Social Networks: The Pre-requisites
September 18, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
Businesses of all sizes and industries, from solo firms to large corporations, are becoming increasingly interested in using social networks, both internally and externally, to build collaborative and conversational communities.
When I talk to owners, managers and executives about their approach and expectations, I often hear answers that combine elements of Web site initiatives and marketing campaigns. But social networks are about sharing and relationship building. A traditional approach will likely fail.
What I usually don’t hear is a deep understanding of why social networks make sense for them and how social networks are related to shifts in control of markets, knowledge, media and technology. Unlike pre-Web 2.0 online marketing, branding, communications and e-commerce, social networks initiatives bear little resemblance to traditional business and marketing models. Although its good to carefully and consciously experiment, a serious social network program requires that deep understanding as well as integrating a clear purpose and message in all content and communications.
I like the holon as a metaphor for an integral social network strategy.
Social Media Integral Strategy
A holon (Greek: holos, “whole”) is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part. The word was coined by Arthur Koestler in his book The Ghost in the Machine (1967, p. 48). Wikipedia
Whatever the planning process, a visual will ensure that strategy and execution is anchored to the underlying understanding and purpose. Simple questions should be asked at the outset and periodically, for example:
- Is this good for me?
- ….for us?
- ….for the community?
- ….for a greater good?
Once the purpose is clear, a road-map for short-term experiential learning, and long-term actionable metrics can be developed to direct your social networks to go the right way.
Use visuals to simplify and clarify.
August 26, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
RedShift: Natural influence expansion in the connected world
Most of the popular small business advice is tailored to product companies. That’s because service firms are always more challenging to define and differentiate without creating complexity which then leads to confusion. And that confusion will increase as new small and solo professional service firms are founded by generalists, multiple careerists and encore careerists.
The nimble solo psf’s are uniquely able to create services for evolving markets that emerge from disruption, convergence and shifting demographics. Their challenge is to simply and effectively communicate who they are, where they’re going and how they help their clients.
If I can’t easily explain my content, I step back, formulate a question that I think needs to be answered and then convey that answer in some visual format. I give my right brain the right of way so to speak. I know its a highly effective method for gaining “creative clarity” and I use it extensively and successfully in client work.
Here’s a recent example of mine. To improve my ability to more clearly communicate RedShfit’s benefits to my clients and community, the question I asked myself is: How do RedShift programs create natural influence and why is that good?
By creating the graphic, I let my right brain (mostly) give me the answer.
You don’t need high-end graphics skills to do this; a whiteboard sketch is great. I used CmapTools for the natural influence concept map.
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Naturally influence the sales call
August 25, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
If you’re in professional services you’re hearing some version of this when you make a sales call: “All this blogging and social networking and having conversations is too much work, too expensive, giving my expertise away for free and just another passing fad. I need to get good leads because I know I can close the business if I have the leads. So I want you to help me with a business development plan so that I meet my business and life goals and objectives.”
In the past, I’d be immediately mentally rehearsing my exit thinking “they’re clueless, don’t waste your time, there’s nothing here.” I’m now practicing a better response by being be present with, open to and curious about these potential clients. My approach is to meet them where they are and drop any attachment to getting their business. I don’t try to persuade them about anything, its futile. And I avoid getting drawn into long, detailed story and history, its meaningless.
What I commit to is understanding how a business owner responds to change out of old habit and then continually reinforces the counter-directing assumptions by endlessly, willfully and forcefully repeating them. “Push” is the modus operandi. But “push back” is no longer mine. That alone can shift the dynamic of the meeting and create an opening for inquiry, deep listening, re-framing and shared understanding. Whether new business results or not, positive fulfillment, often indirectly, unfailingly corresponds with my choice to be naturally influential, even when the sales call seems hopeless.
I may not get a new client, but I’ll definitely gain a new friend.
Chain reaction of overwhelment
August 18, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
You know how some days you leap out of bed before dawn because you have so much energy and so many ideas? And then, by 10 a.m. you feel lethargic and let-down. You probably overwhelmed yourself. I get it. I’m a generalist which makes me very prone to the condition.
I was so excited at 5 a.m. about what I wanted to produce, that I took a rest day from rowing. Its now 11 a.m. and I have a headache, I feel like I’ve been working hard but have nothing to show for it, and I have to leave in 45 minutes for a meeting. All I can think about is “wake me when its over”. But what is “its”? Well, its just my thinking over which I have total control. In fact, at the end of the day, its really the only “it” that I have control over. But I choose to ignore that today.
