Most

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Most, by William C. Taylor.

Imagine any and every field possible. There are so many brands, so many choices, so many claims, so much clutter, that the central challenge is for an organization or an individual is to rise above the fray. It’s not good enough anymore to be "pretty good" at everything. You have to be the most of something: the most elegant, the most colorful, the most responsive, the most accessible.

For decades, organizations and their leaders were comfortable with strategies and practices that kept them in the middle of the road—that’s where the customers were, so that’s what felt safe and secure.

Today, with so much change and uncertainty, so much pressure and new ways to do things, the middle of the road is the road to nowhere.

As Jim Hightower, the colorful Texas populist, is fond of saying, "There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos."

We might add: companies and their leaders struggling to stand out from the crowd, as they play by the same old rules in a crowded marketplace.

Are you the most of anything?

William C. Taylor is a cofounder of Fast Company magazine. His forthcoming book is Practically Radical.

Excellence

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Excellence, by Tom Peters.

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Tom Peters blogs at tompeters.com. His new book, The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence is available in March 2010.

Atoms

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Atoms, by Chris Anderson.

The past decade has been an extraordinary adventure in discovering new social models on the Web—ways to work, create and organize outside of the traditional institutions of companies, governments and academia. But the next decade will be all about applying these models to the real world. Atoms are the new bits!

Just take one example: making stuff. The Internet democratized publishing, broadcasting and communications, and the consequence was a massive increase in the range of both participants and participation in everything digital—the long tail of bits. Now the same is happening to manufacturing—the long tail of things.

The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit. Anybody with an idea and little bit of self-taught expertise can set assembly lines in China into motion with nothing more than some keystrokes on their laptop. A few days later, a prototype will be at their door, and it all checks out, they can push a few more buttons and be in full production. They are a virtual microfactory, able to design and sell goods without any infrastructure or even inventory; everything is assembled and drop-shipped by the contractors, who can serve hundreds of such small customers simultaneously.

Today, there are microfactories making everything from cars to bike parts to local cabinetmakers with computercontrolled routers making bespoke furniture in any design you can imagine. The collective potential of a million garage tinkerers is now about to be unleashed on the global markets, as ideas go straight into entrepreneurship, no tooling required. "Three guys with laptops" used to describe a web startup. Now it describes a hardware company, too.

Peer production, open source, crowdsourcing, DIY and UGC—all these digital phenomena are starting to play out in the world of atoms, too. The Web was just the proof of concept. Now the revolution gets real.

Chris Anderson is Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, and the author of The Long Tail and FREE. He also runs a micromanfacturing robotics company at diydrones.com

Speaking

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Speaking, by Mark Hurst.

Speaking soon? Keep this in mind: people at events are hungry for authenticity. Saying something you might not have said elsewhere is a good way to find your authentic voice.

For my own conference, I often give advice to speakers before they come on stage. Here’s an exercise for anyone who wants to connect with an audience.

A few weeks before the event, when you start preparing the talk, write out everything you spend your time doing - professional work, side projects at home, everything.

Now pick the one thing you’re most excited about.

Now consider: why is that so important to you?

Design your talk from that point, as if you started by saying, “My name is X, and I’m passionate about XYZ because...”

The rest of your talk should fall into place easily enough. Yes, it’s important to know your audience, use A/V materials wisely, watch your time, and so on. But you have to build the talk around your passion.

Here’s the final measure of your success as a speaker: did you change something? Are attendees leaving with a new idea, some new inspiration, perhaps a renewed commitment to their work or to the world?

Be honest, be authentic, and speak from your passion. Yes, it means taking a risk. But the results might surprise you.

Mark Hurst runs Gel and founded Creative Good, a customer experience consultancy.

1%

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — 1%, by Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell.

Two tech executives with no food experience and no marketing budget launch a product called Bacon Salt.

Next, they search for people on social networking sites who profess a love for bacon, then friend them. Among a small percentage of those people, enthusiasum begins to spread about Bacon Salt. What began as a tribe quickly multiplies into 37,000 fans on Facebook and MySpace.

