Originally published on Fresh Business Thinking earlier today.

In the Election campaign that ended earlier this month, two of the three main Political Parties in the UK included the concept of fairness in their slogans. The Liberal Democrat manifesto talked of “change that works for you – building a fairer Britain”, and the Labour Party proposed a ‘future fair for all’. As was to be expected in manifesto slogans, both are very aspirational, even idealistic. Despite the loss of seats that both parties sustained, it is clear that people do respond positively to the idea of fairness but are maybe not clear on what it means in practice.

Definitions of fairness talk of such concepts as equity, justice, even handedness. One definition of fair reads ‘free from favouritism or self-interest or bias or deception; conforming with established standards or rules’. Is fairness something that business can, or should, aspire to deliver in a competitive marketplace?

Business and personal life is full of decisions. They define our journey. Some are universally applauded whilst others evoke the response of Kevin the teenager (as played by Harry Enfield) – “that is so unfair!” What is it that determines the response?

For a decision to be needed there has to be more than one possible outcome. If some people desire one outcome and others desire a different one, there is likely to be an element of unfairness in the result. The decision process however, should be perfectly fair. Whilst some decisions appear to have a win/win outcome, a set of circumstances where all gain something, can all gain what they want? More than likely there will be a compromise for some or all of the parties.

Perhaps most decisions are to some degree zero-sum, where for one party to win, the others must lose. Where the outcome is win/win, neither gets all that they want. In such cases, it is then dependent on how much each can gain and how acceptable that is, especially when taken with other decisions that may be made over time. We all accept that ‘we win some and we lose some’ and we all tend to have a ’bottom line’ position that we will accept if we can’t achieve the desired outcome.

The English Premier League of Football was recently decided between Chelsea and Manchester United. Each won their final game emphatically. Yet, because of the results over the whole season, Chelsea had one more point and became Champions of the Premiership. Was that fair? By the ‘rules and standards’ of the league, it was. Did both get what they wanted? No. Manchester United and Chelsea both wanted to be Champions but only one could be – the definition of a zero-sum game. Would it have been better if it had been ‘fairer’? Where all of the teams would have been in mid-table on equal points, having drawn all of their matches? I think not. There would not have been any reason to follow the ups and downs of your team if there were no clear winners and losers. The Teams and the Premier League would count that as a financial disaster.

Prisoner’s dilemma is an example of a game where there is a ‘fair’ outcome but only if both parties play a particular strategy whilst not knowing what the other has chosen. In the game, if both prisoners deny involvement they will both be able to leave as free men. If one denies and the other chooses to betray him, the one who is betrayed will be jailed and the betrayer goes free or is favourably treated. If both betray each other, both will be jailed. If they play purely for themselves – both may lose.

You might reasonably ask, so what? If we believe that fairness is possible and should be always be the outcome, then the decision making process can be extended possibly ad infinitum – especially if the decision can only be zero sum. If we seek the best outcome for all parties, we can construct a solution that gives a quicker and workable solution. The idea of fairness for all brings to mind Garrison Keiler and his description of the fictional Lake Wobegone – “where all the children are above average.” A great concept but probably not achievable in practice and certainly not one that would inspire people to perform to their best.

I believe that we can seek to improve the lives and experiences of all of our people by bearing in mind the needs and wants of all parties when we make decisions. However, as the Premier League shows, it is not always possible – or desirable – to accommodate them. So long as the process is even-handed and the rules and standards are clear and open, there is nothing wrong in a decision making process where there are winners as well as losers. In fact, I would suggest that we are more comfortable with that approach.

So, in business, fairness is not about an equal division of outcomes nor is it some mathematical formula to ensure even handedness. Fairness is a process that is transparent, that all can understand and with which they can engage, that takes into account all desired outcomes and produces a decision that is explicable and explained.

You cannot please all of the people all of the time, but you can do your best to ensure that you don’t significantly displease groups of them. That’s good leadership.

Andy Coote is a professional writer and co-author of A Friend in Every City (2006), a book about Social Networking and Business. As a commentator on leadership and networking, Andy provides content strategy, writing support and services for a number of Business Leaders. You can reach him at andy [at] bizwords [dot] co [dot] uk or view his website at www.bizwords.co.uk.

