April 30, 2018 Daily Post
Do you “protect your time”?
I hear this term used often. It’s wrong:
Time doesn’t need you to protect it. It needs you to leverage it:
Don’t be a too-good, rigid “protector of time”. Be an intentional genius who leverages time for the good of your team.
April 29, 2018 Daily Post
Great teams teach.
They’re great–and secure enough–to share their insights with the world, as a source of contribution and attention.
But they rarely teach well:
This is the new channel-surfing. An attention deficit is created by those who complain about it.
No more complaining, or participating: what if you were to create something more substantial, more valuable, something you and your teammates can be proud of?
April 28, 2018 Daily Post
It’s easy to feel this.
Particularly if you’re moving more slowly than you’d like, or you’re low on resources.
These natural phases of development breed either determination or desperation. The latter literally stinks:
What if you used this phase of development as an opportunity to get unstuck, control the goal, and let determination germinate instead?
April 27, 2018 Daily Post
A man stands up at a charity gala. The room applauds.
As promises go, standing is the easy part. The hard part comes later.
Teams that stand the test of time tend not to be impressed with ‘the easy part’. No applause for standing. After all, they’ll have likely seen many posture and fall.
Rather, they’ll more likely acknowledge and respect ‘the hard part’ with nods of appreciation along the way.
Who gets your applause, the volunteer or the veteran?
April 26, 2018 Daily Post
What differentiates the winners from the losers?
One of these counts more than all the others combined:
Care is the differentiator. Team members with the first three but not the fourth ultimately fail, every single time.
What’s your care-o-meter telling you?
April 25, 2018 Daily Post
It sounds like a romanticization, doesn’t it?
In contrast, “achieving goals” sounds impersonal.
Achieving goals is a science. Without it, we don’t move forward. But without making magic happen, we don’t move forward anywhere others are excited to go.
All teams are capable of this extra ingredient. We simply need to care intensely enough to choreograph something worth saying “wow!” about.
April 24, 2018 Daily Post
What is ‘weird’?
If you’re on a mission to do meaningful relevant work, the answer might be, you.
If you’re relentlessly pursuing your genius for a cause greater than yourself, the answer might be, you.
If you’re happy with the status quo, safely stowing yourself away for retirement instead of contributing toward something weird, then don’t worry: you’re fine.
(Or are you?)
April 23, 2018 Daily Post
Being assumptive gets a bad rap.
You may have heard the catchphrase, “When you ‘assume’, you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’.” That’s only when it’s not meant for ‘u’ or ‘me’.”
Sometimes–such as when teams communicate with the marketplace–to not assume is to be impersonal and disconnected.
If you’re looking for people who are looking for X… stating “You are looking for X” to the marketplace makes some people say “no” and others say “that’s me”.
The “no” crowd were never going to respond anyway, so why indulge the catchphrase?
Sometimes, to assume is to get to the heart of those your message is to serve.
April 22, 2018 Daily Post
If your team was the best in the world in your field, how would you behave differently?
These are things that separate where you are now from when you’re the best in the world.
So why not change them now and start closing the gap?
April 21, 2018 Daily Post
Why does “get what you deserve” sound negative?
What you deserve is the results of what you sow.
Great teams that pull together and create remarkable work deserve to win. Eyes on the prize.
April 20, 2018 Daily Post
There’s a deadline coming.
Does that make you feel like rushing?
Me too. Here’s an alternative:
When there’s a lot to do (and there always is) the temptation is to rush, to go fast, to skid around corners.
When we recognize the urge to rush, switching to flowing means the same output, but no skid marks.
April 19, 2018 Daily Post
‘Feel-good’. Adjective. Meaning “a feeling of happiness and well-being.”.
It ties two words together that mean far less apart. Consider your team:
Neither truly thrives without the other.
Does your team have ‘feel-good’, or just ‘feel’ (or ‘good’)?
April 18, 2018 Daily Post
What is ‘being stuck’?
It’s what we say when we stop thinking.
There’s a code to it:
The ‘code of stuckness’ suggests there’s no such thing as ‘stuck’. On the contrary, ‘stuck’ indicates there’s immediate action you can take.
Do you–or your team members–ever feel stuck? If so, it’s time to act.
April 17, 2018 Daily Post
Now there’s a job title that shouldn’t exist.
Yet it does.
In the old economy, ‘making sandcastles’ is a worthless skill that people should stop pursuing in favor of sensible, stable work.
In the new economy, ‘stable’ went away. As “sensible” gets automated, genius finds new means of expression.
Sometimes genius creates spaces at the edges that shouldn’t exist. Where automation doesn’t exist. Where genius can shine.
There are parts of your team’s work that exist on the edges where your genius shines. What are they?
April 16, 2018 Daily Post
There are 2 ways to run in the rain:
The rain didn’t change. You did.
When it rains on your team, does it send everyone racing for the door, or give you all a new perspective you can leverage for good?