Months later, the buzz spills over into newspaper articles, TV interviews and the holy grail of PR, an appearance on Oprah. Two guys who knew nothing about the food business and had no marketing budget now had a certifiable cult hit. Inspired, they create several other bacon-flavored products. It’s the birth of a brand.

Their success began with a small – very small – group of self-identified fans of a category. Even if social networks have millions of members, it will never translate into millions of buzz-spreaders. The Bacon Salt story illustrates that it’s usually a small percentage of the tribe within the larger tribe who spread the word—usually about 1 percent. They are the One Percenters.

The One Percenters are not the usual suspects of name-brand tech bloggers, mommy bloggers and or business bloggers. The One Percenters are often hidden in the crevices of niches, yet they are the roots of word of mouth.

This year, your job is to find them and attract them. Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell are the authors of the books Citizen Marketers and Creating Customer Evangelists. They blog at Church of the Customer.

Enrichment

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Enrichment, by Rajesh Setty.

We are all on a search – a search for more meaning in our lives.

Through choosing to enrich other people’s lives, you add meaning to both their life and your own.

Some simple steps to follow:

1. Commit: Commit to lifetime-relationships that span events, companies, causes and geographic boundaries.

2. Care: Care for the concerns of others as if they are your own.

3. Connect: Aim to connect those who will benefit and enrich each other’s lives in equal measure.

4. Communicate: Communicate candidly. Tell people what they should hear rather than what they want to hear.

5. Expand Capacity: Aim to expand people’s capacity to help them give and get more from their own lives.

The Litmus Test: If you are truly enriching someone’s life, they will typically miss you in their past. They think their lives would have been even better if they had met you earlier.

You are only as rich as the enrichment you bring to the world around you.

Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. His blog is Life Beyond Code.

Vision

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Vision, by Michael Hyatt.

Vision is the lifeblood of any organization. It is what keeps it moving forward. It provides meaning to the day-to-day challenges and setbacks that make up the rumble and tumble of real life.

In a down economy — particularly one that has taken most of us by surprise — things get very tactical. We are just trying to survive. What worked yesterday does not necessarily work today. What works today may not necessarily work tomorrow. Decisions become pragmatic.

But after a while this wears on people. They don’t know why their efforts matter. They cannot connect their actions to a larger story. Their work becomes a matter of just going through the motions, living from weekend to weekend, paycheck to paycheck.

This is where great leadership makes all the difference. Leadership is more than influence. It is about reminding people of what it is we are trying to build—and why it matters. It is about painting a picture of a better future. It comes down to pointing the way and saying, "C’mon. We can do this!"

When times are tough, vision is the first casualty. Before conditions can improve, it is the first thing we must recover.

Michael Hyatt is the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. He blogs on "Leading with Purpose" at MichaelHyatt.com and also Twitters at @MichaelHyatt.

Re-Capitalism

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Re-Capitalism, by Chris Meyer.

"Marx read his Darwin but he got it wrong— capitalism doesn't self-destruct, it adapts."
-- Tom Stoppard, Rock 'n' Roll

Capitalism is not immutable — it's changed before (remember industrialization?) and will again.

Darwin wrote about the finches of the Galapagos Islands, observing that the shape of each population's beaks matched the form of the particular flowers that provided their food. Think of businesses as the individuals of the capitalist species. The shapes of companies will evolve as the world changes around them.

What changes? To big ones: the world's growth will no longer come from the high-income economies (the consume 77% of world GDP today — only 32% by 2050.) Second, just as industrial technology shaped the society of the United States' in the 20th Century, information technology will be the basis of the emerging "digital native" economies in the 21st. Like finches, businesses will change their shapes to make their living in this new low income, high growth, globally connected, information-intensive environment.

How? They will learn to price and market goods whose marginal cost is zero. They will learn to profit from giving away value. They will prefer collaboration to competition. They will assume responsibility for the newly measurable "externalities" they impose on their societies.

