2. Big thoughts and small actions make a difference.
Hereās what weāre working on and thinking about.
Things to think about
(and do) this year
What about you?
feel free to share this
5. GENEROSITY
When the economy tanks, itās natural to think If you make a diļ¬erence, you also make a
of yourself ļ¬rst. You have a family to feed a connection. You interact with people who
mortgage to pay. Getting more appears to be want to be interacted with and you make
the order of business. changes that people respect and yearn for.
It turns out that the connected economy Art canāt happen without someone who seeks
doesnāt respect this natural instinct. Instead, to make a diļ¬erence. īis is your art, itās what
weāre rewarded for being generous. Generous you do. You touch people or projects and
with our time and money but most important change them for the better.
generous with our art.
īis year, youāll certainly ļ¬nd that the more
If you make a diļ¬erence, people will gravitate you give the more you get.
to you. īey want to engage, to interact and to
get you more involved.
Seth Godin is a blogger and speaker. His new book
In a digital world, the giī I give you almost Linchpin comes out in January.
always beneļ¬ts me more than it costs.
6. FEAR
Have you ever wondered whoās behind that little We all share the same characteristics.Ā
voice in your head that tells you, āyouāre in this by
yourself, one person doesnāt make a diļ¬erence, so Weāre all divinely human.Ā
why even try?ā
Until Fear is gone, (and realize he may never
His name is Fear. Fear plays the role of antagonist completely leave) make the decision to be
in the story of your life. You must rid yourself of courageous. īe world needs your story in order to
him using all necessary means. be complete.
Weāre oīen impressed by those who appear to be
fearless. īe people who ļ¬y to the moon. Chase
tornadoes. Enter dangerous war zones. Skydive.
Speak in front of thousands of people. Stand up to
cancer. Raise money and adopt a child that isnāt
their ļ¬esh and blood.
Anne Jackson blogs, tweets, and writes books. Her most recent
So, why are we so inspired by them? work, Permission To Speak Freely: Essays and Art on Fear,
Confession and Grace will be available in August.
Because deep down,Ā we are them.
7. F A CT S
Jessica Hagy blogs at Indexed and is the author of a wonderful
book of the same name.
8. DIGNITY
Dignity is more important than wealth. Itās going a prostitute in the slums of Nairobi is just an
to be a long, long time before we can make important ļ¬gure in your life as the postman in the
everyone on earth wealthy, but we can help people next town. And in a world where everything is
ļ¬nd dignity this year (right now if we choose to). connected, the most important thing we can do is
treat our fellows with dignity.
Dignity comes from creating your own destiny and
from the respect you get from your family, Giving a poor person food or money might help
your peers and society. them survive another day... but it doesnāt give them
dignity. īereās a better way.
A farmer able to feed his family and earn enough
to send his kids to school has earned the respect of Creating ways for people to solve their own
the people in his villageāand more important, a problems isnāt just an opportunity in 2010. It is an
connection to rest of us. obligation.
Itās easy to take dignity away from someone but
diļ¬cult to give it to them. īe last few years have
Jacqueline Noīogratz is the founder of the Acumen Fund and
taught us just how connected the entire world isā
author of īe Blue Sweater.
9. Room to Read is doing important work. You can help. Click for details.
10. MEANING
Hugh MacLeod blogs at Gaping Void and is author of Ignore Everybody.
11. EASE
We are the strivingest people who have ever So go take a walk. Or donāt. Consider actually
lived. We are ambitious, time-starved, exhaling. Find a body of water and ļ¬oat. Hit a
competitive, distracted. We move at full velocity, tennis ball against a wall. Tell your colleagues
yet constantly fear we are not doing enough. that youāre oļ¬ meditating (people take
īough we live longer than any humans before meditation seriously, so youāll be absolved from
us, our lives feel shorter, restless, breathless... guilt) and then actually, secretly, nap.
Dear ones, EASE UP. Pump the brakes. Take a My radical suggestion? Cease participation, if
step back. Seriously. Take two steps back. Turn only for one day this year ā if only to make sure
oļ¬ all your electronics and surrender over all that we donāt lose forever the rare and vanishing
your aspirations and do absolutely nothing for a human talent of appreciating ease.
spell. I know, I know ā we all need to save the
world. But trust me: īe world will still need
saving tomorrow. In the meantime, youāre going
to have a stroke soon (or cause a stroke in Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray, Love. Her new book
Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage will be
somebody else) if you donāt calm the hell down. published in January, 2010.
12. CONNECTED
īere are tens of thousands of businesses making More megaphones donāt equal a better dialogue.
many millions a year in proļ¬ts that still havenāt Weāve become slaves to our mobile devices and the
ever heard of twitter, blogs or facebook. Are they glow of our screens. It used to be much more
all wrong? Have they missed out or is the joke simple and, somewhere, simple turned into slow.
really on us? īey do business through personal
relationships, by delivering great customer service We walk the streets with our heads down staring
and itās working for them. īeyāre more successful into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by
than most of those businesses who spend hours doing the same. And yet weāre convinced we are
pontiļ¬cating about how others lose out by missing more connected to each other than ever before.
social media and the latest wave. And yet theyāre Multi-tasking has become a badge of honor. I want
doing business. Great business. Not writing about to know why.
it. Doing it.
I donāt have all the answers to these questions but I
Iām continually amazed by the number of people ļ¬nd myself thinking about them more and more.
on Twitter and on blogs, and the growth of people In between tweets, blog posts and facebook
(and brands) on facebook. But Iām also amazed by updates.
how so many of us are spending our time. īe echo
Howard Mann is a speaker, entrepreneur and the author of Your
chamber weāre building is getting larger and Business Brickyard.
louder.
13. 60 more pages!
If you like this ebook please send it to
everyone who needs to read it!
look for this button
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to people directly
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60 more pages!
15. VISION
Vision is the lifeblood of any organization. It is īis is where great leadership makes all the
what keeps it moving forward. It provides meaning diļ¬erence. Leadership is more than inļ¬uence. It is
to the day-to-day challenges and setbacks that about reminding people of what it is we are trying
make up the rumble and tumble of real life. to buildāand why it matters. It is about painting a
picture of a better future. It comes down to
In a down economyāparticularly one that has pointing the way and saying, āCāmon. We can do
taken most of us by surpriseāthings get very this!ā
tactical. We are just trying to survive. What
worked yesterday does not necessarily work today. When times are tough, vision is the ļ¬rst casualty.
What works today may not necessarily work Before conditions can improve, it is the ļ¬rst thing
tomorrow. Decisions become pragmatic. we must recover.
But aīer a while this wears on people. īey donāt
know why their eļ¬orts matter. īey cannot
connect their actions to a larger story. īeir work
becomes a matter of just going through the
motions, living from weekend to weekend, Michael Hyatt is the CEO of ī«omas Nelson Publishers. He blogs
paycheck to paycheck. on āLeading with Purposeā at MichaelHyatt.com and also Twitters
at @MichaelHyatt.
16. ENRICHMENT
We are all on a search ā a search for more meaning 4. Communicate: Communicate candidly. Tell
in our lives. people what they should hear rather than what
they want to hear.
īrough choosing to enrich other peopleās lives,
you add meaning to both their life and your own. 5. Expand Capacity: Aim to expand peopleās
capacity to help them give and get more from their
Some simple steps to follow: own lives.
1. Commit: Commit to lifetime-relationships that īe Litmus Test: If you are truly enriching
span events, companies, causes and geographic someoneās life, they will typically miss you in their
boundaries. past. īey think their lives would have been even
better if they had met you earlier.
2. Care: Care for the concerns of others as if they
are your own. You are only as rich as the enrichment you bring to
the world around you.
3. Connect: Aim to connect those who will beneļ¬t
and enrich each otherās lives in equal measure.
Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in
Silicon Valley. His blog is Life Beyond Code.