Andy edits the Virtual CEO Newsletter which appears each week on Fresh Business Thinking and showcases the members, leaders and professional speakers whose input forms the resource available to all Academy members. More at www.chiefexecutive.com.

Whatever the size of your business, you have a finite capacity which is determined by the resources you have. There will be a limiting factor to how effectively that resource can be used. A manufacturer may be limited by machine capacity, a retailer by shelf space and a services company by human resource – by its people. In my case, my limiting factor, as a one person operation providing writing services, is my time.

One of the aims of an effectively run business is to maximise the use and profitability of the resources at its disposal, hence the need to review and revise plans from time to time and to make sure that usage really is effective.

In his book First Things First, Steven Covey uses an example of a glass jar which is ‘filled’ first with rocks, then smaller stones are added followed by gravel. At this point, the jar is full, or so it seems until water is added. His point, that what seemed full still had spare capacity, is a metaphor that I am using to renew my business plan and I and thought that I’d share my thinking so far. I’d be interested in your feedback.

I’m using four types of work to tie in with Covey’s rocks, stones, gravel and water. You may have more (or less) in your business.

The first step is to make sure you’ve created time and space for your rocks. Rocks represent regular work that is contracted or on retainer. This class of work must be profitable but may not be premium priced. Long term work of this nature needs less sales effort and so the costs, mostly of customer and account management, will be lower. Review your pricing from time to time to ensure that you haven’t slipped into making a loss.

The stones will be significant work items – in my case major articles or white papers – but for non contracted clients with whom you may have an existing relationship and for whom you have probably worked before. Here, you can consider a premium pricing option as it will allow you to show a benefit if they become contracted and thus allow you to upsell them to a contract basis.

Gravel is jobbing work for one off clients. The amount of this that you can take on will be determined by the space available once the rocks and stones are in place. Whilst pricing should be to clear a profit, in this case it can be marginal and pricing can be discounted if it will occupy a resource which otherwise would be quiet and cost money whilst idle.

I am defining water as internal work, such as maintenance or creating marketing materials, which generates no direct income. By fitting this type of work in the gaps between client work, you reduce the opportunity cost of doing it. Such work is no less important to the business but is generally not urgent and, if planned correctly, can be done in quiet time.

This exercise, once done, will allow you to calculate your additional work needs. It can also be used to assess the need for increasing (or reducing) your capacity. Knowing your capacity – and how much of it is available at any time – will ensure that you don’t overload by taking attractive one-off work for which you have insufficient capacity or turn down work that would benefit your business and represent pure profit.

Andy Coote is a professional writer and co-author of A Friend in Every City (2006), a book about Social Networking and Business. As a commentator on leadership and networking, Andy provides content strategy, writing support and services for a number of Business Leaders. You can reach him at andy [at] bizwords [dot] co [dot] uk or view his website at www.bizwords.co.uk.

Tonight, in Bristol, the leaders of the three main parties will debate on live television. We now know that the performance of each leader in the debate can change perceptions and may change the course of the election.

I tweeted an audioboo by one of the BBC’s political correspondents, Chris Mason (@ChrisMasonBBC), on the interesting use of language around the potential for no single party to have an outright majority of the House of Commons. Is this a ‘hung parliament’ or a ‘balanced parliament’?

I was reminded of, and revisited, George Orwell’s essay – Politics and the English Language,written in the aftermath of the Second World War and whilst Stalin’s purges were still happening on a daily basis. Politics have changed, writing has changed and yet, some things remain the same.

political language has to consist largely of euphemism,
question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry:this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is
needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

The examples from this election – war in Afghanistan, immigration and unemployment, MP’s expenses, cuts in public services and increases in taxation to name but a few – are different but I suspect that Orwell’s cynicism will not be misplaced in the way they are put forward tonight. There will be a lot of use of ‘trigger phrases’ to differentiate one party’s unacceptable policy from their own ‘essential action’.

All I want to do here is to suggest that you listen to the substance of what is being said and assess it for yourself against Orwell’s view -

A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy
of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.

