happens when the on-line meet off-line and the off-line comes on-line.
• Tom Watson mentions Tom Watson in the book, in the context of UK open government, a slightly surreal moment.
• There’s more… Which I’ll come back to in future posts.
• Reading this book will be expensive – I’ve added lots of the books mentioned on to my Amazon wish list, and found some interesting causes.

If you’re in business, and you plan to hire or work with millennials, you better have a cause and/or be involved in one. CauseWired is a good place to start to understand that world. This book doesn’t aim to dig into the depths of social media. It isn’t going to lose the uninitiated, and experts shouldn’t expect any great revelations in that domain. It does illuminate wired causes, and provide a wealth of illustrations. If you work for a charity or not-for-profit, read this book. Digest it. Then read it again. It is the new shape of your world.

For our own mental well being, all of us need to be involved in something that transcends the ‘me’ and engages with the ‘us’, something that reaches beyond the ‘now’ to the tomorrow and beyond. If you haven’t done that yet, then Tom’s book will give you insight into what can be achieved, together with a list of places to get engaged in a rewarding way.

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After a little pause, I’m blowing off the dust and settling into the writing seat again. Things have been unusually busy, with business planning and academic studies. You can tell from the photo what has been on my mind, and everyone else’s too. These are tough times for business.

For every Black Friday there is a new dawn. A forest fire devastates the habitat. But the removal of the canopy of tree cover allows light to fall onto the forest floor, and shoots to rise from the ground. A new forest starts to emerge, and a new generation of fauna gets to have its day. Sadly, it isn’t clear if this particular fire is out yet. Not nice, very painful.

The events of recent weeks and months will undoubtedly be a catalyst for all sorts of change in businesses. Much of the noise is being, and will be, cut out. Traditional assumptions are being challenged, and faster and cheaper ways of doing things earnestly sought. New technology will be a part of delivering on that. New forms of knowledge management. New forms of marketing. New forms of selling. Little will be left untouched.

The industrial age saw the automisation of traditional job roles. The next phase on the information age sees the automisation of knowledge work with technology. It will change how we store and transmit information and how we communicate. That includes inside of the business and outside. The changes were already underway. Marketers are moving more of their budgets on-line, IT managers are exploring open source collaboration tools.

Upcoming posts will talk about how to do more with less. How to market differently. How to use new tools. Together with ideas from some of the best minds in the space, via book reviews and research summaries. If you don’t already, do follow the blog.

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There is something of a WOWNDADI blog tradition that I write an end of month wrap up post. This month’s is a little extended and a little late, since September was no ordinary month.

It was not so much because of Web 2.0 Expo and the Digital Mission, although I learnt lots from them, but because of events in the financial world. It gives pause to think.

Having been in both London and New York during the last few weeks, I watched the layoffs in both places at first hand. I’m not going to attempt to give advice on what to do if you have been laid off, plenty of others are better placed to do that. However, it is worth thinking about what you can do before hand.

This week, during Wiki Wednesday at the BCS, I heard the phrase: “out of hours time”. The BCS awards points to members who invest their personal time into learning and development. The points can be used towards qualifications. What do you do with your “out of hours” time?

Clay Shirky (author of here comes everybody) talks about “cognitive surplus”. Society, or more specifically we as individuals, waste a huge amount of time on television. I’d argue more widely that we waste a huge amount of time full stop. Why?

We don’t have a clear purpose, and even if we do, we don’t point our time effectively at it.

If you don’t resemble that statement, then let me tell you that you are someone who is going to change the world, you are almost unstoppable. Whatever the nice folks at CERN discover, as far as our everyday life is concerned, we can’t create or destroy time, we can simply waste it or use it.

Time is much like the very best sale items, once it is gone, it is gone. In this part of the world we to lead very ‘busy’ lives. I use the quote marks advisedly. We are very active-busy, but not very purpose-busy. The idea of packing more things in, like investing some time into learning and development, causes us to throw up our hands in dispair.

I haven’t got enough time!

Now we both know that statement is bonkers. Seriously, it is like a fish in the sea saying it has no water. We have loads of time. We’ve just filled it with things. Creating time can’t be done (although I’m still holding out hope CERN folks!), all we can do is the next best thing: Change how we use it; Swap out some things.

At Web 2.0 Expo both Clay Shirky and Gary Vaynerchuk, in their own way, urged people to ditch the TV and do something else with that time (Gary used a bit more adult anglo saxon in his talk than Clay did in his).

To create the time to learn and develop means giving up other things. But, going back to New York, in today’s changing changeable world, we need to invest in our own learning and development more than ever. We don’t know when we’ll be looking for a new job, or even a new line of work.

Having a broad range of skills, and being in the practice of acquiring new ones, is the best we can do towards keeping ourselves valuable in the market place. All that said, we still need to give ourselves time to relax and enjoy life. Another piece of advice I am trying to take onboard myself.

