In writing about the Other Brain, we conveniently slid over a confusion about just what other brains there may be.  Just which is the Second Brain and could there be a Third Brain.

Dr.  Michael Gershon, an expert in the nascent field of neurogastroenterology, laid the seeds of confusion with his 1998 book The Second Brain.   A Scientific American article earlier in the year was a useful  recap of what is involved.  It was called “Think Twice: How the Gut’s ‘Second Brain’ Influences Mood and Well-Being.”

There is an often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive some scientists have nicknamed it our “second brain”.

A deeper understanding of this mass of neural tissue, filled with important neurotransmitters, is revealing that it does much more than merely handle digestion or inflict the occasional nervous pang. The little brain in our innards, in connection with the big one in our skulls, partly determines our mental state and plays key roles in certain diseases throughout the body.

Although its influence is far-reaching, the second brain is not the seat of any conscious thoughts or decision-making.

Marghi Merzenich provides more details on this “Second Brain”.

The second brain is a mass of tissue in our intestines that shares many qualities with our brains–millions of neurons, many of the same key chemicals (like dopamine and serotonin). This “second brain” is officially called the “enteric nervous system,” and it’s a fascinating part of the body.

The brain and spinal cord are known as the “central nervous system.” The “peripheral nervous system” connects the central nervous system to the rest of the body, moving the messages along until they reach their destination. The enteric nervous system (the “second brain”)  is part of the peripheral nervous system.

What makes the “second brain” unique from other parts of the peripheral nervous system, though, is that it can function even without input from the central nervous system, and sends many more messages to the central nervous system than it receives. And while it’s not a center of conscious thought, it has widespread influence on our physical bodies and our emotional well-being. This may have implications for how we treat emotional problems like depression.

That’s all well and good but that Second Brain term was being used by others in a different context.  A 2009 article proclaimed, Introducing Our Second and Third Brains: We Do Think With Our Heart and Instinct

This article noted that neuro-scientists have demonstrated that we have a brain in our heart and another in our intestines. What we have in each of these, in actual fact, is an extensive mass of neurons that behave in a fashion similar to the neurons contained in the brain, and that appear to function at mega-speeds, often much greater than those of our cerebral neurons.  

What they are referring to is the work of J. Andrew Armour, M.D., Ph.D. in Montreal and others.  Their picture is that the heart brain is the second brain and the enteric (intestine) brain is the third brain.

Whether you consider that we have two brains or three brains, either picture states very clearly that your logical brain is not the sole way you are assessing information, processing it and making decisions.  At least one other brain or perhaps two is/are unconsciously involved and you probably never realize it. 

Becoming more aware of these different brains and balancing the way they interact can bring significant improvement in the way you try to achieve your goals.  The Three Brain Synergy website provides more information on these issues and can show you what is involved in ensuring all your brains are working in the most effective collaboration.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Second Brain Or Third Brain

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Introduction

What image comes to mind (your brain) when you hear those words, the other brain.  Surprisingly those words can be used in a number of different contexts.  In this article we will describe some of these different concepts that are involved in different people’s interpretation of the other brain. 

The Head Brain

If the word brain makes you think immediately of what is held within your cranium (head) then clearly the brain is an organ of the human body.  Where it gets interesting is how that brain thinks.  Dr. R. Douglas  Fields believes that the brain is much more than the gray matter that we all talk about.  We are all familiar with the notion of the small electrical currents that are moving around in our brain as we think.  That is our Gray Matter at work, or so we might think.  However Dr. Fields would encourage us to focus on the White Matter in the brain.

“Gray matter” is possibly our most common nickname for the brain, that is, the folded-up layers of neurons found in the cerebral cortex, responsible for memory, perception, language and logic.

Famously, scientists pondering slices of Albert Einstein’s brain under a microscope found no discernible difference between his brain and anyone else’s.  It turns out, Einstein’s brain contained much more white matter than the average Joe’s. And that is just one clue to white matter’s importance.

So what exactly is White Matter?  This includes four types of brain cells known as glia.

