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  • Posted on May 17, 2011

Social media tools you can’t do without

I’ve just completed a review of various tools to manage and monitor my social media activities.  I’ve opted for these and cut-and-pasted descriptions of what they do.
Let me know what you use, or if there are any other tools worth using.

HootSuite
http://hootsuite.com
HootSuite has integrated Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Ping.fm status updates, allowing you to manage your social profiles from one location, and to schedule updates in advance.  Save your time and your sanity. Monitor and post to multiple social networks, including Facebook and Twitter using the HootSuite dashboard.

PostRank Analytics
www.analytics.postrank.com

When you sign-up for a PostRank Analytics account, you just need to enter in your blog address and connect your Google Analytics account. You can also enter in your Twitter username, so that your Twitter follower stats can be monitored in tandem with your web traffic.What PostRank Analytics does is take the Google Analytics data and show you the pageviews, Twitter followers and “engagement score” for the day before. You can see how your figures stand up over time, by week, month or quarter.But that’s just the beginning. The really cool part about PostRank Analytics comes when you evaluate individual blog entries. Not only can you see your total page views, unique visitors, bounce rate and average time on the post for each entry — you can also see how many people have tweeted about the post, how many comments it received, if there are any FriendFeed or Reddit reactions, was it re-posted on Tumblr, etc.

Klout
http://beta.klout.com/home
Klout is a San Francisco based company that provides social media analytics that measures a users influence across their social network. The analysis is done on data collected from sites such as Twitter and Facebook and measures the size of a person’s network, the content created, and how other people interact with that content.Klout measures influence by using data points from Twitter, such as: following count, follower count, retweets, list memberships, how many spam/dead accounts are following you, how influential the people that retweet you are, and unique mentions. This information is blended with Facebook data such as comment, likes, and the number of friends in your network to come up with a “Klout Score” that measures a user’s online influence.

Crowdbooster
https://crowdbooster.com/index/
Crowdbooster, the brainchild of three Stanford guys, gives its users “tweet-level analysis” to understand the exact performance metrics of individual tweets — all within a user-friendly, color-coded UI that quickly and simply highlights your best tweets and areas for improvement.The product does some serious number-crunching to calculate the total reach of a given tweet, which includes all the followers of the people who retweeted them, and displays it on a scatter plot. It’ll also show you replies and retweets for each tweet you sent out.

  • Posted on April 30, 2011

We are freed by our choices

Life is about choices; how we choose to see the world, and how we choose to be as a result. If we feel sad, trapped and are convinced that life is bad, then we need to remember this: we are not trapped by our circumstances, setbacks, history, mistakes, believed injustices, and even our view of where we are now in our lives. Every second of every day we are freed by our choices. Our choices of how to view our lives, and what we do to live the remarkable life we were born to live.

  • Posted on February 24, 2011

What is creativity, how does it work, and how do you be creative?

We live in a world of abundant choice. A world where goods that used to be luxuries have never been cheaper to produce, a market where companies and individuals can move, sell and work across time zones and geographies with an ease we take for granted without often really being aware of the consequences. Consequences that include projects and jobs moving to “low production cost economies”; economies which are developing fast and moving up the value chain. It’s not just about call centres; India now has more software developers than any other country in the world.

In this world of abundant choice, increasing commoditisation, and lowering barriers to entry it is more important than ever for countries, companies, brands and individuals to compete on the value they offer. Value that the markets they operate in believe is worth choosing over the competition and, hopefully, paying a premium for. And by markets I mean everything as diverse as competing on the supermarket shelves, for jobs, or a lifetime partner.

Over everything else this value is generated by creativity. Creativity makes you stand out; you conceive and produce in a way that encourages the market chooses you over the competition. Creativity is the biggest agent of change in the world. It has always been, and in these tough economic times, creativity is more important than it has ever been.

It is my deep-rooted belief I belief that everything significant in our world came from an idea – from somebody challenging how things are done, creatively thinking ways to make it better, and making it happen.

What is Creativity?

