Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly , from publisher Tim O’Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.

I usually like the books of Seth Godin, and sharing is caring, so I downloaded, started to read it and decided to put it up here. The book has over 71 thought provoking chapters, with some photos spread around – focusing on children, education and Room to Read – and beside the having a great content, it shows a very useful initiative, which I think deserves the “eyeballs”.

Below are my favourite chapters, with some samples – in case I have to persuade you to check out a free ebook.

Elizabeth Gilber – EASE

The world will still need saving tomorrow. In the meantime, you’re going to have a stroke soon (or cause a stroke in somebody else) if you don’t calm the hell down.

I don’t know who and where said it, some reformed movie hero probably – “All my life I was chasing everything and I missed everything”. We dictate a speed which is needless and useless most of the time. Where are we running?

Howard Mann – CONNECTED

We walk the streets with our heads down staring into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by doing the same. And yet we’re convinced we are more connected to each other than ever before.

We have friends all over the globe, yet we don’t know our neighbours. So immersed in global events we have no idea what happens in our streets.

John Wood – EDUCATION

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.
The second best time is now.

Education is a ripple. And there are too many still waters in the world.

Mitch Joel – COMPASSION

“It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.”
We spend more than 50% of our lives at work. Why would anyone want to wake up in the morning and go to work with that attitude? If you don’t make it personal, and if you don’t make it count, what’s the point?

Should we really leave ourselves at home when we go to work?

Jeff Jonas – CONTEXT

When information is evaluated without context—regardless of highly sophisticated analytics, an infinite amount of compute, energy or time, little if any relevance can be established with certainty.

When information is evaluated without context – it’s not information. It’s just meaningless data. I have 500 HUF in my pocket. That’s no information to you unless you know current prices in Budapest. Without context, it is not information.

Chip and Dan Heath – CHANGE

We’re wired to focus on what’s not working. But Murphy asked, “What IS working, today, and how can we do more of it?”

Indeed, talking about what does not work solves nothing. Concentrating only on the symptoms won’t give you a solution. And CHANGE links so nicely to CONTEXT. Without CONTEXT there is no information. Without information, we can’t find a solution.

And more. 82 pages with short, thought provoking chapters. The book is free, and freely distributable – through Twitter, Plurk, website, whatever, write your review, your thoughts, your comments.

And after you have read it, share what you liked.

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Karen D. Swim released a new e-book title “Write your own resume”. Being in the middle of job seeking, and frankly, being a person who never could write a decent resume I was quick to jump for the possibility to get this book.
Yes, the fact that Karen is a friend made it pretty easy, as she e-mailed it to me.

As I said I have never been too good with resumes – I am pretty bad with self-marketing, and I can easily dismiss things I created or acomplished that should not be dismissed.
Naturally I wanted to learn all the secrets to the resume writing. Well, it is as suspected, most of the secret is hard work and knowing what to do. Surprise.

“Resume writing is part art and part science. The art of resume writing is one reason it is difficult to judge a resume writer by one or two samples. Resumes are individual. Your value proposition is unique to your experiences, approach and skills. I have presented general guidelines only, as there are a number of variables that are completely subjective. The key is to know your market, and design your resume accordingly.”

That’s the Summary of the book from Karen. There you go, if you translate it, it says: “you gotta work pal”. Actually I was hoping it will be more along the “add personal details, shake it, et voil?, our Wonder-Resume Cooker 2009 produced a freshly baked, marvelous, killer resume. Here’s your new job”.? Ok, a guy can dream, no?

What’s in the book? First of all a really concise check list of materials to be used in your resume.

I got a bit scared seeing the item “Social Media Profiles”.
Being the net-addicted social media dweller, it will take at least a week to get all of them – 3 days to remember every one of them -, but then it’s for my future job. And I need a comprehensive list anyway.

Then after you get everything together Karen leads you through the outline of your resume with examples, and explanations of whats and whys.
I for one always understood that you have this plain text up front, and I was told what kind of info should go there, but never the why, and the goal of the section. Knowing that honestly makes it a bit easier to fill out that bit

And then there is the tips section called “Writing and Design Tips”.
A lot of them are common sense – don’t mix 34,956 different types of fonts -, but as we all know common sense is not that common.
When the inner-designer is released it can run a pretty scary amok on everything we do. Don’t let him.

