On philosophy, basilisks and branding.

Compare and contrast... this comment to my site:

I'm getting a little exasperated with all of the philosophical blogging about brands, missions, visions, etc.

Let us never forget that the game of business is a transactional one. Meaning that if your company's purpose is anything other than providing what people want in order to get them to exchange their time, attention and ultimately money for it, you're misguided, at best.

Now . . . if you want to take that money and reinvest part of it in improving people's lives and the world at large, I'm one of your fans. But please stay focused on the desires of the markeplace, or you'll have no money, and hence no ability to make a difference in anyone's life . . . except perhaps your own and your children's.

Stay passionate . . . and focused!!!

with this posting:

""Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction."

I'm often reluctant to use the word "love" in the same breath as commerce. But in this case, Saint-Exupery's insight is perfect for today's sales and marketing professionals. Your job is no longer to sell stuff and close deals by watching intently for subtle shifts in your clients' behavior. Rather, it's to open up new worlds and new possibilities to them.

Forget your agenda! Give up your need to control! And start looking together towards the horizon . . . towards a creative and mutually rewarding, long-term relationship."

You might think these two writers might not get on. Yet they are both Tom Asacker. The first is Tom in exasperated mode (to see what I'm like in exasperated mode, look at my Dr Rant category)

When I first read Tom's comment it came as a bit of shock to me. To be honest I felt a bit hurt until I realised I sometimes feel the same way. Some of the philosophising about brands exasperates me. There is so much pretentious claptrap about my "relationship" with the "values" of a Mars Bar.

But what (I hope) I'm philosophising about is "can't we do better than this"?

One option is Exasperated Tom's Transactional Game of Business, with its Basilisk Focus on the meat at hand. I think the Transactional Game is an understandable response to the waffle and dishonesty of marketing. Confronted with half truths, we give up on relationship and demand only to have our immediate needs gratified. Cut the crap British Telecom and cut my phone bill, don't make me sign up for your pseudo-loyalty programme.

Then there is Philosophical Tom's desire for mutually rewarding relationship. That's what I'd like more of. Treat me with respect, as an end not a means, and I'll be collaborative. These are the working relationships I put my energy into. That's what I feel most humans are after, even those that present Basilisk mode.

And these trusting relationships start with... a transaction. Ultimately, the transactional game can be part of the relationship game.

Angry blogging. Scary but thought provoking. Discuss.

Wanted

(Techie Question)
I need a bit of help on working with a MySQL database as part of my Movable Type installation. I need separate out one stream of entries from another whilst preserving their irregular ID numbers. All suggestions gratefully received at johnm at roundourhouse dot com.

Corporate self or selves?

No sooner did I complete that last post than I found this excellent entry by Chris Corrigan. Here's a big chunk from it:

I believe that an organization's vision is as messy and apparently incoherent as the organization itself. Ask around in organizations with which you work and see if anyone actually has the vision statement committed to memory. They generally don't. Which isn't to say that individuals don't have a vision. But ask them what their vision for the organization is and maybe what they think the organization's vision is, and start a conversation about the difference between the two.

When I run Open Space meetings, and we are doing visioning, and the agenda gets set, I point the sponsors to the wall and invite them to look at the two dozen or 40 or 50 topics there and say "There is your vision." The sum total of where everyone in the organization wants to go IS the vision for the organization. Diluting these nuggets of intrinsic motivation down to one fairly empty statement in an effort to extrinsically motivate people does nothing to work with the actual vision that is there.

Vision is a personal thing. In Ojibway culture, one needs to spend a lot of time cultivating a vision. In Ojibway cosmology, humans were given the unique gift to dream and have visions. In fact, human self-fulfillment comes through visioning. It is something which lives deep in the person. When groups of people come together, the vision that motivates them is their own. If that vision connects with others, then you have an organization. If not, then people don't come together to work.

You can point to commonalities in the visions of people within an organization. For instance, a development NGO might have a motherhood vision statement that says "we're here to help" because that is a component of nearly everyone's personal vision. But to say that "this is our vision, and everything we do is motivated by that" isn't really true. Actions are undertaken by individuals for a greater purpose that simply the "organizational vision."

So I guess I'm saying that organizations aren't in fact singular, coherent wholes. They are networks of individuals that come together and come apart all within the frame of a larger mission such as "making cars" or "providing medical care" or "loaning money." These little networks appear and disappear as they are needed, not because of a vision created to extrinsically motivate behaviour.

(Thanks also to whetever piece of software is scrambling Chris' RSS feed at the moment, which mysteriously shoved this item from January into my aggregator this morning. A little chaos can be a good thing.)

The Corporate Self

Jennifer Rice has sparked off a good discussion with her post The Corporate Self.

Over the past several years I've gotten uncomfortable with the word 'brand.' Branding has traditionally been associated with marketing communications: the logo, tag line, visuals and tone of voice. I've been fighting a losing battle in my attempt to broaden the definition of brand to include operations. Talk to a CEO about his brand and he immediately says, "oh, that's a marketing decision." Yet if a company's actions don't match its words, the brand is simply a facade that customers so clearly see through.

So this morning I was surfing through the thesaurus in search of an alternate word without so much baggage. It was pretty enlightening. Compare the associations with the following two words:

Brand: Classification, badge, identification, signature, symbol, emblem, stamp, label
Self: Being, essence, personality, substance, texture, distinctiveness, singularity, essential nature

Brand is associated with external 'label' words, whereas self digs deeper into essence. And essence is the true heart of a brand. Self -- used as a modifier -- also has many other meanings: self-important, self-confident, self-respect, self-control, self-centered, selfish. It's a great reminder that brand (self) can have positive or negative connotations, and that self-perception may be completely different from how others perceive you.

"What is your corporate self?" What a provocative question. It circumvents every pat, rote answer that's been spewed out to customers, employees and investors about the brand. It forces a shift in thinking from externals to essence. It also wipes out the silo mentality and departmental battles. Because the word implies one body. What is in the best interest of the hand, eye or foot is usually in the best interest of the entity. All parts work together for the good of the whole.

Judging by the comments, she's touched a chord. For instance, Stephen Macklin:

An interesting question, "What is your corporate self?" It is one I would like to pose to senior management where I work. I would be especially interested in how they feel their recent decision to close three U.S. manufacturing facilities fits within their vision of the corporate self.

And Tom Asacker takes a good swipe at the status games that plague brand thinking - a snippet of his comment:

Take a look and see if you see the problem that the experts perpetuate:

1. Strategic Leaders: Sessions, led by gurus and C-level practitioners, are specifically geared toward high-level business leaders. Topics discussed range from building loyalty and developing breakthrough channel strategies to understanding the value profit chain and executing your growth strategy.