17. Two tech executives with no food experience and no īeir success began with a small ā very small ā group of
marketing budget launch a product called Bacon Salt. self-identiļ¬ed fans of a category. Even if social networks
Ā have millions of members, it will never translate into
Next, they search for people on social networking sites millions of buzz-spreaders. īe Bacon Salt story illustrates
who profess a love for bacon, then friend them. Among a that itās usually a small percentage of the tribe within the
small percentage of those people, enthusiasum begins to larger tribe who spread the wordāusually about 1 percent.
spread about Bacon Salt. What began as a tribe quickly īey are the One Percenters.
multiplies into 37,000 fans on Facebook and MySpace. Ā
Ā īe One Percenters are not the usual suspects of name-
Months later, the buzz spills over into newspaper articles, brand tech bloggers, mommy bloggers and or business
TV interviews and the holy grail of PR, an appearance on bloggers. īe One Percenters are oīen hidden in the
Oprah. Two guys who knew nothing about the food Ā crevices of niches, yet they are the roots of word of mouth.
business and had no marketing budget now had a
certiļ¬able cult hit. Inspired, they create several other īis year, your job is to ļ¬nd them and attract them.
bacon-ļ¬avored products. Itās the birth of a brand.
Ā
Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell are the authors of the books
Citizen Marketers and Creating Customer Evangelists. ī«ey
blog at Church of the Customer.
18. SPEAKING
Speaking soon? Keep this in mind: people at events īe rest of your talk should fall into place easily
are hungry for authenticity. Saying something you enough. Yes, itās important to know your audience,
might not have said elsewhere is a good way to ļ¬nd use A/V materials wisely, watch your time, and so on.
your authentic voice. But you have to build the talk around your passion.
Ā Ā
For my own conference, I oīen give advice to Hereās the ļ¬nal measure of your success as a speaker:
speakers before they come on stage. Hereās an exercise did you change something? Are attendees leaving
for anyone who wants to connect with an audience. with a new idea, some new inspiration, perhaps a
Ā renewed commitment to their work or to the world?
A few weeks before the event, when you start Ā
preparing the talk, write out everything you spend Be honest, be authentic, and speak from your
your time doing - professional work, side projects at passion. Yes, it means taking a risk. But the results
home, everything. might surprise you.
Ā Ā
Now pick the one thing youāre most excited about.
Ā
Now consider: why is that so important to you?
Ā
Design your talk from that point, as if you started by
saying, āMy name is X, and Iām passionate about Mark Hurst runs Gel and founded Creative Good, a customer
XYZ because...ā experience consultancy.
Ā
19. ATOMS
īe past decade has been an extraordinary adventure in inventory; everything is assembled and drop-shipped by
discovering new social models on the Webāways to work, the contractors, who can serve hundreds of such small
create and organize outside of the traditional institutions customers simultaneously.
of companies, governments and academia. But the next
decade will be all about applying these models to the real Today, there are microfactories making everything from
world. Atoms are the new bits! cars to bike parts to local cabinetmakers with computer-
controlled routers making bespoke furniture in any design
Just take one example: making stuļ¬. īe Internet you can imagine. īe collective potential of a million
democratized publishing, broadcasting and garage tinkerers is now about to be unleashed on the global
communications, and the consequence was a massive markets, as ideas go straight into entrepreneurship, no
increase in the range of both participants and participation tooling required. āīree guys with laptopsā used to
in everything digitalāthe long tail of bits. Now the same is describe a web startup. Now it describes a hardware
happening to manufacturingāthe long tail of things. company, too.
īe tools of factory production, from electronics assembly Peer production, open source, crowdsourcing, DIY and
to 3D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches UGCāall these digital phenomena are starting to play
as small as a single unit. Anybody with an idea and little bit out in the world of atoms, too. īe Web was just the proof
of self-taught expertise can set assembly lines in China into of concept. Now the revolution gets real.
motion with nothing more than some keystrokes on their
laptop. A few days later, a prototype will be at their door,
and it all checks out, they can push a few more buttons and Chris Anderson is Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, and the
be in full production. īey are a virtual microfactory, able author of īe Long Tail and FREE. He also runs a
to design and sell goods without any infrastructure or even micromanfacturing robotics company at diydrones.com
20. EXCELLENCE
Be an irresistible force of nature!
Vibrateācause earthquakes! Do it! Now! Get it done! Barriers are baloney! Excuses are for wimps! Accountability is gospel!
Adhere to the Bill Parcells doctrine: āBlame no one! Expect nothing! Do something!ā Respect and appreciation rule!
Always ask, āWhat do you think?ā en listen! en let go and liberate! en celebrate! Perpetually dancing at the frontier, and
a little or a lot beyond. Determined to challenge and change the status quo! Motto: āIf it aināt broke, break it!ā
Addicted to MBWA /Managing By Wandering Around. In touch. Always. Partners with the world 60/60/24/7 via electronic
community building of every sort. Relentlessly pursue diverse opinionsāthe more diversity the merrier! Diversity
per se āworksā! e alpha. e omega. e essence of leadership. e essence of sales. e essence of marketing. e essence.
Period. Acknowledge it. Connect, connect, connect with othersā reality and aspirations! āWalk in the other personās shoesāā
until the soles have holes! Eļ¬ective listening: Strategic Advantage Number 1! Life is theater! Make every activ-
ity-contact memorable! Standard: āInsanely Greatā/Steve Jobs; āRadically rillingā/ BMW. Keep it simple!
Ready! Fire! Aim! Try a lot of stuļ¬ and make a lot of booboos and then try some more stuļ¬ and make some more booboosāall of it at
the speed of light! Straight as an arrow! Fair to a fault! Honest as Abe! Michelangelo:
ā e greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.ā Amen!
Pursue the highest of human moral purposeāthe core of Aristotleās philosophy. Be of service. Always.
Never an exception!
If not Excellence, what?
Tom Peters blogs at tompeters.com. His new book,
īe Little BIG īings: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence will be
available in March 2010.Ā Ā
21. MOST
Imagine any and every ļ¬eld possible. īere are so As Jim Hightower, the colorful Texas populist, is
many brands, so many choices, so many claims, so fond of saying, āīereās nothing in the middle of
much clutter, that the central challenge is for an the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.ā
organization or an individual is to rise above the
fray. Itās not good enough anymore to be āpretty We might add: companies and their leaders
goodā at everything. You have to be the most of struggling to stand out from the crowd, as they
something: the most elegant, the most colorful, play by the same old rules in a crowded
the most responsive, the most accessible. marketplace.
For decades, organizations and their leaders were Are you the most of anything?
comfortable with strategies and practices that kept
them in the middle of the roadāthatās where the
customers were, so thatās what felt safe and secure.
Today, with so much change and uncertainty, so
much pressure and new ways to do things, the
middle of the road is the road to nowhere.
William C. Taylor is a cofounder of Fast Company magazine. His
forthcoming book is Practically Radical.
22. STRENGTHS
Forget about working on your weaknesses ā> Focus on Relatedly, women are rather UNlike men and oīen
supporting your strengths. approach problems and opportunities with a diļ¬erent
outlook. Yet books and coaches oīen encourage us to
I worked on my weaknesses for 40 years to little avail. adopt male strengths and, lacking understanding, to
Still āneeds improvement,ā as they say. Why? Easy. We relinquish our own. īe irony is, studies show that
hate doing things weāre not good at, so we avoid them. more women in leadership translates unequivocally into
No practice makes perfect hard to attain. better business results.
But my strengths ā ah, I love my strengths. Iāll work on Wouldnāt it make more sense for both men and women
them till the purple cows come home. When we love to appreciate each otherās strengths so we all work on
what we do, we do more and more, and pretty soon what comes naturally?
weāre pretty good at it.
īe beautiful thing about being on a team is that,
believe it or not, lots of people love doing the things
you hate. And hate doing the things you love. So quit
diligently developing your weaknesses. Instead, partner Marti Barletta, speaker, consultant and author of Marketing to
with someone very UNlike you, share the work and Women and PrimeTime Women; is currently working on her
share the wealth and everyoneās happy. next book, Attracting Women: Marketing Your Company to the
21st Centuryās Best Candidates
23. RIPPLE
Education has a ripple eļ¬ect.Ā One drop can īatās why there are 300 million children in the
initiate a cascade of possibility, each concentric developing world who woke up this morning and
circle gaining in size and traveling further. did not go to school.Ā And why there are over 750
If you get education right, you get many things million people unable to read and write, nearly 2/3
right:Ā escape from poverty, better family health, of whom are girls and women.
and improved status of women.
