The Tragedy of the Captive Audience

Investors and advertisers love networks that have captive audiences.  They love that fuel dispenser toppers catch people when they are tethered to a gas station with an 8 foot hose.  They love that people waiting for a movie to start in a cinema have to watch something when the lights are down and their cell phones are put away.  The captive audience that can’t escape the message you are trying to deliver.

But, think about it from the user’s perspective.  Who wants to be captive? “I want to be a captive audience,” said no one ever. 

People want to be captivated, not captive.  It’s a higher calling that we should all strive for.

Diversity

We don't care about diversity because it's in vogue. We care about it because we like winning." - Mike Gamson, SVP Global Solutions, LinkedIn

Some Moments are Meant to be Forgotten

"Some moments are meant to be forgotten. You can't dance at weddings anymore." -Jared Ficklin

You are a Liar

I know it’s true.  And you can join me in blaming the internet.  I am nearly 100% sure you have never actually read the Terms and Conditions to which you just agreed.  

Expressing Emotions Changes Them

I recently heard Heather Andrew from NeuroInsights speak at a conference.  She explained how our brains are separated into right and left sections.  Emotions are on the right, but language is on the left.  So, to express your feelings is to pass them between the two lobes of the brain. 

This has several implications.  First, it can be difficult for some, as men, for instance, have less pathways between the lobes.  And secondly, the act of putting emotions into words, changes them.  Makes them more rational.  Our anger, becomes righteous anger or defensiveness.  Our shame becomes blame.  Our irrationalities and impulses get sanitized when they get communicated. 

Perhaps instead of speaking our emotions (and passing them to language on the left), we should instead use our right brains to sing them, paint them, or act them out in dance.  Or perhaps, that is precisely what the performing arts already do?

Tweeting Our Attention

It has long been said that if you really want to learn something, you should teach it.  But research shows that the same can be said for tweeting.  When NeuroInsights ran focus groups with consumers who were shown programming and told they would need to tweet about it, paid more attention and retained the information better than those in the control group.  So, instead of “pay attention, it might be on the test” perhaps we should say “pay attention, it might be in a tweet.”

Creators Rule

#CreatorsRule

Memorable and Sharable

Start-ups: the Laboratories of the Economy

Start-ups are the laboratories of the economy.  Doing things that established companies don’t do, won’t do, or can’t do.

An Icon as a Metaphor

Who designed the now ubiquitous wireless logo?  The one with three curved bars above a dot.  You know the one.  Someone surely was the first to sit down in Illustrator or with a pen and paper and draw out the picture.  The ones that the world now uses.  One of our most powerful and universal icons and it’s anonymous and unowned.  Perhaps that is a metaphor for some of the new, powerful technologies and ideas that will be as disruptive as wireless internet.

What Would Ben Do?

I wrote recently about Google’s efforts to provide the whole product in my article Y is for You: Google's Alphebet and Personal Branding.  I learned recently that one of the founding father’s pioneered some of these strategies himself: Ben Franklin

Ben wanted to be a printer.  His biographer (Isaacson) talks about the lengths to which he went to procure a printing press from Europe.  He wanted to own a communication machine.

He started printing things for his friends and customers.

So, to use the machine, he started a newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette.  If one flyer was good, then having a weekly or daily publication was even better.  Those who wouldn’t afford to print a flyer, could afford an advertisement in a larger publication.

He printed books.  The most popular book was the Bible.  But most people only bought one of those in their lifetime, so how could he get people to want to buy a book every year.  He started the Poor Richard’s Almanac which would have repeat customers every year.

Then he began to think bigger.  He wanted people to read his books and magazines, but many people were far sighted and had trouble reading.  So he invented bifocals.

He noticed that in the cold New England winters, people weren’t reading as much, so he invented the Franklin Stove.

He wanted to broaden his distribution channel to allow people outside of Philadelphia or the region to read his books and publications.  So, he championed the US Postal System.

And realizing that it was inefficient to print things in Philly and move them around the country, he franchised and shipped the plates to a friend in the Carolinas so she (yes, she) could build a business serving that community. 

A man with Ben’s broad curiosities and diverse background pursued these and many other ideas in service of his main themes and principles.  What are your main themes and principles that are worthy of the height of your creativity, enthusiasm and focus?

Big Data is Like a Small Town

Feedback...it's the breakfast of champions.

“Feedback…it’s the breakfast of champions” – Dharmesh Shah

CTRL-ALT-DEL

Every morning I unlock my computer with the keystrokes that I used to use to reboot it in case of terminal errors.  CTRL-ALT-DEL were the keystrokes of triage and now they are “hello.”  Maybe it’s a sad commentary on our world where “that was a disaster, let’s try again” is how we greet the day or maybe it is Microsoft’s way of reminding the computers that if they get sentient and go Terminator on humanity, we still remember how to do a hard reboot.  In fact, we’ve been practicing every day.

It's all relationships.

At the end of the day, when the final numbers are tallied and the results are analyzed, it is all relationships.

Scare Yourself Busy

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Much has been written in professional and personal development circles about the importance of doing things that scare you.  Tackling projects that take you out of your comfort zones.  Roles that challenge you to grow.  This has been the justification for exhilarating thrills like climbing Mt. Everest or life-changing moves like leaving an abusive relationship or embarking on a new career.

I have never thought of myself as a risk-taker.  I generally had a “big fish, small pond” mindset.  I liked to tackle projects that I believed I could do successfully.  I have prided myself that my hobbies, my relationships, and my work are not drama-filled.  I don’t even like horror movies.  Alas, I am missing all the tell-tale signs of a risk taker, so I figured I wasn’t one.

