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Thoughts and things I care to shareWalk Your Walk
If there’s one thing you should always do, it’s to keep your unique individuality.
As an individual we need to recognize how and what we do differently. Protect and nurture those qualities that make us who we are. It’s important to realize that these qualities are what others see in us, and differentiate us in a crowd.
Quite a bit of this relates to your personal brand, and perhaps that context helps make the most sense.
Walk Different
Walk a funny walk, have fun, explore who you are and what others see in you. Dare to be different. In doing so, you’ll start to learn what others value in you. You’ll also be able to realize that there’s opportunity in doing things differently.
Try those new things, find ways to step out into the future and expand your skills and worldview. You may be great at what you do today, but there are other things you may be well suited for. It’d be a shame not to find out what those may be. It’s rewarding to relearn things about yourself that you may have forgotten.
Walk Tall
Be proud of where you come from, what you do, and how you accomplish your work. Your walk can be compared to your “brand personality” when you meet a person , often the first thing you see is them walking towards you. Much like the t-shirt you brand from Print My Logo, you have control over what is seen.
There are no unimportant jobs in society, and it’s what we do with our lives that’s the real testament to each of us. It’s what we do day-in and day-out that people remember, and this is the base of who we are. It’s always a good idea to start from a firm foundation, and that is what walking tall is about.
Don’t let others define your success as success is a subjective label to begin with. Only we can define what that is, because only we know what’s important, or what the next step in our path was supposed to be.
Walk Straight
Sticking to your values is what this is all about. Its when we stray from our ideals that we begin to loose our way. By following through on your plan and remaining true to your core values, its easier to reach those goals that you prize most. This is also something that people remember about us. It’s about being consistent, honest, and following through. Not always easy, but never ignored either.
Walk With Purpose
Having a purpose to things is just as important as everything else. It’s about direction. There’s a reason that we’re all good at different things and make different decisions every day. Define for yourself why you do things the way you do, get to understand what that purpose is, and refine it as time goes on. This is ultimately what drives each of us in our own way. We have some ultimate goal that we alone hold.
Stepping Up
Finally, taking the time to map out a path to walk in life is a great thing to take time to do. Plan out short and long goals, match your pace in life with your ultimate goals. Enjoy the each step along the way.
This is a post from my ‘inspirational’ list. Not sure if it really is, but I like to give it a try from time to time. All feedback is welcome! That’s one of my goals as I walk through life, to learn from anyone willing to share suggestions or criticism. It’s all good from my perspective as I just want to learn.
Enabling Trust in the Organization
We’ve all been there. You’ve got a great idea that you wish you could find a way to share with the appropriate team at your company. You’re not able to, because you’re not part of that team. Or that department. Heck, it’s not even a field you’ve specialized in or worked in much, but you’ve got that idea – a good one – and you’re sure that it’ll help in some way.
How do you share that idea? How do you get a chance to talk to folks on that team or present that idea without someone saying “gee that’s great†and then ignoring it because you work in another part of the company? How do you make your voice heard?
Unfortunately this is all too common in corporations today because of various institutionalized barriers. Different departments, protective fiefdoms, overzealous paperwork, and draconian process and procedures. These all contribute to the problem we have today of large, slow, companies that make incremental improvements rather than large bold ones.
Cut Out The Middle Man
This is where cutting through the organization from another angle is beneficial, and while it’s not a new idea, its facilitated by social media tools. Call them “Enterprise 2.0†or some other Gartner approved term if it helps you out, but it’s all web 2.0 tools and with social interactivity built into the technology.
These new tools foster that important cross-organization conversations that help promote sharing the institutional knowledge that is part of each employee. Allowing them to forge new relationships and new communities within the organization.
This lets people – the most important resource of any organization – to feel more welcome to share and trade ideas, just like sharing anecdotes and stories. The workplace becomes less rigid in it’s communication allowing everyone from the bottom up, or the top down, to be more receptive to comments, ideas, questions, and suggestions coming from other parts of the organization.
Getting There
Getting to that point is a lot of work, and simply making the executive decision to try something new is a large step in the right direction. That first step is a doozy though, because its all about trust. Not just trust in a new CFO, or in a Director of “This Or Thatâ€. Its trusting every employee at every level. Trusting that they’ll do the right thing. Trusting all those intelligent folks that were hired to do those jobs in the first place.
