to tweet or not to tweet...

Tweeting

...that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the stings and scorns of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.

(with apologies to the Bard). (And, sorry, that’s 205 characters).

Anyone who hasn’t used Twitter is usually quick to call those who do “twits”. It’s a worn-out pun now, folks. With Twitter claiming 175 million registered users, it’s surely time to at least consider it seriously. It has also been around long enough for us to make a few observations on the way it has changed, enhanced or undermined the way we communicate.

With only 140 characters in which to express yourself, it seems to some that a tweet is a quintessential example of the dumbed-down sound bite. There are others to whom it is a thing of beauty. Yoko Ono is a keen tweeter who was recently quoted as saying:

“it’s almost like a haiku, but involving other people in a participation act”.

Speaking of haiku, there are those who set themselves the challenge of writing poetry or a prose poem in 140 characters - and there’s an app for that: TwiHaiku. Check out Unfold Press: “the most poetic 140 characters you’ll read today”. Think I’m kidding? Consider the exquisite little poems on their site.

Then of course there is the cacophony that you can encounter when launching into Twitter.  It may seem less like haiku and more like the noisiest cocktail party you’ve ever attended. But, as with a cocktail party, the key is to engage with the conversation that interests you and add your own comments. If the subject is enticing, those first comments may lead you to a blog or a website or an article that warrants your undivided attention. Or the subject might just be part of the stream of daily culture that passes you by, maybe or maybe not leaving impressions or information in its wake. Just like a regular conversation. And unlike television, or even a book, you get to respond. Yes, you are included in the conversation.


Here's what a recent conference speaker Tom Bedecarré  had to say about using Twitter in business:

"One important question is, how to understand the change from a push model to a collaborative discussion. I find that clients struggle with that change. The good thing is, whatever is new and interesting gets a lot of attention. For a brand, last year it was the iPhone application, this year it is the Facebook page ... 

Twitter is used for a lot of different things – that is one of the interesting things about it. People are creating business opportunities, use it to communicate with friends, publish something or tell the people out there about a brand. This is why I don't understand Twitter haters. There is something really exiting about Twitter. This is going to be a platform that will lead to great ideas."

Twitter may be just the thing for 175 million people, but not for you. That’s fine. But it's certainly interesting to observe just what it can and does do to our communications.  

the end of email?

end of the road?

More articles are emerging about the end of email. This may seem almost as momentous as the end of history. But before you go buy some carrier pigeons, the discussion so far is only about internal company email.

For such email, the future is looking less and less secure. Personally, I don’t mind email for business - for me it is quick, leaves a paper trail, is date stamped automatically...and, importantly, I have the guts to delete now and delete often, where appropriate.

But the people doing the research are telling us that many inside companies, including CEOs, are spending up to 20 hours a week doing nothing but dealing with email. There is a plethora of advice about how to stay on top of email, how to ration the time you spend on it, email etiquette and so on, but still the tool (and that’s all it is) more often produces inefficiency than the reverse.

One of my biggest bugbears with inter-company or inter-firm email is that someone can spend ten valuable minutes sitting on her or his butt carefully composing an email to me, when I’m just a few steps away. How about some old technology folks? Like walking and conversing? It would help your health.

This article in the The Sydney Morning Herald says that French company Atos (74,000 employees) aims at banning internal email completely by 2013.

CEOs are looking at new ways of doing things. Using micro blogging for short announcements to multiple people (that don’t need an answer), electronic scheduling tools for getting people together without the discussion, instant messaging for a quick word with someone on a different floor, and Facebook-style interfaces for more efficient conversations.

This article by Jill Duffy  makes a case for the superior utility of social media style communication tools within companies: “brevity by design”, a team ethos, actually including more people across departments in discussions.

While this is about internal company email, not email generally, you never know how these things can spread. Futurists might indulge in some wild-seeming speculations about this trend -- and who’s to say what the future of email will be? Watch this space.

the rat race

Office life: can you stand it?

Business people are not all the same just because they all sit at desks. 

