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Leadership

Recognize your prime as an opportunity to learn…

This is a guest-post from Kris Rowlands who blogs at Fresh Focus who was thought she might just write a guest post on one of the questions I asked to get feedback from folks.  Kris’ tackled one of the questions I proposed in crazy real-time.  This would certainly makes sense she blogs on productivity.  I struggled a little bit with the title, I didn’t know what Kris wanted, but I definately wanted to get it online, in the same rapid fashion in which it was created so I made one up.   It is a blend of a quote which Kris’ had on Fresh Focus and the question I asked.


“Be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.” – Muriel Spark

Thanks much to Kris for the guest post below:

This was one of the questions that Jon posed to his readers. He was looking for someone to do a guest post, and I decided to be a victim!

So, building on the sentence above has proven to be a challenge to me. Picking one single experience would be hard. But, I’ve found a way to wriggle outta that box and put my own spin on it. – hang on for the ride!

The single experience is called LIFE. Obviously, living our LIFE allows us the grand opportunity to learn each and every day…..I hear grumblings in the audience……”GRAND OPPORTUNITY”??? Yep – you bet.

LIFE is a grand opportunity for many, many things. Meeting people, traveling, having a career……….but none of that is more important than the lessons that you learn along the way. Once a lesson is learned, and really learned, your rid of it forever. But if you hem and haw, don’t learn the lesson and repeat the pattern, they you aren’t learning a darn thing! In my opinion, our purpose, while on this Earth, is to learn and teach. You may not thing of yourself as teacher, but you truly are. The people that are involved with you learn from your experiences, trials and tribulations. They also learn from your joy, exuberance and successes. Everything that you do touches all the people that surround your life. The LIFE that they see you live is impressed indelibly upon them. Hopefully, they will learn from your mistakes, as you have……….and if they don’t, and follow in your footsteps, then you have the skills and ammunition needed to help them learn the lesson this time around.

My LIFE has been a university with a mixture of hard knocks, Masters’ Degrees and kindergarden. There have been easy, hard, and lengthy lessons to live……but I, as well as all of those around me, have learned from all of them. It seems, to me, that once I learn a LIFE lesson that someone will present themselves that is going through that same lesson so that I can teach them what I have learned – they say the best way to learn something is teaching another! And I have, many times.

Live your LIFE and learn from all the experiences that come into it. Don’t dread the leaps and hurdles that you will have – learn and grow! But most of all, try and retain all that knowledge that you learn – you’ll never know who needs it next!

August 8, 2008 by
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Great Ideas? Maybe not, but they are YOURS!

So I continue to just be so busy with life, that it is hard to keep the content comming, but true to my less fluff more value statement, I thought I would spend some time and share some topics hopefully you can blog on. I’ve already had a couple of great guest posts from folks and 2 more on the way. My thanks to the Bigg Success Show and Stephen for their efforts. I also am interested in letting folks guest post on the following topics (especially the first 9) or another topics which you feel might fit well into this eclectic mix here at Spatially Relevant:

Business and Social Media

  • What is the biggest challenge for social media for general corporate wide participation/acceptance?
  • What is the best use of social media for a business? Service, demand gen, knowledge management…
  • Our brand has been hijacked online – now what?!?!

Social Media and Ethics

  • What role do standards play in creating transparency and authenticity, if any?
  • How can identity management improve accountability?
  • What is the biggest hurdle for establishing best practices and ethical frameworks for social media?

Standards

  • How can standards assist in scaling a given activity?
  • What controls and governance opportunities exist for standards organizations/development which are NOT being pursued today in Social Media?
  • What is the value in a standards based approach?

Product Management and Marketing

  • Can a technology development model change a product or companies viability in the marketplace?
  • Who owns the product strategy – the customer, the product management or the market?
  • How can positioning and targeting of buyer persona’s improve sales execution?

Better Place Concepts

  • This <single experience> represents an opportunity for all of us to learn <X>?
  • In the last 90 days this in the biggest lesson I learned which should be shared
  • If <X> was a commonly held belief/activity/x it would be easier for everyone to <x>?

