Zane Safrit

Social media mutes coaches, takes fun away from game?

When asked to explain why he called then-Missouri coach Norm Stewart "Francis the Talking Mule," Oklahoma coach Billy Tubbs "apologized" thusly:

"I got Mr. Ed, the talking TV horse, mixed up with Francis the Talking Mule from the movies. I meant to say, 'mule,' because a mule is not a thoroughbred. A jackass is a thoroughbred, but a mule is a cross, I think, between a jackass and a horse. I think a mule is worse than a jackass."

Told he was likely to be fired during the season, little-known Southwest Minnesota State coach Pierre duCharme once had his team carry him to the bench in a casket.

John Chaney, as we all know by now, threatened to kill John Calipari. And Bob Knight did, in fact, murder a chair.

And Pete Carril, lit cigar in hand, once waddled over to James Taylor and impolitely asked the singer to "shut the [heck] up," since his sound check was interrupting Princeton's practice.

Those, my friends, were the days, the days when characters -- uninhibited, unafraid and unapologetic -- ruled the sidelines. They were a little kooky, a touch controversial and a lot entertaining, adored for their showmanship, yet still revered for their principles, interesting even if they could be, at times, alienating.

They made the game of college basketball just that: a game.

We never realized their days were numbered.

When, in 2006, Chaney quietly rasped Frank Sinatra's "excuse me while I disappear," it wasn't just the Temple coach who was headed off to retirement; he was taking his era into the sunset with him.

It was an era of fearless and unfiltered coaches, men who could be a little controversial without fear of recrimination or termination; men who could be a lot off color without worry of a social media firestorm.

"I couldn't wait to hear what was going to come out of Lefty [Driesell]'s mouth or see what was going to happen with the family feud between Wimp Sanderson and Sonny Smith," said former Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl, who once memorably painted his chest orange in support of the Lady Vols basketball team. "You'd go to a banquet with Johnny Orr and you'd be bent over laughing, but every other word out of his mouth wasn't a household word. Can you do that today?"

And that's really the essence of it all.

It's not that there aren't characters in the game anymore. There are plenty. It's just that their personalities and their convictions have been muted.

The combination of high stakes and social media has robbed the game -- and maybe the world in general -- of some of its fun. There is too much to lose to risk offending anyone and too many Internet highways to burn the politically incorrect trespasser.

"If those guys then had social media monitoring their every move and every word, just think about that," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said.

Just think about that. That's blaming the messenger media, the means used to deliver the message. Literally.

Social media merely serves our purposes; a rorsach test, if you will, of our community's mores, values, prejudices, wondrous moments and inspiring leaders.

Blaming social media for taking the fun out of the game is like blaming phones for taking the fun out of dinner, delivering robocalls from political parties.

Blaming social media for 'taking the fun out of the game' is like blaming the post office for taking the fun out of mail, delivering spam to our mailbox spam.

Same thing for blaming email for spam.

Social media's a tool. Our tool. We use it, for our purposes, in our language.

Those salaries? Yeah, they went up because more people watch. More people watching means more advertising and sponsorship revenue.  Why do more people watch, well, because more people engage more, with more, all compliments to social media tools like ...Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc.

The real issue comes to this:

"I just think," Pearl said, "there are less people who can take a joke anymore."

Behind every joke is the truth.

Here's the Big Truth:

"I think sometimes people are just afraid," said Coppin State's Fang Mitchell, who proudly considers himself a Chaney disciple. "Jobs are so scarce. We are in a field that has [338] Division I jobs. To keep your job, it's easier to just be politically correct."

Ironic. As more people find more outlets for their opinion, we see more people being afraid to voice them.

"What's our game lost? It's the same as what our society has lost," Huggins said. "Think about it. It used to be that the leaders of the country said what was on their mind regardless of whether it was popular. Now we're all so guarded in everything we say. Nobody takes a stand. We've become a very vanilla society. Why would sports be any different?"

And there you have it.

And social media merely reflects that. Fairly transparently, too.

Twitter, [Crowdsource] Thyself for Cash-Flow Growth

Physicians, heal thyself. We've all read this somewhere.

This saying came to mind as I read about Twitter's decision to sell our tweets to several companies. And that came on the heels of the news that they agreed to self-censor in certain countries in order to be able to operate in those countries.

These two announcements or news stories, read as if the culture of Twitter is being dominated, more and more, by more and more accountants and attorneys. And decisions around their business model are being made to satisfy the needs of these two constituents.

And there are always conversations about how to generate the cash that sustains a fast growing company, like Twitter. That conversation may be even more critical given Twitter's size and that robust demand made on cash-flows to pay for servers and bandwidth and engineers, coders, etc, etc., and the intensity of the conversation around sustaining cash-flows may be even greater when your original business model was a ..freemium business model.

Paradoxically, oddly, maybe ironically, Twitter is a tool that brings openness and transparency not just to corporate and brand discourse with their public audience, but also to the discourse around civil societies and the freedoms or their lack they embody. See #Iran and #IranElections and ArabSpring and Egypt hashtags on Twitter. Twitter's simplicity and its global reach allowed for  streaming, live, realtime crowdsourcing on a global spectrum of topics, from the most mundane to the most vital.