There are three aspects to anything creative produced by humans:

It is based in insight
It is outstanding
It is accepted to have value

Insight

Anything creative is rooted into a fundamental thought about how a situation could be changed for the better. This is usually based in an understanding of people and how their needs can be answered more effectively.

People want to spend money on their holidays not their flights.
Outstanding

Creativity makes you stand apart. It gets you noticed and, usually, talked about. How? Because it grabs your attention and you feel that there is something inherently special in it that you connect with it.

“Their no-frills service means that I pay the lowest fare possible to fly.”

Value

When people connect with something they see as different and possibly unique, then they create a vivid picture in their mind of its potential.

“I can travel more because it costs me less.”

We know that something is creative when:

  • It is unexpected.
  • It leverages some uniqueness, something inherently special in itself that can be copied but will only ever be a copy.
  • It is disruptive and creates disequilibria in its favour.
  • It changes the direction and sometimes the speed of actions.

It is also important to understand that true creativity is both the conception of an idea, and then its execution. You might have the best ideas in the world but they are, essentially, worthless if they remain locked in your head or notepad.
For creativity to be truly creative; it has to work.

Why Does Creativity Work?

Creative ideas work more effectively than safe and boring ones.

In these tough times the weak and insecure go for safe and boring ideas.

It is the weak and insecure who suffer in these tough times.

This is a time to be more creative, more brave.

Why? Quite simply because creative ideas work more effectively than safe and boring ones.

Creativity is so important because it:

  • Stops people doing what they are doing, pay attention, and feel rewarded for the experience
  • Because the experience has meaning and resonance for them; they connect more with what you are saying
  • If you are a brand that’s really good because it means you stand apart from the competition
  • And by brand I’m talking about whether you are a bar of soap or a recently graduated textile designer – we are all our own brands
  • The other really good news is that creative ideas have an impact well out of proportion to their cost. Creativity makes money – and that’s more attractive than ever in these tough times.

How Do You Be Creative?

Creativity isn’t a destination; it is a journey, an approach to life – who you are being. You are at your most creative when you are being creative, when every aspect of who you are thinks and feels how things are and questions how they could be. Just doing creative; well that’s impossible.

The creative act is not only one of conceiving, it is one of producing as well. The best ideas in the world are of limited value if they are locked away in my head, notebook, or computer.

How do you be creative? Start with questioning. Have the curiosity to look at how things are, and ask questions – “smart” ones and “dumb” ones.
Smart ones like: “could it be better”, “what happens if we add this part”, “how can we make this unique”? And “dumb” ones (like kids ask): “why can’t we smell television”, “why does my brain have to be in my head”, “why are all the US Presidents white men”?
Funnily enough, it’s usually the dumb questions that lead to the most creative answers.

Over the years I’ve developed some “rules” for how to be creative. They’ve worked for me and, hopefully they will for you.

Magnus’s Rules for Being Creative

  1. Have a vision and inspire those around you with that vision
  2. Work with inspiring people
  3. Create work that is at the edge of what has been done before
  4. Make money
  5. Have fun every day

Have a vision and inspire those around you with that vision

If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for everything. Whatever you are doing, you’ve got to have an idea that guides what you are doing. Guiding ideas are the glue that hold your work together and which bind people to you and together.

Work with inspiring people

Low-energy and negative people drag you down. Seek out and collaborate with the bright sparks, the passionate ones; these are the people who change the world.

Create work that is at the edge of what has been done before

Try. Fail. Learn. And try again. Following the work of others will just leave you at the end of the queue for interest, and the beginning of the queue for things that get cut out.

Make money

There is no point in being creative if you have to stop it because you can’t eat. I know, I’ve done it. I started a business once and ran out of cash on more than one occasion. Poverty is not fun and when your back is to the wall you make the wrong decisions; which can lead to failure. Either get paid for what you love. Or find another income source to fund you until the money from what you love kicks in.

Have fun every day

Smile. It’s not that bad out there. And the more you enjoy yourself the more successful you’ll be – in all areas of your life.

