Lessons in Amazing Grace

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Last night Gorgeous and I had a date night and we went to see the movie Amazing Grace.

All I can say is Wow. Talk about a powerful movie.

It tells the story of William Wilberforce who was the main driver in Parliament behind ending slavery in Great Britain at the turn of the 19th century.

The fight to end British trading in slaves was a bitter one that lasted more than 20 years with Wilberforce bringing the issue before Parliament only to have it rejected year after year.

William was a reluctant warrior in the battle. But once he took on the role he kept at it with a passion that nearly consumed him completely.

The movie takes its title from the hymn Amazing Grace which was written by John Newton. Newton was a former slave ship captain whose change of conscience after his conversion to Christianity forced him from the business of trading in slaves and eventually into the clergy.

Apparently Newton heavily influenced Wilberforce in his own decision on whether or not to stay in politics.

There are a few lessons I brought home from that movie last night. Read more

Visionary Cat Herding Princes of Execution

That last post about the quote I saw on Twitter generated quite a discussion about the difference in rolls between the Visionaries and the Princes(ses) of Execution. Tariq Khan and Karin Hermans in particular wrestled with the question can you move (or move someone) from one category to the other?

It’s a great question.

I agree with those two that you can. But it is not easy. And both elements are vital in their respective quantities or the organization will flounder.

Big Takes More of Each

The bigger the organization, the more of both elements that is required.

When you are a one man (or one woman) show, you get to wear both hats. In fact you have to wear both of them or you are sunk. Read more

Momentary Flashes of Twitter Brilliance

Twitter is all the rage these days. Several big blogging names are fully on board tweeting away. And a few others have not embraced the idea. The die hard Twitter converts would probably add a “yet” at the end of that last sentence. We’ll see.

Fortunately for me their IM connectivity is still not working, at least with GoogleTalk, which has been good for me from a productivity standpoint because I’m not all up in the madness non-stop throughout the day.

Most of what goes on there is only of passing interest to me. And I see an interesting principle that seems to be in play over there. I’m open to other names, but for now let’s call it

The Cree Principle of Twitterization

Your Twitter posting frequency will be directly proportional to the length of your friends list.

It seems those folks on my friends list who have hundreds of friends (and huge followings) tend to be the heaviest Twitters. And that makes it easy for me. I can just check in a couple times a day, skim through, glean the interesting stuff and disregard the rest.

A Moment of Brilliance

Read more

An Open Letter To the “New” AT&T

Dear AT&T

I awoke this morning to a very unpleasant example of your apparent unilateral corporate heavy handedness. And I’m not happy about it.

I have been a contented BellSouth customer for many years. In fact, yesterday was my 9th wedding anniversary and we first opened our BellSouth account with a computer that was a wedding gift. We’ve carried our BellSouth account with us through moves to three different states.

The BellSouth home page has been there to greet every browser opening on all our computers for that entire time. And like I said, I’ve been quite contented.

Until now, that is.

Now that you’ve taken my old BellSouth and returned it to the “New” AT&T fold you are plowing ahead with your re-branding efforts. Fair enough. Change is a fact of life.

However you have seen fit to hijack my home page, the page that my wife and I’ve been passing through on our way to the internet for 9 years by the way. And you’ve replaced it with a poor imitation of an old AOL design.

I don’t like it. Read more

CREEating Value – 21 March 2007

CREEating Value – About once a week I go through my feed reader and pull out a few gems that bring value to you as a business blogger. We’re overdue ’cause I sorta skipped last week. (oops!)

And I am personally going through a bit of a challenging week on the non-blogging front. So today I thought I’d go through and pick out a few that make me think, and that I find encouraging.

Here are this week’s juicy finds.

Enjoy!

Middle Zone Musings (feed) – Besides having one of those names that I am in perpetual fear of misspelling, Robert Hruzek has created a place at his blog where I can go hang out with a cup of coffee when I want to shift mental gears. At Middle Zone Musings I can relax and ponder some ideas. Sometimes they are big ideas, and sometimes just a little on the silly side. Either way, Robert’s got a refreshing take on things and I really enjoy hanging out at his place. And he just recently graduated himself from Blogger to WordPress too!

