In a small twist, I’d like to take this anecdote and actually put it to use.

Anecdotes are recommended to presenters (including pastors) to help break the ice, bring comic relief and engage the audience. The problem is when the anecdote doesn’t relate to the message. Even if you’re not a presenter, this is relevant to you.

What is the TRUTH about your company’s story, your family’s story, your story?

If you ask this of your colleagues, your employees and your customers, will you get mostly the same story or greatly varying answers?

Why would they vary? Because everyone has their own personal experience. We possess our own anecdotal evidence to support our perceptions about most everything. And this personal story IS our truth. Unfortunately, we may be telling a story that doesn’t connect with what people experience. Like the case of the pastor’s sermon, the anecdote and the message don’t relate.

The idea of telling a consistent story isn’t new. Not even close, but are you paying attention to the anecdotes you are creating? Every interaction with someone else is an opportunity to frame the story they tell. If others all start telling the same basic story, then you may reach a (tipping) point where people who haven’t interacted with you directly are helping tell your story. We could call this Critical Anecdotal Mass.

It isn’t about manipulation or distortion of the truth. It’s about being authentic, but intentional. They are stories about Apple’s hyper-controlled design standards, the brilliant generosity of Tom’s Shoes or the affordable build-it-yourself eurostyle of IKEA.

So, let’s put down the futon anecdote, step away slowly and start telling the stories that matter.

The world continues to move at ever-increasing speed. Twitter is not going to slow down for you to catch your breath.

Not only is work filling your day, but so are non-profits. Even consumer marketing seems to be vying for your time (“Visit our website.” “Fill out this survey.” “Engage in these conversations.”) instead of directly reaching for your billfold.

We’re all busy. It isn’t going to change anytime soon. If I could visualize this phenomenon, it would look like a monstrous fitness center with people on treadmills. So many treadmills you can’t see the end of it.

What can you do? If we’re all stuffing our lives this way, how do you do anything that gets noticed? How do you define success in a line-up of people all running in the same direction, yet going nowhere?

Margin.

On a sheet of standard notebook paper, there are a few inches of space reserved along the edges where the writer doesn’t write. I remember my elementary teacher guiding us, “Write your name in the margin.” If that space were not preserved for our names, it would have been much more difficult to discern which paper belonged to which student.

It is the same in our lives today. Sure there are going to be meetings to attend, traffic jams, paper jams, invoices to create, bills to pay, meetings to attend, paperwork to fill, inboxes to empty, dinner to make, dishes to clean and meetings to attend (let’s not get carried away). But there must be space reserved along the edges of life. This is where we can leave our unique signature.

What are you doing with your margins? Are you filling them up with other’s “stuff?” Are you letting others into your margins and giving them what should be your space? Or are you writing your name? Your way. Your signature.

Create the space to be uniquely you and claim your masterpiece.

We’ve talked about the difficulty in discerning your unique, personal brand.

Here’s an exercise that can help you see a snapshot of your life and/or career, and ultimately help you define the ‘Brand Called You’ (ala Tom Peters).

Post-It Note Timeline

First, you’ll need three colors of Post-It Notes. In this example, we’ll be using

Yellow

Red

and Blue

And you’ll also need a sheet of poster board. 11 x 17 inches is a good size, but you can make it smaller or larger depending on how much information you want on the board.

Step 1: Brain Dump

The first step is to write significant events from your life (or career) onto the yellow post-it notes. Don’t worry about following a pattern or order. We’ll deal with that next.

Step 2: Order

Now you should have a group of significant events to work with. Place your post-it notes on the poster board. Take time to add events, filter out irrelevant events, and/or put items into chronological order. You may start to see patterns emerge or related events in a grouping or repeated cycles throughout many years.

If you see ‘chapters’ emerging in your life, you may group those together into the same column or stop a column when a chapter ends.

Step 3: Seeing Red

Take anything that has negative connotations and transcribe it to a red post-it note.

Replace the yellow note on your board. Now you may notice periods which were difficult in your life. You may also notice how these negative events affected the events that followed (even beneficially at times).

Step 4: Lessons Learned

Now, look at each chapter of your life/career. Try and discern what overriding lesson you learned in that time. Write a summary or title of that lesson on a blue post-it note.

Then place the blue post-it notes below each chapter in your timeline.

Step 5: Share It

The final step is to share your story with others. If you’re married, you might try it on your spouse first. Otherwise, share it with a close friend or relative. They’ll be pretty honest with you about what they found interesting or what you left out (or should leave out next time).

The more you share your story with others, the more comfortable you will be sharing your life experiences and lessons with people.

In the end though, you should be able to see what events have shaped your life… helping you see your personal brand. One that is unique and incredible. Just like you.

Thanks to Dave Jewitt at Your One Degree for sending me this process.

Boldly be yourself!

… chasing friends while playing tag.
… chasing your pet dog as he was running away with the chew toy.
… chasing your dad around the house, eventually falling in a heap on the couch and ending in a tickle fight.

At some point, many of us grow out of chasing and sign up for the (rat)race instead. We…

… race to a job before others can beat us to it.
… race against our peers to get the better car, bigger house and “perfect family.”
… race against time to try and find significance before it passes us by.

Simply running a race lacks passion. What can you do to rediscover yours? Maybe you just forgot what you were chasing. Maybe you need to know your red rubber ball. “Discover your passion and chase it for a lifetime.” As Kevin Carroll says.

