Successful Blog

Saving the Net–Doc Searls & Walter Cronkite

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Y2K and the Media

If you’re reading this, you’re old enough to remember the media coverage of the Y2K “catastrophe.” The Y2K problem was a computer issue based in a design flaw in then-current programming, which caused certain date-related processes to operate incorrectly for dates after January 1, 2000.

The total cost of the work done in preparation for Y2K was $US 300 billion. [10] There are two ways to view the events of 2000 from the perspective of its aftermath:

The vast majority of problems had been fixed correctly, and the money was well spent. The lack of problems at the date change reflect the completeness of the project.
There were no critical problems to begin with, and correcting the few minor mistakes as they occured would have been the most efficient way to solve the problem. This view was bolstered by the lack of Y2K-related problems in the Third World, which in general had not devoted the programming resources to remediation that the industrialized West had marshalled.
—Wikipedia, Year 2000 problem, Was the expenditure worth the effort?

The media made sure we knew about this problem–every day, any place we were.
The media moved our businesses to check our systems and upgrade.
The media also made the Y2K problem larger by over-reporting on actions of fanatics.

I see no evil intent in this. I do, however, see an incredibly unfortunate result of the Y2K media coverage, and the coverage of events like it, on where we are today.

When it comes to the media, I don’t know who or what to believe.

Where’s Walter Cronkite when you need him?

The Smoke Screen

Now the media is dancing around on the subject of blogs and bloggers. “We like you. Stay in your place. We respect citizen journalists. We’ need to be in control. Let us help you. You’ll be out of the way soon enough.” The message is incredibly unclear.

At first I thought media folks were talking down to me. Now, the more I read, the more I realize how much this sounds like Y2K again.

Something is happening, but no one is saying exactly what it is. The story is replete with opinion and conjecture intertwined with the facts. Examples aren’t representative. Words are filled with subtext and connotations. Reporters and bloggers spend as much time discussing each other as they do what’s happening.

I think that all of the talk in the media about blogging is just a smoke screen.

Doc Searls’ Three Scenarios

Brian Clark pointed me to Doc Searls article Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes. It’s not new. Doc Searls wrote it last November. Every blogger should read it to be able to speak about the future of the Internet with fluency. Doc Searls outlines three scenarios in compelling detail–any one of which is plausible.

[Read more…]

The 10 Skills Most Critical to Your Future

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Thinking in the 21st Century

Thinking cannot be separated from who we are. In the 21st century, the age of intellectual property, the way we think is crucial to having a place in society. What we think and how well we express those thoughts will determine where we fit and how well we live. Thoughts, ideas, processes, intangibles–all have value in a world of constant change where knowledge is an adjective, a noun, and an asset–in the form of intellectual property–on balance sheets.

In the largest sense, American society is breaking into two classes:

The first class are people who know how to think. These people realize that most problems are open to examination and creative solution. If a problem appears in the lives of these people, their intellectual training will quickly lead them to a solution or an alternative statement of the problem. These people are the source of the most important product in today’s economy ideas.

The second class, the vast majority of Americans, are people who cannot think for themselves. I call these people “idea consumers” — metaphorically speaking, they wander around in a gigantic open-air mall of facts and ideas. The content of their experience is provided by television, the Internet and other shallow data pools. These people believe collecting images and facts makes them educated and competent, and all their experiences reinforce this belief. The central, organizing principle of this class is that ideas come from somewhere else, from magical persons, geniuses, “them.”

. . . My purpose in this article is to undermine that belief.

–Paul Lutus, Creative Problem Solving

Most Schools Are Inside the Box

When I was in school, it was weird and unpopular to think outside of the box. But there I was. It’s not something I learned to do. It’s how I came into the world. Much like a left-handed kid learns to use right-handed scissors, I learned to figure out how everyone thinks. I learned to observe so that I could understand them. Knowing how other people think was a survival skill for me. For them, learning how I think was a gesture of friendship.

That was then.

In school it’s weird not to think like everyone else.
In society, outside-of-the-box thinking is a prized commodity. Innovative thinking is essential to any change-based leadership brand.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

My experience of school, both as a student and sadly as a teacher was not, in the most primary sense, geared toward developing new ideas. It was centered around teaching and learning what had already been done, without taking that next step to challenge the past with how it might have been done differently or better.

Thinking Outside of the Box Is Critical

The world economy has changed to one of service and ideas. Conversation is digital and content is king. The ability to work with ideas has become crucial to having a place in society. Thinking outside of the box is no longer a weird personality trait, but something to be admired and valued. It’s a key trait necessary to modern-day strategic planning and process modeling.