I dream of a world in which weāve changed that.Ā A
Educate a girl, and you educate her children and world with thousands of new schools.Ā Ā Tens of
generations to follow. thousands of new libraries.Ā Each with equal access
for all children. Ā
Yet for hundreds of millions of kids in the
developing world, the ripple never begins. Instead, īe best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.Ā
thereās a seemingly inescapable whirlpool of īe second best time is now.
poverty. In the words of a headmaster I once met
in Nepal:Ā Ā āWe are too poor to aļ¬ord education.Ā
But until we have education, we will always be John Wood is Founder & Executive Chairman, Room to Read,
poor.ā which has built over 850 schools and opened over 7,500 libraries
serving 3 million children.Ā He is the author of Leaving Microsoī
to Change the World.
24. UNSUSTAINAB
ILITY
Everyone is pursuing sustainability. But if īe road to sustainability goes through a clear-
change happens when the cost of the status eyed look at unsustainability.
quo is greater than the risk of change, we really
need to focus on raising the costs of the
unsustainable systems that represent the
unsustainable status quo.Ā
Unsustainable failed educational systems,
obesity-producing systems, energy systems,
transportation systems, health care systems.
Each and every one is unsustainable. Itās more
āinnovativeā to talk about bright, shiny, new
sustainable systems, but before we can even
work on the right side of the change equation,
we need to drive up the costs of the Alan M. Webber is co-founding editor of Fast Company magazine
unsustainable systems that represent the dead and author, most recently of Rules of īumb: 52 Truths for
Winning at Business Without Losing Yourself.
weight of the past.
25. AUTONOMY
Management isnāt natural. If we want engagement, and the mediocrity-
busting results it produces, we have to make sure
I donāt mean that itās weird or toxic ā just that it people have autonomy over the four most
doesnāt emanate from nature. āManagementā isnāt important aspects of their work:
a tree or a river. Itās a telegraph or a transistor radio.
Somebody invented it.Ā And over time, most Task ā What they do
inventions ā from the candle to the cotton gin to Time ā When they do it
the compact disc ā lose their usefulness. Technique ā How they do it
Team ā Whom they do it with.
Management is great if you want people to comply
ā to do speciļ¬c things a certain way.Ā But it stinks Aīer a decade of truly spectacular
if you want people to engage ā to think big or give underachievement, what we need now is less
the world something it didnāt know it was missing. management and more freedom ā fewer individual
For creative, complex, conceptual challenges ā i.e, automatons and more autonomous individuals.
what most of us now do for a livingā40 years of
research in behavioral science and human
motivation says that self-direction works better. Ā Daniel H. Pink is the author of A Whole New Mind. His new
And that requires autonomy.Ā Lots of it. book, Drive: īe Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,
comes out in late December.
feel free to share this
26. POKER
BUSINESS IS A GAME EDUCATION
ā¢ Never stop learning. Read books. Learn from others who
Everything I know about business I learned from poker: have done it before.
ļ¬nancials, strategy, education, and culture. ā¢ Learn by doing. īeory is nice, but nothing replaces
actual experience.
FINANCIALS ā¢ Just because you win a hand doesnāt mean youāre good
ā¢ īe guy who wins the most hands is not the guy who and you donāt have more learning to do. You might have
makes the most money in the long run. just gotten lucky.
ā¢ īe guy who never loses a hand is not the guy who makes
the most money in the long run. CULTURE
ā¢ Go for positive expected value, not whatās least risky. ā¢ To become really good, you need to live it, breathe it, and
ā¢ You will win or lose individual hands, but itās what sleep it.
happens in the long term that matters. ā¢ Be nice and make friends. Itās a small community.
ā¢ Have fun. īe game is a lot more enjoyable when youāre
STRATEGY trying to do more than just make money.
ā¢ Learn to adapt. Adjust your style of play as the dynamics
of the game change.
ā¢ īe players with the most stamina and focus usually win.
ā¢ Hope is not a good plan.
Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos.com and the author of the soon-
ā¢ Stick to your principles.
to-be-published book Delivering Happiness. Tonyās (longer) blog
post is Everything I Know About Business I Learned īom Poker.
27. MOMENTUM
Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours Not many people in our A.D.D. culture
of practice to become an āOutlier.ā He is, of can stay FOCUSED, but those who can
course, right. My mother says practice makes are on their way to winning. Add to the
perfect. She is, of course, right. A billionaire focus some serious pull-your-shirt-oļ¬-andpaint-
friend once told me to read one of the best yourself-blue-at-the-football-game
stories on successful living, īe Tortoise and INTENSITY, and now you have a person
the Hare. He says, āEvery time I read that who is a diļ¬erence-maker. But very few
book, the tortoise wins. Slow and steady wins companies or people can maintain that
the race.ā He is, of course, right. FOCUSED INTENSITY over TIME. It
takes time to be great, it takes time to create
Whether it is branding or wealth building, I critical mass, it takes time to be an āovernight
call it īe Momentum īeorem. success.ā Lastly, you and I are ļ¬nite, while
GOD is inļ¬nite. So, multiply your eļ¬orts
through Him and watch the areas of your life
move toward winning like never before.
FOCUSED INTENSITY over TIME multiplied Dave Ramsey is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host,
by GOD equals Unstoppable Momentum. best-selling author of ī«e Total Money Makeoīer, and host of
ī«e Dave Ramsey Show on the Fox Business Network.
28. CONSEQUENCE
īere is little evidence that we will solve the they say they want. Aīer a century of isolating the
environmental challenges of our time. Individuals product or service from its resulting impact, the tide
too readily allow responsibility for the solutions to is turning.Ā We are making consequence visible.Ā We
fall on larger entities like governments, rather than will witness the ļ¬rst generation who can truly know
themselves.Ā I ļ¬nd one very signiļ¬cant reason for the impact of everything they do on the ecological
hope amidst this largely hopeless topic. We are support systems that surround them.
learning to measure consequence. Galileo said
something akin to āmeasure what is measurable, My hope is that we will use this knowledge wisely.
make measurable what is not.ā Ā We are slowly gaining We will put aside old ideas of what is good and bad
expertise in measuring our impact in terms of carbon, for the environment and ourselves, and will
energy demand, water use, and toxicity production. quantitatively make the changes we need with new
foresight.
Why is this hopeful? Now that we can say
deļ¬nitively that even the production of a soda bottle
has a measurable (if tiny) increase in greenhouse
gases, itās hard for a thinking individual not to
acknowledge that they are working against the things
Saul Griļ¬th is a MacArthur Fellow and new father who blogs
atĀ energyliteracy.comĀ andĀ designs solutions for climate change
atĀ otherlab.com.
29. POWER
Power provokes ambivalence. Power-seeking is Obtaining power requires will and skillāthe
politically incorrect. So power remains cloaked in ambition to do the hard work necessary, and the
mystery and emotion, the organizationās last dirty insight required to direct your energy
secret. productively. Power comes from an ability to
build your reputation, create eļ¬cient and eļ¬ective
John Gardner, the founder of Common Cause, networks of social relations, act and speak in ways
noted that nothing gets done without power. that build inļ¬uence, and from an ability to create
Social change requires the power to mobilize and employ resourcesāthings that others want
resources. īatās why leaders are preoccupied with and need.
power. As Michael Marmot and other
epidemiological researchers show, possessing the Stop waiting around for bosses and companies to
power to control your work and social get better and complaining about how are you
environmentāhaving autonomy and control over treated. Build the skillsāand use themāthat will
your jobāis one of the best predictors of health permit you to create the environment in which you
and mortality. want to live.
Jeļ¬rey Pfeļ¬er is a professor at Stanford Business School and author
of Power:Ā How to Get It, Use It, and Keep It. Read more here.