So what triggers caused me to unwittingly flip my excitement over to anxiety, its shadow form? I’ll re-trace my morning:
- I read dozens of tweets by people I’ve been following and started to mentally compare myself to them, even though I have little in common with them and care less. I started to think that I’m not doing enough.
- I went on a support forum to review a thread about about a software problem I’d been dealing with but that I’d decided last night I could put aside for now because its fairly trivial. I started looking hard again for the “answer”. I started to think that my new site is not perfect enough.
- I browsed through some feeds and noticed a trend that annoys me: popular coach/consultants marketing their very expensive and exclusive secrets of “how to triple your business” to struggling solo professionals. I got angry, thinking about how I hate pyramid schemes. I started to think that these people are not ethical enough.
Urgency. Perfectionism. Judgment. And the chain reaction was set into motion.
I could feel it happening but chose to not hit the “kill switch”. Sound familiar? This comes up in my work with so many clients, in so many contexts and situations. I often hear people self-describe it as their ADD.
Why is it so hard to stop it in ourselves or to help others caught up in the chain reaction? Well that’s a huge learning that I want to share: its because we protect our hidden beliefs that counter-direct us away from what we want. And there’s hidden payoffs in protecting those beliefs…or, there once was.
That’s it. When the spinning starts, and the anxious feelings kick in, just remind yourself that you’re choosing the thoughts that are creating your reality in that moment. Stress is an indicator. A different thought is yours to choose.
Shiny lures
July 17, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
Before I got into competitive rowing I sport-fished, and think I still hold the IGFA world record for Women Atlantic Bonito on 8 lb. test line. It wasn’t a huge fish but the line was very light and the lure was small, making it a lot more challenging to hook the fish and reel it in without breaking the line. The fish were too smart to grab anything bigger and heavier. Its like that when lures tempt us to go in the wrong direction or trick us into intending and aligning with what we don’t want.
We’re like fish in that we’re not so easily misled when the lures are glaringly obvious, like things, relationships and experiences that are overtly harmful, dangerous, addictive or socially and politically unacceptable. We may deny the risk and take the bait, but we know the danger exists. Its different when the lure is subtle and the line is almost invisible, and when we’re feeling particularly susceptible and vulnerable to external changes and forces, and when the only thing that warns us to swim the other way is the inner voice of intuition.
The lure and line is well camouflaged in so-called “experts”. They’re everywhere..in the media, politics, the workplace and even in our family and social networks. You’re ready to burst forth in creative self-expression but the career experts tell you that 100% mirroring the company, job description and hiring manager is the only possible path to earning a wage. You’re ready to shift into a more independent life infused with meaning and purpose but the life planning experts tell you that holding on to every dollar is imperative to survival and almost all small businesses fail anyway.
There’s simply too much fear noise to tune out. But we can choose in each moment, individually and collectively as a culture, to accept uncertainty, to follow our intuition, and to swim freely, naturally and unhooked in the unstoppable current of evolution.
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alignment, intuition, metaphysics, self-awareness, solo professional service firm
Efficiency
July 10, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
When I posted about how to raise your Metaphor Q, I recommended that doing what you love as often as you can is good practice. If you stay present and aware, metaphor will show up in your favorite activities and peak experiences. My daily peak experience activity is rowing and today I learned a rowing lesson that correlates with a life direction lesson.
One of our boat club’s most skilled, knowledgeable and successful master rowers offered to row in a 2x (2 people, 4 oars) with me so that he could check my technical progress and help me improve. He’s a great coach and teacher so I jumped at the chance. His initial comments had to do with my applying too much force, expending too much effort and slowing the boat down by trying to speed it up. He had me practice a series of technique drills while he explained (from behind me) what I should be noticing and feeling as I eliminated excess motions from my stroke to make it smoother, more efficient, and more perfectly timed.
At one point, when he said “that’s it!”, I told him that I felt like I was pretty slow and not doing much of anything. His response was “that is because you have a false sense of boat speed.” Then I turned around (scullers face backwards) and he showed me the wrong (hard) way, and the right (efficient) way. Watching him and feeling the boat move, it was immediately apparent that trying too hard interfered with boat speed and added check, which, because of slight, repetitive, inefficient movements translates to “going the wrong way!”
