Year: 2006

See you there. Or online here.

Cerado’s own Leif Chastaine will be in Chicago tomorrow, presenting on Enterprise Social Networking at the American Marketing Association’s “Ahead of the Curve” session, which focuses on high-tech trends in marketing. Drop him a note if you want to get together.

Am at Supernova today, and JP Rangaswami just brought up a very interesting point. He asserted that there are really only three fundamental business processes, and each of these is enabled by a collaborative technology. The three processes are:

• Idea-to-market: Creating a new concept, and bringing it to market. This process is enabled by co-creation.
• Problem-to-repair: Identifying, diagnosing, and fixing issues. This process is enabled by instant messaging and other real-time and offline collaboration technologies.
• Sales-to-cash: This is all about execution. When a sale occurs, what are the steps that need to occur to deliver what was promised, and get that process done quickly, efficiently and repeatably? This process is enabled by collaborative workflow.

Interesting thought.

Was at a (boisterous!) dinner last week in New York with a number of folks after the Corante Innovative Marketing Conference (more on this in a future post), and the podcasting recorders were rolling during a good portion of the evening.

At one point, Joseph Jaffe was talking about “consumers” and, of course, this tripped my Pavlovian response that, no, we are not “consumers.” We are customers, and producers, and people. (Doc and Jerry, your presence was missed!)

Listen to the “‘consumer’ vs. ‘customer’ vs. ‘user’ rant.” (5.6MB MP3)

This is a short snippet of the longer Across The Sound podcast #36.

So…what do you think? Are we customers? Consumers? Users? Something else? Please send e-mail (including MP3 attachments) to [email protected] or audio comments to +1 206 203-3255 if you want to jump into the conversation.

(photo credit: niznoz)

Just received a Pot au Feu from the workshop of the fantastic John T. Unger! (John is also MC at typepadhacks.org, and the only person on the planet that makes art to pay for his tech habit.)

Thanks, John! Next step…accelerants!

Dave Winer says that we need to “drop the B” in Web 2.0, and make is “WE 2.0.” I agree with commenter Monty, who says “It’s not people that need an upgrade to fit technology, it’s technology that needs an upgrade to fit people.”

So, Dave…right idea, wrong “B.”

Here’s my thought: What we’re really doing is turning the World Wide Web into the World Wide WE.

The “World Wide WE”…I like that.

The ever-cogent Christopher Allen brought the idea of the “Familiar Stranger” to my attention in a comment on yesterday’s “Werewolves…” post. Chris writes:

“One concept related to progressive trust that you might be interested in is the “familiar stranger”. When you see someone in the hall that you’ve seen before, maybe nodded to, but don’t actually know, that is a “familiar stranger”. Our sense of comfort in social situations is often bounded by the percentage of people that are familiar strangers, as well as our sense of safety in our communities. There is quite a bit of interesting research on this topic.

How it relates to progressive trust is that even before you get to the point where you are consciously moving forward on gaining mutual trust, you may have already established some by already being a familiar stranger. You are also more likely to default trust someone more if there are lots of familar strangers around.”

The folks at Intel Research @ Berkeley bring us this further definition:

“The Familiar Stranger is a social phenomenon first addressed by the psychologist Stanley Milgram in his 1972 essay on the subject. Familiar Strangers are individuals that we regularly observe but do not interact with. By definition a Familiar Stranger (1) must be observed, (2) repeatedly, and (3) without any interaction. The claim is that the relationship we have with these Familiar Strangers is indeed a real relationship in which both parties agree to mutually ignore each other, without any implications of hostility. A good example is a person that one sees on the subway every morning. If that person fails to appear, we notice.

Familiar Strangers form a border zone between people we know and the completely unknown strangers we encounter once and never see again. While we are bound to the people we know by a circle of social reciprocity, no such bond exists between us and complete strangers. Familiar Strangers buffer the middle ground between these two relationships. Because we encounter them regularly in familiar settings, they establish our connection to individual places.”

