Not Vader

I'm kinda pleased/relieved that my rant about the blog conference last week seems to have generated so many comments and trackbacks. I always feel a bit hesitant about these Dr Rant posts, with a tiresome inner dialogue about what people might think. It goes something like, "Oh here you are Johnnie trying to work as a facilitator and then you post these really angry, unreasonable things." In this case, that inner demon will then make a series of predictions about the judgements folks will make if I say this.

So it's nice to get what seems like fairminded recognition of what I said, as well as finding lots of different perspectives on the same event.

So I need to remind my inner demon that I am not Darth Vader.

Not so much that I need to remind myself that I am not a Bad Person. (Boy those double negatives are hard work).

More this: Apparently, Darth Vader's ultimate destiny (or dessssstiny as he likes to put it) is to bring balance to the universe. That's not the job of single blogger. Read the comments and links and you'll find balance is often taken care of by the combination of all the posts.

Trying to be balanced is OK, but if taken as an absolute rule I think it stymies and makes a blog boring. When I just give voice to my experience, I think it's more interesting. Sometimes it's a rant, sometimes a rave, sometimes not.

(And by the way, I don't think facilitation is always about being frightfully neutral either. But that's another post for another day.)

Today's Gonzo quote

Today's snippet of Chris Locke's Gonzo serialisation is his quoting of David Weinberger (from here)

The belief in centralized management isn't just a business decision. It's part of a larger, neurotic understanding about our place in the world. For the past century, Americans have been obsessed with controlling everything. It's neurotic because the human condition is about living in a world that we didn't make and that we can't control. In that sense, the Web's lack of control -- its very architecture -- is a celebration of being human in a universe that joyously overwhelms us.

Why blog?

Denzil Meyers asks

Everyone and their dog seems to be blogging, except for me. What's the big deal?

HR and branding

I've long thought that marketing and human resources directors should collaborate much more. So I'm interested in Regina Miller's blog HR's brand new experience. (Spotted by Jennifer) Regina is focussing on how to create brands that actually engage employees instead of just creating more instructions for them to follow.

I was drawn to the post on Does your agency live your brand?

There are still companies that produce brand guidelines - guidelines that tell people what to do and not do with the brand and usually communicate those “rules” in the most “unbrandlike” way. Why is that? We all know it doesn’t work!

I'd suggest abandoning the phrase "living the brand" though. I know what it aims at but to me it says that the brand exists first and then us mere mortals have to align ourselves with it. I think it's more interesting - and respectful - to see the brand as something that emerges from the goodwilled behaviour of the people, not the other way round. Seen this way, the brand becomes a form of Improv arising from the offers being bounced around between management, staff, suppliers, customers etc.

Participation in brands is a voluntary activity.

Telephone seminars

I'm going to run a couple of telephone seminars in April. On the 20th on Improv at work, and on 21st on Facilitation.

The idea is to create a bit more interaction with potential clients, share some ideas and offer some insight into what it's like to work with me.

They will be free, apart from the cost of the phone call. I'll probably limit to numbers to around eight participants. All welcome. Details here.

Improving Conferences

Chris Corrigan has posted some interesting ideas about improving conferences, partly prompted by my recent comments on this subject.

I like his description of keynote facilitation:

The keynote facilitator combines the attention and energy of a keynote address with the process care of a facilitator. Instead of giving you great ideas from MY head and experience, as a keynote facilitator I help to set the context for your own learning, and guide process that invites you to turn to those in the room and begin to craft innovation together in collaborative conversation. I have been using World Cafe as a process for doing this recently at a national conference on Aboriginal forestry and a regional gathering on Aboriginal economic development and I believe that it does provide added value for participants who are able to get quickly deeply into the issues and questions they face. The process also helps to develop an emergent sense of what the conference as a whole is thinking about and it provides individuals with an opportunity to reflect on their reasons for attending and to become more intentional about that. With the hour or so assigned to traditional plenary keynote speakers, I can have a conference of people talking to one another, creating connections and seeking out partners.

Subversive art

A British artist sneaked into four New York galleries and covertly hung his own art. Brilliant. And the art itself matches the audacity of the hanging. [Via Steve Rubel]

Gonzo on authenticity

Today's reading from the (Gonzo) Gospel according to Chris Locke...

The quality of wildness most lacking in commerce is play. Yet play, once again, is serious business. To the rollicking delight of online audiences everywhere, corporations seem to get easily confused trying to balance their overly earnest brand personas with their All-New SuperCool E-Brand Avatars that plead, "hey look, we're just one of the gang!" The resulting display is a little like watching baboons dress up in Barbie Doll outfits: amusing for a while, but ultimately unconvincing. Play is serious stuff, profound even. While it's hard to describe, we all know it when we see it, flourishing as it tends to do, in accord with innate qualities.

Improv Wisdom

I've posted a review of Improv Wisdom by Patricia Ryan Madson over at the Applied Improv Weblog.

Today's helping of Gonzo

Chris Locke continues his series on Gonzo Marketing. Here a bit that jumps out at me:

Being a full participant in events, having a point of view, a deeply personal perspective: gonzo is about being engaged. It's not distanced, impartial or "objective" -- it cares about outcomes.

Very creative commons

Chris Anderson highlights Yahoo's new Creative Commons Search. Excellent idea.

I spoke too soon

So yesterday I smugly say that conferences where we have to sit and endure powerpoint are "exactly the kind of event I would avoid these days."

And yet barely 3 hours later, I saunter into Six Apart's evening blogging conference here in London... for a good 2 hours of being presented to.

Alistair Shrimpton had found some interesting speakers, especially John Dale of Warwick University, talking about WarwickBlogs, a project to get everyone there blogging together.

But oh how I hate this default conference format where I get to sit and listen to talk after talk.

And let's not kid ourselves that a Q and A session is a satisfactory nod towards interaction. I hate Q and A sessions. Here we have a room of maybe 100 smart people and the only way we can interact is to ask a question.

