disciples Archives | Ian M Rountree

Rethinking Leadership

November 23, 2010 by Ian Leave a Comment

Some leaders are great because we mesh with them on a personal level. Some are great because they generate momentum for their cause. Still others are great because they advance the very paradigm under which their industry operates.

Which of these leaders is hard and fast the best?

Good leaders deliver a power that is impossible to fake. Those they lead are enhanced with every interaction, feel the investment of time and energy from the leaders, and become forces of nature. Good leaders invite Discipleship, and make of their followers Apostles – envoys of empowerment and personal effectiveness.

Can thought leaders do this?

Not alone. We bandy about the term Thought Leader pretty freely – but I’ve grown concerned that because so many people are becoming thought leaders (not inherently a bad thing), finite, measurable leadership is being slowly forgotten. Conceptually, leadership will always have huge merit – but the direct skills needed to lead individuals, or groups, still require a certain personal attention. You can’t learn to really lead without having had a great leader to learn from.

Leadership is important. We should be sharing our leaders with others.

There are some things we can only learn from direct Discipleship – studying under the masters, and finding out how they not only ship their ideals and their work, but how they deliver consistent excellence. Some things, in the same way, we can learn best from indirect study – the way we do when contemplating the work of real thought leaders like Kierkegaard, Tacitus, the Stoics – just to name a few.

So I’ll pass it back to you – who are your great leaders? Those you’ve worked with, or perhaps studied under? Philosophical leaders, direct report managers, executives – tell us all what influence they’ve been on you.

Start now. Recognize your leaders. Here, or elsewhere. Let’s learn together.

Image by Better than Bacon.

The Power of Cross-Disciplinary Skill

May 24, 2010 by Ian 1 Comment

I’ve been writing HTML by hand and building websites since I was twelve – fifteen years, more than half my life. I’ve been programming since I was sixteen, again, nearly half my life. I’ve been blogging for more than eleven years, studying internet culture for somewhere around eight, and administering websites for the last seven.

I’ve been an internet marketer for three months. What do these things have in common? Transferrable skill.

Marketing is more than just snappy ads and writing copy. There’s a tracking aspect that doesn’t get enough credit, a necessity to know a space thoroughly enough to navigate any trouble that comes your way – just as there are in so many other fields. And I keep running into situations, especially doing SEO, where my knowledge of code and structure has proven valuable. I’m aware that sounds incredibly self-agrandizing, but consider this.

Knowledge of code in many forms is easily transferrable to internet marketing, the same way knowledge of building materials is transferrable to architecture. Designing any structure – whether it’s a website infrastructure or the framing of a building – benefits immensely from a studious approach to knowledge of your materials. Associated knowledge empowers you in a way few other personal or professional developments do, by lending perspective to your work.

Transferrable skill is not universal. Knowing a lot about dance isn’t going to help an architect. However, you’d be surprised what can be transferred – from a history of, say, retail one might take an intense knowledge of people and human behaviour and become a stellar salesperson, or get a psychology degree and use the unique perspective from behind the counter to help others understand mass behaviour. A history in accounting may be just what someone needs to tackle building a business from scratch – patience and tenacity.

Meaningful work comes in many forms. We don’t live in a culture where we are encouraged from any direction to have College graduation-to-retirement loyalty to a position, company or even field any longer. If the market, the culture, and your family and friends expect and accept that you’re liable to jump jobs every five or ten years, one of the best things you can do to serve yourself is develop not only a wide range of skills, but a widely usable range of skills.

Just as there’s a difference between being known and being knoweable, there’s a gap between being skilled, and having applicable skill.

What Fight Club Can Teach Us About Presence Media

May 17, 2010 by Ian 3 Comments

When you’re looking for an icon to blame for the idea of rising underground movements, it’s hard to get far before you run into Fight Club. In either it’s book or movie form, the story of “Jack” and Tyler Durden, stalwartly stumbling into guerilla revolution through near-psychotic boxing matches so well the curves of social media and other groundswell changes in the last decade, it’s easy to see the correlation from certain angles.

Which angles might those be? These:

The underground tends to rise up.

The long tail (the idea of fast mass-adoption, followed by tapering acceptance) is exactly matched by a userbase curve. Look at the rise of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and other location games. Once the flood begins, there’s no real way to stop if until mass adoption sets in. In some cases, this means rabid over-use by companies trying to make a buck. In others, it’s calm resignation of a societal change. The really fun part is trying to tell the difference between the two.

Tyler Durden is a great man.

There’s always a figurehead. Comcast has Frank Eliason and Comcast Cares. Dell has Lionel Menchana. The rest of social media has – well, dozens of people, depending on your circle. there’s always a charismatic early adopter waiting to show us the way. An Apostle in the wings, taking on Disciples as they go. It’s an important process. What’s even more important, however, is the point at which Tyler – our intrepid figurehead – gets the funding he needs to sink back into the crowd, continue to do the work, and leave further evangelisation to the Disciples oon their own road to the Apostolic Shift. But only if they buy in.

You choose your own level of involvement.

This is, perhaps, one of the most critical aspects of groundswells, because so few people seem to display an understanding of what it means. You can opt in, give yourself to the game, and benefit. You can also opt out, and remove yourself, to find other kinds of benefits – often less plentiful, but perhaps more fitting to your needs. the third choice is to ignore the movement, which is very hazardous, because –

Things happen without us – even when we’re there.