Orwell offers his thoughts on how a ’scrupulous’ writer behaves -

in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

Is it hopelessly idealistic to wish for political language and communication that answers those six questions well and comes out completely – in one of the favourite words of this campaign – clear?

When so many people are suspicious of anything that any politican says, what hope is there for the future of trust in government and politics?

The process of change is one that fascinates me. From the moment we decide that something needs to change until the final satisfying feeling of change completed – or not – , we are, in effect, on a journey. That journey has no clear destination, can be quite difficult, maybe dangerous, and, at the end of it, there is no guarantee that where we reach is any better than where we began (if, indeed, it is a different place at all).

How can mythology help us to understand this process and, in particular, that thorny question of why, after trials and tribulation and much effort on our part, the change we thought we wanted to make simply doesn’t happen. One tool is the Hero’s Journey (also called Monomyth), developed from the book Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Campbell analysed the mythology of many cultures and discovered that their stories followed a similar structure – one that seemed to satisfy our innate need for a journey and a resolution. It is possible that it can be applied to change making in business, so let’s try.

The first of four stages is about our slow recognition that something needs to change. We are in our familiar world (our comfort zone?) yet something isn’t right. We may deny the need for change but eventually something happens that overcomes that and we begin the journey, leaving the familiar world for somewhere unfamiliar.

In this second stage, we are searching for solutions to the need and we will meet characters and situations along the way that may make the situation worse. We may understand the real issue is much deeper than the triggering one. Despite also meeting helpful characters here, we reach the end of this phase still searching and maybe doubting our resolve or despairing of the possibility of finding the solution.

The third stage is about finding the resources and solutions that we seek. It is by no means certain that we will reach this stage and many abandon our quest here. We may find a mentor who will help us on our journey and may even show us that the solution was with us all the time – we just couldn’t see it. Now we have the answer, we may spend time refining it and preparing for the final stage – our return to the real, familiar world.

This fourth stage requires that we return to our familiar surroundings and install the changes into it. Perhaps that involves reviewing our business direction, changing our relationships with friends and colleagues and acting differently in our own activities. The more radical the change, the more the familiar can seem more appealing. Our resolve can be dented or completely neutralised by our dependence on the people and habits of our everyday life. We lose momentum and the moment is lost.

This of course is just a theory based on the stories that we tell. It may not be true for you. It does, however, ring true for me. I’ve been on many courses over the years. Some have been of interest but no more, whilst others have been triggers for a Hero’s Journey that took place within the course. All of the first three stages were there and, at the end of the course, copious notes were written detailing the changes to be made. What happened? Sometimes some (or all) of the changes took place, but far more often I returned to the real world of to do list, emails (or memos in the early days), and demanding customers and managers and the whole change plan was sidelined. Months later, I would read the notes I’d made and smile ruefully, recommit to the changes and, once again, find them overtaken by other priorities. There are still changes that I once planned to make that would be good for me today.

What is the learning that I take from this process? I think the main thing I now understand is that moments of clarity have to be followed by proper planning and by an assessment of the emotional cost of following the plan through. If the change to be made is major, we have to consider how we react to changing relationships with important people in our lives and careers, to risking failure and, maybe, ridicule and to leaving behind the comfort of the familiar. Change is risky and it is scary – but the end results may be more rewarding than we can imagine.

Every journey begins with a single step. The more steps we make on the journey, the more likely it is that we will arrive at our destination and not turn back.

I have a confession to make. A few days ago, I behaved in a way that I’m not proud to admit but i’m going to use it to make an important point about communication. I could have de-personalised the experience and talked about a mythical friend of mine but decided it is more important to draw personal conclusions than to spare my blushes. So here goes.

On a recent Sunday night I booked a course online. Not just any course but one with excellent presenters. To be honest, I expected it to be fully booked and I would have been fine with that. It wasn’t, so I went ahead and booked and began anticipating being away for a week amongst a small group with a chance to explore an area that has always been a passion of mine -crime fiction.

On the Monday morning I got a call from the administrator – “sorry but we can’t allocate you a place”. There was a perfectly good reason – and the message was delivered in an acceptable way BUT the message wasn’t what I wanted to hear and I heard myself say “I’m sorry to hear that, too and I never want to do business with you again.” Now where did that come from?

