Love this following post written by http://www.brasstackthinking.com Tamsen McMahon

Why do we do it? We set goals, we make plans. We tell ourselves we will…this time.

But we don’t.

A while back, Julien Smith wisely pointed out (as is his wont) that three of us are present for any decision: there’s who we were, who we are, and who we are going to be. One begets another.

As I said to Julien then, each has a siren song: Past Self dwells in what could have been, Present Self dwells in the lush tactility of now, and Future Self sees all that could yet still be. Each has lessons: Past makes us what we are, Present sets who we’ll be, and Future reveals the paths from which we choose.

Future Self fascinates me. It holds so much promise, and yet we forsake it all the time—we do things today that pretty much screw over the person we’ll be tomorrow.

Why is that?

Perhaps because it’s so easy to dwell in the past. We know Past Self—it’s as old as we are, minus a day. It walks with us in everything we do, chats with us, tells us how this is or isn’t like what came before, how we have or haven’t succeeded by doing this or that. Perhaps it’s because some of us don’t like our Present Selves very much, and we can’t see the possibilities that Future Self provides, or at least, we can’t see anything but a continuation of who we are right now (and that’s more than we can bear).

Or maybe it’s just that the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t.

I mean, Future Self…we don’t even know that guy. He just sits out there, dealing in abstraction, putting pressure on Present Self, waiting to see what we’re going to do to him. Bastard.

As much as I love to ask “why?” (and trust me, I can be worse than a toddler on that front), the answers fall too often into the True But Useless category of information. What good is understanding “why” if it doesn’t actually move us to do something different? (Or worse, actually holds us back?)

Not much.

The problem is our success depends on our relationship with our Future Self—on someone we can’t know, and yet whose life we control absolutely.

So, how do we do that? How do you?

Image credit antonkawasaki

Posted via email from sn0wfl8ke’s Muse

For this very 1st week, I’d like to introduce my latest addiction - Mind Mapping. It is a fantastic creativity booster and it keeps the thought process well organized. As opposed to linear documents, mind maps are more like graphs, with nodes of information which in turn holds other nodes of information. You can create a mind map for a book, describing each chapter as a node, or for a project, defining each feature as a node. Whenever you have the time to re-create your project, do it with a mind map. Start with the title and then add nodes with features or goals. You can use  mind mapping software programs or you can simply start with a blank paper, the physical support doesn’t really matters. The key is that mind mapping makes it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

If you are like me, your brain sometimes feels as if it is scrambled because of information overload, overwhelm, or under tremendous pressure. Switching out of the linear perspective, from the height of bird-eye view, something will start to change the way you process information. You’ll start to see new connections, missing links or unnecessary clutter. Before you know it, you will feel more organized and more inspired.

Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question “Why?” His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers — and as a counterpoint Tivo, which (until a recent court victory that tripled its stock price) appeared to be struggling.

In a similar vein, study has shown that by asking potential voters to predict whether they will vote on an election and to provide a reason for their prediction, participation rate could be increase 20% to 25%.

So what’s actually driving the drastic increase? Based on my recent interesting read of <Yes! 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive>, there are two important psychological steps involved in the success of this technique. First of all, when people are asked to predict whether they’ll engage in a socially desirable behavior in the future, they feel compelled to say yes because that’s the socially appropriate thing to say. Secondly, after most of these people have publicly state that they’ll perform the socially desirable behavior, they’ll be motivated to behave consistently with the commitment they just made.

What lessons can we draw from this human factor that can be effectively employed in our lives?

1. If you plan on joining a charity run for a nonprofit, start by asking your friends, family and co-workers whether they think they’ll donate
2. If you manage a restaurant or doctor’s office, having your receptionist ASK instead of TELL when taking a reservation. Simply by changing “Please call if you have to cancel,” to “Will you please call if you have to cancel?” I ensure you the no-show rate would drop significantly!
3. If you are designing a nonprofit/corporate responsibility website where voting mechanism is the center piece, make sure to cement those potential voters’ commitment by making it voluntary, active and publicly declared to others.

Small and easy changes to our messages and to our requests can be made vastly more persuasive, just remember: asking a little goes a long way!

How many problems in life can be solved by TINKERING the PERCEPTION rather than the tedious hard-working messy business of trying to change reality? LOL – isn’t this the main purpose behind all advertising & marketing? Don’t miss Rory Sutherland’s fantastic marketing solutions via TED talk. Check out discussions and comments here.

Management≠ Leadership

Management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done. Managers know exactly what they need to deliver and they are given resources to do it at low cost. Managers manage a process they’ve seen before, and they react to the outside world, striving to make that process as fast as cheap as possible. Great leaders create movements by empowering the tribe to communicate. They establish the foundation for people to make connections, as opposed to commanding people to follow them.

Leaders are dark horses

Leadership almost always involves thinking and acting like the underdog. That’s because leaders work to change things, and the people who are winning rarely do.

The art of leadership is everything

Leadership only happens in a spectator’s mind. Everything else is a distraction… You cannot cross over into the world of leadership until you put everything else aside and behind you – including your own desires and needs – and focus on bringing an experience to the tribe.

