Failure hurts. Admitting failure hurts worse.

Great leaders.

I love reading, learning and applying leadership skills. A good leader is the able to assess a situation and determine whether it is working well or not. A great leader not only assesses the situation accurately, but a great leader makes tough decisions that are best for the organization (business, church, family, etc).

In other words, to be a great leader you must admit your efforts are failing and make the decision to stop or completely change how you are operating.

Historically great leaders make great assessments, make the hard decision, and do it under immense amounts of pressure – i.e. Winston Churchill during WWII.

There is more than this to being a great leader, but making tough (correct) decisions is one of the hallmarks of leadership.

I want to be a great leader.

I have to admit failure, and I need to make change. Over the 6-8 weeks, I’ve come to realize while The Collective is a beautiful creation, it isn’t working.

The headline of “failure” is grabbing, but I don’t feel The Collective is a total failure. I’ve failed to meet goals needed for it to be worth the time and effort put into it.

So…I need to make changes.

Changes for The Collective

There are 3 changes I will be making. They will go into effect immediately (this week).

1. Less (but better) content.

If I were to create The Collective all over again, this is one of the things I would definitely do differently.

I’ve spent so much time in creating daily content I’ve missed being able to do other things to either build The Collective or create and work on other opportunities. I’ve also been so worried about creating daily content, that sometimes it’s not been the quality you deserve.

I will create original 1-2 posts per week. My intention is that they will be more in depth, a little longer and even better content.

2. 1 guest post per week.

This is actually the pace I’ve been on for the year, and I would really like to keep it that way. Some of the both the best quality and best received content has been from The Collective’s guest authors. They/you are what make this a collective, after all.

I’ve asked many times before, but I’ll do it again. Consider sharing with The Collective; you truly have something to give.

3. Pivot.

I’ve read several articles over the course of the last few months about the concept of “pivoting”. The concept is this:

When building a business or a brand it may become obvious that your original aim is off. The question then becomes how can the business or turn (or pivot) using the infra-structure and platform it has created and be successful.

That leads to the question:

What is The Collective pivoting too?

The answer is:

I’m not entirely sure.

Let me give you this “guess” I have. I think The Collective will begin moving away from being a “photography” blog. It’s obvious by reading through many of the posts that they have very little to do with photography or even the photography business.

What I know most about, and what I’m most passionate about is life – true, strong, healthy life. Doing whatever it is you do (photography, business owner, widget maker) and at the same time living a full and happy life. I’m tired of seeing too many photographers/business owners work so hard to build something and completely miss out on life along the way.

I have to stop trying to be something I’m not (a photographer), and admit to make this the best at what I love (real life).

The message I have is bigger than the photography industry, and it seemed easiest and most convenient to start here. I think it’s time to move beyond it.

I hope you continue to join me on this journey.