Bird's Eye View

Getting Your Message Out There Fast

I'm amazed.  I like to think I'm moderately savvy about ways technology has changed the way we develop and distribute news, but my experience yesterday really brought it home.

I've mentioned here that I'm a Senior Adviser to MyVetwork.com, a truly thrilling social network designed specifically for military personnel and their families...that lets them shape their own community.  It provides seriously sophisticated tools to connect with one another while exchanging information about the services and resources they need.  MyVetwork has just added the capability to match veterans to jobs, using the same algorithmic tools to match specific experience and personality traits to appropriate work...it's awesome.

So we got a call from KCBS in Los Angeles yesterday for a story they wanted to run on their evening show.  In minutes, they had me sitting at my computer and, using Skype, doing an interview they edited and inserted into the piece.   The coolest part of the piece is when Dave Malkoff, the reporter, asks me to join him in a "transcontinental high five" so we "slapped hands" over our respective monitors.

Totally cool.  Check it out here.

Talking to Strangers

Did your parents, like mine, warn you against talking to strangers?  A big deal in my waspy childhood.  Didn't have to call upon that careful behavior much as a kid, though, because my hometown was small enough so I felt I knew everyone...or knew someone who knew their sister or neighbor.  You get the idea.  Strangers were understood more in theory than in practice.

There was an odd exception made, though.  It was about pen pals.  I went to a Catholic grade school where every year there would a concerted effort for us to raise a little cash for starving children in any one of an assortment of far away countries, and part of the deal was that our donations earned us the right to have a pen pal, with  whom we could communicate across the world.  Although we never met them (I remember pictures of kids dressed in blouses and skirts  at a convent school in Africa) we had a sense they weren't really strangers...because someone reputable had arranged for us to "meet" through the mails.

In any event, once on my own, I ignored all the warnings and made it a habit to talk to strangers.  On planes, buses, at restaurants, in church lobbies, wherever someone interesting appears approachable, I'm likely to initiate a conversation.  Turns out most of the time to be entirely worthwhile.  I find that asking questions is a surefire way to get thins started.  Most everyone likes to talk about themselves.

So why does it sound so creepy that Omegle has started a website devoted to talking with strangers?

Maybe because my talking with strangers is not done anonymously.  Each of us is face to face.  And the exercise is initiated with the understanding of an underlying possibility that we will, if of mutual interest, learn more of each other and even become friends.

The Omegle site is based on an interest in anonymity.  So one can pretend to be someone else.  And stay anonymous.  No one vets the meeting or connection.

Sorry, it just creeps me out.

Jack Myers on Career-related Loyalty

Jack Myers is a media guru I admire.  He published today an excerpt from his 1993 book, Adbashing: Surviving the Attacks on Advertising. 

The relevance of this article to today's business world is striking.  See if you agree.  Here's what Jack has to say:

"Relationships between employees and their companies and between companies and their clients are increasingly short-lived. Positions are jobs, rather than careers. Myers Reports mails thousands of letters each year to ad executives. In 1992, more than 20 percent of our correspondence was returned. Attrition. Moves. Firings. Lay-offs. Recession. Change. (2009 comment: A recent e-mail outreach we conducted on behalf of a client using their list of agency and advertiser executives had a return rate of more than 35%.)

The Japanese have created a system of loyalties in business built upon "Dokikai." As a new group of employees enter a company, they form fast friendships that continue throughout their careers. Whether an employee has become company president or stayed in the entry level position, members of the "dokikai" are obligated to state "honto" to each other - their true feelings on any business subject.
In this country, our driving ambition to succeed often causes us to state "tatemae," saying what is expected, rather than "honto." Employees rapidly moving from one company to another, and intense pressure for promotions within companies virtually assure that few employees feel free to state what is truly on their mind for fear that their feelings are not consistent with their management's objectives.
As we mature in our careers, we form "dokikai" with a few, very select friends and associates whom we have learned to trust. Typically, these individuals are not within our own companies and they serve as advisors, rather than forces for moving a business. The adversarial foundations of the advertising, marketing and media businesses have encouraged career-minded individuals to think only in linear patterns at the next sale, the next deal, the next client -- like digital clocks moving ahead with no sense of continuity or long-term purpose.