That power has allowed us, Twitter's users, to invite it and us into each other's homes, our businesses, our communities. Twitter and its community of users forms an integral part of our day.

So, it surprises me that Twitter does not eat its own dogfood and crowdsource itself, us, its users, our community...for ideas on how to create sustainable cash-flows in ways more creative than the standard ...sell your users personal data.Or doing business with, supporting, legitimizing despotic leaders who refuse any semblance of openness and transparency for their citizens. (Why does that sound familiar...?)

Imagine if Twitter invited us, its users, to help create an unique business model that generated self-sustaining cashflows while continuing to honor its original mission?

Imagine if they created a hashtag to organize the conversation?

Imagine if their CFO hosted the event? I mean, c'mon if President Obama can be guest on Twitter chat, surely the CFO of Twitter could host one? Doncha think? I do.

Imagine if Twitter organized Twitter chats to occur around the globe at a certain day and hour.

• Monday's at Noon Eastern.

• Tuesdays at Noon Greenwich time,

• Wednesdays at Noon Sydney time....etc?

Would that be fascinating to see the ideas and see the variances from around the world on how to create a sustainable business model?

Imagine if they then moved the conversation to a forum page?

Imagine then they would not need to sell our tweets to unknown 3rd party advertisers?

Imagine they would not need to self-censor in certain countries and thereby continue to provide a real-time streaming global forum for important conversations?

Imagine the global education of Twitter's uses for users, big and small, savvy and newbie? They could witness how the pro's, those at Twitter...their CFO, used Twitter to crowdsource solutions for the most pressing problem of business, any size and in any country: cash-flows.

How many users and their own countries would welcome the chance to learn from the global community of Twitter users?

Twitter, [Crowd-Source] Thyself.

Do you still think Twitter is...Frivolous?

A new report shows that Twitter provided an early account of the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti. According to the study published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Internet news and social media were faster transmitters of information in tracking the cholera epidemic in Haiti than health officials. The tweets provided information that health officials wouldn’t report until two weeks later.

via curiositycounts.com

In cholera-time, two weeks is a lifetime. Maybe, it's many lfetimes.  Saving lives, giving advance notice of cholera outbreaks is...that frivolous? Using a tool that lets you hear these advance warnings...is that frivolous? 

Cholera outbreaks. What's that got to do with your business?

Let me answer it with another question, one only you can answer:

If Twitter, or any tool, can give you 2 weeks advance notice on drastic changes to your marketplace, where your business lives and dies, would you say that's a frivolous tool?

Top 5 Uses for Twitter...Here They Are

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

I left them blank to illustrate a point.

How many times have we seen a post titled:  TOP 5 USES for TWITTER...or some such list. And we scramble to quickly self-assess and add a to-do item to start doing...number 5 on that list. Ok. I have. Twitter's powerful and how doesn't want the results described along with that list of quick and easy steps...

That's the point.

The top 5 ways to use Twitter don't come from me. My list of ways I use Twitter is precious and wonderful for me, sure. But ultimately irrelevant in this conversation.

The top 5 ways to use Twitter don't come from another post published by another social media expert, maven or guru, agency or firm.

They never have.

The top 5 ways come from...you.

What are your top 5 ways that you use twitter...*?

That is the power of a resource like Twitter or blogs or posterous or tumblr or flickr...You can discover and develop YOUR top 5 ways of using...Twitter. We can do this together. That has been the power of social media from the beginning.

You remember 3-4 years ago when there were no social media experts or agencies? 3-4 years ago before everyone and their mother and their mother's mother heard that list posts were a great way to generate traffic. Not ideas. Not conversations. Not discoveries.  

Be like everyone else and follow these 10 steps on social media and presto!

Presto, you're just like everyone else. True confession: I bought into it. It seemed an effective way to learn and help others. Then one day the lists seemed rote, redundant, repititive...and pretty soon everybody was doing it. Like AutoDms on Twitter to new followers. (Ok, I never did that.)

The power of social media has always arisen from this:

We, anyone, can use them, explore them, master them, make a mistake or two with them, at our pace. As we decide. That individuality, that freedom to explore and learn and fail and succeed as decide has always been the viral power of social media.

What was missing...back in the day...were experts or institutions assigning one way and enforced with bored and tired rules, which they administered. There were no standardized tests. No rules. No policies. Like kids we joined this playground and learned and fell down and got back up by ourselves or with others who helped.

See what's missing? No experts.

Like kids in a playground we all played together. Sure, our skills are ours alone. We mastered them: running or climbing or organizing a game or talking quietly off to the side or watching a butterfly or running out in the field by ourselves or competing or cooperating. We learned together. Together we all watched and learned and experimented and became masters ...together.

The power of social media is the power to run around on a playground on our legs as fast as we want in the direction we want. As often as we want. As fast as we want. And...with whom we want.

To say this in marketing vernacular we have the freedom to speak in our own voices. To share and showcase our own voices. As a marketing media there is no message more powerful than that of unique. Sure, you can browbeat people, you can bury them with an onslought of paid media. And as soon as that onslaught stops so does your message stop being shared.

