The glass is undervalued by at least half of its potential value. Buy it at its current discount. Top it off with some tap water. Brand it. Package it. Resell it.  Win.

Here is an image summarizing this as a General Theorem of Glasses-of-Water-with-Unrealized-Potential:

This theory also explains the “it only really matters if you’re thirsty / it’s needed” observation, made elsewhere, while also allowing for the effects of advertising and packaging on demand. Sometimes people enjoy glasses of water because it’s the cool thing to do.

Finally:  The glass is 100% full of metaphor: Be the glass and fulfill your potential.

Add your comments, votes or opinions on this most importunate matter, here:

http://www.quora.com/Is-this-glass-half-empty-or-half-full/answer/Dan-Spira?__snids__=39871696

re: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)

(ht SMG)

Danny Silverman writes,

Success = Ambition * Selling Skills.  

Discuss…

Okay, let’s discuss.  What do you mean, Danny?

I know people with (competency and determination) but they can’t sell it… and so they fail.  That’s my thought of the day.  “Everyone lives by selling something.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

Yes… and..?

For any career, whether you craft violins, collect garbage, write law or heal people, if you can’t sell yourself and your craft, the rest doesn’t matter.

I like this guy, Danny S… and he’s articulating an idea that I have to sell to clients constantly, especially those clients who insist that they ”aren’t salespeople.”

Yes. Yes you are salespeople.  All of you. What’s more, sales is the oldest and most noble professional. Sales is what makes the world go around.

Sales done right, that is.

I try running my flurry of formulas and models by Danny.  There’s the old Skill x Will matrix.  There’s the rogenSi (Knowledge+Skill+Process) x Mindset = Exceptional Performance formula.  Nope, Danny doesn’t want any of that. I don’t bother trying my A.V.O.C.A.D.O. performance model on Danny, or my Competency x Warmth x Intention framework.  Even though he started off with a mathematical formula, Danny is not buying my equations or models today.

Selling ain’t about telling.

Let’s throw away the models and open up the question of how to build-out the components of Danny’s success formula, by making a list of attributes, going from A to Z. (Learning Consultant Jargon version: We can generate an ad hoc sales competency framework using the English alphabet as a convenient brainstorming scaffold.)

Yes Danny, to be successful you have to be able to sell your ideas and your talents…. and to do that, it helps tremendously if you can develop the following:

Ambition

Belief

Confidence

Determination

Experience

…and with that, I and turn the discussion over to the Facebook Peanut Gallery:  What are the attributes of a successful performer?

Here’s some of my other friends had to say:

(ht Lev, Ben, Avi, Aliza… apologizes for partially sanitizing your submissions, especially yours Ben…  hey, this is a somewhat family-friendly operation here…)

Tellingly, by changing one term in this exercise — generalizing competency in “sales” as a “performance” —  it opened up an interesting analogy between sales and the entertainment industry, which of course was unintentional. 

Ultimately, it’s the serendipitous connections that make an exercise like this so valuable.

Various entries were given for each letter…. but what is the X-factor?

Xenophilia, I think…. the embracing of that which is unknown and different, especially the different perspectives you can get if you ask a question to a few friends in an safe learning environment…. yes?

Yes, I just called Facebook a safe learning environment.  For whatever reason, some people open up on Facebook personal status update comment threads in a way that’s different than what you see in blogs, public forums, Twitter, or even email and instant messages. Perhaps the mid-size semi-private conversations on sites like Facebook and Google+ are the Internet’s equivalent of a small group discussion…. not as intimate as a 1:1 conversation and yet not as open as a large group discussion. In terms of places to generate online conversation, a circle of friends-of-friends seems to be a uniquely interesting zone.

Zeroing in on the lesson learned: It’s more interesting and fun to learn/sell when you let other people do the teaching/selling. Thank you Danny and friends for your excellent, LOL (Learning Out Loud) input!

Within a mere seven days this “Every Presentation Ever: Communication FAIL” video has garnered over 178,000 views — that’s good publicity for an organization that does good work. It’s easy to understand why people like this video… what’s a bit harder to understand is why two of my friends have already tagged me with it (HT DavidC and GilY).  It may mean that my friends know what I do for a living… and/or it may mean they know that I sometimes preface my prefaces with a preface.