Our business focus should be on preparing for the person who will follow us after we move into another position. The role of every individual should be to take responsibility for clearly demonstrating how his or her job function is being enhanced and how it is enhancing the process of which it is a part.

The future of the marketing, advertising and media businesses depends upon improved training programs and expanded emphasis on "honto." Each year thousands of graduates pour out of the nation's colleges and universities. If America's greatness once was manifest in the dreams of its young, its current economic conditions now have imposed a more austere reality. Today, the hopes and dreams of college students simply are for a meaningful entry level job. They are moving back into their parents' homes and are being forced to accept jobs far afield from their hopes and aspirations.

We used to say (and most people still do) that it's a "dog eat dog" world. I don't agree. (2009 Comment: The Bernie Madoffs of the world might convince me otherwise.) Success is built on a foundation of relationships, perceptions, ideas, experiences and skill. Success in today's business environment requires a tactical focus on immediate business needs within a strategic vision of tomorrow's opportunities. Your success will be inevitable when you organize the forces of strong relationships with imagination, planning, knowledge, involvement and effort."

If We Twitter Tonight Will You Still Love Me In The Morning?

If all the talk of twitter has you wondering whether you've missed something important or hope the whole twitter phenom will simply go away, you will probably find Virginia Heffernan's piece in the April 19 New York Times of major interest. 

Heffernan throws out the provocative question of whether--if she were "fully at liberty" to do what she likes-- she would bother to twitter.  "In other words," Heffernan says, "I'm not sure I would use Twitter if I were rich."

Apparently, writer Bruce Sterling flung down the gauntlet at the South by Southwest conference in Austin a couple of weeks ago when he posited that the clearest symbol of poverty is dependence on 'connections' like the Internet, Skype and texting. It's "poor folks who love their cellphones."   It all reminds me of the stories I've heard about JFK, that he not only never carried a briefcase in his life, he also never carried money.  Why should he?  There was always someone around who could pay for things if he needed to buy them.  In other words, the poor or not so important people are the ones who have to mess with the details.  And according to Sterling, the "details" include all this effort around connectivity.

The suggestion is made in Heffernan's article that rich people--or if not rich, people who have their lives together and are wealthy in the sense of having all the friends they need--don't have to seek out companions on the internet.  The whole idea of "friending" someone is absurd.  They have dinner parties if they want to connect with people.  And the conversations at those dinner parties, it is suggested, are of higher content quality then the stuff one reads on Facebook.  And they read books instead of poring over inane accounts of what someone had for breakfast.  And they certainly don't "follow" others.  Furthermore, the idea of strangers "following" them on a Twitter chain would freak them out.  Why would anyone do that if their social life was already a contented one?

 

Hmmm.  Check out the Heffernan article and let me know what you think.

Student Veterans Have Lots to Talk About

Last weekend in San Francisco I found myself at a conference with 200 attractive, ambitious, highly vocal college students.  No frat party, this gathering brought together men and women who are members of Student Veterans of America, a group I know you'll be hearing about.

Now in its 3rd year, SVA has 160 active chapters on campuses throughout the US, from prestigious Universities like Columbia to junior colleges in California, and a variety of academic institutions in between.

I felt privileged to be among this group of veterans who bravely put their lives at risk for the rest of us.  They spoke movingly of their frequent sense of estrangement on college campuses where classmates are just learning the advantages--and responsibilities--of freedom from parental authority, which includes decisions about the use of alcohol and drugs.

"My classmates are just entering adulthood," said one attendee.  I passed that threshold long ago in Iraq, where my leadership responsibilities included literally saving lives.  It's hard to relate to conversations where the most critical issue is where to get a beer.  These kids have no clue about my experience in combat."

The SVA students share a collective mission to ensure that veterans on your college campuses get the respect and benefits they've earned.  There is wide discrepancy between schools, from those that embrace their vets and celebrate their presence, to others, like the U of Michigan, cited as opposing even recognize the SVA chapter "legitimate student organization."

College faculty members are seen as generally out of touch with veteran issues.

SVA members are a sophisticated lot, who know that by initiating conversations at the Board of Trustee level of their colleges they can jump start action on their demands.  No fire rands, they are training each other in effective discourse that gets results.  And by pooling their expertise and experience, they are on their way to forming a formidable force for reform.