2. Brand Building: Positioning and maintaining your brand is at the core of marketing strategy. Hear from industry "greats" about the newest ideas in building your brand to ensure business success.

Tom's comment reminds me of the extent to which discussions of brand are skewed towards command-and-control fantasies because that's where the big money is for consultants. Go the C-suiite and pretend that your genius will operate the levers of their business for greater profit. They have a massive vested interested in pretending that the "brand" or organisation is a complicated machine for which they have the wiring diagram. What chance there of curiosity, exploration and surprise?

David Foster asks a pertinent question:

How do you avoid have the discussion of corporate "self" slide down into the same kind of feel-good, chest-thumping generalities that afflict most "mission statements?

Yes. I think what needs to be challenged is the Abstraction that is a brand or corporation. The Corporate Self could become just another distraction from looking at our own choices and decisions, at our own values rather than other people's.

Part of the problem may be in this part of Tom's contribution that I want to challenge

I'm not sure what the answer is. I like your attempt with "Self," but I don't believe that it will resonate with MBA's and CFO's. Know what I mean?

The trouble with that statement is that it may be part of the problem; it's part of perpetuating the idea that change must come from the MBAs and CFOs. And lumps those diverse indivduals into a group, and generalising about their response (Branding them, if you will). And sometimes people can be moved by things that challenge their views rather than confirming them.

I want to suggest that brands and organisations are labels we give to shifting dances of humans that are constantly influencing each other, intentionally and unintentionally. The dancers come and go (outsourcing; headhunting; congressional hearings, depending on status). The question "who are we" as a group is interesting; but not it if becomes an excuse for NOT saying who I am and what I believe. (Which is why I like blogs...) It would be like the people joining Jennifer's debate saying: look, here we are on Jennifer's blog, we're an organisation, what is our credo?

Remember that tedious precept, "There is no I in team". Codswallop (and I can email you a brilliant anecdote that is too vulgar to blog on that point). In my experience, there's too much loose talk about "we" in organisations where a pseudo-consensus covers some much more interesting conflct. In my life, some of the more slippery characters default to taking about "we" when they are after a favour and "they" when making excuses for not granting me one! Organisations might paradoxically flourish if there was less of the averaged out "We" and more individuals willing to show up as themselves.

This is not to deny the value of being part of group or tribe. Absoulutely not. What I question is the amount of abstraction and rule-making about this "We" as if it is a fixed group, which tends to obscure the more fluid, emerging story.

There may be trouble ahead

I'm planning some changes to my web presence in the next few days which are probably going to be disruptive, so here's a warning and apology in advance.

I've decided to change my server and will be migrating the blog shortly. On top of that I'm commiting the cardinal sin of changing my URL from johnniemoore.com. I'll reveal the new one when it's working properly! Although in theory the old URL should forward to the new site, there are bound to be some problems.

(Why on earth am I doing this? I just decided that having a brand name other than my own name was becoming a nuisance. Plus I managed to be more confusing by calling the business Ourhouse and the site Roundourhouse. Originally there were two of us and we planeed to work from a house. Myflat.com doesn't have the same resonance!)

I'll keep you posted.

The Quiet Launch

Good posting by Evelyn Rodriquez: The Myth of a Quiet Launch (Thanks to Robert Scoble for the link)

Is it just me, or is there a pattern here? What is this "quiet launch" meme about?

Maybe quiet is more effective in an overloaded information world. I don't have the quote handy, but I remember reading in Mark Gobe's book, Emotional Branding, that a whisper in this attention-is-currency world stands out and would be remarkable.

Quiet has power without the (brute) force.

A quiet launch is counter-intuitive. But it's a totally deliberate (and effective) strategy.

It's not just you, Evelyn. I've written before about the danger of "big idea" thinking (see here) Instead, I want brands to offer a good service, take part in engaging conversations, and stop wasting money on image-building. This reminds me of Alan Mitchell's delightful piss-take on brand narcissism

In Greek legend, Narcissus was the poor creature who was so enraptured by the sight of his own reflection that he pined away, gazing at it until he died. Modern psychiatrists classify narcissism as a clearly identifiable personality disorder.

According to the American Psychiatric Association’s reference bible DSM IV, the narcissistically wounded personality tends to display some or all of the following attributes:
1) a grandiose sense of self-importance;
2) fantasies of unlimited success, power and brilliance;
3) a belief that one is superior, special and unique;
4) a constant seeking for attention and admiration;
5) a preoccupation with how well I am doing and how favourably I am regarded by others.

A personality disorder? Or a brand manager’s job description? You take your pick, because the similarities are striking. After all, 'Look at me! Look at how wonderful and attractive I am!' is the fundamental agenda of advertising, direct marketing, public relations, sponsorship, and so on.

Measurement dysfunction

From Joel on Software: a good pice on Measurement (via Lee at Headshift)

"Thank you for calling Amazon.com, may I help you?" Then -- Click! You're cut off. That's annoying. You just waited 10 minutes to get through to a human and you mysteriously got disconnected right away.

Or is it mysterious? According to Mike Daisey, Amazon rated their customer service representatives based on the number of calls taken per hour. The best way to get your performance rating up was to hang up on customers, thus increasing the number of calls you can take every hour.

An aberration, you say?

When Jeff Weitzen took over Gateway, he instituted a new policy to save money on customer service calls. "Reps who spent more than 13 minutes talking to a customer didn't get their monthly bonuses," writes Katrina Brooker (Business 2.0, April 2001). "As a result, workers began doing just about anything to get customers off the phone: pretending the line wasn't working, hanging up, or often--at great expense--sending them new parts or computers. Not surprisingly, Gateway's customer satisfaction rates, once the best in the industry, fell below average."

It seems human nature to want to measure stuff so what's the solution to gaming? I suggest that each time one of these measures is set, a group of people discuss the potential downsides and put in a place a qualitative way of assessing its impact. Like an open-space discussion for those being measured to talk about its impact on them. As well as reading the seductive numbers, the manager has to show up for the meeting...

Marketing: for humans or machines?

Katherine Stone comments on what sounds like a crazy workaholic mindset at Y&R

Diane Brady has written a very interesting BusinessWeek article (March 29 issue) about Ann Fudge. Ann recently became the CEO of Young & Rubicam, after spending a couple of years in retirement journaling, cycling, traveling, serving on boards and spending time with her family. What stood out in the article was this: a lot of grumbling and whining from the folks at Y&R that Ann may not be the right person for the job because she retired.

