Proceed Until Apprehended

Change. Let’s just take that as a given.

Your organization. Unless it was established in the past decade,  it was designed or incrementally built for a different era and a different notion of how companies are successful.

Now, the world is different. Creating value had different rules. To make an old organization relevant for today, you have to adapt.

In evolution, adaptation is done though trial and error. A long beak either helps you survive or slows you down. A different shape to your ear either helps you hear predators or it dulls their footsteps. Species have thousands of mutations and a few work. Ultimately, the adaptations that improve design are the ones that make it.

So, in our organization, why do we think it is going to be the vetted, approved-in-triplicate, endorsed-by-the-president idea that is going to change your organization? That’s the common expectation. Everyone keeps looking for the home run.

If nature offers any clues, we should likely be considering the “small ball” of little trials and errors. Trying a hundred small things gives us a lot more opportunity to find a winner and plenty of knew information, besides.

A culture of “small innovation” guarantees you’ll find some real, effective improvements. It just won’t happen like in the movies.

Even the most reticent among us now acknowledge that the way our economy works and the way a large majority of us produce value has changed significantly. If you’re not there yet, you should perhaps watch the latest version of Did You Know. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3rqW_n1Y8o&feature=youtube_gdata to get a sense of how this world is asking something different of you.

This fundamental shift clearly hasn’t been matched by a smooth adaptationd by our population. Personally, I’ve experienced a significant lag between my realization that the world had changed and the creation of strategies to feel like I’m actually engaged in the shift.

Here’s some rules I’ve now put in place. Perhaps they’ll be of assistance:

Make information work for you
Set up filters and categories in your email, through RSS and screen your phone calls. If you don’t manage the flow coming at you, it can be constant and very distracting.

Document your best ideas and share them
The name of the game is now reputation. People won’t seek you out for your knowledge like they used to and letters behind your name now mean less than they ever have. If you want people to have confidence that you have the smarts for the next problem, solve some existing ones without being asked.

Become a student… and a teacher
Along with increased availability of information is an accelerated pace of change. The approach I advocate is to institute a self-study course that makes you an eternal Master’s student. You can never be on top of it all, but to be relevant in the discussion, you have to be informed and carry an opinion. Teaching is a no-brainer. It’s how we learn. There’s also a huge audience as we all try and figure it out.

It’s DIY
In The Pirate’s Dilemma, Matt Mason references a punk magazine that showed the neck of a guitar and three possible chords. It said, “Here’s a chord. Here’s two more. Now go form you own band.” Go nuts. There are no restrictions. At little to no cost, you get to try what you want.

Embrace your new role
Most of all, beyond any advice I’m providing, I urge you to find a way to enjoy this environment. It’s not going away anytime soon. There are plenty of discoveries, perspectives and unconventional sources to keep things interesting, but they can also drive you nuts. Make sure you have the right frame of mind. It’s more of a pick-up game than league play. No-one is looking over everything with the right answer, not even Seth Godin.

There is no single source. YOU are a source. I’m a source. Isn’t this fun?

The last person to get knocked out of a poker tournament before they get to the cash payouts is called the “Bubble Boy.” Celebrating the arrival of the Bubble Boy is great fun for everyone but, you guessed it, the Bubble Boy.

I watched a World Series of Poker broadcast the other night when they were going to “break the bubble” and get into the cash. Poker celebrities were talking about the misery of being the Bubble Boy, their own experience with the bubble and their hopes for this year. They all took pity on the Bubble Boy, except Daniel Negreanu, a well-known Canadian player. Daniel celebrated the Bubble Boy as someone who took a risk when they were close to the reward. He said they could walk away and people should say, “there’s a guy who is going to be a great poker player.”

I think there’s two ways to have a career, and one of them looks a lot like the Bubble Boy. You can choose to be the methodical, incremental value creator or you can be the make-it-or-break-it person, the one that succeeds and fails a dozen times. The one that creates stories worth telling – about the times they hit and the times they missed.

Sometimes that person has to walk away from the table, but it doesn’t have to be in shame. Someone will be saying, “there’s a guy who is going to do great things.”

Now that I’ve been blogging for a while, I would say this is the question that haunts me the most. A lot of magnificent thinkers and writers are talking about the same sorts of things I am talking about.

I’ve just learned about www.caliandjody.com. They have a model is called ROWE, the Results Only Work Environment In my estimation, it’s brilliant. I downloaded the introduction and first chapter of their book, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, and the evisceration they give to our out-dated perspective on time is fantastic.

