Successful Blog

Change the World: Use and Interpret the Data

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What Will You Do with the Data?

Change the World!

A colleague calls you. She’s cranky and to the point. She doesn’t offer a greeting. She just starts right in with what she wants you to do.

What she wants you to do isn’t your job. It isn’t something that should naturally go to you. She’s demanding a huge favor, without even asking. Someone listening in would think you were being paid or that you’d already said, “yes.”

Of course, you have choices here, but the big one is.

How will use and interpret the data you have?

We can change the world by finding out more — more than what we think we know, more than the surface shows. Imagine the reasons, the ways that we might want to help.

You can change the world today — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

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If you’re ready to change the world, feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Change the World!.

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.

Head and Heart Together: Extreme Leaders Change the World

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I’ve been thinking about changing the world — not that I don’t do that already. Everything we do changes the world in some way. We breathe; we release carbon dioxide for the plants. We smile. We frown. People notice, even if we don’t. We walk the given path or find our own direction. Every step changes what was there before we passed.

But from now on, I want to change the world on purpose, for real, and for the better.

The hard part is making changes for the better. It takes energy to be audacious about pursuing the right goals and values and proving that they make a positive difference. Energy is easy when the world is going smoothly, but not so, when things are extreme and uptight. If I want to always have a positive impact, I need to have energy all times. I need to be an Extreme Leader.

Extreme Leaders know that love generates boundless energy — love of all kinds.

“Love of what future principle we’re trying to live out, love of what people I have around me, and love of what they want for their lives. Love of what customers I have, and love of what customers I might have in the future if I am smarter, faster, and more creative in serving their needs. Love of what impact we can have on the lives of our customers and — if we’re audacious enough — on the world as a whole. Love of what our business really is, and love for what — when we cut away the chaff — we really do at work every day. . . .

If I love who we are, and if I love what we can be, then I’ll love the process of how we get there. And in order to make it all happen, I will act boldly and courageously and I will, at times, fail magnificently. But my love demands that I try. Demands it.” — Steve Farber, as Pops in Radical Leap

Extreme Leaders don’t use their heads solely to run their autonomic functions. They don’t use their hearts only to pump blood.

“Now is the time for all of us to take our power back and become, each of us, Extreme Leaders in our own right. We have to set a new example of what’s right in business and everywhere else. We have to be audacious enough to follow the examples we respect and challenge the ones we don’t.” — Steve Farber, as Edj in Radical Leap

Head and heart together, full-out open, audacious and engaged.

It takes that to be fully human. It takes that to be an Extreme Leader.

When head and heart work together, the world responds positively.

Imagine the little and big changes many Extreme Leaders can make.

How will we change the world this year?

Liz

 

That Christmas Week — When No One’s There

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I've been thinking . . .
This is a Friday when most folks aren’t in the office. When I used to have an office away from my home, this day and the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day were my favorite days to sneak in for an hour or two to organize things.

It was the “be there when you don’t have to be” feeling.

It was the “be with the handful of folks who are also there” camaraderie.

It was the “I can clean out my files and talk about anything” freedom.

It was the “everyone has taken a vacation from deadlines” lack of stress.

It was the “I can toss this, move that, and add a picture” comfort and pride of ownership.

It was the space, the quiet, the room to breathe.

We spend more waking time in our offices than in our living rooms. It only took an hour or two to make my space somewhere I wanted to be.

Liz's Signature

One-in-a-Million Award for Every One-in-a-Million Blogger

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Yeah, It’s a One-in-a-Million Kind of Thing

One-in-a-Million by Trée George and Sandy Renshaw

My husband tells me that if someone on the planet is saying, “one in million” there’s a good chance that person is talking about me.

I know it’s not so. I know there are plenty of us who fit in that “one in a million” category. So I’ve decided to celebrate how unique we all are with an award!

I’m calling it the The One-in-a-Million Award for One-in-a-Million Bloggers. Everything about it is a one-of-a-kind thing. Read the rules and you’ll understand where I’m going. Then join on in, and we’ll get this party rolling. When it’s over, I’ll make a giant list of the One-in-a-Million Bloggers that we all know.

Here’s how to participate. It’s easy.

  1. Make up a one-in-a-million category — use lots of detail to name it.
  2. Choose a one-in-a-million blogger — the only one who fits that description.
  3. Collect the following information:
    your descriptive name of the category, a link to the blog and the blog author Your description probably explains every reason why you named it a one-in-a-million blog so that’s already covered. Do include a link to your own one-in-a-million blog and your own name — so that I can link back to you as the one-in-a-million nominator and cohort well..
  4. If you’d do me the favor to write One-in-a-Million in the subject line of an email and send all of the information to me at lizsun2@gmail.com, I sure would think you were one-in-a-million for helping me out that way.
  5. Go with the One-in-a-Million theme and only submit one please. I know you know two million people, but most of us don’t.
  6. The awards go on until December 31, 2006, 11:59 CST. (Chicago Time)
  7. And of course, be nice.

