Category: K.E.E.N. skills

Change the way you see yourself

Every so often I bump into Anais Nin famous quote, and every time I find it inspiring anew, and so true.

the world inside us
the world inside us

Let us quote it in its full extent here:
“The way you see yourself shapes your life. How you define life determines your destiny. Your perspective will influence how you invest your time, spend your money, use your talents and value your relationships.

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” – Anais Nin

 

Take 5 mins. Meditate that sentence. The easiest way to find whether we have a strong perspective which excessively distorts our view of reality is to get an external feedback. Get someone you trust, if possible living a very different life. Ask whether they believe your view reality is distorted. And then investigate why. And change. And get free.

The picture is from Dan Mountford, great photos to be discovered on Flicker

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Bonus: how to market oneself in the Collaborative Age

Now that we’ve ascertained that personal marketing is necessary for the K.E.E.N. in the Collaborative Age, this great post from Mitch Joel about “Personal branding is not an option – it is the recipe to success” is a good place to start to know how to market oneself on the Internet.

Enjoy your first personal marketing steps!

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Not a lot of people know how to market themselves

Knowing how to market oneself is a great differentiator. It can mean orders of magnitude of differences in influence, revenue. It makes the difference between the competent-knowledgeable, and the successful achievers.

What prevents us from developing this important skill?

  • as we saw in the previous blog post, developing a personal unique brand is against Industrial Age mindset and is rejected by our social environment;
  • marketing oneself is scary, because it means standing up and getting rejected more often than accepted;
  • successful marketing involves developing an emotional connection with prospective buyers, and this is not something we have been educated to develop and enhance

    • Still, self-marketing it is a key skill that differentiates successful achievers in any field.

    How can we develop this skill? Beyond developing one’s brand, expose yourself! Find your unique selling proposition, stand up and start marketing it. Persist, get feedback, and you’ll get there.

    So, when do you start marketing yourself?

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    Developing a personal brand: a revolutionary idea – and so much needed!

    The Fourth Revolution is here. Today anybody living anywhere can develop a personal brand that will be visible over the entire Internet.

    Personal brand marketing
    Personal brand marketing

    This requires a good definition of one’s personal purpose and a persistent and consistent communication over many media.

    But it is necessary.

    And actually, it is key for the successful K.E.E.N. to develop such personal brand.

    The Industrial Age mindset is completely opposed to such idea: people were put in categories, by profession and diploma. They were considered interchangeable in the workplace. And any individual deviating from such classification was considered suspiciously, and he or she did not fit anymore in these categories.

    Today, more and more, exceptions to the Industrial Age categories are the rule. Although failing bureaucratic organizations will continue to resist the idea for a while, the future is that each individual will have a specific profile and a specific brand.
    And that’s needed because having a strong personal brand increases one’s value by being unique: possibly the unique response or profile to solve a particular issue.

    So, when do you start developing your personal brand on the Internet and in the world? It will take time. Start today.

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    Making sense of data: the limits of datadregding

    Today as yesterday, making sense of available data to create information and knowledge is as important as before.

    The difference is that the available data is way larger and much more accessible to anybody. Statistical analysis tools on Internet-based communication are available for free, like Google Analytics. And a lot of people try to use then to increase their own or their marketing impact.

    And there come questions like ‘what’s the best time for me to tweet’? It’s possible to run that analysis, as this blog post by Chris Penn, “when is the best time to tweet”, shows. Now what is the meaning of this analysis? Is it statistically significant? Do we effectively control all the other parameters that influence the result? What are the assumptions – here, the assumption is clearly that people are supposed to live in real time, you want to tweet at a moment they are connected. Is that real? For myself I look at tweeter once a day for all the day’s tweets…

    This excellent post by Tom Webster about ‘Social Media data dregding” shows very clearly how these challenges affect the interpretation of the data.

    As a conclusion. Running statistical analysis on heaps of data, in the Fourth Revolution, is easier than ever. It makes all the more dangerous the conclusions we get. The good old principles of statistical control and design of experiments are still valid. And more needed than ever. That should be part of the basic literacy in the Collaborative Age.

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    The education system revolution: developing curiosity

    Our current education system was created during the Industrial Age. It was made mandatory in the second half of the 19th century in most developed countries to produce the manpower Industry was requiring.

    What skills were taught? Basic literacy and conformance.

    Einstein on curiosity and education
    Einstein on curiosity and education

    No wonder that Einstein reflected “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education”.

    Curiosity is now what we need. What we need to develop – with some other skills like Presence and Choice. Because we need to educate for creativity.

    When will we say “It is a miracle that conformance survived education”?

    Sooner than we can expect, because the young generation today thrives by being curious. But that will require great changes in our education system. And then for sure the Collaborative Age will be flourishing!

    Note – the image of this blog comes from the “Presentation zen” blog, a blog by Garr Reynold, a presentation specialist living in Japan, with some very interesting insights about what it takes to do great presentations.

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    What motivates the K.E.E.N.?

    There is a great video from Dan Pink about motivation: the surprising truth about what motivates us.

    It shows the incentive schemes of the Industrial Age corporation only work for mechanical skills. Once the task involves cognitive skill, rewards lead to lower performance!!

