Deborah Schultz

Bringing back the Soul to Business

Gary Hamel nails the need for bringing soul back to business in this article entitled "The Hole in the Soul of Business"

A noble purpose inspires sacrifice, stimulates innovation and encourages perseverance. In so doing, it transforms great talent into exceptional accomplishment. That’s a fact—and it leaves me wondering: Why are words like “love,” “devotion” and “honor” so seldom heard within the halls of corporate-dom? Why are the ideals that matter most to human beings the ones that are most notably absent in managerial discourse?

This article brought back to mind one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite movies - Dead Poet Society.

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

The nature of our networked world in which we now have the power and ability to participate is pretty darn exciting.  We just have to remember to not strip technology from it's human essence. 

Snackbyte: Boxee: listening, learning, improving, growing

Thanks to Chris at Gigaom for highlighting Boxee not only cause they are a cool game changer - but also the way they are "Proactively Listening" and acting on user feedback to run their business.  In the hyper-connected world - your community and your ability to "weave" is essential.  [link to a bunch of my presos on this topic].  

This is an entire new skill set that flattens traditional silos and definitions and constraints   - call it the "connector" on steroids, community manager, weaver, or my new favorite [thanks to great brainstorming with heather and kevin] - tummlers

Snackbyte: How will it all play out?

As we gather our nuts and prepare for the long hard economic winter ahead, there will be an inevitable consolidation of companies, communities and customers.  I wonder down which path this slowdown will lead us?

This being conference season, I have had a number of interesting conversations with analysts, advertisers, investor's, publishers and start-ups.  The topic of the economy, globalization etcetera -  is of course top of mind.  Opinions vary on how this will all play out, what we can all pretty much agree on is that the social web has now entered adolescence.  This is a fragile time for a teenager - she is highly susceptible to influences - both good and bad.  Will she be dazzled by bling and a quick buck? Will she broaden her horizons via exposure to new ideas and people? [I will drop the metaphor before I beat the life out of it, but you get the idea]

In our enthusiasm over the potential of the social web, our rush to generate viable business models and find customers wherever they may be lurking - what forces will have the greatest long term impact on our social web?  Will we forget the fundamental human drives that gave birth to the social web to begin with? Will companies sell out their customer base for an advertising dollar? Will innovation be spurred by the need for creative re-invention or will it come to a grinding halt? During the great depression - the entertainment industry was a much needed escape from the daily grind [see Sullivan's Travels and rent it NOW if you've never seen it].  If we can look past current mass media models - we may have a real opportunity to create some amazing and viable participatory fun with all these great tools.

I am no macro-economist, but if we can self-organize  - what is the role of the multi-national? Can smaller economic trends mediate the big picture?   The participatory web will have a huge impact on shaping our economic and social future.   It is the next few years that are a big question mark. 

What forces will have the greatest influence on our teenage social web as she grows into adulthood? Will tough economic times - shape a more robust future? Or will she crumble under the pressure?

So - now that I got that out of my system  - what do you think? Did I lose you? Am I nuts?

Snackbyte: It's all personal

In preparing for my upcoming "Death of the Grand Gesture" talk at Web2Expo, I've been deep in my usual observational analysis of the dynamics impacting the social web meets "big bidness".  I've also realized [thanks to Mario] that my blogging has become a sad chain of "weekly links".   

I have always found it difficult to juggle "big thoughts", getting stuff done and ensuring I make the time for posting my observational nuggets as they occur to me.  I admit it, I  enjoy real world back and forth conversations more than the more solitary skill of writing [probably why I will never write the great American novel]. 

Which leads me to my recent personal observation. Gasp - I have lost touch with why I fell in love with blogging in the first place - a blog post does not have to be a fully formed argument or a perfect pearl of wisdom - it just has to be.

So in the spirit of it spontaneity I am rededicated to providing both in the future.  I won't promise a schedule or a minimum number of posts or even where they will be posted [she hints at future news], but I do promise to not sit on the nuggets and personal observations till they are all well crafted and wrapped in a bow.   