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I’ve been ‘doing’ startup technology businesses for over 20 years now. During that time lots of things have changed, and lots of things have stayed the same. It can get confusing as to which is which, so l took myself along to the SocialMedia Business School to catch up with current consensus thinking in the social media space.

SocialMedia Networks produced the event, which included panels with some familiar faces, including Joshua March. One of the highlights for me was Stefan Glaenzer, with his Fidelity Ventures hat on. Whilst he gave solid advice, in his usual straight talking style, it got me thinking about the place of VCs in the new open-source-social-media-powered technology world.

For the greatest part of my career, startups have depended on venture capitalists for a number of reasons, mostly contacts and cash for:

• Marketing, to get the company and product known.
• Development, to get the product or service developed.
• Funding the build out of a sales force ahead of revenues.

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Long-time readers will know that I am a bit of a TED fanatic. I’d love to get the best of the UK’s brains together for an affordable, UK version of TED. I’ve met so many talented, world-changing people over the last year. I’d love to get them up on a stage. One day, one day. It will happen. In the mean-time…

Enjoy the on-line TED videos. The trouble is, with so many now on-line, where do you start? Well, at the 50 million views mark, TED have announced their Top 10 TEDTalks of all time, and even put together a highlights video. They are good brain food – although don’t take that too literally with the top video in the list:

1. Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke of insight
2. Jeff Han’s touchscreen foreshadows the iPhone and more
3. David Gallo shows underwater astonishments
4. Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos Photosynth
5. Arthur Benjamin does “mathemagic”
6. Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity
7. Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen
8. Tony Robbins asks why we do what we do
9. Al Gore on averting a climate crisis
10. Johnny Lee demos Wii Remote hacks

All I can say is, enjoy! Btw, you can retrieve the TED talks via iTunes – which is just about providing a reason to live for my poor frequently-rebooting AppleTV. My Top 10 would have been slightly different. For lots of reasons Sir Ken Robinson would be top of my list:

And, speaking of brain food, Steve Lawson has a novel way of dealing with the pressures of being a one-man band (literally, in Steve’s case), in this post on Creative Choices “…Employ Yourself“. There again, I may just be a little biased, given one of his sources…

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I’m typing from The NESTA Innovation Edge event today. Innovation has been, unsurprisingly, the key theme. I’ll post more on my notes from the sessions over the next few days – Tim Berners-Lee spoke, and as a surprise (for me at least), Gordon Brown also spoke briefly at the event. He said he was sending a message (and he was by speaking at the event) about how key innovation is to Britain – the ability to innovate and invent, based on the creative talents of our people, is key to the continued growth of the country…

“The most important thing you have is you – your creative talents and ability to lead for the future”

“We are in a global economy where the country that drives innovation will win”

Countries will succeed because they have the creative ideas, not just the capital or resources. Gordon said that he wants to break down every barrier in front of people with creative ideas and innovative businesses. In my view that is going to mean some big changes in regulation and tax, and he did mention those. There are many barriers to setting up a business.

Innovation is very much on the popular agenda these days. A shift to a knowledge economy places an increased emphasis on thinking things (innovating), rather than just making things. The big challenge is that no-one really seems sure what innovation actual is.

What does innovation mean to you?

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I like to gather information into piles – adding bits to each pile as I discover things, or as they occur to me. I use a combination of notes in outlook (a habit from my Windows Mobile PDA days) and a personal wiki. One day I’ll turn some of those piles into a book or two, but in the meantime here is a distillation from my notes on hiring. I have found them useful in hiring teams, but also in assessing the relative strength of potential employers too. I hope they benefit you in the same ways.

As a business leaders, there are three main buckets to worry about: The management, the market and the product. The first is the one you have greatest influence over, and getting the right people in the door is the best place to start.

Hiring the right people is a journey, not an event.

1. Attract
2. Hire
3. Retain
4. Grow

When you market your business, it isn’t just to get customers, it is to get great staff as well. Successful businesses know this.

When hiring a management team:

• Look for A players. A players recruit A players. B players recruit C players. C players turn your business into toast.
• All board members should be able to be CEO – a good test of the strength of a company.
• Go for strategically minded, hands on people. The combination is rare, but essential.
• Look for people who are open minded and at ease in life. An insecure, narrow minded person will break the team.
• Choose only team players. You can’t teach this behaviour. If they can’t play with a team, keep them out of the business.
• International/well travelled people bring breadth and insight, as well as contacts.
• A well motivated individual, but one with no chips on their shoulders. Good self-motivation in leadership drives the business.
• Good hobbies make for a good hire. How is free time used? Charity? Adventure?

Identify who in the business is good at recruiting, and have them do it! Some people are better at spotting good and bad cultural fit, and at giving a feel for the business to an outsider. Having this anchor person also adds consistency across hires, which pays dividends in the long term.

Team building is key. It must be intentional and frequent. People operate and manage out of relationship, and relationships are build by shared experiences.

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Carpe Diem – Seize the day, from Horace’s poem: “While we’re talking, envious time is fleeing: seize the day, put no trust in the future.”

