Also from Linchpin, Godin illustrates the “hierarchy of value.” It’s done visually in a way that won’t replicate well in the same way here, but the levels are:
He notes:”Lots of people can lift. That’s not paying off anymore. A few people can sell. Almost no one puts in the work to create or invent. Up to you.”
Glenn Brooke has a good review of Seth Godin’s latest book Linchpin.
This is a helpful, short video on the top 5 business writing blunders. (Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be a way to embed it.)
Negativity is all a matter of perspective. Negative people can make any situation, no matter how great, seem like the end of the world. And positive people can make any situation, no matter how bad, seem great.
Mark Sanborn illustrates this well with a common story in his book You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Leader: How Anyone, Anywhere, Can Make a Positive Difference:
An old favorite joke of mine illustrates the positive attitude of a person who takes responsibility for his or her life, even in those circumstances they don’t completely control.
Twin boys were born to two happy parents. But as the children grew, the parents noticed a dramatic difference in the outlook each had on life.
One boy was completely negative. His perspective was consistently one of gloom and doom. No matter what happened, he was downhearted. He was able to find a rain cloud in the sunniest sky.
The other boy was buoyant and looked at everything positively. No matter what happened, he could find the silver lining in the darkest cloud.
The parents began to worry that each child had a problem. So one Christmas they attempted a bold experiment to try to change their son’s dispositions.
For the boy with the negative attitude, they bought the most wonderful gifts: a new bike, a train set, board games, and other fun diversions.
To the boy with the positive attitude, they gave a pile of horse manure.
On Christmas morning, the boy who was negative was led into a room containing all his wonderful gifts. But rather than being delighted, he complained, “The bike will become dirty and scratched the first time I ride it, and the other toys will break or wear out.”
Their other son, upon seeing the pile of manure, shocked his parents by instantly shouting in glee.
“Why are you so excited?” they exclaimed.
He replied, “With all this manure, there’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”
My point? When something bad happens, the challenge is to search for the pony, not with the naive enthusiasm of the boy in the story but with the informed optimism of a leader.
And, of course, this is biblical:
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Edward Tufte’s The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within is a fantastic — and humorous — article on the abuse of PowerPoint. I highly recommend checking it out.
In it he talks about how PowerPoint is commonly misused, how to use PowerPoint right, how to avoid the boring use of bullet points, and how bad PowerPoint deserves part of the blame for the Challenger space shuttle disaster back in 1985.
The one problem is that the article is not available online for free. However, an abbreviated version called PowerPoint is Evil appeared in Wired a few years ago. It’s worth checking out; and if you’re interested, you can obtain the entire article at Amazon.
A good word from Tom Peters:
(How does this harmonize with my linking last week to Penelope Trunk’s post on not making a big deal out of typos on blogs? Peters is addressing a larger and more macro issue — he’s not talking about typos. However, eliminating typos would be a sub-set, for sure, of good writing.
Further, Trunk wasn’t saying that lots of typos are good or that we shouldn’t care about them at all; her point in general was that in the medium of blogging and the press for time that comes from it being avocational for most, an occasional typo isn’t such a big deal.)
HT: BNET
From a recent book by Harvard Business Press:
The conclusion [in a presentation] should not summarize your arguments; rather, it should appeal to the audience for its understanding, its action, and its approval — whatever it is you want the audience to do or think.
So don’t fall into the trap of telling your audience what you’ve already said. Summing it up is a surefire way to kill any enthusiasm your presentation may have generated. So forget about a summary; instead, tell your audience what it should think or do.
Fast Company has an excerpt from Chip and Dan Heath’s upcoming book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.