Personal mission statement

I have been reading some of the follow up posts on the Outstanding Club and have decided it was time to take a crack at my own personal mission statement. I am hoping by doing so it will help reshape my own blog and get me back on track with my career development.

I started creating my personal mission statement by looking at the activities in my life the gave me joy and energy in my life. Not the short term burst of happiness but the true fulfilling moments in my life that still make me smile when I look back at them. The events that stick out are:

• The day I said “I do” to my wife
• The day my first child was born and I became a father for the first time
• The day I became a father for a second time
• Meeting with other innovators at work to discuss new ideas
• Working in a close team and learning through sharing experiences with each other
• Reflecting with friends and having discussing where we are and where we are going

I also started to look at what I am passionate about. Those things that I can talk about for hours with friends, family or someone I just met. Some of my favorite topics include

• Use and need of technology
• Social media and currently twitter
• Process tools and methodologies
• Setting goals and continuous self-improvement

After some reflection I have decided that what drives me really boils down to:

Working with people to create trusting relationship to understand their needs and help discover and apply the right tools to help them be successful on their own goals.  

I would say that is me in a nutshell. I love working with people and listening to their stories. There is so much self-discovery in just talking to someone else openly and when you create that relationship I just can’t help but want to work with them and help them be successful. 

Tumblelog app for Facebook

Tumblr for a long time has been my microblogging service of choice, and recently I have discovered a great little facebook application to further promote ElephantsCrossing.com. Appropriately named, Tumblelog, the application is easy to setup and cleanly sits in your facebook profile.  

The screen grab demonstrates the customization options and it is great to see that users have the ability to filter out content based on type and even further promote their tumblelog via News Feed. Because I like to keep a minimalist profile I was also relieved to find I can set the number of posts to be displayed in my profile and videos I have posted on my tumblelog first show as a play button versus the video screen.  It should be noted however you can play the video from your facebook page and images are shown without requiring any additional clicks.

Overall this is a great facebook app and way to promote your tumblelog. I will surely keep this one around for a while and add one more reason for keeping a facebook profile to my list.  

The skinny on Lean

This week I am Lean training and after completing just the first day of this bootcamp it has been an eye opening experience. Whether it is work or personal life, process is everywhere and the Lean methodology is a way of looking at the process and making it as efficient as possible. What I enjoy most about it is it takes a no nonsense approach to getting the job done.

Lean is designed for quick wins or at least as quick as possible when challenging an established way of doing work. Through this act of challenging it is looking to make a cultural change. It requires a deep dive into a process and at every step asking why do we do this and what value does this step add for the customer.

Some of my biggest take-aways from the first day of the bootcamp include:

1. Defining value add of a process step is difficult and can have grey areas however the general rule of thumb is would the customer pay for this activity.
2. Simple things like floor layout play a huge role in reducing lead time even outside of the manufacturing floor. Things like walking to the fax or copier machine add bloat to a process and overtime add up to huge costs.
3. Lean is the not the end all. In fact, it should be treated as one of many tools in your process management tool box and can be used many times over in a process for continuos improvement.

I still have two more days of learning and simulations as part of the bootcamp. I look forward to learning more and sharing my stories so others can realize the cost saves and quality improvements available through a lean event. If you have stories or tips to share about participating in an event post them here.

Outstandingclub - A Group Writing Contest

In previous posts I have asked and discussed what you should be blogging about and overall entrepreneurship. Overwhelming feedback has come back time and time again that if you go down either route it needs to be about something you are passionate about. This means before you can even begin you need to be able to discover and know yourself. Once you have this you can create a cornerstone to build on and that is your personal or company mission statement. Outstanding Club, a blog I recently subscribed to and launched by a good friend of mine, is hosting a contest to do just that.

I encourage readers looking to enhance their personal brand or evaluating a business venture to take this challenge and create a mission statement. Blog about it and put your hat in for a chance at an Amazon gift card. I’ll be following the trackbacks and looking for additional inspiration as I need to also work on my mission statement.

What is Your Mission Statement - Outstanding Club Group Writing Contest

The leadership of Outstanding Club is busily working away at refining the vision and mission of the group. A great mission statement is one that is succinct but thorough, simple but all-encompassing. It is a filter through which all things must pass to be considered a part of what the group is and does. If you intend to use it as that filter, it has to be, deserves to be, chiseled to near-perfection.

With that in mind, the challenge to you this month is to define your own mission statement. What are the things that define you to the core? With a clearly defined mission statement and vision for your life, it becomes far easier to know what to say no to, what to embrace in your life, and how to spend more of your time doing what is unmistakably “you”.

Write your personal mission statement and the process you go through to determine what it ought to be, and you might win one of two US $25 Amazon Gift Certificates! For an example, here’s a link to the Personal Mission Statement of one of the Outstanding Club members. Yours does not have to be as long, structured in the same way - heck, you don’t even need to succeed in coming up with one! The process of trying to develop one is the important part.

How to Win

Write a blog entry on your own blog describing what your personal mission statement is, along with a description of the process you went through to come up with it. Only one entry per participant! It should be recent and original (up to 60 days old is OK). You’re strongly encouraged (though not required) to link back to this blog to acknowledge your participation.

Contact us via a comment on this post (see the little comment link near the top of this newsletter) or via e-mail at iainhamp at gmail no later than Wednesday, April 30, at midnight Pacific Standard Time. Include your name and the URL of your list. On May 7, we’ll post a list with all valid entries.You have until Wednesday, May 14 to read the participants’ entries and post a list with your favorite entries in your own blog. You should pick at least 3 favorite entries, and as many as you like (all, if you are so inclined).

Note: While we certainly don’t want to discourage anyone from linking to their favorite entries, regardless of whether they participated, only those who submit entries and then vote on their favorites will be eligible to win.

On May 21 the winners will be announced. Every time an entry gets mentioned as a favorite it gets one point, regardless of position. The two entries with the most votes get the prizes (if there’s a draw, the entry that was submitted first gets ranked higher).

Prizes

As mentioned before, the two top entries in the group writing contest will win US $25 Amazon Gift Certificates! Good luck, and we can’t wait to read your entries!

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[From What is Your Mission Statement - A Group Writing Contest]

Chris Pirillo speaks about technology in Iowa

Last weekend Chris Pirillo was back in Des Moines, IA visiting family. A couple days before his flight from Seattle he organized a meet up over twitter. The dmtweetup crew was quick to respond to the call and the meetup was held on Sunday at East Village Books.

I, unfortunately, had to miss this outing, or more fittingly I should say I had chosen to skip this one at the last minute to have a day of family time, however being the tech savvy group they are the event was well documented.

Nathan Wright has a video clip on his site from his interview with Chris. Chris’s response to retaining a creative class in Iowa strikes the closest for me but overall I have mix emotions about his comments. I agree that Des Moines is still not a technology hipster town however I can without a doubt state that Des Moines is making improvements to that cultural change. Through Twitter I have found a strong network of like-minded technology and social media followers which has expanded my network to a collection of bloggers open to supporting each other and most recently a budding group entrepreneurs.

In today’s environment the city you live can no longer be an excuse for not launching your own project nor finding others to have a dialogue with. There are a wide variety of tools to find the network and the support. It takes a little digging to find but this is true for any city and I for one applaud Des Moines for its progress and the network it has created to support its developers, bloggers and other freelancers.