300

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Dec 202011
 

I do not believe it! (Victor Meldrew) Since drafting this post, Seth Godin has blogged about the 4,300 items he’s written since starting his blog, originally in email format back in 1991. I think I’ve been trumped! Oh well, for what it’s worth, here’s my offering.

I’m going to bore you with a little history! This is the 300th post since this blog started in its original guise as The Watercooler. Some of the early posts were written by friends before I stopped nagging them and took full responsibility for what appears in print. However, my wandering mind first started dumping its thought in written form on the 26th April 2006 when Random Ramblings first appeared on my original website. Then, with the advent of my second website, RR became a monthly emailed newsletter. With this, my third website iteration, I started the Watercooler blog and for some while ran RR as a separate entity. But it seemed a bit unfair to inflict quite so much waffle on the world and so a few months back I merged the streams so now the monthly emailed Ramble is a collation of what appears in the blog, with a some mild editing.

Anyone who writes as much as I have over the years is either very creative or they nick ideas from elesewhere. I fall into the latter category. One of my key influencers is Seth Godin. I was rather taken with an eclectic list of a dozen pieces of advice Seth published recently. My favourites are:

  1. Borrow money to buy things that go up in value, but never to get something that decays over time. (If only the world had taken note!)
  2. It’s almost never necessary to use a semicolon. (He’s completely wrong on this!!!)
  3. Backup your hard drive. (Well reminded.)
  4. Taking your dog for a walk is usually better than whatever alternative use of your time you were considering. (Hmm, no dog.)

And just to finish off, here are three thoughts I’ve borrowed from elsewhere:

  1. A pessimist is never disappointed. (Eddie Kiely, a work colleague from many years back.)
  2. Smile – it confuses people. (Scott Adams – American humourist.)
  3. Strategies are okayed in boardrooms that even a child would say are bound to fail. The problem is there is never a child in the boardroom. (Victor Palmieri, US corporate turnaround specialist.)

Happy Christmas!

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Under Pressure

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Aug 312011
 

No, not a discussion of a Queen song, although it’s a pity I can’t add a sound track of Freddie Mercury. At the moment I have quite a few things that need doing in a short time. I’m under pressure. Or am I? As Seth Godin pointed out in his blog a couple of weeks back, I’m under pressure from myself. Most of the urgent items on my To Do list I have elected to add to it. Sure, if I didn’t do them one or two people might take a dim view but the world wouldn’t end, I doubt it would even make much difference to my life. And those disappointed folk would mostly forget pretty quickly.

Yesterday I was discussing fear of certain situations with Derek Norval, my co-facilitator of our Succesful Speaking workshops for people who are nervous of speaking in public. As Derek pointed out, although there may be deep seated reasons for our fears, we choose to be frightened. We can make a decision not to be. I remember reading a book where the author said that one day she took a decision to be happy. And so she was. In the latter days of my corporate career I would look for the positive in whatever situation presented itself. Sometimes I would make my colleagues laugh at the absurdity of my take on ‘positive’. But there is no doubt that if you look hard enough, there is nearly always that proverbial silver lining in every cloud.

By the way, I chose to write this post. Sure I hadn’t written anything for a while. But I could have let another week or two go by. After all, none of you has been banging on my door asking when I am going to write a new post. You have my full permission not to feel under any pressure to do so in future. And you can give yourself full permission not to do things that aren’t essential. And not to fear the consequences.

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Didn’t You Used To Be Someone?

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Aug 122011
 

If memory serves me correctly it was that wonderful cricket commentator, Brian Johnstone, who was approached by a stranger who asked the question, “Didn’t you used to be someone?”. Most of us meet so many people and come across so many businesses that we are likely to forget or at best have a hazy recollection of them unless we are reminded frequently. If we remember them at all it will be as they were when we first came across them.

If you are running a business it is important to keep developing, to stay up to date with modern practices and trends, to keep your product offering moving forward to stay competitive. But you also need to TELL people that you are doing this otherwise their impression of what you can offer will be based on what you did half a dozen years ago or whatever it might be.

So go on, remind us who you are and what you do. And if you attend networking events, please wear a LARGE name badge so that I don’t have to dig into the depths of my memory to try to work out who you are!

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Building Trust

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Jul 182011
 

Recently I purchased something that was very expensive. I took the salesman’s advice. His company has built a reputation for being straight in their dealings. The sales guy knew much more about the product than me so it made sense to trust his advice. But how often do we feel like that when we are buying anything?

Any good salesman or saleswoman should act as a consultant to the customer, not aim to grab their money and run. But for this to work you need a clearly defined operating ethos that applies from the top and right through the organisation. Building trust is a prerequsite for sustaining success over a long period. Building trust requires sustaining a high standard of integrity over a long period.

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Momentum Or Dying Horse?

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Jul 152011
 

In a blog post this week Seth Godin talks about half-life, a term normally associated with the decay rate of radioactivity. But Seth uses it in terms of projects. One example he gives is best selling books, where typically half of lifetime sales will be in the first two months.

It is an interesting way to regard a project. Maybe it is something we should take into account more than I suspect most of us do. In fact perhaps we should all pause for a moment and examine our current projects. Can we continue to build momentum or are we flogging a dying horse? Should we be looking to refresh our product offering or introduce a new service?

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