(This was originally posted at Social Work prn, where I write on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you get a chance, check them out. They’re nice folks!)

I’m starting to build a Rules of the Road document (in my head, at least) while reading a book by the excellent Clay Shirky called Here Comes Everybody. Some of these things I knew, but some of them are recently-cemented concepts for me and that’s very exciting. I am madly obsessed with people projects—where many people come together over the internet and accomplish something previously unlikely or impossible. Shirky is talking about this very thing in his book, and it’s making my whole life awesome. Downright thrilling, I should say.

My Rules of the Road so far:

1. The relationship between you and the people you lead is a bargain. You give them what they want (assistance, entertainment, meaning) and they give you what you want (they spread your ideas, give you authority, help your project succeed). If you forget about the bargain—or strike the wrong bargain—you lose that essential relationship. It’s imperative that you find out what the bargain really is before you assume, crash and burn.
   
2. There will always be a cost to the organization of a large number of people. If you lead, you know that a B.I.G. part of that cost for you is time and energy—not necessarily money. But anyone who has been in a leadership position knows that time and energy is often a bigger, more interesting challenge than money. Thinking you can organize a big group of people without dealing with some cost in these terms is unrealistic, but if you can walk into it knowing what effort will be necessary to expend, you’re a step up.
   
3. Our circumstances have changed on a spectacular scale (one word: internet) and they’re not going to stop changing. Get with the change game now and start to expect things to shift—you’ll be ahead of everyone who’s still fighting it. Things may look the same in a lot of ways… but they are not.
   
4. We can have anything we want, if we are only willing to reach out and create it. This is truer now than it has ever been in the past. Our limits, as suspected, are in our heads—not on our capabilities.
   
5. It is less efficient to try to build something you want, and more efficient to wait and watch, keep your eyes and brain open, and seize an opportunity when you see it. A great book I talked about awhile back, Made to Stick, made this point often. A struggle to make something out of nothing is often not as efficient as an ability to see opportunities and leap on them.
   
6. Give them tools instead of instructions. If you can give a group of people the means to self-organize their passion, it’s more effective than trying to tell them how to do it. Self-organized efforts on the internet are often more effective and successful than similar initiatives by large companies with many resources (and many managers). Don’t worry so much about oversight. Give them systems. Give them tools. And then let them do their thing.
   

We’re capable of self-assembling now in ways we never were before, and it’s changing the entire landscape of “people projects”—or PR, or business, or community initiatives, or anything else you can name that has to do with how groups of people interact and make things happen.

I can’t wait to finish this book. Wow.

I asked this question on Triiibes and at Social Work prn. Bob and I talked about it, too. I even asked on Vloggerheads. Now I’m going to ask it here.

What do you need?

This is just a smattering of Social Work prn posts that have gone up in the last month or so. Enjoy. ;}

Social Work and the Power of Belief
My usual routine, most Tuesdays and Thursdays, is to wake up at 5:30. I stumble through finding clothes and brushing my teeth, grab some small breakfast, take my vitamins, pin up my hair and go to the gym where I CrossFit five days a week. When I get done, I’m woozy and exhausted—but by the time I get home I’m starting to get my brain and my energy back. I wash the grit off my hands and sit down at my computer—still relatively filthy from the mats—and post my Social NetWorker entry for the morning. (Read more…)

Hunting That Elusive Internal Motivation
I’ve told you about CrossFit, and I’ve told you about my sometimes-favorite strategy for personal change (that is, gettin’ coached!). There were great allegories for social work there, but there’s an obvious and important aspect that I didn’t mention: The coach can’t always be there. (Read more…)

Authenticity and Better Business in Social Work
I learned early on that in order to be a good businessperson, I had to pretend to be someone other than myself. I had to pretend to be “big business”—or at least “bigger business”. I had to stay aloof and withdrawn from my clients, so they would know I was “professional”. I had to use words like “we” and “us” to talk about my company (even though I was a one-man band, back then). And no personality—not in the business world! I had to be slick and sere and professional at all junctures. At networking functions, I had to have a canned approach (as a response to everyone else’s canned approach) and there wasn’t going to be any of this banter about issues unrelated to business. (Read more…)

Mental Clarity and the Power of Now
I’m four or five chapters into Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, a book that seems to have temporarily rescued me from myself. Ever get that voice going in your head? The one that won’t shut up? (Note: I do realize that I’m writing about the voices I hear in my head to an array of mental health professionals. No, this does not bother me. Well, at least until I hit “publish”...!) (Read more…)

The Social Work “In”: Create a Positive Environment for Ideas
When you’re running a business, you want lots of ideas. Every new idea is an alternative option you can take advantage of to make everything better, so the more options, the better. You want to create a positive environment for new ideas and you want to engender a mindset in yourself that takes advantage of new ideas when they float through your head—instead of rejecting them without really thinking about them. I think many of us are actually conditioned to this kind of instant rejection. We’re so used to our lives as they are, we often fail to notice subtle opportunities to change our lives dramatically because we’re simply not expecting to see them. (Read more…)

Fear, Listening and Opportunity in Social Work
I was inspired to riff on Bob’s post yesterday when I read the following: “One of the most common reasons is that they don’t want people to talk about them because they are afraid of what they might hear.” He’s right, folks—it is too late. Everyone you make an impression on (good or bad!) has an opinion of you that they’re reasonably likely to share whether you see them do it or not. The great part of this is that you, as social workers, and every individual and company under the sun have the resource you need to change all your word of mouth for the better: Your Ability To Listen. (Read more…)

I’ve been writing for Social Work prn (that is, pro re nata) for almost three months now, and by god, it’s a great way to spend time. It’s definitely a favorite as gigs go, and they are good people. Here’s my preferred list for the stuff I’ve put together since I started, if you want to bop around and take a look.