Today's nugget:   

No matter how you slice it - everything is personal.  Not personal as in taking things personally [tho there is plenty of that taking place], but personal as in this is 'personal to me'.  Social web tools are just that social and personal. They are a reflection of their creator - without a personal voice and tone there is no "there there".  And they are changing the dynamics of how we interact, relate and do business.

The challenge for a business or political campaign is how do you infuse the personal without over-sharing and how do you find the balance of what is appropriate? 

Navigating this landscape of "personal" is tricky 'bidness'  - some words to keep in mind - respect, context, and empathy.

If you want to attend Web2Expo you can use my "personal" discount code: webny08mc23 for $100 off registration fee.  Hope to see you there!

Snackbyte: Are we all just being rude?

[Cue voice over of Carrie Bradshaw for this quick post]

I have been thinking a lot lately about the impact the 24/7 social web connectedness has on how we connect and behave in personal and professional settings and the impact it is having on our relationships:

"In an era of increased inputs, ambient intimacy** and weak ties, it is now difficult to remember, react and respond to everything and everyone in a timely manner. Are we rude or do we need to reset our expectations of what is proper etiquette in the era of the Social Web?"

• Is it really ok to not return phone calls? or email? Is there a window when rude sets in?
• Is it rude to not respond to a direct Twitter?
• Is everyone SO busy with outbound expression that no one is there to "catch the proverbial conversation toss?"
• If you know that people are overwhelmed - how do you know when you are being ignored proactively or when are you simply lost in the "inbox"? When do you PING LOUDER so you get attention and when are you ignoring the signs that you are indeed being purposefully ignored?
• If micro-interactions are indeed the present and future, what are our new sets of online behavioral expectations?
• I have noticed an increase in last minute cancellations at face to face events.  Have we gotten so used to multi-tasking online that we think we can be in two physical places at once?

Thoughts?

** totally envious of Leisa's brilliant turn of phrase - as i repeatedly tell her every chance I get!

Snackbyte - social ball of string

Everyone is all 'aTwitter' about Google's FriendConnect  announcement and last week's MySpace & Facebook announcements. I am ALL for open social standards.

However...

More social connections without greater intelligence built in is just gonna be more noise"

or if you prefer an equation:

 

I got my hands full tracking my fragmented world as it is.  Luckily as everyone races to claim the open data, social graph charge, there are those thinking about enabling better, smarter management tools that start with ME - the user/consumer/individual/PERSON. 

Related posts:

Dan Farber, Mashable, RWW, and Charlene Li

Related events this week: IIW,  Data Sharing Summit

 

Snackbyte: So simple so true

That Jarvis has a way with words:

"Before the public can learn to trust the powerful, the powerful must learn to trust the public."

Amen, Jeff! Looking forward to the new book!

Snackbyte: Sometimes ya just gotta repost

This morning I took a break from being in execution mode to catch-up on some of my favorite feeds - sharing these great ones with y'all. 

Fluidity of the Web - Thanks to Brian Oberkirch for posting some notes on  Anil's recent talk at WebDirectionsNorth on Web tools and business. Many of these point are relevant beyond enterprise - and are just plain relevant to web tools. Once again , I nod to Anil for not getting caught up in 'shiny bling' - but what is always at the root of why we love these technologies - the way they facilitate relationships between people & businesses [if we let them]. Particularly love these points - always seem obvious to me - but not to everyone -

• We have so much potential with this technology; we have responsibilities that come with that & we need to use these tools of change wisely. They have real world impact.
• The Web tools enable relationships.  This is new for business tools.  Relationships (esp. reciprocal) are never mentioned.
• We aren’t different people at work & home. [that's right and current enterprise security measures are making it really hard to be fluid like the web]
• Don't talk jargon
• We are moving from a focus on words to gestures [LOVE this SO true]
• The Web is in motion  - [yup, this is alpha days - pretty exciting tho if you have the stying power and can live in flux land]

Let's rethink the word content, people: Content is a media industry term - 

"As far as I am concerned there are only two platforms - the individual user and the web"   -

Brilliantly stated Adriana!