That makes us all leaders. As Rajeev Peshawaria said during his interview with me:

We call someone a leader when they create something that does not yet exist. Or when she significantly improves something that already exists. And this comes from original thinking, not copying.

By copying behavior you can become an expert at something. But you cannot become a leader.

Back to the title. Fill in those blanks. What are YOUR top 5 ways of using Twitter? Or Posterous or your blog or Tumblr or YouTube or Google Reader or Google +. Find those. Use them. Speak in your own voice. You'll be heard. You'll hear others. Like on a playground. You will lead others on your, collective you, playground. And likewise you can be a co-leader on someone else's.

And what a playground it became with no one volunteering to be adults and no one claiming....they are an expert. Then we are all leaders and together we are co-leaders.

 

Twitter Forgets

"We know people are following brands like crazy," says Adam Bain, Twitter's president of global revenue.via www.usatoday.com

Really? Huh.

People don't follow brands. People follow people. And until...now, Twitter was the place to connect with people.

Besides, those who want to follow brands can like those brands on Facebook. And Facebook and those brands can follow, some might say, consume their followers' online activities around the web. ( Consume/follow/track...You know it by its other name cyber-stalking.... 'cause it's done in stealth. Facebook and its partners don't share the details.)

We come to Twitter to connect with each other, what are we doing, what are we reading, what interests us...in real-time. Because we offer it to each other.

Facebook recently announced it would create a design that forces ads onto our page. At all times. And now Twitter's original new idea is to do the same by posting these ads at the top of Twitter feeds.

Sadly, Twitter seems to have forgotten their own legacy. 4-5 years is a long time in social media, I guess. But Twitter's original purpose was to provide a platform where we could connect, in real-time with each other about what really matters to us. Real life. Our life. Brands weren't part of that conversation.

Twitter, don't forget that.

G+: Ain't Stealin' Our Stuff

via i54.tinypic.com

I like this. I like its sentiment.

I'm on G+. I'm not sure really what I'm doing with it yet. But...still, I like it, liked the first steps of adding people to circles. The design is clean, simple. 

I like Twitter. But I've noticed a bit of a fade lately with Twitter. Here's a couple of anecdotes:

Spammers. Lots of spammers. Sure, I can block them. But...when it is so obvious they are a spammer (0 tweets, 1500 followers...) why are they allowed?

Brands. Yawn. Brands use twitter now to do what brands do: promote themselves. Yawn, really. I can find that experience anywhere I look, online or not.

And sure, some brands use Twitter to connect with their audience in a personal and meaningful way. Some. That is quantified with the term...few.

Bots. Just automatically retweeting stuff based on...whatever, Keywords or phrases or whatever? Who cares? No one cares. Wanna know why? Because bots aren't people. Bots aren't real (they're really annoying...). People care about people and not bots or brands.

I disagree with Robert Scoble when he says Google + has made Twitter boring. No, it's not boring. Yet. Cluttered, yes. He does share some very good points. And,  if Twitter doesn't realize that some users are gaming the experience, that their behaviors are easily identified, then...the party that has been Twitter will get very boring.

This graphic came from Heather E. Coleman in her Innovative Leadership Daily.

Infographic: President Obama's Twitter Town Hall

via www.webinknow.com

Thanks, David.

Twitter and the Wheat Farmer

How can new technology help Iowans find their places in the world economy?

We tell the story of the wheat farmer who used twitter on his Blackberry out in the field. That’s nice, right? Here’s the real story. The bigger city news was talking about how there was not very much storm damage to the crops after the last big storm. This farmer was out in his field looking and he didn’t have much damage. However, his friends on twitter were posting pictures of the damage in their area – and it was bigger and worse than his. He was scheduled to sell his wheat that week. He made the decision to wait a week. Why? Because the prices skyrocketed – there was so much damaged wheat and supply was low, demand high! His crop brought in a better price – because his friends posted pics on line. Yeah, the farmer today is no idiot. There will be lots of stories about how technology is changing the way we do things.

via desmoines2011.140conf.com

Awesome story. Beautiful.

Why?

This is how social media levels the playing field. It brings real-time data to those who really need it, when they really need it and it, tools like Twitter, is really inexpensive. Think: Free.

In the longer past, the data was there.

In the the recent past, it was there but for those who had the time and the resources, money and people to gather it and put it to their use...at the expense of the small, the individual.

Now...the small, the individual, has the power of that data at their fingertips in real-time. That real-time is now. Right now.

PS: This 140 Conference in Des Moines on Monday was excellent. Well-organized, crisply delivered and every presentation was about the power of Twitter, the power of connections, to do the previously impossible. All these stories are like this wheat farmer's: individuals connecting to share their stories and their tools and resources where previous this had been impossible.

Awesome.

Is It a Trust Issue?