30. HARMONY
īe word harmony carries some serious baggage. When focusing on harmony, success becomes
Soī, namby-pamby, liberal, weak. Men who value deļ¬ned by diļ¬erent terms. Contribution.
harmony arenāt considered macho. Women who Dedication. Cooperation.
value harmony are considered stereotypical.
Success is typically deļ¬ned with words like hard Harmony takes bravery, an open heart. It takes
(sell, line, ass). Successful people are lauded for lying awake at night when one of your co-workers
being argumentative, self-interested, disruptive. is having a rough patch and dreaming up ways to
But those assumptions are the dregs of a culture help.
that celebrates the lone hero who leads with
singular ambition all the while damning the sheep In the true sense of karma, to achieve harmony,
who follow him in harmonious ignorance. you must always do the right thing with no eye on
a reward. īe reward will come because there is
No. trust on the other side.
Harmony is a springboard. Harmony supports Harmony creates a workplace where you and all
teamwork. And teamwork creates energy. An the people around you love to be.
energy that fuels creativity.
Jack Coīert is the head honcho at 800ceoread. Sally Haldorson is
the companyās resident wordsmith.
31. TOUGH-MINDEDNESS
We live in the age of distraction, of Twitter and Iāve written about showing up in my āWriting
multi-tasking and short attention spans. Even Wednesdayāsā series, drawing examples from
these micro-essays are part of it. Whereas what Patricia Ryan Madsonās book Improī Wisdom.
produces real work (and happiness for each of us, īereās tremendous power in putting your ass
in my opinion) is depth, focus, concentration and where your heart wants to be. Being there is just
commitment over time. the ļ¬rst step. You must stay for more than a few
minutes or one 140-character post.
īe antidote to these scattering inļ¬uences is
tough-mindedness, which I deļ¬ne as the ability to Special Forces Major Jim Gant wrote the seminal
draw lines and boundaries within which we report āOne Tribe At A Timeā. Heās a husband and
protect and preserve the mental and emotional father, who was training for a one-year deployment
space to do our work and to be true to our selves. to Iraq at the time, while also juggling the everyday
Not to the point of insanity (we gotta keep a sense issues we all face. No one asked him to write the
of humor about this stuļ¬), but we also desperately paper. Conviction, passion and a dedication to
need the ability to play real hardball with ourselves hard work were on his side ā thatās tough-
when we need it. Otherwise, weāll all expire from mindedness.
sheer shallowness.
Steven Pressļ¬eld is the author of Gates of Fire and īe War of
Art. Ā He blogs at āItās the Tribes, Stupid.ā
32. EVANGELISM
īe future belongs to people who can spread ideas. Ā Ā 6. Learn to give a demo. A person simply cannot
Here are ten things to remember: evangelize a product if she cannot demo it.Ā
Ā Ā 7. Provide a safe ļ¬rst step. Donāt put up any big
Ā Ā 1. Create a cause. A cause seizes the moral high hurdles in the beginning of the process. īe path
ground and makes peopleās lives better. to adopting a cause needs a slippery slope.Ā
Ā Ā 2. Love the cause. āEvangelistā isnāt a job title. Itās Ā Ā 8. Ignore pedigrees. Donāt focus on the people
a way of life.Ā If you donāt love a cause, you canāt with big titles and big reputations.Ā Help anyone
evangelize it. who can help you.
Ā Ā 3. Look for agnostics, ignore atheists. Itās too Ā Ā 9. Never tell a lie. Credibility is everything for an
hard to convert people who deny your cause. Look evangelist. Tell the truthāeven if it hurts.
for people who are supportive or neutral instead.Ā Actually, especially if it hurts.
Ā Ā 4. Localize the pain. Never describe your cause by Ā 10. Remember your friends. Be nice to the people
using bull shiitake terms like ārevolutionaryā and on the way up because you might see them again
āparadigm shiīing.ā Instead, explain how it helps a on the way down.
person.
Ā Ā 5. Let people test drive the cause. Let people try
your cause, take it home, download it, and then Guy Kawasaki is a founding partner and entrepreneur-in-
residence at Garage Technology Ventures. He is also the co-founder
decide if itās right for them. of Alltop.com.Ā Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple
Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books.
33. C O M PA S S I O N
āItās nothing personal, itās just business.ā īe Internet is amazing because it connects us all.
Compassion for those around us now extends globally
We spend more than 50% of our lives at work. Why and beyond our physical boundaries.
would anyone want to wake up in the morning and go
to work with that attitude? If you donāt make it We can all do more for each other and be better.
personal, and if you donāt make it count, whatās the
point? Be compassionate to everyone no matter the level of
connection.
Business is missing one important core value:
compassion. Make compassion a core business value.
āBetween work and family, I have no time for Start with a smile to a stranger.
community.ā
Start by getting others to nod in agreement when you
īis is something everyone feels at some point in their say: āIf weāre not compassionate to one another, whatās
lives. But think about it: What if we made community the point in the end?ā
an integral part of our business? What if we recognized
that we canāt have strong businesses without a strong
community and we canāt have a strong community
without compassion?
īe real way strong communities are built is through Ā
the compassion we extend to others. Both to those we
Mitch Joel is President of Twist Image and author of Six Pixels of
know, and to those we donāt know.
Separation.
34. KNOWLEDGE
How does news shape the way we see the world? īe result: much of our news canāt be called āknowledge
mediaā ā content that builds insight about our world.
Distorted, bloated, and not representative of what is
happening. Itās diļ¬cult to understand the world, if you havenāt heard
much about it. But we also know many Americans want to
Too oīen, AmericanĀ commercial news isĀ myopic and know more.
inwardly focused.Ā
Storytelling is powerful. It helps us understand, make
īis leads to a severe lack of global news. And increasingly, choices and can inspire us.Ā
a shortage of āenterprise journalismā ā journalistic depth
built over time through original sources ā that provides the Journalism as we know it is in trouble. īe old models
context and enables thoughtful response. donāt serve us anymore with the content we need. Now is
our chance to make it better.
Too oīen, the news sticks to crime, disasters,
infotainment, and horse-race politics. Many important By investing aggressively and entrepreneurially in the
topics such as education, race and ethnicity, science, future of knowledge media ā in both journalistic reportage
environment, and women and childrenās issues are oīen and in powerful storytelling, we can ensure that people get
less than 5% of all news combined. the fullest global perspective.Ā Ā īe Time is Now.Ā Ā
Ā
Much of widely-seen online news isnāt better ā itās oīen
just re-circulates the same stories.Ā
Alisa Miller is the President & CEO of PRI, Public Radio
Ā
International, and her new blog is Global Matters Post. Follow
her on twitter.
35. PA R S I N G
How many times have you paid your taxes? Ever get a What if there was as much data about John Barrow (D-
receipt back telling you what you bought? Youāre paying GA) as there was about Manny Ramirez (LF-Dodgers).
for something, right? Why is everybody arguing about īere are 750 players in Major League Baseball, and
taxes and deļ¬cits when they donāt know how their only 535 Members of Congress.
money is being spent?
Most of the data exists and what doesnāt we need to
What if you went to Loweās, and paid to improve your demand. īe answer to healthy democracy lies not in
home, then Loweās did work but didnāt tell you what rhetoric, but in our data.
they did. Would you notice if they ļ¬xed faulty wiring?
īatās parsing I can believe in.Ā
It is time for us to rationalize the debate. Letās parse the
data and free the facts.
Imagine if we organized around meaningful data
instead of vapid rhetoric. What if you could see how
much you spent on your commute to work this year, or
defending your country, or keeping your neighbor
healthy?
Clay Johnson is the Director of Sunlight Labs for the Sunlight
Foundation. He tweets at cjoh.
