“Two Minute PSD” Final Day with Mitch Joel – SCN Encourager 8/23/2013

It’s here! Day 5.

Hey, is that a “flash mob” behind you that’s breaking into the Hallelujah Chorus?

For sure. Everyone is ecstatic that it’s Friday and the final session is about to start.

Mitch Joel is the President of Twist Image, founder of one of the most sought after digital marketing firms in North America.

His 2009 book Six Pixels of Separation, with its focus on “connecting with others,” is on the bookshelves of many school leaders and communicators.

His new book Control Alt Delete just came out to rave reviews, and more importantly, to tons of actual real-world readers (folks like us) who praised the book for positively and effectively changing the way they view the future.

If you’re wondering how you’re actually going to find the time to read all of Mitch’s thought-provokers, you’re in luck.

He also has a weekly podcast covering marketing and communications topics in which he bounces opinions and ideas off of many other leading creative types and customer-centric movers and shakers.

As Mitch moves toward the ramshackle stage, you notice that he’s got a friendly, outgoing air about him.

Unlike the previous four speakers, he doesn’t seem all that peeved about dreary warehouse location for the PSD.

So his presentation should be interesting.

No doubt he’ll have to begin by telling everyone that, due to an inherited condition of some kind, he is unable to see very well and cannot smell anything at all.

How else could he be content with this run-down setting?

Mitch begins:

Good morning all –

I see you’ve given up on the wooden planks you’ve been sitting on all week… and you are now sitting on your suitcases – all packed and ready to go.

You’re ready to git. Got it.

So you listen quickly. I’ll talk quickly.

This may come as a great shock to you – and to our novice PSD organizer as well – but I really LOVE this old abandoned warehouse!

What a remarkable environment for learning.

Yes… I see what you do. I feel what you do. 

I don’t care for the depressing gray walls, the poor lighting, and the dens of mice, either.

I’ve been battling the same cobwebs you have.

They’re hanging everywhere.

So with an eye on the wrap-up this PSD – here’s what I’d like for you to leave with. 

In a few minutes, you will get up and leave all of the dust and cobwebs behind.

But… will you really?

Yes, you will depart from this century old facility – and take along the strong impulse to leap into a giant tub of Lysol and give your whole body a good scrub – and I’m totally with you on this.

But I would ask you this morning… that while you will soon travel miles away from this warehouse, how many out-dated, decades-old, dust-covered notions and perspectives did you enter with…  that you are now taking right back with you to your school and office?

Shaking off real cobwebs in our midst is much, much easier than shaking off the invisible mental cobwebs we all routinely ignore.

Remember Jack Canfield’s point yesterday that we effectively influence outcomes by choosing how we respond to the uncontrollable events swirling around us? 

Well, while I can affirm the truth of this… I must also pass along an unfortunate, yet relevant fact.

The fact is that the time you have to make a reasoned and intentional response to an outside event is about one-fifth the time your predecessor enjoyed.

No one is immune from today’s rapid accelerations of innovation and change.

You must be vigilant in continually developing your ABILITY TO ANTICIPATE technological and societal trend lines and points of intersection… if you hope for your future choices and responses to be good ones.

This won’t be easy. For any of us.

In 2002, I launched my marketing firm.

Today, we have more than 110 employees.

Just two months ago, we hired two new professionals.

Amazingly, these two came into our firm with skills from career fields that didn’t even exist when I started the company a little more than 10 years ago.

Our parents and grandparents rarely jumped around from job to job, or employer to employer.

Today, it’s not uncommon for people to switch jobs and employers multiple times.

We see this all of the time.

Soon, vast numbers of people will not only change jobs and employers with regularity, they will also adapt and succeed in a variety of careers and fields… many of which we can barely imagine now.

What a challenge for you as educators.

This is why I commend you… for your passion in preparing our young people for a future you cannot fully know or see.

You can only anticipate it… as best you can.

Educators in the past could rely on rulebooks, ruled paper, and rulers. For years and years.

Not you.

You’ve got to be more nimble. Day by day.

The mental cobwebs they chose to leave untended didn’t really hurt anything.

Yours will.

So that’s my message for you today.

We’re concluding something akin to a “Cobweb Bootcamp” in this old warehouse.

No doubt about it. 

Just keep wrestling and fighting with them long after you leave.

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* respectfully recorded and transcribed by Tom Page, SCN