Marcus Buckingham on “Drucker on the Dial”

 

Marcus Buckingham

Marcus Buckingham on “Drucker on the Dial”.

Marcus Buckingham, the leading authority on strengths, recently released his new book StandOut.   I ordered the book on Amazon, and can’t wait for it to get here.  As I wait for my copy, I enjoyed this radio show podcast where Marcus Buckingham discussed the theories of the book on the show Druker on the Dial.

I am a huge fan of the strengths philosophy, and really want to bring it more closely into the work I do as a manager.  One of the things I am so excited about with this book is how Buckingham is focusing it on making these ideas easier for manager to use.  One of the biggest difficulties that I find is how to I communicate the idea of strengths to my staff, and get them to fully invest in using it with each other. It really seems like this book will bring more of a practicality to the topic of strengths.

One of my greatest strengths and loves is how can I be more creative and help others to find their way into the creative zone.  Buckingham states that this book will help facilitate creativity and authenticity.  I am really excited to see how this book suggests we accomplish that feat.  Authenticity really goes a long way with the people you supervise; if people do not believe you to be authentic they will be less likely to fully trust and follow your leadership.  While strengths provides us with a summary of the way we see ourselves, this new assessments provides us with insight into how others see you.

Especially in this economy, we need to figure out how to find our edge and use it to our advantage in the work place.  The thing I am most excited about with this book is how Marcus said it will provide us with a way to intentionally use our strengths.  He said we can easily use your edge accidently or you can intentionally to be more successful.  I will supply a review once I receive the book and read it, and look forward to finding more of my edge!

Make Big Plans

To get you all in the mind set of making Bold Choices, I wanted to post a link to the Make Big Plans article in Seth Godin’s blog!  This is a teaser for next month’s series on choices!

This blog highlights the original thought processes that go in to making Bold Choices.  It is really important to as Seth describes, to create dreams, write them down, share them with close friends, and move into the process of bringing them into reality!  I love the blog and Seth’s thought processes!  Go out and make big plans!

Unify, Simplify, and Amplify

I recently became really interested in brand design and creation.  It started with all of my evaluation of the new Big Ten branding.  Since then I have been looking at brands in a whole new light, and really trying to figure out why they are successful.  I recently hosted a roundtable discussion at a conference of student leaders, to discuss how to brand their student organizations.  We talked a lot about centralizing the mission, boiling it down to a few major words, and then building a brand off of those words.  This advice directly connects to a great article I recently read!

Fast Company article entitled $100K of Free Branding Advice, in Just Three Words, provides prolific advice!  Short simple and to the point!  Ken Carbone is the Chief Creative Director of a brand design company.  Check out his recommendations on how to Unify, Simplify, and Amplify your brand!

Vulnerability

This TED talk has been making the rounds at UNC the past couple weeks!  As you know I am always sucked in by a TED talk, and this one is stellar!  There are multiple truths and lots of information to be gleaned from this conversation on vulnerability.  The creative process definitely makes people feel vulnerable.  The creative part can be easy, but the tricky part is delivering it to the world.  That is a vulnerable moment, and one you need to be brave in.  Often times we can develop or have the ideas, but until we choose to be vulnerable and ship the product, we will never be fully creative!

Ignite Durham

I am going to be attending this event tomorrow for a little creativity spark!  It is kind of like TED talks, but a shorter live version!  If you live in the Triangle Area in North Carolina, you should definitely attend!  One of the title sponsors is DSI, my improv studio!

http://ignitedurham.com/

Ignite DurhamFebruary 9th at 6:30 PM, The Carolina Theater in Durham North Carolina

How To Live Before You Die

This week one of my friends posted the above TED talk Best of the Web video on her facebook.  I am always up for a good TED talk and had to watch!  This video is of Steve Jobs speaking at the 2005 Stanford commencement ceremony.  He talked about how to live before you die, and the importance of living each day with purpose and passion.  I think this goes along very well with my post from yesterday about choosing people, and choosing your priorities each and every day!  Enjoy the talk and Steve’s viewpoint on how to connect the dots, do what you love, and to live each day as if it was your last.

Eliminate the Small Things

I really love Seth Godin’s thought processes and ideas.  On Saturday he posted a blog about Misjudging Risk (and bad decisions).  The idea behind the story was people like to spend time putting out fires and working on the immediate besides working on the important and bigger long term goals.