Regular readers will know Galba Bright. He wrote the excellent Tune Up Your EQ blog and regularly commented here and on a number of other blogs. Sadly, Galba passed away recently. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends in Jamaica, and around the world. I will greatly miss his encouragement. You can leave comments on his blog here, or read Dr Ellen Weber’s tribute.

Although Galba worked just down the road from here at one time, our paths didn’t cross until he was almost halfway around the world. The connectivity of the Internet, combined with the blogosphere, enabled us to meet and communicate in a way that would not have been possible just a decade ago. Our blogs, e-mail and Skype kept us in touch. I learnt much from him.

We are all mortal, none of us knows when our time will come to an end. Sometimes it is wise to step back from frenetically shuffling our daily to do lists, to ask what is really important in life. To take time for the special people we know, and enjoy their company while we can. To ask ourselves what our legacy will be, once we are gone.

Galba impacted on the lives of hundreds of people around the world, even though many never got to meet him face to face. He championed Emotional Intelligence and had a wonderfully cheerful outlook on life that was infectious. He made a positive difference in the world, setting a high high bar for all of us. Today is the day to take a step towards building our legacy. While we’re talking, time is passing.

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Seth Godin’s books are compulsory reading for any marketer. His latest, Meatball Sundae, is stuck in my inbox, behind a few textbooks. So, I found a way to get it to jump the queue, courtesy of SF Entrepreneur who hosted a call with Seth, which I joined just now. I don’t agree with everything Seth says, but I don’t have his following and I do find him thought provoking!

Seth focussed on the book, making the point that this is the moment of our revolution. Seth says there have been 3 or 4 or 5, revolutions depending how you count them. Every time one happens, the people in the middle of it get busy, but don’t realise that they are in the middle of it. They end up fighting against it, and getting stuck in-between the last thing and the next thing.

He said that when you look back on the revolution, it is easy to see it. e.g. looking back at Henry Ford’s production line, it is obvious, looking back at it. Seth scoped out what happens when a revolution occurs, and how we end up living with the vestiges for a long while.

Factories are arranged in a line. Why? Because when steam was first used for power, they would build one steam engine at the end of the factory. That drove a shaft, which powered all the machines, so you had to line them up along that shaft. Factories are still laid out this way, even though they don’t have to be. Old habits stick around for a long while.

What is sticking around now? We grew up with TV, and TV thinking. A world where anyone with money could interrupt you. The could buy an interruption – an ad. If you want to interrupt a lot of people, you better have something of interest to lots of people. That leads to average stuff for average people. That leads to a focus on ‘lower the costs, keep the quality, …’ Seth says this is the line shaft of the modern age – the ‘meet ball’ – safe, predicable.

But now there is a revolution. That interruption engine is broken. Not slowed down, but broken. Direct mail, with 1% hit rate, is considered good. But people don’t open junk mail any more. TV ads don’t build brand anymore. In the US not one brand has been built from scratch via TV ads in the last 5 years, may be more (according to Seth). Interruption media is falling apart. 50 million people in the US joined the do not call list within 3 months of it being started in the US. People don’t want to be interrupted anymore

So what happens to average stuff for average people?

Seth went back to talk about Josiah Wedgwood (mentioned in the book – a great brit) He invented sales people paid on commission, water-based logistics, showrooms and lots of other revolutionary business ideas. Josiah’s brother lived and died poor, he didn’t listen to his brother’s ideas. Josiah was richer than Bill Gates is today (in adjusted terms). Years later, Josiah’s wealth funded the science projects of his grandson – one Charles Darwin.

So what do you need to change? Seth says change your meatballs. A company like Gillette isn’t part of this new world, because of their meatballs. They don’t have a ‘right’ to our/my attention. Seth said you have to be old world or new world. You have to make a choice. It isn’t about new tactics on old things (the idea of Meatball Sundaes).

Seth book lists 14 trends, but he ran through these on the call:

1. New media allows everyone who makes something to establish a direct connection with the people who use it. No middle men. Directly connected players have an advantage over indirectly connected ones.
2. Every single person person you interact with is the equivalent of a major newspaper critic. Everyone has a printing press. All customers are equally capable of spreading the good or bad news about your product, through blogs, youtube, facebook, and so on.
3. Speed. Things are fast. And getting faster. People who organise themselves around speed gain an advantage, that appears to be more sustainable.
4. The Long tail (Steve Anderson’s concept). In the ‘limited’ shelf space era, we worried about the bulk, the short tail. The long tail introduces the idea that when inventory becomes infinite, the long tail wins – it is 50% of what is sold today on Amazon and other on-line sites. Lots of things long forgotten in the short-tail world.
5. Outsourcing, as a competitive speed advantage.
6. Dicing the world into little tiny bits and rearranging it for the user. Seth gave Google as an example. You don’t choose where your content goes anymore.
7. Infinite media channels. There are hundreds of channels, every Google search is a media channel, every blog is a media channel. Those people are in front of you with the message that you wanted at that moment. If you can find a media channel that matches what you have to offer, you win.
8. You can win by enabling connections, because you can profit by enabling connections.
9. Who and who many. Too many people are focused on how many, rather than who. e.g. how many people read my blog (tell me about it Seth!). If you are selling wireless spectrum, do you want the twelve multi-million dollar bidders reading, or the twelve million people who want to read about Paris Hilton? (Hmmm… I’m sorry Hilton fans, I am going to have to cut you loose. Thank you for joining for the ride so far)
10. Gatekeepers are going away. But new gatekeepers are coming in – they are leaders, with a tribe.
11. The Seinfeld curve – which is an upside down bell curve. One the left, scarcity. On the right, ubiquity. you need to be at one end of the other. Don’t get stuck in the middle (Seinfeld gets to be at both ends – ubiquitous via his TV shows and scarce via his personal appearances).