Until now. 

I now see that I am just a different type of risk taker and here are three things I am learning about managing risk.

1. Sometimes it’s the stop-watch, not the altimeter which measures the risk

It might not be the altitude of the mountain that is the risk, but the speed at which you are trying to ascend or the number of hills you are climbing at once.  When I get overwhelmed or scared, it is generally not because of the enormity of any individual task or commitments I have made.  It is rather because I am trying to do them all at once.  I scare myself in this way regularly and I know I am not alone.  Recognizing that deadlines and commitments, served up simultaneously, adds stress and complexity to otherwise reasonable tasks, is important to acknowledge.  Those of us who rush to do more can give ourselves permission to recognize the risk for what it is and pull back or lunge forward as necessary.

2. “But isn’t multi-tasking bad?” is a trick, and surprisingly personal, question

Behavioral scientists say multi-tasking is a fallacy and that this lack of focus costs organizations millions of dollars a year in lost productivity.  I respectfully, I don’t believe it.  Maybe for some it is a bad thing.  Making people work outside their natural work style can certainly backfire, but for me, it’s the only way.  Experience has taught me that when I multi-task I accomplish more.  I achieve better results.  I think more clearly.  I make connections between things that lead to new insights.  I remain more open to ideas from others.  I have certainly had professional failures and disappointments, but throughout I have found that action itself is a source of energy.  The busyness isn’t the secret sauce, but it is certainly in the winning recipe for me. 

3. Managing risk is about knowing your risk tolerance

You don’t gamble, what you can’t afford to lose.  Whether you are analyzing the risk of an investment portfolio or contemplating bold moves in your career, managing risk appropriately requires an appreciation of risk tolerance.  My risk tolerance has to do with judging my commitments against my priorities.  Despite my multi-tasking ways, or perhaps because of it, I am a big believer in looking at my life in chapters.  There is a time and place for everything.  The good things need to find more time and space in my schedule and attention, crowding out things of lesser importance or urgency.  Avoiding the fallacy that tasks or priorities are permanent or immovable.

Ralph Waldo Emerson summarized it well when he said, “Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age. It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’”  So, you might just scare yourself busy.

This article was published on LinkedIn. 

News is piling up

There is the new thing.  And the new, new thing.  The previously new thing is now not so new (borderline old). There is the new that makes the news.  There is the new that is so new it’s stealthily secret.  We are obsessed with the new.  New is piling up everywhere.  

Courage and Comfort

I heard Brene Brown speak recently and she proposed that courage and comfort couldn’t co-exist.  If you are comfortable, you are not acting very courageous.  Where are you on that spectrum?  What are you willing to give up to get what?

Success is making those around you look brilliant

“Success is making those who believed in you look brilliant.” – Dharmesh Shah

3 Reasons to Flee the Country During the Holidays

This is the first year ever that my family is going to be out of our home country during the holiday season.  Although not everyone will travel to exotic (and warm!) locales during this traditional vacation-laden time of the year, but there are three reasons why everyone should consider taking a proper break during the holidays. 

It sounds strange for me to defend the value of a vacation, but the statistics are pretty alarming:  US workers simply don’t utilize their time off.  I assume it is similar worldwide.  Vacation hours, even the “use it or lose it variety,” go unused.  And in the modern era of always-connected, device-toting knowledge workers, even days of PTO can be consumed with email, texts, and keeping tabs on projects.

1. Vacations are a release valve.

We recently say the hosts of Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters in a live show at a local theater.  While explaining how they caused a household water heater to explode magnificently, Adam Savage made a poignant observation.  “Water,” he explained, “boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit.  Unless it’s under pressure.  Then it gets stupid and forgets to boil.”  It is this expansion effect that can lead to magnificent explosions as the air trapped inside the water heater compresses and then releases.

I think we humans are the same.  Under pressure, we can get stupid.  We can get harried and stressed.  We can do our own form of expansion as the negative parts of our personality, like our impatience or intolerance, are amplified.  We forget what we were designed and gifted to do.  What otherwise we’d do without thinking about (like treating strangers or co-workers with a degree of kindness), we forget. 

Vacations can be a bit of a release valve.  After all, pressure only builds in a closed system (like that of a sealed water heater).  If some air can escape, then the water can return to it’s normal operating state.  That is the hope of a vacation.  To make people less stupid.

2. Vacations provide perspective.

Sometimes getting away from something can provide you a whole new perspective and a new set of solutions to draw from.  Marcel Proust has been quoted that “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”  Many professionals in creative fields, find it useful to step away from their problems or work, to take a walk, work on something else, or even goof off a little, only to return to the work refreshed and ready to see the solution that might have been in front of them the whole time.

Although there is a temptation to get things “wrapped up” before leaving the office for the holiday, it might be wise to leave some tricky problems waiting for your return in January.  You’ll return with new eyes and have a better chance of coming up with a better resolution than you might have under the pressure of deadlines in December.

3. Vacations allow us to appreciate normal

Despite the fun of the vacation and the excitement of news sights and sounds, there is always something nice about coming home again.  Sleeping in your own bed.  Being able to wash clothes and eat at home.  The space to spread out after being cooped up in a hotel room or a car (a “little too much togetherness” at times).  Sometimes getting away allows you to better appreciate “home,” even if you don’t travel far.  The familiar routines take on new comforts.  The places and people that you took for granted now seen through new eyes of gratitude.

So, whether you are fleeing the country for this season or staying close to home, I wish you a very merry and warm holiday!  I will be seeing you and the world with new eyes this coming new year and I wish the same for you.

This article was published on LinkedIn.