Unlike neurons that operate by electrical signals, glia behave chemically.  Glia interact with neurons in previously unknown ways.  One type of glia, myelin, is what allows us to carry good heads on our shoulders that are not any bigger than a breadbox.

The insulation they provide to nerve axons speeds the impulse conduction 100 times and allows the miniaturization of our brains.  Glia perform a range of important duties. They take in information from neurons, respond to their signals, control velocity and timing of conduction, act as the immune system of the brain, provide the brain with new neurons and control other complex brain activity.

This use of the concept of the other brain as part of what is going on inside our heads is clearly justifiable.  However others have used the term other brain or second brain to describe quite different concepts.

The Gut Brain

Although it is a myth that dinosaurs had two brains, it is true that a second or other brain may exist in us all.  This is sometimes described as the gut brain because it deals with extremely basic reactions such as fight or flight when danger threatens.

Although not everyone thinks it is located in our stomachs, Dr.  Michael Gershon does not agree.    He is an expert in the nascent field of neurogastroenterology and author of the 1998 book The Second Brain. 

There is an often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive some scientists have nicknamed it our “second brain”.

A deeper understanding of this mass of neural tissue, filled with important neurotransmitters, is revealing that it does much more than merely handle digestion or inflict the occasional nervous pang. The little brain in our innards, in connection with the big one in our skulls, partly determines our mental state and plays key roles in certain diseases throughout the body.

Although its influence is far-reaching, the second brain is not the seat of any conscious thoughts or decision-making. 

That is a very literal interpretation of the term got brain, but others have interpreted this term, gut brain, more figuratively.  Perhaps it may be linked to the limbic area of our cranial brain that is the area that handles all those basic instinctive reactions.  What is quite clear is that it deals with non-logical and extremely rapid reactions.  They might almost be described as unthinking responses.

This gut brain can come into play in even the simplest situations for example in deciding whether you click away from a website or stay to explore.  This is not something that search engines get involved with as their spiders think only logically and only about the digital content.  However to create engaging websites, you must be aware that instinctive reactions will play their part.

Taking this notion to even larger and more important situations, although he does not use the term ‘gut brain’, Simon Sinek covers similar ground in thinking about inspirational leadership.  For him the key is a golden circle and the question “Why?”

Someone may try to sell us on a cause by describing the What and the How.  That engages our logical brain but it is not the logical brain that determines the precise moment when we switch from a non-committal position to one of engagement.  Determining what is right for us is not determined by a cold-blooded accounting of the pluses and minuses.  At some point we know it feels right and we’re in.  At that point suddenly we know Why we want to get involved.

Sinek points out that you don’t bring people onside by explaining in detail What it is that you want them to support nor by a long description of How you will be delivering on that What. That’s all grist for the logical brain. It is necessary that they get enough of that logic to remove any barriers, but it is not sufficient to get them motivated. That comes by linking with that part of their brain that determines Why you do things. You must engage with that second brain and satisfy that urge to know Why I should get involved. As Sinek says in his book, Start With Why.

Here is a Ted lecture video where Simon Sinek describes what is involved. He is an engaging speaker and you won’t regret spending time on hearing what he has to say on this.

… or perhaps in discussing the other brain, we have been talking about the third brain all this time. It’s all food for thought.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

The Other Brain

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One of the most moving (long) blog posts I have read in a long time was written by Andy Jenkins in his Blog with the tagline, Irreverence, Rebellion and interweb marketing.  Among other things he covers the reasons why he left StomperNet, the company he set up with his partner, Brad Fallon.  It’s a great read. There is a somewhat tangential comment about Mind Maps:

Mind Maps and I get along swimmingly.  I made a mind map of this post before I wrote a single word.  There’s something about mind maps that just make sense to me – they work far better than flow-charts or check lists or any other organizational tool that I’ve ever used.

