What I don’t want to be.

I don’t want to manage people. I don’t want to tell them what to do. I don’t want them to tell me what’s wrong. I don’t want to know what time they started work. I don’t want to know what time they finished work. I don’t even want to know if they came to work or where they are on the planet. I don’t want to be a meeting convenor.

What I do want to be.

An editor. A collator of brilliant ideas. A facilitator of resources to make them happen. Always on. Always inspired and hopefully inspiring. Creating things that push boundaries, are better than what was before, and I don’t just talk about it, we ship like stink. We ship “brilliance” out the door every week, week after week, relentlessly and with passion.

That’s what I want to do. That’s what I want to be when I grow up.

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?