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Reflection and Renewal

Guest post by: Jim Clemmer

Article Overview: During the 18th century, two explorers set out with small flights of ships to find the fabled Northwest Passage that cuts through the Arctic Circle across the top of North America connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It was widely agreed that the first to discover this elusive passage to China and India would find fame and fortune. Captain John Smith was bold and impatient. He believed that speed was critical to winning the race against the competition led by Captain Henry Jones.

Reflection and Renewal

"Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought." - Henry David Thoreau, Walden During the 18th century, two explorers set out with small flights of ships to find the fabled Northwest Passage that cuts through the Arctic Circle across the top of North America connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It was widely agreed that the first to discover this elusive passage to China and India would find fame and fortune. Captain John Smith was bold and impatient. He believed that speed was critical to winning the race against the competition led by Captain Henry Jones.

Captain Smith and his crew made record time through the ice-filled waters. They rarely consulted their charts and maps. They took only quick, sextant sightings to plot their position. They had no time or patience for such nice-to-do activities, since they were too busy sailing their ships.

Meanwhile, Captain Jones and his crew kept a brisk pace, but took regular time out to check their progress against what little information was available in these vast, uncharted waters. When they encountered natives, they befriended them and spent days learning how to communicate and then probing for their understanding of this frozen land and sea. They also studied the sea currents and charted wind directions. The captain and his officers met frequently to pool their information, debate what it all meant, and decide what direction they should take.

Had Captain Smith seen this, he would have laughed heartily. He was hundreds of miles ahead and making great time. But there was one small problem - he was heading into a deadly trap. He had ventured far down a sea-lane that looked like an open passage. Had Captain Jones known where Smith and his crew were, he could have told them that it was a dead end, the sea was about to freeze over there, and they were in the most desolate, God-forsaken place in the Arctic. Jones and his ship sailed steadily onward. As the seas froze, they wintered over in a well-protected area that had a good food supply. The next year, they found the Pacific Ocean - and their fame and fortune. The speedy Captain Smith and his crew were never heard from again. Decades later, their frozen bodies and smashed ships were discovered by other explorers mapping the region.

This fictional story illustrates a major problem we encounter again and again in our work with individuals, teams, and organizations trying to move to higher levels of performance. It's the problem of balancing the speed and pace of daily life or operations, with periodically stepping back to make sure we're heading in the right direction. Going nowhere in a hurry is a timeless leadership issue that's been with us for centuries. As the pace of change quickens, it's easier to fall into this age-old trap of confusing busyness with effectiveness.

Stepping back, taking time out, assessing our direction and effectiveness, reflecting on our progress, is as rare as a proud man asking for directions. Here are a variety of perspectives showing how central reflection is, to growing and developing:

"The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practiced, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good." - Pierre Charron, 16th century French philosopher, Of Wisdom

"We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world - introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably - that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves." - Walter Lippmann, Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist and author

"Self-reflection is the school of wisdom." - Baltasar Gracián, 17th century Spanish writer

"With self-knowledge we lay the groundwork for the inner life without which we're slave to chance and circumstance." - Vincent Barry, The Dog Ate My Homework: Personal Responsibility - How We Avoid it and What to do About it

"Self-reflection is the first key to becoming a leader...leaders must be self-directed and self-reflective, listening to their inner voice and taking direction from their values and vision." - Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith, Learning to Lead: A Workbook on Becoming a Leader

Like the woodcutter who's too busy chopping to stop and sharpen his ax, we get caught up in a frantic pace that may be taking us to the wrong destination. In 1891, the Anglo-Irish playwright and author, Oscar Wilde, wrote, "We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid." Over 100 years later the tradition of industrious stupidity continues. If we're not paying close attention, we can get caught running flat out with our head down. We can race down dead-end roads and right over a cliff. We were too busy running to watch the signs or stop and look at a map.