Seth listed some other switches, of which the following jumped out at me:

1. Limited number of media outlets, versus countless (the Internet).
2. Limited media versus countless.
3. Horizontal applications, versus small vertical niches.
4. Marketer-to-consumer versus consumer-to-consumer communication.
5. A barrier between consumers and makers versus no barriers.
6. Spam vs permission.
7. A product line limited by the line you own versus limited by your imagination.
8. Features versus stories.
9. Advertising funded versus innovation funded success.
10. Customer support versus community support.
11. Focus groups versus launch and learn.

Seth’s closing words? Stop pondering and start now – go!

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There are some conversations that we are afraid of. An awkward subject raised with a boss. A difficult exchange with a close relative. Explaining bad news. These are understood.

There are also conversations that are awkward for a business. A discussion on the web about problems with a product, poor financial results, internal conflicts – all made public. I have seen all of these recently, and as a marketeer I know that they ‘damage the brand’. The conversations may or may not be factually accurate. Regardless, people still take something away from them, and a mark is made.

Most people see PR as about getting the message out. It has turned into Press Relations or Media Relations, rather than Public Relations. The new world of PR will be about engaging in conversations to persuade people, which was the very old world of Public Relations.

If you are in the business of persuading people, it is much easier if you are persuading them of something that is believable, credible. Something that is true and defensible. Thus the demand today for authentic companies, for ‘authentic brands’.

I observe, with an ironic twinge, the parallel growth of the personal branding industry. Will people and companies swap places? Will we end up with a juxtaposed world of authentic businesses, with people trying to project an image? Don’t misread me. I think that personal branding has a contribution to make, but as a marketeer I know that it also opens up Pandora’s box.

Good branding today is about being authentic, but most branding theory comes from the old ‘one way’ days of “sticking lipstick on the pig”. There is a big difference, one focusses on the message, the other on the messenger. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people, all of the time. With one way media and PR, the branding conversation was a tricky one to manage, but it could be managed.

With social media, some of the people are connected with some of the other people. Customers are better connected and the media doesn’t own the conversation anymore. It isn’t clear who will own it, if anyone. And, actually, it doesn’t matter. A new set of skills is required. Now we are all PR people, but we must focus on the messenger, more that the message. Who is it that you are? What’s your brand?

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I remember my first trip to Sweden. As I was driven from the airport to Stockholm, I remember seeing these really tall, bright posts in the ground on either side of the road. I wasn’t sure what they were all about.

Some months later, I returned. With the snow falling fast, and already so thick on the ground that the road was invisible, I realised what those posts were there. They showed where the road was! And, by implication, told you know if you were about to head off of it. They were a very good predictor of where the cars were going to drive, mostly.

Values are like those markers. They are the beliefs which act as boundary guides on the road that is the mission. Cross them, and you’ll know that you are off course; the going gets bumpy and you forget where you were going.

Let’s say your mission involved raising money to sail around the world. You could go out and rob a bank to raise the cash. Bear with me a minute on this one, I know you wouldn’t do that, but it is an example to make the point: There will be some ‘bounds’ that shape how you execute the mission.

Unfortunately values aren’t always as visible as those marker posts. Even if values aren’t written out, there is a set of values at work. And don’t assume that the values written on that employee badge represent the actual values in play.

The only way to assess values is by examining actions. Intent is interesting, but action is telling. Where are resources (time and money) allocated? How are decisions made? These reveal the true values in play, anything else is a desired value. Desired values need inspection. Are they truely desired? If so, what is stopping them being put into practice? Or are they misguided.

True values surface in the hard decisions that are made, in the conflicts that are resolved and the comprises are made. Once you know the values, it becomes easier to predict decisions. This is why executive teams should make values part of the management process.

If all employees understand the (true) values, decisions made down the chain will be more aligned. It works at a personal level too. If you know my values, you’ll have a good sense of how I will prioritise things. That makes me a little easier to predict, and much easier to trust.

Different people, unsurprisingly, have different sets of values. Companies operate most effectively when the people within them operate under similar sets of values. If people believe or value similar things, then they act in complementary ways. Collective action, in a common direction, with broad agreement.