36. Room to Read is doing important work. You can help. Click for details.
37. F O R E V E R
8
You are immortal. īe result of everything you do But as humans we strive for progress. We will not
today will last forever.Ā live alone self suļ¬ciently on our rural hectare and
therefore we must bring simple common sense to
Everything you buy, own, consume is likely to last everything we buy, own & consume. If they will
forever somewhere in a landļ¬ll. Even the majority last forever, then we must make these items as
of the the recyclable materials you use will not be useful as they can be for as long as possible.Ā
processed and these āgreenā items will be found
piled up in deep far-oļ¬ valleys whether you like it Products needs to be kept, repaired, loaned and
or not. shared. Packaging needs to be reused and
returned.Ā īat is progress.Ā
When our great great grandchildren ļ¬nally work
out how to solve the selļ¬sh errors of our time, we Yes, the future will have smaller markets but
will be considered primitive: our balance with our tomorrowās business leaders will be the ļ¬rst ones to
habitat ignored in pursuit of progress. build markets today that have a focus on forever.
Piers Fawkes inspires his PSFK.com readers, event attendees and
corporate clients to make things better. His latest click to print book
is Good Ideas in 2010.
38. E M P A T H Y
Our word is dangerously polarized. īere is an At this crossroads of history, we have a choice. We
imbalance of wealth and power that has resulted in can either emphasize the exclusive and chauvinist
widespread alienation, suspicion, and resentment. elements that are found in all our traditions,
Yet we are linked together more closely than ever religious or secular or those that teach us to
before ~ electronically, politically, and celebrate the profound interdependence and
economically. One of the most important tasks of unanimity of the human race.
our generation is to build a just and viable global
order, where all peoples can live together in mutual
respect.
We have it in our power to begin the world again
by implementing the ancient principle that is oīen
called the Golden Rule: Always treat all others as
you would wish to be treated yourself. We need to
make this compassionate and empathic ethos a
vibrant force in private and public life, developing
a global democracy, where all voices are heard,
working tirelessly and practically for the well-being
of the entire human race, and countering the Karen Armstrong is a bestselling author, winner of 2008 TED
dangerous mythology of hatred and fear. prize and creator of the Charter for Compassion.
39. N E O T E N Y
Neoteny is the retention of childlike attributes in īe future of the planet is becoming less about
adulthood. Human beings are younger longer than being eļ¬cient, producing more stuļ¬ and
any other creature on earth, taking almost twenty protecting our turf and more about working
years until we become adults. While we retain together, embracing change and being creative.
many our childlike attributes into adulthood most
of us stop playing when we become adults and We live in an age where people are starving in the
focus on work. midst of abundance and our greatest enemy is our
own testosterone driven urge to control our
When we are young, we learn, we socialize, we territory and our environments.
play, we experiment, we are curious, we feel
wonder, we feel joy, we change, we grow, we Itās time we listen to children and allow neoteny to
imagine, we hope. guide us beyond the rigid frameworks and dogma
created by adults.
In adulthood, we are serious, we produce, we focus,
we ļ¬ght, we protect and we believe in things
strongly.
Joichi Ito is the CEO of Creative Commons, blogs at Joi Itoās Web
and is an Internet entrepreneur and early stage inīestor.
40. C E L E B R A T E
As I write this, all day long, itās my birthday. Iāve Imagine if GoDaddy oļ¬ered you, Birthday Girl,
gotten emails and tweets and Facebook wishes any 1 of these 10 available variations of your name,
from friends. And Iām grateful to know theyāre all today only, for 1 year, free.
thinking of me.
What if Twitter put a cupcake icon on your
But what about the companies and products and proļ¬le. Click and see a live list of everyone who
services I have relationships with? Why arenāt they said āHappy Birthday @neilhimself !ā that day.
taking this perfect, regular, anticipated, ego-full Itās not just about free stuļ¬ and attention from
chance to single me out from the crowd and make followers. Itās about a business making up their
me think of them on my birthday? (Tactics minds to have an ongoing relationship with you, to
asideā¦) invent fun ways to delight you, and mostly about
following through in a way youāll tell your friends
Why doesnāt iTunes send you a code for 1 free about.
99cent song on your birthday?
Happy birthday.
What if Dunkin Donuts gave you free coļ¬ee on
your birthday, in a special birthday cup that people
will notice (and remark on) when you walk in to
Megan Casey is Editor in Chief of Squidoo.com
the oļ¬ce?
41. D I Y
Do it yourself. My prescription:
Most doctors prescribe pills, I prescribe empowerment.
We spend less than an hour per year with our doctorāand
8,765 without. Fortunately, we live in the age of DIY. And
now we have the tools to create a new health experience.
Dr. Google is always there for us. We can connect with the
500 people in the country all living with the same rare
illness. We can email our doctor or meet them by video
chat. We can ļ¬nd the nearest farmerās market with our
iPhone. We can use the web to ļ¬nd fellow runners in our
neighborhood. Living healthy is getting easier every day.
Imagine if your doctor, acting as your consultant,
prescribed all these tools for you to be the most
empowered CEO of your health. What if you paid your
doctor for advice to keep you out of their oļ¬ce? What if
we looked at protecting our own health the same way we
look at protecting the environment? What if being healthy
became a social, not just a personal, cause? Jay Parkinson is co-founder of Hello Health and founding partner
in Future Well, a new design ļ¬rm architecting innoīations in
Empowerment is the best prevention. health and wellness.
42. ADVENTURE
Iāve been thinking about how big our world is and Adventure calls. Blaze a new trail. Cross a
how small-minded weāve become; how quick we continent. Dare to discover. Escape the routine.
are to judge and how slow to understand. Find a fresh perspective. Go slow; gaze
Technology places the resources of the world at absentmindedly and savor every moment. Have
our ļ¬ngertips, yet we have trouble seeing past the some fun! Invest now in future memories.
ends of our noses. Journeys are the midwives of thought; Keep a
journal. Leave prejudice and narrow mindedness
For every trend thereās a countertrend worth behind. Make for the horizon and meet new
considering. Resolve to leave the screens of your people. Navigate the unknown. Observe, and
virtual world momentarily behind, and indulge open your mind. Pursue a road less traveled.
your senses with a real world adventure. ī¶uest for truth. Rely on yourself. Sail away from
the safe harbor; Take a risk. Unleash your
St. Augustine said: āīe world is a book, and those curiosity. Venture further. Why wait? eXpect the
who donāt travel read only one page.ā My advice? unexpected. Say Yes to adventureā¦.journey with
Zeal!
Robyn Waters is an Ambassador of Trend, a Champion of Design,
and a Cheerleader of Possibilities.Ā Ā Sheās the author of Ā ī«e
Trendmasterās Guide.
43. DUMB
A long time ago, starting a company that made So, how do you tell a good dumb idea from a bad
soīware for computers was dumb. Microsoī and dumb one? Good dumb ideas create polarization.
Apple may beg to diļ¬er. A company that Some people will get it immediately and shower it
manufactures cars: dumb. Putting a college with praise and aļ¬ection. Others will say itās
yearbook online: dumb. Limiting updates to just ignorant and impossible and run for the hills. īe
140 characters: dumb. ļ¬ercer the polarization, the smarter your dumb
idea.
Hereās whatās easy: to recognize a really smart new
business concept as just that. Whatās hard is Of course, dumb can be just dumb. You just have
recognizing that the idea you think is just plain to be smart to tell the diļ¬erence.
dumb is really tomorrowās huge breakthrough.
But what makes dumb, smart? īe ability to look
at the world through a diļ¬erent lens from
everyone else. To ignore rules. To disregard the
āwhyāsā and āhowāsā and ānever-succeeded-beforesā.
īen you need conviction, and the ability to stand
by that conviction when other (smart) people look Dave Balter is a serial entrepreneur and most recently founder and
you in the eye and say, āno way, nuh uh.ā CEO of BzzAgent. Heās written two books, Grapevine: Why Buzz
Was a Fad but Word of Mouth is Forever and īe Word of
Mouth Manual: Volume II.
44. N O B O DY
Nobody has the answers. Nobody predicted the Iraq War would be a disaster.
Nobody is listening to you. Ā Nobody expected the levees to fail.
Nobody is looking out for your interests. Nobody warned that the housing bubble would collapse.
Nobody will lower your taxes. Nobody will reform Wall Street.