All in all, the whole book is 23 pages full of useful tips and guidelines in an easy to digest format.

Admittedly not everyone will be able to write a outstanding resume after reading the book, but what is important everyone will be able to write a better resume at least, and everyone will be able to work better with a professional resume writer.
Like starting with a huge armload of material prepared for her instead of spending a week after the first talk to gather these materials, or simply understanding what the resume writer needs and why.
Understanding is the foundation of successful teamwork – and successful teamwork means a higher chance of a successful result.

So I say check “Write your own resume” out – and if you think share your opinion here.

You’re either a Purple Cow or you’re not. You’re either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice. – Seth Godin

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I have just finished Francis Fukuyama: Trust, plus, as the last two posts shows I have been thinking about teamwork and communication, and I had a few really great conversations with some of my co-workers, and all of these made me think.
I have written about how I think communication is important, I have written about how I see teamwork as a really important thing, and last week I’ve answered a question on LinkedIn which was a kind of “10 most important things” for a project manager.
My conversation with a project manager at the company was mainly about how he thinks that soft skills are way less important than hard skills, and how I think that while hard skills are important, soft skills can kill or keep alive a project and are at least as important than hard skills.

So the how to manage a project, what are important to successfully pull off one was a subject that I have thought about a lot.

And that’s how I ended up with the title: On trust we build.

No matter how I look at a project, there is one important thing that makes it work, or makes it fail, and that is trust.

Trusting your client, your partners, your project team, your managers, the people all around you is important. Yes, I know, people betray trust, people will try to cheat you, people will slack off, people will do shoddy work.

That sucks. I know. And they will do this, because they don’t trust you, they don’t trust their boss, and they don’t trust themselves.

Oh, yes, I am not talking about the trust where YOU trust others. I talk about the trust that is either missing in the project or it is there. I don’t talk about only you, I talk about everyone.

And there is the point where several things you and your company did in the past comes in. Seth Godin says

The best time to look for a job next year is right now. The best time to plan for a sale in three years is right now. The mistake so many marketers make is that they conjoin the urgency of making another sale with the timing to earn the right to make that sale. In other words, you must build trust before you need it. Building trust right when you want to make a sale is just too late.

And that applies here too. If your company is has a bad name on the market, why should anyone trust you? If you were not a trustable person before push became to shove, why should your team trust you? If you don’t trust yourself, and thus you don’t trust your client, why should your client trust you?

Trust you have to earn, but earning trust is hard, and like with love, you can destroy with one word uttered at the worst moment. It has the “nasty habit of disappearing overnight.” And rebuilding is even harder than earning it.

But without trust, nothing will work. If your team and client don’t trust each other, they won’t communicate clearly and freely, they will withhold important information, they will keep secrets, they will not tell everything just to keep the edge, the advantage in case someone betrays the other.

If there is no trust, then there will not be teamwork, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, actually the harder you try, the less success you will have.

And if there is no trust, then you can have all the mightiest hard skills, the best processes, the most advanced technology, you can have the brightest and most ingenious engineers on the Earth, you will fail miserably, your metrics will be false, your processes will be gamed, your engineers will always keep an eye out in case someone wants to take advantage of them.

Without trust you will sink like a stone. And maybe your project will be successful – e.g. not killed off and grudgingly accepted in the end – it will not be really a success.

If you don’t have a resume, what do you have?

How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects?
Or a sophisticated project they can see or touch?
Or a reputation that precedes you?
Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up?

Now it sounds sensible, and all, but there are some problems with this.

1) Resumes are required. I know that they are not really used, only to go over the checklist, but they are required. No CV/resume, no interview. Plain and simple.

2) My sophisticated projects can’t be seen or touched. I mean, they could be, if you bought the softwares.

3) Blog – well, to be honest, around here, Hungary, Central/Eastern Europe, blogs are seen mostly as the playground of teenagers. Blogs are not serious. Sorry. Maybe in a few years.

Some people support this view on resume’s, Zoltán Erdős, Bob Warfield, Deb Owen, some support with caution – if I read it right – like Dan Schwabel, and some disagree for one reason or other like Just a Guy, so there is no consensus here even among the blogging people.

My take on this?

Well, I think they all have valid points. We all know that it always worked like this. You sent your CV (or resume) because it was a must, but your best chance was knowing someone who could assure the HR guys that you are not a psychotic killer, you are fast learning and all.

