Are you a Change Agent?

It’s not even New Years Day and I’m all about change.

I’m talking about all those tools and occasions we use to remind ourselves that we are human and can always do better in our lives:

• The New Year’s resolutions
• New to-do lists
• New business plan to execute

But What Creates Change?

Personally and professionally, I am collaborating with others to develop and share change strategies that inspire you to pursue a social path to create the desired changes you seek in your work, in your business, in your life.

I find that if we really want to achieve a systemic change in our business, in our lives or in the world, we need to lead as the agents of change.

Here are 8 questions

To help you develop your change strategies consider these:

1. What changes do I desire moving forward?
2. What are the negative patterns and influences I need to change or remove?
3. What motivates me to produce these changes?
4. What changes do I need to make so that I can achieve this?
5. What communities do I need to engage to create these changes?
6. Who have we shared these strategies with for feedback and reflection?
7. How can we creatively share and implement or strategies?
8. Where will we integrate these change strategies in our lives, relationships or business plan?

Are You a Change Agent?

Leadership as an agent of change is the strongest strategy to produce change in and around you. See two inspiring examples below of change agents leading the way.

So what are you doing to create change?
Share your comment here.

See more at Volksvagen’s innovative website. http://thefuntheory.com/

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Amos White is a Social Media Marketing Evangelist and public speaker.
Follow Amos on Twitter @Mos42

Is success worth falling for?

How important is falling down and failure to developing future success?

In a previous post I shared how entrepreneurs and organizations explore enabling risk taking and even failure to foster innovation and creativity.

Recently, Guy Kawasaki showed how the 40-30-30 rule applies as well to business as it does to sports: 40% physical training, 30% technical skill and experience, and 30% willingness to take risks. The moral? If you haven’t had a good fall, you probably aren’t trying hard enough nor taking enough risks.

I find the upside to this rule in our potential to learn from our mistakes and the path that new learning can take. Falling down or failure can produce learning in the form of a new approach, an innovation upon a stagnant theme or a creative tact – all because we chose to push the envelope a little further and fell along the way.

Falling for Success

How have you or your business gained from a recent failure?
What are you doing to increase measurable risk taking away from routines?

Share your comments here.

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Amos White is a Social Media Marketing Evangelist and public speaker.
Follow Amos on Twitter @Mos42

Google Logo Celebrates Barcode Invention

Google changed its logo to celebrate the invention of the barcode today on the 57th anniversary of the barcode patent.

Originally designed for the railroad industry to label car, it wasn’t until the early 1970’s that the barcode was introduced commercially in the supermarket industry to automate checkout systems and introduce a cost reduction in the labeling of supermarket products.

Read more about the barcode on Wikipedia.

Google’s Visual Communication

Google uses its logo as a form of visual communication, to create conversations across the web. In changing its famous and highly recognizable logo, Google leads inquiring minds to discover noteworthy items, historic dates and points of interest via key words on its search page.

See previous posts about Google logo changes on Ghandi and on Samuel Morse and the intervention of the telegraph here.

Brand Influence

One of the most influential uses of brand changing or remixing is the image of Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign.

A photo taken by a journalist during the campaign was artistically adapted and made into a poster to express. The effect of  Obama’s highly recognizable image (brand) being changed to convey a message proved overwhelmingly powerful; probably the single most indelible image of the President. The artist, Shepard Fairey, was instantly catapulted into to fame with the image seen round the world and shared widely on the internet.

Barcode as Art

See an ABC News Story on artist Scott Blake who remixes art using barcodes.

Conversational Marketing or Artistic Interest?

When have you modified your brand to create conversations or influence others?

Post a comment here.

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Amos White is a Social Media Marketing Evangelist and public speaker.
Follow Amos on Twitter @Mos42

CNN Money offers small businesses innovation in Six Steps

Small businesses innovation
or productive creativity can be daunting when considered within the context of what adds to the business bottom line.

Managers and chief executives are wary enough of employees losing valuable work time to social media chats and water cooler gossip.

But consider this- if your business is not improving (read: growing) when you keep doing the same things, isn’t it worth enabling and supporting you staff in trying something new and different?

CNN Money’s post on Six steps to creative breakthroughs listens to industry leaders share how they effectively leveraged existing resources to produce innovative changes that improved their bottom line.

Here are some lessons learned from the “6 Steps”:

1) Look behind you.
Always look back to see what did and did not work.

2) Lose the routine.
Make time to read widely.
Move more quickly in your own life to find your creative impulse.
Attend a trade show or seminar about an unrelated industry.
Try spending a day in the life of a client.

3) Use the brains you hired.
“Give people the license to take risks and to fail often enough
to realize that they will not be punished for doing the right thing.”

4) Get cozy with customers.
“Your guests are going to tell you how to be successful.”

5) Share the load.
Get outside feedback and vett new concepts with partners.
Use student interns: they’re not afraid to tell you something is dumb.

6) Try to fail quickly.
Once you find a good idea, commit to it.

Read the full post here.

Lessons Tried?
What has worked for you in moving your business out of the box?

Google’s homage to Gandhi

Google is just a class act.

Today Google posted a minimal home page homage to Mahatma Gandhi.

Google’s Tribute to Gandhi

Their long tail approach to sharing information through images linked to searches inspires us to connect with the stories of other great artists, factoids, historic dates, etc.

Its sort of a geeky way to join in a world community, learning about people, places, and things not so much larger than ourselves, but that had great impact on our world or impressioned others around them.

International Day of Non-Violence
Today is also the Internal Day of Non-Violence.
It is led by the United Nations as inspired by Gandhi.

Learn more about Gandhi.

Building Community
What conversations will you create to bring more peace into this world?