Nobody will ļ¬x the education system. Nobody will stand up for whatās right.
Nobody knows what he is doing in Washington. Nobody will be your voice.
Nobody will make us energy independent. Nobody will tell you what the others wonāt.
Nobody will cut government waste. Nobody has a handle on this.
Nobody will clean up the environment. Ā
Nobody will protect us against terrorist threats. Nobody, but you, that is.
Nobody will tell the truth. Ā
Nobody will avoid conļ¬icts of interest. Never forget, a small group of people can change the
Nobody will restore ethical behavior to the White House. world.
Nobody will get us out of Afghanistan. Ā
Nobody understands farm subsidies. No one else ever has.
Nobody will spend your tax dollars wisely.
Nobody feels your pain.
Nobody wants to give peace a chance.
Micah Siīy is co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum. He
tweets @mlsif.
45. ANALOG
Analog computing, once believed to be as extinct as correspondence to the underlying network of human
the diļ¬erential analyzer, has returned. relationships now drives those relationships, the same
way Googleās statistical approximation to meaningā
Digital computing can answer (almost) any question allowing answers to ļ¬nd the questions, rather than
that can be stated precisely in language that a the other way aroundāis now more a landscape than
computer can understand. īis leaves a vast range of a map.
real-world problemsāespecially ambiguous onesā
in the analog domain. In an age of all things digital, Pulse-frequency coding (where meaning is embodied
who dares mention analog by name? āWeb 2.0ā is our by the statistical properties of connections between
code word for the analog increasingly supervening memory locations) and template-based addressing
upon the digitalāreversing how digital logic was (where data structures are addressed by template
embodied by analog components, the ļ¬rst time rather than by precise numerical and temporal
around.Ā coordinates) are the means by which the analog will
proliferate upon the digital.Ā
Complex networksāof molecules, people, or ideas
āconstitute their own simplest behavioral Analog is back, and here to stay.
descriptions. īey are more easily approximated by
analogy than deļ¬ned by algorithmic code. Facebook,
for example, although running on digital computers,
constitutes an analog computer whose George Dyson is the author of Baidarka, Project Orion and
Darwin Among the Machines, as well as a recent short story,
āEngineersā Dreams.āĀ
47. THNX
āSocial mediaā facilitates direct engagement with In this world content creation becomes imperative,
consumers to an unprecedented level,Ā fundamentally the initial engagement.Ā When you are transparent
shiīing the concept of customer service.Ā Ā No one and engaging, the result is what I call the āthank youā
expected the CEO of Pepsi to ring their doorbell or economy.Ā I gave away information for freeāonline
call on their birthday. It wasnāt feasible. But now, the videos and keynotes with content similar to my
cost of interaction has plummeted. I can thank book.Ā Monetizing that scenario sounds diļ¬cult but
someone by texting āthnxā from my cell phone wasnāt.Ā People didnāt buy 1 book, they bought 4 or 5
between meetings, or hang out on Ustream copies as a thank you for what they had already
answering questions, or send an @ reply on Twitter. received.
All at minimal cost.
I believe the thank you economy will become the
Every CEO and business must recognize that norm in 2010 and beyond, and brands that fail to
customer service is now their primary business.Ā adjust will be leī out in the cold.
What was unreasonable becomes essential; the
empowerment of the individual consumer aļ¬ects
every brand.
Gary Vaynerchuk is the author of the New York Times bestselling
book, Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in on your
Passion.Ā He dispenses business advice on his personal blog.
48. ATTENTION
You can buy attention (advertising). via sales, and Zappos via earning attention on the
You can beg for attention from the media (public Web). Oīen, the deļ¬ning organizational culture is
relations). determined because the founder or the CEO has a
You can bug people one at a time to get attention strong point of view. When the CEO comes up
(sales). through the sales track, all attention problems are
likely to become sales problems.
Or you can earn attention by creating something
interesting and valuable and then publishing it Chances are that youāll have to work on your boss
online for free: a YouTube video, a blog, a research to get him or her on board with option four. Since
report, photos, a Twitter stream, an ebook, a most organizations overspend on advertising and
Facebook page. sales and underinvest in creating great information
online, this eļ¬ort is well worth your time.
Most organizations have a corporate culture based
on one of these approaches to generating attention
(examples: Procter & Gamble primarily generates
attention through advertising, Apple via PR, EMC
David Meerman Scott is author of ī«e New Rules of Marketing
and PR a BusinessWeek bestseller now published in 24 languages.
49. CONTEXT
When information is evaluated without contextāregardless whereby more data is faster ā much in the same way the last
of highly sophisticated analytics, an inļ¬nite amount of few pieces of the puzzle are as easy as the ļ¬rst few, despite the
compute, energy or time, little if any relevance can be fact there are more observations in front of you than ever
established with certainty. before.
When information is ļ¬rst placed into context with prior Information in context makes smart systems smarter. When
observations, relevance can be determined with basic applied to ļ¬nancial services, more fraud is stopped. When
algorithms and insigniļ¬cant amounts of compute power. applied to health care, patients live longer, and when applied
to transportation optimization, cities produce less carbon.
When each new observation builds on earlier observations,
context accumulates. Context accumulation improves Jeļ¬ Jonas, IBM Distinguished Engineer, Chief Scientist, IBM
accuracy over time and leads to an exciting phenomenon Entity Analytics. He has a blog. Two articles to check out:
Algorithms At Dead-End: Cannot Squeeze Knowledge Out Of A Pixel
Puzzling: How Observations Are Accumulated Into Context
50. CHANGE
A troubled teenager named Bobby was sent to see Now Murphy had a roadmap for change. He
his high-school counselor, John Murphy. Bobby advised Bobbyās other teachers to try these three
had been in trouble so many times that he was in techniques. And suddenly, Bobby started behaving
danger of being shipped oļ¬ to a special facility for better.
kids with behavioral problems.
Weāre wired to focus on whatās not working. But
Most counselors would have discussed Bobbyās Murphy asked, āWhat IS working, today, and how
problems with him, but Murphy didnāt. can we do more of it?ā
MURPHY: Bobby, are there classes where you donāt get in Youāre probably trying to change things at home or
trouble? at work. Stop agonizing about whatās not working.
BOBBY: I donāt get in trouble much in Ms. Smithās class.
Instead, ask yourself, āWhatās working well, right
now, and how can I do more of it?ā
MURPHY: Whatās diļ¬erent about Ms. Smithās class?
Chip and Dan Heath are the authors of Made to Stick and the
Soon Murphy had some concrete answers: 1. Ms. soon-to-be-released book Switch: How to Change ī«ings When
Smith greeted him at the door. 2. She checked to Change is Hard.
make sure he understood his assignments. 3. She
gave him easier work to complete. (His other
teachers did none of the three.)
51. PA S S I O N
Some people ask, āWhat if I havenāt found my If you ļ¬nd yourself glued to Photoshop,
true passion?ā playing around for hours,
dive in deeper. Maybe thatās your new calling.
Itās dangerous to think in terms of āpassionā
and āpurposeā because they sound like such If you keep thinking about putting on a
huge overwhelming ideas. conference or being a Hollywood screenwriter,
and you ļ¬nd the idea terriļ¬es but intrigues
If you think love needs to look like āRomeo you, itās probably a worthy endeavor for you.
and Julietā, youāll overlook a great relationship
that grows slowly. You grow (and thrive!) by doing what excites
you and what scares you everyday, not by
If you think you havenāt found your passion trying to ļ¬nd your passion.
yet, youāre probably expecting it to be
overwhelming.
Instead, just notice what excites you and what
scares you on a small moment-to-moment Derek Sivers is an entrepreneur and programmer. Ā Read sivers.org
level. and try muckwork.com
feel free to share this
52. Room to Read is doing important work. You can help. Click for details.
53. MAGNETIZE
Markets have been through a rough patch Itās all about getting the rules right. īe global
lately. But itās time for us to give them a new warming crisis, like the recent turmoil in the
job to do. īe powerful economic forces that ļ¬nancial system, shows why we need to design
have trashed our planet are the only forces markets well and regulate risks appropriately.
powerful enough to save it.
