The transition point in our calendar from one year to the next always causes me to stop and ponder, and this year it’s how we view time itself that actually has me wondering.
What if we knew next year was all we had? There would be no more. How would we act? On the contrary, what if we realized that every action we took would be felt by the generations ahead of us? What if we, all people, everywhere, understood that every moment could be our last and we used that moment for the children yet to come?
What if I could hold that thought and act on it every day?
That’s all I want for Christmas! And I wish the same for all of you. May all of us have the wisdom, patience and peace to live in the moment in service of the future.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
In a world that didn’t change evolution favored habit, routine and caution. Mainly caution. Those who didn’t take risks, kept their head down and maintained the status quo had far longer life spans than the adventurous.
Unfortunately for many, all of that has changed, actually it is change itself that is different. Us, as a race, and the world that we impact is evolving at an exponentially greater rate each day. Those who stand still, avoid, seek routine and safety are left behind. What happened yesterday, isn’t going to happen today, so don’t expect it to.
Those who embrace change and pursue new ground fearlessly are propagating.
Time to throw out your fear and start evolving.
Good leadership is sensitive, retrospective and internally focused while externally tough and forward looking.
Huh?
To lead you must know yourself; what you’re good at, what you’re not and most importantly what you want. It is all about you. If you lie or fool yourself you put the whole group at risk. It is your responsibility to spend your time figuring out you. But, this is a private conversation. Externally leadership requires decisiveness, sometimes tough, hard decisions and a vision that is inclusive but solid, it can’t easily sway in the wind with every comment and critique – in other words you can’t be a self obsessed, reaction to the moment flake, or no one in their right mind will listen to you, let alone follow you.
What a dichotomy.
I want to bitch about people bitching. Hypocritical I know. Our industry, digital signage, those that provide and review it, carry on about how under appreciated we are, misunderstood and just generally not given the due that we’re owed. We all recognize it and we go further and recognize that there are just way too many of us in it – last count over 300 software providers alone.
You’d think our industry observers, the same people who make a living off us, would recognize this and cut the lot of us some slack, right? Wrong. Overwhelmingly I read #fail across my Twitter stream. I think we, all of us, need to inspire and wonder, rather than doubt and critique – how about we start a new trend #awesome?
Mashable just reported that NetFlix is moving from a software app for their user experience to a web app – and they’re doing it with HTML5. Why? Portability across mobile – iPhone, iPad and Android, the desktop, and even the gaming console with their PS3 implementation. And they can do it iteratively, with quick turn-around between iterations and instant deployment with each release. This is one more example of another provider embracing the convergence of visual mediums on the web, and more importantly doing it with HTML5. Many in digital signage don’t believe this is the future for our industry, I think otherwise, but I’d prefer to hear your thoughts. What do you think is the inevitable technology trend and how do you feel digital signage should take advantage of it?
One-on-one telephone and email support needs to evolve to forum support. Why? It’s all inclusive, all users and all employees. Smart companies eliminate layers between them and the user by putting everyone facing forward in a forum. It’s available 24/7/365 and Google Translate makes it multilingual. It’s leveraged beyond just your employees, your user base becomes your strongest contributors. It’s open and honest rather than secretive and closed – everyone knows if something “ain’t” right. It’s proactively educational as well as reactive – anyone can follow and learn. If done right it builds community. Where are you investing? One-on-one support or many-to-many?
Gowalla, the lesser known of the check-in apps, just did something amazing. They didn’t me-too the better known FourSquare or try to overcome the looming Facebook Places, instead they integrated and aggregated them. You can now broadcast your Gowalla check-in on Foursquare and Facebook Places and while doing it earn Facebook Deals and Foursquare Badges. And they created an aggregated check-in stream of what your friends are doing on all three. Then they personalized their new release and added the ability to leave personal messages for your friends should they check in too.
Brilliant. They didn’t circle the wagons, go me-too, only made here, instead they created a better product from their competitor’s products. The proprietary closed digital signage crowd could really learn from this. How could we “mash” rather than keep trying to “smash” each other?
