Writer in Residence - Cornwall

Robert Rush of PFA Research and co-leader of Ecademy Cornwall has started a blog in partnership with Cornwall and Devon Media (ThisisCornwall.com). The blog is ostensibly about research - so what have thongs and anger to do with anything?

I look forward to further revelations about the world of research - and its seamy side?

Labels: anger, Ecademy Cornwall, Robert Rush, THong

I know that X Factor may not be one of Fresh Business Thinking readers’ most favourite shows, but given its immense audience and the coverage it receives in the press, you will probably have seen some of it. If not, then think of Dragon’s Den or the Apprentice, for they demonstrate the point I want to make, though maybe not as powerfully.

Each new season of X Factor begins with the auditions. The team visit a number of places and get to see hundreds of hopeful acts who believe that they have the X Factor – the ability to be the very best in show business - if only someone would see it and give them their big break. The problem – for them – is that they are in most cases simply awful. What raw talent they have appears to be storable in an eggcup with plenty of room to spare. We can see this, the panel can see this but they, the hopeless hopefuls, simply can’t.

When Louis Walsh, Sharon Osbourne or Simon Cowell tell them how it is, they get angry and emotional but their internal self-belief often appears to be unchanged. The feedback is honest and, often, brutal, too. It is, usually, deserved. How do those contestants reach that point in their lives – some of them quite a long way in – without someone telling them honestly what anyone can hear? Or have they done that and it is simply discounted and denied?

Giving and getting honest feedback is not an easy process. Giving good feedback depends on our objectivity in doing it. We must consider the behaviour and the outputs and feedback on them and not on the individual who is responsible for them. We also fear that if we are ’brutally’ honest with someone that may change the relationship we have with them. That is not a groundless fear, either. When receiving feedback, our ego often gets in the way and we do, in the old cliché, go on to ‘shoot the messenger’. Even when acting as our own critic, we may be too easy on ourselves in some areas and too hard in others.

What does this have to do with leaders? We, too, may have unrealistic beliefs about our own performance. I’ve met leaders who believed that they were comedians and yet were totally unfunny (like David Brent, the ‘chilled out comedian’ in ‘The Office’) and others who indulged in ‘once more unto the breach’ company motivational speeches that were laughable. This mismatch between belief and reality affected their performance and their credibility. They were less effective as a result.

As leaders we need to be realistic about our strengths and our weaknesses. The level of feedback we need to achieve this is unlikely to come from within the business. What we need is a place where we can give and receive feedback as peers with people who understand our problems and can help us know the real us and can help us to work on developing the skills and understanding that will change that reality for the better. We are all imperfect works in progress. Time spent on self-improvement in a safe environment is never wasted.

Andy Coote is a professional writer and publisher 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 writes for a number of Business Leaders. You can reach him at andy at bizwords.co.uk.

This article first appeared at Fresh Business Thinking

We are offering free delivery when you buy two or more books at Ecademy Press this week. Offer must end on Sunday night (9th December 2007).

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Offer includes all of our 30 plus books including the Village folk children's books. More HERE.

Take a look at our books HERE.

Commercial over :-)

A

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The next generation of business leaders is waiting, sometimes impatiently, to take their place at the head of business and of government. OK, so James Purnell is currently the youngest cabinet minister at 37 years of age but that won’t be the case forever. The new generation are still in university or taking their places as junior members of business. There are also entrepreneurs who are starting out young, just as Sir Richard Branson did, and beginning to have their impact on business.

Maybe all new generations of business people have been different. My generation came out of the sixties with more informal views on life and on business, but we still conformed with suit and tie when it was needed. We’ve embraced the web and email (or at least tolerated it) and we are getting involved with newer technologies, so can this new wave be so different?

The answer to that is probably. They are far more informal in their dress and in their attitudes to authority, more immediate in the way they act and they are much more open in sharing the intimate details of their thoughts and lives.

What’s more, the technology is arriving that supports those changes in attitude and approach. Where we have, in the most part, held on to our face to face meetings, this generation will be much more comfortable building networks and transacting business online.