After sitting impatiently for so long, I decide to ask a question. But I realise now that I'm asking less out of curiosity than out of a desperate urge to do something other than just sit still. I wonder if that dynamic lies behind other questions.

And what is the likelihood that one person's question is going to interest many other people in the room? Of course, after enduring a boring question the urge to stick a hand up and do something myself only grows. So here we have an ingenious form of group torture where each additional question simply adds to the frustration of sitting trapped by a format that sucks.

Is that clear? Q and A sessions make boring conferences even more boring.

How bizarre to assemble a group of bloggers and use the meeting equivalent of a blog with no RSS, no comments and no trackbacks.

I choose to sit at the back knowing I will be fidgety... the trouble is that that's where the caterers are lovingly preparing the wine for afterwards. So there I sit, my attention increasingly drifting to the prospect of alcohol whilst the Q and As drone on.

(A friend of mine (I shan't name him here) had a great idea for a question to ask the lawyer who was last up. He didn't ask it but it would have been great: "Is there a legal reason why I don't have a glass of wine in my hand right now?" And Lloyd's comment last night shows we were not alone in our frustration.)

Finally, Alistair mercifully releases us from this torment, the drinks and eats are served and what happens? Immediately, a flurry of animated, energetic conversations spring up all over the room.

It turns out that the audience, like the speakers, is made of up of bright, enthusiastic people who want to share ideas and enthusiasms. Why make us wait so long to do so?

(It's not as if the speakers really enjoy this format either. And no disrespect to them is intended here.)

It doesn't have to be this way. There are plenty of simple ways to let groups like this self-organise. Good grief, just look at how instantly we did it once the handcuffs were off.

UPDATE: Other coverage of the event is much kinder, including a very thorough report by Suw Charman; positive vibes from minkmedia; Luke Razzell. Connected Blog says "Well, what an interesting night! This was quite easily the most interesting conference Connected has ever been to." (All spotted by Luke) So maybe I am just being a grumpy git today...

A favourite word

I'm not a fan of jargon but I do have a soft spot for "disintermediation". It's what happens to industries where a middleman is rendered obsolete by innovation. It has struck brokers and agents of all kinds.

I think the next industry in need of serious disintermediation action is publishing. I keep having conversations with authors which confirm that unless you're a big shot writer, most publishers slow things down, stifle creative ideas, stick to formulae and... basically get in the way. But with the internet, do we really need these people to help us spread our stories?

Conference boredom

Ton Zijlstra posts a critical - but constructive - review of a recent conference in The Netherlands, A story of form and content. His central point: here is a conference about creativity and innovation run in a deeply conventional way that stymies freeform conversation in favour of powerpoint grandstanding by supposed experts. Exactly the kind of event I would avoid these days.

Ton concludes,

For a next time it might be useful to look into incorporating Open Space elements, or think about what makes a good conference. I would gladly help out in the idea-forming stage.

I think the conference business, just like the publishing business, is on borrowed time with the tedious "listen to the amazing experts" pitch. And it's absolutely my own experience of these events that the chairing and moderating is often done really badly by folks who are far too fond of the sound of their own voice. The result is lots of death by powerpoint, and little or none of the conversation and engagement that humans really crave.

Powerbook or Girlfriend?

Neil Turner points to Why a powerbook is better than a girlfriend. The table had me laughing out loud.

JWT rethinks

Nick Wreden has been looking at how ag agency JWT have been reviewing their approach. They have some interesting ideas, including "the audience is the new client". There's also a new ten point ranking for rating creative, ranging from 1 (Damaging) to 10 (World beating).

It's an interesting effort to ring the changes - and certainly the big agencies have their work cut out.

For me, there's a characteristic adman's emphasis on striving for brilliance and making an impact on others. All fine, but what about responding to customers and letting them participate in creating good stuff?

Nick points out that this scale makes no reference to practical results. I think the implied reverence of the revolutionary may discourage work that is ordinary, down-to-earth, useful and effective. Truth isn't always gobsmackingly exciting.

Manure madness

The folks at Fight The Bull are up to more mischief.

Yep, we're here to cover all the action of Manure Madness, an annual tournament that will crown the company with the worst annual shareholder letter as a Shining Beacon of Business Idiocy.

This should be fun to watch.

Sainsbury's and Jamie

Adrian Trenholm is guest blogging at 173drurylane.com, and kicks off by asking what will Sainsbury's do with Jamie Oliver?

Life and death

A powerful, succinct and touching post by Rob Paterson: The Right to Life. Snippet:

It has been the custom of most traditional societies for individuals to take a responsibility for the amount of burden that they place on their community. There is a dignity in deciding when it is time. There is an acceptance in the community that death is inevitable so how you die becomes more important than life itself. Death is surely the greatest experience that we all share.

By denying it - what do we deny? Do we not deny life itself?

A second helping of Gonzo

Chris Locke posts a second instalment of Gonzo Marketing. More great stuff. My favourite bit:

In marketing, just as in government, professionalism tends to hew unimaginatively to its own timid orthodoxy. It does not provide leadership, enthusiasm or the kind of impassioned personal engagement that has come to be called gonzo. In stark contrast, business professionalism tends to be arid and passionless, narrowly focused, self-involved. However, this doesn't mean that everyone in business fits this damning characterization.

Far from it. In my own experience, there are many more lively intellects at work in the workplace than the misbegotten "corporate communications" coming out of those places would lead one to believe. There's often more going on in today's corporation than today's corporation would care to admit. New life is growing between the cracks in the corporate edifice, and it's spreading like a weed.

Improv blog

I've been doing a bit of work building a weblog for the Applied Improv Network. It's taking shape now and is worth a look if you're interested in how Improv work can enliven organisations. (You'll see that it borrows a lot of design elements from my own blog, I plan to tweak it over time to give it more of its own look and feel. It needs more graphics to liven it up.)

Gonzo Marketing

Chris Locke, aka RageBoy, in his guise at Chief Blogging Officer, is serialising his book Gonzo Marketing. Today is Part One: Participating in the Scene

I've recently posted my frustrations with business books. Among the many nuggets in here is Chris' pisstake in similar vein.