That’s the first step… the next is almost as hard. Accepting feedback. But that’s another post.
Photo credit: Jerry Vo
Social Media and the 40 Hour Work Week
One of the more frequent questions I hear about social media, is around how much time should a person allocate towards it. The answer is a lot simpler than it seems: lots.
For those looking at moving into a social media role, whether its a community manager, specialist, analyst, or strategist (hmm… lots of –ists in there) expect to spend quite a bit of time. Each of these jobs consist of a lot of hours, mainly because you’re dealing with a platform that never turns off: the Internet.
The speed of the Internet really has an influence on the time you need and should spend in a social media related field. Since things change so quickly, it’s imperative to be monitoring all the spaces that are relevant to your company, brand, or interests. This can take up a huge amount of time.
The bottom line on time invested in social media activities, is that you need to set boundaries, and work towards containing them. There are always things that require our attention, or distract us in some way. The trick is to be diligent in leveraging the tools and services that are available for doing monitoring and alerting you when something needs attention, or is relevant to your interests. Event then it get’s a bit difficult to stay on track.
Words To Socialize By
Ever run across a phrase or two that you’ve heard that sums up things really well? Short, simple, clear points that makes what you’re trying to say much easier to understand are always worth repeating. So with that, here are a couple that I try to share with clients as they start exploring social media and online communities.
“Don’t Be Stupidâ€
Credit for this phrase goes to Gary Koelling, co-founder of Best Buy’s BlueShirtNation. If you’ve met Gary, or have the chance, you’ll know that he cuts through the gobbledygook corporate speak phraseology quickly. Once everyone has their say, and the external communications policies are written, and the training is complete – the simple, boiled down essence is: Don’t Be Stupid.
“Don’t Shame the Nameâ€
Credit for this one goes to Brian Rogers, a colleague at Accenture. In relating stories of family and youth, we covered lots of ground. When he mentioned that one, it stuck with me. It’s simply another perspective on being responsible. It keeps a person thinking about positive actions, respect, and of pride.
So, keep these simple phrases in mind, share ‘em with friends, coworkers, and people who ask for advice about interacting online. Social media is a powerful medium, and you can’t go wrong by keeping it simple in whatever you do, either for yourself or for your company.
Living in the future
Several years ago (okay, more than a decade) there was a great keynote speech by James Burke at ACM 97 where he talked about ‘The Next 50 Years of Computing’. Now, if you’ve seen James Burke’s Connections series, you know what he’s good at. Describing the intertwining relationships of time, technology, and happenstance.
Here, a decade or so later, I’ve been thinking how true those words are. At the time, Windows 95 was still new, Microsoft Outlook was in it’s initial ‘1.0’ release, and the browser wars of Netscape vs. Internet Explorer were on, and Google was still a dream to be developed. Back then, I was waist deep in technology as a Novell NetWare and then Windows NT “expertâ€, and loving it. It was all about connecting computers together, and getting businesses connected to the Internet. Email and ICQ were HOT.
Fast forward a decade, and so much has changed. Where cell phones were a luxury that businesses could barely afford to sponsor, they’re now the de facto communication device of nearly all of us (who needs a land line). Why have browser wars when you can have 5 to choose from that all have a spot on your Start Menu? Where we used to pay upwards of $30/month for 56k dialup access, today most folks pay about that much for about 100 times that speed. Heck, we have faster connections on our cell phones than we did at home back then. GPS was a nifty gadget where you could plot waypoints to your favorite fishing hole; today, we have full-on navigation packages built into our vehicles to guide us anywhere. The list is endless.
The point I’m getting at is the change all these things have made to our culture. We’ve brought the concepts of democratization to technologies and industries that we used to think impenetrable. Through citizen journalism and social media, we’ve toppled once powerful institutions. We’ve squeezed huge entertainment companies to the point that they lash out at their own customers because they can’t find a new business model. The people of the United States felt they had a real voice that was listened to in the selection of their latest President.
All this is through the incredible advancements in technology that changes our culture.
