Making magic magical and work workable September 1, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Blue , trackbackI have a visionary friend: an entrepreneur and a cultivator of talents in others. He sees what others can’t sometimes, because he works with generosity and talent and he takes his time. And I have a talented friend who is caring and nurturing of others. She works often “unwitnessed” to change the lives of others in tangible and sustaining ways. One day I brought them together and we made magic.
I like to think of my friend, James being at the pointy end of communication. He uses new media to sharpen and re-work old practices.
For instance we have the age old practice of needing to inform others of something newsy. But our audience is either chasing a clock or moving around so much we can’t reach them. We get our information “on the run”. There’s nothing new here, but James has been mulling over the idea of using new media in a sustainable way within corporations - enabling them to run it for themselves. Visionary and nurturing. It makes good business sense as well.
My friend Martha is at the educating end of communication, perhaps even the “warm and fuzzy” end. As an entrepreneur, she works for herself. Her services utilise programming techniques like Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), hypnosis, time-line therapy, huna, engagement skills, selling skills and stories to help others remove barriers and limiting beliefs to get them out of bad habits. In this way she helps them improve their performance across all facets of their life. And to be free of the need for trainers and coaches like herself. Nurturing and visionary.
Last friday we bought the two together and made a series of podcasts at James’ fabulous network studio. And voila the first of a series of great talks is avaliable on his Lifestyle PodNetwork. The podcast is called Making Work Work. Its core message is to enable people to get over the barriers they put up, and reach their true potential. By putting these two people together, James got to push Martha’s message out to more people in a new way.
Who yet knows who will listen to this new podcast? Who will subscribe to Making Work Work? Is it a niche market of trainers? HR Specialists? Or is it a technical savant checking out the latest podcast products? Or is it the person, chasing the clock, driving home listening in their car and questioning why they even went to work at all – given the nightmare day they’ve had! Whoever it is, they get to hear some profound and helpful messages in a digestable time savvy way.
I love to work with James. I rush in and he waits. I keep hitting my head against a brick wall, because people aren’t ready, are too scared, don’t understand, or it’s a lousy idea…. whatever. On the other hand, James prefers to envision a project from start to finish even before he takes the first step. When he steps though, it is fast, and appears to the outsider, in this case, Martha, as seemingly effortless.
By now I’m quite used to how he works. It’s as if he gestates ideas, Sometimes there’s no sign of movement, as if in his Leo-nine way, he’s lying asleep in the sun, with only a flicking tail, waving away the flies who buzz: ”is it ready?” “What do you think”, ”should we do it now”, ”can you fix this here” “can you do that over there” What about a blog for the boss?”, ”what about a new website to fix communication”, ”what about…..”.
He stays quite still, non-reactive, thoughtful. Nothing for a while, then springing into action, he lifts off with a comprehensive leap right across the program: to link this to that, put that over there, move that piece under there to shift this one over here. And it works, because it’s been mulled over, chewed over, sat with and envisioned. If you ignore the flies, you save your energy and secure the entire carcass with one big bite!
That’s why when Martha arrived at 9.30 in the morning and left at 4.30 that afternoon, with no idea of what a podcast was, let alone what she’d say, and how it was done, we were able to record 5 engaging, interesting and believable shows with cogent messages, branded, posted and live by the start of the next day. Inspiring, easy and fun.
I am looking forward to the new communication podcast, he and I will be recording each Friday. It’s linked to our Working with Sparkle blog. We are meeting together at the end of each week to discuss the week at work – what we did, how we did it and whether it worked. A sort of a week wrap. I’ll probably buzz like I always do, and he’ll probably ruminate like he always does. By looking at the week just gone, we’ll keep it anchored to stuff that resonates with other practitioners. We’ll keep it real.
A sort of magical reality, though.
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