She took a few years off, so she must not be relentless enough to run their company. Brady writes that in our culture "... leaving is a sign of weakness, a sometimes unforgivable lack of ambition." She adds that, "A surprising number doubt -- quietly for now, anyway -- that a woman who openly hugs fellow execs and values her life beyond the workplace can raise Y&R to new creative and financial heights. As one senior executive puts it: 'I just don't know if someone who can spend months on a bicycle has the 24/7 drive we need.'"

This Ann Fudge sounds interesting to me. I read in the latest copy of Research (British Market Research Sociey Mag), that a week or so into the job, she set a challenge for her colleagues. After looking at the contracts page in AdMap she said "I never want to see our name on this page. I never want us to be seen publicly pitching for business. We should not play that game". She was basically saying she wanted businesses to come for organic growth - building existing relationships and getting word-of-mouth referrals. No cold pitches. No wonder the workaholics panicked when she arrived, they would not be able to do all those late nights desperately pitching for work they'd likely not win.

Opening and closing

Still on the subject of Chris Corrigan... he writes so eloquently on the themes of opening space. His blog is a real gift. Take a look at his report on a talk by the Dalai Lama. Here's a snippet:

The Dalai Lama had some very interesting comments about opening and closing energies. In speaking about emotional energy he said that positive energy is opening while negative energy is closing (see his comments starting at about the 45 minute point in the video). "Hatred must find an independent target. Positive emotions are helpful to see a holistic perspective; negative emotions are the opposite," he said. The lesson here is that in order to exhibit negative emotions, you must collapse your world onto a specific target. It is a closing energy that inhibits compassion, inhibits a holistic view of the world, and inhibits the ability to transcend personal issues and problems in order to express compassion.

This fits with my own experience and had an impact on me when I woke up this morning feeling pessimistic and resentful. I realised how closed down I felt and just asked myself, how can I find a way to open up a little? Just in asking the question, I noticed how tightly my jaw was clamped and let it go. And that set in chain a sense of opening up, and my gloom dispersed.

I'd add that I don't think it's always right to open and wrong to close... there are certainly situations in which some form of closing down is an appropriate defence. What this posting reminded me about was the virtue of noticing what you're doing and realising that there is a choice between the two.

I remember a teacher holding his hand out before me in a fist. "This is not a heart," he said. Then he opened it fully. "And this is not a heart.". Then he started to move it open-and-closed, to and fro. "This is a heart".

Lists, continued

Chris Corrigan stopped by and added this comment to my complaint about lists.

Why lists don't work:

1 They gloss over depth.
2 They simplify solutions
3 They inhibit learning
4 They devalue introspection
5 They train users to expect easy answers
6 They provide "solutions" to "problems" rather than analysis for situations.
7 They falsely elevate the list maker to "expert"
8 They are usually offered too earnestly

That's just so much more eloquent than I could manage, thanks Chris.

Needless to say, there is another side to the story and there are lots of contexts in which lists are jolly good things. There were a lot of checklists when I learnt to fly and I'm very much in favour of pilots using them. My point is that there are many contexts in which lists become counter productive for all the reasons Chris states.

Intuition

Michele Miller has been posting on intuition (starting here)

Thanks to our old friend the Corpus Callosum (See "Woman Does Not Live by Hormones Alone" 3/4/04), a woman has the advantage of being able to rapidly link and process information on both sides of the brain. With this “crossover” brainpower, she is pulling in all kinds of information from her surroundings. She is unconsciously accessing those file drawers of the right brain, tapping into emotional memories and feelings, sorting and looking for similarities and relationships to what she is presently encountering.

Interesting material (and, by the way, a very nice site layout).

May I just put in a word for the male of the species: we can do intuition too you know...

Iranian Blog

On a tip from David Weinberger I've been reading the blog written by the Vice President of Iran.

I recommend you take a look. It's had a real impact on me. He comes across as witty, compassionate, intelligent and willing to express personal opinions. The guy comes across as... a human being like the rest of us. This one blog has had more impact on the way I think about Iran and Islam than anything I've read in mainstream media lately.

More on values

Tony Goodson continues his thinking about values. Here's a snippet:

I don't think it's our values which drive change in our lives. It's our activity moment by moment and how we exercise that freedom to choose, or in the case for most of us, to remain apathetically on auto-pilot.

It's a stimulating argument. Some people talk about values as if they are the cause of our behaviour; and values-gurus sometimes seem to make this assumption. But what if it's the other way round - that our values are "caused" by our behaviour? (For complexity lovers, what if they are an emergent property of the system?)

A good friend used to drive over the limit and insisted he was right to do so. Then he got so many points on his licence that he had to change his behaviour. His values didn't change; the need to keep his licence trumped his urge for speed. And then... he started to discover he felt calmer when he drove less fast; and that he didn't need to get places as quickly as he thought. That there was more time when he rushed less. So his behaviour changed first, and his values changed in response.

Robert Paterson posted a good comment to my earlier post on this.

I do think that organizations do have values but not in the way that they are evolved in a two day consulting workshop where they pick who they would like to be.

Another way of finding the values is to investigate how the organization actually behaves in practice - add this into the behaviour of the CEO and the executive team and you have a reasonably accurate sense of where you work and how things are done.

In this case the real values would look quite different in most organizations from the aspired values - but at least they would reflect reality.

This makes a lot of sense to me. And I like the idea of spending time looking at the values we actually embody instead of idealising. I also think that often when we really acknowledge what are doing, that itself can lead to emergent change.

List anxiety

I'm curious. Does anyone else feel that there are too many lists being made these days?

I remember when presenting design work, clients might dislike, for instance, an idea for a front cover. Then they would often list lots of things that were wrong with it... I don't like the picture off centre, the font is too big, that's not really the blue I had in mind, our logo is too small, perhaps we should have a square shape not A4 etc etc.

We'd have a discussion and often I'd persuade them to let me change just one or two of the things on the list and see what happened... More often than not, they'd see it with just those changes and be happy. All the other list items turned out to be red herrings.

There are lots of lists in blogs. How to improve employee engagement; how to save time; how to boil an egg so the white is cooked and the yolk is runny. I've noticed how often my first response to lists is to feel anxious and inadequate. Oh my god, I'd better learn this list if I'm to give good advice on engagement, manage my time and boil an egg effectively. Of course, that anxiety usually means I rapidly distract myself with something else. No wonder I'm still struggling with that egg boiling.

