Today I saw this headline in my notifications from Mashable.

Apple set to be the #1 seller of PC’s next year.

Thoughts of Wow! And Finally! And “They said it would never happen!” all flashed across the screen of my mind.

And then it hit me. Apple doesn’t sell PC’s. Wasn’t that Steve Jobs’ whole point?

“Think Different?”

It would be akin to the headline, “Pepsi set to be the #1 seller of Coke next year.”

If ever there were the blaspheming of a brand, this is it.

Could this signal the beginning of the end for the brand Jobs’ built? He must be turning over in his grave.

My take: Apple didn’t set out to win the “computer” war. Jobs created an entirely different game; one in which they were the only player. That, in large part, explains why apple owns the tablet market. There is no competition. This can’t be summed up as a blue ocean red ocean issue. It’s more like apples and oranges isn’t it.

How might you develop this kind of strategy in your business or on your blog? What about your church or non profit? How many churches operate with the mentality of competing with other churches. I work in higher education, an industry that constantly talks about “comparator” schools. Someone is going to completely reinvent the game soon, leaving the rest of us holding the proverbial bag.

My question: what would it look like to create a new game; one where you owned the playing field–because you were the only player? It takes a lot more imagination and ingenuity to do this. But it must be a whole lot more fun. I

Anyone got any analysis on this?

Ok, so if you’ve clicked on to this post you may have already fallen into a the third trap– the trap of thinking you are a smart person. ;0)

The truth is, you probably are.

In all seriousness– here are the two traps:

1. To forget what it’s like not to know what you know. (i.e. to be unaware of your intelligence)

2. To not know what you don’t know. (i.e. to be unaware of your ignorance)

The former is negligence. The latter is recklessness. Both run the risk of arrogance.

The antidote to the former is attentiveness; for the latter it’s restraint.

Take 6 minutes and watch the bit below.

Last Friday night I braved the journey to the local Apple store to buy an iPad 2. Upon arrival I learned they sold out; the line began forming the night before and almost ran the length of the entire mall.

Apple imagined it all over 16 years ago.

So I ask myself, “Self, what are you imagining today that might come to fulfillment in 2027?”

I encourage you to ask that question too.

Ideas? Anyone?

Click on the image and read the page– begin with “The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind. . . .”
It wouldn’t surprise us to think this was written by another fluffy consultant type. The surprise? Tom Peters wrote it. The excerpt captures part of #25 in his book, “The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence.” (Quote from the slightly fluffier Dan Pink.)

Tom Peters’ is a bottom line business thinker. Leadership guru Warren Bennis, the only person close to both Tom and the late Peter Drucker, told a journalist, “If Peter Drucker invented modern management, Tom Peters repainted it in Technicolor.”

Whatever kind of movement you lead or organization you run, be on the lookout for “artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers,” and you get the point. Make sure they sit at the tables of influence.

If you’ve crossed over the frontier of reading, I’d encourage you to get this one in the Vook Edition. and the price is right!

What would happen if I instituted an auto-reply to every email that came into my inbox saying the following:

“I respond to Email on Friday. If you need more immediate attention please call or text my cell.”

The big question:  should I list my number??? I’m thinking not since those I want to have my immediate attention would already likely know my number or could easily acquire it.

The beauty of email is the wonderful way it enables you to keep projects moving forward, track conversations and keep clear communication trails.  The horror of email is the way it makes virtually everything urgent and creates the unreasonable expectation of immediate response.

Email creates the perennial scenario wherein we over promise and under deliver. I think my idea creates just the opposite reality.

So what do you think . . . . . . will it work?

Take a look at this 27 second media clip. Then pick up the conversation below.

The obvious move you never see coming

Gives a whole new meaning to the idea of a Quarterback Sneak.

Two ways to look at this.  1.  A trick play you only get away with 0nce. 2. An epiphany that can change the way you see everything.

