Wednesday 10 March 2010

Linchpins, Trusted Agents, Family, Friends, Colleagues, Who do you rely on? Who is relying on you?

I feel despair when so called world leaders fail to collaborate and therefore what needs to happen with climate change, economics, you name it, doesn’t happen.

On the other hand I feel excitement, inspiration, and exhilaration when I see or hear of so called ordinary people making a difference. I am convinced more than ever that positive and productive change is personal first, local second, the world third.

Aside from law and order, maintaining some infrastructures and safety nets, politics is irrelevant in the modern world in my view.

We must be the change we want to see in the world as Gandhi suggested long ago. The change journey then continues in our homes and in our neighbourhoods and local communities, then the rest of the world.

Having people we can rely on and who can rely on us by our sides on this change journey is crucial to success.

My personal reading in the past month has focused on this and I have been inspired by three people’s work in particular.

Geoff McDonald’s book summaries on steroids as he calls them! If your reading time is short check out Geoff’s summaries here. This month I gained much from Geoff’s Web Line summary about trust agents, Design Advantage about how design may be the new competitive advantage in business, and Brand Worship why people are loyal. These all helped me to get really clear on who is helping me and who (albeit unknowingly) is hindering me.

Who is helping you? Who are you allowing to hinder you?

Seth Godin’s latest book Linchpin about how to be indispensable. I get Seth’s blog every day however I think this is his best work yet. It helped me to get really clear on who is indispensable in my life and why, and how I can be better in being indispensable in the lives of others.

Who is indispensable in your life? Have you shown appreciation to them this week? Who are you indispensable to?

Peter Sheahan’s Making $#IT Happen is a great read. We all have great ideas. The issue for most of us is turning our ideas into great results. I have never read a better book on this subject than Peter’s. It helped me get really clear on who and what I need to focus on to really make the difference I was born to make in my world.

What is happening with your ideas? Are they in your head? Are they in your heart? Or are they out in the world making a difference?

Be remarkable
Ian
Founder Differencemakers Community
Sign-up here for a least one free resource per month and to get your complimentary copy of my ebook Differencemakers - how doing good is great for business.

PS Alexander Blass plus a special guest speaker in each city, and myself, will be calling the world to action in a very special one day master-class.

Dubai 21st June 2010
Toronto 13th July
Southbend 15th July
Manchester 27th July
Oxford 29th July
Singapore 17th August
Perth 19th August
Melbourne 24th August
Sydney 26th August
Brisbane 31st August
Auckland 2nd September
Adelaide 7th September

If you live in or nearby or can get to one of these cities I hope you will register today.
Find out all about the tour and register from here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice post, thanks!