Simplifying your Digital Mindset

Guest Post by Simon Tyler – Simplicity Coach

The volume, proliferation and inundation of information today may cause you discomfort, your way of handling it is the focus of this Simple Note.

Social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, etc) are challenging what and how you connect and share anything.
How you handle the digital world and its flow of information, your sources and your networks may define your success (in using them to your advantage), easing stress levels, increasing personal efficiency, growth and igniting positive personal change.

Thomas Power, the founder and Chairman of Ecademy coined two acronyms that capture the journey each of us are challenged to make in this information and networking transition journey. He spoke brilliantly on this topic a few years ago at a TEDxNewStreet conference (an independently organised TED event).
Corporations, and the laggardness in many of us, he describes as being CSC:

Closed – to new ideas, methods, ways, channels, people

Selective – about the people and places we connect with, work with, source from

Controlling – of the people in our circle, in their activity, methods and ways of working

Being CSC is not wrong, or bad. It quite probably has been a valuable, often principled protective way to be in the information proliferation world of the past. However staying closed, selective and controlling is now requiring more effort and your decisions and standards are challenged daily. It may even feel like you’re fighting a losing battle. The more you entrench, the more difficult it has, or will, become.

Today demands we question our operating methods and ways of connection to the flow of information. My children have a completely different way of living in the digital world and sitting in the flow and as I observe their behaviour more of Thomas Power’s assertions are found to be present.

My children are, to use Power’s second acronym, ORS:

Open – to all channels, willing to experiment and explore, prepared to do things wrong first

Random – resisting the need to force structure and order, resisting judging anything (at least initially)

Supportive – of anyone in their new networks, prepared to be part of the process of change and experimentation

Your transition from CSC to ORS will take time and not necessarily be easy, but it is a journey that will bring rewards, in new information, less anxiety and a preparedness for whatever happens next in the information flowing world.

Obviously this could be a coaching supported journey (get one), and certainly a path that is easier travelled with colleagues than alone.

The same transition will apply to your team and your company. The sooner it is made, the faster the benefits will be noticed.

Good luck and keep it simple.
Simon