Am I alone in this? I'm not against lists, I'm sure I've written plenty of them. But I think that list-making can be a pit paranoid, an attempt to create a perfect, comprehensive framework into which our raw, imperfect, paradoxical lives can be squeezed neatly.

These long lists of what's right or wrong with a company or practice tend to make me think: oh goodness, this is a tough thing to crack. Yet, as with my design experience, I often find that changing just one or two things can resolve the other problems too. Or that there is another more intriguing issue underneath all of the listed ones.

Lists will always be with us. Could we at least have some funnier ones?

Elder Wisdom

Loosely related to the entry below - where I talk about the satisfaction of sharing experience - I've just read this touching story from Doug at Proactive Living: Elder Wisdom. He relates a chance conversation with an elderly widow at an airport. He learns how she recovers from the death of her husband

“He still did most everything, all the budgets, everything,” she said. She talked of the times they shared in world travels and raising their kids. She clearly loved her husband and the times they had together.

I asked her how the transition to life after her husband has been. “Well, I think I am doing quite well,” she answered with a smile. I wondered to myself what her secret was for continuing to live fully after a significant personal loss. Before I could ask the question, she said, “I love my needlepoint, my friends, traveling with them.” “These things really helped,” she said.

The shuttle bus came to a stop at her airport destination. “I love a good conversation!” she said as she prepared to get off. “Sure made this trip go fast! Nice talking to you, young man,” she said, as she waved and stepped off the bus.

Persuasion... or sharing?

Robert Scoble has done a thoughtful post - How do you persuade?.

If you listen to Donald Trump's Apprentice show, or political advertising, you'll quickly pick up on the predominant method of persuasion:

Make the thing you're trying to persuade people to do seem like it's only good, and the behavior that you don't want people to do seem like it's only bad. Or, the "my stuff is great and their stuff sucks" method.

You think George Bush is going to say anything nice about John Kerry?

I watched the Apprentice show a week ago where the candidates needed to interview with Trump's team. Did they talk about any of their own weaknesses? Even when asked about what those are? No. Our culture has taught us that when you want to persuade you should only talk about the strengths of the things you are trying to get people to do, and only talk about the negatives of the things you don't want people to do (in this case, the interviewees wanted Trump to hire them and not their competitors. Persuasion skills at the highest level).

...But, is this really the best way to persuade someone to do something?

I look at two recent experiences in my life where I was persuaded to do something using another method that I'll call "the authority method."

He goes on to give some examples of people who really persuaded him because of their knowledge and passion for what they are doing. Their approach stands in contrast to the invulnerable method which seems still to be in fashion in some places. He asks

Do you take the "our product/idea/meme/service/etc is the best and the rest are crap" point of view? Or do you take "I'm an authority on this topic and I'm looking out for your best interests" point of view? Which is more likely to persuade you to change your mind?

Given that choice I know what I'd prefer. Though I'd be tempted to change the "authority " label as it might encourage people to think this is a high-status game. (For a really great take on status games in branding, I love Bland Personality and Brand Character by Robert Poynton)

What shines through about the people who persuaded Robert was their approachability and openness. It's a style that his own blog exemplifies and it succeeds in humanising the company he works for (Microsoft).

I'd take this a bit further. I do a fair bit of training/speaking/facilitating and I'm told I can be quite persuasive. But I've noticed that when I'm trying to persuade people I often feel unsatisfied. It actually feels like hard work. When I'm sharing my enthusiasm, that feels better. But what I love most is when someone interprets what I talk about in an unexpected way - which is when I get to learn something. That's the sign of a learning relationship of equals, rather than a let-me-tell-you-how-it-is approach.

I guess I'm saying it might be better to let go of persuading in favour of sharing experience and seeing what happens. That's the essence of co-creativity and it makes relationships vital and fun: less what-can-I-tell-you and more what-can-we-do-together? Then look at the comments to Robert's blog and you'll see the different styles played out... some are "do it this way!"; others cite academic authority (tends to put me off), and others more humbly talk about "what works for me".

I'm typing this while peering at tiny fonts because I'm experimenting with setting my screen to a higher resolution. Why on earth am I doing this? Cos Robert also blogged about how he sets his at 1600x1200 and sounded so enthusiastic I thought I'd give it a try. I don't know if he was trying to persuade me and I might go back to my familiar settings - but I've had fun playing and that counts for a lot.

Ordinary Language Philosophy

(Warning: Rambling Entry)
I studied Philosophy for three years at Oxford. I loved some of it, and some of it did my head in. I have forgotten nearly all of the content. Indeed, if I hadn't learnt the lyrics of Monty Python's Philosophers Song I'd have a hard time remembering the names of the blighters whose works I tried to understand.

The only bit of Wittgenstein that lodged in my mind was this:

So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.

This piece of priceless wisdom was buried in his legendary, and dreaded, private language argument. I'm afraid one inarticulate sound wasn't enough for me. Nor were quite a few articulate but rude ones. And old Ludwig was trying to make a rather serious point here.

Yet the other day - further proof of my desperate need to get out more - I did one of those online personality tests that informed me that I was a visionary philosopher. Go figure.

Anyway, only now in middle-age do I learn from David Weinberger about Ordinary Language Philosophy...

Here's what he tells me (in the middle of piece on identity)

Ordinary Language philosophy arose as a way out of some vexing problems. For example, we've banged our heads against the wall for thousands of years trying to figure out what "reality" is. What makes something "real"? Is it because it has matter? Is it because it exists independent of our awareness? If so, how could we tell? And is that where headwaiters come from? Many thousands of bored freshmen (and one Woody-Allen-ish gag) later, we're no closer to understanding what makes reality real.

Along come the witty Ordinary Language philosophers. Stop with all the pondering of those special words in philosophy, they say. Instead, they recommend, look at how we use them words in casual conversation, for that's where words get their meaning. For example, "reality" shows up in phrases such as "In reality,..." in which it functions like the word "However." We don't spend thousands of years trying to figure out what "However" is because we know it's just a way of telling listeners that we're about deny what we just said. Only philosophers make the mistake of thinking that "reality" is the name of something. In short: Ordinary Language analysis subverts the attempt to figure out meanings in abstraction from how they are used.

Boy, I would love to have deployed that wisdom when worrying about the tree in the quad and whether it existed when the Master of Balliol wasn't looking at it. Or whatever it was.

Slightly more seriously, I think this is a great challenge to conversations about abstractions that abound in organisations and, admittedly, here in this very blog. I love the idea of looking at what language does, not fretting about it's deep meaning.

PS You've got to love Weinberger's small print:

JOHO is a free, independent newsletter written and produced by David Weinberger. He denies responsibility for any errors or problems. If you write him with corrections or criticisms, it will probably turn out to have been your fault.

