Jan'09 - Best of the blog posts

I regularly read several business blogs. Thought of sharing the posts that I thought was good, thought provoking and actionable. Plan to post this entry end of every month. Here is the one for Jan'09, in this series:

Tom Peters reminds us to commit to lifelong learning as a core value, in his series of posts titled "100 ways to succeed" (In case you have not read TP's post in this series you can get the same here - Part1 and Part2)

ChangeThis presents a new manifesto Leading with Agility by Kevin Cashman. Learning Agility is Change Mastery--the ability to learn, adapt, and apply ourselves in constantly changing conditions.

Learning Agility, which has four dimensions--Mental Agility, People Agility, Results Agility and Change Agility--is a key to unlocking our change proficiency. Learning Agility is a complex set of skills that allows us to learn something in one situation and apply it in a completely different situation.

Zen Habits is one of the Top 100 blogs on the Internet, and covers: achieving goals, productivity, being organized, GTD, motivation, eliminating debt, saving, getting a flat stomach, eating healthy, simplifying, living frugal, parenting, happiness, and successfully implementing good habits.. Here is a list of their top posts - The Essential Zen Habits 2008.

Seth Godin asks the question what are you good at?. He asks us to distinguish between process and content. He says content is domain knowledge and easily learnable. Process on the other hand refers to the emotional intelligence skills that you have, which is hard to learn.

As the world changes ever faster, as industries shrink and others grow, process ability is priceless. Figure out which sort of process you're world-class at and get even better at it. Then, learn the domain... that's what the internet is for.

Seth also offers five pillars of success.

Folks at Psychology Today explain how to change your personality.

Your inner mettle may not be easily altered, but with the right tool kit, some aspects of personality may be works in progress.

Finally, Steve Yastrow writing in Tom Peters blog urges us not to think current economic crisis as a recession. Instead, think of it as a recalibration, so that you don't you are not tempted to "hunker down" and wait for the economy to cycle back.

If you think of it as a recalibration, you will be motivated to focus on what you have to do differently, since everything is different now.

The way your business generates results is different, now.

Your customers think differently, now.

Your customers care about different things, now.

Your customers act differently, now.

Your customers may actually be different people, now.

Customers aren't disposable anymore; more than ever, you have to create sustainable customer relationships.

Everything is different now.

Thank you very much,


RamP!