Get Tweetable

* Which customers or collaborators can help your business grow?
* Decision makers, always in the market for quality information.
* As long as it’s relevant, clear and concise. Really concise.
* Don’t expect them to read wordy, derivative articles or blogs.
* Or hang around networking events and flaccid Facebook pages.
* They demand real value, in messages that’ll fit on iPhone screens.
* Offer them bite-sized solutions to business problems and challenges.
* Excellent concise content can transform leaders into your followers.
* They’ll read articles like this on Twitter, posted one line at a time.
* So your messages will help business succeed for years to come.
* Just keep the messages short and sweet. Tweet tweet.

Clouds and Conversations

On Monday I was at a “slow media” event with four oil industry experts. In other words, a great conversation.

I helped the geologist, geophysicist, project manager and operations manager interview each other about a challenging job. They didn’t talk about what they were doing, as much as why they were doing it well.

It went great. The geologist even offered the operations guy an impromptu solution to his problem.

Why do such highly intelligent and well trained engineers, working at a leading corporation, rarely have these invigorating cross-discipline conversations? Must be the silo effect.

At most larger companies, it’s still normal to over-categorize their employees. Process experts keep projects “atomized,” broken down into parts so each part can be treated as a real object, analyzed and manipulated . . . forever.

But the internet and social media might bring real change to project management. “Clouds,” creative brainstorming and other post-industrial techniques are gaining momentum. Internet users prefer intuitive, collaborative projects in which they can indulge their curiosity.

Workable process will always be important. But truly productive process benefits from a spoonful of mystery. Systematic curiosity will be part of every great business conversation from now on.

Business conversations of the future will help bring social media thinking into your workplace.

New Hope For Recovering Salesmen

Hi, my name is Carey and I’m a salesman. A recovering salesman. And thanks to social media you can recover, too.

Don’t get me wrong, I love sales. It’s even addicting. But I love making a decent living more than sales, which has put me on the road to recovery.

It won’t be easy to give up the familiar sales rush that comes from enthusing across the bows of busy, preoccupied strangers about opinions and hopes that I hope will move them to action. Unfortunately, prospects knew the game as well as I.

My most important opinion: I deserve to get paid for sharing my employer’s opinions of his service or product. My fondest hope: a prospect will give me money before I can finish my pitch. That way I won’t have to ask him or her for the sale.

Most people don’t have the money or interest to purchase; so there was rarely a snowball’s chance in hell of making a sale. And that’s even before my carefully rehearsed pitch had a chance to kill any interest in me or what I’m offering.

We all know great sales professionals who are making money. For example, my friend and advisor Frank Hurtte of River Heights Consulting does his homework, carefully chooses the best prospects, qualifies them, and presents compelling reasons to buy during his carefully orchestrated campaigns.

Times change, of course; and technology will help ease the pain of recovering salesmen. Because online opinions are often bundled with solid information, we can use them together and “sell” even some knee-jerk opinion to somebody–with a stray fact or two as evidence. And when we pass on a favorite blogger’s opinion, we have their gazilllion followers as proof that it has merit.

So take heart. recover and prosper! In the social media age, we have nothing to lose but . . . the nothing on those commission checks.

How can legions of recovering salesmen make a decent living? Stay tuned. But remember: You’ll only be getting one man’s opinion.

How To Monetize Brilliant Ideas

Of course you have brilliant ideas. But to monetize them you need a responsive team of expert advisors, and a doable process that allows you to tap into their expertise.

This isn’t new. Almost a century ago, the sainted Napoleon Hill told businesses to create a kind of Mastermind group.

Business incubation companies usually help established companies. Sole proprietors and startups often rely on Mastermind support groups, or agencies like SCORE.

You know a little about business incubators and how well they work. Wikipedia says:

“Business incubators are programs designed to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support resources and services, developed and orchestrated by incubator management and offered both in the incubator and through its network of contacts. Incubators vary in the way they deliver their services, in their organizational structure, and in the types of clients they serve. Successful completion of a business incubation program increases the likelihood that a start-up company will stay in business for the long term.

“Historically, 87% of incubator graduates stay in business.”

Wow, 87%? That’s about the same as the depressing percentage of new businesses that close within their first few years. Incubators clearly help, and could do even better if the business had a home grown Mastermind group, and was ready to fully tap into its skills and talents.

You could hire an incubator company, or invest time and effort into working with SCORE and SBDCs. But most of their experience is in industrial age business. Even if that approach still worked in the internet age, you’re probably not ready to follow their suggestions without educating yourself first.

Every day you spend hours online educating yourself. It’s quick and easy because so much information is modularized and partially filtered by super-widgets like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or StumbleUpon.

Why don’t more businesses create greater value from all that information? Why can’t they organize and tap into this unlimited pool of expertise? Simply because they lack the right implementation strategy and plan; a customized “Social Media Business Incubation for Dummies” process.