Personal Growth

  • I’m putting an personal action plan in place to accomplish <X> in the next 30 days?
  • I just realized I’m not the center of the universe, now what?
  • I used to think X was sorta important, now I think it is a requirement for a fulfilled experience

Personal Shrink (two sides to every coin)

  • I am the center of the universe, deal with it jackass.
  • If everyone would stop X, I’d be a better person
  • I can’t believe you don’t appreciate X

Geography

  • What cities are all of your Grateful Dead/Phish/Panic/Yonder T-shirts from?
  • Where is the best place to do nothing at and why?
  • What is the smallest city you actually flew to and why?

If you end up posting on one of these please link back and send me an email, I’ll do a summary post which itemizes all the blogs which posted on Wednesday and links to the posts.

If you think you have a guest post in one of these send me an email at publisher AT spatiallyrelevant DOT org.

I will schedule my guest post schedule for next saturday due to travel, so I look forward to your posts and submission by Thursday – midnight for an eligible guest post. Ok, Friday am will work, but much later than that – no promises.

So the question is – can you get listed in both the Wednesday list and the Saturday list? Yup, you just have to participate/do the work. It does have kinda of an outsourcing feel or another way to look at it is I’m going to pimp my list for you.

When you send the email for a guest post or to point me to your post on one of the above, please include the following:

Name, blog URL and Post URL – A sentence about your blog would be cool, so the folks here might want to add you to their RSS reader.

if you are interested in a guest post, just give me a sentence or two on why your should be considered along with the post you think should make it. I will post no more than 10 during the month of August.  Everyone looks forward to YOUR POV on these.

Hope this is fun and works, because I clearly would like to learn more about the folks that read my stuff and how we can as a group influence our space.

~jon

August 3, 2008 by
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It’s a BIGG Network and A Real Pleasure

This is a guest-post from Mary-Lynn and George of the Bigg Success Show where she and George share their life, their interviews and years of expertise to their audience/listenership/readers. Yup, they have talent AND good things for folks to grok on – a radio reality check.

It is with great appreciation and respect that I post this piece, which well – made me blush and Emily is always reminding me that real people are just as valuable as “friends“, if not more valuable.

This post is really timely, since I’m posting this right now from the cabin overlooking a great morning valley view, getting back to basics – people, family and the outdoors.

Thanks for the post, the reminder and kind words. I did decide to put a couple of reactions inline, in bold/Italics, which could be considered editing, but thought I should share a little bit my reaction and Emily’s for y’all.

Merging Your Networking Worlds


We sure are social! Social networking and social sharing sites are among the most popular on the internet. We can make friends all over the world. Yet some people haven’t jumped on the social networking bandwagon.

At the same time, business networking groups are also growing. We crave interaction with other people and we’ve realized that there is tremendous power in our network. Yet some people have abandoned traditional networking for the most part.

We think it’s best to use both methods because each of them has its own significant advantage. (@emmyeg: “Told you so Jon”)

Social networking is more transparent


Social networking offers a significant advantage over traditional networking – networks are more transparent. For the most part, we can see each other’s friends.

With offline networking, you may see someone you know with a few friends or colleagues. However, short of a significant event (e.g. a wedding), you usually don’t see his or her extended group.

With social networks, you can browse your friend’s entire list of connections. You know all the people they know within that particular site. You can grow your base of friends much more quickly than you may offline.

Traditional networking offers fuller communication
When you’re online, you can LOL. You can :). There are ways to communicate who you are, but your true personality doesn’t fully come out.

If we talk on the phone, more of “you” comes through. Even better, when we meet in-person, your full dynamic is on display. That’s the richest form of communication.