  • Posted on February 22, 2011

You create your own reality

You have created the reality that you find yourself in; what you tolerate in life, the beliefs you have that limit you, your attitudes, these and other of your influences have all created your reality.  The sooner you accept this, the sooner you take responsibility for your current situation, the sooner you can take responsibility for changing it for the better.  We may not always have direct control of the world around us but we are always free to choose how we think and feel.  It’s not what happens that makes the biggest difference but how you deal with what happens.  No one can take this inner freedom, this inner power, unless we choose to give it away.

Sound too simple?  Well let’s look at how attitudes are formed.

Attitude is an emotion that all people get when they have other emotions.  As Wikipedia says “Attitudes are positive, negative or neutral views of an “attitude object”: i.e. a person, behaviour or event.  People can also be “ambivalent” towards a target, meaning that they simultaneously possess a positive and a negative bias towards the attitude in question.  Attitudes come from judgments.  Attitudes develop on the ABC model (affect, behavioral change and cognition).  The affective response is a physiological response that expresses an individual’s preference for an entity.  The behavioural intention is a verbal indication of the intention of an individual.  The cognitive response is a cognitive evaluation of the entity to form an attitude.  Most attitudes in individuals are a result of observational learning from their environment.”

There is a simple conclusion to this: a positive reality comes from positive emotions about a person, behaviour, or event.  Re-frame your emotional response to a positive one and your attitude will be a positive one.  Sound too simple?  Well ask yourself if you are really seeing the true picture.  When a Japanese person nods we assume that he means “yes” but he is actually saying “I hear you and I acknowledge that you said that”.  Do not confuse data with assumptions.  The problem is that most people treat interpretations, attributions and generalisations as data or facts, rather than assumptions.

As Peter Senge says in his book “The Fifth Discipline”: “We do not describe the world that we see; we see the world we can describe.”

The greatest thing that any of us will ever choose in life is our attitude towards it.  And that is how you have created the reality you find yourself in now.  If you believe that you will live the fullest life you can, you will.

  • Posted on February 16, 2011

How often does an email hurt you?

We are hooked on not missing out. We incessantly check our email, Facebook, twitter, texts and the multiple other ways we communicate and keep in touch. Friend just popped to the bar? Get your phone out and see what’s going on. We all do it, every day, and far too often.

In his recent book, Linchpin, Seth Godin sums up very neatly what is driving this incessant checking in – anxiety.

“Anxiety is needless and imaginary. It’s fear about fear, fear that means nothing. “Neeedless anxiety” is redundant, because anxiety is always needless. Anxiety doesn’t protect you from danger, but from doing great things. It keeps you awake at night and foretells a future that’s not going to happen.”

We are anxious about missing out, anxious because we don’t know what lurks in our inbox: an invite to a great party, a problem about to explode, or a great photo of a duck wearing a nappy.

How often does an email or a status update really hurt you? Email does cause stress at work but that’s usually because we place too much importance on it, and we so we often replace reading and sending emails with actually making things happen.

I did receive an email once that really upset me and changed my life forever. It was an email from my mother telling me she had cancer. Although the news was among the worst you can get, that email did give me the information to do something, to get prepared for the worst: to help her, my father and my family through her last days. So, when she died weeks after, we were as prepared as we could be.

Perhaps the worst thing about all this checking in? It means that we are not really present in the moment, a little bit of us is elsewhere, looking for something better, different, more exciting. And in that moment how often does that better thing come up? You’ll never know because you’re hunched over your phone, looking at a duck in a nappy whilst opportunity walks right by.

  • Posted on February 12, 2011

Passion, money and chaos

I am massive advocate of finding your purpose in life – the one thing that is unique to you and which is your lasting legacy to the world. Bring that passion into every aspect of your life and live your purpose. That’s what I tell everyone: family, friends, coaching clients and everyone who reads my blog. Passion is the fuel of achieving your purpose. But being passionate without being realistic; then that’s road to penury and chaos.

Sounds harsh?