I love that he's posting his book in blog form. His particular style jumps the species barrier brilliantly and is, for me, near genius material. When most authors ramble, it's just boring. When Chris rambles it's an art form, and then you realise he's not really rambling at all. So he earns his place as the fourth (chronological) entrant to my Dr Rave category. Here's a tiny snippet, but I urge you to read the whole thing. (Rich...! this includes you)

Oh yeah and by the way, Levi-Strauss says bricolage is analogous to the mythical thinking typical of primitive peoples. Savages. You know, the kind of uncivilized barbarians you get in places like Harvard, Borneo, New Guinea and the World Wide Web.[8] So, taking all the above into account (along with a grain of salt and two aspirins), think of this book as playful bricolage involving serious matters. As sampling. As a hip-hop cover of boring old best practices played backwards and burned into a bad-ass MP3 dance remix download.

Community and well being

I had a great Skype call with Chris Corrigan at the weekend. During it, he mentioned something that I checked out later. It's this post in Chris' blog: Institution building and suicide prevention, reporting on a Canadian study, Cultural Continuity as a Hedge Against Suicide in Canada's First Nations"

The authors look at the role that cultural continutity plays in supporting invidual self-identity, especially among youth in BC Frist Nations. It works from a well-known correlation between supportive communities, healthy individuals and low suicide rates, but the real contribution of the paper is that it outlines a course of action communities can take to dramatically lower rates.

With some self-government in place for example, a community will reduce its youth suicide rate by 85 percent! But the authors discovered something even more amazing. In communities where these six factors are absent, the youth suicide rate is 137.5 per 100,000. That is 800 times the Canadian national average. In communities where all six of these factors are present, the rate drops to 0 per 100,000. You read it right. Zero. Not one suicide in the five year study period.

Lame hotels

Great post by Doc Searls:

Imagine going to the sink, shower or toilet in your hotel room and being told water will cost you $14.95 per day. And that you'll have to call the front desk to have water turned on. And then having to call the front desk all over again the next time you use the plumbing, just because you haven't used water in the last half hour.

That's what it's like for travellers whose only required amenity is broadband. But, to be fair, we're only talking about expensive hotels here. At cheap hotels that provide free broadband, there's the additional benefit of no spash screens, no useless promotional bullshit (as lame and annoying as the defaulted hotel channel on your room TV), no expensive and buggy billing schemes (with multiple charges the per day the common result). Just, bandwidth.

The graphic above comes from the amenity selection form of a travel site (they're all the same in this regard, near as I can tell). All the hotels, and the reservation intermediaries, pretty much disregard the one thing that a large number of business (and other) travelers want. Why?

Not knowing

The other John Moore, ahem johnmoore, has this quote from John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods Market:

“Whole Foods is more like a fast-breaking basketball team. We’re driving down the court, but we don’t exactly know how the play is going to evolve.”

Sauce opened

Well Friday saw James' and my first Open Sauce workshop and it seemed to go pretty well. (Here's James' account of it)

I learnt lots from it too, which I think is a good sign. (I've got more and more sceptical about hey-wow training events, and prefer to run workshops where we assume everyone has something to learn.) James set up a Open Sauce del.icio.us page for examples of good and bad Sauce and for the first time I really got what del.icio.us is about.

Delegates had widely varying interests and needs so we kept the format fairly open to encourage side conversations rather than dictate the agenda.

The day reinforced my view that collaborative marketing is not really a new thing, and it's something that comes naturally to humans. And it's also clear that in organisation-ville there are still plenty of institutional barriers that get in the way.

In denial...

Seth spotted this ad for troubled American Airlines:

and comments

Let's say you run an airline with a horrible cost structure and you're facing bankruptcy on an almost daily basis.

Why on earth would you waste money on marketing like this?

Do the folks at American believe that some harried New Yorker is going to choose to fly to Tokyo on the spur of the moment for sushi and because American is the brand that prompted them, fly there on American?

Where's the ROI?

I can imagine the desire to try and show business as usual and not scare people off. But when two people are in a relationship and are not talking about something blindingly obvious, it's completely life sapping. Thus American and United both run the risk of being Basil Fawlty, trying far too hard not to mention the war.

There are no miracle cures but I'd recommend some really straight talking. An acknowledgement of the kind of trouble the airline is in. A confirmation of where money can be saved (and this kind of advertising could be on that list); where cuts won't be made (safety) and the areas where something creative is needed (how to offer efficient customer service without either wasting money or short-changing the customer). A willingness to enter a conversation. A dropping of pretence. A vote of faith in customers that actually would like their airlines to succeed and don't need a miracle to show some loyalty.

Sadly, I fear that the most likely reason the external conversation is forced and unconvincing is... that the internal ones are forced and unconvincing. And when a company is in denial, I wouldn't look to an adman for a bit of down home honesty.

Prejected

I've just received an email containing a "pre-invitation" to a "case-based learning experience" about how "indiviuated social media can be instrumental in transforming employees into leaders".

This is, apparently, something to do with blogging.

I think I shall arrange to be pre-engaged.

No more heroes any more

Ok, a small additional riff on the theme of my earlier post. Katherine Stone wrote an interesting response giving some examples of personal experiences and stories having more power than fancy-schmancy advertising.

I think this ties in with Chris Anderson's thoughts about the long tail... that it's easy to underestimate the cumulative impact of small experiences.

Cream crackered

I'm cream crackered (Baffled Americans see this explanation)

It's been a good week and I've been "on-stage" for more of it that I'm used to. Quite a lot of facilitiation which I love doing. It's been fun, I've learnt a lot but I'm now facilitated out. I'm looking forward to a Skype chat this weekend with Chris Corrigan. Amongst other things I want to see whether he gets that or has ways to avoid it.

For now, as a typical introvert, I need to turn down the lights and disappear into some kind of cocoon for a bit.

Before hitting the switch, I'll just commend Evelyn's post: Chop Wood, Carry Water. This year I've been following an approach like the one Evelyn's recommending... throwing smaller pieces of mud at more walls. It seems to be working.