So what are their technologies of choice? They use instant messaging and text messaging in preference to email. Their familiarity with computer games also makes them comfortable with technology and they learn quickly as technologies change.

Social networks such as Bebo (during earlier years), MySpace and Facebook have been available to them for a few years now and they have mastered these ways of brand building – personal branding is the essence of networking - until it is second nature to them. They share their lives using the Social Networks and blogs. The technology may, in the view of my generation, leave them open to abuse by sharing too much personal information but they don’t see it that way.

Why Vampires and Zombies? Applications that can be quickly added to Facebook allow anyone to put a Vampire or Zombie on to their profile – the place where their musical, literate, filmic and life preferences can also be presented – and use it to ‘turn’ their friends into Vampires or Zombies and to fight with them to earn points. This may epitomise an approach that life (and business) is a game – or it could disguise a killer instinct. The approach of Facebook is to allow anyone to add applications to their platform (they call it a Social Utility) and offer Facebook users a choice. Most applications are free but with advertising, merchandise or other revenue earning options also available. Facebook earns money by creating and signposting web traffic to providers of paid services and through advertising.

‘Older’ business people are also involved on Facebook and are building their own networks there. I’m there myself. However, I doubt that it is the same experience for me as it is for the younger, much more actively engaged, users. The technology, of course, is not new, just easier to use, quicker and more ubiquitous than before and that makes the difference in my view.

As this Facebook generation develops careers or businesses, will they change and begin to conform to the way things are done? It looks likely that their approach to meetings will be different, with far less travelling needed to be face to face, especially as webcams get better and networks faster. Decisions may be more collegiate with the use of polls to gain an understanding of people’s views both within and outside the business. Style and communication will be more informal. The rise of Second Life and other silicon based parallel universes is also likely to change things. Your avatar (an online ‘physical’ representation of you) may attend meetings in cyberspace for you, giving the impression of being together whilst the participants are far apart, sitting at computers.

Does any of this matter? Here on Fresh Business Thinking in the past week, Clare West reported a Jobcentre plus survey that shows that older workers learn from their younger counterparts. Business leaders will also have to learn and adapt to these new attitudes and approaches. We often claim that business should be fun but are we prepared for the logical extension of that – the business version of Vampires and Zombies?

Of course, we can stay as we are and wait for them to adapt to us, to don the suit and tie and conform. I have a small problem with that. Just as Canute failed to hold back the tide, so we may also fail if we try to resist.

Perhaps we need to adapt to them? See you on Facebook for New Business Leadership 101?

Andy Coote is a professional writer and publisher 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 writes for a number of Business Leaders. You can reach him at andy@bizwords.co.uk and, of course, on Facebook at http://profile.to/andycoote/.

Article first appeared in October 2007 in the Virtual CEO Newsletter at Fresh Business Thinking.

A lot of confusion appears to afflict people about the difference between these two concepts. In the controversy about ghost blogging, one of the themes that frequently emerges is this idea that an article or blog written by a ghost is somehow not from the person whose name is on the 'byline'.

I view the two as very different. In my last blog here I talked about my writing process and that is relevant here as well. Essentially, the process starts and finishes with the author. I may write the piece but my client is, whenever their name alone goes on the byline, the sole author - that is the ideas came out of their head and what I wrote for them was checked and changed by them before publication. In other words, whilst the wordsmithing is mine, the ideas, the tone and the overall effect of the article is my client's.

Some people can write and some people can't. I know people who, when faced with a piece of paper or a blank computer screen, simply panic. Others write excellent prose and, in some cases, are just naturally good communicators. I can help those who can write but have little time to do it or who choose to spend their time on their main role, to improve their copy. For those who can't write or who struggle with grammar and structure, I can write every word. The authorship in both cases is theirs because we will have begun with a conversation, recorded for reference, which I use to construct the finished piece of work.

The following diagram shows the continuum between the client doing 100% of the writing job to a writer doing as much as 90% of the writing but using the client's ideas. The client is the author.


The work I prefer is generally in the 50/50 area of that continuum as it challenges me to understand and explain the client's theme whilst giving me enough support to be sure that I'm getting it right for them.