A decade ago in that keynote by James Burke, he talked about how developed countries were 50 years ahead of underdeveloped countries, and how this pattern would repeat into the future. I believe we’ve sped up the process and are much farther down that path than we believe. We are living in a future that our parents could never have dreamt of. We have the opportunities available to us at the touch of an iPhone that a decade ago weren’t thought possible.
My question then, is what will you do with the advantage of living in the future?
Photo credit: Hometown Invasion Tour
As a note, if you follow the link to the ACM97 slide deck and videos, I just want to point out that it was compiled a long time ago and is not as polished as we see today on YouTube. Just remember that as you go through it. It’s still a great presentation, by a master at telling stories of history and technology. Oh, and I did try to find it elsewhere without luck.
A Note For SPAM Marketers On Twitter
It’s been there for awhile, quite awhile really. I’ve been able to ignore it for the most part, though it is getting a bit old.
I’m talking about those MLM types, thinking they can gain some advantage through sheer following numbers on Twitter. Fancy schemes to gain thousands of new followers in 48 hours or less.
What purpose does this serve? If your tweets/following percentage can’t even break 1%, why are you there? Why would I even care? Why are you gaming my account and others? We can see through what you’re trying to do.
Do you want to know why?
Like a bad 70’s disco LP, stuck in the past. Singing the same tune like so many previous polyester leisure suit wearing, used-car salesman before you. Am I stereotyping? Gee, sorry – there’s a reason for it. Your last-century marketing efforts are lost in the reality of the 21st century. You might as well try selling toothbrushes door to door for all the good your Twitter account does.
Take your glossy commercials with pop stars, your shiny hummer, that damn inflatable Gorilla, delete your spam account and start over. We’re not buying it.
Photo credit: Sunfrog1
Getting Along with the IT Gatekeeper
I’ve been an IT guy for a darn long time, and as I’ve said before, it was a great career. I’m sure I’ll revisit it from time to time – I’m too much a tech-geek to abandon it completely. One thing I know from experience is that IT is many times a bigger bottleneck than we tend to admit. So as I move into new areas as an advocate for and a professional in social media I understand the issues from both sides of the fence.
Some folks scoff at how IT always seems to pull the security card on attempts to do new, inventive, creative things. It’s but one of many things that corporate IT departments have to consider when someone brings up something new. Other things can range from support costs (obviously) to recovering from disasters. New systems really do consist of much more than just buying and installing software.
Interestingly, it’s not always management in IT that causes the roadblock. In fact, IT leadership is often well equipped to be advocates of change in the organization. Even with tight budgets, IT is almost always looking to help position the company for growth. However, remember they’re biggest responsibility is to maintain existing systems and provide a secure, reliable environment.
So the question is then, how can you get IT to be interested and prioritize your project?
The answer is to get them involved early. Very early. In fact, they should be among your first stops when you’re looking for supporters and stakeholders. What usually happens with many a project is that the technology aspect get’s pulled in way too late for the project’s original timeline. All this does is turn it into another firedrill project with folks working long hours and weekends to make it happen.
However, if you get IT involved at the beginning, they’ll help with estimating real costs. They’ll help figure out realistic timelines. They will be a key part of making your project succeed.
Contrary to what you may think, Information Technology isn’t just about databases, operating systems and all the computers in the office, they too get excited about learning new things. The realization that social media, and new ways of doing business is important to them too.
Photo credit: Great Beyond
One perception of social media
It’s been an interesting week or so. I’ve again learned that my perception of social media is just one of many interpretations.
What is this socialization of media anyway but a simpler means of collaborating upon work with peers from differing backgrounds. Social media, really, is a movement and not technology. The technology and tools are simply enablers.
While we explorers of social media out on the Internet talk about transparency, and openness, businesses are struggling to figure out how to get involved but be able to balance all the parts that are important to them. Some will say this is the problem, that there are too many layers in your average corporation that get in the way.
That may be true, but we also have to remember all the parties involved in that corporation we like to lump in with so many others. The needs of the shareholders, the responsibilities to the consumer, proprietary technology or processes, responsibilities to it’s work force, legal liabilities, risk of damage to a valuable brand, and the need to be a good corporate citizen.