Example 1. Watching some chefs on television the other day, their passion for great cooking was so evident. However it was clear (even without Gordon Ramsey pointing it out) that this passion was not enough. These chefs weren’t being realistic about the impact that they were having on their co-workers. Frankly many in their brigades just didn’t like working with them; so limiting their potential. Or, they were too focused on the food and not thinking enough about the whole experience for their diners; poor service was keeping the customers away. Again, limiting their potential. They were getting increasingly frustrated that they weren’t fulfilling the potential they knew they had, and so their behaviour became more ineffective in a downward spiral. Chaos.

Example 2. “But the money is SO good” even though I will hate every day of it. Or, the “Second Life Plan” otherwise known as “I hate this job but when X happens…” And X never happens. Actually it’s usually Z, and you lose your job. Penury.

Chase your passion not money but always be realistic about where you are and how you are doing.

If you are chasing money, you are simply someone who is “doing this job because it pays” or “I’ll bear with this for a bit because they’re bound to recognise my efforts”, and a whole host of other situations you will recognise. Chase money, and not your passion, and you put an automatic ceiling on what you can earn and the opportunities that will come your way. Why? Because you will only ever be someone who can fill a role – and there are plenty of people who can do that. You won’t be someone who brings their passion to their work, and so who is unique, who shines through, and so who has a value far in excess of most others.

Live your passion every day, love what you are doing. But if you have no heed of how effective you are being and what your real impact is on the people and the environment around you; that’s where chaos lies. That’s where co-workers find you impossible to work with, where you delude yourself about how much impact you are making, where you think you’re worth X but they would struggle to pay you Y. Frustration, unfulfilled dreams, and generally thrashing around to ‘make things work’; simply because you’re not being realistic about how effectively you are bringing that passion to life.

If you are lucky enough to have worked out what it is – follow your passion; always believe that you will find a way to express that passion to the fullest of your potential and make your mark on the world. But, be absolutely realistic about where you are now; and how you need to BE, and what you need to DO to fulfil your passion. Do that, and you avoid the chaos.

A personal example:

PASSION
I am absolutely passionate about the transforming power of creativity, and view it as my purpose in life to enrich the world by empowering its creativity.

REALITY
I am not making the impact I could on the world because the role I am freelancing and looking for permanent work, this takes up my time, and my reach beyond work to a broader universe could be far larger.

CHAOS
I wasted months last year just chasing income, trying to find work that I was qualified for; rather than work out strategies and tactics to get the work that only I, uniquely, could do and that people would value enough to pay for even in these difficult times. I’m avoiding that chaos by focusing on how I add more value than others, and how I can spread my impact (e.g. this post).

Always be passionate, always be realistic, and only create chaos to create something better.

Still chasing money and hoping?

  • Posted on February 11, 2011

Notes from The Universe

Every morning I receive a Note from The Universe; sometimes inspiring, sometimes funny, sometimes a bit too ‘New Agey’. I read them every day, and they usually make me think. They’re daily emails from Mike Dooley of “Thoughts become things”. Read more about him here.

And here are some of the latest notes:

Sadness, illness, and despair, are less conditions than they are decisions – to see yourself as less than you really are.
Good thing that’s all, huh, Magnus?
Yours,
The Universe

Magnus, no one has ever grown a garden…
(dramatic pause)
…that you couldn’t grow yourself.
And I’m not just talking about the leafy kinds.
Let’s till,
The Universe

Hypothetically, if you’d like to be able to spend $1,000,000 a year, Magnus, perhaps on yourself, or maybe to shower upon your favorite charities (incidentally, either will have me beaming), don’t you think as part of defining the end result you ought to know just how much you’d be spending, on average, per day? I mean, you wouldn’t buy a car without peeking through its windows, would you? The details are crucial. You owe it to yourself to make sure it’s exactly what you want.
$2,739.73.
Right. Not nearly enough.
See what I mean?
Think bigger -
The Universe

You’re the kind of person, Magnus, who saves so much time every month with wise decisions, creative thoughts, and simple kindness, that if you were anyone else, you’d toot your own horn, take the next week off, and stop feeling guilty for not doing more.
Really…
The Universe

Like most things in life, Magnus, getting what you want, or doing something new, or being really honest with yourself, is typically very, very hard for first timers, but then… it becomes patently, ridiculously, absurdly and preposterously EASY for the rest of eternity.
I’d say do it right, nail it, whatever it takes, because “easy” is good, and eternity is long.
Comprende?
The Universe

  • Posted on February 07, 2011

Relationships are the fundamental organising principle of everything

Everything is connected, everything physical, mental and spiritual. How you think, what you think, what you say, what you do, what you don’t do – all of this impacts your life and changes everything, every second of every day.