If you live or operate in the developed world, you've got a problem — you have a lot to unlearn, and no short-term incentive to do it. But better not ignore the competitor with the strange-looking beak.

Chris Meyer, co-author of Blur, The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy, is writing a book about the evolution of capitalism. HBR blog, "You Call That Capitalism?" at http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/meyer-kirby/.

Connected

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Connected, by Howard Mann.

There are tens of thousands of businesses making many millions a year in profits that still haven’t ever heard of twitter, blogs or facebook. Are they all wrong? Have they missed out or is the joke really on us? They do business through personal relationships, by delivering great customer service and it’s working for them. They’re more successful than most of those businesses who spend hours pontificating about how others lose out by missing social media and the latest wave. And yet they’re doing business. Great business. Not writing about it. Doing it.

I’m continually amazed by the number of people on Twitter and on blogs, and the growth of people (and brands) on facebook. But I’m also amazed by how so many of us are spending our time. The echo chamber we’re building is getting larger and louder.

More megaphones don’t equal a better dialogue. We’ve become slaves to our mobile devices and the glow of our screens. It used to be much more simple and, somewhere, simple turned into slow.

We walk the streets with our heads down staring into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by doing the same. And yet we’re convinced we are more connected to each other than ever before. Multi-tasking has become a badge of honor. I want to know why.

I don’t have all the answers to these questions but I find myself thinking about them more and more. In between tweets, blog posts and facebook updates.

Howard Mann is a speaker, entrepreneur and the author of Your Business Brickyard.

Ease

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Ease, by Elizabeth Gilbert.

We are the strivingest people who have ever lived. We are ambitious, time-starved, competitive, distracted. We move at full velocity, yet constantly fear we are not doing enough. Though we live longer than any humans before us, our lives feel shorter, restless, breathless...

Dear ones, EASE UP. Pump the brakes. Take a step back. Seriously. Take two steps back. Turn off all your electronics and surrender over all your aspirations and do absolutely nothing for a spell. I know, I know – we all need to save the world. But trust me: The world will still need saving tomorrow. In the meantime, you’re going to have a stroke soon (or cause a stroke in somebody else) if you don’t calm the hell down.

So go take a walk. Or don’t. Consider actually exhaling. Find a body of water and float. Hit a tennis ball against a wall. Tell your colleagues that you’re off meditating (people take meditation seriously, so you’ll be absolved from guilt) and then actually, secretly, nap.

My radical suggestion? Cease participation, if only for one day this year – if only to make sure that we don’t lose forever the rare and vanishing human talent of appreciating ease.

Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray, Love. Her new book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage will be published in January, 2010.

Meaning

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Meaning, by Hugh MacLeod.

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Hugh MacLeod blogs at Gaping Void and is author of Ignore Everybody.

Dignity

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Dignity, by Jacqueline Novogratz.

Dignity is more important than wealth. It’s going to be a long, long time before we can make everyone on earth wealthy, but we can help people find dignity this year (right now if we choose to).

Dignity comes from creating your own destiny and from the respect you get from your family, your peers and society.

A farmer able to feed his family and earn enough to send his kids to school has earned the respect of the people in his village—and more important, a connection to rest of us.

It’s easy to take dignity away from someone but difficult to give it to them. The last few years have taught us just how connected the entire world is — a prostitute in the slums of Nairobi is just an important figure in your life as the postman in the next town. And in a world where everything is connected, the most important thing we can do is treat our fellows with dignity.

Giving a poor person food or money might help them survive another day... but it doesn’t give them dignity. There’s a better way.

Creating ways for people to solve their own problems isn’t just an opportunity in 2010. It is an obligation.

Jacqueline Novogratz is the founder of the Acumen Fund and author of The Blue Sweater.

Facts

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Facts, by Jessica Hagy.

Jessica Hagy blogs at Indexed and is the author of a wonderful book of the same name.