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Article Tags: leadership
Referred by: http://www.searchengineworkshops.com



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Web Pro News' "Mom's Top 10 Reasons to Social (Web)Mark - I belong to WebProNews, a weekly eletter which provides lots of good info. I reproduce their whole article below on "Mom's Guide To Social Marketing" (No intent on violating copyright - if you think this is good info you too should subscribe to Web Pro News too.) Your mother, if she did her job right, taught you everything you need to know about how to get along in the world and how to get ahead in it. When we were kids, we thought these rules were silly, but later we learned her advice was pretty valuable. In honor of Mother's Day (May 13), we've put her wisdom to work in online marketing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editor's Note: Social marketing is quickly becoming an integral part of generating business online. While search is the on-ramp, social networks are the destination. And just like any social setting, your rep is important. Mom's Guide to Life, we thought, was a great Guide to Everything. Did we forget some valuable tip? Let us know in the comments section. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mom's Top 10 Steps To A Good Online Reputation 1. Put Your Best Foot Forward: As recently as a year ago, when things were newer, more experimental, a presence on MySpace only was fine. Not so anymore. You have to be everywhere, treating branding in the online world the way you would in the real world. Most social networks allow you to set up a profile page for free (the ones that matter most do anyway). Create your online persona (a polite one), then clone it as necessary. 2. Make Eye Contact: Just like in the real world, wallflowers don't get noticed. The wallflower is most likely an incredible resource – it's just that nobody knows her because she doesn't put herself out there. Be a participant by commenting, inviting, giving. Show up at your new neighbor's door with a gift. It always goes over well – just remember to button your blouse. 3. You Are a Reflection of Your Mother (Company): Nobody likes a poorly kept lawn except the lazy bum that lives behind it. Maintain your public face on the social networks, shine your shoes, crease your pants, embrace your OCD. It may not be your homepage, but it is a home away from home. Maintaining several of these online presences is work, but so is business. 4. Keep An Open Mind: There's an appropriate cliché for every situation – all your eggs in one basket comes to mind here – but I prefer my grandfather's chestnut: "You drove your ducks to a damn poor market." Poetic, that man was. For a long time it was search, search, search. Before that it was email, email, email. But now you need to integrate your campaign. Search is a staple, a pillar of your online campaign, but we also know that Wikipedia ranks consistently number one in the SERPs. That means you need a Wikipedia page, too. Note: YouTube also ranks well. 5. Become Necessary: Viral marketing is tricky, difficult business. But maybe it doesn't have to be. Maybe if you realign your approach to reflect what you, as an individual enjoy, instead of being a salesperson, you can find a more intuitive connection with what the public wants to see. It's often been said that a salesman sells himself more than the product. So if you want to make linkbait, think about what would cause you to bite first. If you look at your viral attempt and see more corporate talking points than linkable material, it's time for a do-over. 6. Like the People that Like You (Even If You Think They're Annoying): Barack Obama's campaign people did something brilliant, and followed up with something not so brilliant. That makes it a great case study. An Obama fan set up a MySpace page and soon attracted thousands of friends. Instead of competing with his biggest fan, Obama endorsed the site as the official MySpace campaign headquarters. That was the brilliant part. After the page "got too big" for the original operator, the campaign crew took staged a coup to wrest control of the page from their biggest fan. That was the not so brilliant part, even if politics is mean by nature. 7. Watch Your Mouth: Again with the clichés that still hold true – if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all. Steve Rubel learned the hard way that stream-of-consciousness blogging can have you saying something you wish you hadn’t. Transparency doesn't mean total access. 8. Don't Be a Fake: Who do we dislike most in civilized society (aside from the violent)? Liars, cheats, and thieves. We don't like them because we view them as betrayers. That principle applies online, too, when your network discovers you're not what you say you are. And the mob's wrath is one that is hard to endure. Ask Edelman PR about their Wal-Marting Across America campaign. 9. Mind Your Manners: Mom's favorite Bible verse still applies: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Commonly referred to as the Golden Rule on Earth, in Cyberspace, manners and etiquette are becoming increasingly more important. People are getting angry about anonymous drive-by (rude) commentary, salesy and useless comment spam (spam in general constitutes harassment in some form)…the list of ethics and etiquette violations is a long one, so it's probably best to ask yourself: Would I appreciate this if it were done to me? 10. Stay Hip. Right now, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia, and YouTube are essential, but they're still relatively new. Few really saw SecondLife coming as a virtual marketplace. Still yet, only the early adopters are talking about Twitter. But change online is swift, and the smart marketer keeps up with what's hot. The last thing you want to do is look outdated. Just don't sell out your core identity in the process. While that's just ten guidelines out of many, Mom always had one rule that ruled them all: Use your head, dodo bird! This is a thinking man's game. Indeed it is. Good luck with your campaigns.


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