What I like about this video, apart from its painfully-true-to-life humor, is its high level of craft in the details.  Not every gag is pointed out, not every joke verbalized… it invites you to take a closer look and discover things on your own… and that’s exactly what makes for a good presentation.  Am I over-thinking it? Sure, why not. The video wins because it calls out the bad behavior without modeling it.

Looking for something simpler but also funny?  (Oh you weren’t? Well here it is anyway.)  Here’s a classic bit by Don McMillan called “Life After Death by PowerPoint:”

Well, we’re officially at peak Decorative Gourd Season, so I think I’m going to start inserting random decorative gourds at the bottom of my work emails. 

Things like this…

Think that might start an email signature trend?  

..or how about this one…

..or we go with the more artsy look…

..then there’s the Martha Stewart Real-Ladies-of-Connecticut-Use-Power-Tools-on-their-Gourds aesthetic…

Of course, a more representative example of the American aesthetic this time of year would be this:

..and while we’re doing interpretative aesthetics and still life / floral arrangements, let’s round-off this little photo-essay with a little  kawaii  take on the whole autumnal-gourdy-display-thing…

So please, please, consider the work environment before modifying your email signature, adding trite clip art and rendering your name in a “script” font, followed by an overwrought quotation and a lengthy legal disclaimer.

Seasonally yours,

Dan

Recently, I heard someone use the term 3 or 4 times in the span of about 30 seconds. (David G has me wondering if that is more like a “haha moment” ?)   Well, I’m officially adding “aha moment” to my secret Learning & Development Jargon Bingo Card… it’s right next to “stakeholder” and “learning style” and nestled underneath “subject matter expert”  (aka, SME, a TLA which is pronounced it’s ugly phonetic-rendering of “smeeee”).

The Aha Moment –  also known as an “sudden insight” or “epiphany” (yes, there’s a perfectly good existing word out there, folks) — is the holy grail of the edutainer (cf. Wikipedia, cf. XKCD) who is addicted to the experience of creating awesome, relevant, life-changing moments in the lives of their audience/learners… however fleeting those moments of glory may be. 

Apparently, while Mutual of Omaha has tried to own the term, so has Oprah Winfrey, leading them to a legal dispute last year about who owns the right to speak these poor, abused words of the English language.  You might say that Oprah and Mutual of Omaha had a bit of a  pipe wrench fight…  because, as a friend (props @Lev P) suggested to me, whenever I hear someone use the term “AHA MOMENT,” I should start humming that classic tune from the 1980s…  

In other words, you’ve gotta sell sales skills training, negotiate negotiation skills training, and present presentation skills training.  One false move and you’re OUT.

The thorniest can be the negotiating-over-negotiation-skills situation…  it can quickly lead to a stand-off unless you inject humor. As one rogenSi legend has it, someone was once overheard talking to a client on a phone saying, “What’s that word you just used?  How do you spell it? D – I – S – C – O – U – N – T ?   No, I’ve never heard that word before.”

Some people walk around with a metaphorical rain cloud over their head. For others, there’s no rain cloud, but there’s something else:  an Invisible Ash Cloud that you can’t see and won’t bother you, as long as you stay on the ground.

Blue-Glass Skies Over London

The weather is beautiful and the skies are clear over London, for a change.  Spring is in the air, flowers and skirts are coming up, the air is filled with the giddy energy of office workers who would like to stay in the park at lunchtime just a little bit longer before heading back inside to their grey, fluorescent-lit cubicles.

There’s a catch to all this, however:  If you want to fly in an airplane, you cannot.   That’s because despite the blue skies, ALL IS NOT AS IT APPEARS.

According to the government and airline officials, there is an invisible cloud of silica-based ash in the sky, recently belched out by an angry volcano named Eyjafjallajökull. Officials fear that if this Invisible Ash Cloud of Eyjafjallajökull gets sucked into the heated turbine of an airplane’s jet engine, the silica will transform into a furious high-velocity storm of glass beads which will tear through the engines like a fist through wet Kleenex, bringing that plane down in a sudden, catastrophic FAIL. 

So the message of the Invisible Ash Cloud is this:   It’s okay to be happy… just as long as you keep your head down and your aspirations firmly grounded.

In business, the “first mover advantage” isn’t always an advantage. 

The same goes for “thought leadership.”

“The early bird gets the worm” applies only if you are high enough in the food chain.