I’m Leaving This Blog

My blog posts are random and sporadic. Here’s a little marketing tip: If you don’t post at least 4 times a week, your blog traffic goes down the tube. So…I’m moving everything to Danjohsoninc.com as of March 1st.
‘Til then, find me on Facebook. I’d love to get to know you.

Proof that Reporters Have Absolutely No Imagination

China’s cyber-terrorism campaign: Your chance to be a cyber-patriot?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-01-13/chinas-secret-cyber-terrorism/?cid=hp:mainpromo5

Get educated on real time world statistics by checking out worldometers.info. Fascinating and overwhelming!

http://www.worldometers.info

Read Seth Godin’s new ebook here (It’s Free!)

Seth Godin may be a marketing genius, but judging by the way he conducts his professional life, integrity and generosity are two of the his core values.  Along those lines–generosity-based marketing–he’s offering a free ebook for the Christmas holidays.  He’s pulled together an equally impressive group of leaders from different fields and given them each a page to share in stream of consciousness fashion what they think (feel is important NOW).  Below is the text/link Seth sent along.   Click the link at the bottom of the text for the free PDF file.  No obligation.  But if you benefit from it, pass it on.  Thanks, Seth (and company)!

Seth’s Message Follows:

What Matters Now: get the free ebook

Now, more than ever, we need to shake things up.

Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around. I hope a new ebook I’ve organized will get you started on that path. It took months, but I think you’ll find it worth the effort.

Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O’Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.

Here’s the deal: it’s free. Download it here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23711234/What-Matters-Now

What ever happened to long-term thinking?

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed-some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where ‘long-term’ is measured at least in centuries.

–Steward Brand, Founding Board Member, Long Now Foundation.

Did you know there is an organization dedicated to long-term thinking? In our ADD-afflicted culture of texting, Twittering and looking over someone’s shoulder for the next big idea, there is a group of people dedicated to the idea that the world may be here tomorrow.

The Long Now Foundation stands as a reminder that the future belongs to those who realize life is more than a succession of self-gratifying moments.  In fact, whereas most people dance to the rhythm of their symbiotic relationship with the digital passing of time, the Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates with extra zeros solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years!

The inability to “see the forest for the trees,” to delay gratification, to stop texting, Tweeting and doing daily planning long enough to carve out some quiet space and time to look a year or two or ten ahead is, in my estimation, one of the reasons our American culture is skidding along the road of distraction into a lesser place of influence among the community of nations; individuals as well.

You’ve heard the expression, “I’m putting out fires”–when asking how someone is doing. Putting out fires is what people have to do when they didn’t clear out the mental, social, job (etc.) clutter (crises) from their lives . . . until it caught fire. Putting out fires is what a nation has to do when it hits the skids financially. It puts out fires by throwing money in one direction and then another, creating lasting damage to the bottom line and any bottom line the near future holds.  Forget the distant future, most of us aren’t thinking about that; except the folks at the Long Now Foundation.

The opposite of long-term thinking is, of course, short-term thinking (evidenced by the inability to delay gratification).  From petty crimes to the white collar variety, from the internet bubble to the housing bubble where unqualified buyers bought homes they couldn’t afford from mortgage “specialists” who opened the floodgates to keep their commission checks coming, from the teenager who gets pregnant because she (he!) isn’t thinking about next week much less raising a child in poverty for 18 years, to the day-to-day arguments about who is right on global warming (global warming data is measured over decades and whether “we” caused it or not, a long-term plan to clean up the air and water would be a good start).  Like a nation of drivers eating a burger while texting/driving, we are in the middle of the road and a handful of strategically-motivated nations are heading for us on the same freeway.  The real question is who is doing the most strategic long-term planning?  Because the future is being formed by the actions we’re taking each day and how those actions will play out like so many chess moves on the world stage.

As I write, one of the top subjects of the hour on Twitter is Tiger Woods.  For the day?  Tiger Woods.  For the week?  You guessed it, Tiger Woods, followed by important topics like, “If Santa Was Black?” and Jersey Shores. This in a medium where over a million people signed up to follow–minute by minute–Ashton Kutcher, former underwear model and producer of the TV show, Punk’d.

