The New New Paradigm – Thinking Lobally

I was in a great mastermind session this morning, with a bunch of very bright people.

As we do in mastermind sessions, we were going around the table and each talking about the challenges we face, and my question was: For a thought leadership business, that is, a business focused around speaking to conference audiences, leading workshops and seminars, offering consulting services and authoring books to share original thinking with corporations and individuals, where is the best place to focus on?

Should we focus on serving globally, with the incredible connected international market we can connect with through the internet in more and more personalised and effective ways? Or should we focus locally through engaging with businesses, organisations and clients in our own city, state and country?

Ultimately of course the answer is both, for different reasons. And although that’s an interesting topic in itself, that’s not my main point here.

As it happens, Canadian High Performance Leadership Coach Sean Richardson was talking about the relative merits of global versus local and, with a slip of the tongue, his thoughts came out as “lobal” – a great concatenation of local and global.

Yes, we live in a lobal world. A world where we have to think both locally and globally. We are deluged by information from global sources around the world, just a google click away. We consume information products and online training and video coaching and a whole range of services online, quickly and effectively. Yet our local context, local circumstances and personal experiences still matter. We still need people to deliver services locally, to sit down and speak and work with us in person.

It’s a skill. It’s the new skill you need. Think lobally, starting from today!