Reporters are forbidden from engaging in conversations “with those critical of our work or critical of Bloomberg News.” Bloomberg journalists are forbidden from retweeting anything they don’t fully endorse and fact check first. They’re forbidden from expressing opinions related to politics, and perhaps most ridiculously, related to their beat. They’re to avoid linking to non-Bloomberg stories. (The guide then adds that it is “good social media etiquette” to link to others, an empty statement considering Bloomberg.com has never linked to an outside site.) They’re asked to have an editor look at tweets before they’re posted. via www.adweek.com

So, is it a trust issue?

Remember, back-in-the-day, when these reporters were first hired? You both were so full of hope and promise with and for each other.

As the employer, you trusted the newly-hired reporter with access to your computers and your other reporters, with your brand name as they went about the market identifying themselves as a reporter for Bloomberg....You trusted them with some of your secrets and policies and access to your networks....

As the newly-hired reporter you trusted this global brand with your passion and zeal and skills and integrity. You trusted them with the majority of your waking hours.

Together, you worked to build your brand into a global source of financial news...global sources means non-Bloomberg sources.

And somewhere, somehow, you all stopped trusting each other?

That's sad.

But, if you don't trust each other to report accurately and globally, then you have to wonder why your customers should.

Visualizing 24 Hours of London Tweetin'

via vimeo.com

I'm not really sure why this is important.

But it's cool.

Ok. Here is the significance in those dots and flashes. Connections, communication, meaning. One-to-one, at our choice, about our interests...with our rules.

Social media, our media. Done Twitter-style.

Now, THIS is Transparency

Amy Oztan, who blogs at SelfishMom.com, is particularly transparent when it comes to her sponsors. She has a lot of them — companies who pay her, in money or in product, to advertise on her site or to mention them. Oztan has an entire section explaining how she makes her money, including an extensive index of tabs she uses to alert readers to the economics of everything she writes. It starts with Level 1 — “The product or service mentioned was provided to Amy free of charge (or at a considerable discount not available to the public)” — and goes up to Level 13: “This is a sponsored post. Amy was compensated to write this post. While Amy’s opinions in the post are authentic, talking points may have been suggested by the sponsor.” In between these extremes are compensation for inserting links to a certain Web site, attending an event or administering a product giveaway. Which pretty much explains why, between daily witticisms, she so regularly describes how she offered Kleenex to the woman next to her at a conference or placed her HTC HD7 Windows phone on the tray table next to her when she lucked into an empty row on her last plane trip.

via www.nytimes.com

Et tu, Facebook?

Vermont Senator Becomes Twitter Sensation

BOSTON — “I’m not here to set any great records, or to make a spectacle,” Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, said Friday, about a minute into his speech on the Senate floor. By the time he stopped talking, nearly nine hours later, Mr. Sanders was an ascendant, if unlikely, Internet star. via www.nytimes.com

That's the power of social media. When you have something to say and are willing to say it then there are tools and folks who will help you say it and share it.

I'm on Twitter...now what?

via learning-now.wikispaces.com

Excellent.

Less is more sometimes with social media

Dunbar's Number, the theory that most people can maintain at most 150 stable interpersonal relationships, faces an unusual challenge in the time of social media. You may have more people than that add you as a follower on Twitter every month, week or maybe, every day. Half or more are robots, spammers or robot spammers.

via warrenwhitlock.posterous.com

Recently, I opted for the Less is more approach to social media. I opted out of the race to gather a gazillion followers on Twitter, Facebook, etc. And other social media resources I choose to ignore.

I choose now to follow people less often these days; I unfollow more.

These people all good people. Well, except for the robots/spammers/robot spammers, self-appointed gurus and world-class somethings, the porn stars, the hawkers, the gawkers, the people who buy followers...and MLM'ers who want to explode my downline...they are all good people. ( Ok, the MLM'ers are good people, too.) We just share different interests, goals, and ways to reach those goals. But, if we sat at a bar beside each other, I'm not sure we would have a conversation.

As a result, I feel better. More relaxed. More focused.

I have more conversations. I learn more. I listen more. I push my agenda less.

We exchange links, and develop ideas; we build a personal connection.

Their updates and quips are an important part of my day. I look for them if I don't see them for few days.

These relationships mean something. My life is better from them. Less is more.

That is the point, right? To connect, not compete? To add meaning? To deepen our connections.

It's a work in progress. Kinda like life. Kinda like relationships.

Overcoming Obstacles to Posting Your First Blog Post

This may be a late hour to address obstacles to blogging. There are maybe 125 million blogs in existence. This doesn't begin to include 500 million Facebook members, each with their own page, in essence a blog. Nor does it include the 105 million registered users of Twitter...in April of 2010.

However, only 24% of small businesses use social media. And that's double the number from last year.

Blogging is the foundation for any social media effort. (I hate the term campaign...) So, for more small businesses to embrace social media we have to find ways to overcome some of the obstacles to...blogging.

OBSTACLE: What do I write about? I don't have anything to say. That's what one employee said when I offered her the opportunity to blog on company time. I don't have anything to say. I knew otherwise. I suggested she start her day with 10-15 minutes of free writing. Just write. I checked back with her in another week. She'd discovered she did have something to say.

• SOLUTION: Try it. Write for 10 - 15 minutes a day. You'll discover you have something you really want to say.