It’s always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission

Nobody is going to listen to your idea for change, sagely shake his head, and say, “sure, go do that.” Nobody is going to see your powerpoint presentation and hand you a check. Change isn’t made by asking permission. Change is made by asking forgiveness, later.

Innovation devalues over time

“Not yet” is the safest, easier way to forestall change. Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.

We have a choice of being helpful

If we see my new product but don’t buy it, that’s my failure, not yours.

If you attend my presentation and you’re bored, that’s my fault, too.

If I fail to persuade you to implement a policy that supports my tribe, that’s due to my lack of passion or skill, not your shortsightedness.

What’s helpful is to realize that we have a  choice when we communicate. We can write so our audience hears us. We can present in a way that the people absorb the material. Most of all, we get to choose who will understand (and who won’t).

Tribes are more effective

A crowd is a tribe without a leader.  Most organizations spend their time marketing to the crowd. Smart organizations assemble the tribe.

Success is a matter of accretion

If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either.

P.S. I plan to give this book to my friend Kevin, who is a student of public administration and also a deviant, a future leader.   Leading changes is a long journey, it’s always good to have some brave souls to keep you company

Oneupweb found that not only do people spend time viewing paid ads on social networks, but they often looked at the ads more quickly once they landed on the search results page. For example, 65% of participants engage with sponsored ads within the first 10 seconds of their search. Often times, the path eyes scan the page often does not follow the order of the search results. Contrary to expected behavior, sponsored ads were looked at before the 3rd or 4th result. The Oneupweb study indicates similar behavior was observed throughout the YouTube search. The participants engaged with the sponsored ads in the process of completing the search task. Twitter does not support sponsored ads but the study still observed users’ search habits on Twitter as it has become an essential social marketing channel. About half of survey participants revealed they were satisfied with their brand search on Twitter. Many liked that they could find the most current opinions about a product. If you would like a PDF copy of the study results, access it here!

Okay, we’ve established that there’s not blindness toward ads in social networks, people still look at the ads. But do they click on them? Unlike searching on Google, the interaction with content in social media sites is very different. Many marketers including myself believe that opt-in advertising works best, while behavior-based campaigns and randomly generated ads are far less successful. In my opinion, this notion still holds true although the end users are becoming more acceptable of sponsored ads on social sites. Niche targeting and relevancy are the two areas advertisers need to focus on more when they try to apply their brand campaigns to those new environments. Will targeting based on niche, geographic location, interest, lifestyle & social graph be the future of advertising? Certainly! Will “engagement ads” change the game of online advertising after Google’s creation of “contextual ads” (judge the quality yourself)? Sooner or later. As of now, there is still a lot left to be desired!

Last black Friday March 13th 2009 was the 20th anniversary of the World Wide Web. While many of us take this information-sharing protocol

• The Web is a lively place where people connect & converse, it is not an extension of media channels

Does communication technology have to roll out incrementally? Many people seem to assume so. If TV is radio + visual stimulus, then Internet should be Television + something else! But what is that “something else?” Cheaper ad spaces ? Infinite channels ? A “buy” button ? Companies and marketers desperately tried to fill in the blank in order to superglue the Web onto the back of the TV’s history. That way this online market can be monetized, advertising can thrive again, everybody can go back to do their business as usual. Such wishful thinking didn’t go far at all, because the Web is a whole different beast that challenges everything we’ve experienced for the past 200 years. It is a global conversational space where everyone on it can have his/her own voice without any hierarchical management and control. So far it has attracted close to 1.6 billion people in the world, and it’s continuing to expand. t is a real place where people can learn from each other, debate, argue, comment; connect to those who share the same interests, form communities; access information, exchange knowledge; look for business vendors, do business with each other, and the list of activities goes on and on.Sounds different from what TV can do us? Ask the early founders of the Internet, it was intended to be a revolution. What does it mean for companies and marketers then? If TV was the perfect medium for advertising, then the Web is the anti-advertising medium by nature. If TV was the glamorous broadcasting tool for big companies, then the Web is the free playground for ordinary you and me who longs to have a voice. So before developing your next marketing communication plan, think again, 1.6 billion of us are no longer the same passive couch-potato audience.

• What’s the solution then?

Listen to the little voices, mock yourself if you dare & most importantly, get closer to your customers! We will reciprocate your effort by linking you, digging you, tweeting you and talking about you…After all, the most successful form of advertising is word-of-mouth, isn’t it?  Luckily, the technology available today can amplify the “word-of-mouth” effect that goes beyond your wildest dream. One thing to keep in mind though, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Many savvy marketers have recognized that technology is not leading to a new way of doing business but rather to an old way of doing business based on social need and human touch. It’s going to be a long and arduous road to go back to the old-fashion way after you have indulged in benefits coming out of mass production and mass media for two centuries. But we are in this revolution with you. We are not expecting you to be “perfect,” we just want you to be honest and try to be “better.” You can start by talking in our language , showing us who you really are (not your brand positioning statement, but the actual employees behind the firewall), sharing your resources and knowledge base. As long as making money is not your only incentive, the Web welcomes your participation!