    What then does motivate the K.E.E.N, the Knowledge Enhancing Exchanging Networker of the Collaborative Age? According to Dan Pink, there are 3 main factors: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

    • Autonomy like self-direction.
    • Mastery like getting better at something.
    • Purpose like getting up in the morning.
    purpose maximizer
    We are purpose maximizers

    According to Dan Pink, we are purpose maximizers, not just profit maximizers.
    So, when do you start maximizing your purpose?

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    The scariest is not to start something new, it is to stop something ongoing

    I am a Coach and I find through my experiences that one of the most difficult stumbling blocks for personal change is for people to stop doing things.

    We are often scared to start new things. What will be the result for us? How are other going to look at us?

    But because it adds things to our life, our character, our reputation, because the new can be exciting, with a little or more effort this fear can be overcome, and we effectively start the new activities.

    Though, you can’t continue to add up things in your life without removing others… or you’ll have a burn-out problem.

    And then comes the even more scary part: removing activities, habits that one has developed over time. We feel comfortable with them. They become part of our identity. It is scary to abandon them for the benefit of some new, uncertain things and activities.

    Stop and go sign
    Stop and go sign

    It is where most people fail: stopping old things to give room to new things. They don’t fail to start new things, but because they don’t abandon old things, they don’t devote the time and attention to the new things and they falter.

    Overcoming the fear of stopping and abandoning things and habits is the hardest. It is where the Coach needs to concentrate.

    So, when do you make an habit to abandon every year what makes 5 to 10% of your time and replace it with new, better activities?

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    A simple habit to tame the lizard. Just for you.

    I have a small trick to tame the lizard.

    When you consider a situation, an event, always look for the positives before you consider the negatives. Always brainstorm the opportunities before the risks.

    Setting your lizard in positive mode first will tame the lizard.

    If you don’t do that, you will drown in the negative and never be able to look again at the positives.

    This is so simple, yet so powerful. It is just a habit. It is just a simple way to exercise the brain the right way.

    So, promised? In the next days and weeks when faced with a new situation, always think opportunities first. That will change your life.

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    The lizard and the Fourth Revolution

    We developed our biological construct as primates and then hunter gatherers. We were wandering, very vulnerable, in a hostile nature. We developed very effective warning signals for any change that could have fatal consequences. Our primitive brain, the first to process sensory information, triggers quick response in case of anything outside the usual.

    the lizard
    the lizard

    That is what Seth Godin calls “the lizard brain”. It never sleeps. It constantly monitors the environment. It reacts to any change.

    In our modern world the lizard brain is still at work. It protects us usefully from dangerous situations, but also kicks in and prevents us from doing worthwhile activities. It is the lizard brain that prevents us from public speaking – a dangerous situation, at the center of attention of so many pairs of eyes!

    The lizard brain is also at work when it comes to the Fourth Revolution. In the face of change, our natural reaction is to retreat in a safe environment. In an environment that we think is safe because it is well known and has served faithfully our parents and grand parents.

    Yet the Industrial Age is now crumbling. Rather than trying to hide behind the walls of the citadels of the Industrial Age, which will only resist for a while before being swept away by the tsunami of change, the safest option is then probably to leap forward into the Fourth Revolution.

    This is not intuitive. It goes against our deepest reflexes. It needs exercise, practice and will to go outside one’s comfort zone willingly, to tame the lizard.

    When do you start taming your lizard?

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    Deep learning from the “law of requisite variety”: practice your flexibility!

    The “law of requisite variety” is a fundamental insight in our world. It is not well known. It should be recognized as a fundamental new insight that changes our understanding or the world.

    The law itself comes from cybernetics – the study of systems controlled with feedback loops. Articulated in 1948 by Ashby, it states in its original form “only variety can destroy variety”. To be effective, the control system needs to have more variety than the perturbations of system it controls.

    It has been taken up under a slightly different form in the 1970’s by the initiators of NLP – neuro-linguistic programming. In their words, “the actor with the greatest flexibility of behavior will ultimately control the system“.
    In other words, the most flexible and adaptable actor will dominate.

    We now know that most systems in our world – climate, biology, society – are systems controlled by feedback loops. This law should then apply to most of our world.

    Darwin’s theory is but the application of this law to biology. Darwin’s theory is that the species most adapted to its environment will thrive. That does not just mean a static adaptation like the color of the bird or the shape of its beak. It also means, the level of dynamic adaptability, of flexibility.
    That humans have come to dominate most of their environment and the rest of the ecosystem is not because they are the strongest or physiologically the most adapted – it is because they are the most flexible and adaptable thanks to their intelligence.

    Let’s now take this insight into the field of economics and society. The most adaptable and flexible will eventually dominate.
    For organizations it means that flexibility and adaptability is a primordial condition for success. For institutions and governments also. The natural tendency to create organizations and institutions that try to freeze a situation to their benefit is doomed in the long term.
    The quest for success should be to seek to enhance the flexibility and the adaptability of organizations and institutions rather than devise all sorts impediments to change.

    It is also applicable on a personal level. To thrive, you need to be more flexible and adaptable than the world around you.

    So, when do you start practicing that fundamental skill – flexibility?

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