Especially if you’ve seen the movie, you know about cigarette burns. The reel changes, the stream evolves, and whether you’re with it or not, something’s different. Perspective adjusts. Ever lose track of a conversation you were having with someone else, only to realize far too late you were arguing about the same point from different angles, rather than disagreeing on something? The dissociative split that happens when we unintentionally opt in or out of something is like this. The game goes on, whether we’re participating (or boycotting) with intention. Not paying attention to which side of the fence you’re on, or even that there is a fence, is a hazard not worth risking.

What’s the take-away?

Like all communal endeavours, groundswell social movements require a measure of intention to navigate. Presence media – beyond just social media – is a communal endeavour at its core, a societal dance requiring navigation. Even chosing to leave the party must be a choice, not a somnambulation. Jack saw the danger of his sleep-walking – its name was Tyler Durden.

What’s the name of your sleep-walk?

Disciples – Learning to Learn

May 6, 2010 by Ian 1 Comment

Developing the skill of critical learning can be very difficult. Seth Godin writes often about the current mass education system being designed to teach conformity rather than critical thinking, and unfortunately, I think he’s right – in general.

Critical learning is not the act of learning something important – it’s the process of learning critically.

Critical learning is the process through which your lessons are validated against your own internal knowledge, and harmonized with your ethic. In many cases, this can include unlearning much of your assumed knowledge, something that education as an institution does not adequately prepare us for. How much algebra and trigonometry do you use in your daily life? Not much. But what volume of that knowledge harmonizes well with consumer maths like taxes, ROI and others? Likely not much, unless you took business math courses.

Over-using the skill of critical learning can often send us into analysis paralysis.

It’s difficult not to over-think new skills. Harmonizing new knowledge with our assumptions and existing skills can encourage long bouts of comparative analysis, tracking, validation and, worse, the burgeoning fear of incomplete knowledge.

The easiest way to stop this process is to check everything against a simply mantra: What is this information for. What does it do? What does this knowledge enable me to accomplish?

Disciples have it particularly hard. We barely even know what we don’t know.

Being stuck with known unknowns is annoying, and can lead to over-zealous research. However, being stuck laboring with unknown unknowns can be even worse – many people, in the process of being groomed as Disciples are, either become prone to drastic errors because they over-assume their skill. Worse still, some become paralyzed by the certain sense of impending teaching, and fear to act before any lesson.

What does this mean as a Disciple?

When you’re learning, communication is important. In an educational or academic setting this usually consists of assignments given, then submitted, then marked and returned. All learning is retroactive and, thus, built for compliance rather than progress.

In a Discipline setting, communicative learning is far more active. You can’t just take instruction and run with it – when you’re a disciple, rather than just being a student, every lesson is live steel. Running is a bad idea unless you already know exactly what to do with the sharp edge of your new skills. Communicate with your teachers, confirm your instructions, and always be checking in.

What does this mean as a Teacher?

Academics and education are poor places for invested teachers. Those truly dedicated to the growth of their supplicants may find they strain under the retroactive, formulaic process of reportable teaching. There are always ways to stretch the experience – but the system is very fragile, and stretching into a Discipline structure without universal (system-wide) support may cause more issues than it remedies.

As the mentor of Disciples, your job is far more labor-intensive, and far more rewarding – but only if you do it right. As the soldier’s adage goes; as someone in a critical role, your job is to make yourself obsolete by, in essence, preparing your replacement. For soldiers that means making way for peace. For teachers, that means fostering such perfect competence and confidence – and communication – that your Disciples could replace you when they’re prepared.

Letting go of your learning formula will be difficult.

However, allowing real experience to guide your growth, and letting text books act as a simple reference, is one of the most effective ways to ensure sustainable, teachable growth.

The Disciple / Apostle Conversion

May 4, 2010 by Ian 4 Comments

When was the last time you were promoted? What about the last time you found yourself alone, on a mission, without backup or resources? or the last time you realized you were no longer learning, simply doing?

How about the last time you changed position from that of a follower, to a leader?

It’s difficult. No one hands you a manual and says go to it. No one can possibly prepare you for the gap that you face when your accountability goes from being external – having a supervisor – to being internal, and doing the work for yourself.

The change, in part, can be thought of as the difference between being a Disciple, and becoming an Apostle.

It’s not an idea people give much thought to, so I’ll try to lay out the analogy fairly clearly. For awareness, I’m speaking strictly in the sense of the role, not in the sense of the historical, theological use we’re so accustomed to.

Basically, the difference is this; a Disiple is a booster, someone whose main role is support. They’re in a role to learn, be an aide, and grow as an advanced follower of a concept or person. However, the thing you’re following – the leader, the cause, what have you – always goes away.

As we grow, we lose the need for certain levels of leadership. Oversight becomes less beneficial. We learn all the lessons we can. So, eventually, that tether to the thing pulling us forward goes away. We out-earn our positions in companies, outgrow our mentors. Sometimes our mentors are taken from us by force. When that happens, we have a choice. We can either find a new cause, or continue the work underour own direction.

I like to think of this as the Apostolic Shift.

The Apostle is very different from the Disciple. Where the Disciple follows a Leader, the Apostle works largely alone. Disciples are usually kept close at hand, to directly aid in the work of the leader and the cause. Apostles often strike out on their own with limited resources and only the work of their hands and tools to prove their message.

They may gain followers, they may move toward something (such as a cause) but the Apostle has changed from being led, to steering their own ship. Some Apostles even begin to look for their own Disciples to help them do the work that has become larger than themselves. It’s a big jump, requiring more than just ability, training, experience or knowledge. It requires a drive that, frankly, the massive bulk of people simply don’t have.

If you’re out there, doing the work on your own, working for yourself in every situation, it’s likely that you’ve survived an Apostolic Shift at least once in your life. What was that like?