OBSTACLE: Fear. Some executives may wonder if it's safe to blog. Is it safe to talk on the phone? Is it safe to send an email? Is it safe to have a meeting. People are taking notes, in writing or mentally. And often there is something lost in that translation between your voice and their notes.

• SOLUTION: You're safer writing it yourself.

OBSTACLE: I'm not a good writer.

That is not an obstacle for a leader; it's an excuse. And it's no longer an acceptable excuse. Today's world requires leaders, well everyone really, to have excellent communication skills.

• SOLUTION: Write every day for 10 -15 minutes. You do not have to publish it. But you do you have to write it. Write about anything you want. Just write. Pretty soon, you will see you do have a lot to say and you say in the most unique voice in the world: yours.

• Besides, writing everyday for 10 -15 minutes before you even publish a post is a great way to ...be a good writer.

• It's also the best way to systematically re-innovate your company. Blogging was the best way to do that, according to Tom Koulopolous, author of The Innovation Zone: How great companies re-innovate to bring amazing success and CEO of The Delphi Institute

OBSTACLE: Topics. Subjects. Content.

That's one of the biggest seeming obstacles both to potential bloggers and long-time bloggers.

• SOLUTION 1: List posts generate a lot of traffic. List posts are posts titled with something like Top 10 Ways to....x, and then the body of the post is compromised of that list of 10 ways and a brief explanation of each way.

Ultimately this is a list post.

I have a huge ongoing project of 52 ways to recognize employees. And each week I describe and analyze one of those 52 ways in detail. And at the end of these 52 ways I'll create a book that includes the result of my writing and analyzing each of these steps over the past year.

Already, I've changed my understanding, deepening and broadening it, for why each step works and why and how it connects with the other 51.

And I carve out tip posts from what my radio show guests share during our hour conversation. Those are like bite-sized snacks in between meals. They give some good content and entice you to eat the whole meal, read the whole blog post or listen to their whole show.

• SOLUTION 2: Compare and Contrast Posts. I lean more today towards compare and contrast posts. These require more time. To help me gather data, I use Evernote to help me clip notable news items from any online source. I tag them with key words. Then I review them weekly. Often I find contradictory data, arguments, positions, manifestos. Always, I find myself forced to clarify for myself where the gap exists and why. I write a post to explain the contradictions or contradict them again.

OBSTACLE: They may disagree with me. Hopefully, they will. At some point.

• SOLUTION: Don't worry about it. I learn more from those who disagree than those who say 'great post'. I enjoy the latter more. But those who challenge me, critique me, attack me are always my best teachers.

If you're not pissing somebody off regularly, hopefully your competitors, then you don't have much of a brand. And if people aren't disagreeing with your posts some of the time...you're not writing anything worth reading.

OBSTACLE: Writer's Block. This will happen.

• SOLUTION: Either go out for a quick run or clean-up your desktop. The first one relaxes the mind and stimulates the thinking and creativity at the same time. The second one brings a little order. Gotta have both: creativity and stimulation along with an orderly environment.

I hope this helps.

Who needs a social media policy? Adult politicians, it seems.

The governing center-right UMP party and the opposition Socialists both said they had agreed not to use text messages or Twitter to leak the proceedings in real time, as happened twice this year during closed-door appearances by Prime Minister Francois Fillon and French soccer coach Raymond Domenech. via www.reuters.com

Ok. So, wouldn't you know it? Adult politicians need a social media policy...

Highlights from My Conversation with Joan Koerber-Walker, founder of Core Purpose

Joan-Koerber Walker is the founder and President of Core Purpose. She joined the show for a 2nd time recently. You can listen to our conversation here.

Core Purpose specializes in building solutions that enable clients to focus more of their resources and energy on what they are passionate about and best at in a way that makes financial sense.

See? Joan and her organization help their clients find their core purpose, connect that with their clients’ employees and execute in a sustainable fashion.

Joan was the CEO of Arizona Small Business Association where she worked with the talented team of staff and volunteers tackling challenges like health-care, workforce development, and growing local businesses as an economic development strategy. And before that she was successful in the Big Corporate World.

Joan, how are you? Thank you for being on our show. How are you? What are you working on?

When we spoke last summer we talked about we were in a recession, a depression and how were we going to tackle all the challenges that impact business at every level.

We’re still bumping along the bottom. Companies, start-ups or big global companies are still struggling with the question of why are in business...what are we trying to accomplish and who will we get to the yes that gets every team member to sparkle.

And when you get to the yes that’s when you’re following your core purpose.

You live in Arizona. How is Arizona's economy now?

Arizona was hit hardest by this economy. We’ll take them as a leading indicator for the rest of the country for receiving from this economy.

Arizona’s economy was based on two areas hit hardest by this recession. We had two primary streams of income:

• Income stream #1: real estate.

• Income stream 2 was retail, consumer, spending.

When we had banks collapsing, real estate construction coming to a halt and foreclosures rising then retail spending came to a halt.

Budget cuts but not enough to balance it. Tax increases were approved to keep key ares of the infrastructure then

When government can’t solve the problems their self then citizens come up with creative ideas to solve these problems.