So If you’d like to join me in becoming a long-term thinker  (LT people) there are some benefits:

First, you’ll start breathing the rarified air that leaders breathe.  Remarkably, you’ll find that in doing great things there is far less competition.
Second, you’ll run with other people who have faith; enough confidence in what they are doing today to believe there will be a tomorrow.
Third, when game time comes, your team will be on the field first, rested, ready and with playbook not merely in hand but in heart.  You’ll know what to do when the crisis arrives.  Chance does favor the prepared mind (Pasteur) and the future belongs to those who don’t get stuck in the quicksand of outdated ideas.

In talking with my friend, Adam Salmon, at Child Empowerment, this all came together for me.  He has set up schools and leadership academies in Sri Lanka.  Instead of using the antiquated term, “orphanage,” they speak of Leadership Academies and are planning that a good number of their children will go on to be leaders in the fields of science, government, technology.  And all of their efforts are based on the faith that there is not only hope for the future but promise.  These kids will not have to suffer the indignity of the sex trade or be left on the wayside of an ever changing cultural landscape.  And when we sponsor a child at $30 a month, it’s not merely about being humanitarians or about assuaging the guilt of Western affluence.  It is about reaching children before they are lost, before they become bitter warriors, and raising them in a l0ve-based leadership culture.  This is a game changer…for the future.

The Long Now Foundation is on to something.  And for those who start thinking strategically about business, charity and society, the future can be bright a hundred years from now.

http://www.nextleader.org

http://www.childempowerment.org

http://www.longnow.org

Dan Johnson is with Next Leadership Association and Dan Johnson, Inc. He helps people and businesses transcend their limiting thoughts to achieve lasting, measurable change.

Take 5 Minutes and Join the Campaign to End Apostrophe Abuse Today

Help! The apostrophe is in grave danger. Lately I’ve been receiving cards from the Smith’s, the Jone’s and the Wilson’s (the names have been changed to protect the possessively-challenged).  The words your nice have replaced “you’re nice” and Lisa’s Harley has been replaced with Lisas’ Harley.  This is an emergency of epic proportion’s.  (Come on, doesn’t that last word just feel wrong?)  If the apostrophe had a theme song right now it would probably be: “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”. The future of inter-word punctuation is at stake. So for those of us who speak and write English, let’s review:

An apostrophe has at least 3 uses in English:

1)       To indicate possession (Possessive Apostrophes)

2)       To show omission of letters (Contraction Apostrophes)

3)       To indicate plurals of lowercase numbers and letters (Time/Measurement Apostrophes)

Let’s take a look at the first use: Using the apostrophe when writing the possessive form of nouns. 

If the noun doesn’t end in an s, add an apostrophe and an s.  Like this:

Tim’s boat is new.  Bill’s boat is old.   Lilly’s phone is in Tim’s boat (because she left it there when she went boating with Tim who she likes more because he has more money and a bigger boat).

If the word ends in s (more than one person or object has possession), you’ll only need to add an apostrophe:

The Jones’ shop. The Kerns’ home. The James’ school.

Did you know that many people add an apostrophe before the s in a plural word like flower’s. But doing so turns it into its single form.

Here’s a practical note for all you card senders out there:

You can add an s to your last name without putting an apostrophe before the s unless you have an object after your name.

So, if the card is from the Johnson’s, it’s wrong.  If it’s from the Johnsons, it’s right; unless it’s from the Johnson’s house. The Johnson’s house is notoriously bad about getting cards out.   The Johnsons are a bit better. There IS NO apostrophe within your name on the return address label. 

Speaking of the word it’s, the word it’s is short for it is or it has. Its is a possessive pronoun like his and means ‘belonging to it’ so no apostrophe is needed.  Never use an apostrophe in possessive pronouns (It’s not her’s, it’s hers).  Always add apostrophe s to the single form of a word, even if it ends in s.

Speaking of the word “you’re,” it’s a contraction for “you are.”  The apostrophe replaces the letter a which is missing.  That’s the second use of an apostrophe. Other examples are:

Can’t (short for cannot).  Didn’t (short for did not).  I’m (short for I am.  As in, “I am moving to the last point”).

The third use of an apostrophe involves times and measurements (and lowercase numbers and letters).

Here’s an example of the use of an apostrophe as it applies to time: Today’s weather.  Today’s isn’t short for today is.  It shows that weather belongs to today.

