May 20, 2013

CIO IT Leadership Interview with Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel is a thought leader in new media, marketing, technology and business. He’s the President of the Twist Image digital marketing agency, the author of two business books, a columnist in the Montreal Gazette, a prolific blogger, and host of the Six Pixels of Separation weekly podcast.

Here he talks with me about his most recent book, CTRL ALT DELETE – Reboot Your Business, Reboot You Life. Your Future Depends On It.

We talk about resetting your approach to business and your career for a different landscape now that recent technology innovations have changed everything. The implications for CIOs, IT Leaders, and any leader in an organization today are enormous.

The video is embedded below and also accessible via this link.

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May 16, 2013

Ctrl Alt Delete, by Mitch Joel

ctrlaltdelReboot your business. Reboot Your life. Your future depends on it.

So argues Mitch Joel in his new book, Ctrl Alt Delete, a follow up to his earlier work on the world of new media, Six Pixels of Separation. Where Six Pixels of Separation showed you the new world order emerging, Ctrl Alt Delete is a wakeup call to help you recognize that it has arrived. Joel says we’re in a sort of business purgatory now, so it’s crucial that you do the things that will get you to the promised land.

And that doesn’t mean tacking on some social media bells and whistles here and there. It means embracing new strategies for success. Your business must establish a direct relationship with its customers. Your digital products aren’t to be cute shiny objects, but must offer real utility. You must understand the difference between passive and active media, and know how to leverage each. You must recognize the wealth of data you now have access to and learn how to analyze customer behavior more fully. Finally, Joel argues that it’s a one screen world going forward – the only screen that matters is the one your customer is looking at right now.

In a conversational tone, Joel walks you through this new world as he sees it and provides specific guidance on how you should move forward. The advice is summarized as lessons at the end of each chapter.

Lessons for you

Once he’s done talking business, Joel spends the second half of the book speaking to you more directly. How should you personally navigate this new environment?

Joel explains how to become a digital native, how to view your career path differently, and how to embrace the new work environment. He goes on to talk about marketing yourself, embracing a start-up mode attitude, and other ideas for personal success going forward.

A lot

There’s a lot packed into this book. It’s really like sitting down and having a conversation with Joel, one where he attempts to tell you everything he knows about what’s happening right now in the world of marketing and business and gives you his best advice for how to be successful. That can make the work a bit overwhelming at times, but the book is structured well and ideas can easily be referenced later on, along with the specific advice that’s called out at the end of each chapter.

I enjoyed the book, and I very much enjoy Mitch’s weekly podcast. If you’d like to learn more about how a really smart and successful guy sees the business and marketing world right now, pick up a copy of the book. It might just be the wakeup call you need.

 

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April 30, 2012

The Start-Up of You, by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

The way we manage our careers now is very different than in the recent past. It takes different skills to stand out in an organization and a very different approach to be successful in a career that will span work at a variety of organizations.

Reid Hoffman, cofounder of the popular business and career oriented social network LinkedIn, and his coauthor Ben Casnocha, make the case that the best approach to managing your career these days is to approach it as an entrepreneur would successfully manage a start-up company.

After convincingly establishing why you should think of your career as a start-up, the authors spend the bulk of the book explaining key strategies for success in start-ups and in your career. Focusing on your core competencies with gusto is crucial, but so is having contingency plans. And not only having them, but actively working them even has you pursue your current path. You may need or want to pivot to another plan at some point. They suggest really only three plans – your current “Plan A,” a solid “Plan B,” and a last-resort “Plan Z” just in case things go wrong with both Plan A & B.

The book makes a strong case (not surprisingly) for constantly building and leveraging your professional network. There are great tips on the main areas that require focus and attention here, with many specific examples.

Risk taking is the third big focus area of the book. The authors provide good advice for assessing risk and how to take smart risks in your career. The advice here provides a good strategic framework for thinking through the many choices you’ll need to make over the course of your career, such as when you to pivot from a Plan A to a Plan B.

The book is well-written and easy to read. The tone is positive and encouraging, with lots of great tips scattered throughout the content. Each chapter is punctuated with a list of ways to “invest in yourself” that includes things you should do immediately, in the next week, and in the next month, making it easy to translate the lessons of the book into concrete actions. The book concludes with a nice summary and great suggestions for further reading.