I made mind maps for Email Subject Lines, Email Copy, Landing Page Copy, Sales Funnels, Sales Copy, Shopping Carts, Upsells, Video Script Writing, Joint Venture Partnering, Video Sales Letter structuring, Lead Generation…

Yeah, I’ve got a Mind Map that I use just about every time I write an Email Subject line.  I don’t know what that says about me personally, but I do know that when I was figuring it out, I had a damn good time doing it.

Mind Maps is a tool I have not considered for some time, although I have always found it useful. His comments inspired me to check them out again.

The technique was developed in the late 1960s by Tony Buzan, and they are now used by millions of people around the world whenever they wish to use their minds more effectively. His explanation is a little over the top but is as good as any.

A Mind Map is a powerful graphic technique which provides a universal key to unlock the potential of the brain. It harnesses the full range of cortical skills – word, image, number, logic, rhythm, colour and spatial awareness – in a single, uniquely powerful manner. In so doing, it gives you the freedom to roam the infinite expanses of your brain. The Mind Map can be applied to every aspect of life where improved learning and clearer thinking will enhance human performance.

In tuning in to Mind Maps again, I find it is a current hot topic among the movers and shakers.  For example, recently Robert Scoble and Michael Deutch looked into Mind Mapping with MindManager from Mindjet.  For Scoble this was apparently a somewhat recent interest:

I’ve been getting more interested in mind mapping lately (the act of getting ideas into the computer). I’ve found MindManager from Mindjet to be the best software out there and I sat down with their evangelist to learn all about how to use MindManager and why it’s important.

Steve Rubel also in Mashable used a Mind Map to explore What is the Future of Blogging? He suggested using MindMeister, an Online Mind Mapping system.  MindMeister is a free web-based collaborative mind mapping tool for brainstorming and project-management although there are premium versions incorporating more features.

Looking around, I was pleased to find FreeMind, which is free mind mapping software and having now downloaded it I can thoroughly recommend it.

Why don’t you use FreeMind? You have a tool at hand that remarkably resembles the tray slips of Robert Pirsig, described in his sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance called Lila. Do you want to refactor your essays in a similar way you would refactor software? Or do you want to keep personal knowledge base, which is easy to manage? Why don’t you try FreeMind? Do you want to prioritize, know where you are, where you’ve been and where you are heading, as Stephen Covey would advise you? Have you tried FreeMind to keep track of all the things that are needed for that?

I’m sure you can do that and much, much more.

If you really want to get your teeth into Mind Maps then I would recommend the Topicscape Blog.  Through that I found the ultimate resource that includes all you could desire on Information maps.  You may wish to check it out: it is called WikIT.

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Mind Maps Organize Thinking

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7 Reasons Coaches Can’t Make a Living Online is the somewhat provocative title of a post from Internet Business Coaching expert, Terry Dean.  As he says:

This article is specifically written for my readers who call themselves life coaches or business coaches. It’s about the 7 major mistakes I see coaches making online.  Go through each of these and really examine your practice to see if each element is holding you back. In every coach I’ve consulted with at LEAST 2 of these roadblocks were holding them back. I expect the same is true for you if you aren’t at the six figure level at least.

His Road Blocks are:

1. You Are a Generalist
2. You’ve Never Defined Your System
3. Limited to Hour Based Income Only
4. Not Generating Enough Leads
5. Limited Selling Skills
6. Not Recognizing your True Value
7. Doing It All Yourself

His article expands on these topics and is well worth a read.

Checking Google for ‘business coach online’, there are clearly a great number of people who are offering such a service.  How many of them, I wonder, are running into those roadblocks that Terry Dean has identified..

Google’s current number one choice for a business coach blogger is Ken Troyer, an Online Business Coach & Mentor, who is Quietly Working Behind the Scenes.

He posts somewhat rarely so clearly Google must be aware of many of his grateful customers who presumably link to his website.  Since the start of the year he has only two posts, Lost Your Job? on February 16th, 2009 and Meet The Mentors Of The Niche Power Group on January 3rd, 2009.  He clearly is using his own recommendation: Set, and Forget…Get 250 One Way Links Automatically …with your keywords as anchor text. This is the how I got on page one of Google for my keywords.