Apostrophes are used to form plurals of letters that appear in lowercase. To form the plural of a lowercase letter, just add an apostrophe and an s after the letter.  Example: There are many a’s and b’s in the class. We’re seeing more people use quotes as well (“a”s and “b”s).  This is acceptable.

 Skip the apostrophe with years (the 1970s were a groovy time) unless you want to show possession again (the 1970’s kind of unrest).

And there’s no need for apostrophes indicating a plural on capitalized letters, numbers, and symbols, though some teachers require it.

Final note: There are exceptions to almost every rule here.  An hour’s worth of study on this oft-abused little creature isn’t asking too much, is it?  Join the Campaign by letting your friend’s in on the news.  ”Friend’s”…did you catch it?

 

Dan Johnson is CEO of Next Leadership Association and CEO of Dan Johnson, Inc. He helps people and businesses transcend their limiting thoughts to achieve lasting, measurable change.

How Your Brain Works and Why It Matters So Much

by Dan Johnson

The primary area of change that occurs in all of us involves the brain, the expression of which we call the mind. Like the psychologist who studies human behavior and the processes of mind and body in an effort to understand his or her own personality, my interest in the mind stems from a desire for a theoretical, yet practical understanding of why I act the way I do, how I can change and how personal change translates into the ability to help others. That interest along with friendship with professionals who study the mind led to an awareness that effective communication must begin with understanding how people think the way they do.

 
When we communicate with people we are communicating with their brains. So success or failure to impact people’s lives depends on understanding how they think, the dominant thoughts they think about and how they can think differently. When we meet someone, we’re coming face to face with the billions of thoughts that have produced the individual before our eyes.

 
Weighing in at about 3 pounds, the brain has up to 50-100 billion neurons or nerve cells connecting in 40 quadrillion ways. It’s very flexible. Our wonderful brain takes billions of thoughts and events in our lives and weaves them into the neural net that is our identity. Each time we think about something synapses between neurons fire, creating a network.  Every time a thought occurs a neuron connection is made. It is estimated that a person thinks 60,000 thoughts per day.

 
The brain stores everything that makes us what we are spiritually, emotionally and intellectually. The good news is that while neuroscience taught that the brain was hard wired by childhood, we now know that it rewires throughout life. The challenge is that the brain works by pattern matching. New situations and experiences are judged by old ones. Everything we hear is filtered. It’s possible to be communicating to people whose paradigms do not allow them to be open to what we are saying.

 
The really good news is that we are not slaves to our neural networks. Every time we interrupt the thought process that produces a chemical response in the body, those nerve cells that are connected to each other start to break up and lose their long-term relationship. That’s called CHANGE. People resist change, but awareness is the first step in moving people in a new direction. When we interrupt the thought processes that subconsciously govern our lives, and observe the effects they have, we are no longer on autopilot.

 
Yet the people we relate to each day have a long history of thinking before we showed up. Knowing how the brain works, is it any surprise that a 30-minute lecture, lesson, rally or training session rarely brings about a long-term change in the listener’s behavior?

 
Lasting change like that requires follow through. An oral presentation is a good place to start because it introduces new ideas into a person’s consciousness. Having a system in place to help people experience change on a day-to-day basis is where real effectiveness kicks in.

 
Dan Johnson is CEO of Next Leadership Association and CEO of Dan Johnson, Inc. He helps people and businesses transcend their limiting thoughts to achieve lasting, measurable change.

Here’s a Second Version of Did You Know?

Scroll down for the first version.  Some of the material is the same, some new.  Again I ask, are you adapting to the changes in the world, suspending  judgment long enough to understand just how significant this techtonic cultural shift really is?  There’s the temptation to run out the clock.  But who would want to give up the chance to shape the future.  

Follow-Throughs

1) How sharp is your web page?

2) How usable, easy to navigate?

3) How well do you communicate with people in their teens, 20’s, 30’s?  

4) Really?

 

Did You Know?

Did You Know? is a 5-minute video that highlights the fact that those living today are experiencing the largest population increases, the most exponential increase of knowledge and the fastest rates of change in the history of the world. Are you adapting, innovating, learning … running out the clock? Scroll down and take a look.