A company full of people with conflicting values will get pulled in different directions and is unlikely to get far. A little bit of diversity is good, but too much means problems down the line. There is no point hiring a talented individual with values that conflict with the rest of the business. It only means problems down the line.

Values can hold us back, or they can propel us forwards. Just as conflicting values within a company cause friction and slow progress, so conflicting in our own personal values can cause stress and hold us back from our goals. We get stuck in internal arguments or constant shifts in direction. If you aren’t making progress towards your goals, I can almost guarantee that you are holding some unresolved value conflicts.

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Following on from Part I and Part II – Vision, what is the mission statement?

The mission statement springs out of a clear vision statement. It plots the course towards the vision, describing the nature of what has to be done to get to there. It should address at least medium turn. A mission statement that only covers the next few months is more of a thumbnail plan than a mission.

The mission statement should address the what and the why, describing the purpose of the business or individual. An agreed mission statement is one of the key factors of success for businesses and non-profits (some research here, subscription/purchase required).

At an individual level, a mission statement is obviously not about focussing disparate teams, but it is about aligning the different roles that we serve in our daily lives. The fundamental questions are the same:

• What is the problem that is address?
• Why is that problem being addressed?
• Who are the beneficiaries?
• How do they benefit?

The answers may not be directly called out in the mission statement, but they are addressed. For example, one of my favourite mission statements is from Wal-Mart: “To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same thing as rich people.”

It appeals to me because it covers a lot of ground in just a few words. We can see who will benefit, and sense what the problem and benefit is. It may not be perfect, but it has served the company well.

A mission statement is not always this ‘pure’, in the sense that it may contain elements of the vision too. That isn’t specifically a problem, unless the mission statement becomes long and rambling.

A good mission statement is clear and memorable, it only needs to be a few sentences. Is effectiveness depends on it being lived and breathed. If the mission isn’t remembered, that it is not likely to happen.

Watch out for the ‘and’ trap in mission statements. If you are doing ‘this’ and ‘that’ and ‘the other’ are you really committed to them all? It is difficult to fight a battle on many fronts, as it divides resources and creates the risk of conflict. Is there something that needs to be dropped, or are all of these things part of a higher level purpose that should be stated instead?

There is one additional piece that should be covered in the mission statement, that was missing from the Walmart example… We’ll cover that in Part IV.

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Strategically Speaking

Serendipity is putting mission and strategy in the middle of my world. They are curiously emotive terms, dividing people into either cynics or firm believers in a single breath.

My passion for strategic planning has caused me to dig into these topics many times over the years. I firmly believe that you get the best results by being focussed, and by playing for the long term. Taking short cuts and only acting tactically results in burn outs and blow ups. This series of posts walks through a framework based on vision, mission and values, exploring how they are constructed and how they function.

Is Mission a Dirty Word?

The ‘mission’ word, like the ‘strategy’ word, is often abused these days. Recently I heard someone say “we have a strategy of handing out leaflets”. That isn’t a strategy. It is doing things. Doing things is valid, but don’t be fooled into thinking that doing things is the same as having a strategy. Herb Kelleher, of Southwest Airlines, once said “We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things” – that probably says a lot about the airline industry. To be fair, Kelleher’s preceding words were “‘Strategy’ overrated, simply ‘doin’ stuff” underrated”, and I’d agree with the sentiment. All strategy and no doing is not going to get you far, but neither will doing with no strategy. The majority of people and small businesses don’t have a mission statement, and so end up all ‘doin’ and no strategy. Big businesses, in contrast, often end up all strategy and little doing. To be effective, you need a foot firmly in each camp.

Writing off the Mission

A strategy is the series of plans carried out to achieve the mission. Many people don’t like the idea of having a formalised, written ‘mission statement’ and see them as nasty, cheesy things. Good mission statements are actually exciting, motivating and empowering. Sorry to drag films into it, but if you aren’t convinced about the power of mission, think about great spy film heroes, think Mission Impossible II or James Bond. But this isn’t the stuff of fiction, studies have revealed strong links between clearly written mission statements and success. If you want to get to ‘mission accomplished’ you need one foot in the doing camp, and one foot in the strategy camp

Don’t Waste Any Time

Mission gives purpose to how time is spent. It guides actions and informs plans. If you haven’t got a mission, you can’t have a strategy, and if you haven’t got a strategy, then you are just ‘doing stuff’. There is much more to life and business than spontaneous actions, driven by life’s random events. Writing down things down flushes out differences of opinion. In the case of personal mission statements, it can surface internal conflicts. These hidden tensions hold up progress and waste valuable time.

When mission statements are implicit, people often believe that everyone is on the same page. That belief is misplaced. The process of writing thoughts down makes things explicit and concrete, enabling clarification and debate. Only then do the hidden conflicts surface – sometimes to the great consternation of those involved. People realise that there are different things in different people’s heads, at different times. Writing things down crystallises thinking and is the first step to resolving these conflicts and creating consistency.