There’s been pretty high profile legislation in the recent 12 months. We’ve seen everyone coming together on a critical issue to find a way to come work out what’s come to be a national issue.

That’s the Arizona Immigration Law, SB-1070. It pertains to jobs, business growth, what’s your thoughts?

It’s been very momentous piece of legislation. From a small business perspective, it’s the first time a state is boycotting another state on this issue. That’s how divisive it is.

The important thing about SB-1070 is that it’s not an immigration bill. It’s an illegal immigration. It’s focused on people breaking the law.

The challenge is that it’s based on federal law. And not all federal laws are that great. And it’s like a patchworked quilt where not everything lines up right.

It has ramifications for law enforcement, business, current residents.

Hundreds of small business people gathered and shaped themselves in a big SOS asking the Washington to please help. Otherwise, we’ll continue to have these patchwork solutions in each state.

Arizona is a gateway where these problems come through and they don’t stay here. And they show up in places like...Iowa.

We have to remember that there are different issues that have to be addressed. Issue one is we have to secure the border. Equally important is the crime statistic you hear about. They are not the guy coming across the border to find a job. It’s the people in the business of bringing people and drugs over the border. Very often instead of taking cash back across the border they take guns. That creates problems for our partner south of the border.

The reason you see laws like this...holding employers accountable for hiring undocumented workers, penalties for aiding and abetting bringing people over the border and checking people for citizenship when they break the law.

The reason they go after employers is that if there’s not that opportunity for a job then less will come over.

Now, dealing with SB-1070 is like closing the barn door. You still have the situation of all those people here now. Some of it is generational. And it gets difficult when both sides start screaming at each other.

It goes back to a post I wrote, Answer or Hypothesis, where you need a place to test a solution. Thinking about your own career, our roles as leaders, it’s really important we remember we rarely have a perfect solution. We have a hypothesis and we test it. We take a step forward.

The reality is that when you have a complex answer you have to start with a hypothesis and test it, take a step forward, test the parameters.

Compare this conversation about the SB-1070 bill to that of a company needing a solution to a complex problem. Every department has their stand, their perspective. It seems like there was no real clear purpose leading that discussion.

No, no. Their purpose was clear. They were going to act because the federal government had not. They had specific things they needed to stop. And they had only a few things they could do.

The reality is that the states do not enforce federal law. So, they created a state law that mirrored the federal law.

They had to do something and that’s the best they could do.

Let’s say we talk a year from now. And Arizona’s governor, Jan Brewer, has made you Immigration Czar. What are the three things you’ve implemented that move this conversation forward.

That’s tricky. It’s tricky because the reason we’re talking here is that the conversation is very diverse. We’re a nation of laws. The reality is that we can’t restructure a state or federal law and implement it in a year.

Whomever is given the job will fail, if they are measured on a 12-month forecast.

Let’s bring that back to having a core purpose, understanding why you are doing, what you are going to do and how you are going to do it and getting a consensus on yes among all the members.

Everyone’s going in their own direction instead of one unifying goal.

SB-1070 is addressing a challenge we hope can be solved in our lifetime.

The first thing is everyone on board has to agree why you’re doing what you’re doing. If you cannot as a leader clearly explain why we’re doing what we’re doing...it’s highly unlikely a consensus will follow.

If you have the wrong core purpose you get the wrong results.

We saw that in the banking community, the Wall Street debacle. If the reason you’re in business is to make more money and that’s it....you’re going to make a bad decision.

Those things we talk about are the results of making good decisions. If you’re in the business to make life better for your customers or make a better widget...to prevent pain and suffering...those are reasons to be in business. You can find people who truly believe in your purpose and you can hire those people and you’re not going to have to motivate them because they come to you motivated. You just need to give them direction.

The first question that I ask is why are you in business. Why are we having this meeting? What do you want to accomplish by following the path you’re following.

If they can’t answer those questions then they’re not going to get the results they want.

Let’s talk about what you do with Core Purpose. What are the catalysts that bring a client to you? What are the events that let them know we’re not on track on moving towards their common goal.

The time that people normally come knocking at my door, the people I spend my time with are Boards of Directors, Executive leaders, General Managers, people who are leaders. Leaders need help. They don’t have people they can turn to for help.

Normally when there is a challenge, it’s marketing is changing, it’s customer base is changing, there’s a problem the leadership has looked around the room and said we don’t have a solution.

Then someone in their organization will say “Someone needs to call that girl. And approaching 50 I like being called a girl.”

Most of the time when they say ‘we have this problem we need to solve.’ normally that’s not the problem. That’s the symptom of the problem. We keep going and asking why this is happening. And we’ll follow the why’s all the way back to the root causes.

When we go in and start asking those questions and that root cause can be anything...

The main thing is that being in business for over 30 years Core Purpose has a network of over 200 experts we can bring in to address those root causes. We can do triage but we can also bring in the best experts from around the country who can not only stop the bleeding and start getting the organization healthy again.

Our goal at core purpose is to help companies make the most of who they are...for the people who matter: their shareholders, their employees, their customers and partners.

Just imagine if every company focused on doing what’s right then we wouldn’t have an economic downturn.