I love this concept of the “familiar stranger,” especially when it’s linked up with Kathy Sierra’s recent thoughts (she calls it “the-guy-from-the-train phenomenon“). Kathy writes:

“You know the story: you take the same train to work every day. One Saturday afternoon you’re in a cafe when you spot a familiar face at the next table. “Hey, it’s the guy from the train!” you think, with a smile. Then the guy from the train notices you, and his eyes light up. You start a lively conversation moving from weather to espresso to geopolitical forces. You exchange URLs.

The thing is, you took the train with this guy for the last 18 months and never gave him a moment’s thought…until you saw him at the cafe.

That’s the power of unexpected context.”

Not only does the familiar stranger bring trust to a public place, but placing the familiar stranger in an out-of-context environment may be the catalyst that converts the “familiar stranger” into a friend and catalyzes the trust relationship between two individuals.

I like the symmetry in that.

(photo credit: toronto_lex)

Three choice tidbits from Mike Manuel’s recent post: “Real Brand Engagement”

“People don’t want to engage with brands, they want to engage with the people behind the brands. ” – Mike Manuel

“Scream marketing fails because, all too often, it is just that, and if we are not in the mood to be screamed at, it fails or – worse – turns us off completely. The most powerful brand relationship is personal but with people who have akin values.” – David Philips

“In an ideal world, the people ARE the brand.” – Jarrett Nixon

Rock on.

(This is why Haystack exists.)

Your boss is a werewolf.

That person you always see in the elevator? Another one.

You’re one, too. Probably.

We are all many-faceted. Yet, the facets we show are very different at different times, depending on the context of the situations in which we find ourselves. At the office, dressed in Dockers and a button-down, we are expected to be “professional.” Here, we describe ourselves in terms of our experience and education, perhaps with a perfunctory snippet on two or three “safe” outside interests that are guaranteed not to raise any eyebrows.

This compartmentalization is not limited to the office. At a function with extended family, we are expected to be friendly and compassionate, and we describe ourselves in terms of where we sit in the patriarchy/matriarchy of our clan. With new friends, perhaps we describe ourselves based a little bit on “what we do,” perhaps a bit more on where we went to school, but we stay away from truly “personal” topics.

In any given situation, we are presented with a set of cultural expectations of how we should act and dress, what topics are acceptable for conversation, and what set of situational mores are in effect. Yet, with old friends, we are “ourselves.” The guard comes down, the drawbridges are lowered, and the connections are natural.

Inside The Werewolf, We Find A Russian Doll

This bicameral struggle becomes even more apparent when one has one or more online personae. Much has been made over the past few months about how “naked” one should get online, not in the carnal sense, but rather with respect to the personal and emotional, and how those aspects intersect with a “professional” personality.

Jory DesJardins writes “[Blogging] is fun because it has allowed me such freedom to express myself but it hasn’t been all fun and games. Authenticity is not tantamount to irresponsibility. I’ve had to practice the art of diplomacy and learn to take myself a lot less seriously. I’ve had to clean up my relationships offline and enlist their support; I’ve had to maintain a degree of professionalism and discretion; and I had to define by personal blogging policy: what was off-limits (not much, apparently), what was my focus (basically anything pertaining to ME), and whose comments I would allow (basically anyone’s, provided they weren’t spamming me).

“Every blogger has to make these decisions for herself. It ain’t easy–it’s a constant re-defining of oneself. But once you get to your most accurate definition of your blogging self, your best ‘stuff’ comes out.”

This internal bridging of the personal and professional and resolution of the social conflict between the two is a significant leap, insurmountable for some. But, as DesJardins writes, it’s a necessary step on the path to letting one’s “best stuff” emerge. Only after the internal Rubicon has been crossed can the connections begin to be extended beyond the self and into one’s external community.

Progressively Taming The Werewolf

In order to span the gaps that exist between ourselves and our colleagues, to really span it and not just play-act yet another persona, we need to be able to connect, based on shared affinities and understanding. But we can’t get there all at once.