One Step At a Time

Getting to a mission statement and building out a strategy is a process. All it requires is a few simple steps and the upfront investment of some time. Are you ready to accept your mission?

In part II, what is vision, and why do you need it?

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People get sloppy. Sometimes people are always sloppy, soggy. In choosing people to work with, the issue of balancing aptitude with experience comes up. There are people who have done a job day-in and day-out for years – lots of experience – but they are no better than a bright new thing with just a few months experience. Why is that?

Seth Godin’s most recent post is about how things become ‘soggy‘ over time. How do you get crisp and keep crisp? I’ve been thinking about that recently.

As a child I studied a musical instrument. Back then, getting good meant practicing, but practice came to be a chore. As I grew up and started to play in bands, practice came to be something that kept me out of scrapes and made me better at something that I enjoyed. So, why don’t we practice at work? Would you expect to become a brilliant musician by walking out on stage and just playing every evening? Never studying, never practising. Yet that is often what we do in the workplace.

When it comes to work, practice can be more important than experience. Experience comes from doing the same thing over and over again. In today’s business environment that is an opportunity that is increasingly rare. Things move and change. Practice is something different. It involves preparation, reflection, and seeking feedback. It is being purposeful about getting better. It is about concious learning. That is very different from blind repetition. You can do the same thing over and over and never get better at it. You just get soggy.

For that reason, I recently joined the Camberley Toastmasters club. It is a great opportunity to learn to speak more effectively and provides an opportunity for feedback and reflection, with a wonderful set of people. It is a great way for me to practice. Practice makes you crisp and it keeps you crisp. If you want to improve your speaking, I highly recommend finding your local Toastmasters International.

Why don’t we practice at work? Maybe we don’t practice because we don’t see ‘practice’ as ‘doing stuff’, it is just practice after all. Perhaps we just don’t get the chance, were are too busy ‘doing stuff. In reality, practice is ‘doing stuff’, and more than that, it enables us to ‘do stuff’ better than before.

Practice is about creating opportunities to learn, to have experiences where it is OK to fail. That is a radical concept in many businesses. Creating the space and opportunity to practice is a significant effort, but it is one that can provide significant rewards.

What would you like to practice?

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I was stirred by a recent post about personal history on Stephen’s Adversity University. I didn’t get on with history at school. I had great teachers, but I didn’t have a head for names and places. That puts a bit of a damper on being good at it. This was compounded by my belief that nothing interesting had happened prior to 1980, when I got my first computer.

Later, as I worked across different countries, went to places and met people, I realised how important history is, even in business. In the IT world things change fast, but a countries laws and biases change slowly. They impact on how products are marketed and sold, and what people do with them. People’s history shapes their world view, and how they adopt technology.

The great leaders I have met consistently had a good knowledge of history. How is your history? Do you have a sense of personal history, family history and national history? They are important in understanding ourselves, just as much as the technologies around us. For those of us steeped in Social Media, Web 2.0 and Unified Communications, yesterday is too easily forgotten in the excitement about tomorrow.

At a personal level, having a good sense of history provides a strong psychological grounding, which is why Stephen’s exercise of writing down his personal history struck me. It can also give you a good sense of your career. At a professional level, historical knowledge enables more informed and sensitive decisions.

Grab pen and paper, or your favourite text editor. Write down each of the years since you were born and write a sentence by each. If something doesn’t spring to mind for a year, skip over it. You can always go back to it, once the creative juices start to flow. You now have a snap shot of your personal history, handy for writing that biography when you become famous.

Time for me to dig out a history book or two – I benefited from the last one I read back in April – and to keep that habit of creating a journal entry at the end of each day. History happens everyday.

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I recently spent an action packed, laughter-filled weekend with Jack Milner, on his stand-up comedy course. The course was held at Diorama Arts in London, pictured here. Even the trees outside it are comic. Yes, they are 20 foot off of the ground!

I’m always looking to push my presentation and speaking skills, and Jack certainly did that! I’d highly recommend the course to anyone interested in comedy, especially if you are looking to go on to the stand up circuit.

People really can be taught to be funny – I’m convinced Jack could turn almost anyone into a comic. Stand up comedy is a good way to develop your creativity and to improve your confidence. The experience of being thrown on stage with an audience that is demanding a laugh from you is quite terrifying. It was the first time I have been nervous on a stage for a long time, but very rewarding all the same.

We can take ourselves far too seriously in the business world. It is a shame, as a good laugh can go a long way to defusing any crisis. Comedy is a creative art, but it is also a skill that can be learnt and honed. Some people are naturally funny, but that is just a temporary head start. Anyone can learn to get a laugh from an audience, even if not everyone will go on to become a world-class comedy superstar.

Some presentation trainers approach comedy with great caution. A blanket fear is misplaced, although some caution is required. It is true that there are some forms of humour that are simply not appropriate in a presentation. However, it is the content, rather than the context, that makes humour inappropriate.