So what am I doing here blogging when other people are already saying it so well? Well, two things. First, I’m forcing myself to get my own thoughts into a coherent format and be responsible for them. It’s tremendously helpful, if not even a little cathartic. Second, I’m contributing my voice to a movement, one that needs every member the world can spare.

Your quiet agreement to some or all of what I say is great. Agreeing in a not so quiet manner, through voice or action, is powerful.

Oh, hang on. There’s a third reason. By blogging, I’m learning a ton. I’m not sure I would have come across ROWE without the generosity of a reader. Thanks Sebastian.

I believe the “soft stuff” is the hard stuff.

Every year, when my fundraising team for the MS Bike Tour gets out on the road in our costumes, people say, “Oh cool. I wish I was that creative.” We dress up as cows, or soldiers, we make up a theme and dress as the Adam West Batman characters. People say, “how did you ever come up with that?” or “I’d never think of that in a million years.”

These statements always surprise me. You see, I’m not creative, either.

I just so happened to care about fundraising for MS. I participated in the bike tour and determined that it was too elitist, too competitive and too fashion-conscious for my liking. I determined that new fundraisers were getting turned off by a culture that they didn’t fit in. I want new fundraisers. I want the tour to grow. I want more money for MS research. As the title suggests, these are “selfish matters.” I decided that I cared enough to try and change it, and I’d do it by example.

So, deconstructing how we make our team costumes, here’s how I get creative:
1) I get quite specific about what I want to change and how I might change it
2) I created space to reflect on what would work as a solution
3) I enlisted others to react and contribute to a kernel of an idea
4) We try it. We don’t know if it will make sense to others, but we implement.

I guess what I’m saying is that creativity, for me, isn’t some other-worldly headspace where stuff just pops in and “becomes.” It’s deliberate, it’s methodical and it takes work. Typically, I think the “I wish” crowd just doesn’t get deliberate enough to make it happen.

This is from the SAMBA blog:
After a concert, a woman gushed to Beethoven about how enthralled she was by his music. “Oh, sir, I wish I could play like you! It’s genius the music you create!”
Beethoven: “Well maam. If you want to practice 8 hours a day for 30 years, you could most certainly play that way also.”
She didn’t expect that. To Beethoven, his performance was not a one-off coincidence where talent met opportunity. To him, it was the culmination of effort and sweat put into his practice daily. The woman, only aware of the performance, didn’t give the process the respect it deserved. Honoring the process matters. It’s the thing that matters.

By the way, this year’s theme is SuperHeros. It’s going to rock.

On the surface, this doesn’t seem all that big, but I’m blown away that from my little corner, I can engage so broadly with people.

First, people scattered all over the world have read my blog:
Additionally, another blogger has reviewed and commented on my manifesto.

People I’ve never met have taken the time to post my manifesto on Twitter and some of the writing meant enough to be tweeted by others.

Admittedly, these have all been in small numbers, but I find it exhilirating. When I started sharing stuff through online media, I had the hope of adding my voice to the thoughtful things I read by such people as Seth Godin, Leo Babauta, Pam Slim and Chris Guillebeau.

This gives me some feedback that I’m contributing to a conversation that’s happening worldwide. I’m proud to be a small part of it.

There’s a significant advantage that you shouldn’t overlook. In whatever you care about, how likely is it that other people are thinking about it as much as you are?

Your advantage is your ability to think through every scenario, every defensive response, every potential roadblock. You can figure out the solution to every one of those items before you ever begin the discussion. There’s the magic.

In “Freakonomics,” Levitt and Dubner use the term “Information Asymmetry.” It’s when a professional has access to information you don’t have. Whether intentional or not, they can use the imbalance of knowledge to their advantage to get the better of a deal.

You can create an asymmetry with your passion, too. It’s an easy and available way to drive your agenda. Let’s call it a “planning asymmetry.” Your recipient is thinking about the eight phone calls they’ve got to return, the conversation they’ve got to have with an unresponsive employee and what they’re going to have for dinner. You, on the other hand, are looking for agreement on one thing, and you’ve spent eight, twenty or two hunred hours thinking about how to get from here to there.

Really, who’s got all the power?

I find myself referencing The Long Tail in conversations all the time. It is an excellent concept/observation by Chris Anderson. To be fair, I haven’t read his book on the topic, but this paper makes me feel confident enough to reference it constantly. http://www.changethis.com/10.LongTail

For me, The Long Tail and Seth Godin’s discussion of “Best in the World” (see The Dip) fit hand in glove. What am I passionate about ? What thin slice of the world’s discussion is going to be associated with me?