My Favorite Single Posts

• Fully-Integrated Social Change
• Better Kids, Better Us, Better Everybody
• Social (Detective) Work, Perseverance, & What Matters

On Homelessness and Social Change

• A Need for Social Change
• Finding the Connection for Social Change
• On Desperation and Locked Doors
• Seeing Clearly: What Help for Whom?

Angel and Michelle’s Story

• Outside Looking In, Part One
• Outside Looking In, Part Two
• Outside Looking In, Part Three

Burning Flipside and Alternative Social Structures

• Alternative Social Values for the Real World
• Civilization and Self Reliance
• Social Systems, Invisibility, and Self-Reliance
• Self-Reliance: Creativity, Ingenuity, Growth
• Remembering to Connect

Sweat Lodge Ceremonies and Social Work

• Assuming Social Connection
• Sweat Lodges and Social Work
• Seeking the Sweat Lodge
• Inside the Sweat Lodge, Self-Work and Spirtuality

If you want to catch posts as I make them, you can see them most Tuesdays and Thursdays at Social Work prn’s blog, The Social NetWorker. Rob Plotkin posts there regularly, and we’ve had a smattering of other guest bloggers in the last few weeks (including our friendly neighborhood Freak Revolutionaries and the ever-awesome Bob Poole). If you’re interested at all in social work (or being mindful of the world around you!) it’s a good read. Here’s the RSS feed.

Have a super-great weekend, folks!

May feels to me, strangely, like the turning of the year—as if its pivot is not New Year’s Day, but a certain week in late spring when we all go running around in the wilderness like heathens. I’m sure that if I attended Burning Man, that would feel like the pivot. But because Burning Flipside is my thing, instead, it’s the pivot. There is a clicking and snapping in my brain that says it’s time to turn things over. Geeze, it’s only my second year. I’m still a n00b, man.

But this year I’m gonna live in a yurt.

That’s gotta count for something.

The last week or so has been a huge blur. There’s a limit to how much one person can get done in a certain amount of time, but I’ve been pushing it. Today’s list is the biggest, because early tomorrow morning we’re packing up the car and wandering out into Texas Hill Country. To that end, this is really a scheduling post, so that you all know where in the hell I am while I’m not answering your emails or picking up my phone.

From May 21-25, I will be in the middle of nowhere—really!—braving the hot sun and dust and desert creatures in Flat Creek with nothing to protect me but some insulation panels and, uh, TAPE. It will be wild. There are no computers in the wilderness. As such, I will (obviously) not be answering email during that time. I am also 99% certain that I will not have any kind of mobile reception, so although you’re welcome to leave me voicemail, please do not expect responses while I’m gone (swift or otherwise).

From May 26-27, I will be back in town and on a super tight deadline. We’ll be getting Marty ready for A-Kon in Dallas, and making sure nothing slipped past our radar while we were camping. It will be fairly difficult to get a hold of me, but possible. I would beg you to only send me emergency items during this couple of days, because time will be very short.

From May 28-31, Marty and I will be in Dallas at A-Kon. I will be working, but internet connectivity may be spotty or non-existent, depending on whether the hotel’s wireless works and possibly on whether I can find an alternate ‘net location without compromising my ability to help Marty run his table. It’s best if you don’t depend on me for anything desperate while we’re in Dallas.

June 1st I will return to my apartment and pass out for three days underneath the floorboards, eating small insects and rodentia and rebuilding my strength for the day when I may rise again to once more wreak my unholy havoc upon the world.

Oh, wait. That was Marty’s copy. Uh. I’ll be around the first week of June. I’ll be tired, but I’ll be here. ;}

I’d say the next four hours are the best time for you to contact me if you have something absolutely urgent that must be dealt with before I head out of town—so get on that, it’s probably your last chance for a couple of weeks. Otherwise, I’ll be back in the saddle (or toppling, exhausted, out of it?) the first week of June, and we’ll catch everything up then. (In fact, by then, a normal work week will feel like a blessing from Heaven. Looking forward to that!)

If you are just dying for more posts and you can’t stand to be without something Megan M. for a whole! week! you can feel free to check out The Social NetWorker blog at Social Work prn—my posts there will keep going up Tuesdays and Thursdays as usual. Magic! As for my Personal Revelations, I’m sure I’ll have a great store of them when I return from the hills.

Just hang on a week or two, while I turn my brain over. ;}