What exactly does a local business coach do for you?  I believe strongly in the words of Peter Drucker, Help is defined by the recipient.  A good business coach is someone who can complement your own skills and experience.  It is someone with whom you have a mutual relationship of respect and confidence.  If the personal chemistry is good, then you will find that there is a synergy in working together.  The business coach provides a mirror in which you can better see exactly how you are running your business and how it can be strengthened.

A good example of such a business coach is Donna Fontenot, a fellow moderator at Cre8asite Forums. who is very well known in Internet Marketing circles, and who offers eBusiness Coaching & Consulting services   She provides expert assistance, as she says, for anyone wishing to transition from an office cubicle to a successful online ebusiness capable of generating substantial buzz and profit.

Team action with your local business coach is essential. Google’s new enthusiasm for local search gives new opportunities to leave your competitors eating your dust. The coach must be there whenever you need them, although thankfully with mobile phones and the Internet that is much more practical.  He or she will provide help as and when needed.  No more and no less. If you would like to explore how that can work for you, why not send us a message.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Local Business Coach Online

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The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC) has announced it will use “With Glowing Hearts” and “Des plus brilliants exploits” as the Games’ English and French mottos.

Both phrases come from O Canada. They will be used leading up to and through the Games. The phrases were recently trademarked by the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee. According to VANOC chief executive officer John Furlong: “With glowing hearts’ is connected and familiar to all Canadians through our anthem, O Canada, and it also embodies what it takes to be an Olympic or Paralympic athlete.” It seems that this really appeals to the athletes but the general public is more divided. At the present time in a Castanet poll the votes split fairly evenly:

Poll Question: Do you think words from the Canadian national anthem should be used as the motto for the 2010 Olympics?
Yes 342 No 321 Total Votes: 663

In a way it is not surprising to see that split. It links to a topic raised by Guy Kawasaki on whether one should work on Mantras or Missions. Missions often tend to be long-winded and empty. He felt that mantras would better fire up the troops.. On the other hand, I felt that mottos or taglines were better since they tell your customers what you will do for them.

I believe what VANOC has delivered is a great 2010 Olympics mantra. It links in with all that good work done by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Flow. Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Who better than Olympics and Paralympics athletes to feel that Flow “With Glowing Hearts”.

Related: Faster Is Better

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

2010 Olympics Motto – Or Should That Be Mantra

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How to Make Profound and Lasting Change is a blog post you’ll find on the Think Simple Now website. It’s tagline, Creativity, Clarity & Happiness, suggests the benefits you may achieve in exploring this website.

That particular post is all about a Google talk by Professor Srikumar Rao in the Leading@Google series. Dr. Rao had visited the Google Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book, “Are You Ready to Succeed? Unconventional Strategies to Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life.” If you have 48 minutes to spare, you will most probably enjoy his talk.

You can get a sense of the concepts he discusses from the headlines used in the Think Simple Now blog post.

Learning New Concepts
Does this work for me better for my life than what I am presently using?
Profound Change
Three Important Building Blocks
1. Mental Chatter
2. Mental Models
3. Me-Centered Universe
Living in The Matrix
Steps for Altering Your Reality: An Exercise
1. Articulate a reality
2. Craft an alternative reality
3. Start living as if your alternative reality were THE reality
4. Write it down
Other Tips
a. Focus on just one
b. Mutual Support
c. Understand Why
d. Be Inspired
e. Reward & Celebration

It’s always a question whether such gurus have any real success in helping people make profound and lasting changes. The alternative approach of doing a little better each day has much to recommend it. That applies in any field. An upcoming SMM newsletter will discuss how that applies in Internet marketing. Stay tuned.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Profound Lasting Change Or Do A Little Better Each Day

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Decisions. Decisions. How to stay in touch with the exponential growth of the technical information being developed by our exponentially growing network of contacts. The Internet is a fertile field for all this growth but how do we poor humans stay on top of it.