The only thing we have as a new thing is the internet, where you can do the same groundwork, with blogs and LinkedIn profiles and networking, but I don’t think we are there yet – which is a pity, because I am awful with resumes.

At the same time, the internet made it sort of permanent, and along your professional profile and insightful comments on JavaLobby, the would be employers will find your photos that shows you in a stupor, lying on the floor, surrounded with beer and vodka bottles. Or your rant against your current employer. Or your not so professional blog where you write down your most private and intim secrets, just forgot to create a separate mail account for this blog.

So far I always depended on my resume and then on the interview.

Now however I am trying to move to the UK, so LinkedIn, twitter, my blog and general net presence is my resume, simply ’cause I will be on a totally foreign playfield, having nothing else but a resume and some google results.

Ten years ago I would not have known what to do, where to look, now I can try to find people on the net, talk with them, “social networking” and all, and with twitter it’s faster than face to face.

Nota bene: no, I don’t use twitter to pitch myself, but knowing people who can tell you which is the best pub in town is a huuuge advantage.

And why the hype in the title?

I start to feel that people are too fast to push out the “do a blog” answer to everything these days.

I know I love blogs, I love twitter and all the net stuff that makes it easy to connect with people. But I know that around me, even in the IT profession, at least 60% of the people never heard of twitter or linkedin, and don’t take this whole blog/social media thing seriously.

They don’t read them, they don’t know them, they don’t use them.

We are not there yet.

The only thing I did not really understand and like when Coupland started to write himself into the book. Himself as Douglas Coupland the writer, that scenes I found a bit unneccessary. But all the same, go ahead and read it. It is funny.

The other book, the one I just put down is Seth Godin‘s Unleashing the Ideavirus. A really good book, although I wonder if he would write it differently, if there are parts which he no longer agrees – I think probably, after all it was written 6 or so years ago. Also, I have to check out the website, maybe he writes the changes there. And checking out the other one, the Big Red Fez site, just out of curiosity.

And now, I am moving on to Fred Newell‘s Why CRM doesn’t work, which seems promising – well, our product has a CRM functionality along with rating and billing, so I think it won’t hurt reading the book.

I would like to know what books did the people at the company read about their job. I think it would be a good idea to put up a list of recommended readings on different subjects that are related to our job and products.

So, I don’t see them being in danger of becoming a “mass” product, at least not in Europe, and probably not in the US either.

What I really, really loved was the part under Examples: Stories framed around worldviews the worldview titled, and exactly I loved the title:

“I don’t believe marketers”*

Ok, I like the book, mainly because Seth Godin is marketer enough that I find some stuff he writes a bit disturbing – for the same reasons he describe under the bit called I’m angry -, but not marketer enough to make my skin crawl like it usually does. You know, from those snake-oil selling, “Our product is what your life misses” kind of marketers, who – you just know – tries to separate you from every last penny you have.

So, his words disturb me time to time for a little while, mainly because the same words are used sometimes by the other kind of marketer. Thankfully he goes on and deliberates on the meaning of his words. It occurred to me that maybe that’s when he takes me to the woods, but I hope not.

As a side note: the rain is pouring in Vienna, and I have an hour ’till my flight departs. Of course, there is not much to do, except buying stuff which I don’t need or buying food and coffee which I need for about 5 times the price you would pay elsewhere.

I think the main reason you can’t take your own mineral water to the plane is that you have to buy it for these ridiculous prices.

* And I read the fine print.

I never had any problems with Paypal so far, but then I only pay through them.
It’s always good to see a company’s true colours about customer relationships.

One is on Seth Godin’s blog who I read daily – and whose book, All Marketers A Liars should arrive sometimes next week -, he is writing about the importance of saying goodbye.

That reminded me the way I departed from my previous company, where my boss said goodbye in a way that was not really polite.

Back then I was joking with my friend/ex-coworker that she should have been more polite, she never knows if I will ever interview her for a job.
That last seemed unlikely, then about 5 months later I was sitting on my first interview as a decision influencer. And interviewed an old friend. Life is weird, huh?

So, take Seth’s advice to heart

It seems to me that you ought to say goodbye with the same care and attention to detail and honesty you use to say hello. You never know when you’ll be back.

You never know when you’ll be back.