Taking a phone call, watching Netflix, cooking food, and caring for children are only some of the distractions remote workers deal with daily. And with the uncertainty of when they will be able to return to the office, many will continue juggling between different duties while working remotely.
Category Archives: Career
Time, Energy and Attention Are The Only Things We Invest That We Can’t Get Back
Here’s a typical scenario…
You’re an employee at a large organization, have been there for a while. You see opportunities to make things better, you talk to people, some doors open then they close. You’re frustrated because you can’t make progress. You start thinking about all the ways everything could be better if you only had a chance to apply your ideas.
Does this sound familiar?…
8 Universal Skills The Most Productive People and Teams Put To Use
Are digital tools really making us more productive? It’s a constant inquiry and an ongoing debate whether the digital revolution is making us more productive. I’ve written before that the digital revolution is transitioning us to the Age of Efficiency, one where technology does most of the decision making for us. It’s great, but it also has it’s cons and more importantly the expectation that it will make us smarter just by it being there.
The promise of the digital revolution is better innovation, higher productivity, lower costs and faster growth. The jury is still out on whether or not digital tools make us more productive, and the implications for society. …
What’s your creative thinking style?
Have you ever noticed how you come up with your ideas? Have you noticed how others come up with theirs? I’ve been thinking about this lately and seeing how on Twitter there’s no shortage of people tweeting ‘x ways to innovate’ back and forth (myself included!) it makes me think non-innovation people will get confused with so many ‘techniques’.
So how many ways are there really? infinite. This is a problem because most techniques are just designed to stimulate your brain to get it thinking in all sorts of ways but they don’t naturally come to you.
We must also remember that most people are put off by all of this ‘innovation’ talk, they just don’t care about the latest and greatest technique, they just care about the outcome and our job is to help them get there. So where do people like us who are trying to spread the religion of ‘innovation’ around start teaching the non-innovators? With what comes natural to us.…
Disrupt yourself to change the game you play in
If you can’t solve a problem, it’s because you’re playing by the rules. – Paul Arden
All a disruptor really does is change something from one state to another by breaking patterns. Google is a typical disruptor, they seek ways to ‘disrupt’ a familiar flow in how things get done to another and then change the rules by creating new ones that play in the new state.
Disrupt or be disrupted.
Like Google we must learn ‘to be disruptive’ starting with ourselves. We have to disrupt our own flow of how we do things, changing how we do them not just for the hell of it but because it’s the only way to stay relevant. This isn’t just for product development, marketing or sales, it’s looking at your business from 30000 FT and asking yourself: what can I change to be better and what can someone else change that could put me in a disadvantage?
A game-changer is a disruptor.
Where do you start.
– Be aware of governing schemas (mental models)
– Be aware of the patterns that shape behavior
– Be aware of the rules
– Be aware of trends
– Be aware of things that haven’t changed in awhile (rigid)
What do you do?
> Do the opposite
> See how you can change things from one state to another (ice to water)
> Blend it
> Find the in congruencies and make them congruent.
> Do the unfamiliar by making the common uncommon.
> Ask why?
> Ask what if?
A disruptor moves at a different pace than others, it constantly probes the system to get an insight because the faster this happens the more it learns and the faster it moves. Learn to fail fast and break away from everybody!
How are you disrupting yourself? How about your business? Who’s disrupting you?
STRATEGY: Exchange the role of guest for host
Look beyond the immediate battle and build on a position of weakness to take control.
I was watching my favorite childhood cartoon movie, GI Joe, yesterday and was reminded of a very powerful strategy that the terrorist organization Cobra uses in most of the cartoons that can be applied in business. If you’re not familiar with GI Joe, Cobra Commander is the leader of the terrorist group know as Cobra and Destro is his 2nd in command (both are in the picture above) but in the movie Destro is the commander while Cobra Commander is the brains behind the weapons they’ll use to takeover the world.
The MARS (aka Cobra) organization is the world’s largest supplier of weapons and Destro is it’s CEO. Cobra Commander takes an inferior position by being able to use Destro’s resources to build a technologically advanced terrorist organization that is of his own making.
This is important to know because Cobra Commander is really just waiting in the wings for Destro’s downfall to take over. Up to this point every weapon Destro’s MARS organization has was designed by Cobra Commander himself and as any good strategist has been influencing every decision the organization has taken before he takes power.
When he finally takes power nothing really changes since he’s planned all of this from the beginning to be this way.
This strategy is called ‘exchanging the role of guest for host’.
This is a very powerful strategy because you start by seeming weaker than the person or business you are trying to take, but in doing so you build on a position of weakness to take control. It’s a deceptive strategy but when well executed opens up a lot of options for you because in reality you are the one in control when giving it up.
Microsoft was born from taking a subordinate position to IBM.
Why this is important to you.
Because you want something and there’s always going to be obstacles standing in your way and most of the time you lack the patience to see the bigger picture. Your natural instincts will tell you to focus on the present and the faster you can get what you want the better, instead look at the big picture and see how taking an inferior position right now can benefit you in the long run by using others resources to your benefit.
There are endless applications of this devastating strategy, have you used this strategy before?
Malcolm Gladwell on “meaningful work”
Here’s Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink Out There on dvd discussing some finding from his new book Outliers. Here speaking at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, he gives examples of The Beatles and Bill Gates and how hard work, pouring your heart and mind into something, results in meaningful work and at the same time getting rewarded for it.