One simple, disruptive-technology process helps transform raw ideas–yours or others’–into productive, sustainable action. Why not start “incubating” your own business this week?

First, create a clear vision of what makes your business unique. Not what you do, but why you do it so well. You’ll stay focused, and easily screen out unhelpful bits of information and false prophets. Next, build authentic, long-term engagement with your stakeholders, tapping into all their wisdom and experience. Finally, plan and execute world-class communications that will really build your business.

The tools you need for viral success are already familiar to anyone who uses social media. Begin your new business incubation program and thrive.

The Internet as “Experiential Marketplace”

Image via Wikipedia

(Dedicated to my friends at Jobs Ministry Southwest)
It makes the news when an 89-year-old man straps himself onto the top of a plane for his 20th wing-walking jaunt over the English Channel (http://bit.ly/7IQpwR). He’s one example of the growing experiential marketplace.

It’s not as newsworthy when a laid-off executive sees his or her job status as “just another stage of exploration” and actively begins “tossing aside presumed limitations” by creating or enriching opportunities on the internet. But these men and women achieve much more in the long run than aging thrill seekers.

Their families, industry and community all benefit every day from their vision and bravery.

It takes guts to put aside years of identifying yourself with a title or job description, and adopt entirely new modes of communication. It’s scary to join in the hunt for online success alongside much younger people. First you have to unlearn many outmoded “secrets of success” that you learned over your long, often illustrious career.

You have to see yourself as a leader rather than one more cog in some corporate machine.

You do whatever it takes to stand out, because you’re determined not to fade out.

God bless all those old-timers who challenge their physical limitations to try something completely different. But let’s also honor those who reinvent themselves and transform society into a new and better experiential marketplace.  These pros are charting a more elusive and uncertain territory, and helping improve the life experiences of millions of us uppity “younger folks.”

How not to connect

Image via Wikipedia

One evening many years ago I was standing in line at the train station in Maebashi, Japan. A middle-aged man came up and started practicing his limited English with a rapid-fire series of unrelated questions.

I answered in fluent Japanese, so he knew conversation was possible. But that wasn’t what he was after; he finished his half dozen questions and disappeared down the boulevard; mission accomplished.

For years I laughed at the memory. How could anyone confuse irrelevant, unsolicited phrases with meaningful engagement?

I’ve stopped laughing. Millions of social media users do the same thing and think they’ve accomplished something. The internet has come to resemble an enormous room full of strangers busily talking over each other, and believing they’re maintaining real relationships or selling teeth whitener.

The latter group even thinks they’re trembling on the brink of money for nothing. No really, nothing.

Yet this is how engagement doesn’t happen–it’s “empty calories.”

As our traditional safety nets and sources of recognition evaporate, we all need more personal validation and growth. And belonging to a supportive new culture or “tribe” is what most Americans are seeking. Always have, always will.

The internet is history’s greatest engagement tool. It will also help businesses tap into the greatest asset we could dream of: our internal and external customers. We just need to use it better.

Every tool you need to make authentic engagement your business‘s hallmark is available and waiting. But to paraphrase the Zen saying, you must stop confusing the tools that point toward real engagement with engagement itself.

Stop being unwelcome and irrelevant like that guy in Maebashi. Get in touch.

Time to Reinvent ROI?

Today’s business news included a stark report on the American workplace. Only about half of our country’s workers are happy with what they are doing–a 22-year low.

Workers under 25 are the most unhappy demographic group, apparently. And unhappy older workers are less inclined to share their knowledge, skills and experience with younger counterparts.

Both facts relate to workplace education and training. Younger workers, who spend the most time online, are educating themselves and feel less dependent on corporate training programs. And older workers’ decreasing contributions to overall worker development will add pressure for a company to invest in high quality training programs.

But the biggest losers will be large, well-established and very expensive internal programs such as Quality and Safety. Even before the recent business downturn, companies were dealing with an erosion in employee commitment to these initiatives. And the more unhappy and demoralized a workforce becomes, the less likely its members will be to keep their workplace safe and their output quality high.

Given the soaring Cost of Quality figures that most companies face–even those using Six Sigma, Lean or similar management improvemnt methodologies–such news can only have a negative impact on ROI. And where Quality standards go, so goes customer satisfaction; more bad news.

If the downturn was almost over, finding solutions to these significant problems might be easier. But most signs point to a full U.S. recovery being weak and far off. Some immediate action to initiate meaningful change and increase real engagement of rank and file workers is called for.

The first place to look may be our traditional definition of ROI.

Would new measurements and standards help executives develop strategies more pertinent to our changing business landscapes? What would it take for corporate leaders to tap into the positive aspects of social media (sense of ownership, new willingness to teach and learn, a more dynamic engagement model, etc) while presenting viable alternatives to some of social media’s inherent weaknesses?