The simplicity of Twitter has been very seductive. With only a maximum of 140 characters and spaces, you can only deliver the meat. To an extent its overwhelming attraction has been its undoing. So often in recent days quite frequently all the Twitter site is showing is the following:

Twitter has now come clean on its technical problems. Roland Hachmann is surprised that we complain about Twitter’s failures when it’s free. However it might appear that powerful competitors offering free services will benefit from Twitter’s problems. FriendFeed seems to be picking up momentum as it offers the ability via RSS news feeds to be aware of what your friends find interesting. You can also comment and converse easily about these in an almost Twitter-like way. I can understand why some say they are migrating from Twitter to FriendFeed given the current problems. Another elegant solution with some similarities is SecondBrain. Here you can store all the online properties that are important to you and your contacts can check them out too. That name SecondBrain suggests all sorts of possibilities in terms of improved thinking.

However when it comes to brainstorming, I think Twitter in all its simplicity beats the complexities of SecondBrain. A little reflection on this will show why.

Why does Twitter work?

JD Rucker has an interesting post on all the things you can do with Twitter, based on a survey he did on Twitter.

In a recent inquiry to dozens of online friends, I discovered one truth about Twitter. People either love it and use it daily (even hourly) or they absolutely hate it. Few people fit into the ‘moderate feelings’…

Mark Evans has also come to the defense of Twitter in suggesting that Lorne Feldman Is Wrong About Twitter. In a video included in the post, the only point that Feldman seems to make is that if you appreciate the instant feedback from Twitter, it probably means you’re a loser. Without realizing it, I believe that Feldman has focused on the one most important strength of Twitter – instant feedback.

Your TwitterSphere Can Be Your Extended Brain

Perhaps Twitter can act as your central nervous system on the Internet. If you have a few hundred people following you on Twitter, then it can act almost like your subconscious. You may only check it a few times a day. Perhaps those few hundred people also check it only a few times a day. But at any moment you may be able to contact randomly a handful of people from your network. So if you’re trying to think of new solutions, check with your subconscious. If it’s important, you could ask the same question half a dozen times at fifteen minute intervals.

A Small Example Of Twitter Brainstorming

A small example yesterday confirmed the efficacy of this approach. I was doing research for a blog post on Free Website Reviews and wanted to be sure I was covering all the angles on this. The item was at the same time announcing a new SMM service for Website Mini-Reviews. My question on Twitter produced a most useful response from David Mihm in Portland, Oregon, who is someone you may find it useful to follow on Twitter. He suggested a new line of thought that I had completely overlooked. This new thought triggered in my TwitterSphere seems so analogous to the way a new thought may be fired in your brain’s synaptic circuits. That is why the notion of Twitter as an extended (and subconscious) brain seems a very useful concept.

Whither Twitter?

Presumably Twitter will put behind it this horrendous period of inferior service and emerge strengthened. Its competitors have been given a real opportunity for a period. We also now have Jaiku, recently acquired by Google, slowly building up its membership on an invitation-only basis. It has some similarities with Twitter but will inevitably edge out and add on other gadgets.

Twitter is the supreme example of a KISS-based tool. It really is just Instant Messaging to the nth degree. I for one hope that it continues to keep that focus.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Twitter Beats Second Brain For Brainstorming

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The Harvard Business Review in April asked, Can You Say What Your Strategy Is? The authors, David J. Collis and Michael G. Rukstad, suggested:

Most executives cannot articulate the objective, scope, and advantage of their business in a simple statement. If they can’t, neither can anyone else. If they can summarize their company’s strategy in 35 words or less, would their colleagues put it the same way?

It is our experience that very few executives can honestly answer these simple questions in the affirmative. And the companies that those executives work for are often the most successful in their industry.

If your company has no strategy, who should determine what it is? Some might say this is a no-brainer question. Clearly the leader, the CEO, is the one who must set strategy.

Strategy resources for the CEO

If the CEO accepts it is her/his responsibility, where can they turn to for help? Google suggests one such resource, the CEO Refresher, with its tagline, brain food for business!