Subscription information, or requests to be removed from the JOHO mailing list, should be sent to self@evident.com. There is no need for harshness or recriminations. Sometimes things just don't work out between people.

Dr. Weinberger is in a delicate nervous state, but if you want to send positive comments to him, his email address is...

Howies

Paul Goodison prompted me to take a fresh look at Howies. It's a great website, inspiring, funny, provocative, informative. Why can't more businesses be like this?

We are on a journey from tiny to small, growing slowly by doing things we believe in. Do you hear us?

Here's a fragment I found further in:

In Finland, the temperatures get real cold... Even if you're a tree you tend to feel it... They conserve their energy and just wait for the weather to change. Come spring, and the warmer weather breaks, they start growing again... Appropriately, it's this patience that gives the wood its real strength. And sets it apart from other wood.

We could all learn a lot from a Finnish tree.

Grow slow. Grow strong

To me, it doesn't matter whether the grow slow idea is objectively true - what I love is the passion with which Howies tell their story.

Ranting on values

My good friend Tony Goodson is in rant mode. I love it when he does this, it always gets me thinking. He's having a go at values statements.

I am sick of corporates (and anyone else for the at matter) coming out with a set of Values. This values thing will be gone in 10 years time, just another passing fad. It took me a bit of time with this, to see that Emperor has no clothes, but that's exactly what it is. Almost every large corporate, good or evil, has a set of Values on its website, which just goes to show how useless values are.

Let's get real here. Individual people have values. That's about all you can say on values. Even the individual with values doesn't for most of the time use those values much. We are creatures of habit and expediency, so when I get up in the morning, I don't think to myself, "Ah yes, we'll have a bit of Integrity today, Tony." No, I go to the toilet, I scratch myself, I have a shower, and then breakfast.

We're being led on this guilt trip by a lot of consultants telling us about values. And the best test of people who espouse these values, is to find out how much they live their values and adhere to what they preach. Interesting isn't it that it seems most people who espouse "Values", don't usually practise what they preach.

I guess that most of us have become fairly cynical about mission statements and lists of values. Often they are just nice fantasies that don't really correspond to reality.

On the other hand, I've been working with a client who lists their values and works with them and I've been impressed. I think what they get right is to think of their values as inspiration not legislation. They don't specify exactly what the values mean, instead they offer employees a range of different people's interpretations and get them to think of their own.

So they don't instruct them on what, eg, trust means - instead they get them to think what it means to them. And then they encourage conversation about where they see it and where they don't in the organisation. Instead of setting up a pious ideal, they set up a debate.

This is not a debate at the end of which someone produces definitive answers, it's a continuing dialogue. The values become pegs for fierce conversations. Thus they have an impact - because the management have eased off on control and invested a bit of faith in their people. Do the values capture the essence of the organisation? No, that's not the point. Do they support a culture in which positive values emerge - Yes, my own experience is that in this case they do. Done the other way, I think values statements are the sort of BS Tony nails in his blog.

Freedom to tinker

Found this excellent comment in an interview with Clay Shirky. (Which also contains a hilarious New York anecdote of the low point in Clay's life)

The thing that will change the future in the future is the same thing that changed the future in the past --- freedom, in both its grand and narrow senses.

The narrow sense of freedom, in tech terms, is a freedom to tinker, to prod and poke and break and fix things. Good technologies -- the PC, the internet, HMTL -- enable this. Bad technologies -- cellphones, set-top boxes -- forbid it, in hardware or contract. A lot of the fights in the next 5 years are going to be between people who want this kind of freedom in their technologies vs. business people who think freedom is a shitty business model compared with control.

And none of this would matter, really, except that in a technologically mediated age, our grand freedoms -- freedom of speech, of association, of the press -- are based on the narrow ones. Wave after wave of world-changing technology like email and the Web and instant messaging and Napster and Kazaa have been made possible because the technological freedoms we enjoy, especially the ones instantiated in the internet.

The internet means you don't have to convince anyone that something is a good idea before trying it, and that in turn means that you don't need to be a huge company to change the world. Microsoft gears up the global publicity machine its launch of Windows 98, and at the same time a 19 year old kid procrastinating on his CS homework invents a way to trade MP3 files. Guess which software spread faster, and changed people's lives more?

Amen to that. (This excerpt is brought to you by the cumulative linking of Fred, Rajesh Jain and Richard Gayle. )

Conversations of quality

Brian Alger has just posted an eloquent entry on Conversations of great quality. (Partly in response to my earlier posting here.) Here are a few highlights:

Under the power of networks, the days of trite slogans, cute logos and superificial advertising are over. In a networked society, a brand is a kind of network, and a network is inspired by quality conversations between people. The notion of copywriters sitting and coming up with various kinds of tag lines, etc., will implode - they simply won't be needed as much. For one thing, a quality conversation will effectively nullify superficial marketing and advertising techniques. And the brand will not flow through a hierarchy(i.e. - corporate structure through to public awareness), but through networks (i.e. - many to many). People, consumers, will learn about products and services via networked learning environments and their thoughts and actions will irrevocably become part of the brand identity..

John's point that marketing people must generate conversations involves a fundamental shift (re-distribution) of power, and will serve to bring marketers and advertisers into much closer proximity with the living and breathing human beings that buy their products and services. If the power of knowledge is in sharing, then consumers will do as much, and perhaps more, of the sharing than marketers can ever hope to. Marketers will need to develop new skill sets that make them expert at facilitating quality conversations...

I'm not one for forecasting, but it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that brands and marketing will, out of necessity, evolve toward becoming network learning environments in which "conversations of great quality" form the essence of the brand image

I particular want to cheer the point about marketing facilitating conversations. That is a world away from the dominant, arrogant mindset in which marketers see themeselves as controlling the dialogue.

Also, a propos Butterfly Moments, Brian's entry highlights a pretty big one. He is at a physiotherapy appointment...

During my workout I started up a conversation with a fellow that I had seen from time to time, but never really took spoke to in any detail. So, keeping with the tradition of the culture of physiotherapy, I provided the most common opening line, "You here for ACL as well?" His answer was startling and resulted in a long conversation which, to my physiotherapist's chagrin, cut short my workout.

"I nearly lost my life," Ron responded, "and I can only thank God that I am still here."

I think that would qualify quite high in Tony Goodson's taxonomy!

