How To Make Your Digital Life Easy, In Ten Seconds Or Less

While you may wonder if the last digital hit is just a buzzword and how much effort you should really devote to it, you are already late. Does it feel as if the world is changing too fast?

It is tricky to identify whom to follow when everything changes around you.

Digital advisors, innovators, and influencers have been popping up like mushrooms for the last years. Exceptional ones, though, are rare material.

Most self-labelled disruptors have hacks and templates to quickly mold together readable, nice-looking proposals. They have convincing talks about holistic views of the future. They state the obvious with nonchalance, mentioning elephants in the room, every two examples. They mingle Xs in their speeches, awkwardly trying to recall in the back of your mind the eXperience of the neXt.

Do not let them take the reins of your future!

Screening LinkedIn profiles or social media activities will not help to filter them out. Diversity of experience, the content deep, their communication style are all relevant elements to understand the fit with your background, but they are not traits of their potency of innovation. Also, it is better to be careful in giving credit to who links his innovation title to hackathons, hubs, and followers. Why? Innovation is a farming process that requires diversity, shared understanding. Innovation requires care about things that are hard to institutionalize in a short time frame, difficult to achieve in competitive environments and that are never a result of a passive game. Exceptions apart, there are two types of profiles that elicit from these setups as they both lack the creative spark you will need:

Innovation Brokers are good talkers about ideas they do not get: they will give details about their network and how your thoughts resonate in the markets, but they tend to sell off the shelf and, you risk to get back a polished version of what you have already in your mind, with their signature on.

Broken Innovators have been lucky few times. Once lost their positive light of astral conjunction, they tend to become historical, looking at their professional life from the back mirror. They will not be able to repeat their success reliably, wasting your and their time organizing nonsense events from their past.

Only a few visionary leaders can quickly create a punchy headline that buzzes with a big I need it in your mind, effectively improving your digital life.

They are digital pioneers, the only ones who can give you a significant advantage in the race, bringing ideas that move the needle toward double-digit growth.

In our days, whether you are a customer, a technology vendor, a system integrator, or a consultancy firm, you need them badly.

They are the only option that will keep safe your market shares.

You Are Ten Seconds Away From Making A Better Decision

All right, now that you know who you need to avoid to make your digital life successful, a piece of advice on how to choose the right digital siever.

Digital Pioneers are creative thinkers, community builders, strategic leaders with three specific traits that make a difference in making a positive change. If you spot them, in 10 seconds or less, you will know you are on the right trail:

Linking dots all the time: Over 20 decades of consulting, I have noticed that real Innovators are quick in linking back new information. The world speaks to them through what they read, and they read all the time, as they feel there is a lot more for them to learn about what they have in their mind. Bad or Good days do not matter: they are always there for a discussion that can better craft their view into something simple.

Walking on the edge: Pioneers invest their energies, hopes, and dreams in improving the world around them, so they are in a continuous re-evaluating process in light of any type of change; they play with rules, always looking for something punchier, a different perspective that can refine their toy. They are wandering minds able to depict so vivid pictures of the future that you feel like taking a ride.

Accepting criticism: The best digital ones (those who consistently move ideas from theory to reality) have generally no issue with criticism. They do not fuss or argue back, and they add, always. They adjust their ideas by creating an instance around that specific ask, and usually, they recognize that suggestions help them. They are not so worried about the sales side: they keep following up, proposing evolutions and reworks even after: they keep building on their idea relentlessly. One catch: If they say no, it is a no, it is not a matter of price.

Conclusions

It is tricky to identify whom to follow when everything changes around you.

Digital Pioneers are the ones who own the principles to balance in each environment what is possible with what will be possible; they know where to dig and when to be on the move.

In the digital wildland, this knowledge is all you need to survive.

There are too many opportunities out there. There are plenty of promising technologies to invest in, a morass of directions to walk, standards to bet on, reports to trust, and consortia to deal with. There is no stable regulation on data, no single digital authority, no more barriers, no ‘ring’ to rule them all.

Digital pioneers are one step ahead in your tiresome journey; they know how to sketch a map with explanations, meaning, and no ambiguity. They know what is relevant to you, and if you ask, they will tell you why.

Get it right, don’t waste your time! All you need is a ticket on the right digital bandwagon!

Thanks for reading. Tweet me @flavalib and let me know you read this!

If you liked this article you might want to have a look at my other articles on Innovation

________________________________________________________________

Disclaimer: Views or opinions represented in this article are personal and belong solely to the article writer and do not represent those of people, institutions or organizations that the writer may or may not be associated with in professional or personal capacity, unless explicitly stated.

_________________________________________________________________