people

The Problem With Perception

In public, people say and do things to build a perception of them.

Some of this is calculated; some, natural. After all, perception is everything. It gets you work; clients; a promotion; a date; a raise; and more.

No-one wants to be perceived as anything but awesome, so they build the perception about them carefully. Others buy into it, and the perception crafting reaps its reward.

The problem is, perception – by definition – is fragile. All it takes is for one slip, and the house of cards that is your perception comes crashing down. And the funny thing is, it doesn’t even have to happen in public for it to start making a difference in public.

All the more reason to be consistent across the board, no?

Numbers

Most people have probably heard the story of how Jesus fed 5,000 people with just five fish and two loaves of bread. It?s one of the most popular tales from the Bible and whether you?re religious or not, it?s likely you?ve heard it.

What does it tell us? That success isn?t dictated by numbers. You can have the biggest company and satisfy the fewest people. You can have the smallest company and satisfy every single customer, every day.

Numbers aren?t the important thing. It?s what you do with the numbers that is. You might be a solitary fish in the sea, but you can still satisfy 1,000 people.

image: elisecathlene

Planning Ahead

I took this picture on the way to a meeting the other day. As you can see, the lady driving the car has her little dog right up front with her in the driver’s seat.

Because we were driving (and I know how some of our local drivers are – think New York cabbies!), I couldn’t help but think of some of the things that could go wrong:

A car suddenly brakes in front of her.
A child runs out in front of the car.
She’s rear-ended by the driver behind.
The dog sees another dog and starts going wild.

All of these scenarios – and probably a few more – would all lead to the same result, and it wouldn’t be pretty for either the driver or her dog.

Because she didn’t plan ahead.

She didn’t take into consideration what might happen, so she let everything go to fate. Fair enough – but sometimes we need to make sure that planning ahead is core to all we do. Some of this could include:

Planning Ahead For Your Business

We like to think we’ll know what to do when our business hits a rough patch. But do we? Do we know to have X amount set aside to pay the bills, employees, contractors and ourselves? Do we make our business and/or marketing plans flexible enough to be able to change on the fly? Do we plan for trends in the marketplace and how we’ll overcome them? Do we plan ahead on changes in the administration of our countries and different mindsets to our current business approaches?

Planning Ahead In Your Job

There used to be a time when you had a job for life. No more. Now, you’e lucky you’re at the same place for more than a couple of years. So how are you planning ahead for that? Are you taking a night school course to expand your skills for a new career? Are you keeping on top of industry news about your employer or their industry? Are you planning ahead in case your employer goes bust tomorrow? Are you planning how to use the contacts you’re making when/if push comes to shove?

Planning Ahead On Your Blog

If you blog, you may or may not have a blogging schedule. Myself, I pretty much write when an idea comes to me and I’ll write almost there and then – I don’t have any drafts. But what if I fell ill, and my blog was dead for a month or more? Are you planning on having a back-up plan for you falling ill? Or vacations? Or if your server goes down, or your host goes out of business?

Planning Ahead In Your Life

Okay, this is probably the hardest to plan ahead for, since life is pretty good at throwing us curve balls. But there are still ways we can plan ahead, either for us or for those around us. For instance, have you planned how much extra you can put to the mortgage to make your home your own faster? Or how you’ll cope if your partner falls seriously ill, and you have children? Who can you reach out to? Or how about the discussion that’ll arise if your son or daughter comes home one day and says their views on a topic you’re passionate about have changed and they’re in direct – and possibly harmful – conflict with you?

Your Turn

These are just some of the ways we can all plan ahead, whether in our personal or professional lives, or somewhere in-between. There are many more – the main point is that they’re all related. What happens at work affects your home life, and very often vice versa.

Planning ahead might not stop certain events from happening; but it sure as hell can prepare you better. After all, you never know when you’re going to get hit by a flying dog…

How about you? Are you planning ahead, and if not, should you be, at least just a little?

Stepping Outside Social Media and All That Jazz

So this post has absolutely nothing to do with marketing. Nothing to do with social media. Nothing to do with PR, or communications, business or blogging tips (unless you count the stats about spam emails when you click the “More” tab on the side navigation menu).

But that doesn’t matter. Sometimes you need to step away from all of that stuff and take a look at the world around us. Learn about the people, facts and figures that make up this planet.

Which is exactly what this World Clock from Poodwaddle does.

With real-time statistics (based on projections) on the state of the world today (collated from various world organizations), it’s a very cool visual representation on the make-up of our home.

Enjoy.

For more cool applications, check out the Poodwaddle website.

Calls and Actions

We all know things are tough at the minute.

Businesses are laying staff off or closing down altogether, contractors are finding less clients and people are finding it hard to make ends meet. And it?s probably going to get worse before it gets better.

So here?s an idea. A call to action, if you like.

If you?re a business owner that?s in the position to help, reach out to your community. Those contacts you build up every day of the week? Use them. Use their knowledge and expertise. Offer them contract work.

You don?t even have to worry about advertising costs. Use the tools that you?re using to make these connections in the first place.

Put a call out on Twitter for work or an opportunity, and if you see someone doing this, re-tweet it.

Write a blog post about who you need and why (or have a Skills Needed page with your current requirements).

Use your LinkedIn connections to either recommend a position to someone, or someone to a position.

Yes, going local is always preferable and should be your first port of call. But that?s not always an option, which is where your community comes in.

We often count on our community for so many things. How about helping them out at the same time we count on them?

image: steven w