Trust and conversation

Thanks to Jackie Huba at Church of the Customer for highlighting research by the University of Columbia and EuroRSCG on who journalists trust. Jackie says the research:

finds that company CEOs are not the most trustworthy sources for their reporting, even ones who aren't facing jail time... Reporters say they're more interested in credible sources, such as:

* Customers' experiences with a company
* The quality of that company's products
* The status of the company as an industry innovator

All interesting stuff. I also focused on this comment on the findings by David Kratz, himself a CEO (of Euro RSCG Magnet):

To build visibility and credibility simultaneously, companies must break free from traditional, linear communications models and adopt a more proactive, holistic approach. An integrated communications strategy that unifies messaging across all marketing disciplines is only part of the answer--although certainly a critical part. But companies must go even further if they are to leverage the opportunities created by the emergence of the prosumer. They must partner with and start a dialogue with customers, consumers, academics, media--basically each and every stakeholder--and inspire them to carry the company message.

Hmm, I'm sceptical. Is this just a bit of classic PR flannel? It has nice sounding buzzwords like partnering and dialogue. But spot PR 1.0 in the idea of leveraging, unifying messaging across all marketing disciplines and in inspire them to carry the company message. What's it to be, David? A real conversation in which we might all be - horror of horrors - surprised by the spontaneous? Or just a pretend one, designed to peddle a pre-fabricated message? (No doubt hatched expensively with consultants at head office).

Stuck on transmit

John Porcaro comments on the deadening effect of overpreparation. An otherwise engaging offsite goes off the boil:

One of the folks on our team came completely prepared, with a three or four page document with an outline of challenges, strategies, tactics, and plans. She clearly had done her homework, prepared for the topic, and had done some great thinking.

So how did we react? By turning off our brains. I did it too. Most of the day, we brought up topics, used a flip chart, asked questions, and nearly everyone was involved. But it stopped cold when everyone's attention turned to a formal presentation.

Spot on. It is so easy in organisations to squeeze out spontaneity in the name of order, and in so doing kill the whole point of having humans in a room instead of a rack of computers. In fact, I think this whole notion of controlled presentation is at the heart of much rotten marketing. The spirit of "death by powerpoint" is really behind most marketing, however charmingly contrived: an attempt to persuade an audience rather than engage them. As the RAF used to say of pilots who'd forgotten to let go of the little button you press to talk to air traffic control (you don't hear back if you don't let go of the button): stuck on transmit.

In the red corner

Harry Hill's silly-but-funny TV show always goes to the commercial break with him setting up a stage fight between TV characters over something. I thought of Harry when I read Chris Lawer's latest - Free Prize Inside: Edgecraft. Chris reviews Seth Godin's latest book. Here are a couple of snippets:

Seth Godin's new book, Free Prize Inside, champions the role of "soft innovations" in creating the next "Purple Cow" (!) and making the organisation "remarkable"... I'm all for the latter but from what blurb I have seen about Seth's new tome, his new cow appears to be firmly stuck in the muddy field of incremental product innovation...

Incidentally, the idea of Free Prize Inside is not new. Ulster University Prof Stephen Brown ("The finest writer in our field today" – Journal of Marketing) published a similarly titled book last year Free Gift Inside. In it, he amusingly argues for a return to marketing tease and trickery

Now Seth very kindly offered me a free copy of this book and I've been enjoying his stuff. And Chris is a good mate too. So perhaps I'll just egg them both on from the sidelines...

Butterfly moments

Joyce Wycoff asks Do you ever think about moments that change your life? and continues with a few examples. Here's her own:

One Butterfly Moment happend during a weekend from college that I spent visiting my aunt Lerrea in Tulsa. My cousin Gary and I were almost the same age and I had dated his best friend. At the time, however, I was very serious about a Marine and one of my favorite pieces of clothing was his old Marine Corps sweatshirt. That Saturday morning I dressed in my cut-off wheat jeans (I am really dating myself, uh?) and that garish yellow and red sweatshirt. However, something stopped me and, for some reason, I changed shirts. Later that day, my ex-boyfriend stopped by and we talked for awhile and then went out for a drive and proceeded on almost in a straight line to a twelve-year marriage. That marriage took me to California where the threads of my present life wove themselves into a new tapestry, one that I’m sure would look entirely different if I had worn that Marine Corp brand that long ago Saturday morning.

I've often wished, if only God (or whoever) would just let me know that I'm at a "butterfly" moment. Now that would be really handy. Joyce asks the question that I often ask myself

So, if some small moments can be linked directly to major life changes, does it mean that all small moments carry such portent?

To which the answer is, I think, yes. There's that Zen idea that we should live our lives as if everything we do is of importance to the world - and then laugh at ourselves for our grandiosity. I do think that in our highly connected world the point about the potential of the moment is that we should take less seriously all the rule books people write about how to succeed following proven disciplines; all of which tend to undermine the mystery and joy of life which is that - and I know I've quoted Kirkegaard before - it can only be understood backward, but must be lived forward.

Money and Happiness

Thanks to Colin Morley for pointing to Polly Toynbee's Guardian article A Hedonist's Charter. "Money does not bring contentment. So how do you forge a politics where happiness is the priority?". Here are a few snippets.

Mori has produced a new social survey - Life Satisfaction and Trust in Other People - exploring what makes people happiest. It confirms the overwhelming evidence from economists that income is not an important determinant for life satisfaction for most people. The poll shows that a doubled GDP over 30 years has made Britain not a jot happier...

Mori says its research should give the government a reason to dampen down "the pressures of consumerism and work and promote education that gives a more rounded view of happiness". But, the report says: "Governments that attempt to argue for less emphasis on economic factors are likely to be seen as attempting to manage expectations downwards, or to lack ambition."

...Hedonic thinkers are treated as off-the-wall unrealists. How do you forge a politics where happiness is the priority? Politicians need to find a suitable language for it.

It's not just politicians who need to find the words - it's all of us! In business, it is generally assumed that value and profit are the same thing, whereas in my view they have a very on-off relationship.

(You might also enjoy Fast Company's article How to Lead a Rich Life. )

Microsoft's embarassing metadata

Found via Richard Gayle, is Strike that Out, Sam. This is a cheeky exploitation of the fact that Microsoft Word documents retain the fingerprints of the editing process. The author trawls the Microsoft site for documents and reveals the editing that went on prior to publication.

Not that Microsoft is especially villainous in this; what is shown here is quite typical of the way PR gets spun - made-up quotes attributed to people even before the identity of the supposed speaker is not known; exaggerated claims getting pared down to reality in the editing process. There is, of course, a nice irony that it's Microsoft's own software that exposes them to this kind of analysis.