I’m not proud of my reaction and would love the chance to react in a better way but thinking it over I realise that I reacted exactly as a small child might do when refused a sweet in a supermarket and I realised what was happening.

Several years ago I first came across Transactional Analysis (TA) through books like I’m OK, you’re OK and my reaction was certainly one that could be seen as I’m ‘OK but you aren’t’ but actually it was the other way round – a sort of victim’s cry – I’m not OK. Now I’m not a TA expert and if you are you may wish to look away now. From my recollection, TA also proposes that we operate in three modes Parent, Adult and Child. Business transactions should, as far as possible, work on an Adult to Adult level though sales messages often try to excite the child within us. In this case I was operating instinctively out of my child mode thus potentially skewing the transaction completely. However, the interesting thing was the reaction to my outburst.

It is very easy when faced with a ‘child’ reaction to pair it with a ‘parent’ type of response. That can be a nurturing parent where we try to mollify or a strict parent where we ’slap down’ the child. It is also tempting to react in the same vein and insert two children into the conversation. The person on the other end of my response did neither of those things. She simply acted in an adult mode – asking if I wanted my money back or to wait in case someone dropped out and a place became available. It drew me back into adult mode, too, got us back on track and I’m now on a waiting list with fingers crossed. Whilst their web systems did not lead to customer satisfaction, their human ‘systems’ did.

Looking back on another recent set of interractions, I can see that one person in my network has been operating from a parent position and trying to put me at a disadvantage by doing so. That has spurred me to take action effectively to win back control of the relationship by distancing from it.

Over the next week, I’d like to ask you to watch how your conversations (transactions in TA terms) develop. When transactions are good – Adult to adult or parent to child in either way – then things get done.

When transactions are skewed – like the adult to child response I’ve described -there are choices. The adult could move to parent or to child and the whole thing could deteriorate into an argument (or a strop) or the adult can stay there until the child returns to adult and a result is achieved.

Which outcome works best for you?

Every significant new technology to reach the workplace has the same reactions. Some love it and propose it as the answer to everything (but you have to truly believe) and others see it as the thin end of the wedge and nothing but moral and financial ruin can come from it.

Right now the technology in the spotlight is Social Media (and Twitter in particular).

The BBC reported (on October 26th) a survey commissioned by an IT vendor that claimed “Staff who use Twitter and other social networking sites while at work are costing UK businesses £1.38bn every year.”

“The popularity of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook has grown considerably over the last couple of years, however with it has come the temptation to visit such sites during office hours,” said Philip Wicks from Morse. “When it comes to an office environment the use of these sites is clearly becoming a productivity black hole.” It added that companies should think about protecting the reputation of their brand.

The £1.4bn was extrapolated from a survey of 1,460 office workers of whom 50% spent an average 40 minutes per week on ‘social’ sites during working hours. Is that a reasonable extrapolation, or is there another factor to consider? Is Social Media in business all cost and no return? And is that the only consideration for businesses?

Social Media covers so many areas of business and personal communications that it is difficult to put it into one box. In today’s increasingly devolved work environment with more people working in isolation it is the new office watercooler or coffee machine – a place where people meet and share thoughts and ideas in a relaxed way. The value of having far-flung ‘colleagues’ who are there with you in real time is difficult to quantify not to mention the expertise at your fingertips on so many topics and the discoveries that can be made daily from links and retweets.

In a Business context, however, I believe Social Media can fit into the category of early stage Marketing – awareness, market research, audience building and R&D – rather than as a selling tool. So what we might look at is the opportunity cost of Social Media versus other similar activities and against activities further down the pipeline.

Interest in what it might bring to a business in that context is clear. Recently I went to Like Minds a conference about ROI (Return on Investment) and Social Media, an event that had a real buzz about it. The speakers had come from the USA, from London and from much nearer to the venue in the centre of Exeter. There were equally well-travelled people in the audience.

There was a consensus on the importance of having good content and on developing conversations and also in the development of communication that engages people around their own interests rather than forcing them to move to the agenda of the communicator.