That’s a great economic recovery program. It sounds so simple. How do companies get off-track?

We have to separate it into public and private companies. When you look at public companies you are only as good as your last quarter. And the markets adjust. That drives us to short-term decision making so that our stock price doesn’t tank and we have a ll sorts of problems from that.

We drive public companies to short-term, opportunistic, decision-making. That’s what effected our economy.

John Talton wrote an incredible piece talking about Apple, specifically about the iPad.

• 25,000 employees working at Apple here in the US.
  

• 250,000 working for Apple overseas.

Is there any question why we have a competitive challenge here at home.

On the other side, let’s look at small business. Small business is very much in survival mode. It’s only as good as its last bank statement. If that business starts runs out of money it’s going to come out of the small business owner’s pocket.

Where is the capital coming for small business in his downturn? It’s coming from the small business owner. Banks, angels, VCs are all on the sidelines. It’s coming out of the personal life saving of the small business owner. They invested their entire life savings in this company.

The challenge that faces big and small companies goes back to short-term decision-making rather than going back and looking at the root causes with a team that shares a common goal.

My friend Erika Andersen coined a favorite phrase of mine. That’s reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. She used it in her book Being Strategic. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future when you created Core Purpose? Has it changed in this past year?

That’s a tricky question!

Core Purpose is one of the things I’m involved in. In the case of Core Purpose, we started in a downturn. Core Purpose started in times like these...It does best in times like these because people see they need help. Our purpose in starting Core Purpose was in helping people grow.

We’ve continued with that focus. That’s served us well.

I love being involved in multiple projects. I serve on the Board of Directors of a bio-tech firm in San Diego. That’s personally when I look at my RA it’s that not only my core purpose as an individual but find organizations whose core purpose I can believe in and help them get there.

I hope that I can do that for awhile.

What are some of the metrics, other than longevity, that show your progress towards hoped-for future?

Our customer base has expanded and we’ve learned over time who our customers are.

The small businesses in the community, we’ll work with in a seminar format and through our blogs and giving back to the community. Many of the problems we work on are too expensive for small businesses to pay for.

I personally find it very rewarding to work with small businesses. That’s why I work with organizations that help small business in disadvantaged communities. That’s why I write the Core Purpose blog which doesn’t sell anything. That’s why I’ll talk with any small business for an hour for free. And then I’ll point them to the resources they need.

That’s how we move forward.

I was going to Tweet about this but then I thought maybe you don’t want a lot of quirky people talking with you for an hour.

I have 5 public Twitter profiles:

• JoanKW
  

• JKWLeadership

• JKWGrowth

• JKWinnovation

• CorePurpose

Each of them is focused on  those subject areas.

Tweet me a question and I’ll see if I can find a solution or articulate a hypothesis.

All entrepreneurs face and overcome challenges along their journey. What have been the 3 biggest challenges you’ve faced and overcome since starting this journey.

The biggest challenge I faced when I started was being alone. All of a sudden when I left corporate American was how do I survive on my own. That’s rebuilding an infrastructure that’s cost effective. Understanding what was the right working structure.

Marty Zwilling wrote a post about Corp executives who leave. If you’re over 40 don’t, because you’re too set in your ways. That’s a real challenge from being part of an eco-system to being on your own.

#2 is understanding capital budgets. When you get into start-up mode, if you think you're going to be cash-flow positive in a year, you need the money to run it for a year. You get paid last. You have to have enough personal capital to pay your own bills during this time, while you’re building that business.

If you can’t finance your business and your home life then you are dangerously under-capitalized.

Make sure you understand what you need to live and support your business. You have to enough for both.

#3. It’s going right back to where we started this conversation. Know why you are in business. You may change the how. You may change the what. But stay true to why you started your business.

Jim Rohn said Leaders are readers. You’re a leader. What are you reading? What’s been your favorite books this year, fiction or not, business or not?

Actually this Fourth of July I read two trash novels with no redeeming values. Leaders, sometimes, need to regroup.

I also was re-reading The Recipe: a recipe for leaders that Core Purpose recently published.[can't find the link. sorry.]

I just got a preview copy of Bob Sutton’s new book Good Boss, Bad Boss.

Where can we find you on the web?

The easiest ways is to go to JoanKW on Twitter. If you’re looking for my blog it’s JKW.typepad.com. The company site is Core Purpose dot com.

Thanks, Joan, for another great conversation with insights, tips and solutions not only on business challenges but on the tougher challenges facing us.

Should policy be debated in social media?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently appointed 200 people to read through the 50,000 messages he has received from his 250,000 followers since he opened a Twitter account. His critics complain that the rambunctious President should spend less time tweeting and more time trying to solve the country’s problems. But are the two mutually exclusive? via www.futuregov.asia

These conversations in-person, on social media, 1-to-1 or crowdsourcing, form a classroom.  That classroom can drive their culture of learning, a culture where they pull from each other the new knowledge and skills required to solve the next bigger challenge. 

Organizations, leaders, fans and followers, customers and associates, voters and pundits have two choices: 

Join this classroom. Be part of the solution. Learn and grow and benefit from and bring benefits to the members who care enough to debate the challenges. 