I’ve worked with some of the world’s best leaders, and seen them use comedy to amazing effect. Victimless humour, or humour where you make yourself the victim can be great. Note (as mentioned in the Al Gore analysis) that you do need to be careful when you make yourself the victim of the humour – don’t do it in a way that is going to damage your credibility.

Comedy is a powerful tool for leadership and presenting, as Jack Milner says, “If they are laughing, they are listening”. Laughter provides a natural release mechanism for the tension that builds up in fraught situations. It is hard to be angry when you are laughing too.

To understand the role of laughter in leadership, check out Daniel Goleman’s book on Emotional intelligence: The New Leaders: Transforming the Art of Leadership into the Science of Results. Laughter is the fastest way to create emotional resonance in a group. This can be used to quickly get an audience on your side, or to bond a team you are leading.

Comedy is great for your mental health too, it has even been shown to fight off depression. Go on, learn to get a laugh. It will be a great investment of your time.

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Isn’t it amazing the return we can get on our time? Well, sometimes it is. I was at the virtual worlds forum hosted SXSWi event last night. It was an interesting insight into a different world, quite literally. If you want to get a feel for what Virtual World technology can do, then check out Pelican Software’s site. I think the technology holds a lot of promise for connecting people, but that is a matter for a future post – I was talking about time.

Time is such an interesting thing, mastery of it is key for productivity, leadership and definitely for effective presenting. Lots of literature focuses on the idea that time can not be created or destroyed, and the fact that you can’t manage time, you can only manage yourself. I don’t know enough about quantum physics to verify that claim, but I do know that getting a grip on time is essential. How do you do it? Here is one approach: Make time your friend, by taking hold of it – look forwards and look backwards.

Take control of the Future

A plan is a to do list spread over time, together with a commentary or narrative. The most powerful property of time is that it stops everything happening to you at once, and for that I am very grateful! Take your list of what you want to achieve, and lay it out over time and record the reasons that items are there in that order. This is the fastest way to create a plan and the best way to take hold of long term time. Looking back through my life, I see a consistent pattern: The things I have achieved have been the things that I wrote down and planned to achieve. Sometimes they didn’t happen until long after I forgot about them, but they did happen. This will work for you too.

Take control of the Past

For whatever reason, I remember technical facts, faces and concepts really well. However, most days I can’t remember where I was at breakfast without deep thought. Maybe you are different, tell me about it. For me that means keeping a journal is an essential activity if I want to be able to look back over the past. I use my electronic diary and also create a journal entry to record the significant thinking or changes from that day. Again, looking back, the times I have made the most progress are when I have been diligent in keeping a journal. Those journals have been a rich resource for self-discovery.

Going back to last night’s event, I met Gavin from Rememble. , a thoroughly nice chap with a thoroughly nice life tool. The site’s strap line is “write your story from wherever you are”, which gives you a sense of what the site is about, and brings me to my last point. To quote from the site, Rememble “reinvent[s] the simple diary in a way that helps us make sense of the world and our journey through it, by putting the valuable digital evidence of the stories of our life into order” on a memble line, a bit like a washing line that you can hang txts, pictures and the like on.

Let Time Create the Story

Here’s the thing, this happened, then this happened and then this happened. That’s a story. If you are presenting, story is key to keeping the audience’s attention. If you are leading, story is key to creating alignment across the organisation. If you want to be productive, understanding the story is key to knowing what you need to do. A journal enables you to look back through your story and make sense of it. A plan is the map for your future.

What’s your story?

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It was one of Seth Godin’s posts that kicked this thought chain off. I’m a regular follower of his blog, and normally I nod sagely at his wisdom, but for once I’m shaking my head furiously. Why? Because of the wikipedia gap. I’m thinking of it more as a chasm.

I have recently restarted academic studies and it has definitely been a shock to the system. The rigor and discipline required has reminded me quite how sloppy we are as a society when it comes to matters of knowledge and understanding. More simply put, we are rubbish at getting our facts straight and the writers we read are poor at acknowledging their sources.

One of the keys to effective leadership and successful living is summarised in this:”What’s the reality of the situation?” Start with this question, and work from there. It is a simple question, but often a very hard one to answer, accurately. Understanding the reality of the situation means sifting facts from opinions, truths from assertions and understanding from misunderstanding (see Understanding the reality of the situation Part I and Part II).

This is where I have a problem with wikipedia. I have expertise in a few areas and I know that the information on those areas in wikipedia is inaccurate, if not just plain wrong. While the pages sometimes note that the information is unvalidated or contentious, unfortunately that doesn’t stop people taking it as fact. Remember, when it comes to your brain, just like a computer: garbage in, garbage out. Once your put junk in there, it is very hard to get it out. Why have I not edited these inaccuracies? Because I know enough to know that I don’t know enough to fix them properly. Don’t get me wrong, I really like wikipedia, it can be a great starting point, it just isn’t an authoritative source on its own.