A worldwide carbon market will combat
So are we doing all we can to put markets to global warming by pulling inventors and
work to drive down global warming pollution investorsāand you and me and everyoneā
āthe most serious environmental problemā toward low-carbon energy solutions.
while thereās still time?
Markets can unleash peopleās creativity, guide
We need to magnetize ourselves. Markets, entrepreneurs and catalyze innovation. By
acting like a magnet, create a pull on people harnessing markets to protect the
and businesses. So when a market is designed environment, we can align human aspirations
to protect the environment, it attracts with planetary needsāand save ourselves
brainpower and capital toward green from ourselves.
solutions, aligning private incentives with the
Fred Krupp is president of Enīironmental Defense Fund and
public good. coauthor with Miriam Horn of Earth: īe Sequel, the New York
Times bestseller on low-carbon energy inīentions. Heās on Twitter.
54. CONFIDENCE.
Conļ¬dence is rocket fuel for your business 1. Feed Your Mind Good Stuļ¬
life. Conļ¬dent people have a come-this-way Stop reading negative information, listening to
charisma that generates a following. When negative people or watching cable network
you possess total conļ¬dence you are willing to news. You are loading up with fear. Replace
take risks. When you have it, you propel that information with studies about the future
yourself and your team forward into the or an improved you. Youāll soon emerge as a
future. solution provider instead of a Chicken Little.
Problem: Most people donāt cultivate 2. Exercise Your Gratitude Muscle
conļ¬dence ā it just lands on them due to Gratefulness is a muscle, not a feeling. You
favorable conditions. I call this spot need to work it out daily. Every morning, give
conļ¬dence. Good times make for conļ¬dent thanks to two people that helped you
people. Bad times crush them, along with yesterday and one person that will assist you
their daring point of view. today. īis will focus your mind on what you
have, and youāll soon realize you are not alone.
īe secret to unbreakable conļ¬dence is a
lifestyle of emotional/mental diet and exercise. Tim Sanders, author of Loīe Is ī«e Killer App: How To Win
Business & Inļ¬uence Friends. You can follow him on Twitter.
55. S L O W CAPITAL
Iāve spent almost twenty ļ¬ve years in the
capital markets watching investors behave. 3) Slow capital starts small and grows with the
Way too oīen it is a āwham bamā experience company as it grows
and then oļ¬ to the next deal. īings like
exploding oļ¬ers, āļ¬y byā board members, and 4) Slow capital has no set timetable for getting
shotgun marriages are so common that you liquid: slow capital is patient capital
sometimes wonder how anyone makes any
money. 5) Slow capital takes the time to understand
the company and the people who make it up
We need to embrace āslow capital.ā Ā
Here are some basic tenets of slow capital:
1) Slow capital doesnāt rush to conclusions
and doesnāt expect entrepreneurs to do so
either Fred Wilson is Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures. You
can read his blog and follow him on Twitter.
2) Slow capital ļ¬ows into a company based on
the companyās needs, not the investorās needs
56. OPEN-SOURCE DNA
If you visited my home today it is legal for me to slyly snatch Eventually, the cost of sequencing will be so cheap, that it will
an āabandonedā sample of DNA from you (from the lip of a become mandatory for certain purposes. For instance,
cup, a fallen hair, etc.), sequence it in full, and publish your thousands of eļ¬ective therapeutic medicines today cannot be
DNA online for the world to read. Of course I wouldnāt do sold because they induce toxic side eļ¬ects in some people.
that, but in April 2008, a seller on eBay peddled the remains Sometimes the sensitive will share a cluster of genes. If this
of Barak Obamaās restaurant breakfast claiming that āhis group can be excluded using gene testing, the otherwise
DNA is on the silverware.ā eļ¬ective medicine can be prescribed to the rest. Several drugs
on the market today already require genetic screening for this
But your DNA is not really yours. We know that 99.99% of purpose.
the code in your cells is also in mine. We are 99.99% identical.
īere are very few genes that are unique to you. Probably īere will surely be people who will not share any part of their
none. īe same can be said of our faces. But what our faces genome with anyone under any circumstances. īatās okay.
portray is the unique combination, or arrangement of very But great beneļ¬ts will accrue to those who are willing to share
common parts. Humans have an uncanny ability to their genome. By making their biological source code open, a
distinguish the less than .01% diļ¬erence among faces and person allows others to āworkā on their kernel, to mutually
declare them unique. So we talk about āourā face, even though ļ¬nd and remedy bugs, to share investigations into rare bits, to
we share most, if not all of it with others in our extended pool behavior results, to identify cohorts and ancestor codes.
family. To species outside of humans we probably look like Since 99.99% of the bits are shared, why not?
identical penguins.
It will become clear to those practicing open-source personal
īis means that just as computers make regulation of the press genomics that genes are not destiny; they are our common
and the control of copies impossible, computers embedded in wealth.
DNA-tricorder devices will make regulation of DNA
sequencing as impossible to control. Anyone will be able to Kevin Kelly has seen our future. He is inīolīed in the Long Now
sequence anything they want. Foundation and Wired Magazine. Kevin is the author of several
essential books and blogs.
57. TECHNOLOGY
For those of us who have a hand in building technology- Design for a humanist experience
based products, we oīen focus on achieving business- Technology has a reputation for making us feel stupid,
deļ¬ned success metrics without considering the impact of helpless, less human. Designing technology for a humanist
what we donāt (or canāt) measure. Here are some notable experience changes that. Take Kacie Kinzerās innovative
themes in technology to reļ¬ect upon the consequences of Tweenbotsārobots that require human intervention in
what weāre creating when we design. order to reach their goal. Or Foursquareāa location-based
application for discovering places and socializing with your
Legacy friends in physical space. Instead of simply using
āLegacyā used to mean the stuļ¬ of legend. Nowadays, in technology to supplant us for the things weāre not so good
technology, itās the outdated stuļ¬ that no one wants to at, humanist design lets us do what we do best: It lets
inherit or support. Not too long ago, we designed for humans be human. Itās a great reminder that, when
disposability, planned obsolescence, and cost reduction by designed thoughtfully, our experiences with technology
all means necessary. Now, we have garbage dumps piled donāt need to be wholly outsourced to the point where we
high with the unwanted and unsafe consequence of lose our sense of being.Ā
products that donāt degrade and were born out of caprice.
Good design always stems from an understanding of the
context youāre designing forāwe just need to acknowledge
that our contextual accountability extends beyond whatās
explicitly deļ¬ned for us in a spec. As technology makes it
cheap and easy to release products simply to see what
happens, itās important to remember that the rest of the
world shouldnāt be expected to inherit and clean up
Phoebe Espiritu is a design problem-solīer with a masterās īom
someone elseās shortsighted spec.Ā
NYUās Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP.) Sheās
working on fund raising for ITPās Red Burns Scholarship FundĀ
58. EXPERTISE
Expertise is typically over-rated. Sometimes you Ignorance can be an advantage, and feedback an
have to rely on feedback to grow. incredibly useful tool. It allows you to share the
journey, which helps make writing accessible to
My ļ¬rst SEO website had a serious error which beginners. And it allows you the courage to do
earned me a chastising email, which at that the things you would not do if you waited until you
time didnāt feel so good. I responded to his email already knew everything, especially because as you
and ļ¬xed the error and today, the sender does not learn more, you learn how much you donāt know.Ā
remember writing that email and has a big
promotion for my site on his website.Ā
If you care and are receptive to feedback
appropriately, eventually the market will help sort
things out for you. People will come across your
work and suggest helpful tools and ideas. Some
will be rude, some will be condescending, and
some will be generous and kind.
But if you keep everything in your head then you
canāt expect anyone else to appreciate your genius
or trust your knowledge - they donāt know it exists. Aaron Wall writes SEO Book, a website about the ever-changing
world of search. He is also authoring a book by the same name.