Throughout the day I’ve seen the correlation everywhere, for example: 
- drivers speeding up, stopping short and weaving in and out trying to beat the lights and the other drivers
- clients expressing their frustration with endless, extraneous “stupid” tasks in their jobs that kill their creativity and productivity
- everyone multi-tasking, rushing and doing more to get ahead or to stay ahead while constantly subjecting themselves to news and information that informs them of seemingly insurmountable costs and hurdles to accomplishing either, and no end in sight
We’re speeding up, trying to do more, urgently competing for safety and survival.. but we’re “checking the boat” and going the wrong way.
A response I often hear is “but how?”, or, “I have no choice!”, or “next week (or month, or year) when I have more or less of ‘x’”. Well, there’s a glut of advice and tips available about how to improve efficiency, but although its mostly common sense, without a shift in awareness and belief, it results in superficial and temporary changes at best, and increased frustration and stress at worst. It needn’t be as hard as adding more goals and lists and resolutions.
Instead, just notice how different experiences feel when you do them with a lighter touch, or natural influence and when you let go of pre-conceived assumptions about what the results should be. Those assumptions, or beliefs, may be based on “a false sense of (insert your metaphorical term)” and create an artificial self-influence that counter-directs you away from your ideal.
Technorati Tags:
alignment, leadership, natural influence, self-awareness
My paradoxical weight loss story
July 2, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
I’ve been asked by so many people how I lost weight and went down several sizes that I wanted to share my thoughts. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never had weight problems; everyone is fairly tall and thin in my family. But over the past 15 years its crept up even though I figured a lot of it was muscle bulk due to taking up the sport of rowing 10 years ago and also, just getting older.
I workout most days for my rowing and I started doing the Five Tibetans after every workout to re-balance strength and energy. I don’t pay anywhere near strict attention to diet although I cut back on deserts. I found I just couldn’t leave them alone working from home, so I stopped buying them. A rower friend helped me improve my rowing technique, rhythm and posture. That, and the Five Tibetans, and the resulting improvements, translated to how I carry myself all the time. And that’s the sum of what I did physically that likely contributed to the inches I lost off my waist. It may sound like a lot, but I didn’t significantly increase my activity or radically change my diet. I just paid more attention to the quality.
But I also have this very strong intuition that the pounds I lost are directly related to the interior baggage that I lost over the winter. I was worried about my business, I wasn’t inspired to write or develop anything new, my closest family members had moved across country and I deeply missed them, the weather got me down and I got discouraged. On one hand, I was telling myself to work and try harder to improve and change things. But instead, I obeyed some impulses which included getting rid of TV and excess stuff and immersing myself for 6 weeks in self-awareness practice, reading, journaling and just letting go of trying to control anything at all. And that was significant. After that immersion period I found it easy to continue the practices in the normal course of the day because I’d formed habits.
I started noticing that my clothes, especially jeans, started to feel big, and then really big so that I had to give away 2/3’s of my closet. I replaced my jeans with a size that I wore 30+ years ago. I want to stress that losing weight was never a goal or even a back-burner issue; I was happy to be fit, healthy and to excel at the sport I love. Besides, I love food and would not dream of depriving myself of the pleasure of eating.
So the more I tried to explain it to everyone who asked me “how I did it”, the more I realized that my weight/size loss was tied to the old limiting beliefs that I’d shed and replaced during my self-imposed retreat. It presented itself more like a totally unexpected gift and surprise, because although I was not looking for it I really love and appreciate the results.
So its simply not possible to put my weight loss story into a “how-to” context because I believe if anyone tried to do the same, they would not have my experience…because they “tried”. All I can definitively say is that deep stillness, relaxation, consciousness examination and letting go of all concerns and control opens doors, especially doors that you don’t try to open because you don’t even know they exist.
If you’re curious about The Five Tibetans:
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self-awareness, self-knowledge, weight loss
Positioning
June 10, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
Another metaphor found me last night as I was browsing through my rss feeds.
A popular marketing blogger/author wrote a dire post about the urgency (emergency!) of paying off credit cards and recommended drastic personal spending cutbacks including eating rice and beans for a year.
Another popular blogger wrote about how the fearless small business, that embraces a “So screw it. Let’s ride.” belief is poised for a treasure chest business bonanza.
The third was a Mac blog about the new iPhone which has a very cool built-in GPS (Global Positioning System).
It struck me that we have the choice in every moment to choose our personal and professional life experience GPS. The two bloggers provide radically different views about how to respond to change and there are limitless directional choices beyond these two. I’m not advocating either. I do want to point out that our beliefs are like GPS satellites. They unfailingly get us to the destination based upon our input, that is our beliefs, intentions and assumptions, into our system.
