Bloomport U

Part of my self-imposed education is figuring out whom to listen. There is a TON of hacks out there and you can find any number of self-prophesying opportunists with a pretty model and an MBA.  I think the trick is, figuring out who is worth following.

This morning I was following links and I ran into Seth Goden and his post “If TV ads were free” challenging marketers to think like TV advertising was free.  Now, I admit, I do not remember ever hearing of this guy but when I read his post, I was thinking “hmm… I like how this guy thinks”.  So I did some checking and he was number 43 on the Top 50 list of thinkers, written a couple good books, and is pretty much a internet marketing guru, so aside from being embarrassed that I had never heard of him… he still just made sense. 

This got me to thinking, how do I select my “Professors” and why wasn’t Seth on my list? 

Selecting my Professors 

I realized that when it came to selecting “who” I listened to, I had no real criteria.  This first came to me when I was building my “links” list and I was trying to figure out who I should list, but the problem never really manifested itself.  Realizing now, the downside of not having an approach is that I could select the wrong thought-leaders and waste time.  In this post I am going to systematize my selection criteria (because that is what I do, I add order when there is none) and try to crystallize my thought process for selecting who I listen to in the world of Environmental Scanning.

My inital selection criteria:

• Did I hear about the person in business school? (Hamel, Porter, Kaplan, Norton, etc)
• Have I read one of their books (and was it good): (Covey, Drucker, Ferazzi, Groppel, Goleman, Buckingham, Goleman, etc)
• Is the person a personal icon: (Drucker, Demming, Carnegie, etc)
• Did the person have an article in the HBR: (…)
• Do they have a blog I follow in HBR voices (Sviokla, Baldoni, Bregman)

 New criteria added today:

• Are they on the Top 50 Business Thinkers?

Based on this, my action steps are to build a page for my “Top Ten” Professors and why… perhaps in the form of order qualifiers and order winners?   Great, another item on my “to do” list.