Taming the Turds

140 characters forces the mind to come up with some gems. How about this for a quote, "Virtually all innovation emerges from piles of turds".

The writer goes on to say, "Good news: Lots of turds around hence matchless opportunity to innovate or start up business."

I have been saying similar things myself in deeper vernacular. This writer also says that, "Only tough times produce heroes." He does caveat it with "more or less" but again I see his point. When the going gets tough, the tough get going and all that malarkey.

In fact, this writer again goes on to say, "Name me a US President you can remember who didn't achieve memorable status by taming turds." To be frank, I didn't know turds were uppity so you learn some thing new each day. The vision of Nixon fencing with an angry turd is amusing and apt. I see the writer's point.

The theme is somewhat grim and perhaps a bit cynical of our times. But we are all pulling in our belts, consumer confidence is very low (Argos had bad numbers recently), the PC market has dropped sharply and dominate companies like Nokia are being hard pressed. Times are not rosy.
And as the Irish would say, "You need some prime shite to grow beautiful roses."
We may not agree with the details of all this but it is true to say that the innovators make things happen in tough times and opportunities are taken. When tough times come businesses, it is courageous and creative leadership that wins through.

So the time is right, the opportunities are there - get creative and tame those turds.

The writer? Oh, some guy called Tom Peters said it on Twitter just this afternoon.

Oh Twitter - How Cool Was That?

Just when I thought Twitter was going to disappoint me, it has made my life worth living again.

Yesterday, the power of Twitter embraced me and I had a brief, but rewarding, conversation with none other than Tom Peters. Yes, THE Tom Peters - the 'Thriving on Chaos' etc. Tom Peters.

How did it come about, I hear you all ask as one? Well Tom, as he likes me to call him, tweeted something about enthusiastic staff making him busy. Then he clarified that tweet by how he was going to do 'Operationalizing'. Being the wag I am, I asked Tom if that was a real word and he replied that he had no idea but had been using it for 40 years. Further, when I suggested I would use it from now on he said that he would take no responsibilities for my actions and not send me cookies when I was in bad-grammar jail.

Fantastic repartee.

Ah my point here is that you can threaten Wayne Rooney, call Piers Morgan a self-publicising fart or have a banter with the great Tom Peters. In short bites, Twitter makes people who you thought were inaccessible, accessible.

The key is original thought - keep that in mind and cut out the irrelevance and maybe Twitter will really become a good place to be.