Can you move your resources around to fit your needs? It cost me time and energy to start The Agency.
- I already had the computer, the domain, knowledge about how to build a website. I learned how to integrate the software systems and use the mailing service.
- I had ten years of experience and skill to offer.
- I connected with champions and collaborators to test ideas and get help building.
- I spent $100 and launched in 45 days. And I was viable within 60 days.
How have you been creative about resourcing your business or endeavor?
Permanent link to this article: http://agency.thrivable.net/creative-resourcing/
In building The Agency, I wondered, “how do I accelerate the progress of our clients?” I also wondered, “how do I help them capitalize on their assets without requiring significant additional investment of resources?” And, “how do I connect my clients with available resources within my network to catalyze their progress?”
The Agency focuses on deploying technology, intellectual, and social capital to form more evolutionary capital as well as catalyze our agent’s social and intellectual capital. We primarily support efforts building human and ecosystem capital. The costs for social and intellectual capital have already been invested. Technology resources were mostly free or paid already.
We have a low overhead of ongoing resource needs. We demonstrate the approach we offer to others: resourcefulness. How are you being resourceful?
Permanent link to this article: http://agency.thrivable.net/resourcefulness/
Breaking down big decisions into small iterative steps to experiment helps discover whether there is indeed a fit for your offering. The Agency itself is designed as small experiments to test what works and build upon that. When we have small experiments, it can feel like the stakes are not as high, allowing more room for play and creativity.
Where have you created small experiments? How did you establish what success of the experiment would be? What did you adjust based on feedback about your fit?
Permanent link to this article: http://agency.thrivable.net/small-experiments/
(nods to Jim Collins)
In crowdfunding and social entrepreneurial efforts, are we being honest about the challenges and aware of how much fails for each one that succeeds? While the fabulous hype and excitement around these endeavors provides actionable energy, wise action comes from facing the gritty reality of what is.
Where are you facing the gritty reality head on?
Where are you avoiding it?
And how are you opening space for it in conversations with others?
Permanent link to this article: http://agency.thrivable.net/facing-gritty-reality/
Pivot. Business as Improv.
Agility matters. We create a hypothesis. Offer a pilot. Try it out. Update hypothesis. What were you testing for? What is the question you are asking?
During a pivot, a business can change how they answer their “reason for being” question. The question might stay the same, and the implementation and design can shift dramatically based on feedback received from the market systems
How are you improvising your work as you learn?
Share your story with us!
Permanent link to this article: http://agency.thrivable.net/pivot-business-as-improv/
Collaboration doesn’t have easy replicable recipes for success. People are involved. The answers aren’t known. It is a complex adaptive learning system. Emergence happens. So we don’t know how to adjust those knobs and dials of the collaboration mixing board in precise ways. We can know some principles to act on, just like Improv does. Then, what we then make together and how we make it can be dynamically designed.
Are you using some of these improv rules in your collaboration:
- Don’t deny. If we reject what someone else offers, we aren’t building together. Use the “yes, and” to qualify or add on to what someone else offers.
- You can look good if you make your partner look good. Work for the whole and your credit comes back to you.
- Have Fun. Having fun increases play and creativity as well as being attractive and magnetic.
- Trust. Improv takes a lot of trust. So does collaboration. Someone has to trust first. Let it be you.
- There are no mistakes, only opportunities. Transform everything that happens into feedback loops to make things better.
How do you use improv and play in your collaborations?
Permanent link to this article: http://agency.thrivable.net/collaboration-improv/
Collective Intelligence. Me+You+Everyone Together
To me, a collective is an additive grouping. Tracing collective intelligence, there are several strains:
And JF Noubel says, “The capability for a group to organize itself in order to decide upon its own future and control the means to attain it in complex contexts.”
Tell us what it means to you!
Permanent link to this article: http://agency.thrivable.net/defining-collective-intelligence/
Collaboration. What questions help us get there?
Imagine a mixing board for designing collaboration. How do you adjust the knobs and dials? What are the readings you get? And then what does that sound like? Certain combinations produce proven harmonic sounds. Open Source or Open Space, for example. But we don’t live in a one-collaboration sound fits all world. What is the right mix for your efforts?
What would the mixing board for collaboration look like to you?
Permanent link to this article: http://agency.thrivable.net/collaboration-mixing-board/
Give and Get Support.
When you have people around you supporting your actions and way of being, you can do all sorts of things you couldn’t do alone. It can seem like taking time away from doing tasks doesn’t move your forward. We find in The Agency that the experience of feeling supported by others keeps energy and enthusiasm levels higher. And when your energy is up, your productivity and vibe give you better results.
How are you getting support?
Permanent link to this article: http://agency.thrivable.net/give-and-get-support/
Collaboration. What do we mean?
Hot word now, but does it mean less than gets bandied about? Putting it in context with terms such as collective, cooperation, connected, and community might help achieve some discernment.
To me the critical distinction is whether the process is iterative where all parties contribute to what is generated by the collaboration. It is not the collection of finished results from multiple parties, rather it is a co-creation process.
How do you define it?
Permanent link to this article: http://agency.thrivable.net/defining-collaboration/
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