Not that they all do just sit. In a recent New York Times report, an article by Eric Copage highlighted the health dangers of sitting all day, and promoted the benefits of getting up from your chair and moving about during the working day. It seems that exercising out of office hours is not enough on its own to combat the risks of sitting on your butt all day. 

Copage reports that a firm in Minneapolis, hoping to help matters, has introduced walking meetings. Yep, you read that right. In their conference room they have set up “treadmill desks” with height-adjustable working surfaces. Employees have also been provided with treadmill desks with computers. Then there’s wireless headsets for walking about while talking on the phone.

As someone who spent a lot of years sitting down in an office, I fully endorse any efforts to change that dynamic and get people moving during their working day. Taking the stairs between floors instead of the lift is great. Going to talk to someone instead of sending yet another rambling email can be good. A small gym within the office is convenient. Breaks for activity would be innovative. I’ll even endorse sitting on a balance ball.

But those guys walking on the treadmill while they work -- that just defines “rat race” for me. 

creativity: group think or solo activity?

'I just want to be alone'

Creative people are famously loners, at least in stereotype. But in business, there is a view that ‘brain-storming’ in a group, and being constantly connected with others in an open-plan office is the way to unleash new ideas and allow people to access their inner Steve Jobs. 

In an interesting article recently for the New York Times, Anita Patil reviews some of the current thinking on this topic. She says that recent research has shown that brainstorming may be inefficient:

“The problem? Well, other people. In a group, people can tend to fixate on one idea, blocking out other possibilities, or they sit back and let others do the work. Eventually...group members start to mimic others’ opinions and conform.”

Sound like a meeting near you? 

Patil also points out that the creative process can have “a quiet part”. Smart ideas don’t always come from the people with the dazzling charisma. And even those people may need some contemplative time out to recharge and connect with their best ideas.

As for open plan offices, Susan Cain, author of “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” is rather scathing:

“...corralled into endless meetings or conference calls conducted in offices that afford no respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers. Studies show that open-plan offices make workers hostile, insecure and distracted.”

I think that the point here is that there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to the psychology of those who work in offices. Some may thrive on interaction and others may cringe at the constant barrage of people. A wise manager will play to an individual's strengths, and not try to force round pegs into square holes. And with that flurry of cliches, I'll leave you to think about it. Quietly.

are you really my friend?

do your customers love you?

I’ve commented before about using social media for business, and suggested that it is something most businesses should be looking at. But let’s not close our eyes to the pitfalls. In a recent report in the Australian media, the supermarket chain Woolworths found out the hard way how not to handle Facebook posting.

It seems that it posted a question on its Facebook page: “Finish this sentence: this weekend I can’t wait to....” Perhaps subliminally offended by the inanity of this, some “friends” of Woolworths took the opportunity to finish the sentence with gems such as “...throw out the fruit and veg I bought at Woolworths only 3 days ago that goes off so much more quickly than the green grocers,” and other such complaints. See Woolworths Facebook page here.

In another Facebook blooper, Westpac bank began deleting critical posts about its interest rate rises, thus indicating that their social media people have not grasped the concept of marketing in this medium. If you invite people - everyone - into a conversation, you don’t get to control what they say. The real skill in using Facebook and Twitter is to see and use the positive opportunities that come with engagement with your clients and customers. 

The article mentioned above singles out Qantas as another victim of social media, with angry tweets filling the Twittersphere during an industrial relations dispute; and the National Australia Bank as an example of successful engagement with customer criticisms, responding to suggestions and critiques positively and pro-actively. Social media is an activist sphere, and a responsive business can actually be changed and improved by its customers’ suggestions.

In the past you may have paid big money to survey your customers to find out how well recognised your brand is, whether it is associated with good value, what customer concerns really are. Welcome to social media, where the customers will tell you all this in a nanosecond, given a platform. 

It’s time not to just broadcast to your customers and clients, but also to listen to what they have to say.

