Ho‘ohana Aloha

Liz Danzico and Frank Chimero have me thinking about noticing, and about my own observations (and what I do with them) when I do:

From Liz: The Beagle and the F Train

From Frank: Stand Clear of the Closing Doors

Please take the clicks to read both Tumblrs (they aren’t too long) and come back (to Talking Story).

Did you know…

Napoleon wrote that the reason he beat the Austrians was that they did not know the value of five minutes.

It took Lincoln less than five minutes to deliver his immortal Gettysburg Address.

It took William Jennings Bryan less than five minutes to electrify a great political convention with but a single expression that gave him the nomination for the presidency of the United States. (George Matthew Adams)

Now imagine if you were to “take five minutes” just once every day… The Daily Five Minutes

This interview on Inc. is proving meal-worthy:

The Idea Hunter sounds like a book which will affirm many of the talk stories we have had about valuing ideas and collective thinking [most recently: Brainstorming 2.0: Making Ideas That Really Happen]:

Great leaders are great idea hunters. They bring ideas into an organization. They bring ideas into a team. They move things forward through the power of ideas, not through their intellect or their genius. It was really about their ability to go around the world and find ideas, repurpose those ideas, and create something brand-new.
~ Andy Boynton

We started with the belief that habits and behaviors are more important than sheer brain power, that it’s not the brightest who perform the best, but it’s people who have figured out how to really prosper in an idea-rich society. What we realized was that they were not only good at getting ideas, but they were really good at infecting other people with their ideas, spreading those ideas through an organization.
~ Bill Fischer

I like their I-D-E-A acronym. It reminds us that the habitual work rhythms we set are so important — in this case, with getting ideas to result in innovation.

You gotta be Interested and curious; you have to have a Diverse set of sources; you have to do it Every day, it’s not something you can just do episodically or periodically; and you need to be Agile.
~ Andy Boynton

For me, their research and resulting thesis also gives more affirmation to the wisdom of The Daily Five Minutes, and the benefits we gain from it:

if you’re really interested in what other people have to say, they’re more likely to tell you, and if they’re more likely to tell you, you’re going to hear more ideas. At IMD, our doors are glass, and the reason the doors are glass is because it’s more welcoming. It gives you a higher probability of having a conversation where you’ll learn something. Innovation is all about conversations. The basic building block of knowledge work is about conversations.
~ Bill Fischer

This destroys the myth that innovation is about genius. It empowers and should motivate everyone to realize the ideas are out there to get, absolutely for free, if only you can find them. In a way, it’s liberating that we can all become great idea hunters and we can all make a difference in what we’re trying to do. Whatever our goals are, whatever our objectives are, whatever our gig is, the ideas are there to be found. Becoming a great idea hunter is learnable, it’s repeatable, and it’s something you can work on every day.
~ Andy Boynton

Do click in and read the entire interview. Boynton makes a great point about productivity, and making the space in our day so it can happen smartly, and Fischer comments on competition with a view very much in alignment with the value of Kūlia I ka nu‘u in Managing with Aloha.

They aren’t “a project.”

I must start this posting by saying that I greatly admire the gentleman I’m going to quote shortly. I’ve read all his books, and have implemented several of the suggestions he makes within his expertise of GTD productivity, blogging about them extensively in past years. However this beginning to his recent newsletter sent up such a red flag with me:

I’ve got some help for David Allen.

‘Chunking work’ into projects can be a good idea ~like when you do your income taxes. But you can’t chunk your people.

I have a lot on my blog about The Daily Five Minutes, and I’ve come to know that the people who enjoy those articles most, bookmarking resources and printing them, are those who are already doing it. Now they’re tweaking their practice, mixing it up and having fun with it: They’re ‘zooming’ as Seth Godin calls it (in Survival is Not Enough, Zooming, Evolution, and the Future of Your Company - an older book for him, yet I strongly recommend it.)

My toughest coaching challenge are those who, if they were 100% honest with me, would simply admit, “I just don’t want to do it, and I can’t get over that hurdle of resistance.” Or as someone told me yesterday, conversation “is a pain.”

You don’t have to admit that to me, but do yourself a favor and strip away all the excuses and justifications, and admit it to yourself.

Read more here.