If we commit to and urgently prepare for survival our belief satellites put us on the scarcity, subsistence and lack highway for as long as we intend that. If we commit to and are poised for success and a huge demand for our services, then that’s the road on which we’ll travel and the destination we’ll arrive at.
What do you call your positioning system? I like FPS (Field Positioning System). Other possible replacements for global are: universe, spiritual, source, etc. Whatever you call your positioning system, be vigilant about what you choose to believe, and then just set cruise control and D.R.I.V.E.
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self-awareness, solo professional service firm
Strategy
May 14, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
I’ve always been quite proud of and grateful for my skill, talent and experience in strategy. The ability to figure out all the angles, possibilities, scenarios and methods for problem solving and decision making served me very well in both my professional and personal life. Or so I thought.
Because over the past year I’ve shifted as I’ve realized that my being strategic about certain aspects of my personal reality was a (lifelong!) habitual, albeit sophisticated, attempt to control when non-resistance, or willingness to let go, accept and receive, was the better response. And these old habits, particularly when they’re connected to safety and survival needs (my specialties), tend to sneak back in and get the ego involved when I least expect it, during meditation for example.
But gradually, and sometimes in leaps and bounds, there’s a great sense of ease and relief in letting go of attempting to control through strategic means that which we don’t have control over and in fact never did have control over.
So for the past days I’ve been going through a lot of my material, and books, and notes to try to synthesize, re-frame and present this material visually and creatively to maximize its value to my readers and clients. I wanted to come up with a compelling diagram or clever map that would provide a starting point to answering the question: when is strategy the correct response and when does it counter-direct? The harder I tried, the less I accomplished and the worse I felt until I finally realized that I was being strategic…again.
So I allowed myself a few minutes of stillness to see what came up and this came up:
Relief.
Technorati Tags:
self-awareness, solo professional service firm, source
Turnaround
April 22, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
I talk to a lot of people who, because of the economy and business climate, are unable to resist the backward pull of old habits and beliefs in attempt to re-gain a safety and security footing that they feel that they once had, but gave up in a quest for a better direction that they now believe is out of their reach. I understand their concerns and also see the contradiction in their choices. So I try to offer an approach that at the minimum helps make these decisions less painful.
The RedShift approach is:
- to assimilate and synthesize what I believe are the best teachings with my own experience and learning.
- to creatively communicate those in a way that involves “right-brain” learning, including popular culture metaphors, graphics, mindmaps, music etc.
- to make them more real by placing them in the context of practical business and life direction problem solving and decision making.
- to combine them with easy to understand techniques and exercises to help clients quickly begin shifting in the direction they want and away from the direction they don’t want.
A simple and effective technique, or exercise, is the turnaround, thinking about the problem from the opposite side of the coin so to speak. The examples that follow are specific to the kinds of challenges solo professionals and career transitioners are frequently experiencing in a weak economy with its accompanying ubiquitous reporting about lack of business opportunity and cutthroat competition.
But the fundamental principal of the turnaround exercise works the same for any problem in any area of life - health, wealth, love or life direction (the RedShift focus). The turnaround exercise helps clients consciously respond to change, specifically by answering the question: When it seems like things are falling apart, how can we suffer less, avoid habitual traps that convince us to go the wrong way, and stay aligned with our truth and desire for something better?
In the following mindmap examples, I thought about what most solo professionals and independent service practitioners want more of:
- Money
- Clients
- Business Success
One response to worrying about what is not showing up, is to put oneself in the persona called “I’m the one who believes in lack”. The turnaround response is to put oneself in the persona called “I’m the one who lacks belief”.
Each persona has his or her own set of assumptions, feelings and proof(s), but the first is infinitely harder than the turnaround because it requires changing and controlling what is “out there” and responses are often irrationally driven by painful feelings and the need to avoid them. (click graphic for enlargement) 
The turnaround persona requires only a shifting of beliefs, which we are free to choose to do in any moment, and does not attempt to control through will, that which is not and never has been in our control. Clearly the turnaround is an easier response and I recommend trying on each with respect to what you want, and simply noting how you feel. (click graphic for enlargement) 
The one caveat is that you don’t do this exercise with an agenda “to get”. It doesn’t work that way. Strategy is effective when working with the content of our lives and our clients’ businesses. But when working with our consciousness and self-awareness, engaging the will through goals, agendas or strategies becomes another means to go the “wrong way”. To quote Emerson, “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” All we need to do is be what we want and get out of the way.
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self-awareness, solo professional service firm