Are You a Cliche?

I just spent about an hour looking for a picture for the header on this blog.  Every picture I found that I liked because of the metaphor it represented on second look seemed cliché.  I started to feel like everything has become so cliché.   We seem to have exploited and over used so many images in business.  It’s almost like metaphors themselves are cliché.

In this world where so many ideas flow through our inbox and twitter feeds every day it is easy to start feeling like there is nothing new to add to the conversation.  Maybe the solution is to narrow our focus.  Stop worrying about reaching thousands of people and really just take care of our own little part of the world. It’s rare that we feel the people we love and know deeply are played out.

Process

I just wrote about process on my other blog and was delighted to read Seth Godin’s blog today. He says it so well!

It isn’t just social media that involves process though.  Change does as well.  We often think an event will change things (logic behind lots of evangelical conferences).  Events don’t change people.  They may be a catalyst but even that doesn’t happen as often as we would like.

It makes me consider changing my business name to:  Leadership ON PROCESS!

Be Knowable

I just read a good quote, “Don’t blog to get known; blog to be knowable.”. (Hugh McQuire)

I think that applies to more than blogging. It applies to leadership. Are you leading with the motivation of getting known. Is your motivation to feed your ego? Or are you a transparent leader who wants to share the vision and the glory?

Lead to be knowable – on purpose.

Get on the bus!

This summer the main focus at Leadership ON PURPOSE has been on researching best practices in social media for small businesses and non profits.  It’s a service that we want to offer our clients because so many of them are asking for help.

We ran a survey of non profits and with a response rate of 90% we are confident that the data is accurate. The common theme was ‘we feel like we should be doing more, we are not doing enough but we don’t know where to start’.

Do you have the same question?  We will be offering workshops and consulting this fall.  If you want help assessing where you should invest your time and energy in the world of social media please contact us.  And if you aren’t convinced watch this video!

And a special thanks to Chris Spagnuolo’s EdgeHopper for sharing this compelling video.

Remotely Speaking

Have you ever found yourself on a conference call or webinar and realize you haven’t heard a word that’s been said for the last five minutes?  Maybe you got distracted with your email or filing your nails. I know I’m not alone!  You may even be reading this while on a call.   Nancy Duarte has put together an informative presentation with Six Tips to design and deliver a powerful remote presentation.  I love her line “pump up the perky”.

Let me know what you think of it.  I’m doing a lot of work in this area and I would be happy to talk to you about what I am learning.

A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep

That’s how I feel about my online world. I have four websites each representing a different role I play. I’m LinkedIn, Twittering, blogging, facebooking, and a host of other things. What is the most important? How do I know when do narrow my focus? Judging by the hits to my blogs I’m not generating much reading so this is probably one thing to abandon or I need to start promoting it more!