Yes Car Discredit

Once in while I realise how lucky we are to have the BBC.

Last night was one of those moments. A remarkable piece of investigative reporting on Yes Car Credit. It exposed loathsome sales practices, shoddy car maintenance, unabashed racism and general all round nastiness at the company's Croydon branch. A shocking contrast to the bright and cheery image the company cultivates in its advertising. Here's an article with details: Car and finance providers target poor

The BBC filmed at Croydon after receiving a spate of complaints from Yes Car customers - over 1,000 to date - who say they have been lied to, sold expensive insurance and finance packages as well as cars that are over-priced and not up to scratch.

The behaviour of the staff that were filmed veered from the highly offensive to the highly questionable.

Sales staff were shown lying to customers in order to sell car finance and insurance as well as cars.

The most obvious trick was to do a pretend phone credit check, just to get the customer to come in for another appointment.

On one occasion a customer was threatened with credit blacklisting if she did not come in as planned.

Poor targets

On average, Yes added £2,000 to the recommended price of their cars. In some cases this doubled the price.

However, after taking into account the costs of finance and insurance - as well as finance for the insurance - we found people who ended up paying four times the normal cost of the car.

We found a car worth little more than £3,000 was coming in at nearly £12,000.

The customers are some of the ten million people who cannot borrow from mainstream lenders in this country...

Dangerous practice

The BBC also placed a garage inspector, Martin Woodhouse, at Croydon for three weeks posing as an mechanic.

Again the script was comedic, although this time it wasn't just people's finances that were being threatened but their safety.

When questioned about the garage's approach to servicing, the man in charge of the workshops shut his eyes and waved his hands around saying "it's Stevie Wonder services here".

An advertising campaign spoke grandly of the company's 125 point vehicle check.

However when our inspector asked a colleague about this, he merrily shrugged his shoulders and said he "just ticked anything".

Our inspector said that there was not even the equipment to carry out the full checks.

Bigger problem

Of course the target market for Yes are also likely to have the least access to the resources of the web to check out companies. (There is some interesting pro and anti debate here at Grubletext and I also found YesCarCreditSucks [UPDATE:Apparently taken down... try this instead.])
Yes are only a symptom of a bigger problem, but can't a slighly more reputable financial institution see an opportunity here?

...a chance for one of our many faceless banks to distinguish itself. Instead of wasting squillions on yet more narcissistic advertising, why not set out to use your skills and expertise to go out to the poorest communities in Britain and really educate them about money and loans, so they no longer fall pray to sleazy finance houses. No, it wouldn't make you money but it would earn you a respect and maybe even admiration that no amount of Saatchiesque posturing could ever get you.

AdPulp, now with added attitude

Here's a raised glass to the folks at the AdPulp blog.

Always a good read, lately it's become particularly good. They are posting with attitude and I like it. Today, danny g comments

A NYC agency called Anomaly was started last year amidst a barrage of hype and sycophantic press releases, which claimed the agency's founders "decry tradition and embrace revolution."

So the entire ad industry has been waiting for the first fruit of this revolution.

Well, according to Adweek they're breaking their first work for Dasani, a bottled water brand owned by Coke. And indeed, it's revolutionary—the work consists of little mini-movies that the Anomaly folks are calling "spots." Each "spot" is 30 seconds long, which fits the format now embraced by the newfangled medium called "television."

Wow. That's frickin' genius. Vive la revolucion!

What blogging did for Microsoft

Shel Israel has posted Chapter 2 of The Red Couch. It's a good read, basically explaining the story of blogs at Microsoft ending with the rhetorical question

Our point is this: If blogging can do all this for one of the world’s most despised and distrusted companies, think of what it can do for yours.

Saatchi sues

Wade at AdPulp reports that Saatchi are suing a former employee for leaving and convincing 17 others to join him a few days later.

Oh, I think the creators of Lovemarks are doing a bit of brand extension... a sub-brand: ToughLovemarks.

Rob doesn't rate "Presence" (the book that is)

Rob Paterson isn't mincing his words reviewing Presence by Senge, Jaworski et al.

To say that I have been disappointed is an understatement. It was if I had eaten a cake that was made by my favourite cake baker, Robin, and discovered that it had been made using a mix.

One of the things Rob dislikes is the penchant for quoting "big names" in interviews. That does ring true for me, it was one thing that irritated me about Synchronicity. I dislike books that seem to reverence status; I distrust books, for instance, that give acknowledgements to a long list of doctors and professors but no mere mortals. Rob says

Throughout the book they proudly claim to work with the largest and most powerful institutions in the world

I've not read the book myself, but these days a review like Rob's is all I need to knock if off my wish list.

Marketing filter

Nice idea from Rob Paterson and his friends: marketing filter. And not just because it very shrewdly filters me in. Likewise his Cityfilter for Charlottetown. Some interesting comments on Rob's post too.

Open letter to London MEPs

I have just emailed all eight of London's MEPs (Members of the European Parliament). I tried to keep it snappy. I'd encourage anyone else reading this in the EU to act similarly. (Find your MEPs here)

As one of your constituents, I write to urge you to vote against any and all efforts by the European Commission to make it possible to patent computer software.

I do so primarily because the idea is extremely dangerous and will, over time, seriously damage the ability of European people to collaborate to create great things together.

I do so secondarily as I think it is vital that MEPs challenge the tactics of the commission in trying to introduce this idea.

This article in by John Naughton in The Observer puts the case more eloquently than I, and I urge you to read it

Customer or prospect

Harry Joiner tells this joke

"A guy dies and goes to heaven. At the Pearly Gates, Saint Peter says: 'Although you qualify for heaven, I’ll give you the option of staying here or going to hell. I’ll even let you spend a day in each place before you decide." So the dead man spends the first day in heaven, which is quiet and relaxed. On Day Two, one of Satan’s sales reps shows the guy around hell – where everyone’s partying like it’s 1999.

"On the third day the dead guy informs Saint Peter: 'As much as I always wanted to go to heaven, the folks in hell really know how to have a great time. I'd rather spend eternity there.’

