Foggy Futures Then and Now

When I started writing here, I only hopes and ideas.
Three years ago this day was only a foggy future.

Here’s what I wrote (unedited) one month after I started . . . .
______

It’s an odd thing to write under the masthead Successful Blog. It’s such an opportunity, such an “Okay, Big Shot,” moment. It’s a chance to model best practices, not just write about them.

The writer’s credo is Don’t tell, show. How much closer to that could I get than this?

I can talk about building community by answering comments relentlessly, but it’s so much more powerful when I do it and my readers actually experience how it feels. I can explain how to correct your public mistakes, but again how much greater impact it has when I actually do what I say. If I do this job right, everything I do has the potential to have a tiny positive effect on the blogosphere.

So I share with you my learning curve at the end of one month. I’ve learned.

• That people respond positively when you treat them like people who are worth talking to. They pitch in, share ideas, and form a community that’s fun to be part of.
• That when someone takes a negative viewpoint, it works better to take the conversation offline.
• That the blogosphere doesn’t need me to keep it working right.
  That keeping focus on my readers takes care of almost every problem. (Except how I’m going to pay for my son’s college. )

In 1972, a friend said to me “You always leave the other guy a place to stand.”

That advice has served me every day since. It works with everyone from 6 to 106. We all need a place to stand –- no matter how scary we look. It can be the smallest thing. Here’s a fun read about Giving the Other Guy a Place to Stand that explains what I’m talking about.

If I could choose one best practice to pass on, that would be the one –- that everyone in the blogosphere leaves lots more room for the other guy to stand.

_______
That was then. This is now.

We still need each other to be visible, authentic and relevant. . . . connected. We still value the people we’re meeting. We still talk and listen.

I think we do. Right?

Three years ago, when this day was only a foggy future, I couldn’t see people talking in 140 characters. I didn’t hear anyone asking, “Am I following you?”

Dr. Michael Wesch says Change the media — the tools — and you change the way people relate. The Machine Is Us/ing Us.

Yesterday I got a telemarketing call on my cell phone from a well-known Internet personality. Before that, it had been sad enough getting his spam.

Three years from now, when this day is in the dimly lit past, it’s likely that companies exploring social media will be here, will have tried it out, will have had some sort of impact.

How will we answer the Twitter question — What are you doing? — then?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Can You Connect?

A culture gap is forming. Social media business is on one side. Traditional business is on the other.

Our business plans depend on offline folks to be our clients. we’ve let the social media culture become something of an echo chamber. We risk losing sight of folks who spend no time working on the Internet.

Ironically the gap itself is something that folks on both sides can relate to and understand. Cultural gaps are part of the human experience. Here are three examples that Google recognizes as important.

• Bridging the Gap on the (Nonprofit) Board from Social Edge.org —
  This discussion group takes on the question of helping private sector businesspeople understand the differences in the way non-profits are governed.

  What worked for me in board meetings was to be educated about the topic in the context of non-profit governance. This was always done in a respectful manner, routinely included in addition to describing the topic, issue and relevant questions for the board’s consideration. By contrast, in my experience on for-profit boards, context is frequently set simply by recalling for board members the history of the issue, its current status, and decisions to be wrestled, because board members all share business experience and vocabulary.

• The Culture Gap From Law.com —
  This article discusses the investment some companies make in cross-cultural training before they go global.
  [Gary P.] Kaplan, from Howard Rice, said large law firms should consider such investments so that American lawyers don’t learn through mistakes.

  “You’re kind of an ambassador of your country every time you go abroad to do work,” he said.

  “We’re considered ignorant, so to try to break that as a stereotype, I think that type of training would be highly appropriate,” he added.

• Language Is The Door To A Culture from Susie Litts.blogspot.com —
  This article answers the question, How does the cultural gap hurt the Hispanic family? A mother tells the story of her daughter’s “becoming too Americanized.”

  I explained the impact that occurs when a linguistic gap is developed, as children become, that is fluent in English and parents do not. In a similar fashion, a cultural gap may develop as the child develops the ability to navigate [the] culture while their parents remain separated from it. The cultural gap widens when children acquire a [different] education than their parents may have gotten.

  It is nearly impossible to learn a culture if you do not understand the language.

Social media attracts literate, intelligent, curious people — people who like to explore ideas. Seems we use that what other folks have learned to close our own cultural gap.

• Be sensitive to context.
  That’s what the Non-profit article is saying. What we see as obvious and readily applicable to the concrete world requires more context and explanation. The private sector business people who sit on non-profit boards felt respected when they were offered the appropriate context, stories, and vocabulary to participate fully and with confidence.

  How to do that.
  1. Dress to connect. People hear what you’re saying if you look like a credible source.
  2. Explain the culture in terms of time. Three years in social media is a long time. In the concrete world it’s still entry level.
  3. Outline values of the culture that can serve the audience you’re with. If your network is one that influences the business they’re in say so. Construct your contextual overview to match the person you’re speaking with.
  4. Demonstrate the values of social media — make it easy, make it about them, listen actively before you talk.