If I need to be more involved than that, though, I can do it. If you can talk about it, I can write about it.

Labels: authorship, collaboration, Ghosrt blogging, ghost writing

The BBC ran a story this week about Thomas Power, with whom I worked on the book A Friend in Every City and on a blog also called A Friend in Every City. For both I operated in a mode that works for several of my clients. That is, we talk, I research, I write, they review and we post (Thomas on Ecademy and I on the blog). That arrangement ended with Thomas late last year by mutual agreement, but it is still something I do for some clients.

In the way that these things take a life of their own, Thomas and Rory Cellan-Jones of BBC News connected on Facebook and Thomas made known his use of ghosts to write his articles and blogs. The type of blog that I was involved in was akin to an article, not the short, personal exchange type of blog that Ecademy uses. I spoke to Rory on Friday 13th (an auspicious day). Rory also spoke to a colleague of mine on Ecademy who now writes for Thomas (I won't mention his name because he has enough publicity already and I won't, on principle, add to it - but you can easily find it). As a result, an article appeared yesterday in which he appeared as the main focus and I was 'several people'. Seems that my colleague had the magic formula for giving Rory a hook and the quotes/direction for the story and I didn't.

I asked my network if I should have approached the task differently and one member noted that, though this blog appears high on the Google results for Andy Coote, there was nothing here that even hinted that I work as a ghost writer, let alone a ghost blogger. So lesson learnt - except for one small detail.

To my mind, I simply work with people to write material that reflects their views and message in a way that provides them with the best impact for their words and gives them profile. I do this by getting out of the way of the client and letting their words, in their voice, come out. Is that new and cutting edge? I think not. It is simply the trade of a professional writer and that is what I am - and that is what I told Rory Cellan-Jones that I am.

It may not get me headlines and allow me to rampage across cyberspace, adding my own blogs to the fire in an attempt to create a viral forest fire, but it does allow me to remain true to my beliefs and to my clients.

More on the controversy about ghost blogging will almost certainly follow here. Seems some people feel let down by the thought that the blogs they read come from the pen of another person. I am very clear that the articles and blogs I write for clients come out of their head and represent their ideas. As I put it in a post on a closed message board earlier -
"There is not a single word in any of those articles that Thomas couldn't or wouldn't say in conversation with members of this network or others. That is because we always began with conversation and from that might come a series of articles, each one of which would be seen and approved by Thomas before publication.The same process, with tweaks for the preference of each client, holds for all of the writing I do for clients, whatever its destination in print or online."

Andy Coote
Professional Writer and Publisher

Labels: biogrpahy, blogging, digital, ghost blogging, ghost writing, writing

The 2007 AZAB Race began in grey and overcast conditions from Falmouth, Cornwall at 1pm yesterday. One of the delights of living in this part of the world is the opportunity to see this type of event close up. As with the arrival of Ellen MacArthur on her return from her solo round the world voyage a couple of years ago, I was stationed at Pendennis Point for the AZAB race.


Four races began 10 minutes apart at 1pm, 1,10pm, 1.20pm and 1.30pm and a total of over 60 yachts set off on the 1200 nautical mile journey to the Azores watched by a crowd of several hundred people. There was a good breeze and the boats seemed to get off to a good start, though, of course, the start may be of little relevance to the overall race distance.

A few more pictures HERE. Apologies for the greyness - that was how the day was.

Can't believe that my last entry here was so long ago! It was a hectic end to the year but that's no excuse! 2007 is looking like a hectic year already, so I need to make time and apply a proper division of my efforts into the various projects I have on the go.

I spend my time writing for myself and others and publishing books for people, so it seems to me that this blog could be a good place tro share some knowledge and support about good writing and getting published and to find help on those subjects from others who are on pages ahead of me.

So watch this space.

First change I've made is to upgrade to the non-beta Blogger. Expect some changes to the format of the blog as I get to grips with the new features.

In the meantime - Happy New Year - I'm only a month late with that!

A

Labels: publishing, upgrade, writing