Walk past this classroom . Be left behind when the solutions are discussed, implemented, refined, improved, stirred and repeated.

There's a classroom for us all. It's one where not only can we pull much needed knowledge and expertise, but one where our knowledge and expertise can be pulled* from us to provide solutions from others.  The choice is ours.

* The Power of Pull: How small moves smartly made can set big things in motion.

AT&T fights twit storm with social media customer care team

After being compared to Comcast, who up until recently was coined as lagging in the social media department, cell phone carrier AT&T are turning to a new strategy in social media with what they are calling the social-care team, that will put customers first and hopefully a calm in the ‘twit storm’ that follows its name...

Almost every day during the first half of 2010 #attfail and AT&T sucks were regular trending topics on Twitter.

The brand had originally used social media to forward its PR and marketing strategy, however quickly realized that without a customer care service in place - not many of their clientele were really listening.

via snoo.ws

ATT is learning. Their PR & Marketing strategy with social media is...cannot shout down this many unhappy customers they have created for this long.

Customers use social media to tell THEIR story of THEIR experience of your service. This story, THE CUSTOMER'S STORY is....the company's story (PR and marketing strategy for the agencies reading this post). It is always aligned. The company...creates and delivers the story. Customers merely share their experience of this story using social media.

Customers, individually, may have temporary interests in disparaging a brand. But, individually they cannot create the results where:

Almost every day during the first half of 2010 #attfail and "AT&T sucks" were regular trending topics on Twitter.

Nor can they generate this search result on Google for the term ATT Sucks:

That's 818,000 results. On Google. Ouch.

That's a lot of individual customers whose story with ATT is not a happy story. And who are motivated to share it online. For everyone.

That's why ATT's social media PR & Marketing strategy isn't heard. It's completely at odds with what a LOT of ATT customers experience. Regularly. For a long time. No amount of PR lipstick can cover this pig.

Chris Brogan is quoted in this article. Chris is far smarter than I am at all this. And I'm reasonably confident his quote is out of context:

“I’m glad they [AT&T] are going to push forward,” said Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs. “They are a bit behind, like Comcast was. They’ve really let the media run the story for the longest time.”

I read, the media in this article on social media to be synonymous with social media.

I first read this quote as implying, possibly, that ATT is a victim of the media run wild.

That's not Chris's style. And it's also not the truth.

ATT for the longest time has chosen to invest in the experiences of their PR & Marketing departments, agencies and their budgets. That's why THEIR story of ATT is shared with such glowing terms.

And that's why their customers use social media to share THEIR story using different terms.

Given the results of ATT's investment priorities...has it been successful?

And if ATT's plans for social media customer care only goes as far as happy-talk platitudes of customer service...we care, we understand, we're sorry...with no real change in their policies and quality of service....I predict you'll see:

• #attfail and ATTSucks remain top trending topics on Twitter

• Google results for ATT Sucks will move towards the same number as Ashton Kutcher's followers on Twitter. (1 million+)

Link: Apologies. I found this story on Twitter. And I can't find the username who shared it.

Today’s Three R’s: Runnin’, 'Riting and Retweetin’

Back in the day the three R’s were readin’ ‘riting and ‘rithmetic. I think now Runnin’, Writing and Retweeting...could be The Three R’s 2.0.

I was out for a run today, right after a great radio show with Warren Whitlock. ( And at 55 I’ve earned the right to use that term, run, generously. ) Headphones were in place. But I chose silence, instead.

As I ran in silence and in the heat...I found the connections among the loose threads of conversations. Snippets of ideas, some quotes from the most recent guest on the radio show, a prospect that could be turning to a client, some recent events online and off, slowly wove themselves with their common themes...as I shuffled along in that long, slow, run.

Together with this post, I composed 2 more which I'll write today-ish and post next week:

• You can't accept our order? Hire somebody!

• 2-Step Marketing Plan

And as I kept running and thinking about this post, it seemed today’s skills are about creativity, communication and connection or Running, Writing, and Retweeting.

• Creativity comes during the running. A few endorphins, some alert but unfocused awareness during the run, a relaxed mind, a little bump in the heartrate, some infused mind-body coordination and...you have an aha moment of clarity.

• Communication comes during the writing of the blog post.

• Connections are made when I Retweet this blog post, now done automatically thanks to Typepad and Twitter’s friendship.

And in today's economy:

• Creativity is needed to drive ideas and solutions to keep a company out in front of its competitors and in front with its employees and customers.

• Communication skills are needed to communicate those ideas and create stakeholders in bringing the ideas to life.

• Connections are what’s needed to spread the solutions and what’s needed to bring a new source of ideas and energy, passion and enthusiasm, to the organization.

A little running accomplishes all three. It also helps with our obesity epidemic.

I’m thinking our educational system needs fewer standardized tests and more Runnin’, Writin’ and Retweeting. We’ll have more ideas, with better communication skills to share them, and more connections to share them with and better health to celebrate.

Maybe, social media policies can include an endorsement, encouragement, a nudge, even permission(!) to do a little runnin' before they write and retweet.