Signposts & Weathercocks

I have a lot of time for Tony Benn. He is a genuine politician, an honest man, and someone always worth listening to. I heard him recently put in refreshingly simple terms the whole essence of leadership. It summed things up for me admirably.

Signposts are reliable. They provide you with a sense of direction. If you wander off and get lost, when you come back to them they are still pointing in the same direction. They stay firm and committed to where they believe they are going. They are not knocked off course easily.

Weathercocks on the other hand change at the whim of the wind. They seek out forums, opinion polls and swing with the tide of popularism. They cannot be relied upon.

Give me a signppost over a weathercock any day.

Change Your Mind More

"Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything." wrote George Bernard Shaw.

What were you working on before you checked your email?

The question "What were you working on before you checked your email?" struck me between the eyes one morning. It immediately summed up to me all that is wrong with email - or at least the way we allow it run our lives. Don't get me wrong - I love my email. I'm pretty attached to it and wouldn't want to go back to a pre-email, snail mail world. But, how often does your day take on a different course than what you had planned after you start reading your email? How often does an email intrude on your day and take you on a totally different journey. Is your email ruling you, rather than you being in control of it? I received the message from a regular newsletter I receive from David Brownstein, Hollywood Coach. I worked with David a few years ago when I was being trained as a Leadership Coach, and he has some great messages such as this on his blog. I recommend it to you. Click on the title to read David's newsletter.

What is Web 2.0?

It depends which book you read or which guru you listen to. But basically it is a loose and unplanned confederation of functionality on the web, which acts together like some giant organism. Perhaps a coral reef is a better analogy. Beautiful to look at, but what's it for? Under threat from predators, in the shape of the environment and divers. At best, it is a collaboration experiment on a grand scale; collaboration of both creativity and chaos. It is natural selection at work. The fit survive and people vote with their feet. Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Amazon, YouTube. Today's superspecies. Tomorrow's dinosaurs? What are the small mammals waiting in the trees for their turn to inherit cyberspace? Who are the birds of the air or all-pervasive insects? Twitter? Aptly named perhaps.