There was (and still is) much debate and not a little confusion about ROI. I thought Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder on Twitter) explained ROI very well. It is about cost reduction or profit increase set against the costs of achieving that result. To me, ROI is a much more global concept and is best viewed across departmental or Company performance rather than against one activity – such as Social Media. However, businesses only have a finite budget and Social Media, as Olivier suggested, needs to be funded out of one of the existing budgets in this area of Marketing.

Generally speaking, a business has goals for turnover and the sales that make that up come from a pipeline that converts contacts into prospects and prospects into sales, usually with considerable wastage as people qualify out. So, there should be, across all methods of acquiring them, a number of new potential clients that will deliver that turnover. How many new contacts are needed in each method of acquisition and over what timescale will be dependent on the ratio of potential clients to actual conversions and the average time taken to close the business with them.

How effective is Social Media in delivering good prospects into this process? Trey Pennington (@treypennington) at Likeminds talked about engaging people in conversation and then moving those people along a process that might lead to business. Time will tell how effective Social Media is at doing this, but it is something that businesses are, quite rightly, exploring. As they get more data, they will either move further into Social Media use or withdraw and try something else.

The approach of Social Media to Marketing is also developing in an interesting direction. Scott Gould (@scottgould), who marketed Like Minds exclusively using Social Media, in a blog post, talked about his approach to Like Minds. He described how he builds a platform around the people and gives them a place where they can talk. Whilst this is dangerously close to a ‘build it and they will come’ theory, it does seem to work and it is equally true about any communication. You need to know your audience and engage with them on their home ground both in terms of the content and context of the communication.

At the Cornwall Social Media Café (@csmc) the following week, Lloyd Davis (@lloyddavis), founder of the London Social Media Café (or Tuttle Club (#tuttle) as it is known) also talked about creating a platform, in this case a regular time and place where you can drop in and have coffee with likeminded people. The Tuttle club is a self-organising group with little or no agenda and no obligations placed on members. The concept is, however, developing into consulting where Lloyd takes the equivalent of a Tuttle meeting into a client and uses conversations to explore possibilities around a brief. The process of building such a group and developing outcroppings from it takes time but it is important in his view not to impose any expectations on the group.

Social Media gives businesses the opportunity to extend their Marketing reach in a way that may cause some concerns for the old school. Marketing has always been about having the right content and delivering it to audiences through multiple channels. Now, with Social Media, it is easier to strike up a conversation with your potential customers. Not only can those prospects talk back, they can also talk to each other. It is a conversation that you can’t easily control, but it is one that will take place regardless of whether you, as a business, choose to take part in it.

Social Media technology will continue to develop. It is by no means certain that the current tools will be the long term winners. Just look at how Google rose to dominate search (and many other areas) for an example of how a new player can sideline earlier technologies. What is certain is that businesses will need to understand how those tools will translate into business practice. Treating Social Media as a passing fad will not work. Finding ways to handle and outweigh the costs and achieve competitive advantage will be.

I won’t win friends in either camp with this position, I’m sure. Social Media is just another new approach that businesses must embrace and embed in their business practices. When we stop putting it in capitals, we will have understood it and begun to harness it effectively.

As delivered to Business League Falmouth today.

This has been a busy week and an interesting journey into the world of Social Media. I was glad to hear a consensus on the importance of having good content and on developing conversations and also in the development of communication that engages people around their own interests rather than forcing them to move to the agenda of the communicator.

On Friday, I went to Like Minds (#likeminds), a conference (or maybe an unconference) about ROI and Social Media. Social Media has a buzz about it and the event was at capacity (around 200). The speakers had come from the US, from London and from much nearer to the venue in the centre of Exeter. There were equally well-travelled people in the audience.

In the aftermath, there is much debate and not a little confusion about ROI. I thought Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder) explained ROI very well. It is about cost reduction or profit increase set against the costs of achieving that result. To me, ROI is a much more global concept and is best viewed across departmental or Company performance rather than against one activity.

Social Media covers so many areas of business and personal communications that it is difficult to put it into one box. The value of having ‘colleagues’ who are there with you in real time is difficult to quantify when working in isolation in today’s increasingly devolved work environment not to mention the resource at your fingertips on so many topics and the discoveries that can be made daily from links and retweets.

