You can no longer win by shouting, there is always someone who can should louder, longer, and more effectively.
You win today by being genuinely useful.
Those on the receiving end will tell others, who will tell others, and so it goes.
My kids call it social media marketing, I call it common sense marketing.
The speed at which things can happen is halving, and halving again, the wider implications of Moore’s Law at work. In such an environment, where is the value in static annual planning cycles, bi-annual sales meetings, 3 and 5 year plans when we cannot forecast what will hit us next week?
The premium on flexibility, and agility is continuing to increase, and to survive and prosper, it seems to me that there are three strategies that need to be implemented:
The most powerful way to get someone to agree with your idea is to ask them the leading question, and have them tell you.
Ronald Regan used this technique a lot. He did not tell the American people “your economic situation has deteriorated over the last 48 months”, instead he asked the famous question during his election campaign: “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?”. The answer was a resounding “NO” and he was elected.
Asking the right question can prompt a favourable, almost pre-deternmined response, but the formulation of the words to convey that response provokes a deeper, more intensive processing of the question. This leaves less room for ambiguity and uncertainty in the way the receiver responds to the question, and considerable committment to the answer.
I have also found it a great way to generate engagement at the opening of a presentation.
Today is ANZAC day, 2013, a day Australia stops, and remembers. We remember those who fell and amongst the detritus of hyperbole that seems to multiply every year, there are tales of courage, endurance and perseverance that should not be forgotten, along with hard lessons from which we should have learned.
Alas, it seems we have not.
We still have troops in Afghanistan, and the rhetoric is similar to that which I heard as some of my mates did not come back from Vietnam, a war that divided us to the point that the Vietnam Vets were not welcome in Anzac Day marches until 1987.
Disgraceful. A blight on our country.
I wonder at the long term impact on Afgan vets, will they be as screwed up as those from Vietnam, and WW11? My father to his deathbed did not talk about his experiences, the few comments over the years would lead to a conclusion that his time in the islands was boring, with just the occasional excitement, but that grossly understates what happened, even if it was nothing like the horrible, inhuman experiences of many.
By remembering, we hopefully do not repeat the mistakes, but human nature is that we seem not to take sufficient notice, and repeat them.
Just like in business, we should contemplate the motivations that led to our actions in the past, and learn enough not to repeat the bad ones.
Business however, is pretty benign compared to war, irrespective of how brutal we may believe it is. I am reminded of the quip by Keith Miller, our best-ever all round cricketer, spitfire pilot, and archetypal Australian larrikan who when asked during the invinvibles tour how he handled the pressure of a tight test, said “Pressure, this is not pressure, pressure is having an ME 109 up your arse at 400 miles an hour, this is just a game of cricket.”
Oh, the other reason I feel Anzac day is special, it is my beautiful daughters 28th birthday.
Happy birthday Jenn.
Lest we forget.
At a simple level, cognitive productivity is just using the brainpower at your disposal to deliver the optimum outcome, weather that brainpower be resident between your ears, or between the collective ears of many in a group.
However, it is also much deeper than that. The notion of cognitive overhead how much effort there is in understanding something comes from this post by David Demaree, a software engineer in Chicago, which was prompted by the early iterations of Google+. Cognitive Overhead — “how many logical connections or jumps your brain has to make in order to understand or contextualize the thing you’re looking at.”
As conceived, it applied to software engineering, and the resulting products, but it seems to me it has much wider application. All those remotes that run our “entertainment centers” are testament to that, what happened to the simple old TV remote, one device, did everything without a science degree?.
Clay Shirky talks about the notion of cognitive surplus. This idea proposes that people are motivated by the opportunity to create and share, no longer just by the command and control ideas of the hierarchical employer where money and power emanating from a position description are what counts. The real power in the new economy comes from individuals, and the power vested in them to create by the digital revolution. Even if that creation is just another silly cat picture posted on Instagram, it is nevertheless a creative action taken by someone who could not have done it just a few years ago
If you put the two notions of cognitive overhead and surplus together, you have a recipe for cognitive productivity. Leveraging the cognitive surplus in a manner that minimises cognitive overhead, to deliver greater and greater value to society.
That my friends, is the future!