Take Five. A List of 2018's best. (Books, Podcasts, Youtube Channels & More).

Every new year comes with new hopes, habits, notes to self and reflections on the passing year.
It's not important what you have covered this year, but what did you discover.

Keeping up with the festive tradition here is a list of the best 5's I have stumbled upon this year.

5 podcasts 

1- Big Questions with Cal Fussman:

First stumbled upon him with Tim Ferris (another great Podcast), then was thrilled to find that he started his own podcast. Fussman is a New York Times bestselling author, longtime Esquire writer, corporate consultant.

The format is simple, it's one on one interviews with diverse driven,accomplished and success figures I highly recommend stating with Kobe Bryant episode

2- Leadership & Discipline:
Because motivation is like showering we need to do it everyday in the morning Jocko Willink  is a decorated retired Navy SEAL officer, author of the book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win.


3- The Message:

The first confirmed signal from outer-space has reached us, a team of specialists is trying to decode the message. Documenting the whole process is a Cyphercast podcast host Nicky Tomalin.

The reason why this is not all over the news, is that it's fake. The Message is fictional podcast about a podcast that was described as a sci fi serial. Interesting concept worth discovering.

4- You're not so Smart:

The easiest person you can persuade and manipulate creatively is yourself, as it turns out your brain sometimes takes part in self delusion as well.

you are not so smart is a podcast dedicate to the exploration self delusion. It covers topics like why your memories are not reliable, the idiot brain and naive realism.


5- HBR Ideacast:

Some podcasts are great at capturing the start up life, the silicon valley spirit of positive productivity at work, other podcasts are great at theoretical academic analysis of theory and philosophy of business.

It is very rare (at least for me) to find a podcast that does both greatly. HBR Ideacast is a weekly podcast featuring the leading thinkers in business and management.

5 Youtube Channels.

1- Jablinski Games:

This is Jack Black's gaming channel, as I am writing this now the channel got more than 2.5 Million subscriptions and 13.4 Million views with only 79 seconds of video content.

No Spam, No sponsorships, No Ad campaigns just jack speaking for 79 seconds.

2- Nerdwriter1:

This is a weekly video essay series that visualize and articulate beautiful a wide variety of thoughts and concepts.

The Channel covers diverse topics, From how to understand a Picasso and why did Dylan won the Nobel prize?, to topics like Fidget Spinners and why Apple needs a Samsung.

The Videos are average of 6:00 minutes long which makes them a perfect refresher in the middle of the day.

3- The Hot Ones From First We Feast:

Inbound Marketing in action at it's best.

The Idea is to interview celebrities over while they eat 12 spicy chicken wings. While the concept is extremely simple, the questions are very well researched and the host is extremely competent.

The series of videos gained traction of both celebrities and viewers alike, some of the guests of the show were Natalie Portman, Kevin Hart, Jeff Goldblum & many others.

The show is a great case study for inbound as the whole show is build around promoting and increasing sales of the products of the Hot Ones.

So the viewer not only opt in for the commercial by subscribing and viewing the content.
The celebrities endorsements adds to the mega influence campaign that is the Hot Ones.

Worth watching if not for the content then for the concept.

4- Kurzgesagt:

This Channel creates one animation video per month about scientific concepts and it is beautiful.

The visualization of concepts like aliens under ice, why beautiful things make us happy and time: the future and history of everything.

The channel is also known as in a nutshell as they chunk down scientific concepts into a bite size animated video. In an age where our digital world is overwhelmed by massive quantities of content, such a channel provides a quick intelligent breeze that pays respect to our very short attention span.

5- OnePercentBetter:

"I wish I can read more books" and "I don't have time to read any more", are two statements that I hear very frequently.

One Percent Better provides animated book summaries! featuring the key lessons from success and self-development books in 10 minutes or less.

While a recent article published by Inc. Magazine, says you only need 417 hours a year to read 200 books.The  average person spends 608 hours on social media and 1,642 hours on TV.

If these stats are not enough and you still don't have time then I do recommend 1% better.


                                                                     5 Books

1- Becoming by Michelle Obama:

Only 46 families got to live in the same house that she lived in, and only one family of her heritage and back ground got to be the residence of the White House.

This is a story of existence, resilience, tolerance and acceptance. The book provides an eye on a very rare life in the human experience and an insight into a survival spirit.

2- Educated by Tara Westover: 

Born and raised on a mountain in Idaho. her survivalist family didn't believe in schools, collages or any form of education; But Tara did.

