Check out the new site!

I will still do the occasional post here but most of my new online home is

ChangeAgentPublications.com

Please stop by, register and check it out!

Ride the flow!

~ Cliff Collard





Upcoming Change Agent: Events

There is a lot happening in the next week. Here is the
rundown:

What: ATEN Exchange Fair at Learning Man

When and Where:  Saturday, May 4, 11 am to 4 pm Where: Soma Vida Work/Life Balance Wellness Center, 1210 Rosewood Avenue

The Austin Time Exchange Network (ATEN) supports an alternative currency “bank” that allows members to provide services for each other in exchange for time credits (Hours) that can be traded with any other member of the network. Membership is FREE.

~ My PRESENTATIONS~

Don’t’ call it Money!  - This is about why dollars are NOT money, they are currency; and why things like time can be a currency, too. This will be short, 15-20 minutes and I will repeat if there is interest. 11:30 am

What is a Change Agent, anyway?  - This is an invitation to become a Change Agent and learn to thrive in the current environment of massive change. 12:30 pm

Creating a Personal Vision - Having a Personal Vision is a key part of creating the personal vehicle that allows you to navigate all the change going on in the world. 2pm

Workshops have limited capacity. Sign up, ask questions or get more information by emailing: atenexchangefair@gmail.com A schedule of all the workshops can be found at:   http://wp.me/PvHIQ-54

What: Web Site Launch!

When and Where:  May 1 - Online ChangeAgentPublications.com

The new website will become a hub and valuable resource for communities of Change Agents!

What: Part Two of Become a Change Agent available for free Kindle download

When and Where:  May 3-5 Where: Online at Free Kindle readers for most devices can be downloaded from Amazon.com:

Contact me on Facebook: cliff.collard@facebook.com  or Twitter:   @CliffChange

Top 25 news stories that didn't make the News in 2012

This list is worth reading.  Many of the stories have important implications for Change Agents! Click the symbol to check it out.

The 80/20 rule revisited

I have written about the 80/20 rule both in this blog and in my books.  It is a useful tool for may situations.

I learned something new about it today. It is also called Pareto Principle, after 19th Century thinker Vilfedo Pareto. He described the distribution of probable results and options as a mathematical function that is then graphed.

The resulting graph gets divided into the vital few and the trivial many.

Thanks to ongoing ITIL training for this insight!

ChangeAgentPublications.com launches May 1

30 days from today! 
Stay tuned for details!

Words are powerful - stop calling it money!

 

Words are powerful. It is very important to choose your words correctly when you can. Groups that want to control you often use words in misleading ways. that is why it is critically important to use the word money correctly. What most of us call money today is actually currency.

Currency is:

1. A medium of exchange - it can be freely traded for goods and services
2. A unit of account - Bills have numbers on them to indicate how many dollars that particular piece of paper represents. Accounting systems are based on this unit.
3. Portable - it is easy to transport
4. Durable - it doesn't wear out
5. Fungible - every one's money has the same value (the dollar in my pocket is the same as the dollar in your your pocket).
6. Divisible - it can be divided into smaller units

Money is all those things PLUS it is a store of value over a long period of time.

This is clearly not the case for dollars, euros or any other currency in common use. The dollar lost half its purchasing power since 1988 and 95% it value since 1913 (the year the Federal Reserve came into existence).

People make many, many decisions based on this declining purchasing power. As a retailer in the 1990s, I agonized over a supplier price increase that forced me to raise my candy price above 50 cents for a standard-sized bag of M&Ms. Recently, I put a quarter in a machine and got 6 M&Ms. This is inflation in action.

There are hundreds of examples of fiat currencies (those not backed by a durable asset) in the last 5000 years. All of them have gone to a value of 0. Mike Maloney covers this important Money vs Currency distinction in a lot more depth.

Key take-aways:

1. True wealth is your time and freedom - not money and even less so any currency. 
2. Start freeing yourself from economic voodoo! Stop calling those Federal Reserve Notes in you pocket and bank account money. Call it currency.
3. Words can bind you. Choose them carefully if you want to make changes!

Will you take the challenge to get in the habit of calling dollars currency?

Roles vs Titles

Curtis Guilbot has a great post that describes the top roles in a business organization. These roles are different than titles. Check it out.

I discuss roles vs. titles in Change Agent: Visions. This is a good example of what I mean.

Next post: Thoughts about South by Southwest.