Back to Seth’s post, I believe we should be teaching children basic philosophy and critical thinking – and some research at least agrees (see: “a little bit of philosophy makes you smart, apparently“). Information should be multi-sourced and children should be encouraged to explore different perspectives and assess the information. We should do the same as adults too. Check the sources – too often we hear the same misinformation from multiple places, little realizing that the same inaccurate facts are being parroted or dressed up in new clothes as new information. Misunderstanding reality, be it academic or misunderstanding ourselves, stands in the way of good leadership and living. Inaccurate information means inaccurate decisions. It is worth fighting to establish the truth in your life, sadly it doesn’t just jump off of a web page. What are your real goals? What is really happening around you? What untruths have, or are, holding you back?

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They say things come in threes. I don’t know why they say that, but they do. For me, today it was three blog posts:

• The first, from Write At Home, with this quote:
  • “Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” Malachy McCourt

• The second, thanks to Debra Moorhead is the garbage truck story, by written David J Polley.
  • You can read the story here. Essentially, some people need to dump their garbage, sometimes it is on you.

• The third, thanks to one of WOWNDADI’s readers, Galba Bright from Tune up your EQ who had a difficult course attendee to deal with (How To Learn From Your EQ Hot Spots),

  • In a nutshell, “Thanks for your feedback. I will think on what you said.”

There are people out there with ‘issues’ they need to deal with, just as we have issues to deal with. When they say something nasty or negative, it might not be your fault. In fact, it almost definitely isn’t. It is more about what has happened to them, in the near or distant past, the pressure they are under, and the hurts they are carrying.

People will dump rubbish on you, or use words that wound. When they do, take away the barbed-wire from what was said. Delete the emotional content, sift for actionable feedback, discard the rest. Thank them and move on. Their problems are not your problems. They don’t have the right to change your good mood, let alone to keep you awake at night. That is easier said than done, but it is the truth. If you want to help them, that is great, but don’t expect kindness in return, although you may get it. If they upset you, you are free to shake the dust off of your shoes and move on. If you want to.

Failing all that, this will do your head in and distract you for a bit. I can explain how it works, but then you’d call me a geek.

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I have been flattening the battery of my iPod listening to the title track from Stevie Wonder’s new album, A Time 2 Love. It is a wonderful song, featuring India.Arie, with potent lyrics about the things that we find time for, and the important things that we don’t. It started me thinking that making time for things is a key skill for success and happiness.

• Making time to rest.
• Making time to prepare.
• Making time to practice.
• Making time to learn.
• Making time to reflect.
• Making time to love.

I’ve been getting a little rest myself these last few days, as there has been lots going off It is a fun time for the blog, which recently made it on to the WordPress Growing Blogs list and was mentioned as Daily PlanIt’s Discovery of the day (thank you!).

I’m thinking about what next for the blog. It has been in action for over half a year, and I have learned many things. The blog has been a kind of journal, and that is a good thing.

I want to write much more about presenting with PowerPoint, one of my major passions, and I know that I have been writing less about productivity of late. That isn’t to say I have cracked the productivity problems of life, just that I am doing more doing. I am also about to start studying for the first time in a long time, as I formalize my Psychology learning. A long way of saying, expect more on those things, but I am not sure if it will be one blog or three just yet.

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“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
Peter F. Drucker

This is key to avoiding the ‘activity’ or the ‘productivity’ trap. I have met – in real life and virtually – many people who are focussed on getting more and more things done. They read books to help them do more. They have electronic gadgets to help them do more. They manage to cram more and more things in to their days, they even work out ways to sleep less. The challenge is that they are often cramming in the wrong things. I know, I was one of them. It is a tragedy, please don’t get caught in the ‘activity trap’, where you end up far to busy to stop and realise that you are wasting your time. You will be highly efficient, but completely ineffective in your life. You can save yourself from the productivity trap right now, by starting to work out what REALLY needs doing.

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”
John Lennon

Having said all that, don’t fall into the planning trap either! Life is full of paradoxes and contradictions isn’t it? I reached a point where I was spending most of my life planning. I had a 360 item to do list and it would take me an hour to work out what I was meant to be doing next. It was usually something that I then put off until the next day. Day after day. The list grew and I shrunk. It took me a lot of time and effort the extract myself from that pit. The reality is that ending up with a 360 item to do list was a sign the size of a small planet telling me that I didn’t have an effective way of working out what needs doing. I had only worked out a way of writing down what wanted doing and what I thought that I might want to do, which was more than enough for two people, if not a small army.

“I just don’t have enough time” people shout. Well, everyone gets 24 hours, they just use it differently. Time management books remind you that you can’t manage time, you can only manage you.

• Do the things that should be done, above the things that want to be done.
• You can make time to do the things that you most want to do.
• Live life on purpose, it is the one thing that will make the biggest difference – Be purposeful in all that you do!

Or, in a sentence, work out what needs doing, and do it. Now, how do you do that?

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The simple things are often the most powerful, take focus for example.

Pause and think about this for a few minutes:

If you could choose just one change you could make in your life,

what would it be?

What would the result of that change be?

What is stopping you making that change?

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