John Winsor

How Does Sports Influence Business?

Lately, I've been thinking about how the behavior athletes develop in training and competing in a sport can influence behavior in business. In these uncertain times, I've noticed the people who are driving business forward in paradigm shifting ways are athletes. Here's a rough list of rules that I've developed from the sports that I do (rock climbing, backcountry skiing, surfing and cycling) that influences my approach to business.

1.    Speed is Safety
2.    Know When to Go
4.    Feel the Danger
5.    Bad Things Happen, Get Over It
6.    Distinguish Between Pain and Injury
7.    Be Fearless
8.    Set the Right Pace
9.    Balance Emotions and Logic
10.  Experiences Outweigh Accomplishments
11.  Practice
12.  Commit

I'd love to get your feedback and additions on the list. Leave a comment here, shoot me an email or hit me @jtwinsor on Twitter.

Thanks.

Quote of the Dav

 Overheard: It used to be what you knew, then it was who you knew, now it's who knows you.

Be More Human

Note: Today I had three conversations about the power of improv in business. Powerful. It reminded me of a piece a wrote in my book, Spark.

A recent experience I had reminded me how important being human is in our work lives. I first met Johnnie, a Branding Consultant who’s based in London, on a video conference call to discuss the BrandShift weblog in which we had all been invited to participate. I was a little nervous going into the meeting knowing that I was, by far, the most junior in a group of otherwise experienced bloggers including Jennifer Rice, Andrew Lark, Alex Williams and Hylton Joliffe.

For a long while during the conference call I sat and listened, feeling very intimidated by the team’s incredible knowledge. They were throwing out basic blogging ideas and terms that I did not understand at all.

            

It wasn’t until Johnnie started talking about some of the principles of improv that I started to participate in the conversation. This idea of allowing everybody, no matter the level of knowledge, to participate in a positive dialogue really intrigued me.

            

However, it wasn’t until after my interview with Johnnie that the magic of improv really started to become apparent. I had posted a provocative thought on my own weblog only to get a couple of pretty sarcastic and aggressive responses. Being a person who always wants to be liked and doesn’t deal with conflict very well, I was unsure how to respond.

This same feeling happens to many of us, including me, in our work environments. I have always had difficulty understanding how to deal with aggressively differing opinions. And often these positions get calcified, creating great rifts in companies and on teams.

            

After thinking more about Johnnie’s interview and the tool of  “Yes, and?” I started to apply the principle to my dialogue with those people on my blog who expressed radically different opinions. By saying, “I understand where you’re coming from and, in fact, here’s something to add,” I was able to focus on the areas of common understanding and build from those in a positive way, instead of thinking about the differences and focusing only on those.

What would happen if you used the principle of “Yes, and?” in your interactions with your coworkers and customers?

Note: Today I had three conversations about the power of improv in business. Powerful. It reminded me of a piece a wrote in my book, Spark.

A recent experience I had reminded me how important being human is in our work lives. I first met Johnnie, a Branding Consultant who’s based in London, on a video conference call to discuss the BrandShift weblog in which we had all been invited to participate. I was a little nervous going into the meeting knowing that I was, by far, the most junior in a group of otherwise experienced bloggers including Jennifer Rice, Andrew Lark, Alex Williams and Hylton Joliffe.

For a long while during the conference call I sat and listened, feeling very intimidated by the team’s incredible knowledge. They were throwing out basic blogging ideas and terms that I did not understand at all.

            

It wasn’t until Johnnie started talking about some of the principles of improv that I started to participate in the conversation. This idea of allowing everybody, no matter the level of knowledge, to participate in a positive dialogue really intrigued me.

            

However, it wasn’t until after my interview with Johnnie that the magic of improv really started to become apparent. I had posted a provocative thought on my own weblog only to get a couple of pretty sarcastic and aggressive responses. Being a person who always wants to be liked and doesn’t deal with conflict very well, I was unsure how to respond.

This same feeling happens to many of us, including me, in our work environments. I have always had difficulty understanding how to deal with aggressively differing opinions. And often these positions get calcified, creating great rifts in companies and on teams.

            

After thinking more about Johnnie’s interview and the tool of  “Yes, and?” I started to apply the principle to my dialogue with those people on my blog who expressed radically different opinions. By saying, “I understand where you’re coming from and, in fact, here’s something to add,” I was able to focus on the areas of common understanding and build from those in a positive way, instead of thinking about the differences and focusing only on those.

What would happen if you used the principle of “Yes, and?” in your interactions with your coworkers and customers?

Quote of the Day

"Mysticism peoples and cultures alive. Logic, too emphatically embraced, is what undoes the mind."

-G. K. Chesterton

(Seen above the door at Larry's.)