And certainly represents another way in which organisations are becoming transparent, and how hype damages the credibility of those who practice it.

Trust/Social Capital/Blogging

Robert Paterson has done a great piece on Trust - Identity, Social Capital, Motivation and Blogging which I'd urge you to read.

Inspired by Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards and Francis Fukuyama's Trust, the Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, he writes

Kohn makes a strong case for rewards being counterproductive as they break community, taint the activity and become an end in themselves. Fukyama makes the case for how centralization creates helplessness, social atomization and social and economic failure and how people become most fulfilled and are most motivated by recognition in the context of a purpose and a community.

In the major part of this post I will extend these ideas and make the case for how blogging will drive the internal motivation that is strongest in us - having a voice that is recognized - and how it helps us make the choices in activity that makes any activity the most attractive. Finally I will talk about how these ideas can form the basis of how we can find another process for leadership other than command and control.

I love the way Robert writes and I agree with his arguments for "A purpose driven community that has a powerful and noble goal that extends beyond the self interest of the individual". Now how would you like that as a definition of a brand?

(And if you like this entry, check out Rob's extened series on Moving from Alchemy to Chemistry - The workplace today)

My Brief Career

I've just read My Brief Career by Harry Mount. The blurb says

Harry Mount's hilarious account of his hellish year as a "pupil" - a trainee barrister in The Temple - has all the horror of a Dickensian tragedy and all the charm of Bridget Jones's diary.

An expose of what goes on behind the ancient walls of London's Inns of Court, this fascinating story dares to reveal the grim secrets of one of England's most archaic institutions.

Well the Dicken's comparison overeggs it, but is a funny and sometimes painful account that certainly confirms my already deep distrust of the workings of the British legal system. It paints many barristers as profoundly dysfunctional, antisocial creatures... generally the worst sort of people to expect to help solve a dispute. Nowhere was this awkwardness more apparent than tea time in chambers, when they would all gather for tea and fail utterly to manage more than the most rudimentary of conversation with each other. I liked this observation:

For international people-watchers, chambers tea is a useful illustration of how Englishmen prefer to conduct their lives through actions rather than words, that convention is all; the esteem they win in return for what they do comes before acting on the impulses of what they feel. Brilliant as members of chambers were at the practice of law, they showed no particular interest when it came to talking about it - they would have become plumbers if plumbing had been the best paid and most respected of all jobs.

Mount describes an institution trapped in ancient rules and rituals, which seems to postively despise human warmth, based on a narrow, bureaucratic belief in the value of rules over more human judgement.

Blogging at tipping point?

Jennifer Rice first pointed to these stats on blogging a few days ago. Jennifer and I were chatting about them on the phone yesterday, and Robert Paterson highlights the same story with the heading Blogging - Tipped? The stats are interesting.

As a professional researcher, I take all of these numbers with a pinch of salt. So there may be 2.5 million U.S. bloggers, or there may be 8.8 million. The real question such numbers help answer is, "Is it bigger than a bread box? Are we talking small, medium or large?"

Remarkably, when the Pew study first came out, AP spun the story as 2 percent being a surprisingly small number of bloggers (CNN.com attached the headline to that story: "Study: Very few bloggers on Net".) Yet, blogger Rogers Cadenhead notes that Pew's low-end estimate of the number of blogs is more than the 2.2 million copies that USA Today prints on regular weekdays, the country's biggest newspaper.

I think something pretty cool is starting to happen here. Jennifer has asked me to support her on an international branding project - and we only know each other through trading our thoughts and ideas in blogs. I didn't expect that to happen... and it's really interesting to reflect on the impact on this work of us both being out here in public blogging. I realise that it creates a working relationship in which openness becomes especially important and valued.

That feels pretty significant. We're creating a working relationship where there is multiplier for openness. And handling a branding project that - a few years ago - could really only have been done by a conventional agency. If this sort of thing becomes more established, that must have interesting implications for these businesses.

Letting rip

A great story is highlighted in Worthwhile, a magazine that really lives up to its name.

The tragic cocktail of abusive management, anesthetizing drudgery and a noxious office trashcan has driven you to the proverbial edge o'reason. Vent you must, but committing your feelings to e-mail and sending them to an open forum would be unwise. Or would it?

The full story in mediabistro is a good read. A disgruntled editorial assistant lets rip on her bosses anonymously... two years later, she is the Managing Editor of Playgirl. Her conclusion:

Do I regret that column? For the hurt and embarrassment I caused a few special people, yes. For the person it has made me today—not a word of it. In fact, today it's taped on my refrigerator, by the boyfriend who read it long before he met me and realized the sauciness of the writer.

I think there's a lot of anger phobia about. I'm not saying anger doesn't have a downside, but this shows the upside. One of my favourite movie scenes is Howard Beale in Network inciting the US populace to yell "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more."

Of course, the better thing is to release our frustrations as they arise rather than save them up for a rant. But that's perhaps a counsel of perfection.

Shiny Shoes...

Over lunch, more than a year ago, my friend (a biggish cheese in fund management in the City) explained to me the first thing he used to evaluate the people who made presentations to him. I waited to hear his criteria... would it be the person's sincerity? their ability to answer questions? their grasp of the subject? Well, yes, all these things were important. But the first thing? No. The first thing was... their shoes. And specifically, were they shiny?

This shiny shoes thing has never quite settled back into the sponge like mass of my brain. Those shiny shoes are still sticking out, making me laugh and making me think.

First off, ten points to my mate for his candour. You might think shiny shoes are a rather old fashioned way to evaluate a person or a business pitch... but then I suspect that all of us make non-rational decisions quite a lot of the time, we just post-rationalise them as something more sensible. At least he was aware of what he was doing.

Second off, I keep laughing as I imagine all the presentation trainings and rehearsals and agonising all those sellers go through before pitching to my friend. Do any of them know that they need to shine their shoes. Probably not.

And of course, they could shine their shoes for my friend, but how would they know the non-rational criteria of the next mark? Windsor knot in the tie? Single-breasted suit? Length of dress? Scottishness (or not) of accent?

The moral of all this? Not much point in being perfectionist. Nor in obsessing with to second-guessing the other guy's needs and expectations. Better just to say what you think and do stuff you believe in...

Nothing is Written

Do you remember the scene in Lawrence of Arabia when a man is left behind overnight, during the unforgiving journey across the desert? Omar Sharif says it would be madness to return for him, it would lead his would-be rescuer to certain death under the unforgiving sun. It is Written, he says. Lawrence ignores this advice and heroically returns, uttering the words Nothing is Written.

