Join 📚 Christian Champ's Highlights

A batch of the best highlights from what Christian's read, .

Surprise Being funny is a state of mind, and the main ingredient for that state is a hunger to surprise: to give the answer we didn’t think of; to react with an emotion we didn’t expect; to care more than we predicted; to be more specific than necessary.

How to Be the Greatest Improviser on Earth

Will Hines

1 Mission matters. Find ways to pull your items back to the soul and purpose of your organization. "Why it matters" is the perfect device. • It is impossible to overdose on this: Your mission begins to sink in only when you've annoyed yourself with repetition. 2 Tell a story. If someone read all of your newsletters from the previous year, they should tell a clear, powerful story about what you were doing, thinking, accomplishing. Each item or each newsletter should do the same. • People bore easily. They want an authentic story to explain why they work so hard and bother reading your words. • We give new employees a copy of the previous few months of 5 Big Things so they can hit the ground running. 3 Don't be a fraud. Write with candor and authenticity. People aren't suckersthey can sniff out a lawyered line or constipated corporate nonsense. Quit doing this ASAP. 4 Don't quit. You need to connect with your staff at least once a week. Resist the urge to blow off the newsletter. If you don't want others to slack off, lead by example. 5 Be humble. If you're a CEO, leader or manager, you're successful and hopefully smart. But not that smart. Show gratitude, admit mistakes, poke fun at yourself. It frees those around you to stop acting like self-important corporate jackasses too. 6 Encourage copycats. The magic really unfolds when those around you start communicating in the same style and similar cadence. Once we realized Smart Brevity was a game-changer within Axios as well as for our outside audience, we saw a spike in alignment among teams. Everyone has fun telling their own story and knows what colleagues are up to-throughout the company and around the country.

Smart Brevity

Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz

Keep showing up. 99% of success is just showing up. In fact, most success is just persistence.

Excellent Advice for Living

Kevin Kelly

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