David Piccione.com

One thing I’ve learned about myself recently is that I love change. I love learning, but more importantly, I love applying what I pick up to make something else - related or not - better. I’m an agent of change.

There’s a certain sense of happiness that I gather from being around a dynamic environment it seems. Affecting, leading and being a part of a change is empowering to those that embrace challenge and understand that there is always a better way to do things. Tomorrow, you’ll have more knowledge and more experience - if you’re asked to solve the same problem as today, odds are you’ll do it better. Understanding this gives me the strength to embrace change.

Fool’s Game: Holding on to Now

These days nothing is constant. The world is moving faster than you can possibly keep up with it. Those of us close to technology know this all too well. It’s simply folly to consider any process or state as being permanent.

Many people though, live seeking this permanent state. They gather strength from the certainty of the process, from the definite outcome and routine application - regardless of efficiency, cost or result. These people eventually become extinct, if not literally then figuratively. It’s a sad reality.

Power from Chaos

Thinking positively about change and deriving energy from it gives you several advantages.

You Provide Value - Change agents, by looking for new and better ways of doing things are a valuable commodity to a business. Assuming that the net result of change is a happier customer or more efficient process, directing change almost always has a measurable effect on the bottom line, and that gets you noticed.

Failure Doesn’t Bother You - When change itself becomes easy, making the wrong change becomes a lot less troublesome. In this sense, you’re more likely to act and adjust than to sit motionless deliberating. This also means you’re more likely to go with the flow when you’re not calling the shots too, since you know that if it doesn’t work out, you can just change the “flow”.

Naturally Forward Looking - Embracing a philosophy of change forces you to look forward. This can be a tremendous benefit; while not ignoring the past, you don’t dwell on it either. Continually looking for ways to do things better gives you an edge.

Open To New Ideas - Being comfortable in initiating change keeps you alive to new ideas and methods. There is no formula to predict tomorrow. The best you can do is to shoot semi-randomly, and you might get lucky.

Embrace Change Permanently

Change is a constant. It causes upheaval, stress, and mixed feelings for most people. For myself, it motivates. Imagine how liberating it is to be motivated by uncertainty and insecurity. These are the joys of being a change agent. You should try it out if you haven’t already.

I’ll close with a quote:

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

In my previous post about goals, I focused on using goals as a defined endpoint. In other words, having a clear destination that we intend to reach. As with many things though, understanding where you would like to end up is only half the task at hand. Actually getting there is the other half, and to be successful in getting to your destination you need to be as purpose driven in the journey as you are in defining that destination.

In order to achieve your goals, you need to live by a strategy.

Execution Matters

Your strategy will dictate how you execute your life. It will allow you to make individual and independent decisions in a manner that moves you closer to your goals. It enables you to accept risk where necessary, play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses and most importantly, enjoy the journey of achieving your goals. A clear strategy will allow you to act purposely, in control of your situations, as opposed to reacting instinctively to short term awareness. Whenever you find yourself reacting and not acting, you probably aren’t moving towards your goals.

Dealing With Yourself

Think of a great king preparing to do battle with a foe. Behind him, his army. He has spent months if not years preparing his troops for this day. During his training, he’s learned that they do some things very well, but are poor at others. They may have the best fitness, but lack enough cavalry. They might have great leaders, but wavering loyalty. The whole army might be sitting in a bad position; weaker than normal, or they may be on top of a hill with the best possible sight-lines.

In the same way, understanding yourself is the foundation to creating a good personal strategy. You’ll get the most out of things if you work in favour of your strengths and interests, and focus less - but at the same time be aware of - your weakness. This personal assessment process is continual, and the results vary depending on what type of environment you are currently in. Not only does it matter what you are, it matters where you are.

Dealing With Information

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.Donald Rumsfeld

This quote was ridiculed with great glee by those who figured they knew better. Although it won’t win any awards for literature, it is nonetheless an important truth. When you live strategically, you need to classify incoming information in one of the three categories that Rumsfeld refers to in order to successfully process it and act in on it.

Known Knowns are things that you are aware of: your strengths, your weaknesses, the givens of a situation. Let’s think again about our king. He knows that his army has strong infantry, but no horse support. He knows the terrain in front of him, since he can see it. He also knows that he’s got a reserve division hiding behind the next ridge.

Known Unknowns are like blank lines in a sentence. We know that something goes there, we just don’t know what it is. Our king knows that his enemy is in front of him, but he doesn’t know their size, composition or shape. Known unknowns are the things we try to react to by anticipation - the king sends riders to peer into the forests ahead, looking for answers.

