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I try to focus on executing good process, whether or not I achieve good outcomes. Because process is something I can control. Outcomes are not. I’ve been burned enough times to know that the more I hang my sense of achievement onto a flimsy foundation, the more likely I am to be disappointed when it topples.  Process orientation, then, becomes a form of creative insurance. It’s a way of…

Ideas are free, execution is priceless. That’s been my mantra since day one of starting my business. It’s also the title of a book I wrote a few years back. You can download it for free here. But here’s the problem. I’m an idea junkie. Everything I look at in the world breaks down into a collection of ideas. I have about fifty new ones every day, and sadly, I…

If you stay in the entrepreneurial game long enough, eventually, you stop challenging your anxieties and start leaning into them. You learn to live with them long enough to respect them.  As the ancient scripture beautifully reminds us, should we want to contain something, we must deliberately let it expand, and should we want to control something, we must deliberately grant it access.  Because there’s no point in trying to overcome…

I judge people by their vocabulary.  I believe we are revealed in the language we create for ourselves, especially when we write.  I once got an email from a high school student who struggled with shyness, lack of confidence, fear of rejection and inability to be taken seriously. What’s interesting was, her email didn’t read like an struggling teenager. He words were written clearly, eloquently and respectfully. Could have…

Historically, the artist made the art. That was their sole job function. The primary creative act of putting words on paper or clicking the shutter or performing on a stage. Middlemen and vendors and corporations and intermediaries accomplished everything else.  But thanks to the confluence of modern culture, i.e., the digital revolution and the direct to consumer era and the long tail phenomenon and the connection economy and the…

All creativity begins with the moment of conception. That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here. And so, in this blog series, I’m going to…

Every company is convinced they’ve unlocked the secret to productivity.  Every week I read another article about an innovative organization that has it all figured out.  They build creative incentive programs and use employee game mechanics and have real time chat tools and track goals on public dashboards and install screen monitoring software and create content filtering malware that blocks social networking websites and set work timers for fifty…

Ideas are free, execution is priceless. That’s been my mantra since day one of starting my business. It’s also the title of a book I wrote a few years back. You can download it for free here. But here’s the problem. I’m an idea junkie. Everything I look at in the world breaks down into a collection of ideas. I have about fifty new ones every day, and sadly, I…

Creativity literally means making something out of nothing.  But in many cases, it means making something out of something. Organizing raw materials into different wholes. Helping ideas bounce of other ideas, going from one until the other, until they hit an exciting new nerve. It’s not as labor intensive as creating something out of whole cloth, but it requires a certain volume of inventory to be possible.  One of…

I once met a woman who worked in the development department of a cable television network.  She shamefully admitted that her job as a producer was to invite freelancers writers into her office, gush over their portfolio, ask them a thousand questions, listen attentively, take copious notes on their brilliant ideas, act like she was going to hire them, and then just have an internal staff person execute their…