Some type of change is already on the way. More and more Americans are accepting responsibility for their own success, and uncovering innovative ways to ward off failure.

Tweetups and Meetups, Stumbling and unfriending, viral posting and roasting . . . a whole new generation of investment opportunities and potholes is emerging. How well companies can get some bottom-line return on such changes may determine the severity and longevity of our current business malaise.

Build a Corporate Culture the Old Fashioned Way: Institutionalize It

I lived in Japan for eight years in the ’60s and ’70s, when it was hard to miss crowds of coworkers beginning their day with calisthenics and brief motivational speeches by managers. At the beginning of every workday any open space might come alive with neat rows of jumping jacks and jills. Even in offices, people did it behind their desks.

And this wasn’t just for workdays. One summer I spent a week camping near the ocean in Niigata Prefecture. Every morning Japan’s top-rated radio program blared calisthenics from loudspeakers, like a vacation reveille. Hundreds of campers up and down the beach dutifully hopped from their sleeping bags to do squats and stretches in unison.

Early morning calisthenics apparently became a national pastime during World War II, when the military government decided that every citizen should be ready to repel the expected Allied invasion. Since their only weapons would be sharpened bamboo poles, the citizen soldiers would obviously have to stay in good physical condition.

This invigorating ritual also came in handy after the war, when assembly-line workers streamed into factories to help create Japan’s industrial “miracle.”

It was never hard to get most Japanese to participate. Since the feudalistic days Japan has been a nation of poor rice farmers; crops failed without highly focused cooperative effort during planting and harvest seasons.

The Japanese model spread across East Asia and attracted the attention of some important visitors. At a Korean tennis-ball factory in the 1970s, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton was inspired to institute a similar kind of team-building activity, and it became part of the retail behemoth’s corporate culture.

Even today, as each shift starts all Wal-Mart employees everywhere must follow a manager’s lead as he or she does a few calisthenics and group shouts of “Good morning, [colleague]!” — clap, clap, stomp, stomp — “Whoo-whoo!” To make the exercise more relevant, part of the group cheer includes a hearty chanted prediction of the store’s success.

Wal-Mart believes this helps employees more efficiently move over 5.5 billion cases of merchandise a year. But this practice also blurs the line separating corporate process (for greater efficiency) and company culture (which should revolve largely around inefficient people).

Raising their hands in a pledge to work safely reminds employees to help reduce company costs. But is it viable culture for smaller businesses in the social media age, when every company is increasingly focused on HR and employees are increasingly fractious? Stay tuned.

Are SEO Junkies Just Desperate For Attention?

Image via Wikipedia

There are benefits to growing older. You don’t have to show your ID all the time, and . . . uh . . . you’re not so obsessed with getting the attention of strangers.

Okay, so there aren’t many benefits. But that second one is a biggie.

Nothing shouts “immature” like being noisy in public places: rattling windows with the high volume in your souped-up car radio. Showing passersby how drunk and disorderly you can be. Complaining loudly for no good reason at a checkout line, or in an airplane.

It’s normal for young people to confuse attention with respect; they’ll learn the difference as they grow up. But when mature adults start to equate “eyes” with “the prize” (success) we’re just kidding ourselves.

Could our passionate quest for getting an obscene number of hits be simply a sign of our second childhood–or laziness?

In the end, what exactly do those thousands of followers get you? If just two of them decide you have something of value and give you a little business, you haven’t accomplished much of anything. To be blunt, your ROI sucks.

You would have been better off going to a free networking breakfast and picking up two solid leads. At least then you’d have gotten a decent meal.

Everybody knows that Google and certain experts have made millions–or more–with good SEO tools. But unlike the millions of wannabes out here, they offer something of real value to every visitor. They’re leaders because they’ve brought the most value to the table, not because they’ve brought the most visitors to their site.

Eyes aren’t really the prize. Stop filling the coffers of SEO technicians because of dreams of sugarplums dancing in your head. Make your online brand quality, not quantity.

It’s time to stop trying to rattle more windows, and start getting authentically engaged.

Personalize your company with success

How can we persuade CEOs to create for their all-important knowledge workers:

* An authentic reason to believe–in themselves and their company
* All the tools they know they’ll need to succeed
* A culture that organically nurtures self-education
* An ideal environment to effectively deploy everything they have to offer
* A new sense of trust and hope in the company, and their colleagues
* Many new ways to add value to their team and workplace
* Significant savings in cost and resources, one verifiable percent at a time, and
* A sense of engagement that rivals the best social media interactions?

Anyone who can help wake up a CEO “asleep at the wheel” will gain attention and prestige. But the person who has a practical way to achieve these objectives at every level of an organization will have the field all to him- or herself.

As someone once said, “Don’t be so busy counting your chickens you overlook the ducks standing nearby.”