Colin Powell Leads With Curiosity

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Recently, General Colin Powell told me and several thousand other folks, “You’re a good leader when people follow out of curiosity.” Famous media mogul Barry Diller agrees: curiosity helps us outpace the competition, and avoid getting lost in the crowd.

This is great news for emerging leaders. The internet’s already taking most of us off into directions that are interesting, exciting, adventurous, new, and even controversial.

So we already enjoy asking ourselves “why not” and “what if?” You just need to become the first individual we think of when such questions arise. Then zap–you’re our fearless leader!

With no shortage of intriguing or thought-provoking material available on the internet, it’s never been this easy to come up with surprises and charm.

So nothing can stop you from becoming a good leader. Just give us a good reason to follow you. Out of curiosity.

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Ownership Isn’t For Real Leaders

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It’s ironic, isn’t it? We use social media super-widgets like Facebook; iPhones; and internet technologies to gain control over our lives. But in the overcrowded networking age they tend to reduce personal ownership of communications. This means less real productivity.

Think: how many of the last 20 non-salesmen you’ve tried to reach actually answered, maybe two or three? And if you’ve left messages, how many people returned your call in a reasonable amount of time–if ever?

Even friends or acquaintances, like strangers, seem too busy to talk. “Don’t call me, I’ll call you, when I want help or to chat about my priorities.”

This isn’t cruel or unfriendly behavior; it’s how we maintain ownership over our lives.

In a perfect world, everyone would be waiting for my call. Conducting business would be as easy as driving down the freeway at 2 a.m. But the communication superhighway is becoming snarled in a perpetual rush hour.

It’s the rare soul who’s willing to personally answer a call, or at least return it promptly.

That rare soul is also a Leader. Why? Because leadership’s no longer about status or position. It’s about offering more value to every task or interaction. And in our “drive-by” era, nothing is more valued than personal attention and authentic engagement.

Extraordinary leaders have always acknowledged others’ value, and relinquished direct ownership of tasks and solutions. Think of Kambei in “The Seven Samurai,” or the great CEOs. Each built teams respectfully, the way a conductor builds a great symphony orchestra. One superior participant and collaboration at a time.

This approach is also at the heart of Servant Leadership.

I feel like a celebrity every time I get through to the super-busy publisher of the local business newspaper. What a class act! And a few other folks are just as ready to answer and help when I call. Guess who I share my work or referrals with?

You carry your phone around to make calls with. Why not pull the autocratic little thing out of your pocket or purse when it rings as well? Your business will thank you for it.

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The Internet as “Experiential Marketplace”

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(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

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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.

Participating Is Never Enough

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Going to a party and waiting near the door to be noticed or approached isn’t being a “partygoer.”

Going to a networking meeting and simply handing out a stack of cards without connecting with anyone isn’t networking.

So how can anyone equate SEO to social media marketing, or typical social media marketing to authentic engagement?

You can participate socially, or at mixers, or in social media, without sharing anything of value. But what’s the point, when it’s so easy to move beyond participation to engagement? Simply turn the “flashlight” of your attention from yourself and what you need, to those around you.

When you get thirty seconds for self-introduction, use twenty of them to celebrate or recognize someone else in the room. Follow your grandmother’s advice and listen twice as much as you talk. Share an intriguing idea or funny story and make yourself memorable.

Online or offline, separate from the crowd to get meaningful results. A leader doesn’t try to disappear into their crowd of followers, he or she stands out and brings more value than anyone else. Be special and you’ll make the people you meet feel special too. Nearly instant celebrity!

As crowded as things get in the world (virtual or real-life), participating simply means standing still. Soon you’ll be surrounded. But the faceless, uncaring people who surround you will take you where they are going, not where you want to go. Stop wasting your passion, your gifts, your uniqueness. Stop settling for participation and move down the path to leadership and real success.

$ — Social Media’s “Lost Symbol”

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Does SEO really generate serious money for the average small business? Here’s a surprising fact: even its own gurus aren’t sure.

At first blush this proposition seems like a no-brainer. Selling means “keeping the funnel full.”  So the bigger your “funnel” and the more eyes you attract, the more money you should make, right? And does anybody not want to be like Google?

Google has huge resources and a growing family of great products. We don’t. If hundreds (or even thousands) of online followers join your list of strangers, have you really filled your sales funnel, or just installed a heating duct in your marketing plan?

There’s a big difference between a funnel and a heating duct. Using a funnel, you qualify your leads and focus your efforts on the best prospects. SEO’s heating duct approach just brings in lots of hot air.