Deep down I think it’s probably #1.  In a deeper place I want to believe it’s #2. How often do I miss the most obvious move on the board because I am searching for something more complicated. . . . . . . . or clever. . . . . . . . or submitting to the way I understand the rules. . . . . . . . . or just going along with the status quo. . . . . . . . .??? Maybe there’s a #3. The obvious idea you discovered before anyone else leaving everyone scratching their head asking why they didn’t think of it before.

What would this kind of move look like for me at work? at home?

Where have you seen someone making this kind before? Think Netflix!

Now watch it again.

Modern movement theory seems to build on this basic premise:

If we can get a lot of people to do a little bit we can change the world.

Giving campaigns, non-profits, causes, and so forth all seem to rally around this mentality.

I question this approach. What if it’s just the opposite?

What if the secret is for a few people to make an extraordinary sacrifice?

How might that change the way we lead people?

I spend my life working in a sector defined by what it is not: Non-profit. This strikes me as unfortunate. I am often quoted as saying, “The future of non-profit is profit.” I’m not so sure that’s right either. It leaves me wondering why I submit to such a limited categorical framework. The industry I serve is also defined as “charitable,” or “philanthropic.” Where I work, we train men and women to serve the world. What could be more profit-able work? We do research and development in the science and art of making all things new.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I work in a “hand-out” sector. We constantly search far and wide for “hand-outs” in order that we can perpetuate a “hand-out” industry. The non-profit world spends enormous amounts of money and energy preying on the giving of others. Now get this: the “system” incentivizes the citizenry to offer hand-outs to non-profit agencies through allowing the citizens to retain more of their own profit for themselves. (i.e. tax breaks).

Somehow I can’t envision Peter applying for 501(c)(3) status.

I don’t quite know how to analyze all this, but it smells a lot like the fading economy of Christendom. Now before you go defending the status-quo (which certainly has merit and to some extent works) let’s think together about new models and possibility paradigms. Is there a better idea? Might there at least be a stronger, more positive, way of defining ourselves in the marketplace?

See also this story.

While you are at it, check out this company who is pushing the paradigm.

Now that September’s over, I’m reflecting on what happened last summer. Growing up on the farm, summer time meant sun-up to sun-down labor. Because so much had to be done, it often meant seven days a week. Dad developed a policy early on to give the workers the option of not working on Sunday, but for those who did he gave them a $100 bill. It usually averaged out to maybe 10 or 12 Sundays a year through the busy seasons. What do you think happened? You guessed it, the full staff showed up on the shop yard at dawn on these Sundays to pitch in their best labor.

I work on a different kind of farm now (i.e. a seminary) with a completely different kind of policy manual. Summer hours = come in every day at 7:30, take a 45 minute lunch, and go home Friday at noon. It’s an incentive that creates a disincentive to make work a priority. As far as I can tell, it creates lots of clock-watching and makes us run more like a bank than a Kingdom mission. (hoping my colleagues wont throw tomatoes!)

I wonder what would happen if we ran the seminary less like an institution and more like a farm. The word actually comes from “seminarius” and literally means “seedbed.”

So rather than bashing me for bashing summer hours, how about suggesting some creative incentives that inspire people to give more rather than less.

I don’t imply negativity in claiming the ubiquitous nature of the word collaboration. I’m just trying to figure out what it really means.

My friend, Peter, sent me two possibilities this past week:

1.  2 or more individuals working together to design or create solutions to a shared problem.

2.  A virtuous cycle of value creation that involves human interaction

More and more I find that people assume that whatever happens when groups of people meet and get along is collaborative. In most cases, it’s probably cooperation. They got along in order to move a project along. Cooperation means compromise and is the mainstay of committees. Collaboration, on the other hand, rises to a higher level of human interactivity. Collaboration calls for true relationship and it requires something akin to virtue to accomplish.

For now, I’ll simply define collaboration as co-creation. It begins with the movement from me to we; from you to us; and from my to ours.

How would you define it?