"Immediately, Satan’s sales rep reappears and escorts the guy to hell, where he’s shackled to a stone wall. 'Here’s your new home!' the man is told. 'But wait! You can’t do this!" the guy yells. "I was here just yesterday, and everyone was having a wonderful time. What’s going on?'

"Satan’s sales rep says: ‘Yesterday you were a prospect... Today you're a customer!"

All grapefruit are lumberjacks

Sorry for the attention seeking headline, but I wanted to see how far I could take this idea of making sweeping generalisations as a way of attracting attention.

I also wanted an ironic title for a post about Evelyn's good observation that most marketers are beggers. The "most" is a good qualifier and I like what Evelyn says here.

I have noted time and time again that most marketing and sales professionals take on the role of a beggar more often than not.

It's a pitiful sight. They are frantically running up and down the beach jumping up and down waving dim-bulbed flashlights hoping beyond hope that any passing ship will notice them and take refuge.

We don't need another hero

Evelyn posts this good quiz from the book, Soul Prints by Marc Gafni.

Name the five wealthiest people in the world.

Name the last five winners of the Miss America contest.

Name the last five people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.

Name the last half dozen Academy Award winner for best actor and actress.

Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?
I know I did horrendously. The point is this: We forget yesterday's headliners. These people are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Trophies tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and awards are buried with their owners.

Here's another quiz. See how you do on this one.

List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.

Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.

Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.

Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.

Name half a dozen heroes whose stories have inspired you.

I could define addiction as something you can't help doing, that seems good at the time, but that you realise soon after has not been good for you. You might get that realisation in hitting a major downer, or you might get in touch with an experience that is really satisfying.

For me, that sense of deeper satisfaction is a bit like what I felt as soon as I got to part 2 of the quiz. It's a sort of coming home, to things that create a deeper feeling. Stuff that matters.

There's a longer post brewing in my head about celebrity and my hope that the rise of blogging and the fracturing of big media may mean, to quote Tina Turner (spot the irony), we don't need another hero.

I'm putting this in my "facilitiation" category. I think groups quite easily get into many variations of "how the world is" and avoid "how I am" and "how we are"... what's happening to the people in the room, and their experiences of each other. (See previous posts on shadow conversations.)

The man who rang is not with Sainsbury's

You know, it used to be exciting to see "international phone call" on my caller display.

Not any more.

No, it's not that I'm a blase international jet setter who isn't impressed by these things.

It's that I'm being trained by telemarketers. Like Pavlov's dog, I am now conditioned to expect irritation when I see that message.

Because, more often that not, it will be a call centre somewhere else in the world (I'm guessing India) trying for the umpteenth time to get me to change my electricity supplier.

Today, it's "Sainsbury's" with a "fantastic offer". Oh puh-lease. No it isn't really Sainsbury's, its someone who has probably never even seen a Sainsbury's who tomorrow will be pretending to be Tesco. Or Jack the Ripper for all I know.

In these outsourced times, it seems to me that brands are stretching credibility to absurdity with this kind of thing.

What is the point of spending millions on advertising and store design and undermining it by, well, lying to me? (And I mean lying, and not in the excusable sense that Seth Godin talks about).

Anyway I've now registered with the UK's telephone preference service in the hope it cuts down on this kind of intrusion.

Curt Rosengren is a good chap

I asked Curt to read my latest, half-finished, draft for More Space and give me some feedback. He read it and said what he thought, which was a mixture of stuff he liked and quite a few things he didn't. There's no substitute for constructive criticism, and it made me hack away at it, stripping out some chunks and adding a few others. Then I left it alone for four days. Now it looks much better.

So thanks, Curt. Now, I'm trying to psych myself up for another push of the peanut.

Earth moves for Times editor

Simon Jenkins', the former editor of the The Times, in today's issue, commenting on his experience of blogs in the US

'Yet the ground did shake under me. Earlier threats to the press came from new conduits of news and information. Today’s goes to the heart of my trade. It peddles opinion. I can pretend to occupy a higher plane. I can try pleading factual accuracy, consistency, uncorruptibility and a quote or two from Shakespeare. But in truth I too am a blogger, snatching at some item of passing news to argue a case and persuade. And I charge for it. The blogger does it for nothing. I am on my mettle as never before.

So move over, Caxton, the mystery is no more. The whistle-blowers, e-babies, inside-outers, wonkettes, quacks and cranks have globalised Speakers’ Corner. They have rebuilt the Tower of Babel and put microphones on top of it. Amid the noise, a still small voice of reason will still be heard. But it may require the help of Microsoft, not dead trees.'

A little extra sauce

One week to run until James' and my first Open Sauce Workshop. I'm starting to get quite excited about it. We've got a mix of folks from business and non-profits which is good. By the way, we've been asked if consultants are welcome and they certainly are.

After a nice lunch with Alistair Shrimpton of Six Apart (UK), we're going to offer delegates who don't already have a blog a free Typepad account to get them started, if they're up for it.

Four practices

Nice post by Michael Herman: Four practices

Practice of opening
Practice of holding
Practice of inviting
Practice of practicing

I'm adding this to my collection of Simple ideas, lightly held.

Warmth

I'm an uncomplaining fellow, so I've not told you that for the last 2 weeks I've had very little heating working here at home due to plumbing gremlins. The thermal underwear came out of my ski drawer pretty fast.

This morning, a new pump has sorted me out and I can't tell you how nice it is to have the warmth restored. If the posts here take a suddenly more optimistic tone, you'll know why.

Thanks Hugh...

...for making me laugh.

Idea Sandbox

Paul Williams, of Brand Autopsy fame, is opening a exciting sounding venue in Seattle, The Idea Sandbox.

I’m opening an ideation destination... a conducive place for people to brainstorm. It’s called...

The Idea Sandbox

With the broad audience that this Brand Autopsy blog affords, I thought... instead of starting this business on my own – we could do it together. We could have a lot of fun....

