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February 5 - October 1, 2018
And it’s your admission that you, too, are human, that makes them trust you about everything else.
In analog human relations, fear creates risk avoidance, which means the avoidance of putting yourself out there to give generously, to be candid, to show accountability, to come face-to-face with another person, to give of yourself in whatever measure to him or her, and so to run the risk of rejection.
Putting yourself in your reader’s shoes and responding to their needs is generous—and it will also get you read.
The best ideas come from looking around you and constantly asking, “How can I be helpful to people?” and then engaging them early and often in the process of creation.
Inviting others to co-create gives them an opportunity to be part of something, a community effort.
You can’t engage people’s efforts and passion and then spit the bit.
The last thing you want to be in a competitive marketplace is replaceable.
They get that way by failing over and over again, in increasingly ambitious experiments, until they succeed and succeed big.
So be brave enough to put it all out there—the stuff that worked and the stuff that didn’t, with your insights on why and how to fix it next time—and watch as people snap to attention.
They’ll trust you because of your experience a...
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Take away accountability, and generosity, candor, and vulnerability lose their potency fast.
Ultimately, you have to remember that this projection—this collection of bits and bytes—isn’t separate from you. It is you, as far as the world is concerned.
the tough thing about authenticity is that it demands you know who you are and what you care about and that you do your best to be true to that.
No excuses. You are 100 percent responsible for anything that has your name on it.
But the promise is the promise until both sides agree to change it.
“So many people are liars: they lie to themselves, they lie to their friends, they lie to their lovers, clients, customers, colleagues, that if you become the one in a thousand that is truly honest, then you will stand out,”
They used to say fortune prefers the prepared mind. Now it’s fortune prefers the networked mind. —John Perry
Because wherever you find creativity—and, by extension, wherever you find talent—innovation and profits soon follow.
Roizen shaped her own serendipity by: • Being open to opportunities delivered by chance. • Creating a network so broad that it was an incubator of the unexpected. • Planting herself firmly at the geographic center of the technology community. • Becoming a highly visible leader in associations and philanthropic organizations, giving rise to the kinds of situations where the most fruitful, generous relationships are borne—where information flows free and people trust one another enough to help one another.
In such an environment, anything you know at any point in time is depreciating at an accelerating rate. It’s not what you know; it’s how quickly you’re able to know the new and right things.
A recent study at MIT showed that productivity and innovation in urban areas track with population growth.
Attend conferences, which are terrific for serendipity not only because they bring together diverse groups of people around a similar interest, but also because all those people are there for the same reason—to meet new people and learn new things.
Model the traits that support serendipity—curiosity, generosity, passion, and humility.
Joichi Ito, director of MIT’s media lab, “If you plan your whole life, by definition you can’t get lucky. So you have to leave that little slot open.”
In the book Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck, my old friend Tony Tjan and his coauthors studied people they called “Luck Dominant,” and found that 86 percent of them credited their success to “being open to new things and people.”
Create opportunities for supportive, in-person encounters by attending workshops and conferences where you’ll be surrounded by people who share not just your values but your interests.
Surround yourself with genius. Focus less on “to-dos” and more on “to-meets.”
And finally, whenever you can, attract and reward mentors not just with gratitude but...
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How can you offer your company or your network anything of value if you have not thought about how you want to stand out and differentiate yourself in building that relationship?
All that you’ve read thus far doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility of being someone worth talking to and, even better, worth talking about.
Remember, people don’t only hire people they like, they hire people who they think can make them and their companies better.
No matter what organization I represented or what professional avenue I pursued in the future, all my efforts had to be powered by a deep passion and a set of beliefs that went well beyond my own personal benefit.
To move others, you have to speak beyond yourself.
Being known is just notoriety. But being known for something is entirely different. That’s respect.
Content is a cause, an idea, a trend, or a skill—
I became a voracious reader and would spend hours late at night checking out a variety of articles, analyst reports, books, and websites.
Remember those wise words of Mark McCormack in his book What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School: “Creativity in business is often nothing more than making connections that everyone else has almost thought of. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just attach it to a new wagon.”
We started to question assumptions such as what business we were in (entertainment, marketing, or services?), what product we should offer (games, advertising, training, consulting, enabling technology?), and who our real customers could be (geeky adolescents, adults, Fortune 500 companies?).
Once a resonating pitch is perfected, getting attention is less of a problem.
“Create a story about your company and the ideas it embodies that readers will care about.
That’s your content. Then share it.
A unique point of view is one of the only ways to ensure that today, tomorrow, and a year from now you’ll have a job.
In America’s information economy, we frame our competitive advantage in terms of knowledge and innovation.
That means today’s market values creativity over mere competence and expertise over general knowledge.
The one thing no one has figured out how to outsource is the creation of ideas.
I’d immerse myself in it, getting to know all the thought leaders pushing the idea and all the literature available.
I would go on to parlay my experience into giving speeches, writing articles, and connecting with some of the top business minds in the country.
As I did at ICI and Deloitte, you can find someone who has already connected the dots and become an expert of their content. That’s the easy way.
Subscribe to magazines, buy books, and talk to the smartest people you can find. Eventually, all this knowledge will build on itself, and you’ll start making connections others aren’t.
If you’re going to be creative, cutting edge, out of the mainstream, you’d better get used to rockin’ the boat. And guess what—when you’re rockin’ the boat, there will always be people who will try to push you out.
