Since my last writing I have started, stopped and abandoned one post too many.  Among my tomes of “unpublished rhyme” I have a fair bit that reflect on time and such things. For example…

I have drafts on everything ranging from my recollections of  reading Time–The Next Source of Competitive Advantage years ago when working at NYNEX to a napkin-manuscript titled “No time like the present.” After laying around for a while, that draft ultimately fulfilled its intended purpose. It was used to clean up baby-slobber and, I might add, at the very moment it was needed most. Ah, fulfilled and unfulfilled all in the same instance — priceless, ain’t it?

I have been toying with the idea of “making time” to post here. But of course, time is never really the issue, is it? How easy it is to confuse the continuum of time with how we should prioritize our being — at once and at the same time — a part of it and apart from it.

On the subject of time then, and realizing the possibility that, indeed, there is no time — save for billable hours of course — let me point you to a few wonderful things to amuse you should you find yourself with time on your hands, or time to spare, or time to kill, or just maybe, no time to stop…enjoy!

…and so much more…

1. The New Rules of Viral Marketing – David Meerman Scott
2. Marketing Apple – MarketingApple.com
3. Masters of Marketing – Startup Internet Marketing
4. Podcast Marketing eBook – Christopher S. Penn
5. Google Adwords Secrets – SEOBook

6. Get Viral Get Visitors – Stacie Mahoe
7. Marketing With Case Studies – Dynamic Copywriting
8. How to Write a Marketing Plan – Geisheker Group
9. SEO for WordPress blogs – Blizzard Internet
10. Social Web Analytics – Social Web Analytics
11. Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter – Geekpreneur
12. The Zen of Blogging – Hunter Nutall
13. What is Social Media – iCrossing
14. A Primer in Social Media – SmashLab
15. Effective Internet Presence – Effective Internet Presence
16. Introduction to Good Usability – Peter Pixel
17. Increasing the Response to Your Email Marketing Program – CRM Transformation
18. We Have a Website. Now What? – Craig Rentmeester
19. Blogs & Social Media – PRSA
20. The Podcast Customer Revealed – Edison Media Research

First thing: An earlier reading of Gifford Pinchot’s book Intrapreneuring, a topic worth revisiting I think;

Second thing: Recent conversations with all sorts of people who lament the problems they have implementing things 2.0 in their organizations’ thinking and practice.

Hmmm…

In speaking to hundreds of workers and managers for large organizations (government and private sector), I’ve been asked the same questions, over and over:

• How do you convince your boss to even experiment with social media?
• Doesn’t it mean a lot of extra work?
• Isn’t this sort of stuff blocked by our organizational policies?

This Secret Underground Guide to Social Media for Organizations is meant to help you answer some of those questions.

Enjoy — the whole thing is here.

Particularly disappointing was Scoble’s self-confessed, web-enabled obsessive-compulsiveness and apparent delight at finding new ways to feed it. Rather than seek help for what most would consider a disorder it appears he finds all the solace he needs in a similarly unhealthy physical attachment to his computer. I could be wrong but it just struck me that way, very odd.

If you want to cut to the chase, here’s the video…

[Wassup, can't see it? Try WorkFast TV instead.]

On researching cognitive bias I came across Enemies of Reason by Professor Richard Dawkins. The program originally aired on Channel 4. This discovery coincided with my browsing around on YouTube this time researching, um, YouTube. As a result I now know how to create a playlist and have the series of five YouTube clips roll in one continuous play. Another coincidence perhaps, but this could be what I was looking for for another project of mine. My God, that’s it! Eureka!

Ahem. Sorry ’bout that.

If you don’t have an hour now, bookmark the page and come back to watch Episode One later. It’s very good.

[Don't see anything? Watch it on YouTube.]

So, having watched it again I’m wondering why these questions remain unanswered:

Is “being distracted as evidenced by this post” itself a cognitive bias, or is “one thing leading to another?” Hmmm…once again, I’m buggered, daggit!

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Here is a copy of the book, Strategy of Giving free to download and distribute of course! The Strategy of Giving site is packed with lots of goodies. Enjoy!

If I had a dollar for every time I quoted from the book: “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” or warned a friend, “You don’t want to trigger the ‘corporate immune system,’ Bud,” I would be quite a few dollars better off than I am this morning. Of course, it would hardly be as I had billed it then, free advice!

Anyway…

I have been busy researching open source values and various concepts that fly in the face of my traditional upbringing. It is a struggle to reconcile what I have learned in a career spent leveraging competitive advantage with what I know is a better model given a whole new set of circumstances and the proliferation of enabling technologies.

Reading up on The Gift Economy I bumped into Mr. Pinchot again, writing on the very subject in In Context: A Quarterly of Humane Sustainable Culture. Once again what he had to say resonated with me in the same way as when I first picked up Intraprenuering.

In particular, this poignant passage stopped me in my tracks:

A Shift from Capital to Talent

The critical factor controlling success in business is shifting from capital to talent. Employees are no longer interchangeable parts. This is not good for everyone, the undereducated and those whose talents are not now in demand are losing ground. But there is a bright side. Employers must curry the favor of their talented employees who increasingly have an ethical agenda. Employees who can easily find work elsewhere are refusing to work on projects or for companies that offend their values, even if they would be well paid to do so. As this trend increases, as people take a stand for sustainability in choosing their work, even public corporations seeking the favor of bloodless institutional investors will find that sustainable companies have the best future because they have the best talent. In fields where creativity counts, sustainability is a competitive weapon.

This strategy will not work if we are so pure that no realistic level of improvement would meet our standards. It will not work if we sell out for greenwashing instead of instituting real environmentally conscious practices. Biasing the system for sustainability requires some of us to be in the game demanding change.

Frugality and Choice

Our ability to make our talent count for change will often require us to take less for our services than if we were selling to the highest bidder.

One consulting firm I know virtually requires new consultants to use their fine salaries to buy expensive cars and houses. They want them up to their eyeballs in debt so the company can have complete control over them. They want their consultants living in fear of losing their jobs so they don’t ever put ethics ahead of their sales and profits.

Voluntary simplicity is not just polluting less, it is having more to “spend” on integrity at work. If we can live on less, we can turn down unsustainable projects at work just as we do in our choices at home.

Talented people have been making sustainable career choices in increasing numbers. This gives businesses that can provide good work towards good ends a great advantage, and this advantage will grow as the highly environmentally and socially conscious generation in school now becomes important talent to business.

The real game in the business world of the ecological age is running a business or a career so as to make a contribution to the community, the nation, and even to the planet as a whole. True business competence in the ecological age is demonstrated by producing a better product or service for customers and at the same time setting new standards for reducing pollution, for creating habitat, for helping the less fortunate. We cannot play this new game until we move beyond the fear of insolvency and learn to live frugally regardless of financial success.

The old status system is hard on the heart. Living for the larger self through a strategy of frugality and service opens up the heart to the glory of creation all around us. The gift is repaid manyfold.

Wow! How cool is that? You wriggle and writhe trying to articulate something so abstract — or so you think — and there it is, where you least expect to find it!

Thank you, Gifford, you’ve made my day — yet again.