As a little kid, I always wanted to ‘be an idea guy’ and help people find solutions to their problems. In each job I’ve had since graduation I found I had the knack to improve some part of the business by contributing solid, practical and actionable ideas. The Idea Sandbox allows me to formalize my passion and ability to help others generate wicked good ideas. I will share my expertise, as well as an extensive library of tools and resources to help others develop their own creative solutions.

I'm not sure about that word ideation, I think most folks would settle for having ideas. Setting that niggle to one side, I wish Paul lots of good fortune with this, it sounds like a bold effort to make a dream come true.

Internet and terrorism

I am enthused by the statement David Weinberger posted today from Madrid: The Infrastructure of Democracy
Strengthening the Open Internet for a Safer World. I especially liked the third principle

III. The best response to abuses of openness is more openness.

Moore on Ries

John Moore (the US one) says What Al Ries doesn't get about marketing

I can’t blame anyone for jumping all over him when he writes such blanketed statements like, “Marketing is 90% strategy and 10% execution. With the right name, the right target audience, the right position and the right timing, most marketing programs are bound to work. The difficult part is the 90%. The easy part is the 10%.”

Has Ries undervalued the importance of people (employees) executing a marketing program? Oh yes ... he has grossly undervalued the importance of people making marketing happen.

I just don’t buy his argument that most marketing programs are bound to work if the right name, right audience, right positioning, and right timing are in all place. I also disagree with his statement that the easiest part to a marketing program is the execution.

My experience at Starbucks Coffee and Whole Foods Market tells me marketing is more like 35% strategy and 65% execution. A so-so marketing strategy can deliver exceptional results if those responsible for executing it are informed and inspired to make retail magic happen. The real trick is how best to solve for informing and inspiring customer-facing employees to make retail magic happen.

That's my punch-and-judy stance.

At a (slightly) more philosphical level, I think the debate about strategy or execution gets boring quite fast. Most "strategy" is written after the event and rationalises what actually happens. Good strategists (I think) try stuff out and see what happens, and adapt. This sort of strategy emerges from the execution, without the intellectual conceit of pretending otherwise.

The trouble is that at the moment there are still big bucks to me made out of pretending that high powered discussions of strategy are the key to success. (I think the authors of The Knowing Doing Gap argued that there's too much credit given to those who can talk impressively, and too little to the quiet types who just get on with it. Of course, you may think this link is a bit rich coming from a blogger, but there you go.)

No wonder Ries' partner Jack Trout wants the ad industry to rise up against amateurs who do ads. Good grief, these people may not have read and sworn allegiance to the Grand Design...

Zopa up

Thanks to Tim Kitchin for emailing me to say that Zopa's website is up and running. Tim says in his mail:

I am proud to be peripherally connected to this new financial services venture, just launched by the former founding team at Egg.

Essentially it’s a bid to disintermediate the banks in the personal lending market. It’s a personal mutual lending exchange. Backed by Benchmark Capital.

Customer proposition is therefore to give back to lenders and borrowers the margins currently raked off in profits by the banks. Benefits are estimated at a 30% APR improvement for lenders; and a 20% APR reduction for borrowers.

For individual lenders, it creates a ‘consumer debt bond’ at a risk-level and duration of the lender’s choice.

Spread the word. Reclaim control. Invest in fellow human beings.

We are talking serious disintermediation.

They say:

Zopa's an unusual offering in a number of ways, but in a lot of other ways it's a product of our time.

Five years ago, if you wanted to book an unpackaged holiday to Vladivostok with a stop-off at Prague, you couldn't. Now you can, and you can do it easily and reasonably.

Just as you can now get organic cumquats delivered to your home. At a time that you're likely to be there.

Or bid against some bloke in Arkansas for a boxed Millennium Falcon.

Or read a record review at three in the morning and have the album on your computer at ten minutes past three and have the best tracks mixed into your own compilation at quarter past. Nerdy? - maybe. Impressive? - oh yes.

Call it a me-trend or freeforming or whatever you want, the fact remains that people are rejecting one-size-fits-all products or one-way-is-the-only-way services because they're starting to realise that their own size or their own way is, for them, much better.

That's why Zopa lets you manage your money in your own way. At Zopa, you can take calculated risks or play it safe, you can be impatient or you can play a long game, you can pocket your profit or reinvest it, you can watch your investment every day or every month. None of these ways are right or wrong, they are just how it is.

Book overload rant

I'm putting this in the Dr Rant category because I don't want you to take it too literally. I am being rhetorical; please comment back rhetorically if it pleases you.

I'm also going to generalise sweepingly. Forgive me in advance, or give this post a miss. I may just be having an off day.

But for today, I'm sick of business books.

There are too many of them and I can't possibly keep up.

And now some of the authors are kind enough to send me free review copies. And I've been saying yes, like an idiot. So now I feel obliged to read them.

But I don't want to.

I'm still trying to write a book chapter for the More Space project. It's a great project. But I'm hating writing my chapter.

So for now, I've had it with books. With reading them and writing them.

Why? Perhaps I'm just eating the wrong stuff these days, or my boiler is putting out too much carbon monoxide (not much chance in this drafty old Victorian house).

On the shaky assumption that there's some good reasoning behind my response, here's the problem. Business books are a piece of artifice. They have an order and structure that bears no relationship to real life.

They are written, and read, almost entirely as solitary acts. But life is a collaborative act, it's a series of engagments and encounters with other living creatures. It's not like a book. It's nothing like a book.

When you look at the average business bookshelf in a store, what do you feel? Do you really feel excited by the possibilities or do you - like me - more often just feel anxious? Anxious at all these things you don't know yet, and these wild fantasies about your miserable untransformed business/career/whatever?

There are so many things in my life that fascinate me, make me curious and keen to learn. But not business books.

Oh but everyone says to me, oh Johnnie, you must write a book. You obviously have a book in you. What a ghastly thought. If there is a book in me, give me whatever it is I need to eat to flush the thing right out!

For some reason, we reverence books. We think that if someone has written a book, it means they are in some way smarter or more qualified. As if the weird ability to churn out a book correlates in any way with being an interesting speaker... or a capable manager or whatever.

