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
Sharing Your Knowledge (a key to personal growth)
Guest post from Simon Tyler – Simplicity Coach
Knowledge is brief, it has a limited life span; you are simply the custodian, not the owner.
Whatever you know, share it, make it available. Give it away to those that need it, post it where others can find it.
Consider these:
1) A blog – write about what you know or have found (everything I have written in these newsletters is available to view – http://simontyler.com/blog/archives/)
2) Contribute – send your knowledge to forum after forum, add knowledgeable comment to posts (search first and just contribute)
3) Become the hub – link with others that know similar things, connect and share, become known for being a hub
You are the value, not what you currently know. In sharing your knowledge you will find ways, people and situations where you can add your value and expand, expand, expand.
If this resonates with you, take an action, go on, take an easy action today and create momentum.
Keep it simple
Simon
The Perfect Consultant
Guest post from The Simplicity Coach Simon Tyler
Whatever your life, career or business situation, input from a valued, experienced, knowledgeable consultant will always be welcomed.
But who is that consultant, where do they reside, how can you contact them, and would they be willing to consult on your situation?
The answers to these questions lie closer than you would think.
The potential perfect consultant to you and your circumstance is… you!
Potentially.
Inspiration comes from within. Insight, from within. Investigation, introspection, inklings, invention, influence, incentive, and most pertinently, intuition, all from within.
Warning — a consultant who is negative, asks poor questions, or simply spouts opinions is soon ignored and their advice given little or no consideration. If this is your current version of personal consulting then it is no wonder you find yourself unfulfilled, searching the world for better, more accurate and reliable advice.
The Perfect Consultant (you) may well require some skill evolution. Here’s one upgrade idea that will have incredible impact on the consultant’s performance:
Upgrade the consultant’s question
Many of our self-posed questions begin with “Why…”. This provokes a “…because…” response, and rarely leads to new or creative input. Stop whying!
Actively begin your self-posed questions with “What…” or “How could…”. These questions create space for your brain to source its own answers (i.e. inspirationally, intuitively — from within).
For example, after any encounter, event or situation that went well or badly, ask:
“What could this teach me?”
“What do I want to do with this outcome?”
“How could I use this event to help me?”
Ask the questions and allow the ‘in-consultant’ to respond. For best effect, make notes of his or her suggestions and review later.
Good luck and keep it simple.
Simon
The Purposeful Team
Guest post from Simon Tyler – Executive Coach.
Many of the teams with whom I have been involved, as a member or as the coach and facilitator find themselves just existing, delivering the stream of actions that are required and occasionally a few more.
Inside all of us and all teams is the nagging sense that more is possible. I am sure you have often heard the 1+1=3 synergy story, the sum of the parts etc. And indeed significant greater potential lies just in reach for every team.
Consider this simple stepped line of enquiry for your team, and allow the answers to guide your way ahead:
What do I personally want or get from being part of a team?
Responses from the group will be different bringing them to the surfaces helps each realise that we all can achieve our own desires, together.
Who are our customers?
Stakeholders, contributors, everyone that your team impacts.
What do they say about us?
You could even ask them. Although they have or are already communicating in verbal and no verbal ways.
What do we want them to say about us?
Be as adventurous and as outrageous as you can, stretch beyond what even seems possible from where you are.
Design the Change
What stops you (clear out the barriers).
If you follow this path, please let me know I’d be delighted to support in any way I can.
Good luck and keep it simple.
Simon
Call off the search
Guest post from the Simplicity Coach – Simon Tyler.
Unknowingly we set ourselves up for stress and disappointment by hunting down better, or replacements for what we have right now. In calling off the incessant search and recognising again what is already here for us, new and better appears effortlessly in front of us.
In your everyday experience there is a constant delivery of new things, people, opportunities, challenges, chances. Sometimes you notice and grasp them, sometimes you don’t.
So new is there, better is possible, all the time, naturally. My point today is that the unhealthy searching, clawing, desperate craving for new and better is ruining it for you. Even when new or better arrives, it doesn’t feel so good, it doesn’t match the unconscious artificial nirvana you have created in your mind. All the time you are on the seeking journey you add stress, doubt, anger and a range of emotions relating to how much you hate current situation and how much you desperately need new.
Please, get off this incessant and painful treadmill now.
Oprah Winfrey brilliantly spoke to this point “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.”
I repeat again new and better is arriving all the time, on its own, nothing to do with you, stop seeking.
Here’s how to get off the craving path and begin to attract and notice incredible new and better options effortlessly and automatically.
Connect again to what you have right now.
I mean everything, list it, realise it blatantly again, right now, on paper.
Your experience, your physical capabilities, your intellectual capacity, your possessions, your connections, the relationships you currently have (irrespective of what you have been telling yourself about them).
Stop pining for new, step back into what you have, hug it, cherish it, love it, be it and do it a bit more today. It feels like you’re closing out to new or better, but this is absolutely not the case, just begin to notice what starts to show up.
A foundational part of the Simple Life Code:
“Realise and relish what you are and what you have right now, everything”
In connecting with what you have and noticing it all, especially the bits you have forgotten, it is likely you will immediately feel better. From here things will become easier and simpler and the door to new and better is open.
Keep it simple
Simon
www.simontyler.com
Why would you bother working with a Business Coach?
GUEST BLOG POST by Michael Van Osch – Founder & CEO www.thinktankmen.com
Why The Hell Would You Use A Business Coach? December 7, 2010
Why the hell would you use a coach? Someone asked that question once.
Actually that person was me. It was quite a while ago and when I said it I did so with a lot of sarcasm and ridicule in my voice. I thought it was the stupidest idea in the world. That someone needed a coach for business or personal life? Ha! Losers! And funny thing, looking back at the man I was then, I thought I had it figured out. And I’d tell you that too. The reality was different though and although I may have looked successful to some, if I really get honest, I wasn’t. I was just another ego-driven, meathead biz guy with a title, a nice car and lots of bills.
I had my head in the sand. Even when I’d see a top CEO talk about having a coach, somehow I’d justify that it didn’t apply to me, that I could do whatever I wanted, alone. Thing was, I wasn’t doing anything. It seems to work that way you know, the more successful men are open to more things and they keep rising up and up. The posers, like I was, secretly make excuses, are negative and stay stuck. I’ve found the number one benefit of working with a coach has been Perspective.
Working with an experienced person who is in your corner and can give you another and different perspective on yourself and your business or career is worth its weight in gold. It helps you get out of your head, out of the thinking ruts we all get into and it can spark new ideas and motivations.
Now, years later, of course a lot has changed not the least of which is I became a coach myself working with men who are entrepreneurs and executives. The change in attitude came for me when I got desperate enough and got my ego out of the way and asked for some help on some things.
Suddenly it felt as is I’d had 1,000 pounds lifted off my shoulders. Ideas started to flow, and I got energized. That led me to hiring a high level coach. And from that, with a lot of hard work, I found myself in a position where I was more successful than ever, doing my own thing, and jumping out of bed in the morning to get at it. And the byproduct that I didn’t expect…happiness. Go figure. Just when I thought I knew everything.
PS – to hear what the CEO of Google said on this topic, click here http://bit.ly/aSPSyK
Michael Van Osch – Founder & CEO http://thinktankmen.com