SEO experts say you’ll make money by improving your search engine ranking, and therefore traffic. But even they admit that even major social media sites are money losers and that SEO’s success is uncertain. One of them wrote in a LinkedIn discussion group,

“Rank does not necessarily lead to traffic and traffic doesn’t necessarily lead to conversion. Conversion is the real business goal that we should be delivering in my view.”

Another one asked, “Is social media ROI unmeasurable?” How can he keep taking your hard-earned money if he doesn’t know?

And those same experts dismiss branding and engagement as mere distractions, “intangible excuse[s] we use to avoid the fact that we have nothing to measure.” Sorry, Charlie; there’s actually plenty to measure when you connect with real people. It’s just nothing that moves your money to the experts’ bank accounts.

So you decide. Is your business goal having big numbers that look good on a chart, or smaller numbers that generate real conversion numbers–and lasting relationships. Quantity or quality?

The Marketing Mantra doesn’t try to generate huge numbers or first-page rankings. It will, however, generate measurable results for your branding and engagement efforts. It also documents what led your audience from “stranger” to “supporter” status in their own words.

You can pay experts a lot of money for big readership. Or invest a few dollars and build market leadership. It’s time to authentically engage with identifiable people who’ll keep supporting you because you offer them so much real value.

To learn more, please visit http://www.yourmarketingmantra.com.

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A New Quality Culture

I recently told members of the American Society for Quality how social media-style communications can help reduce a company’s COQ and engage its stakeholders. Many weren’t sure how the Marketing Mantra process actually works. Here’s an overview of this tool’s function, along with a mini case study.

A Mantra is intended to enhance communications, as well as the effectiveness of existing business plans or methodologies. It can help reduce costs, streamline operations, and improve morale and teamwork in a sustainable new culture of quality. It has been proven effective with any individual, team and company that’s ready to move their communications into the social media age.

A Marketing Mantra isn’t a tagline. It never describes professional operations like a resume or organization chart. The fact is, most employees are self-educated experts who gain their expertise by spending lots of time on social media and the internet. No successful blogger or online expert would alienate them by asking them to slog through operation or job descriptions. Neither should their CEO.

A Mantra is not about operations. Its focus is the intuitive side of science, technique and process. That’s how it encourages inclusive leadership and full engagement.

It helps communicate new information: innate value, changing perceptions of ownership, or our need for recognition. Such new content identifies the firm as an industry leader with confidence and poise. It never promotes ego and empty generalities because these always sabotage content. Business messages must be clear, concise and compelling; written or spoken in a conversational, relaxed and informative style.

Bringing the CEO’s vision to life will be the job of every deeply engaged stakeholder. Within the company’s organization, each can bring abundant new value to his or her “silo-less” Mantra team. Then he or she will naturally become a leader. And the company’s recognition of that new leadership role will help intensify the stakeholder’s sense of commitment to the company’s long-term goals.

For the case study, let’s follow a workshop organized for a local IT startup. Its CEO and executive team wanted more authentic engagement with each other, as well as with their prospects or customers.

Step 1: Intangibles Participants began by writing down a number of their unique values or qualities on the Mantra worksheet. Each word expressed an attitude, approach, intent etc. These intangibles, more than procedural or technical skills, represent the real impetus for anyone’s past successes and future growth.

This company’s intangibles, for example, included “innovation,” “nurturing,” “discernment,” “fun,” and “bonding.”

Step 2: Grouping Then they organized the 20 intangibles into four or five groups of words with shared characteristics–groups that we labeled “collaboration,” “passion,”  “synthesize,” etc.

Step 3: Instill rare meaning and relevance Next they chose the words from each group that really resonated, combining them into a new set of words or a phrase just three words long. This raw “mantra” would be polished and refined until it could become a word platform strong enough to support any new business, team, community or “tribe.”

Step 4:  Content Finally, the participants began making a plan for content that would be good enough to attract and persuade a new audience of coworkers, prospects or customers. These people are prime candidates to become steadfast members of the team, or of the company’s new quality-driven community.

And every piece of successful content will be rich with relevance, proof and value.

Of course, the ultimate power of communications is still hidden from us in the future. But one thing is certain: our old comfort zones have evaporated. New business models await the most evolved companies. And in your workplace, the individuals who can reduce your cost of quality are standing around you now. Begin building the quality culture, and they will come.

Crowds Haven’t Changed, Really…

Cover of Crowds and Power

In the early 1960s, as I was heading into teenage confusion, my mother told my twin brother and me about a new book, Elias Canetti‘s Crowds and Power–advertised at the time as “the thinking man’s guide to reality.”

I have to smile, remembering that fifty years ago Canetti noted that a crowd “wants to grow,” is based on “equality,” “loves density” and “needs a direction.”  His book should be required reading for every marketer.

Only trouble is that nobody reads any more; we scan.