April 15, 2018 Daily Post
You might simply need to use the ones you have better:
What tool-based limitations does your team experience that clarity, focus, and creativity can’t solve?
April 14, 2018 Daily Post
Are you a team newbie or part of the old guard?
Is it possible to be both at the same time?
How could you–and your teammates–aspire to be the team’s New Guard?
April 13, 2018 Daily Post
Give yourself a number.
Great at what you do? That’s a 10.
Just starting out? Make it 2. New but nice? Try a 4.
Now give everyone on your team a number (don’t tell them). Every relationship you have on the team is a number:
Great collaborations on a team have high numbers.
Are yours?
April 12, 2018 Daily Post
What frustrates you?
Let me help, how about:
Frustration often comes from the feeling of being ‘stuck’.
Energy experts say ‘Shui’ (水) emphasizes the importance of ‘motion‘. That when a rock is placed in a river, the water effortlessly finds another way.
Sometimes we forget that roadblocks to a linear action aren’t really roadblocks at all. They’re merely reminders to think more divergently.
Or, to be a little more Shui.
April 11, 2018 Daily Post
It was my first flight lesson.
It felt nice and steady. I looked at the airspeed indicator: 90mph. Were we on the ground, that’d scarcely feel ‘nice and steady.’
My instructor taught me, “Everything’s done slowly in a helicopter.” Perspective matters. They can’t see your airspeed indicator.
April 10, 2018 Daily Post
But doesn’t changing the rules mean not going with the flow?
Not always.
Sometimes, we’re so busy going against the flow that we don’t think to follow it:
Sometimes the flow has precisely what we need–we’re just too busy resisting it.
April 09, 2018 Daily Post
Is your team charming?
The pursuit of “perfect” often overcooks products into “sterile”:
Except they’re not perfect.
Kindle books have no memories, lower retention, and no personality. Apple Music has no secrets, no social glue, and winner-takes-all algorithms. Netflix has no date magic, few favorites, and no ‘I went to see that’ experience.
Unless you make pacemakers, the pursuit of ‘perfection’ shouldn’t erase variety and charm.
April 08, 2018 Daily Post
If you knew your idea would get stolen, would you share it?
In the western land of patent lawsuits, profit often comes from blocking innovation of ideas.
There’s an alternative that nurtures rapid innovation for brave teams, found in Shenzhen, China.
Sharing knowledge increases a team’s influence and generates more business.
Not by blocking progress, but by accelerating (and becoming attributed to) progress.
Will your team lead progress in your space?
April 07, 2018 Daily Post
Who controls your fulfillment?
First let’s ask, what fulfills you?
Don’t outsource your fulfillment. Where do you need to take back control of yours?
April 06, 2018 Daily Post
Yesterday we talked about ‘meeting spec’.
But what if the ‘spec’ keeps changing?
Some things are designed with rules (e.g. ‘setting and meeting goals’), whereas others have no rules (e.g. ‘following a vision’).
If the ‘spec’ keeps changing, your team needs goals. If goals take you nowhere, your team needs vision.
April 05, 2018 Daily Post
What is “Spec”?
Specifications are shared expectations.
The more people share the expectation, the truer the spec becomes. But when someone decides spec doesn’t work, we have two choices:
The trouble with Option 1 is that those ‘anomalies’ will compound. You’re left with the challenge of bailing faster than you take on water.
So we’re left with Option 2. If we must stop production to review things that don’t meet spec, it’ll get addressed quickly, and the whole team will be stronger for it.
You’re not using Option 1, are you?
April 04, 2018 Daily Post
What do “pressing publish”, “pressing record”, and “walking on stage” have in common?
They’re all really simple actions to perform.
Yet they’re all scary. Because we decided they are. We forget what they’re made of.
Works of art, great presentations, and space travel, all consist of simple actions followed by more simple actions.
The next big step forward for your (great) team might be hidden behind what you’re afraid to do. We get to find out what we’re made of when we remember what our fears are made of.
April 03, 2018 Daily Post
Brewing pǔ’ěr tea in a Yixing clay teapot comes with many rituals.
If you search for it on YouTube, and you’ll quickly find videos of people conducting precisely choreographed ceremonies with a huge lexicon of unfamiliar terms.
It may appear extraneous. But to suppose so misses the point of ritual:
Teams that encourage rituals see an increase in some of these three areas. What rituals could your team create?
April 02, 2018 Daily Post
“Do” is a relative term:
How do you define “done”: tried, completed, accomplished, or systemized?
April 01, 2018 Daily Post
What is a “Market Hypocrite”?
It’s sadly much of the market: teams that make promises they’re not equipped to keep. They know it, but are unlikely to admit it, even to themselves:
Prove your genius before asking others to believe in you.
Those who do this don’t need to hide behind sensationalism and flash sales. They get to communicate transparently, deliver consistently, and keep their promises.
Are there any areas of your team you risk being a “Market Hypocrite”?