And they are your friends. Really.

keep calm

British souvenir

I’ve just found a great story from last September about the ubiquitous and quintessentially British slogan KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. I bought my first souvenir carrying this slogan from the gift shop in the WWII bunkers known as The War Rooms. In my ignorance, I thought it was a reproduction of a real war-time slogan. It sounds so awfully plausible. Now I have learnt that although the Ministry of Information did produce posters bearing this slogan, they were (in a rare example of British self-insight) deemed too patronising and never saw the light of day.

In an intriguing backstory, it seems that in 2000 a bookseller in Northumberland found an old poster in the back of his shop. He checked with the Imperial War Museum that it was out of copyright, and started selling reproductions. He never applied to register the design as a trade mark, nor claimed copyright in the image.

In 2007 a more entrepreneurial businessman began selling mugs, t-shirts, and all kinds of other items bearing the slogan. His company is called Keep Calm and Carry On Ltd. The web site happily gives the historical background to the slogan and the poster - and it’s re-discovery in the bookshop.

As Telegraph journalist Gordon Rayner puts it:

“To begin with, both sides did manage to keep calm, but in April Mr Coop gained an EU trademark for the wording of the slogan, thus sparking what must inevitably be described as a right old carry on.”

It seems that applications to register the mark in the UK have been rejected, but OHIM has granted an EU Community Trade Mark.

A brief review of OHIM’s database does indeed show a “right old carry on”. Keep Calm And Carry On Ltd managed to achieve a registration, which has now had an application for cancellation for invalidity filed against it. The company now has a fresh application accepted, in a few extra classes, but no-one has opposed it yet. In between, an enterprising individual managed to have accepted an application to register the words in their familiar graphic form, complete with the crown logo. The Northumberland bookseller has opposed this one.

Interestingly, the slogan has spawned a plethora of spin-off slogans. Examples from the company’s own website include:

KEEP CALM AT CHRISTMAS
KEEP CALM AND COME IN (on a doormat)
KEEP CALM AND EAT CUPCAKES
KEEP CALM AND CUDDLE UP
GET EXCITED AND MAKE THINGS
KEEP CALM FOR CHAPS
KEEP CALM FOR LADIES
KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON COOKING
KEEP GLAM AND ROCK ON

and my personal favourite:

PANIC NOW AND FREAK OUT

Apart from these enterprising variations on a theme, Keep Calm and Carry On Ltd also has products using other war-time slogans - such as DIG FOR VICTORY.

The whole saga has resulted in quite a few people ignoring the maxim in the slogan. Here is a protest site collecting signatures to battle the grant of the EU trade mark registrations, and prevent applications for registration in the USA and Canada. Their slogan: KEEP CALM IS NOT A TRADE MARK.

Everyone should just keep calm. The lawyers will carry on.

strategy v. goals

Achieving your goals

Strategy: a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.

Goal: the object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result.

(Oxford Dictionary)

It is not uncommon advice - and many people follow it when the New Year dawns - to set yourself some goals. The resolutions for the New Year are meant to invigorate your resolve and give you a definite destination towards which you can direct your self-discipline and efforts. Sad to say, when the goals aren’t reached, the whole enterprise just seems de-motivating. 

But there’s another reason why goal-setting can subtly sabotage success: goals can be self-limiting. Say you decide to set a goal to improve your income by $10,000 in the next year. You may well improve your income by $10,000 in the next year; but with less limits on your horizon it could have been $20,000. The $10,000 became a self-limiting prophecy. 

Alan Weiss has said: “The worst thing about having a plan is that you hit it.”

A goal could be defined as your ultimate objective, while strategy is about how you are going to get to that objective. Try making some “strategic objectives” that will lead you in the right direction, towards an open-ended and non-limiting goal. Here’s an example:

"Our strategy is to increase our client base in X-country by translating our materials, attending conferences in X-country, forming strategic alliances there, training our people in  local cultural understanding; with a goal of increasing our profits from business in X-country by a larger percentage every year."


Sounds good to me.