I think this book is spot on in its assessment of today’s world of work and what individuals should be thinking and doing in order to succeed. I highly recommend this book.

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August 19, 2011

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

The 4-Hour WorkweekTim Ferriss’ over-the-top style does not stop at the title: The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. He’s quite serious. He’s done it and wants to show you how.

But, this book applies to so much more. You don’t need to take the ideas to extremes in order to benefit from them. It’s full of practical, innovative little ideas that can be used in many ways to improve your productivity, think like an entrepreneur, and assist you in making realistic goals – and living up to them.

Starting from the premise that “reality is negotiable,” Ferriss goes on to explore ways to bend or break rules to your advantage (ethically and legally). Through such a dramatic posture, Ferriss explores a variety of counter-intuitive ideas – all of which he has tried. He tests everything. It’s all a scientific experiment to him. Even the title of the book was done through methodical testing of a variety of possible titles.

Ferriss shares his personal stories, gives specific instructions and examples, and provides tons of references to specific software programs, service providers, and other tools. The writing style is direct and engaging, with an enthusiastic and supportive tone. The book is clear and well-organized. You could read it through beginning to end and then make easy reference to specific ideas or recommendations later on.

If you’re interested to explore ideas that challenge common self-defeating assumptions, that look at ways to focus time and attention more strategically, and that consider automating and outsourcing to the extreme (even at the personal level) in order to maximize the quantity and quality of time available to you, then this book is for you.

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May 25, 2011

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard

Successful transformative changes follow a pattern, one that Chip and Dan Heath highlight through interesting stories and a clever metaphor in their book Switch. Through the lessons in the book, you learn how to help the Rider (our rational minds) and Elephant (our emotional minds) down the desired Path of change.

Meeting this challenge requires a thoughtful and informed approach. After all, as the authors reveal, what looks like resistance to change is often a lack of clarity. What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. And what looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.

The book helps you learn how to identify and work through these and the many other challenges of making real change – individually or in an organization. The authors also demonstrate that commonly perceived obstacles to change, such as lack of authority or resources, aren’t really always what’s in the way. Several stories reveal huge changes perpetrated by individuals or small groups with no authority and little resources.

The book is well-written, easy and fun to read. The examples are compelling and memorable stories. The framework presented is clear and simple, making the lessons of the book easy to recall and apply. Highly recommended for anyone in a leadership position, or for anyone looking to drive change.

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May 18, 2011

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Why isn’t your idea easily grasped and spreading like wild fire? Why isn’t everyone “on board” and working vigorously to implement it? You’ve written the proposal, sent the emails, and even given the PowerPoint presentation – so what’s wrong? Why haven’t minds or behavior changed?

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath explore and analyze dozens of great campaigns where ideas did spread rapidly and were effective in driving change. From military strategies to the work of Mother Theresa, from the presidential campaign of Bill Clinton to the “Jared” marketing campaign of Subway sandwiches, the Heath brothers deduce six principles for shaping and communicating ideas so that they are “sticky” – so that they spread easily and change minds and behavior.

The six principles are conveyed using clear and interesting examples, such as those listed above. To bring home the major points, the book also contains several “clinics” – review exercises of scenarios that require improvement, complete with their suggested answers.

Everyone should read this book. Not only will it likely improve your writing and communication style, it’s helpful in thinking strategically about that next marketing campaign, proposal, or organizational change. No matter what your idea is, the lessons from this book will greatly help to shape and package it for maximum impact.

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Why the photo of “Don’t Mess with Texas?” .. because the now widely famous slogan that has expanded in meaning and interpretation started as an anti-littering campaign in the 1980s. Just one of the neat little stories in the book.

Photo credit: brionv

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February 13, 2011

Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up

What can improv comedy teach us about work and life? A lot, it turns out. Behind the seemingly freeform, loose, and out of control performances is a very robust framework of structure. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, creativity is often based on rules, structure and discipline. And in her book, Improv Wisdom, Patricia Madson gives us unique insight into what’s behind the curtain.

In an engaging narrative that begins with revelations from her own professional life story, Madson, who has been on the Stanford University drama facutly for over 30 years, walks the reader through 13 “maxims” that make Improv work. And that apply to your life too – in interesting and useful ways.

