A Warrior’s search for Synchronicity

Stream 1 is where the exchanges are straightforward. There are fixed charges, transparent actions and everyone knows how to get it done provided you are willing to pay for it.

Stream 2 is where, only people with the right contacts can get things done. There are no fixed charges or rules. For those who know it is an easy game. Those who don’t know, need to find some one who knows to get things done even if you are willing to pay for it.

For some, stream 1 is main stream and for others, stream 2 is mainstream.

The ease to thrive in both streams depends what you have groomed yourself for. The rules of the game, tactics and skills required are very different. What many people see as a safe bet is to groom yourself in both streams so that you are well-equipped for both scenarios.

Each of us has an inclination for one stream over the other and that becomes the determining factor of our personality.

People who associate themselves more with stream 1 are more self-centered, see a beeline for actions to be accomplished and go about doing it. They often hit roadblocks, use force, get frustrated, curses, wish things were simple.

People who associate themselves with stream 2 builds their network of actions through different relations and multisided interactions. For them, there are no beelines, there are no wasted interactions. There are only learnings of human nature and niches to be exploited.

However there is a stream 3. They are highly networked and that is all they have got. (courtesy gapingvoid.com)

In Life Inc. How the world became a corporation and how to take it back, Douglas Rushkoff discusses two types of money. One is issued by the Central Bank and the other peoples exchange of services. (like if you baby sit my child I will cut your hair). If you think deep the latter system is more real, the services are more defined and the value goes from end user to end user. It does not go through an intermediary and become taxable or measurable or exploitable by a third party and the token used for the exchange is not a piece of paper or metal produced by a bank, but mutual trust. This kind of exchange questions the very existence of corporations which are outsourced entities for catering to people’s needs on the periphery but really are institutions to strip people out of their ingenuity and use their creativity in a more structured way so that the products could be mass marketed and profits made by few. This structure enables the money to get accumulated to the 10% of worlds’ population.

In all probabilities you might be working for one of these corporations and the skill sets you have cultivated is to thrive in such a corporate environment. You cannot just walk out and expect to learn everything that the other system demands and take life as it comes and it would not help either, because corporations would continue to rule the world. So the question is how can you change this inside out? Bring more humanity and over all well being as a culture into these profit motivated vehicles (like Mohammad Yunus puts it)?

The answer is in creating and expanding your brand value to the place you work. There is no easy way to get there. There is no sure shot method either. It is all about looking around and seeing how other people achieved it (George Lucas, Steve Jobs) and building brand building plan or activity into your everyday existence and overall strategy. (of course based on your strengths)

I am trying to get in grips with the world of online search, landing page relevance, search engine optimization, homographs, cloaking, organic search, paid search etc. It is not an easy task to understand an alien world, however this well-written book really gives an in depth view of this world (I chose to read this because I saw this on Soledad Guarch‘s wishlist on LinkedIn. The book has a step by step guide to mastering Search Engine Optimization and thus achieving your goals and it has all the worksheets and tools filed on http://www.yourseoplan.com/.

Any book by Seth Godin is a treat and Meatball Sundae is no exception. It is about permission marketing, engaging customers in conversations, listening to them, being available to be emailed or phoned by them, it is about redesigning your business to suit the new marketing trends, choices available to customers and not interrupting them to market, but joining them in what they do, and being discreet and polite . Still most of the big organizations or CEOs have not started opening up their inbox to customers or listening to what they say in their blogs or twitters, the most valuable source of market research. Still many have not woken up to the reality of the unlimited choices available to any one now as the new inventory seldom compete for shelf space. Many organizations still have not tapped the power of ‘real conversations’ for they do not allow any one other than their marketing or sales people to talk to their customers, what about the other large pool of people who will be part of a network, why not do away with the limitations of typical marketing talk, and start listening into the conversations, holding conversations, building rapport, building relationships and at a very later stage, if you truly believe what you sell is the right fit for your customer, then recommending it.

Watch how Blendtec market their product and blend it with Meatball Sundae

This book emphasizes the understanding that customer is the real CEO or boss. Innovation at P & G realized and executed this paradigm shift in 2000 which made a dramatic change. P & G executives ‘Lived it, worked it’ with their customers understanding their needs, searching for the unspoken moments of truth and embedded them into their products.

A great read for those who wish to make innovation a religion in their personal and professional lives

Have you heard these terms before, intriguing aren’t they. Well, if you are interested April 12 edition of economist has a special report on mobility. This report goes in detail about companies which feels no need for any physical office, increasing use of ‘Starbucks’ premises as meeting rooms, increasing dependency of children on parents due to mobile phones, how digital messaging services affects languages (linguistic whateverism) and declining grammar & spelling , your mobile phone becoming a gps, planner and synchronizing device which can arrange for a friend in the same building and you to share a taxi and birth of a new species homo mobilis .——A special report of mobility

Dan Pink’s new career guide – mango style comic book is a dart in the bulls eye

Everyone in their career hit road blocks, there are moments of self – reinvention, difficult choices and predicament. The most appealing advice that I got from Dan Pink is that “most successful people make decisions for fundamental reasons. They take a job or join a company because it will let them do interesting work in a cool place–even if they don’t know where it will lead.”

Any job should be mutually fulfilling. Your skills ( which you know about and you do not) should benefit the organization ( both within and outside your job description) and the climate & culture of the organization should enhance your being. It is not about being at the right place at the right time, but about seeing the unseen, hearing the unspoken and delivering the unexpected; redefining your role continuously so that you never get tired doing the same job repeatedly.

The first time I took ‘Wisdom of crowds’ to read, I didn’t get too far. However now after reading ‘Wikinomics’, ‘Free Agent Nation’ and understanding the benefits of mass collaboration it was a natural progression into more depth about the science and reasons about why crowds are more intelligent than specialists. Being a specialist myself, I find it difficult to get to grips with this idea, however when I know something as ubiquitous as ‘google’ which has used crowd wisdom effectively in their search engines, I have no choice but to agree. However asking the crowds is different from asking your friends. Yet at which point do you chose between specialists and crowds.

Seth Godin’s Big Moo is a collection of ideas by various thinkers like Tom Peters, Malcom Gladwell, Guy Kawasaki written in a novel way without identifying which part belong to whom, so that readers do not have to shift gears in their brain. Evey penny earned from this book goes to charity and I must say there are many gems in here. On top of that read 10 chapters free -http://www.sethgodin.com/bigmoo/

Just started on Chris Andersons Long Tail. The amazing tale of endless inventory, which takes no shelf space and has transformed the 80/20 principle to 98/2 principle that is 98 percent of the sale comes from the not so known titles. Check it out. Amazing research and iconoclastic view of the world.

Excellence can be obtained if you:

…care more than others think is wise;

…risk more than others think is safe;

…dream more than others think is practical;

…expect more than others think is possible.

Source Anon

“To me business is not about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials. ” Richard Branson