SOMEBODY MIGHT GET THE PRIZE BUT WE CAN ALL WIN. OK so sometimes you don’t get the deal / medal / eBay item / job / girl / boy / etc. But everything is an opportunity for success. You didn’t win; your success is only my failure if I don’t congratulate you, as well as work out why you beat me and take action on what I need to do in future to win. Our relationship has become a learning one. All failures and mistakes, as well as a major event such as an illness can make you stronger if you learn the lesson.

But, more than competing every day; think win:win. Stephen Covey’s 4th habit. Get out of your win/lose attitude and look for a solution in which everyone benefits. The best deals are always those when both walk away from the table satisfied; long-term the results are always worth more than any short-term gain. Even though times are tough, don’t have a scarcity mentality; don’t be stupid but there is usually enough to go around. People remember when you support them, and support you in your times of need.

FEEDBACK is essential to personal and professional success and development. If those around you trust you and know they can speak their mind without nasty repercussions, then your relationships, perspective on life, delivery and success will be enhanced every day.

YOU CAN’T DO IT ALL ON YOUR OWN. No matter how good you are. Successful individuals build strong teams around them: whether that’s a partner and friends they confide in and go to for support, or a team at work who are all passionate about delivering for each other. Powerful relationships in your personal life and work mean that you share: advice, affirmation, ideas, lessons, perspective, and changes in direction or tactics when needed. Having a good team around you supports you in the tough times and helps you celebrate in the good.

IF I WAS TO GIVE ONE PIECE OF ADVICE TO MYSELF if I was to start my career again it would be to remember and keep in touch with everyone I met at work and socially: friend them on Facebook, drop them an email asking how their day is. As my great friend Horace said the other day “later in life it’s not about WHAT you know but WHO you know.”

EVERYTHING IS IN EVERYTHING. Fundamental to our understanding of the importance of relationships is the knowledge, derived from modern physics but always known in ancient wisdom, that everything is enfolded in everything – everything is all part of one unbroken whole, all and always connected.

According to the physicist) David Bohm all of existence is enfolded within each “fragment” of time and space – whether it is an object, a thought, or an event. Everything affects everything else because they are all parts of the same whole. Basically when the Universe started everything came from the same place, and we have never lost that connection. A blade of grass, you, your mum, and your friend’s car – if you go back far, far enough we all started in the same place. As Bohm says, “The entire past is enfolded in each one of us in a very subtle way. If you reach deeply into yourself, you are reaching into the very essence of mankind. When you do this, you will be led into the generating depth of consciousness that is common to the whole of mankind and that has the whole of mankind enfolded in it. The individual’s ability to be sensitive to that becomes the key to the change of mankind. We are all connected. If this could be taught, and if people could understand it, we would have a different consciousness.”

Mach’s principle states “The whole is necessary to the understanding of its parts, as the parts are necessary to the understanding of the whole.” The ancients also described this “As above, so below.” The Chinese proverb says “If you cut a blade of grass, you shake the Universe.” Local events have an influence, no matter how small, on the universe as a whole; particularly when there are many of them. Throw trash on the ground and it doesn’t look good; but if everyone does it people might think “why should I care about this neighbourhood?”, and who knows what they might then go on to do? An overseas businessman visits and notes that people in that area don’t seem to care about where they live: “why should we locate our factory there – the workers are going to be trouble”.

Relationship is the organising principle of everything; create a positive relationship at home, at work, on your travels throughout the day and that positivity ripples out to have affects well beyond where you could imagine because we are all part of the same whole, all connected.

“Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms – up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested – probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name.”
Bill Bryson, “A Short History of Nearly Everything”

Everything is in everything and we are all made of stars.