Say yes

Take for instance the premise of agreement. “Say yes” is the first maxim. It leads you down a road of agreement and building in discussions. No “yes, but” is allowed. And plain old “no” is off limits. This rule forces a continuous flow of ideas that build on each other. It forces you to find something positive to build on and ignore negatives altogether.

Don’t prepare

Other maxims like “don’t prepare” and “pay attention” lead can lead you to be more present and to trust in yourself more. Take for instance the simple ritual of introductions in a group. Better to pay attention when others are making introductions than to preoccupy yourself with what you’re going to say. You don’t really need to prepare; when your turn comes, the words will too. But, you do need to pay attention to others carefully so that you can remember their names and other attributes.

Start anywhere

My other favorite is the “start anywhere” maxim that makes you realize for most projects, simply starting is critically important. The problem or project looks different once you’re inside it rather than studying and analyzing it from the outside. And, starting builds momentum. A sense of relief and accomplishment that can be leveraged into real results, often faster than you think.

Good ideas, well-presented

It’s a short book and a good read. Each maxim is supported not only by improvisation experience, but also by interesting and memorable anecdotes from real life. There are also simple exercises presented with each for you to try in order to test out the ideas for yourself. All in all it’s a very fun, interesting and practical book.

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January 11, 2011

Blink, by Malcom Gladwell

Decisions, decisions. We make them every day, all day long. Big ones and little ones, applying (intentionally and thoughtfully, or instinctively and subconsciously) all sorts of ideas for how good decisions are made. Well, Malcom Gladwell, as usual, throws a pretty big monkey wrench into the works and makes a persuasive argument that will get you to rethink some tried and true principles of decision making in his book Blink.

In Blink, Gladwell explores the amazing world of snap judgements. He looks closely at instantaneously drawn conclusions from different angles, revealing some startling truths. Often, we are much better served by making judgements based on gut instinct with seemingly little information and almost no contemplation. But not always. The book explores both cases.

Through compelling stories and a plethora of scientific research on “thin slicing” – making well-informed, thoughtful and proper judgements based on extremely limited data, Gladwell brings this black box of the human decision making engine under the spotlight. And though we can never see inside this black box, he provides some useful tools for understanding when to trust the answers it provides and when to be wary of them. Careful understanding of the inputs and outputs, of context and circumstance, reveal some useful answers. Gladwell demonstrates this through examining applications as varied as validating museum artifacts, US government war games, presidential elections, and police gun battles.

If you’re at all interested in the human decision making process and exploring ways to improve it, you will be well served by giving this book a read. I think that would be a good decision.

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October 19, 2010

A Million Miles In A Thousand Years (Editing your own life story)

What if you were to set about editing your life story? What if you examined the events that shaped your path and your response to them, and then considered changing things in order to make your story more interesting? What would you do differently?

Well, that’s just what Don Miller did – and fortunately, he’s shared the experience in his wildly popular new book A Million Miles In A Thousand Years. Don takes the reader on his journey of self-exploration and change guided by the simple but profound concept of applying the principles of a good story in editing his own life, deliberately changing the narrative of his life as it is unfolding.

A good story, we learn, is about a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. Change does not come easy for the protagonist of a good story. He must be forced to change, motivated by something other than self-interest (sort of like the timeless hero’s journey). And, the point of the story is not to arrive at a happy ending, but rather to experience a transformation as part of the journey. Applying these principles to his own life, Don pushes himself through enough fear and emotions, takes enough risks, and tackles the tedium of sometimes painstakingly slow progress so as to make his life a more interesting story. (There are not easy answers or quick fixes, naturally.)

Sprinkled in the narrative are all sorts of adventures (he seems to be quite an outdoorsman, for someone who claims such a huge need to get off the couch and stop watching television early in the book). Interestingly, these adventures aren’t the meat and potatoes of the book – not the cross-country bike ride that seems to have inspired this particular work (a bicycle wheel is on the cover of the book), nor the rather epic sounding excursions he’s taken all over this country and beyond. Instead, the narrative is driven by Don’s relentless exploration of applying the principles of a good story to his life. And he does this in a remarkably entertaining way. The writing is funny, clever and insightful, as well as honest and revealing. All in all it’s an interesting topic, covered in a very interesting way. I think Don has succeeded in making his story and this book interesting indeed. I recommend it highly.

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