In a Business context, I believe Social Media comes into the catergory of early stage Marketing – awareness, market research, audience building and R&D – rather than a selling tool. So what we might look at is the Opportunity Cost of Social Media versus other similar activities and against activities further down the pipeline. As an example, Frank Furness talks about having to do cold calls as being the cost of not asking for enough referrals. So Social Media, as Olivier suggested needs to be funded out of one of the existing buckets in this area of Marketing.

In a commercial context, a business has goals for turnover and the sales that make that up come from a pipeline that converts, usually with considerable wastage as people qualify out, contacts into prospects and prospects into sales. So, there should be, across all methods of acquiring, a number of new potential clients that will deliver that turnover. How many new contacts are needed in each method of acquisition and over what timescale will be dependent on the ratio of potential clients to actual conversions and the average time taken to close the business with them.

How effective is Social Media in delivering good prospects into this process? Trey Pennington (@treypennington) at Likeminds talked about engaging people in conversation and then moving those people along a process that might lead to business. Time will tell how effective Social Media is at doing this, but it is something that businesses are, quite rightly, exploring. As they get more data, they will either move further into Social Media use or withdraw and try something else.

For some businesses, the concept of Opportunity Cost is irrelevant anyway as Social Media champions in their businesses are extending their hours to add in their activity rather than doing it in salaried hours and for those of us in self-employment, it is just another unpaid task that we fit in if we believe that Social Media works for us.

Scott Gould (@scottgould), in a blog post, talked about his approach to Like Minds. He described how he builds a platform around the people and gives them a place they can talk. Whilst this is dangerously close to a ‘build it and they will come’ theory, it does seem to work and it is equally true about any communication. You need to know your audience and engage with them on their home ground both in terms of the content and context of the communication.

At Cornwall Social Media Café (@csmc) last night, Lloyd Davis (@lloyddavis), founder of the London Social Media Café (or Tuttle Club (#tuttle) as it is known) also talked about creating a platform, in this case a regular time and place where you can drop in and have coffee with likeminded people. The Tuttle club is a self-organising group with little or no agenda and no obligations placed on members. The concept is, however, developing into consulting where Lloyd takes the equivalent of a Tuttle meeting into a client and uses conversations to explore possibilities around a brief. The process of building such a group and developing outcroppings from it takes time but it is important in his view not to impose any expectations on the group.

I gave a presentation to my Breakfast Networking Group today on the two ‘old cons’ of Marketing – content and context – and the ‘newer con’ of equal importance – conversation. It came from my thinking over years and was informed by many of the things I learned or confirmed this week. I’ve covered some of the ground here and more will develop in later posts.

In that model, I see Social Media (of all types) as part of the Conversation and as just one of the Contexts for delivering your Content to your audience. Content needs to be consistent, effective and engaging and this requires stories. Stories connect with us at a deep level and we learn and are influenced by them all of the time.

All of that is a little undigested and I expect that the learning of the next and subsequent weeks will continue to develop and refine my thinking.

For now, however, it is time to turn this over for conversation. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

In a recent article, I wrote about the need for regular content in order to tell your story to the audiences that you need to inform and influence. We all know that writing regularly is very important but people often ask me – ‘how can you generate good content when you can’t think what to say?’

You may know that barren feeling when clarity is elusive and inspiration disappears. Even professional writers know it. Whether you call it ‘writers block’ or something else, there is no point waiting for it to be replaced by inspiration. It needs to be stimulated by one of a number of methods.

The first may seem obvious but it is effective. Read around the news and see if there are stories out there that fit with your content plan and would thus, with you own point of view applied, make a good article that will attract the interest of your target reader. If you read around the blogosphere or on article sites, you’ll see numerous examples where this has been done. Sometimes, though, even this approach fails to come up trumps. If it fails, then you may need to look deeper.

Your conscious mind is filled with the day-to-day issues and distractions of the urgent. It can also be full of reasons why what you are creating is just not good enough. You may have experienced the many false starts that trying to create through the conscious mind can bring. Your subconscious mind often knows what you want to say however, the difficulty is finding ways through the conscious and into the subconscious. Here are a few ways that work for me – you may have others that work for you.