  • Posted on February 01, 2011

The purpose of life is a life of purpose

We are all utterly unique, and what also makes us unique also mean that we can all have our own individual profound impact on the world that enriches it every day. There are three jobs we all have in life:

1. Find your unique purpose
2. Live it every day
3. Enrich the world with your unique talents

YOUR UNIQUE PURPOSE
Your life purpose is the reason why you are here in the world. It’s the impact that the uniqueness that is you can have on the world. Your life purpose is ongoing and a way of being. Your life purpose informs every area of your life. It gives you direction.

There are as many different types of life purpose as there are definitions of success. Some people’s purpose will be centred on the achievement of something physical – winning, buying or building something – which in effect amounts to having. Others will be centred on their work, project or career – or what they are doing. Our prime or first purpose, however, is always who we are being.

It is who we are being that leads to achieving our life purpose.

Your life purpose may not be directly centred on your work but you can always be passionate about your work because it is a vehicle to help you live your life purpose.

Finding your life purpose is about finding the answer to a simple, yet powerful question: What is the one way of your being that makes you special, that you will be known for, and will be the legacy you leave?

LIVE YOUR PURPOSE EVERY DAY
Once you discover your own unique purpose in life, your life takes on more meaning – it really is one of the most important things you can do. You will find that you have more drive and energy, and that what you do as your day job usually becomes more enjoyable or bearable because you shift to see it as a route to delivering on your life’s purpose. And if your day job is your life’s purpose – then you will be even more positively focused.

Once you discover your main aim in life, in a self-reinforcing way it becomes easier to live that purpose every day. You know what you are heading towards; and so the actions you need to take to get there become clearer. And as you take action, you feel more energised because you are making progress towards your purpose. Your courage rises with each step towards your purpose; what once seemed challenging will be a welcome opportunity.

When you make your life’s purpose become reality your days become more fun, fulfilling, and energised. By acting on your unique life purpose you become more settled and content. Quite simply, you move from uncertain and unfocused, to passionate and channeled. Your life becomes more simpler and more enjoyable because you both have meaning and you are taking positive steps.

Patanjali, compiler of the Yoga Sutras put it best:
“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds: your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction and you find yourself in a great new wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”

ENRICH THE WORLD
According to ancient Eastern philosophy your unique life purpose – your “Dharma” – is your unique way of enriching the world.

Living your life purpose is about who you are being, every day. If you are someone who enriches the world, you too will receive riches. It really is that simple. Do something because it is what you love to do, or you are helping somebody, or there is an important lesson to be learnt. If you only do it for the money or the fame it is unlikely that you will get either. Do it to enrich the world, and the world will enrich you in return.

As the Chinese proverb says, “A little bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.”

  • Posted on January 25, 2011

4 articles worth a read today, all with numbers in their title

Three Questions Executives Should Ask for the New Year

It’s the end of the year, time to reflect. So I asked myself what have I learned this year about business? Maybe more interesting than that, what have I learned about professional business people? What makes some great and others weak? These weren’t idle reflections. I put all the executives I work with on one of two lists, those I felt had performed well and those I wished had done better. Then I thought about at what the top performers had in common.

Three Questions to Help Assess Your Strategic Position

I’ve spent some of my professional life in strategy research and consulting organizations, where developing diagnostic frameworks on competition is the name of the game. But as comprehensive and complex as they are, these models are often unhelpful (or impenetrable) to front-line practitioners who might use them to improve day-to-day decisions and actions…

Define Your Personal Leadership Brand in Five Steps

You probably already have a personal leadership brand. But do you have the right one?

(Maybe not but bear in mind this is an American article; and you definitely need one.)

The question is not trivial. A leadership brand conveys your identity and distinctiveness as a leader. It communicates the value you offer. If you have the wrong leadership brand for the position you have, or the position you want, then your work is not having the impact it could. A strong personal leadership brand allows all that’s powerful and effective about your leadership to become known to your colleagues, enabling you to generate maximum value.

Create Compelling Presentations with the Three Q Method

Save your audience from another dull presentation and increase their focus by building a presentation that answers their questions instead of smothering them with slides.