I’ll be the one-in-a-million judge. If I need help, I’ll ask few one-in-a-million friends I know for an opinion. Every day between now and the end of the year, I’ll be posting the links of both the one-in-a-million bloggers and the one-in-a-million benefactors who named them.

What An Award Posting Looks Like

Here are two one-in-a-million bloggers I already know. Just follow this handy-dandy One-in-a-Million format and you’ll do fine.

For the One-in-a-Million-Category of:

Sci-Fi storytelling and amazing art that moves people. This category requires talent that comes from a heart and soul mixed of cookies, tea, generosity, and filled up with listening, love and downright humanity. This award is bestowed with extra points for providing the art for the One-in-a-Million logo poster because all someone ever needs to do is ask.

This award was submitted by: One-in-a-Million Cohort Liz Strauss

For the One-in-a-Million-Category of:

Being in love with people and graphics. This category requires always wanting to connect the two, laughing a lot, and having kind words for everyone, and somehow being able to spell customer service and help from the letters, Sandy. This award comes with special points for turning the art that Trée provided into the One-in-a-Million Logo poster, never stopping until it was a great example of her graphic abilities.

Sandy Renshaw at PurpleWren Workshop

This award was submitted by: One-in-a-Million Cohort Liz Strauss

So there you go . . . Haven’t you wanted to be a cohort just one time? Here’s your chance to do so in a big way. Who do you think is one-in-a-million? Take a minute. Make up a wild one-in-a-million category and let the world know.

Happy Holidays!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

NFL Coaches, CEOs, and VCs Take a Lesson from Your Kids

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We Learned How Business Works When We Were Five Years Old

Strategic Plans logo

I was re-reading “The E-Myth Revisited” last night. It reminded me of a book I read in 1989, called, “The Game of Work.” Both got me thinking about how the idea of work is so much more important than the task at hand. Those thoughts took me to jobs I had, the work I do, and the games I played as a kid.

I looked around at the world and found that everything that is hugely, remarkably successful has the same things that make it work as our back yard games did.

  • The guy who’s house it is — the place we’re playing — sets the culture. That’s how it’s always been. Everyone takes a cue from the owner, that personality has power. He might keep kids out or share his yard with everyone. He might change the rules in his favor or consistently help others win. Steve Farber, Extreme Leader describes what works remarkably on the playground and in life when he says, I’m convinced that the ultimate rule of the Extreme Leader is to make others greater than yourself.

  • Rules and roles give us freedom to act. — Nothing was worse than when everyone wanted to be king in the drama or sheriff in the old west. Forgive me, but it was chaos when kids would get “shot” and refuse to stay dead. Playing baseball was no fun when we argued about what was a fair ball and was what out or even worse, where the bases were. Learning the rules and working with them make us smarter and give us benchmarks. Seth says so.

  • Sometimes a “do over” is the right answer, sometimes it’s not. — But even the smallest kids know that doing everything over is boring and gets you no where. Guy Kawasaki has some great advice on when and when not to respond to mistakes.

  • Whining, yelling, and tuning out make you look like a baby. — Kids soon enough ignore whiners, yellers, and kids who tune out as not worth the time they take away from the game. Kathy Sierra talks about what to do if stress brings out one of these traits when you should be learning.

  • Don’t break a promise unless someone will get hurt. ,

  • You have to CARE for the game to be remarkable and successful. — Kids know that they put their hearts and their heads into whatever they do Christine Kane explains why everyone wants to do business with people who think like she does.

That’s why experts call play the “work of childhood.” It’s true.

So, let’s get playing.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you think Liz can help with a problem you’re having with your business, your brand or your blog, check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

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The Work We Do

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A Few Words from Michael E. Gerber

I read this last night, and I had to share it with you.

“He said,’The work we do is a reflection of who we are. If we’re sloppy at it, it’s because we’re sloppy inside. If we’re late at it, it’s because we’re late inside. If we’re bored by it, it’s because we’re bored inside, with ourselves, not with the work. The most menial work can be a piece of work done by an artist. So the job here is not outside of ourselves, but inside of ourselves. How we do our work becomes a mirror of how we are inside.’ ” –Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited, pp. 199-200.

I can’t add a word to improve that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

The book is in my store and at Amazon.