Write into the topic and take it by surprise.
Start by just writing something, it doesn’t matter what. As you write, perhaps about the weather or the feeling of the pen in your hand, a line will begin to make some sense and then you are off. This is your subconscious taking over. The spine of an article, maybe the whole thing, flows simply behind it. At worst, you’ll have written something instead of sitting and fuming. At best, you’ll have the basis of your article.

Quieten the noise.
Meditation or relaxation can help. I listen to a Paul McKenna relaxation exercise and find that it relaxes and quietens my conscious mind sufficiently to be able to hear the answer coming from beyond conscious thought.

Step away from the paper or keyboard.

Talk into a recording machine.
Dictation machines are affordable and easy to use (and to transcribe). It is often easier to talk about something than it is to write about it especially if it is a subject close to your heart and one that you talk about frequently.

All of these approaches will result in raw material for an article. That material needs structuring and editing. I mind map the results, structure them into a story and edit the result until it makes sense and gives the message to the reader that you desire. More about that in a future blog.

Being unable to think of suitable content ideas is a common problem but it is too important to leave to inspiration. When inspiration deserts you, don’t just sit there, do something! The results may surprise you – and your readers.

This article was written for Fresh Business Thinking back in March 2009. Recent events brought it back to mind and I thought it would be worth adding here.
————————–
During an interview for another article this week, it became clear to me that gardening is a good metaphor for networking and that they are governed by some of the same natural laws. In my view, it is worthwhile paying some attention to them. I’d be interested in your own additions to this list

Starting Out
Getting the measure of a new networking group is like taking over a garden. You need to spend some time working out what is already in place, which parts are worth spending time on and which can be safely left to their own devices. Too often, people join networks and feel that they have to be listened to without realising that being listened to is what others there also need. If you aren’t listening to others, more than you are talking to begin with, you are missing vital information about the best ways to work within the group.

Relationships have growing cycles
In a previous career, I was involved in a number of meetings alongside the Retail Buyer for a large chain of Garden Centres. We were talking to a nursery about our Azalea, Rhododendron and Heather requirements. A 2 year Azalea takes just that – 2 years – to grow and some of the Heathers took 3 years. If we underestimated our requirements for 2 –3 years out, there was no quick way of growing the shortfall. We would have to hope that someone had stock of them at a reasonable price. A large tree, planted now, may take decades to mature. Building relationships also takes time. You CAN force some plants and accelerate their growth but it is almost always at the expense of the plant. Forcing a relationship may result in a short-term gain but at the expense of the longer term.

Relationships need Nurturing
Plants require nourishment. Sun and rain are supplemented by the application of manure and other fertilisers. Now, I’m not suggesting that you heap manure on to your network but I am saying that care and consideration and regular attention will be repaid. Making a contact once at a networking meeting is simply never going to be enough for that person to know you and to be able to refer you. Nor can you know them and refer them properly and it is a two way process. So regular contact, deeper conversation and knowing their needs and characteristics will help you refer them – and referring them is the quickest way to finding that others refer you. If you want or need referrals – lead by example.

Have an overall plan
How do you want the whole garden to look? Where are the pathways, what are the vistas, how does this area relate to that? In the same way, you need to consider what your overall networking will deliver and how that fits with the rest of your marketing. Do the transitions work? Is the overall effect what you wanted it to be? What does each networking group deliver?

Know your plants and varieties
Some flowers are annuals and produce flowers quickly. Some perennials may only flower infrequently or not at all. Some networking groups are close knit and mutually supportive. Some are mixers and allow you to meet an ever-changing cast of characters. Others offer education with some networking. Finally, some give the organiser a platform for promoting their business and offer less to the participants. Have a strategy for each and remember that most people can be found in more than one place. If a particular network doesn’t offer the type of networking that offers the best fit with your strategy and approach, there are always other varieties available.

For most, networking is a long term influencing strategy that will produce results by building bridges to other business people. So whether you are planning a garden redesign or your networking strategy, sustainability is an important factor. Both take time and effort and in both, patience and care bring their own rewards.
——————
I hope this is useful for those approaching networking and joining new networking groups. Please feel free to add your comments.