This is the story of her ascendance from a young girl raised by her anti- education family to a woman with a PhD from Cambridge University. The story is unbelievable, captivating and above all true.

3- Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke:

The average amount of remotely conscious decisions an adult makes each day equals about 35,000, Annie offers a better mechanism to increase the quality of the decision making process. 

The poker champion shares her insights, on what kind of decisions we should be making and what actions we should be taking.

On a side note you can find Annie's google talk and other interviews online.

4- The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks:

From "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" to "Hallucinations ", Oliver Sacks's work is a must read.

In this collection of essays the professor of neurology, explores his own evolution on ideas, memory, innovation, and sickness,along with a range of subject matter from Freudian psychoanalysis to Darwinian evolutionary theory.


5-  Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi:

In this work of fiction we get introduced to a city, where the sins can be eaten.
When a sin-beast is killed, a tattoo of the beast appears on his skin while the guilt of committing the sin appears on the mind.

The story is captivating and the narrative is unique.     

                                                                        
                                                                     5 Movies

1- A Quiet Place:

Other than dominating the movie theaters by becoming the number 1 movie in USA,
getting recognized by the king of horror himself Stephen King.

A Quiet Place is a great piece of content and storytellers can view this movie, not just as a successful cinematic experience but a great piece of content as well.

2- Searching:

This is a story about David Kim. A father who becomes desperate when his 16-year-old daughter Margot disappears and an immediate police investigation leads nowhere.while the story sounds very familiar we have never seen it implemented that way before. the story is told from the perspective of phones, laptops and Ipads.

This is a classic story retold with digital technology. Innovative and brilliant.

3- Bohemian Rhapsody:

Because Queen.

4- Green Book:

This is a journey of A working-class Italian-American bouncer who becomes the driver of an African-American classical pianist on a tour of venues through the 1960s American South.

The car ride doesn't only reveal the struggle throughout the long road, it also reveals the characters differences, similarities and most importantly their personal stories.

5- Hereditary:

Very unsettling horror movie.

Having said that as a storyteller, content creator and a movie buff, I deeply appreciated the strong visual storytelling aspect of the movie.

The story is engaging, captivating and disturbing. Worth watching.


                                                                  5 Articles. 

1-  A Few Principles for Thinking Clearly by Charles Chu

A quote from the article:

"It gets worse. When people are exposed to evidence that contradicts their identities or tribal affiliations, they’ll actually double down and become more confident in whatever they believed. This is why it’s important, when trying to think clearly, to avoid identifying with any particular tribe."

Read More here: https://bit.ly/2NINGlu 

2- The (Very) Best Books I Read in 2018 by Ryan Holiday

A quote from the article:

"I know that people are busy, and we don’t always have time to read as much as we like. Nothing wrong with that (though if you want to read more—don’t look for shortcuts—make more time!). What matters is that when you do read, you pick the right books."


Read More here: https://bit.ly/2F3pngB


3- The 10 Biggest Archaeology Stories of 2018 by Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor

A quote from the article:

"The inscriptions are actually similar to speech bubbles in comic books, because they describe the activities of the characters, who offer explanations of what they are doing,"

Read More here: https://bit.ly/2Ql9aVR

4- Why CRM Projects Fail and How to Make Them More Successful,
     by Scott Edinger

A quote from the article:

"CRMs today also serve a lot of masters, from executives in the C-suite, technology, marketing, finance, and, oh yeah, sales. They try to address more objectives than are reasonable for any software system."

Read More here: https://bit.ly/2SZbyU1

5- There Is More to Behavioral Economics Than Biases and Fallacies. By Koen Smets 

A quote from the article:

"The proliferation of biases masks the truth that human behavior is fluid and fuzzy. The use of discrete, distinct labels implies a rigor that is simply not there."

Read More here: https://bit.ly/2NIZHa1


That has been a recap of my best lists of fives, Thanks for reading.

Twitter: @Fouad_Khafaga

Managing Social Media Crisis, What you need to know?

Digital Marketing Manager, Fouad Khafaga Talks About Crisis Management

Why and how should a business prepare for Crisis Management?


The answer to why is because it will happen. Every business in the world either faced or will face some kind of crisis; that tests everything the brand stands for.


Some brands have an active inertia effect – they work in their business not on their business. Meaning they get engaged and overwhelmed by the day to day activities, that they there is a little thought goes into such strategic problems like crisis management.