Listen up, folks, when you hear a student veteran talking.  From what I heard in San Francisco, you just may be listening to one of America's future business, political or social leaders.  And he or she has a lot to say.

Petraeus Talks Leadership

One of the most impressive leaders I've had the privilege to experience--up close and personal in a conversation--is General David Petraeus.  We're talking about stratospheric leadership here.  The kind of rarefied combination of intellectual ability and winning personality and sheer willingness to take on the difficult challenges.

Petraeus spoke Tuesday at the Harvard Kennedy School in connection with a celebration of military leadership and student veterans at Harvard.  Petraeus, now head of U.S. Central Command, has a resume that reads multiple pages, each of them an amazing categorization of his accomplishments, both brain-based (he's been voted one of the world's top 100 public intellectuals) and action-based (Petraeus was Commanding General of the Multi-National Force in Iraq who oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq, including the time of the Surge).

He said that it helps--when you've got a politically fraught situation demanding tough decisions that will invariably make some people (maybe most people) unhappy--to approach your leadership role "as if it's your last job."  That way, you're not tempted to make decisions that are promotion-motivated; instead you can focus on what's the right thing, independent of their political consequences for you personally.

It's important, too, to "treat your leadership as if lives depended on it." Your role has got to be crucially important in your own eyes to merit your full attention.  In case you, Dear Reader, are tempted to think "Well, nothing I do can compare to Petraeus' responsibilities, so I'm released from that requirement," think of the "three men and the Cathedral" story.

Petraeus is a proponent of formulating strategies around what he terms "big ideas."  In that regard, he has four rules:

1) Get the big ideas right

2) Communicate them effectively

3) Oversee their execution

4) Capture lessons learned and best practices.

Then, he says, feed those lessons and practices back into Step 1) and start it all over, continuously evolving the process.

This is a man who has been there--and back-- and covers the full spectrum from thought leader to warrior.  Everything Petraeus said appeared honed by his real life experience.

I especially loved his story of seeing on the wall of a US Army office in Iraq a sign that read: "In the absence of orders or guidance, figure out what they should have been, and execute on it."  He took that sign down and put it on his own wall.

I left the Kennedy School forum with an abiding sense of "thank God, we're in good hands."  And I thank God also that our military is attracting people capable of becoming such extraordinary leaders.  Now, if corporate America can just be smart enough to hire the veterans who are transitioning to civilian life.  We've got mini-Petraeus' coming out of this war and they are valuable assets to be snapped up and given opportunities to lead.

If You Can't Find a Job, Blog About It

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating story by Mark Penn, entitled "America's Newest Profession:  Bloggers for Hire." 

Check it out.  Some facts that are worth pondering.  For example, there are now more people in America who make their living blogging than there are bartenders or firefighters.  Almost as many bloggers as attorneys.

An unregulated, non-unionized, industry, it also is a profession that has no educational or certification requirements.  Most paid bloggers are white males (interesting, since it is a perfect "at-home" job and many women who want to be home with children could find this an ideal non-commute way to get paid for what they're thinking about...so long as others want to hear it).

The business model is paid advertising on the site.  Most bloggers get paid on a "per click" basis, which means you need about 100,000 unique visitors a month to be of sufficient interest to advertisers to generate $75,000.  Only about 2% of all American bloggers are able to make that kind of money at their work.

The rest, apparently, do it for the love of it.  That's an awful lot of chatter for the sake of the discussion itself. 

Hmmm. Sounds like if you're having trouble finding meaningful work, maybe you should just blog about the job-hunting experience.  Or why you've stopped looking.  Maybe there are 100,000 other people every month who want to hear about that, and comment on it.  If there are, you can apparently count on their being someone who wants to advertise a service or product to those folks.

Are You Non-Line Yet?

In my meeting yesterday with brilliant Laurie Coots, Global CMO of media agency TBWA/Chiat Day, she talked of the requirement for campaigns, brand conversations, relationships, too, to be non-line.  

It's her way of emphasizing the fact that pure on-line messaging doesn't cut it because people demand--ultimately-an off-line component to relationships, both personal and commercial.  They want that face to face component.

As I've said many times, face to face conversation is the new luxury.

