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Drink your food, chew your wine

December 30, 2010 in Journal with 2 Comments

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once an awhile, you could miss it.” Ferris Bueller

We all have the same problems: deadlines that are getting shorter, email inboxes that are choking on high priority fires to be put out, and consciences that strain under guilt because we’re so busy tending to urgent things that the important stuff gets push to tomorrow.

Then the next day. Then the day after that until we’re staring down the barrel of a new year wondering what happened to all of those goals and plans…and dreams.

I’ve spent the last week, as I do every year-end, looking back at 2010 and everything I did right and wrong (mostly wrong). What I learned wasn’t surprising but it was sobering.

Here it is in a nutshell. The single greatest contributor to the times I failed or was the least effective both personally and professionally: attempting to multi-task. And the close second: my unwillingness to say “no” when I knew I should have.

Both tendencies stem from the same problem, which is the inability to keep the main thing the main thing. When everything is important, nothing is and you end up living with no baseline for making good decisions. Life ends up happening to you. You miss it.

So in 2011 I’ll be focusing on a few things that I experimented with successfully during the last half of this year. Maybe there’s a nugget in here for you.

1. Say “no” twice as much as you say yes.

Everything is not equally important. Know what you want to accomplish and how to get there. When something peripheral comes up, you’ll see it for what it is: an obstacle.

Continue Reading…

When experts aren’t

December 29, 2010 in Journal with 1 Comment

During the early stages of any “new thing” experts are recognized based on who shows up first. That’s mostly what it’s about–be visible, be vocal, and sound smart, which is easier to do when no one really knows how the “new thing” actually works or will change things.

Before long, because the barrier to entry is zero, experts and gurus start popping up everywhere. When no one is an expert, everyone is. But the noise level eventually gets out of control and it becomes more difficult to find those people who are actually making things happen instead of simply talking about it.

That’s when most people who are trying to make a real difference have a choice to make. The tendency is to succumb to the noise that threatens to drown you out and either give up altogether or wait for someone to eventually find you in the quiet corner. The problem is you’re not really an expert–whether a marketer, a novelist, or an artist–if no one knows it. You’re simply a smart person with talent that only you know about.

Being smart is great. It’s necessary, actually. So be a genius and know your stuff inside and out. But then go join the conversation. Or better yet, start a new one. Do something surprising and unexpected. Just don’t add to the noise if you can help it.

How I plan to use About.me

December 28, 2010 in Journal with 2 Comments

Now that AOL has acquired social networking site About.me (for $180 million, apparently), which officially launched on December 20th, more people are test driving it, myself included. But the question I’ve been asking myself is do I really need one more social media site to keep track of?

Up until now I’ve put off giving it a shot. After all, I only recently really settled on how to best use the various online components I’m already signed up for: my website, Twitter, public and private Facebook pages, and LinkedIn. Today I got bored so I bit the bullet, and signed on. Here’s what I found. Continue Reading…

Why Being a Maven Isn’t Enough Anymore

December 27, 2010 in Journal with 5 Comments

As demand for marketing expertise that bridges the analog and digital worlds increases, brands need “digital polymaths” to lead them where “mavens” cannot.

The past few years have seen the rise of the “marketing maven“, trusted experts that deal in a narrow, but deep subject (like PR or social media strategy). They’re brokers of intellectual capital, influencers, thought leaders, bleeding edge types. They tell companies and brands that the future is now and what steps they must take if they want to get left behind.

Mavens have become known for challenging and convincing brands to think differently about one corner of their world. Social media mavens, for example, help companies see the value in social communities, the power of crowdsourcing, and the difference between engaging in conversations and blasting one-way marketing messages. SEO and SEM mavens clarify the need to quantify hard to measure “stuff” and use the right words.

But being a maven isn’t as attractive as it once was and knowing one “language” just isn’t that valuable. Brands have realized that, as the world grows in complexity and the demand to engage in multiple places and ways increases, they need guides that are fluent, or at least conversant, in multiple areas of expertise.

The mavens are no longer the most important players in the game; the polymaths are. Continue Reading…

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