The answer to how – is like a story about a King that had to punish his son by throwing a big rock at him. The issue here is that because he is the king he had to follow the law, and because he is a father he didn’t want to hurt his son. He struggled until a tribe leader from his people told him to break that rock into very small stones which then will have minimal effect on the son.


In other words, breaking a crisis down into minimal manageable problems, and having the respective teams deal with those problems to dissolve the crisis is far more likely to prevent the crisis.
Looking at social media, for example with a brand hiding, deleting, ignoring and not responding in a timely manner to their community.


If a brand is that fragile to negative exposure, then that brand is more likely not to survive an avalanche of negative reviews (crisis) when an event goes not as planned.


What’s the worst that could happen?
Brand losses brand equity and ultimately credibility.
A real-life example of a crisis that was managed well would be at an event we recently attended.
We had a total shut down of the internet – the hotel we were in just had Wi-Fi problems, so we were totally cut off not just from producing and publishing content but from updates, behind the scenes work, major events moments, etc.

We were not even able to respond and interact with the audience already present at the event.
The solution was actually dividing the crisis into urgent situations that needed to be solved

• We had a situation room set up (before the event) in a different place with monitoring screen just for social listening, monitoring and interacting with existing audience
• Before the event we had already scheduled content ( quotes, opening remarks, awards announcements ). That content was published by publishing tools
• We had 3 members of the team capture key moments and event milestone live on different platforms through data plan
• Finally we created an event summary videos to make sure that the offline experience was captured online

Steps to Take

As we discussed, there are different types of crises – and planning and forethought can potentially prevent many of them from ever developing; and even if a crisis does then arise, with clear procedure or a chain of command available, the impact can be lessened.


By taking a proactive approach to your business, and putting safeguards and strategies in place, you put your company in a stronger position to deal with any issues that arise.
Actions to take before a Crisis occurs:

1. Develop Clear Social Media Strategies – such as Social Media Management
2. Use Data Analytics to Monitor your Brand – utilized Social Listening to understand your audience
3. Train Your Staff to recognize changes in attitude and trends online and in the venue
4. Brainstorm various situations and make plans for the ones that seem more likely to occur
5. Establish a clear chain of command and assign roles so your staff know who to speak with

Actions to take during a Crisis

1. Gauge the public mood and prepare an appropriate response
2. Be honest and transparent – let your customers hear from you and not a third party
3. Give relevant updates regularly
4. Respond to questions and comments where possible
5. If not possible, post a list of frequently asked questions and direct your audience to those
6. If it has affected people directly – apologies, be humble.

Actions to take after a Crisis

1. Continue monitoring the data analytics to be sure that the situation is resolved
2. Thank people for their patience and encourage their continued support
3. Avoid phrases such as ‘lessons learned’ – give concrete evidence of any changes being made
4. Don’t pretend it didn’t happen – learn from it and grow
   
   
   This post was originally posted here http://bit.ly/2wO7mz7
   Would love to talk more on twitter @Fouad_Khafaga

What are some of your favorite podcasts to listen to in the morning?

An interesting question and some amazing answers here,

I second every podcast mentioned here some of the stuff mentioned I am addicted to.

so here is my list I hope I don't duplicate any of the resources already mentioned,

Inside Personal Growth

This is how they describe themselves
“Inside Personal Growth provides listeners with high quality interviews featuring leading authors in the field of personal development.”

Podcast Episode Archives - The One You Feed

I came across this podcast from Maria Popova’s brain pickings , I find the podcast both beneficial and fruitful.

the idea of the podcast comes from an ancient story that an old man was teaching his grandson and told him that inside all of us two wolfs a good one and a bad one and they are in a constant battle, so the kid asked grandad which one wins? the grandfather said the one you feed.

Writers' Bloc Podcast

Even if you are not a writer I think you can appreciate the create of writing specifically of those who create some of best selling TV series and programs.

The show describes itself as
“Writers’ Bloc is a podcast about comedy writing hosted by J.R. Havlan, an 8-time Emmy Award-winning writer for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. “

Unmistakable Creative Podcast

Interesting in-depth conversation with some of the most talented creative minds, the podcast explore, investigate, create and enlighten about the subject of creativity and innovation.

Books and Authors

I will directly quote the description here “Featuring Open Book and A Good Read. In Open Book, Mariella Frostrup talks to leading authors about their work. A Good Read features Harriett Gilbert discussing a range of favourite titles with guests.”