“Progressive trust” and its counterpart “progressive disclosure” are required to build the external bridges. Both terms have their roots in systems design, and are nearly self-explanatory. “Progressive trust” refers to an increasing level of trust that can be built between parties based on prior levels of trust being successfully achieved, and “progressive disclosure” simply means to introduce (disclose) new information over time, at the point the recipient of the information is ready to accept and understand such information in context.

(Ever hear the phrase “TMI,” or “too much information?” That’s what happens when one tries to shortcut the progressive trust and progressive disclosure processes.)

Both progressive trust and progressive disclosure are the fundamental construction techniques required in order to achieve this goal of actual, non-superficial connection. They are the tools that allow us to take the internal and make it public, at a rate and in a manner that enables impedance matching with the others with whom we’re trying to connect.

Why Bother?

Why does it matter if we act differently at the office than we do at home? What does it matter if we don’t really connect with the people with whom we’re spending a third of our lives? Well, in addition to the personal thrashing that is required to keep all these personae in check, there’s also a body of research to indicate that business interactions are actually more profitable when individuals can connect the professional side of themselves with their personal affinities. This kind of connection has measurable benefit for all parties involved.

Perhaps the cornerstone of recent work in this area was done by Lichtenthal and Tellefsen, and is called “Toward a Theory of Buyer-Seller Similarity.” Lichetenthal and Tellefsen write, “These findings suggest that internal similarity [perceptions, attitudes, and values] can increase a business buyer’s willingness to trust a salesperson and follow the salesperson’s guidance, and therefore, increase the industrial salesperson’s effectiveness. In contrast, the literature also indicates that, under most circumstances, observable similarity [physical attributes and behavior] will exert a negligible influence on a business buyer’s perceptions or a salesperson’s effectiveness. Thus, the key finding is that it is more important for buyers and sellers to ‘think alike’ than ‘look alike’.”

Spanning

Tools to enable these personal bridges are appearing with increasing frequency in the media, not only via blogging, but with services such as Pandora (shared music, http://www.pandora.com), 43Things (shared goal-setting, http://www.43things.com) and host of both personal and enterprise social networking services. In fact, Howard Greenstein has written “Contact is King” (supplanting the old saw that “Content is King”), and it’s true.

With these changes, not only in technology but more importantly in the increased social acceptance of looking at individuals truly as individuals and not interchangeable cogs playing a predefined, scripted role, there will be an increasing ability to bridge the various aspects of ourselves into a cohesive whole and to connect, really connect, with our peers and colleagues, our friends and families.

And to tame the werewolves once and for all.

(note: thanks to ethan for the nudge)

Spent last weekend in Portland with a group of old friends. Had never visited that fine city previously, and…I have to admit…I am smitten.

Positives:

• A very real, laid-back vibe and no-nonsense attitude
• Rogue (not only do they have the dead guy, but they have bacon as an appetizer on the menu, fercryinoutloud!)
• Gorgeous natural surroundings
• Public art that actually engages
• A killer public transportation system
• Coffee…everywhere

Negatives:

• Um, nothing. Loved the place.

While there, Leif and I had a chance to spend an afternoon quaffing java with Aric Wood from XPlane. (If you’ve ever seen any of the cool and useful information graphics in magazines like Business 2.0, they were done by XPlane.) The key insight from the discussion:

“Time-to-understanding” in a conversation can be used as a competitive advantage.

In other words, if you (and, by proxy, your organization) can communicate and connect with a customer more quickly and more richly than the other guy, you have a significant lead in the race. How to do this? A “Top Five” list of do’s and don’ts:

1) Do use multiple modes of communication (written, verbal, visual, experiential) in order to communicate
2) Do look for common experiences and past shared reference points to which novel concepts can be tied
3) Do use the appopriate technology as a medium
4) Don’t use PowerPoint when a note card will do
5) Don’t bury the customer with loads of jargon and acronyms

Bonus: Don’t make things more complex than they really are

Portland, I’ll be back.

(photo credit: drewish)