A kid gets a paper round. The newsagent pays him but it was his Mum who asked him to start working.

A designer reports to the Creative Director yet her motivation is to be admired by her fellow graphic artists.

An up-and-coming writer takes a job with a popular magazine. It will look good on her CV. She’s no longer thinking about what she can contribute, but how the company enhances her own reputation.

A self-employed musician has to deal with the demands of managers, agents, producers, artists, promoters, journalists, endorsements… but he’s not doing it for them. That’s not what gets him out of bed at midday. He’s doing it to prove the doubters wrong.

Who is your boss?

Your real boss, is the one you are trying to please.

Time to re-evaluate who you’re working for.

Nostalgia and novelty are the ditches on either side of the path.

Content that speaks to people comes from the gut; not from the memory.

Work that moves people comes from following your heart; not from following trends.

Believing that just because something worked in the past, it works now, is naive. 

Applauding something simply because it is in vogue is shallow.

Nostalgia can say “irrelevant” when you were going for “deep” or “important”.

Novelty can signal ‘shallow’ when you were pointing to ‘urgent’ or ‘essential’.

The path to influence and connection is fresh, raw, meaningful, edgy-good, executed with painstaking detail; not a lazy nod to the latest trend or a poor quality pastiche.

Traditions die. Fashions pass. True art lives on.

Carve your own path.

It’s not just how you look but how they see.

‘Everything communicates’ but you have to understand how your audience sees if you want to win them.

A premium venue can lend your organisation credibility or paint you as wasteful and opulent.

A statement can be challenging or offensive.

Budget coffee can appear frugal or cheap.

It may not be important to you but how important is it to others? Beware of driving away your best customer because of something you can tolerate.

The goal should be to win true fans, not placate the cynics.

Think about the long term benefits. Not this month’s bottom 

line.

Stephen Covey says “seek first to understand, then to be understood”.

I say, know thy audience.

You don’t want to end up like these guys.

“The medium is the message.” - Marshall McLuhan

Everything Communicates.

The clothes you wear, the coffee you serve, the building you choose, the people you promote.

Writers don’t want a book to be judged by its cover.

Speakers want people to hear the words they say (and ignore the way they say it, their dress or the stage set).

Leaders want people to buy in to the rhetoric… but too often it is negated by everything else that’s being communicated.

Who are you trying to reach and what are you trying to say to them?

First, answer that question truthfully, creatively and simply.

Then, be relentless and uncompromising in your pursuit of doing it. Do not leave any area to chance, do not leave anything unchecked, do not allow anything that does not tell the story you wish.

This is the path to effective, believable communication.

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things human beings look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7 TNIV

To get beyond outward appearance it seems we need divine intervention. You simply can’t rely on that for your audience.

Influence is a measure of HOW BIG your leadership is.

Everyone has some influence with someone. It does not make them a leader.

I think leadership is being different.

By doing something different you lead. You set an example and give others permission to follow.

Normal is boring. The accepted has been done before.

Take a lead today. Be different.

Leaders have an agenda; they want to lead people somewhere. Else they’re not really leaders; just control freaks.

Some spend a lot of time trying to lead those who don’t want to be led. A fools errand.

Others do not want to go where you’re going.

Others want to… but are unable to.

Meetings are held, vision is cast and projects are announced… but real progress isn’t made.

It feels like banging your head against a brick wall.

Success starts with gathering those, and only those, who have the desire and ability to go where you’re going and the positive attitude required to stay on the journey.

You can spend your life frustrated or you can work on getting the right people in the room.