We have a great example of this. We subscribe to Jon’s RSS feed for Spatially Relevant. We read every post. While a lot of Jon’s personality comes through, we’re glad we’ve met him in person and witnessed him giving a great presentation. (JG: Thanks for the feedback, I was completely nervous as it was my first social media pitch in public, but it was good to have both George and Mary-Lynn from a confidence perspective)

That’s where you truly see how energetic he is. You get the full sense of his fun-loving spirit. You see how truly brilliant he is (JG:blushes, not quite sure about that). Blogs, e-mails, instant messages, social networks, and all other forms can’t duplicate the experience of meeting someone in person.

Merge your networking worlds


Our point is this – merge your networking worlds. The real power in a network comes when your online and offline efforts work seamlessly together. You may be part of a virtual group that organizes a meeting in the real world. You can easily stay in touch with people online that you met offline.

Don’t stick your head in the sand … explore a social network or two. Don’t hide behind a computer … get out where the people are.

Because that’s the bottom line – networking, whether online or offline, is about people. It’s about building meaningful relationships. The richness of the human experience lies in experiencing humans.

(Emily: “Yup, so glad we met them, good people without a doubt”)

August 2, 2008 by
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Principles: Shading strategy, execution and interactions

prin·ci·ple [prin-suh-puhl] –noun

1. an accepted or professed rule of action or conduct: a person of good moral principles.
2. a fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived: the principles of modern physics.
3. a fundamental doctrine or tenet; a distinctive ruling opinion: the principles of the Stoics.
4. principles, a personal or specific basis of conduct or management: to adhere to one’s principles; a kindergarten run on modern principles.
5. guiding sense of the requirements and obligations of right conduct: a person of principle.
6. an adopted rule or method for application in action: a working principle for general use.
7. a rule or law exemplified in natural phenomena, the construction or operation of a machine, the working of a system, or the like: the principle of capillary attraction.
8. the method of formation, operation, or procedure exhibited in a given case: a community organized on the patriarchal principle.
9. a determining characteristic of something; essential quality.
10. an originating or actuating agency or force: growth is the principle of life.
11. an actuating agency in the mind or character, as an instinct, faculty, or natural tendency: the principles of human behavior.
12. Chemistry. a constituent of a substance, esp. one giving to it some distinctive quality or effect.
13. Obsolete. beginning or commencement.

—Idioms
14. in principle, in essence or substance; fundamentally: to accept a plan in principle.
15. on principle,
a. according to personal rules for right conduct; as a matter of moral principle: He refused on principle to agree to the terms of the treaty.
b. according to a fixed rule, method, or practice: He drank hot milk every night on principle.

The funny thing about principles is that not only is the construct so nuanced that it supports 15 different dictionary use cases, but we often forget iT shades most daily actions. I was reminded of this throughout the week based on three different interactions within multiple settings – professional, social and familial. The trifecta of situational proof points that principles could be seen as an individual’ personal acceptable use policy.

Each situation for each participant is shaded by not only personal experience/biases, but constrained to the context of one’s principles. A friend has told me time and time again, your “world view” impacts your reactions and others reactions to YOU. For example, my view of productivity and follow up is not the same as others or vice versa. which while circular logic is the recursive spiral many interactions get into because of core DNA differences with folks. At times you just can’t connect your idea, emotions or actions toward what may or may not be common goals. Ultimately, how does an individual internalize a strategy, a brand or an action plan in the marketplace or in a cohort group is often the common thread of miscommunication between folks, as least that’s my lesson of the week around principles.

To effectively lead, manage or interact this is a baseline reality is often forgotten and overlooked, MYSELF included. I find myself not asking enough questions, but instead interpreting reactions and actions within how I would see/feel on a given topic which is more of an anchor than way to move forward and drive change. So my personal and career challenge to myself of week is to use my ears more than my mouth and to ask questions as to why something isn’t as effective as I thought it would be, rather than to make assumptions based on my own understanding/filter.

I think with this approach then perhaps I can avoid the pitfall of the best laid plans going awry. So now I think I have 101 things to be thankful for.

I really get excited when life hits you in the head with a blunt object and make you realize the best thing is that we are all different and bring different view, strategies and tactics.

For me it’s those situational reminders which provides clarity on things. I think I’ll read the 4 agreements again.

July 20, 2008 by
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