The world of organisations is awash with guidebooks, gurus and instructions. But life doesn't follow ideal plans or rules, good or bad. Improv teaches us to deal better with the opportunity to embrace this uncertainty instead of denying it. Of all the ways I like to work with people, Improv makes me laugh most, surprises me most, teaches me most.

So I'm pleased to be an active supporter of the Applied Improvisation Network - check out this new home for its website. There are some good resources in there - especially in the articles section.

(And if you'd like to me to give you a real demonstration of Improv, just whistle!)

Network Campaigning

Paul Miller at Demos has just published a paper on The Rise of Network Campaigning.

If network campaigns continue to grow in terms of their numerical power and the sophistication of campaigning techniques, it could only be a matter of time before a major Western government is brought down by a network campaign. Networks have provided civil society organisations with a way of handling organisational and logistical complexity that governments have yet to embrace.

I wonder if the same might apply to some of our big brands...

Valuing the free

The other John Moore points to a magnificent performance by US Public Radio presenter, Ira Glass

about how a WBEZ-FM listener will enthusiastically fork over $1.81 every day at Starbucks and listen to WBEZ five hours a day but ... he hasn't made a pledge to WBEZ... Good stuff. No, wait … GREAT STUFF. It is worth a listen.

My namesake is dead right. See if you can find time to listen to this stream, if only in the background. I love this guy, taking the apparently exhausted form of the public radio pledge drive and bringing wit, passion and assertiveness to bear. Some of it had me almost crying with laughter... like when he rings up the local bookstore and asks the clerk to sell him 10 copies of a book but only be paid for one... To make the point about how 9 out of 10 public radio listeners don't contribute financially... and then it turns out the clerk is one of those 9/10 people...

In a similar chat with the owner of a big hot dog company they joke about doing a job swap for a year, to understand each other's business. Prompting Ira to say, well what you'll learn is that when you work in public radio, and find out what really goes into the shows, you won't be able to listen to them any more.

Or this

Look at you! You are not just a National Public Radio listener, you're listening to the pledge drive... you're a lifer... you're an addict... look in the mirror my friend, look in the mirror! ...you are an addict, admit it, you are powerless before the face of public radio... you know what the right thing to do is, so here's the number to call

Or his offer of newsmen on horseback. Just very funny.

And stimulation for anyone wondering about how to get people to value what is given away free....

To focus or not to focus?

It's one of those days when a recurring theme crops up in reading blogs. Jennifer Rice (referencing a good debate over at Darcy Burner's blog) is talking about the importance of focus. She says

If I buy your software (product, service, whatever) instead of the alternative (pick one primary alternative, not several), I'll get what benefit and why. Answer that question -- without using the words 'and' or 'or' -- and you're on your way to creating a focused positioning platform that paints a clear, unambiguous picture in customers' minds. And once they can visualize using your product in a way that's meaningful to them, you're that much closer to winning their business.

Meanwhile, in a good entry, seductively titled The six tendencies of persuasive blogs, (and do read it for the other five!), Piers Young says

Keep a focus to your blog. Just being yourself might be enough.

And then Ton Zijltra is promoting the search for The Perfect Corporate Weblogging Elevator Pitch.

Judith Meskill invites you to imagine you're finally in an elevator ride with the CEO and you have this one chance to explain it all in the one and a half minute it takes to bring you to the floor you need to be. What will you say?

All three good thought-provoking stuff (I'm remembering Piers' fourth point... and his first).

Now let me declare my own hand here. I have struggled and agonised for a very long time in response to people who say to me, "John, I like your site but I still don't know exactly what you do...". The focus thing. In fact, last weekend I went into the Ourhouse main site and rewrote bits of it to try and pin myself down a little more. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I've succeeded. And I'm not sure I want to succeed either.

Now I want this to be a posting in the spirit of "Yes, And" not "No, but". (Still on Piers' fourth tendency here!) I am quite sure I could do with simplifying my ideas and nailing my colours to the mast. I am horribly indecisive about how to pitch my wares to the world, at least I am at the moment. So more focus may be good for me, and others. And if you look at Curt Rosengren or Church of the Customer, these are pretty good examples of focussed blogs that have vitality and passion.

AND that's not quite the whole story. The world, I find, works on conversation and word-of-mouth and not as the slavish chorus to grand arias of us marketing folk. When I'm speaking about branding I get the audience to do a version of chinse whispers to emphasise that how a brand is interpreted is more in the control of the listener's mind than the speaker's. You might have the most focussed USP for your company, but that doesn't mean what your audience understands will be the same thing. It's important not to confuse controlling the stimulus with controlling the response.

The question I'm asking myself is this: if your product/service does lots of different things for different people do you want to go in and disrupt these conversations by insisting on a single truth in your marketing? That's not the same thing, by the way, as being all things to all people.

And you're bound to enjoy this argument for the periphery quoted by Earl Mardle

Picture yourself watching a one-minute video of two teams of three players each. One team wears white shirts and the other black shirts, and the members move around one another in a small room tossing two basketballs. Your task is to count the number of passes made by the white team--not easy given the weaving movement of the players. Unexpectedly, after 35 seconds a gorilla enters the room, walks directly through the farrago of bodies, thumps his chest and, nine seconds later, exits. Would you see the gorilla?
Most of us believe we would. In fact, 50 percent of subjects in this remarkable experiment by Daniel J. Simons of the University of Illinois and Christopher F. Chabris of Harvard University did not see the gorilla, even when asked if they noticed anything unusual...

Now, you might be thinking that this is really about our old friend data overload - if you say too much, people don't listen. Good point, but then as regular readers will recall, no less an authority than my friend Ton has established that data overload doesn't exist...) And they will listen if what you say engages them - and not if you recite some standard mantra designed for the average recipient.

And the thing that gets me about the whole elevator speech meme is the implicit assumption that when you meet a CEO you should allow him/her to force you into distilling yourself into 90 seconds. I sometimes quip that my response would be:

One thing I do is help organisations recover from the dreadful adverse effects of bosses who make people squeeze themselves into 90 second speeches - instead of fostering respectful conversations... I do this by challenging such people to answer - and we've got about 55 seconds left now - what's it like to get a taste of your own medicine? Hurry, time's running out!"

None of which is to say focus is always bad. Absolutely not. There have definitely been times in my life when I have been more single-minded and they have often been exciting (and occasionally disastrous). For me, this is clearly not one of those times... even if it may turn out to be the prelude to one...

Interim conclusion: the truth is probably paradoxical (see my post on polarity management).

Oh, and talk about synchronicity. I've just this second noticed a new post of Curt's: There's more than one right answer.