On the other hand, you've gotta be on-line, too.  Because that's the tool we've got (lucky us to live in this era) to keep relationships fresh, timely.  And for messaging to lots and lots of folks, it's a requirement.  The Achilles heel, says Laurie, is the danger of thinking that on-line communication alone will do it.  Nope.  Gotta have that off-line component.  That's why Second Life and other cyber communities won't work as they're presently conceived.  We're people, not avatars.  More and more, I believe we're all yearning for authenticity in our relationships, not fantasy land.  A little fantasy can go a long way; anything more than that eventually cloys.

Gotta be non-line.  That goes for all conversation, when you think about it.

So...are you living non-line?  Are you working non-line?

Frittering or Twittering?

I suppose if you did not watch Larry King's show with Ashton Kutcher and Sean Combs and Oprah and several others discussing the media-hyped contest between Kutcher and CNN over who would first reach one million followers of their twitter accounts, you no doubt heard about it.  I watched the King show on the plane last night returning from San Francisco. 

It was funny watching Larry King trying his best to be with it about Twittering, an admittedly brand new activity for him.  I'm not sure, even after the show, whether he had fully realized the portent of all the twittering commentary.  Here is a lone--though admittedly well known celebrity--person (Kutcher) who was able to get one million people engaged in helping him reach a million followers before one of the most powerful media conglomerates in the world.  How did that happen?  Easy, well sort of: Kutcher and his fans got others to tell others and so on and made it an emotionally charged effort to show big media that they're not so important after all. 

Even Oprah, also a newcomer to the Twittering mass, joined in the fun.

Now that it's over, one has to ask, what difference does this all make.  Yes, yes, I know, there was money raised in the process of the Kutcher effort: some people involved also agreed to send $$ for mosquito nets to protect people from malaria, spread by mosquitoes in many parts of the world.  But the real buzz (no pun intended) was really the celebrity hype of it all.

Is this time spent twittering and then talking about twittering something of value?  Should you and your business pay attention, even get engaged in twittering as well? 

Some say it's an excercise in frittering away one's time.  Can't say where I come out on all this.  I'm still thinking about it.  But there is a phenomenon here that cannot be ignored.  If for no other reaons, because it has shown that virtually over night (well, over several days) people can be mobilized to do--or say--just about anything, whethr it's preventing malaria or electing a candidate to expressing an opinion to their congressmen and women.

Tale of Two Cities

I’m in San Francisco today. I lived here for a number of years after graduating from Stanford Law School. There are many things about those days here that are forever with me. Like weekends that started with a jog over the Golden Gate Bridge, ending in a café in Sausalito for breakfast. It still takes my breath away to see the City and its hills from that vantage point on the bridge. Then, heading straight over to Sausalito, Alcatraz on the right, and those beautiful hills north of San Francisco ahead.

I remember back then at dinner parties, when it was explained that the difference between San Francisco and New York is all in the conversation. In New York, people would say, they talk about their work, about what they DO. In San Francisco, on the other hand, they talk about how they PLAY, what they do when they’re not at work, and how they FEEL. You would hear people talk of skiing in Tahoe, of going to Monterey for the weekend, of fishing for crayfish in the Sacramento River...and then, when they got around to it..what they are doing at work.

There is a kind of self satisfied air to San Franciscans, knowing that they live in the city most visitors to the United States call their favorite. In a way, it’s not unlike New Yorkers, except that the smugness around New York is about the biggest, the fastest, and ultimately the work. It’s where the New York Stock Exchange is where anyone wanting to make it in the theatre still feels they need to spend time and serious musicians still dream of attending Julliard.

When I moved from San Francisco, I had a big going away party. It surprised and amused me that people came, expressing their condolences, as if something had died. How sad, to think my work forced me to leave this paradise. Frankly, I couldn’t wait. I loved San Francisco; yes, I have left at least a piece of my heart here—no question—but I adore New York. The cosmopolitan feel of the place, the many languages spoken on every street corner, the sheer size of it. And the conversations in New York are different. The song is right: if you can make it here you can make it anywhere.

Funny, though, while I’m here in San Francisco today I’m thinking about this “making it” business. Many people, in these tough economic times, seem to be reflecting that it’s perhaps not about “making it” after all. The San Franciscans may have had it right all along. Perhaps it’s more about how you play, about what feeds your soul.