Commit 2 ShipLessons & Learnings of Linchpins

“UnMarketing” by Scott Stratten offers a message of “engagement” over pontificating. Although somewhat rudimentary at times – i.e. “what is Twitter” – the core ideas reinforced repetitively present listeners with a solid foundation for success in Social Media (with the caveats noted below).

Personally, I liked the authors style of sarcastic asides to keep the content interesting and engaging, a facet that may be less obvious in the written word.

Disagreement; I know from experience Social Media just *isn’t that easy* – sure the principles of engagement are an important road to success, but I’ve had many clients who just aren’t that interesting. Inferring that everyone can use engagement as an important business component is fine for the verbally literate, visually attractive and verbose writing business person, but for many business people for whom a 45 second conversation is a stretch, engagement is a learning process they just may not have the capacity to learn!

Final words… It’s a great read (listen), something I would recommend to friends, family and will be donating to the President of my company as a “must read”.

4/5 stars

Grant:

• (for work) landing key accounts.  Shipping first proposal tomorrow.
• (for personal) getting family back in LA.  Shipping this in June.
• (for extra-business) Get large insurance company on the books for 2011

April:

• Reach out to community locations to find more local clients (neighborhood centers, churches, etc.)
• Create a time/space for internet use so that it does not interfere with family time.
• Continue to work on public speaking.– Create account on A Small Orange, ship the blog

Carlo:

• Find and orient 2 new teachers.
• Improve the search results for HaitiHub’s most important search terms.
• Start a HaitiHub blog.

Laura:

• Book draft done by Jan 1 – this involves taking the draft down in word count.
• Shoot for March 15 book launch.
• Re-ship the reworked werewolf screenplay also on Jan 1.
• Possibly look into Kickstarter

Seth announced the next global meetup will be December 7th.

Every month since the original meetup the Santa Monica group has hosted a meeting once a month “committing to ship” for the betterment of personal, business and charity goals.

We look forward to welcoming old and new Linchpins.

http://www.meetup.com/Linchpins-are-everywhere-raise-the-flag/37220/

Grant – Inspire team, support angel funding process, Design & produce Linchpin/Commit2Ship cards.

David – Committed to script rewrite and kicking butt

David E – Create account on A Small Orange, ship the blog

Carlo – Focus on teacher acquisition, test students as interviewers, organize the interviews

Laura – Create the universe (at least my part of it), attend Jon Stewart sanity event

Anthony - HR Group poll, Legal Docs Online – next steps, pilots license

Last month, I read Scott Belsky’s Making Ideas Happen. I found it to be inspiring, eye-opening, and jam-packed with useful ideas. Belsky’s main argument is that for most creative people, idea generation isn’t the problem. The problem is idea execution. However, Belsky believes there’s an elegant formula for overcoming this problem:

Making Ideas Happen = Ideas + Organization + Communal Forces + Leadership Capability

Through insights he’s gleaned from a number of creative professionals, as well as his own insights as the CEO of a successful consulting firm, Belsky offers concrete steps on how to become better at shipping and turning your ideas into reality.

Among my favorite ideas from the book:

Act without conviction. Don’t wait for inspiration. Act first. Let the inspiration come later.

Thrash at the beginning, not at the end. Use the beginning of any project to generate ideas like crazy. But once you’ve committed down a path, focus on execution; avoid the desire to keep saying “what if…” Course-correct when necessary, but focus on shipping. Changes can always be made after the first iteration.

No one ships alone. Even if you’re a “solo creative,” you usually need the support, ideas, and feedback of other people to turn your ideas into reality. Intellectual cross-fertilization leads to better ideas, while accountability to another person (or to a team) leads to a deeper commitment to ship. Execution rarely happens in isolation.

Limit your “insecurity” work. These are tasks you do out of nervousness or insecurity (i.e., compulsively reading blogs in your field, mindlessly checking email) but that don’t actually further your productivity goals. You do it simply to feel reassured. Scott’s advice: stop looking for reassurance and get to work.

Are you a Dreamer, a Doer, or an Incrementalist? Figuring out which one you are—and which one you need to be paired up with in your professional life—could make all the difference in terms of your productivity and impact. Here’s a short blog post that explains the three personality types.

In short: a highly recommended book for all you Linchpins out there. Your “lizard brain” may not like it, but that’s exactly the point!

140 character review:

“First You Have To Row a Little Boat” provides lessons for life with an aquatic twist. Sailors or non-sailors will be educated and inspired.

——————–

A great book for a number of reasons.

1. If you’ve ever sailed, or looked at sailboats, visited a marina, or even drank water, this book will connect.
2. The lessons are so simple – like patience and calm when the wind dies – and conveyed with so much authenticity, that it’s easy to empathize and learn.
3. Inspires everyone to find an old captain mentor. Who’s yours?

One of the books I give to close friends, it can seriously change your outlook on life.

David – Ship screenplay – Oct 7th

David E – Website live with one post – September 30th

Carlo – Preparation & trust building to facilitate one (new) teacher to teach a small class (in next 30 days)

Caren – Train my assistance, on copy machine and to read my mind (immediate and ongoing)

Grant – Manage change & expectations over the next 30 days

I hear it every day. “You can’t do that” “That won’t work” “It’s never been done before” “That’s not possible”.

The only thing I can or can’t do is listen (or not) to the negative and focus on actually getting things done, doing the (nearly) impossible, and generally moving on without hearing (and believing in) the naysayers.

Admittedly, not everything *is* possible, changing the earth’s rotation, flapping my arms to fly or getting my son to clean his room, but… if you listen to the folks who say “no”, you’ll never know exactly how far you can push the credible towards the impossible.

And that is the journey, the movement, the impetus and the excitement.

You don’t *have* to take the first step, and if you listen to “them” you probably never will. Don’t listen.

David E. – Website & Blog

Grant – Video training plan for Instant Estimator

Laura – Outline to part II

David – Finish first draft of screenplay

Anthony – Law Files Online – keep project going // LinkedIn – HR Group poll

Just finished reading an excellent book called Switch. It’s by brothers Chip Heath and Dan Heath, the dynamic duo who also wrote Made to Stick (another great book, btw).

Switch is about how to make change when change is hard. (And let’s face it, most change efforts, at the beginning at least, can be pretty tough.) Chip and Dan set out to investigate why some people/groups/organizations succeed at making changes, and why some (if not most) fail. I won’t give away everything, but if you want to be successful at a change effort, here are the three things that Chip and Dan say you need to do:

1) Direct the Rider (the rational side of our brains)

2) Motivate the Elephant (the emotional side of our brains)

3) Shape the Path (create an environment where your change efforts can succeed)

What I particularly loved about this book is that while it contains plenty of compelling stories and “self-help” advice, Chip and Dan’s advice is grounded in a lot of cognitive and behavioral research (so that both the rational and emotional parts of our brains can be equally persuaded by their arguments).

Bottom line: Switch is an excellent and entertaining how-to manual for people and businesses who are serious about wanting to make a change.

And a definite must-have for Linchpins!

David M.