Unknown Unknowns are the gotchas of life. These are the events that hit us from out of left field. Our king doesn’t know that the division hiding on the other side of the ridge has been destroyed by the main enemy force. He can’t react or anticipate this event because it doesn’t fit with the information he is receiving from his current vantage point. Unknown unknowns can only be reacted to, and never anticipated.

Strategically dealing with information means understanding the known, seeking the “need to know” and reacting to the unknown when the time comes. Understand that which you must, anticipate the things you can, and disregard the unknown until it becomes relevant.

Dealing With Individual Situations

If we understand ourselves, and we understand how to process information, we can deal with situations as they arise in a manner that is purpose driven and not haphazard. The key here is to deal with life by anticipating outcomes whenever possible. When we’re hit with too many “unknown unknowns”, we move into fight or flight mode. When this happens, we start to make individual decisions based on the fastest possible positive outcome: thinking on how to make our current situation better.

The problem is that we often lose sight of our goals and end points when we’re forced into this mode of thinking, and this becomes even more true if our goals and strategy for achieving them is poorly thought out and understood. As our king learns that the enemy is a lot closer than he thought, and he’s now down a third of his army, what action should he take? The answer depends on his goals, and his strategy to ultimately achieve those goals. If he’s attempting to crush his enemy, he may well decide to join the battle, hoping that a tired and bloodied foe is now weaker. But if his goal is to take the closest city, he may decide that it’s best to ignore the fighting and race to the unprotected treasure.

His decisions are guided by what he’s trying to gain, and how he’s already decided he wants to get there.

Focus on the Big Picture

Without a strategy, our king will make haphazard choices in reaction to the situation he is faced with, instead of controlling the situation based on his larger objectives, regardless of what is thrown at him at a given time. How you lead your life can be controlled by having a clear and concise strategy to achieve your defined goals.

There is no magic bullet that is a guaranteed winning strategy because there are no two people that are living the same lives. Your strategy should be designed by you in conjunction with your goals and expectations for life.

It’s all about acting on purpose, even in times of great doubt and uncertainty. If you can do this, you’ll be all the more successful at reaching your goals.

I was a little late posting this week’s idea due to a very busy weekend. I apologize.

This week’s idea is relatively simple and straightforward, which would make it easy to implement quickly for anyone inclined to do so. (Should you be, let me know!)

As always, if you have your own idea, email me and if I think it’ll generate some discussion, I’ll write about it as well. You’ll be given full credit.

Concept - Tideman, or Ranked Pair voting is a method of voting that can be used to derive an accurate preferred ranking from having voters select between two of the options available. The wiki article I linked to does a good job of explaining how this really works.

If you combined this type of voting with a decent prize, it might be possible to extend this concept into a viable income source.

Operation - The basic idea would remain the same but the subject being “voted” on could be anything, basically. From best blog story, to best photo, to best home video, to best looking person, etc, etc. All of these subjects have been successful at generating interest in the past or as part of other mediums.

For each contest, you would have a “submission” period followed by a fixed “voting” period. Once the results have been tallied the prize would be awarded; rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

Money Making Potential - There are some interesting ways one could generate income from this idea. The ad model - simply placing ads on the site - is of course the first option.

More intriguing though would be to have an insignificant entry fee, say $1 - $5 and a decent prize: $100-$1000. Combine this with a social network based marketing campaign, and the resulting entry fees would more than cover the prize allocations. Quick math says you’d need 200 entries at $5 to cover a $1000 dollar prize. Even at low levels of traffic that’s pretty attainable these days. In fact, having a fee with a little bit of advertising would make the whole pot bigger still. You could also adjust the prize to entry ratio so that you always come out in the black as well, but that might hamper your ability to draw a crowd.

Downsides - The biggest risk with this idea would be establishing a credible readership base right off the bat. That may mean that for the first few weeks, the contests operate at a loss to draw contestants with large prizes that are easily won.

Once the site becomes popular, the usual crackers and schemers will arrive to attempt to influence the voting, and that would need to be dealt with as well.

Finally, this idea has such a low barrier to entry that the winner will be the one that can build the largest community the fastest.

Worth a Shot?

I think this is worth a shot for anyone who has a few hours to spend coding the ranked pair algorithms, along a few grand to present up front in prizes. What do you think? Is this another Hot or Not, or will it die a quick death?