These are all things that an established organization needs to take into account, and it doesn’t even begin to touch on internal power struggles and political plays, or the resistance to change that the majority of corporate workers embrace. One look a the newspaper industry in the United States can give you a glimpse of the worst-case possibilities of all this. They recognized the need for change too late, but your average corporation isn’t quite as blind as that, they just have a lot to juggle to be able to come to the table to play the game.
So as we compare decades-old companies to a couple year old startup when it comes to participation in social media, it really comes down to perceptions of what’s right and what’s wrong.
What’s your perception as you work with older organizations under the theme of social media?
Photo credit: Ezu
Windows Vista – Ubuntu – Windows 7
Spending a week with a different operating system on my laptop is like learning a new religion. It’s intensely interesting, insightful, a true learning experience! Ultimately it teaches one what they took for granted about the things they already knew and cherished.
So I spent a refreshing week on the linux side of the operating system fence last week. In the end, I had to come back to Windows. It wasn’t the operating system, it wasn’t the software, it wasn’t the stability, nor was it any of the big things that people run into when trying to run any flavor of linux.
Instead, it was the little things – very little things. Like not having the play/pause, and volume buttons on my laptop not work with the media player. Or the media player not playing WMA files by default without a trip to the command line to make it work – yeah it matters, I have 15GB of tunes in WMA that I’m not re-encoding.
I ran into a number of things that simply needed a little tweak or manual intervention. Any one of them nothing at all a real problem. All the really important things just simply worked. For example, I didn’t have to find one single driver for my laptop hardware for Ubuntu 8.10 – it all worked out of the box. My favorite Firefox plug-ins, and therefore my main work environment, were all set up in the same amount of time that it takes on Windows – and worked just as expected. Email was set up in Evolution quickly and, again, just worked.
No, it was all the little things that added up made me decide I still needed to be running Windows. I’m less a “techy†person than I have been in the past, and while it’s fun to try new things, and experiment, I need a system that I don’t have to think about or fight with. I need something that simply works on every level at any point, and for me, Windows is that system.
So I’ll test Windows 7 a bit and then go back to Windows Vista until Win7 is released later this year.
Twitter Is…
Since Twitter is the current social media darling, I thought I’d record a few thoughts I’ve had about one of my favorite online tools. I’ve had the privilege of using Twitter for two years, and each and every person I’ve followed or had follow me along the way has taught me something new. So here we go.
Twitter is…
- a place for friends
- a news outlet
- a place to share your greatest failures & your most stunning achievements
- an attention getter
- a publishing platform
- a customer service tool
- a researcher’s dream
- vulgar
- the ace up your sleeve
- brilliant
- a new entertainment channel
- a social network
- a micro-blogging platform
- a marketing tool
- your community
- overwhelming
- 24x7x365 (always on)
- a level playing field for your ideas
- a sounding board for your thoughts
- a comment reel for your new book
- your starting place for your online excursions
- the place for your organization to learn about it’s customers
- a multicasting instant messenger
- a game changer
- a PR tool
- a messaging infrastructure
- a simple way to share & trade information
- can be inane
- is faster to publish to than anything else
- is where you go to learn
- your online “water coolerâ€
- a conduit into the lives of others
- a conduit into the idea stream of smart people
I’ve got a lot more input on what Twitter is than I could fit in this post, so I’ll work on fitting that into another format of some type. What is Twitter to you? I mean, what has Twitter brought to your life that you can’t believe you lived without before you discovered it?
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rickmahn
😢
“We are not enemies but friends.”
Live your life.
Completely.
Without fear.
Live it with Love, compassion, empathy, tolerance and joy.
Treat every person with the kindness, respect and dignity they deserve by the very virtue of being a human being.
Out riding this rainy, wet spring. Got 1,000 miles on the clock with more to come this season. #IMRG #IndianMotorcycle
Watching early seasons of #GoldRush. Fun seeing @GoldrushRick in season 3! Hope his new season is off to a good start!
Oh yes I did! https://www.instagram.com/p/BsRDO9ogSO0/?utm_source=ig_twitter_share&igshid=1kha5yzhjq3ot