The social evolution has just begun - Things are starting to get really exciting around managing our digiltal lives and social connections - opensocial, dataportability, actions streams etc etc.  But let's not believe we can solve it all with open platforms alone - things are going to get way more complicated before they get simpler.  We need to have a better understanding of how people share and connect online.  We are in our infancy on this one.  Heck, we are still using the "web pages" metaphor for stuff that frankly is not a page and we are using the "friend" metaphor for all our loosely joined connections online.   As Stowe points out and I completely concur  -

"we need a "new fusion of the concepts of social media reflected in real social context and the nature of the current web".....or we are at risk of "bleed[ing] out all the social subtleties" of how we interact in the real world.    [great term Stowe!]

I just love smart people.

Snackbyte: A small rant on doing better

My brain has been popping with random bits and bytes over the past few days.  I have also been stuck in front of the keyboard A L0T.  So this may come out as more of a rant than intended, just think of me as channeling Andy Rooney. 

• I have looked at so many social media/web2.0 community sites in the last week that my brain hurts from seeing so many faces boxed into little 50x50 squares.  Where are the designers/UE folks who can think outside the box? There has got to be a new way to look at this. A grid of small faces is not organic and feels flat. Think about how Etsy reinvented the way we interact with items when shopping -- I want more of THAT.

• I am afraid that people - how they live and what they need - is getting lost in all the noise and geek speak around technology, media & social ads these days.  Let's put the social back in social software.  What do people want and need? And it ain't another bite on the neck or yet another place to "express, share and connect" with friends.

• We have reached a key moment in social media - I am now smarter about you my friends/connections/colleagues. This is fun and informative. Now, I would like to be smarter about me and you together.  Great - I know that you are stuck in traffic or eating a pizza or getting on a plane - but how about we take all this data and do a bit of analytic magic to tell me which of my friends I connect to the most and share the most with [no not just a simple graph]? Which are experts on X and which on Y? I crave a deeper mapping of my network and how I can use it better. 

If we are to live in a world  that is flatter, more expansive and more loosely joined - we can do better.  We have to, or all we will end up with is a lot of noise.

Snackbyte - It's about respect, people

There was a little brouhaha this week regarding  Lane Hartwell's copyrighted photography being used without permission in a recent YouTube video by an acapella group called the Richter Scales. Derek Powazek has a great rational write-up explaining all the details. 

The important takeaway for me is that as the community of folks creating collaborative media [i really like that term, Derek], has gotten larger and the tools that enable distribution get easier to use and more widely distributed, it is less likely that the originator of the work will actually know the person who is 'sampling it'.  As a result they may just not feel as beholden or even think about the original creator.  Not acceptable.  Additionally, we live not only in an increasing era of collaboration but in an environment of curation as well.  For a safe environment of curation and collaboration to flourish it is critical to maintain respect for the individual who created the original work.  This respect can come in many forms [ from payment to link love] depending on the nature of the work [copyright, CC, free- flowing ideas off a blog post or presentation or speech]. 

In the old days, you may not have cared if you were 'stealing' from the big bad media guys - heck they are making a fortune and there seems to be no individual person with skin in the game [whether or not what you might be doing is illegal].  Well, in the era of social media there is often an individual person affected. They may be trying to eek out a living directly from the sale of their work or building a reputation based on their ideas.  It definitely ups the ante on the rules of reciprocity and respect.

I have to say, I am a stickler for this stuff whether copyrighted material, Creative Commons or whatever.  I do my best to link and cite and stick to the use originally intended and identified by the original creator.  This is not to say I don't sometimes make mistakes as well [please call me on it], but I am conscious that we do indeed live in a collaborative environment.   [I am also the daughter of a librarian and think proper footnoting is embedded in my DNA].   I often go so far on my preso's to put an "inspired by" note on the bottom of any slide that uses a single bullet or even idea [graphic or text] from something I read on some one else's blog or website.  Not so hard and the effort goes a loooong way.  It's about reciprocity and respect for another individual's work.

And, if that is too touchy feely for ya--well--if nothing else there is the practical knowledge that this stuff travels! It is just good internet karma.

[Update: I forgot that I myself am guilty of having linked to the disputed video, until I had this needling in my head and went back and looked at it.  Amazing. This even further proves the point of how important it is for the original collaborator to just 'do the right thing'. Even those of us who should know better don't often catch this stuff. There is just too much info out there and it travels  really fast!]