I definitely see this playing out in my everyday work life as I spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through emails or dealing with small issues in relation to the things in my area of responsibility.  There is no time like the present to figure out long term goals, and put the pedals in motion!

Steh Goodin’s Blog Post: Misjudging risk (and bad decisions)

Simplification

Fast Company Video ~ Innovation Agents: How Jack Dorsey Succeeds Through Simplification

Today’s post directly piggybacks on yesterdays about finding the simple. But, today we look at it from the other angle, making things simple.  My ideas are based on this video from a Fast Company interview with Jack Dorsey, one of the cofounders of twitter.  This short clip was riddled with so much improv philosophy, I almost fell off of my couch while watching. 

Jack’s opening comments discussed playing with and creating the idea of twitter and then releasing it to the world so they could evolve and make it their own idea.  This is the underlying philosophy of the improv initiation.  On stage it is important to immediately get an idea out, then with unwavering support our teammates will take that idea, play with it, and make it better.  Dorsey goes on to describe his creative process as getting the idea out there for others to play with so you can receive feedback, and in those moments you will discover if the idea is worth pushing forward with.  That concept is improv and creativity at its core.  Get the simple concepts out on the table, then we as a team can yes and to make it better, exciting, and interesting.  The same thing happens in the office except people tend to keep their ideas to themselves, get those things out on the table earlier so together there can be an exploration to make them better, or a decision to move on to the next idea.

The part which struck me the most was Dorsey’s explanation of his greatest strength.  Dorsey described his process of simplification by taking the complex down to its essence.  Now that is skill for life!  In my job, on a weekly basis, I am in the front of a group pushing out information and strategy.  I also send out a regular volume of email to my staff.  Through this I have found less is more!  How can I express my ideas using less words, how can I make the process simpler, how can I explain these steps in short bullet points.  When I accomplish this, its bliss!  The staff is more productive, they easily know what to do, and the time we spend meeting is shorter.  Simplification on a regular basis sounds like a difficult task, but the more you work on it the more logical it is, and I have always found all that extra stuff was not necessary!

1000 Awesome Things

 

A friend recently posted this TED talk video on their facebook page, and described how it was her life philosophy.  I never skip a good TED talk, and decided to check it out.  I love the concept of finding those simple things in our everyday life and making sure we enjoy them a bit more!  Especially after this past week with the incident that happened in Tucson, it was a great reminder for me about the wonderful little things we get to experience on a daily basis!

On the improv stage, the simpler the concept the better the scene.  The more complicated the idea, the harder it is to explore on stage and for the audience to enjoy!  My favorite scenes occur when an improviser can find those simple little things everyone experiences, and twist it around and play with it on stage; this is when biggest laughs roll in!  Simplifying our ideas, and playing with those everyday mundane experiences always lead to success! 

I haven’t read Neil Pasricha’s book, but I plan to add it to my reading list.  Check out his blog, it will certainly add a smile to your day!  Go and enjoy some of those simple pleasures!

1000 Awesome Things Blog

101 Goals for 1001 Days!

In my job as a Community Director, I directly supervise the resident advisor staff in some of the residence halls on the UNC campus!  Today was the first day the student staff was back on campus, and we had a training day.  A portion of the day was left to student presentations on a topic of their choice.  I went to a presentation about 101 goals in 1001 days. 

Through this initiative people create a list of 101 goals to accomplish over a longer portion of their life, 1001 days equals about 2.75 years.  After listening to what the students were talking and about checking out a few of these lists on the internet, this seems like a really cool way to live a more engaged and creative life.  While some of the goals are big dreams, many of them were simple things we yearn to do in our everyday, but do not spend the time making happen! 

So I think it’s time to create 101 creative goals for 1001 days, and to see where it leads!  This concept connects to an activity I do before every improv show.  I create a list of small things I want to accomplish during the show: like saying a word this I think sounds funny or interesting, starting a scene with a physical initiation, or talking in a specific accent.  It makes the show more challenging for me, and hopefully adds some spark for the audience! 101 goals for 1001 days also connects to my New Year’s Day post about creating an incremental new year.  Take all these little steps and they add them up to create big goals! 

Here’s a blog dedicated to the 101 Goals in 1001 Days Project: 101 Goals in 1001 Days