92Y
92nd Street Y (92Y) is an arts, educational, cultural and community center serving people of all ages, races, faiths and backgrounds. The most recent episode was with Actress Natalie Portman

The Entrepreneurs - Radio

A tour around the startup world, Looking at the global SME’s and business world, very interesting thoughts and interviews.

Interviewing Authors with Tim Knox, Author, Talk Radio Host, Serial Entrepreneur, Small Business Expert - Interviews with bestselling authors.

Interviewing Authors is one of the Web’s premiere blog and podcast destinations that focuses on the process of creating, writing, editing, publishing, marketing, and selling an author’s work.

I am working on a list of 100 must listen to podcast.I will share it here upon completion.

feel free to reach me on Twitter : @fouad_khafaga

What are some psychological facts that people don't know?

We don't see with our eyes

There are a lot of interesting psychological and behavioral facts that most of us are unaware of,  like the fact that we tend to over estimate our abilities check out the tapping experiment "Tappers and Listeners" ... An Excerpt From One Of My Favorite Communications Books and a Story I Tell Clients Often - Rassak Experience.

or the fact that we tend  to confirm whatever beliefs we happen to have in a phenomena known as the confirmation bias check out http://bit.ly/21wk53b. In other words different people could be looking at the same scientific solid results and come up with a totally different conclusions in support of believes that already have.

Yet to answer your question the fact that we don't see with our eyes is for me a psychological trick that never gets old, one of the good reference on brain effects is a book titled Brain rules http://bit.ly/1YXtNWH, in the book one of the experiments that proves that we perceive with our minds instead of seeing with our eyes is the wine experiment.

"a group of brain researchers in Europe. They descended upon ground zero of the wine-tasting world, the University of Bordeaux, and asked: “What if we dropped odorless, tasteless red dye into white wines, then gave it to 54 wine-tasting professionals?” With only visual sense altered, how would the enologists now describe their wine? Would their delicate palates see through the ruse, or would their noses be fooled?

The answer is “their noses would be fooled.” When the wine tasters encountered the altered whites, every one of them employed the vocabulary of the reds. The visual inputs seemed to trump their other highly trained senses".

Here is a reference to the wine experiment We do not see with our eyes. We see with our brains. Another interesting article on the same matter is this Eye/Brain Physiology and Why Humans Don't See Reality But a Translation of It

As a final thought i think a couple of years ago it was the age of the atom and nuclear power then it was the age of computers we now live in the age of the mind, the more we research about neuropsychology and cognitive behavior the more we will reveal the mysteries of the self and the universe that is the human mind.

we can talk more on
twitter : @fouad_khafaga

The Effective Social Media Executive (part 1)

The Effective Social Media Executive (part 1)

This is a part of a series of articles about social media executives influenced by the father of modern management book “the effective executive”.

The book actually struck me as being extremely relevant in both principal and practice so I will pick those concepts and try to implement them into the social media field to produce the effective social media executive.

In his book Peter Drucker dedicates a whole chapter to contribution, which is the contribution of the executive to the company or the organization.

This is a profound question to any social media executive, what is your contribution to the field or to the market, if you’re just posting, updating, changing profile pictures that could be great active and could drive both traffic and engagement yet it is not effective.  It’s just posting.

How to determine then what should be the focus of ones contribution?  As per Peter there are four factors

The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four

Basic requirements of effective human relations:

• Communications.

• Teamwork.

• Self-development.

• Development of others.
To break down these four focuses in social media terms we need to look at each of them closely

•   Communication :

Communications have been in the center of managerial attention for years. In modern society however there has been great concern with social media communications. Now it is the social media executive responsibility to ask questions like
 what are the contributions for which will be known for?
What should we expect of you as your audience, friends and followers?
What is the best utilization of your knowledge and your ability?”

Which channels are you using and why?

•    Team work :

The focus on contribution leads to communications sideways and thereby makes teamwork possible. The effective work is actually done in and by teams of people of diverse knowledge and skills. These people have to work together voluntarily and according to the logic of the situation and the demands of the task, rather than according to a formal jurisdictional structure. The question here should be “Who has to use my output for it to become effective?”.

I am still amazed by facebook pages and twitter accounts that still talk only about themselves, their offers, their employees, and their company culture.

Social media as a medium gave us an opportunity to work together as a team of knowledge workers.
Define your output; define your audience and who can benefit from that. Then find you master group or your community creating a dynamic thought process resulting in an output that is both beneficial and effective.