One of my friends writes great books. But when he describes the torture he goes through, drafting and redrafting, I really wonder why he bothers. Because I could say that his books are a kind of lie. They are beautiful, but they completely misrepresent the process he's gone through to produce them. And they thus support the fiction of the highly rational world that so many business books imply.

There are a very small number of non-fiction books that I read to the end. Very few indeed. In nearly all cases, they might have something interesting to say in the first third. And the rest just labours the point.

With apologies if you've sent me a book recently. This is not a comment on your own lifework. And I will still try to catch up on my reviews!

And no I'm not a philistine. Well maybe I am in denial but I don't think I am.

And there's nothing like a good novel.

USB headset question

I bought myself a USB headset at the weekend, to improve the quality of Skype and possible podcast recordings.

The thing is, with an old style headset, as soon as you unplugged the headset, your main speakers would kick right in. And vice versa. Which is handy.

With the USB, that doesn't happen. Which is not handy.

Any geeks out there know a work-around for this?

Tips for Microsoft

Some good ideas in Steve Rubel's post: Microsoft Office Marketing.

I especially like the idea of hosting a head-to-head debate between users of older and upgrade versions. I wonder if MS are sufficiently confident in their product to risk it?

BzzAgent Webcast

A good webcast (42 mins) featuring Dave Balter of BzzAgent. It's a good way to see who is the real guy behind the controversial company.

Several readers here don't like BzzAgent at all. I have to admit some admiration for them, despite qualms about the ethics of rewarding folks for talking up products.

Thanks to Jackie Huba for the link.

Linking and blogrolls

Rather like Jennifer, I've become a bit lazy about maintaining my blogroll and I tend to agree with her: I'm not really into doing "link swapping". I'm happy to read new blogs, and then I'll link to content that interests me.

Without getting too pernickety, I prefer to link based on ideas and people that provoke me, one way or another. Rather than going down the "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" route, though a mutual back scratch is one of life's simpler pleasures.

Actually, I wonder if I should lose my blogroll altogether... in a way, I think it's a bit of a throwback to earlier times. For now, I'll just settle for being a bit lazy about maintaining it.

PS. Reading Jennifer in her comments, I see she's pretty hard on blogs with typos. I don't know how I've hung in there with her all these years!

Porosity/pulsation

Hugh posted an interesting comment here about porosity (referencing this essay by Clay Shirky). The nub:

Funny, this paradox reminds me of classic Clay Shirky (one of my biggest heroes).

Basically, Shirky's idea is: when creating any kind of social group... be it a company, an online forum, or nation state, there are two basic rules:

1. Too much coercion, it dies.
2. Too much freedom, it dies.

What Shirky suggests is that any successful group has a healthy tension between corercion and freedom.

Welcome to the wonderful world of paradox. Structure and freedom seem opposed, but in fact they feed off each other. For instance, if I asked you to "think of something creative, right now" you'd probably feel stuck. If I asked you to "think of 7 ways to persuade a 5 year old to go to the dentist", you might start having some ideas. You might not like your ideas, but you'd start. Many artists like to have a canvas before they paint. A bit of structure can spark our creativity and then we find our freedom within the structure, or testing the structure. (The artist might start with a canvas and then say, sod this, I'll use Central Park as my canvas!)

It's only human nature that we sometimes push too hard on one pole and ignore the other - and end up with less of both. Just this morning on the telly some two-bit politician was saying "security is the foundation of a free society" to justify some fairly oppressive sounding legislation. But if we just go for security in the form of lots of laws and restrictions, we risk so strangling freedom of expression that we feel fearful... and actually become less secure.

Managing anything, including my life, is really about managing these kinds of paradoxes. Of course, we like to swap generalities about what's right (much blogging follows this course) but actually we need to realise that each circumstance is different and we need the ability to pulsate, to move between the poles and not just cling rigidly to platitudes in favour of one or the other.

Sometimes, we want to set rigid rules, sometimes we want to let it all hang out. There is no predeterminded universal setting for the amount of porosity in the boundaries we keep.

I'm gonna repeat something I mentioned here a few months ago:

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".

The Hub

I took part in an open evening at The Hub on Thursday. I ran a couple of sessions using improv to explore how people can connect to generate new ideas. It was a joy to be involved; the space is inspiring and so are the people involved.

The Hub is, as its website puts it

3174 square feet of derelict warehouse transformed into an incubator for progressive ideas. A place for getting things done. All the tools and trimmings needed to cultivate an idea, launch a project, host an event and operate a business. Our intent. To generate possibilities. Our approach. To connect people who make things happen.

It's intended to be much more than serviced offices for small busineses. But if you consider it only in those terms, it is - I think - innovative.

Most serviced offices in London depress me. They give tenants their own little rabbit hutches and use of shared facilities, usually with a lot of "add on" costs, rather reminiscent of hotels where you can hardly move without being sold something ordinary at a fancy price.

The thing is, a lot of entrepreneurs may think they want their own space but I get the sense that most business centres are lonely places.

The Hub is open plan, based on hotdesking. Result: each enterprise uses less space saving money for everyone AND a more friendly, collaborative atmosphere is created. You might think it's too noisy; in fact it's feels quiet and purposeful. It reminds me of the spirit that Open Space creates. Folks can collaborate brilliantly within simple structures where the intention is good. When there are fewer rigid boundaries, folks will usually create rules of thumb for sharing space that are way more creative and satisfying.

There are some cool design features too, so that the place is eco-friendly. AND the result is some very simple design that makes it low cost (financial and environmental) and fun to work in.

One brilliant thing they've done is to set up a meeting space which is only partially partitioned off from the rest of the space. The result is really interesting; it has the integrity of a proper meeting area, and feels connected to the world, not cut off and isolated as so many meeting areas do. It sounds like a mad idea - you might think there would be no sense of privacy - but it really works in practice. The sense of privacy doesn't come from the walls, it's a felt experience connected to the spirit of the place. It's hard to explain but if you visited you'd get it.