There you will find 41 articles offering different perspectives on the best way of determining company strategy. Bear in mind that they define company strategy as follows:

Competitive Strategy is the ‘relentless pursuit of victory’ and topics include strategic thinking, competitiveness, innovation, execution, critical thinking, positioning, and the art of warfare.

Clearly company strategy is akin to the process whereby a general may best direct his troops to win the war. Given that generals have not always had great successes, just think of the Charge of the Light Brigade, you might question whether this is enough.

Strategy Consultants

Perhaps to get a wider perspective, one might think of bringing in a consultant. The most respected strategy consultant is Michael E. Porter. One of his most widely read papers is How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy. A few quotes will serve to outline his position:

Awareness of these competitive forces can help a company stake out a position in its industry that is less vulnerable to attack

The essence of strategy formulation is coping with competition.

Competition is not manifested only in the other players. Rather, competition in an industry is rooted in its underlying economics, and competitive forces exist that go well beyond the established combatants in a particular industry. Customers, suppliers, potential entrants, and substitute products are all competitors that may be more or less prominent or active depending on the industry.

So it would appear that strategy still concerns itself with conflict, but the leader must be aware that this conflict is taking place in a very complex world.

Other gurus have suggested this warlike approach is too limited a view. INSEAD professors W. Chan Kim and Ren�e Mauborgne have proposed that strategy is concerned more with exploration. They favor a Blue Ocean Strategy in a very popular business book:

Blue Ocean Strategy challenges companies to break out of the red ocean of bloody competition by creating uncontested market space that makes the competition irrelevant. Instead of dividing up existing–and often shrinking–demand and benchmarking competitors, blue ocean strategy is about growing demand and breaking away from the competition.

Using as examples Cirque du Soleil, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, CNN, FedEx, and Bloomberg, Kim and Mauborgne illustrate the value of redefining problems in new and different ways; ways not typical in traditional and entrenched marketing and management strategy. Here is how they distinguish between blue and red oceans:

Red oceans represent all the industries in existence today. This is the known market space. Blue oceans denote all the industries not in existence today. This is the unknown market space. Blue oceans are defined by untapped market space, demand creation, and the opportunity for highly profitable growth. Although some blue oceans are created well beyond existing industry boundaries, most are created from within red oceans by expanding existing industry boundaries. … In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set.

Even this Blue Ocean Strategy assumes that the leader chooses a direction after surveying the marketplace. The leader is in control. The troops need marching orders. Clearly the leader should determine strategy.

An alternative approach to company strategy

What determines a good company strategy? Clearly it should be the basis for strong and sustainable company growth. That only arises when the company’s products and services are seen by prospective purchasers as superior to competitive offerings. This suggests that the best person to confirm that a strategy is successful may be that prospect who is reviewing possible suppliers. Provided there are enough prospects in the market niche, then there is potential for success. A strategy must therefore be chosen so that the prospect feels that their needs will be best met by the company. With this approach it is the prospect who determines the strategy.

This is of course a re-statement of the call to be customer-centric rather than product-driven. In rational discussion, it would seem to be unarguable that this is a better way to go. Yet in practice it so often is not the way that company strategies are determined. Perhaps it’s a hangover from the view that strategy should really be determined by The Art of War. That may appeal to a leader’s instincts, and it’s often said it’s lonely at the top. However that instinctive approach may not result in the best company strategy.

Related:
Client-Centric Marketing Plans
Michael Porter on Strategy

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Company Strategy – Who Determines It?

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If you’re having a little trouble sticking to your New Year’s resolution, then the US Government’s web page on Popular New Year’s Resolutions may be of help. They cover the following:

• Lose Weight
• Pay Off Debt
• Save Money
• Get a Better Job
• Get Fit
• Eat Right
• Get a Better Education
• Drink Less Alcohol
• Quit Smoking Now
• Reduce Stress Overall
• Reduce Stress at Work
• Take a Trip
• Volunteer to Help Others

Not everyone is into that kind of resolution. Kim Krause Berg prefers to look for inspiration:

While I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions, I do have a simple tradition that I do every year around this time. I begin looking for new sources for inspiration to re-energize me for the New Year. Usually what I find are ideas that “stick” far better than resolutions.

