Space
May 20, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
We’re made up of more space (dark energy and dark matter) than visible form and matter, but we spend most of our lives totally identified with the latter. Its one thing to think about the concept of spaciousness but yet another to experience it, for even a short period of time. Anyway, why would we want to and how do we do that?
We want to because we now know that the physical and conceptual structures that we’re identified with are unstable and will be replaced with new ones that are yet to be created. We want to be part of that. But fear and worry about that instability, and how it will affect our lives and businesses, lead to more attachment and rigidity that then shows up in how we respond to change: protection, judgment, guilt, resentment, complaining, blame, etc.
So instead of a desired growth direction we get stuck on the survival path. Life and business experience becomes relentless reactivity to an endless series of crises and lack . We know that the way towards new and better experience is through creativity and innovation, but forget that creativity comes through us. Its not something we can reach out and attain. Rather, we have to make space for it and knock down the walls that block it.
Making space for creativity in challenging times requires vigilance over individual and collective thought and action. Space is created by ceasing thinking and constant doing, and by softening the physical and conceptual boundaries constructed in attempt to keep out everything not wanted, like vulnerability. It can be as simple as taking deep breaths and setting time aside for short periods of stillness. It can also be more challenging and require a lot of courage, putting oneself on the line without a safety net for one’s convictions, so to speak.
The challenges we’re dealing with now are opportunities for dropping resistance and defenses to receive the wave of creative energy that is always available. It comes through us when we let it. It takes faith. The biblical metaphor for our self-constructed creativity barrier is the Wall of Jericho. When we blast ours down, we’re then freed to enter our Promise Land. That’s the metaphor for the place and point of power from where we can expand our natural influence, and contribute the best of who we are to what is yet to be created.
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Hide & Seek
March 10, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
My granddaughters loved to play hide and seek with me. I’d hear them crazily running from room to room, laughing and calling my name. Sometimes, when I’d have a great hiding spot, and they couldn’t find me, their footsteps would get a little tentative and their voices more plaintive as they called for me. At that point I’d thump or knock on the floor or wall to let them know I was in the house. I’d hear them get very still and whisper until they could sense the direction of my clues. Then they’d get right back into their joy in the game, knowing they’d find who they were seeking, sometimes hidden right in front of them.
Have you been looking really hard for a long time for a new life direction? Have you been caught up in a cycle of excitement and anxiety? Try stopping, being very still and listening for the “knock knock” of your intuition (muse inner voice, guide, God - your call), trusting in it completely and willing to receive whatever jumps out of the hiding place.
Leading Through Resistance
February 6, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Whether you’re leading a company of one or hundreds through a period of uncertainty and change, you’ll reach a point where action is required yet met with resistance, even after a period of time to adapt to uncertainty.
A default response is fighting resistance with more resistance through boundaries, control and force of will. Lines get drawn for self-protection but backfire, further increasing fear, anxiety and hostility.
A different response is to meet resistance, and replace structures that no longer exist, by committing to and modeling for others the highest possible attention to quality in, and respect for doing what’s in front of you to do, including: making decisions, communications, actions and interactions.
Attention to quality may be easier and more expected and accepted in some areas, like providing customer service and team-building. In other areas it may be more challenging, for example: cutting costs, letting people go, dealing with financial loss and making downwardly mobile lifestyle changes.
In every case, attention to quality and respect means there’s awareness. Awareness is not a strategy, its a practice. You practice by noticing when negative beliefs, assumptions or expectations compromise your commitment to quality and respect for the humanity in yourself and others. These contradictory thoughts lose their power over you when you’re aware of them.
When that happens, you’re conscious that how you respond to challenges now, directs where you’re going and how great that experience will be for you, your business, your clients and your community and beyond.
My 12-Month Social Media for Solo Professional Service Firm Experience
December 13, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
RedShift:12-Month Social Media Experience
I realized that its been exactly 12 months since I decided to get involved with social media. I’d already been blogging for a number years, but prior social media experiments were disappointing. Its good that I gave it another chance.
There’s so much out there about how to use social media for professional and business benefit. It can be daunting to find the right information that you can relate to if you’re a small business or professional service provider just getting started. That’s why I wanted to present my experience as a story and a picture. I didn’t follow a plan; I just dove in.
The experiential, test and learn approach worked great for me and it was right that I waited until the social networking applications allowed users full control. If I made a mistake, or changed my mind, it was easy to edit or delete. I needed that.
I didn’t have a plan beyond wanting to connect with people and bring my content to a higher level, and I think that was a good thing. I developed my own social media models and tools as I learned and gained experience. The more I learned, on my own and from others that I connected with, the more clear I got about where I was going with social media and how it integrated with my my business. It was an iterative, not linear, progression. That’s typical for me, but that’s me. Success in social medial looks and feels different for everyone and there’s nothing wrong with figuring out what’s most valuable to you as you work with it.
My only strong recommendation is to not get bogged down in a lot of advance research or planning, or wanting to be like others. That’s because of the sheer volume of information out there and the huge numbers of people involved. Just start. You’ll figure it out as you go along.
I think that iterative processes and learning are better expressed in visuals and I’m hoping readers will relate to some of my activities and milestones in the diagram and hopefully can imagine their own. I’ve tried to illustrate how my social media experience for a small professional service firm is an ongoing, fluid work in process.