      

•     Individual self-development:

In large measure depends on the focus on contributions. The man who asks of himself, “What is the most important contribution I can make to the performance of this organization?”Asks in effect, “What self-development do I need? What knowledge and skill do I have to acquire to make the contribution should be making? What strengths do I have to put to work? What standards do I have to set myself?”

•   Development of others:
  
  The executive who focuses on contribution also stimulates others to develop themselves. He sets standards which are not personal but grounded in the requirements of the task. At the same time, they are demands for excellence. For they are demands for high aspiration, for ambitious goals, and for work of great impact. People in general, and knowledge workers grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment. If they demand little of themselves, they will remain stunted.

So in order to recap in social media terms these 4 main focus points can be easily implemented in our social media strategy and our social media lives.

A-     Communicate : Be social don’t act Social

B-      Teams work: Find your tribe , create a mastermind group

C-      Self development: it’s a dynamic social world and you should be too.

D-     Development of others: adapted to the platforms and set bar for the achievement for yourself and others.

Thanks for reading I hope that you found this adaptation of the book interesting would love to hear your thoughts feel free to
tweet me @fouad_khafaga
or
googl+ :khafagafouad@gmail.com 

Creative thought and the creative process of linking ideas.

Written by: Fouad Khafaga
Twitter: @fouad_khafaga

Linking

One of the interesting things of the human ability is that we are able to connect and link ideas that in their own nature not necessarily relate-able, for example the evil spirits and the dark those are two independent ideas that does not in their foundation share a common aspect, yet we were able to link those two ideas to create tales, music & movies.

In a lot of the horror movies they use the concept of the haunted houses which are just the host of the two ideas evil spirits and darkness. The concept of merging ideas in this way was able to produce many creative applications in business, entertainment and human development field.

Here is an example

When seen from a distant chess players can sit still in the same place for hours, this in the first sight does not seem like a physical activity and in fact it’s far off from being a sport. However when asked about chess player say it’s a sport and it’s a bloody sport.

Idea 1A : chess                                                                                 Ideas 1b : martial arts

creative link : the book samurai chess

the writer made a creative link between the martial arts techniques and common philosophies like the art of sacrifices and the how to weaken the enemy physically and mental and applied such techniques to a chess board which resulted in what became a very interesting read and some revolutionary concepts.



Note: we can also make the same link through the book art of war by writing a book titled the art of chess war for example.

Our brain contains 86 billion neurons every new connection between two new neurons makes us smarter; following the same concept making new connection between thoughts that might seem either irrelevant or unrelated creates a new channel of creativity.

Consider thinking of cars body and human skin, seems like 2 far apart ideas yet BMW doesn’t think so they did introduce a concept car called Gina the this is what they can to say about the design of Gina :


“The GINA Light Visionary Model has an almost seamless outer skin, a flexible textile cover that stretches across a movable substructure. Individual functions are only revealed if and when

They are needed. With this model, BMW Group Design initiates a fundamental discourse about the characteristics that will affect the development of cars in future. It is therefore fundamentally different from concept cars, which reflect what is expected of them by implementing as many elements as possible in a future production model. In contrast, the GINA Light Visionary Model is a vision of future cars and serves as an object of research.”

Not just skin its seamless skin. The concept is available online on the BMW web site for more details and information about the concept car.

Another field that uses the linking technique in a creative manner is Guerrilla Marketing the idea is to link urban Guerrilla war techniques in the Marketing world. Here is how the founding father of Guerrilla techniques Jay Conrad Levinson defines his art:

“I’m referring to the soul and essence of guerrilla marketing which remain as always — achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money”.

The original term was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book ‘Guerrilla Advertising’.
Guerrilla marketing is often ideal for small businesses that need to reach a large audience without investing a huge lump sum of money or if they simply have a tight budget on marketing and advertising. It also is used by big companies in grassroots campaigns to compliment on-going mass media campaigns. Individuals have also adopted this marketing style as a way to find a job or more work.

Now Guerrilla marketing and Guerrilla art can be seen all over the world creating high brand awareness and an amazing advertising impacts with low budget exactly like it was intended to be.

Comedians, writers & concept artists use the linking technique in their character creation process, they try to find two ideas that obviously doesn’t match and create a character around it, this provide them with a human cognitive paradox and depth of character.

 Like for example a military general who’s into cake baking and wedding decoration, a nun who owns a casino in Vegas or a doctor who is sick (HOUSE A.D.).

The linking technique is one of the most widely used creative techniques that can be observed in a Variety of fields.