The Kitchen Table (feed) – Not sure if you know it or not, but I’m a fairly spiritual guy. I don’t like to beat people up with my views on the subject and I keep much of my spiritual stuff over on my personal blog. But this week has been a challenging one for me and hanging around Tariq Khan’s Kitchen Table has been just the right dose of encouragement for me. Tariq’s a brand new blogger that I had the pleasure of getting to know over at Open Comment Night one Tuesday. His writing may not be a good fit for everyone, but if you are up for some encouragement, head on over. I know I’m glad I do.

BrianKim.net (feed) – Brian Kim is a fairly traditional self-improvement writer who just happens to resonate with me. In fact it was Brian’s practical hands on advice in his post How to Find What You Love to Do that helped propel my business forward in the first place. Brian’s authored several books and has been a student of self improvement since he was a child. And yet he still shares all that wisdom freely with the world day after day on his blog. You are missing out if you choose not to read it.

Success Principle #12 – The Words We Choose to Use Make a Difference

The Problem

The other day I was cruising around some top quality bloggage when I happened across Kent Blumberg’s place. Kent talks a lot about leadership principles, which is why I keep an eye on his blog.

Anyway he was talking about a great leadership idea that the Japanese use that’s having trouble catching on over here in the States. Kent’s theory that because the Japanese word for this principle sounds funny in English, the entire principle is being resisted, even though it is a good, sound idea.

I left a comment over there suggesting that “Maybe the goofy word thing is why some businesses are reluctant to embrace blogging. Probably sounds to them like some kind of medical condition.” Read more

Sunday Morning Goodness – 18 March 2007

Just poking around my feed reader this morning and there is so much great stuff out there you oughtta see. For example,

Ben Yoskovitz is helping out folks just getting started with blogging with his pair of posts, 10 Questions To Ask Before Launching Your Blog and 10 Things To Do After You Launch Your Blog. Great tips for those in the beginning stages of business blogging.

Tom Vander Well celebrated his first blogaversary this week. Check out his take on his first year of business blogging at QAQNA. The results speak for themselves. Tom is officially a fan of business blogging.

Terry Starbucker shares a Classic Case Study in the Ripple Effect. Very timely stuff for us here with all our talk about quality.

Grab yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy!

Frittering Time Away all a-Titter with the Twitter Jitters

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Unless you’ve been shipwrecked on some remote island lately you’ve probably heard all the buzz going around about the hottest new thing since YouTube came down the pike.

Positioned precisely at the intersection of where narcissism meets voyeurism, Twitter has become the latest web rage. Their self proclaimed mission is to be A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?

The idea is that folks type in a little blurb of 140 characters or less telling the world what they are doing at the moment. Oh. And it is expected that other people will read those blurbs.

If you are anything like me, when you hear that for the first time you thought, “Well that’s just stupid. I’ve got too much to do already without managing chronic world wide updates about on the subject.” Read more

And the Winner is QUALITY!

The results are in.

We started last week by asking the question Quantity vs Quality – Which is Better?

We had a lively discussion about it.

Several of you really wanted me to add a “Both” choice on the poll. But that would have been too easy.

Of course everyone wants both. Heck, we all want to be thin, rich and popular too.

As that great philosopher Don Henley said, “If dirt were dollars we’d all be in the black.”

Sometimes when you can’t have it both ways you just have to make a choice.

Unanimous

As of this morning it was unanimous. All twelve of the votes were cast in favor of Quality.

I thought quality would take it, but I didn’t expect quite the landslide.

So here’s my thought for the day:

Since quality is so important to bloggers, make sure your writing is the best you can produce in the time you have available.

That way your blogging will support your business in the best way possible.

How to Stay on Course During Life’s Storms

It started early yesterday morning.

The cell phone never seems to be more than three feet from me, even when I’m sleeping at night. Especially at night.

Its incredibly loud ringing shattered my sleep about an hour before the alarm was set to go off. The phone is always set on the loudest setting. I often find myself in noisy, industrial settings. I make it vibrate all the time too, just in case. The whole effect is very effective at shocking the system into the awake (and mostly coherent) realm when it goes off at night.

We need you at work. Now.

“OK. I’m on my way.” Read more

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