I’m pleased that I’ve built a good foundation and platform for growth, have new relationships with excellent people, and have expanded my personal and professional influence. The biggest return at this point is the content I’ve developed and integrated through repeatedly expressing my ideas, insights, beliefs and observations for my small, high quality and growing community.
The only cost was my time and its been well spent. In fact, after only 12 months, my social media experiment has morphed into my most important small business system. Its become the cornerstone of my intellectual and social capital development and hopefully, in the near future, a driver of increased awareness of my brand by people who need what I offer.
For small businesses and professional service providers in the connected and conceptual world, social media can definitely add to the Value of You!.
Solo Professional Service Providers: What Business Are You In?
October 14, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
We’re in a financial crisis and possibly an economic downturn which means there’s even more advice being given, targeting independent professionals, than in more stable times. Most of it’s marketing related: being seen and heard, getting blog traffic and comments, building links, viral methods, etc. Its easy to get swept up in the speed, urgency and sheer volume of what you “should” do to succeed .
I suggest checking in with yourself and going the other way: slow down, be still and narrow your focus.
Early in 2008 I was deeply moved reading Suzanne Pleshette’s obituary and her philosophy about the entertainment industry and I blogged about it back then. I believe her philosophy is even more significant now:
“I’m an actress, and that’s why I’m still here,” she said in a 1999 interview. “Anybody who has the illusion that you can have a career as long as I have and be a star is kidding themselves.”
I believe that much of the great advice out there is for those who aim for stardom and not for actors. Solo psf’s are actors (although some are both). Know the business you’re in. You see, clients don’t care about stars. Clients are the most selfish species on the planet and they only care about themselves and what you’ll do for them. And rightfully so - its what they pay for and trust in! If you identify with the business of being a star, clients will quickly pick up on the vibe that its about you first, not them.
I’m not saying to ignore or discount great advice and information but rather that you filter it through a solo professional firm’s lens and follow and adopt it from a “client first” perspective. Remind yourself daily about the business that you’re in and commit to it for the long term.
Social Networks Part 4: Quantitative ROI
October 6, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
RedShift Social Media-Network Model for Business
Businesses across all industries are paying more attention to social networks which are predicted to explode worldwide. Although clearly there’s tremendous opportunity and potential it can be overwhelming to grasp the rapid disruption happening and the voluminous information getting pushed out.
Decision makers need help discerning what’s valuable from what’s hype and in taking a direction that makes sense for them. My goal is to help them do that with a unique 4-stage map that is more strategy than tactics and more visual than wordy.
My posts on stages 1-3 are:
- Social Networks Part 1: Community Segmentation
- Social Networks Part 2: Integration
- Social Networks Part 3: Qualitative ROI
The purpose integral to my model is that businesses of all size increase their natural natural influence by using social networks to expand their social capital, brand awareness and sense response skills and abilities.
The quantifiable return in my model is the sum of actionable metrics that follow the qualitative experiential learning of the earlier phase. Its nearly impossible to assign a dollar figure to every social media action. Its more reasonable to present ROI as a story of the benefits of your social media initiative. What’s most important in the very organic world of social networks, is patiently directing the movement, or progression from one stage to the next and not losing commitment to authentic community relationship-building in the quest for ROI.
I developed this model to support a practical approach to social media with recommendations including:
- Determine if and how social networks can help you grow your business and/or improve profitability.
- Accept the disruption resulting from a shift from seller to buyer power.
- Involve people in the decision making process who will challenge assumptions and habitual responses to change and disruption.
- Understand that it will take two years to measure returns on integrating social networks, whether external, internal (behind the firewall), or both.
- Model natural and authentic communications both offline and online and give incentives for participation.
- Don’t wait, over-plan, over-control, micro-manage or over-analyze. Adopt a test and learn approach to social networks.
- Be open-minded and creative about results and metrics you choose to track, knowing that you could get an unexpected equivalent result, or something even better.
- If the above don’t convince you, consider the cost to your business of doing nothing.
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.
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
Natural Influence
June 5, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
People expect results from personal, professional and organizational change programs.
Individuals, executives and business owners make the connection that shifting beliefs, relying on presence and not just strategy, and responding to problems from a higher emotional and social IQ aligns with their personal and organizational bigger games.
But I often hear some version of the question “to what end?”. There’s a need to experience some positive result that reinforces the work of change.
I suggest noticing your natural influence and realizing it as a wonderful, and often unexpected benefit of increased self-awareness.
I call it natural influence as derived from the root meaning “flow into” and contrast it to the more widely used meaning that I label “artificial influence”.
Relating to others with natural influence may feel soft and vulnerable and “too easy” at first, but its an authentic point of power for communications leadership, building trust, gaining support and developing and deepening relationships.
Stories about the positive impact of natural influence that I’ve recently heard, or personally experienced include:
- job interviewing
- giving a business presentation
- submitting a thesis proposal
- attending couples counseling
- expanding social network
- negotiating personal finance
- sales and marketing
- gaining project and program support
- providing feedback and review
- a new blog
Technorati Tags:
empathy, leadership, self-awareness, solo professional service firm, natural influence
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