59. FA S C I N AT I O N
Why, exactly, do humans smile? īe answer: Bigger animals have bigger mouths, and
therefore lower vocal vibrations, which conveys
īis question puzzled anthropologists for hundreds of dominance. Smaller animals have smaller mouth cavities,
years. and their higher voices communicate friendliness or
submission. Itās why a Rottweilerās growl is more
īe smile is instinctive, one of a thousand fascination cues threatening than a Pomeranianās.*
we use to persuade others to connect with us. Yet from an
evolutionary perspective, the smile makes no sense. When humans smile, we pull our cheek ļ¬esh back against
our teeth, which makes our mouth cavity smaller, and
In the animal kingdom, retracting the mouth corners and raises the pitch of our voice. Presto, we sound friendlier
baring teeth is a sign of aggression. Yet in humans, this essentially turning ourselves from a big animal into a
same gesture signals openness. smaller one. Smiling, anthropologists realized, began as a
way to sound less threatening then evolved into a way to
{So why are humans diļ¬erent?} look more approachable.
īe next time you become captivated by a person (or a
brand or idea), without even realizing it, youāre most likely
* Humans have a hardwired connection between pitch of under the inļ¬uence of the fascination triggers.
voice and facial expression. A simple experiment: Sing the
highest note that youāre capable of, and notice how you
raise your chin and eyebrows (almost like youāre cooing to
a baby). Then, sing the lowest note. See how your chin and Sally HogsheadĀ is a speaker, brand consultant, and author of the
eyebrows lower, in a more aggressive expression? upcoming book,Ā FASCINATE: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion
and Captivation. ī«e seven fascination triggers are: power, lust,
mystique, prestige, alarm, vice, and trust.
60. DIFFERENCE
For 2,500 years in the West, weāve tried to settle īe hyperlinked worldāthe Webāis made for
matters, because thatās what it meant to know this way of networked knowing. A hyperlinked
something. Hyperlinks have revealed that thatās world includes all diļ¬erences and disagreements,
really just a result of using paper to codify and connects them to one another. We are all
knowledge: Books settle matters because theyāre smarter for having these diļ¬erences only a click
self-contained, fundamentally disconnected from away. īe challenge now is to learn how to
other books, written by a relative handful of evaluate, incorporate, respect, and learn from
people, and impossible to change aīer they are them. If we listen only to those who are like us, we
printed. So, our basic strategy for knowing has will squander the great opportunity before us: To
been to resolve diļ¬erences and move on: īereās live together peacefully in a world of unresolved
only one right answer, and once itās known, we diļ¬erences.
write it down, and go on to the next question.
īat works ļ¬ne for a small class of factual
information. But, much of what we want to
understand is too big, complex, and arguable to David Weinberger is a Senior Researcher at the Harvard
ever be settled. Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He blogs at Johotheblog.
61. WORLD-HEALERS
All traditional cultures recognize certain people as If you feel something stirring in your heart at the
natural-born mystical healers (shamans, medicine thought that you may be shaman-born, pay
men, pick your label).Ā Ā Modern Western culture attention.Ā Ā īis is not an accident.Ā Ā Some as-yet
has no category for such people.Ā Ā But that doesnāt unexplained force is calling you join in a healing of
mean they arenāt here.Ā Ā Right now, everywhere, unprecedented scope.Ā Ā And though that healing
ordinary people born to the archetype of the will, of course, follow the laws of science, doing it
shaman are feeling compelled to begin ļ¬nding one will feel like pure magic.Ā
another and fulļ¬lling their inborn purpose.Ā
īe great challenge of the 21stĀ century is to wage
peace on a globe full of humans while repairing the
unintended damage weāve inļ¬icted on ourselves,
other beings, and the earth.Ā Ā We need modern
shamans to channel ancient ātechnologies of
magicā like empathy, creativity, art, and spiritual
interconnection, through āmagical technologiesā
like medicine, computers, and satellites.Ā Ā īat Martha Beck, Ph.D., is a coach, writer, and columnist for O, the
marriage of ancient and cutting-edge genius can Oprah Magazine.
heal hearts, minds, beasts, plants, ecosystemsā
almost anything.Ā
62. SACRIFICE
A winning business understands that to gain a customer Costco wins customers by losing customers. Its
it must ļ¬rst be willing to lose a customer. membership model shuns consumers not willing to pay
the yearly membership fee. Its broad but shallow
Unfortunately, weāve been conditioned to do whatever merchandise mix turns oļ¬ consumers wanting more
it takes to not lose a customer. To always say YES to choices. Costco makes deliberate sacriļ¬ces because its
customers. To always kowtow to the whims of customers will also make deliberate sacriļ¬ces in
customers. īatās unfortunate because winning exchange for lower prices.
companies are willing to sacriļ¬ce losing customers to
win customers. Winning businesses have a common trait, an obvious
and divisive point of view. Losing businesses also have a
American Apparel wins customers by losing customers. common trait, a boring personality alienating no one
Its provocative advertising and strong stance on political and thus, sparking passion from no one.
issues oļ¬ends some consumers. American Apparel
sacriļ¬ces appealing to everybody to only appeal to select Is your business designed to be a winning business? Is
somebodies who appreciate the brandās unique your business willing to sacriļ¬ce losing customers to
personality. win customers?
John Moore is a marketingologist; he operates the Brand Autopsy
Marketing Practice.
63. FOCUS
āFocus. Most important.ā īatās what Mr. Miyagi said. In seeing the pixels that make the picture, focus can
become a form of inquiry. We notice things we missed.
For Daniel-san, his attention was scattered. īoughts of New connections appear. īe questions change.
moving to Fresno consumed him and his sensei was Meanings change. When we focus, the answer is always
teaching a simple lesson in self-control.Ā something new.
In business, too, we struggle to obtain focus. More is Be present, the Zen Buddhists say. īis is what Mr.
better, seems the implied message.Ā OurĀ instinctĀ nudges Miyagi was saying too.
us toward a scattershot approach, because we fear
missing an untried path. Like the Karate Kid, we need
to practice our own self-control.
Many mentors beyond Miyagi have advised us on the
beneļ¬ts of focus. Jim Collins tells us to be a hedgehog
and ļ¬nd our singular purpose. Al Ries and Jack Trout
have always said to position yourself to own one word.
Chris Zook even quantiļ¬es the rewards of focus,
showing that the top company in any industry captures Todd Sattersten is an author and speaker who blogs at
70 percent of proļ¬ts. toddsattersten.com.
64. LEAP
I always start my ļ¬ction-writing classes by Show donāt tell. To write ļ¬ction and to have
telling my students this: āshow donāt tell.ā It faith is to take an imaginative leap.
is the classic rule of writing, to use details, to
engage all the senses of the reader by And because life is always full of doubts and
āshowing.ā In this way, ļ¬ction is like faith. To fears, to act is to take that leap.
believe in something is oīen to be unable to
talk about satisfactorily but you can show So leap.
the manifestations of that belief in your life.
īis, I think, is also a good way of looking at
our lives, in general.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of Half of a Yellow
Sun.
65. WOMEN
We live in a world that is owned by men, designed If youāre a man running a business, and if the
by men and managed by men, and yet we expect power and inļ¬uence females wield hasnāt
women to participate. completely registered on your radar, well, then,
what weāve got here is a failure to communicate.
But did you know ā¦
If your store, restaurant, bank, hotel lobby, mall, or
1. Women dominate higher education. Most other public space or amenity doesnāt acknowledge
college and university campuses across North the female factor; if it doesnāt invite women in and
America are 60-40 female. make them feel at home, at ease, safe, hygienic,
respected and in control, if it doesnāt take into
2. Approximately 70% of all American females account what women want and expect (which is
work outside the home, and women make up diļ¬erent from what men want and expect), well,
nearly 50% of the total workforce. then, itās bad business.
3. During the recent recession, 82% of job losses
befell men, and mothers are the major Paco Underhill is the CEO of Enīirosell and the author of Why
breadwinners in 40% of American families. We Buy and soon to be published What Women Want.
4. īe earning power of women globally is
expected to reach $18 trillion by 2014