Before you can do that though, ask yourself the question. “Am I just running? Or am I chasing something?”

That’s a good (even if it’s scary) place to start.

Occasionally, she called upon us parents for volunteers to read or give answers.

I was stunned by the silence and awkward glances downward.

The teacher shared her observation that her students were much more eager to participate than their parents.

It gave me pause to wonder – why were we so hesitant to speak up, give answers… hesitant to take even the smallest risk?  Much has been said of our fear of failure, but failure was not the deciding factor here.  It’s not like our success would be dictated by how well we read “See Jane run.”

How come parents paused when our children would have eagerly spoken up?

I think somewhere between 3rd grade and our 3rd year of college, we have been beaten, chiseled, hardened and restrained by perpetual criticism.  We’re a cynical society.  We make snide remarks all the time about someone’s speech impediment, religious affiliation, choice of wardrobe or choice of friends.  The constant wear has made us paranoid… even as adults.

It’s obvious in politics.  Candidates like McCain, Palin, Obama and Biden know the very words they speak will be used in an attempt to hang them later.  But should they let the critics dictate their speeches, let alone their policies?

How about you?  Are you paranoid because of living among critics?  And how much power do you give them over your life?

More on this from Seth.

Do you feel privileged?

Do your employees or colleagues?

After reading this, ask yourself:

Am I willing to sacrifice in order to have time to be the best?

What do I need to sacrifice?

What do I believe should NOT be sacrificed?

I’ve known about this for a while and yet I’ve only watched one presentation video.

If these speakers were making appearances here in Tulsa, I’d be paying to go see them. Yet, I find it hard to give up the time and effort to watch them for free online.

Why is that? It’s the same info.

But it’s a different forum.

Part of the appeal in attending a live presentation is knowing you will be surrounded by like-minded individuals. There’s a collective sense of belonging. There’s also the opportunity to connect with other attendees and expand the knowledge gained from the speaker. To tap into the wisdom of crowds.

MIT’s online forum doesn’t facilitate that. Actually, I’ve never seen an online forum that does this as well as a live, personal event.

Online
It may never equal the live presentation, but what if viewers could comment on these vidoes? Rank them? Rate them? What if there was a schedule of weekly chat sessions based on particular videos? How about a subscription-based email list specific to those who have watched specific presentations? Notify me by email when a similar presentation is uploaded and available.
Live
What if live presentations used the pre-registration process as an opportunity to connect attendees with similar interests? Then you give them the ability to contact each other and create a post-presentation discussion group for bloggers, educators, students, managers or small business owners… etc.

I think there’s incredible, untapped value here… and it doesn’t just apply to presentations either.

In his popular ’06 TED talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes an inspiring, and entertaining, argument that we are educating the creativity out of our children.

It’s not hard to see how corporations are on creativity killing sprees as well.

Here are the top 10 signs you’re killing creativity:

1. You Preach ‘Safety First’
If you are always opting for the safest decision, you’ll never approve the truly creative ideas. Creativity almost always includes risk. Eliminate risk and you eliminate creativity.

2. You Lease Decisions Instead of Selling Them
Employees must own their decisions, but if they have no real authority then they will only do as told. They fear returning the car with any scratches or dents, because it’s not theirs. Once again, fear rears its ugly head. You squelch the creativity of your employees by not giving them ownership (see Mike Wagner for more on the benefits of ownership).

3. You Relentlessly Pursue Efficiency
Sorry, but the creative solution is not always the most efficient. It hardly ever is. Why? Because creativity requires experimentation. Experimentation requires you to try something that may fail.

4. No Rest for the Weary
Is ‘downtime’ a dirty word in your office? If people are always busy with tasks, when do they have time to be creative? They never have time to question whether or not this is the best way to do their job. Maybe that’s the way you like it though (tsk, tsk).

5. You Expect Perfection
Do you reward risk or results? I’m not saying you should create a daredevil mentality in your workers, but what if you rewarded small risks? Many times they won’t entertain creative solutions because they’re unsure of the results. Encourage them to try something different even if it isn’t ‘perfect’.

6. You Protect the Status Quo
Do you find yourself saying “That’s not how we do things.”? Now envision Dirty Harry holding his 44 Magnum up to your face. That’s how your employee sees you. “I know you feel creative, but you have to ask yourself one question, ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you!?!”

7. You Settle for the First ‘Good’ Idea
People naturally gravitate toward the path of least resistance. Creativity fights through the resistance to find the truly brilliant ideas on the other side.

8. Creative License = Business Card
Some people have no creative latitude because of their title. Is the word “executive” on your business card? No? Don’t bother trying to be creative then. Ironically, those with a license to be creative end up being the least likely to do so.

9. You Give Short Answers to Deep Questions
Someone asks, “Why do I need authorization from Joe in order to give a refund?” The short answer would justify the procedure because of inventory control or quality management. But responses like this invalidate the opinion behind the question. Instead of a short answer, try responding with another question. “Is this causing issues? Do you have an idea of how we can improve our process?” You may be surprised how many good, creative solutions come from the front lines.

10. Fill in the Blank_________________.
I don’t know all the signs and I don’t want to kill YOUR creativity. Maybe you have an idea that belongs on this list. Feel free to share it.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Books

I read quite a few books.  I enjoy reading.  But at the end of many books, I feel like I could do more to retain and/or apply what I’ve read.

Maybe you have other pointers or ideas for the optimal book reading experience.  Feel free to share.