She was particularly struck by two items. Miriam Ellis commented on 5 Industries I Want To Work With In The Happy New Year Of 2008! That’s an example of what Virginia DeBolt called shaking up your neural pathway. This had been triggered by a New York Times item, Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike, by Janet Rae-Dupree.

It struck me that Virginia DeBolt’s article pointed to another meaning of that word Resolution. One meaning is of course “a decision to do something or to behave in a certain manner”. That’s what usually comes to mind if you attach the words New Year. However more often the word Resolution is used to relate how well a person or instrument can see a particular image or picture. Perhaps at this time of the year, you would gain more by understanding how others see you, than by merely deciding to be better.

DeBolt had specific suggestions on who might give you this different perspective. One possibility is the novice as Peg Kaplan had suggested:

Yet, at times I have argued that the beginner, the neophyte among us, can sometimes produce more creative, radical and wildly successful concepts and results than our so-called “experts.” The newcomer is not prejudiced by his years of education and “brainwashing.” He can see what others have been taught to reject out of hand.

Cynthia Barton Rabe was quoted in the NY Times article on how relying on expertise leads to lack of questioning and familiar results.

Look for people with renaissance-thinker tendencies, who’ve done work in a related area but not in your specific field. Make it possible for someone who doesn’t report directly to that area to come in and say the emperor has no clothes.

These are rather specific examples of individuals who can give you a different resolution of how you are seen. A key element here is the act of inviting someone else to give you their viewpoint. As Peter Drucker said, Help is defined by the recipient. Other individuals may be leery of offering advice if they feel it could create tension or be misinterpreted. If you ask someone else how you could do better, then you may be surprised at the revelations. In all likelihood, you will gain much more than if you had made that same old New Year’s resolution yet again.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

New Year, New Resolution

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There’s a new feature on Google Maps that I find most impressive. On our recent move from LaSalle, Quebec to Langley BC, we intended to follow the Trans-Canada Highway. In our planning we did not want to use one of the more complex sites that gives many itineraries. We wanted something simple. At that time we could have used Google maps but instead chose MapQuest.

To illustrate the problem that gave us, here is what such a program will suggest as the route to follow.

As it happens this is a Google Maps image, but MapQuest would offer an identical route. The length is 4,861 km and it suggests it would take 45 hours of continuous driving. That’s a somewhat astonishing average speed of 108 km/hour.

We wanted to travel in Canada so at that time using MapQuest we used a new feature which allows you to step along the route specifying the points you which to pass through. More details are available on this Beta process for MapQuest.

The new functionality that Google Maps now allows is that you can drag the route with your mouse to pass through other points. Take a Google Maps Tour, to find out more on how to get driving directions. Since we wished to pass through Calgary, that’s the first point we changed.

This increased the length to 4,943 km and the driving time to 50 hours. Again this gave an unbelievable average driving speed of 99 km/hour, presumably based on driving at the limits on all roads. Since it still took us through the United States, we then dragged the route to pass through Winnipeg.

That still didn’t do the trick. The length had now increased to 5,068 km and the driving time to 53 hours. For the record this is an average driving speed of 96 km/hour. By dragging the route to pass through Thunder Bay, finally we did follow the Trans-Canada Highway.

The length was now shorter than for the first route at 4,770 km with a driving time of 55 hours. This equates to an average driving speed of 87 km/hour.

The whole exercise was extremely rapid and took much less time than it has taken to describe it. Clearly Google Maps tries to find the fastest route from Point A to Point B. It does not try to estimate the time to cross international borders. It also does not take into account the beauty to be seen along the way. However as a planning tool Google Maps can be highly recommended.

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Following the Trans-Canada Highway with Google Maps

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