Again, there's the paradox: we think we need rigid boundaries but porous ones can be way more enabling.

Gobbledegook

Alain Joudier has a nice post today on the strange and poncey (sp?) job titles being dished out these days. He was provoked by Hilton's invitation to speak to a "Certified Hotel Specialist". Alain continues

I was talking with a writer today and we discussed the unhealthy need for labels. She's in an academic organization that regularly butchers the language with double speak and nonsensical phrases that may sound important but only hide the true intent of those using them----mainly to get something over on the minions and masses while seeming "caring" and "employee-focused.". Language defines us and sadly manipulates us as well. All of us who write for a living know our transgressions and we'll have to account for them in another life.

As for me, today I learned that I was "pre-approved to be approved" for a "generous" home equity loan, "the smart way to reduce those nagging high interest credit card balances." You bet. I fear we are becoming inured to words that bring neither clarity to the human conmmunication process nor something more tangible like an honest connection with the real world we inhabit.

And I also know that I'm quite capable of using fancy language myself sometimes. It can be seductive.

I'd add that I don't think people who do a lot of this are necessarily just indulging in a power play. I don't think it's as malign or calculated as that. Sometimes, I think jargon is used as shorthand (kind of ironic, given its waffliness) because of the pressure of time; to speak from the heart sometimes requires time for reflection which is not always easy to find.

Click fraud

Interesting article from the NY Times: Web marketers fearful fraud in pay-per-click. Here's the intro:

Businesses that pay billions to Google and Overture to steer potential customers to their Web sites are increasingly questioning how much fraud lurks in the blossoming pay-per-click model of advertising.

There is evidence that at least some scammers are clicking away at the ads, or having programs called hitbots or clickbots do it for them, with the knowledge that each click costs an advertiser money. Some of the troublemakers are disgruntled employees; some are companies trying to force competitors' ad spending up; some are even Web page operators who let search engines deliver ads to their sites and then collect a cut when people click on those ads.

Thanks to danny g at AdPulp for spotting this.

Audible, the clock is ticking

My friend John Winsor is ticked off with Audible, essentially for continuing to charge his credit card having agreed to cancel his subscription. So John blogged his complaint, and the emailed the CEO and head of PR, inviting them to comment on the blog.

And now John has added a timer to his blog, top right corner. It will run until he gets a reply to his email. As I post this, it stands at 14 hours.

This is a fun experiment.

What's a community anyway?

Interesting post by Jame at Community Guy: What is community? Here's a snippet

People often think that blogs, forums, wikis, and other tools are community. In actuality, those tools are just that - tools. They can help you to build community, but they aren't actually "community". When we talk community, we're simply talking about an interaction, a connection. Blogs or forums are a way to initiate and sustain that interaction.

Much of the problem with debates like this are over definitions. I quite like this offering by Jake:

A community is a group of people who form relationships over time by interacting regularly around shared experiences, which are of interest to all of them for varying individual reasons.

UPDATE: There's a lively debate on the same topic over at Brandshift.

More on Oystercard

I continue to like my Oystercard, the smart card for using buses and tubes in London. (See previous post here ). They've just emailed me this info

Oyster Pre Pay customers can now benefit from daily price capping.

Make as many journeys as you like using Oyster Pre Pay in Zones 1-6 within a 24 hour period - from 4.30am to 4.29am the following day - and you will never pay more than the price of the equivalent Day Travelcard. If you do, we will refund the difference. Alternatively, if you're using only the bus or tram you'll pay no more than £3, the price of a One Day Bus Pass

I wonder where there'll go next with this. Maybe they can get retailers to let me swipe my card to get my paper in the morning? Not to mention the choccies from the machines on the platforms, to munch while waiting for the train...

Toe in the podcast water

Yesterday I had a go at recording a podcast. Or something quite podcast-like, we're still working on the technicalities. Speaking of which, it was great to have Corante providing all the technical backup, in the shape of Alex Williams, who's got some pretty interesting ideas for making the content accessible and interesting.

I helped make the pilot edition of what we're gonna call the Brandshift Show. Along with Jennifer Rice (fellow Brandshift blogger), Chelsea Hardaway (of Fight the Bull) and Tom Guarriello, I recorded half an hour of conversation on the theme of authenticity in business conversations. I'll post a link when it's been turned into something you can listen to.

It was fun. And it was kinda weird, having a conversation and wondering who might end up listening in. I felt a bit self-conscious. It'll be interesting to hear what it all sounds like. The next show is on the theme of co-creation.

Corporate commands

Alain Jourdier points to the fascinating Institute for Infinitely Small Things, who are compiling a database of Corporate Commands. Snppet:

WHAT IS A CORPORATE COMMAND?
A Corporate Command is an instruction work, a call to action in the form of an imperative:

"Just Do It"
"Turn on the Future"
"Live without Limits"
"Tap into great taste"
"Think different"
"Ride the light"
"Live Like You Mean It"

It is the hypothesis of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things that these commands, largely and consciously ignored by a public over-saturated with advertisements, function at the scale of the infinitely small. Tiny events that do not disturb one's consciousness or disrupt one's identity as "free" agents, these commands seep under the surface of the individual and lay claim to the territory of the Deleuzian Virtual. Desire, memory, and future potentiality become territories for conquest and tactics for social and political control.

I don't know what the Deleuzian Virtual is and I'm not terribly curious. I do think that straplines of this kind, though calculated with great effort are a bit of a waste of everyone's time.

The Elephant Under the Table

I'll be running an Open Evening on 22 March at 5pm, along with my colleagues at The Clarity Partnership.

The theme is The Elephant Under the Table. We'll be exploring how to get teams to bring to the surface the tricky issues that often get avoided. I often find that there's a high price for this kind of secrecy, in terms of all the energy that gets bottled up when important thoughts and feelings are suppressed.

We'll be sharing our experience of how to deal with this and enable groups to more creative and energised.

If you'd like to come, attendance is free. Drop me an email at johnnie (at) johnniemoore (dot) com.