For me the most attractive thing about working in this sweet scented many-petalled flower of the internet plus culture plus business plus everything else is the bees that gather, drawn in inexorably, unstoppably, magnetised by an invisible something.
It's the people, stupid :)
And the people are the most amazing I've ever spent time with.
From across industries. From across national boundaries.
I've met and keep meeting sah-weeeeet people through this Internet thing.
Fortunately we're different enough to not be a bunch of bland, beige generic robots, but there's some shared stuff:
- A love of the new (clearly)
- An associated openness and optimism
- Willingness to get stuck in
- Social conscience too
It's an attitude.
Hunkydory.
What I'm interested to see now, as the tribe grows in strength, size and gelledness, is what we can do together...
To achieve anything I sorta wonder what % of our collective time and energy is distributed across three different time-buckets: Noising, Thinking & Executing at the moment.
Noising -
Noising is the art of making noise.
It's the echoing of the echo chamber - the embellishing and amplifying of someone else's thought or message. Noising is usually higher quantity, lower quality.
It's the continuous partial attention-powered chitter-chatter on Twitter, the blogging, the unconferencing, the making of NOISE.
Thinking -
Thinking is what is says on the tin.
It's quiet time considering, reflecting and generating high quality thoughts, insights and ideas.
It is reinterpreting existing thoughts and concepts - nothing is new, as they say, but it's an attempt to move things forward.
Thinking doesn't 'do' in the operational sense, other than generating and documenting.
Thinking can be collaborative or independently done, and can include workshops, high quality conversations and dialogue, brainstorming and writing.
Executing -
Executing is getting things done.
It is the starting the company to exploit the thought or technology or market opportunity.
Executing leads to startups, working groups, new code, new stuff, new connections, teams, revenues.
Executing is concerned only with what gets done, with results and with real-world achievements and milestones.
So where does all of this leave us, as I like to ask?
-
I wonder how your time splits out?
- I wonder how mine splits out?
- I wonder how the A-list split out between these groups?
- I wonder if there's an optimal blend for an individual?
- Or whether given personality types and natural strengths and weaknesess a better unit for judging the optimal blend is a team or a network - e.g. how much noise vs. think vs. executing do we need in the ideal project team (a network)?
And in a roundabout way what I'm also saying here, implicitly, is that I believe we spend too much time Noising and chasing breaking non-news and the latest social media handbag (today: Cuil, tomorrow: Crudola), and nowhere near enough time Executing.
Ratings and reviews are considered pedestrian by us strident web types - so why haven't we driven forward services and hubs exposing industries and worlds to this disruptive, brilliant innovation?
Online social networks are like SO 1990s for us - we're into microblogging and mobile social networks - but what about the company selling online social networks for vertical industries for gazillions, where did they spend their time - Noising or Thinking then Executing?
I think our personal characteristics mean we move on too quickly, bored by something as soon as we have a handle on it (I think I'm writing about me here), but too quickly to actually give something back to the world - to see how to broker the new new in a way that provides value to normal people.
Maybe a more powerful loop than constantly learning and updating every day would be getting very deep into a pocket and then exploiting and applying that knowledge for the next 6 months - 2 years, and then starting the loop again? Developing towering epic impactful tools and resources each time, whilst our lacklustre buddies are impeccably up to date on the feature set of the latest latest and still treading water, despite brains crammed with value?
Are we applying what we have to give?
Or are we continually topping it up in 0.5% increments?
Who are the Noisers, Thinkers and Executors?
What are you best at?
How can you leverage and exploit what you already have?
...impact, results, real-world change. Execution is begging you to join her.
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