• Give them a concrete reason to listen.
  Make them smart by making it about them. Start with what they know — Use examples from their world not this one: Cross-cultural training in the concrete world for corporate, diplomatic, and relationships in business already have established credibility. Companies that aren’t yet global understand the impact of an insensitive business on a local community.

  How to do that.
  1. Draw correlations between social sites and current roles in the company. Websites often reflect the role of advertising / marketing. Blogs can be related to trade shows and customer outreach.
  2. Discuss cross-cultural and diversity training. Draw from this prior knowledge to explain how to enter the social media space with grace while establishing a successful and powerful presence.
  3. Consider the goals of the client and how they overlap with those of your network and your reach of influence. Use examples of people you know who might be willing to help the client make an easy transition.

• Identify vocabulary that you need to explain.
  Words, like conversation and community, can mean something different in the concrete world of business. Words like Twitter, Plurk, and FriendFeed, can sound silly or worse, make people feel uncomfortable saying them.

  How to do that.
  1. Introduce new words in context. Bring up a Twitter screen where your friends are talking. Interact act with them. Invite the folks on Twitter to answer a question that the client has about social media or the Twitter application.
  2. If a company is uncertain, use words they find familiar — networking for social sites and for conversation, colleagues for friends and followers, online resume for profile.
  3. Listen to what they’re not saying. Watch their body language and respond to confused looks. Pace the information to their interest levels.

The art of closing a cultural gap is inherently in tune with the values of social media — connecting people with people.

How do you use the values of social media to connect with offline clients?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

I thought I’d take a nap. I’d read a book first. Then I’d fall asleep, blissfully rest up, catch up on some space I needed. Wasn’t happening.
He came in to talk to me.

“Where is he?”

“Somewhere in South Central America, I think. ”

“He hasn’t called in weeks. He could be
in trouble.”

“It’s more likely that he’s not thinking about us.”

“That’s my point. He’s smart, but sometimes he doesn’t think.”

“He’s 22, and on vacation. He thinks about what he’s doing. Just like we did.”

“He’s in a foreign country. He could be in trouble.”

” . . . it’s raining. . . .”

“What if he walked into some skirmish in some jungle?”

” . . . the rain is coming down in blinding sheets. . . .”

“Maybe someone stole his wallet and his passport. He could be kidnapped by guerrillas who found out he’s American.”

” . . . at least the hurricane rains will stop, when the hail starts falling. . . .”

“If he’s hurt or injurred, I’m going down there to straighten them out.”

“You might ask him if he thinks you should do that at lunch on Saturday.”

“What?”

“That’s always been the plan.”

“But we don’t know . . . ”

“Exactly, and we don’t about the rain either.”

“Don’t tell him I was worried.”

Reining in Imagination in Times of Unpredictable Futures

A great imagination is usually a good thing. We can imagine real solutions to real problems. We can imagine a future and then plot a real path to get there. But when we’re feeling a lack of control, an unchecked imagination can put us in a precarious state. We can start making up stories that only scare us while we think we’re preparing for contingencies.

Imagination is not a healthy replacement for missing information.

When a situation

• a child who’s late coming home
• no answer from a client that owes us money
• a doctor who hasn’t called us
• a friend who didn’t return an email
• a closed door on our boss’s office

meets a time that we’re less than confident, it’s tempting to make up negatives on the flimsiest evidence.

Child + late + never happened = must be nearly fatal accident or worse.

Such imagining doesn’t find the child or bring him home sooner. It doesn’t help us make a plan to find him. It doesn’t affect the child situation. It makes us miserable. However, the thoughts of tragedy raise levels of negative chemicals in our brains — which leads in the wrong direction.

The worst part is that while we’re making up horrible endings, we’re not attending to what needs doing. We can make the negative reality. A person worried about losing a friend starts acting clingy, needy, and angry. Soon the friend loses patience.

The way out of this loop is action. If you find yourself there, try this.

• Get the facts.
• Recheck and update the information you gather at reasonable intervals, but not minute by minute.
• Give the people involved credit to be smart, human, and fair.
• Don’t try to predict the unpredictable.
• Concentrate on keeping your life running smoothly. A solid foundation weathers a storm. Keep your job and your responsibilities covered.
• When all else fails, push your imagination to the ridiculous extremes. Write or tell the worst possible scenario and at the end of every sentence add, ” . . . and it’s still raining.”

In tough times situations, we can get hurt by imagining bad endings. We can’t deal with bad ending before we have the information about it. Before we predict rain, check the weather. Ya can’t get there until ya get there.

It’s a better plan to keep doing what’s needed to get to the next great day — focus the successful things that keep our jobs, our friends, and our sanity.

How do you rein in your imagination in times of unpredictable futures?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!