Finding Inspiration From a Butterfly

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about my fascination with biomimicry. The subject is starting to get some momentum, as it should. I just noticed that The Biomimicry Institute has a cool new website, Ask Nature. Co-Founder, Janine Benyus describes the site this way:

AskNature is the online inspiration source for the biomimicry community. Think of it as your home habitat—whether you’re a biologist who wants to share what you know about an amazing organism, or a designer, architect, engineer, or chemist looking for planet-friendly solutions. AskNature is where biology and design cross-pollinate, so bio-inspired breakthroughs can be born.

There are so many natural innovations around us that we can leverage. Designing a better world will only be enhanced by a deeper understanding of how nature works.

Overheard

"the only thing I know is I know nothing" - Ben Slater, Future Holdings

TED Favorites

Elizabeth Gilbert's talk about the source of creative genius was one of my favorite TED conversations. If you struggle with being creative like I do, you'll enjoy this.

TED and the New Economic Reality

I'm just back from my first TED conference and am still buzzing from the energy and learning. It's going to take a few days to make sense of all of the wonderful things that were shared. More than the talks, it was incredible to be with so many amazing, optimistic and motivated people.

This morning, I was reading Helen Walter's post on the BW Next Blog entitled, "TED: The three-letter-conference in Long Beach in denial about the credit crisis"  and certainly agree with many of her points.

However, I thought Chris Anderson did do a good job of addressing the issue of omitting the credit crisis from much of conference. And, his thoughts were spot on. (He also wrote a thoughtful response to Helen's post on the Next Blog.)

I do, however, feel that what we are at the start of is something that is bigger than a credit crisis. It is the start of a deep wholesale reconfiguration of society brought on by a culmination of factors from environmental degradation to new medical issues caused by the lack of effectiveness of antibiotics to the deep greed and narcissism caused by unregulated financial engineering. Even more significantly has been the lack of leadership and profound mismanagement from our political system. While past crisis have been caused by one or two of these factors we are now in a situation that everything is up in the air.

While some might look at this with regret and fear I view it as a time of great opportunity and hope. Things will be difficult. Many of the old ways society has done things need to end. A new, more holistic view of the world needs to emerge. Chris Anderson wrote, "That, honestly, is my take on what's happened here, that we have created a destructive and impenetrable tangle, and no one, not even the smartest people in the world, honestly know how to untangle it. The link between cause and effect has been broken. No one knows whether if you pull a string here it's going to improve something over here, or just increase the tangle."

But Chris, if it's not us that helps figure this out, who else will?

TED and the folks who attend the conference are in a unique position to lead this paradigm shift by translating the ideas worth spreading into actions worth taking. But, only if everything is on the table. A new holistic model must be developed that not only includes, Technology, Entertainment and Design but also includes the underlying moral and economic implications that will support this new paradigm.

It starts with optimism. As Chris so eloquently said, "I was so struck by something Craig Venter said at Oxford a couple years ago, that, he wasn't sure whether the optimists or the pessimists were right, but he knew this: that it was the optimists who were going to get something done. And so that is the stance here. When the nightmare passes, the ideas we have heard this week have a real shot at shaping the future, and that's what I believe TED to be."

What an exciting time to be alive. We have been given a rare opportunity to help change the coarse of history in a positive, long-lasting way for decades if not centuries to come.

I'm optimistic we will succeed.

The Death of American Socialism

I was surprised the other day when a good friend said that America is the largest socialist country in the world. He qualified his comment by saying that instead of socialism residing in the government, socialism in America resides in big corporations.

And, the socialism has been manifested by digital technology. Now, with email, blogs, etc. CEO's and CMO's can connect directly to the customer. And, the customer can connect directly to the top. So, the question is, why are all of the corporate layers needed today?

Not only is it a financial imperative to further flatten organizations today, it's a cultural expectation from customers.

Customers want to and now can have a relationship with real people inside of companies who can take the personal responsibility to handle their questions and problems without being shuffled around and blocked.

How can you flatten your company?

Cultural Obesity

Like everyone else, I've been trying to put the events of the economic crisis in context to help me understand it. I was especially astounded by the death of the WalMart employee on "Black Friday." The bottomline is that we've become obese as a culture. For a while now, we've become so focused on our appetite to consume. We have all seen how such an appetite for food has caused our health system to come close to collapsing. Now, our whole culture is teetering from the same kind of appetite for stuff.

How do we, as a culture, break this cycle. It's a lot like working out or eating right. We've got to become disciplined in what we consume, always asking, will what I'm contemplating consuming really help me get to my goal or make me happy? It's about focusing on the moment. It's a victory every time we don't bow to our appetite.

To get out of this thing it's gonna mean putting one step in front of the other and focusing on becoming healthy. There's no doubt that, when this is over, we'll all be better off for going through it.