Intellectual property–content–is an asset that not only gets produced, but reproduced, reconfigured, and re-purposed for variety of media. Those who produce intellectual property are builders of wealth. An original idea that solves a problem or presents an opportunity is worth more now than it ever has been. Those who develop and mold original ideas are the new “killer app.”

10 Skills Critical to Your Future

These are ten skills critical to your repertoire. They have indelible impact as part of a resume, a personal brand, and as a skill set. They compound in value each minute in the marketplace. Though it can be done, these 10 skills are difficult to cultivate inside the proverbial box. Yet they are critical to your future, if you want to be an idea creator and not an idea consumer. These are

The 10 Most Critical Skills for the 21st Century

Future Skills
    1. Deep independent thinking and problem-solving — The ability to understand a problem or opportunity from the inside out, vertically, laterally, at the detail level, and the aerial view.
    1. Mental flexibility — The ability to tinker with ideas and viewpoints to stretch them, bend them, reconstruct them into solutions that fit and work perfectly in specific situations.
    1. Fluency with ideas — The ability to describe many versions of one answer and many solutions to one problem set and to explain the impact or outcome of each both orally and in writing in ways that others can understand.
    1. Proficiency with processes and process models — The ability to discuss a problem in obsessive detail and to define a process, linear or nonlinear, that will solve the problem effectively within a given group culture.
    1. Originality of contributions — The ability to offer a value-added difference that would not be there were another person in the same role.
    1. A habit of finding hidden assumptions and niches — The ability to see the parts of what is being considered, including the stated and unstated needs, desires, and wishes of all parties involved.
    1. A bias toward opportunity and action — The ability to estimate and verbalize the loss to be taken by standing still and missed opportunities that occur by choosing one avenue over another.
    1. Uses all available tools, including the five senses and intuitive perceptions, in data collection — The ability to weigh and value empirical data, sensory data, and one’s own and others’ perceptions appropriately.
    1. Energy, enthusiasm, and positivity about decision making — The ability to bring the appropriate mindset to the decision-making process in order to lead oneself or a team to a positive decision-making experience.
  1. Self-sustaining productivity — The ability to use the confidence gained from the first 9 skills to establish relationships with people at all levels–from the warehouse to the boardroom–knowing that ideas are not the pride and privy of only a gifted few.

Innovative, imaginative, inventive, mind-expanding, playful-wondering, what-if, how-come, dramatic-difference, find-the-wow, visionary, killer-app, I-want-one, no-more-stupid-stuff, nothing-in-moderation, bet-the-farm, incredibly-sexy, please-please-can-I, that’s-so-cool, couldn’t-knock-it-off-if-they-tried-to, able-to-see-better-than-the-best, no-more-move-here-today-move-it-back-tomorrow, stupid kind of thinking happens outside of the box.

The skills that you develop from outside of the box thinking stay with you for a lifetime and are transferable from one job to another. You don’t need them to write every shopping list, but they are there whenever there is a problem to solve or an opportunity to take advantage of.

It doesn’t take a genius to become a fluent, flexible, original, and creative source of ideas. It takes a person who can develop habits of thinking in new ways. What actually happens is that you find out how you really think, rather than how you were taught to.

You become uniquely you–BRAND YOU–the only one–priceless.

Who wouldn’t want to work with a person like that?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

PS We’re going to go down the list of all 10 in the Finding Ideas Outside of the Box series. Let me know if there’s one you’d like to do first.

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Who’s a Citizen Journalist?

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Okay, just for fun, let’s review.

I’m the nice one. I blog about business, writing, and thinking outside of the box.

According to Tom Glocer, Trevor Butterworth, and Roger Parry, today in the Financial Times, I’m also a citizen journalist. I didn’t know that. Should I put that on my resume?

If folks from the old Media such as Tom Glocer, Trevor Butterworth, and Roger Parry can talk about me and other bloggers. I see no reason that I can’t talk about the three of them and their little talk today.

There were 15 questions asked by 12 people. The floor for questions was open for a week–since Mr. Glocer’s speech to the Online Publisher’s Association in London ran as Old media must embrace the amateur on March 7. You’d think they might have found 15 questions by 15 different people that were worth answering . . .

The last question and the one that seemed most relevant to us was

The blogging revolution is in its infancy as the web was in the late 1990s. Bloggers will become more sophisticated and organised over time. The blogging community will itself split – between professional and amateur bloggers. Many professional bloggers will be experts in their own fields that do not have the desire/time to write for mainstream media. Add all these professional bloggers together (through technology or partnerships) and you potentially have the real challenge to old media in a few years. How can old media coerce or partner with a much more advanced and professional blogging community? Fighting hundreds of thousands of real niche experts will be a much different challenge. How can Reuters face this challenge?
Philip L Letts

If my search located the right Philip L. Letts, he appears to have an interesting business background. He also has several blogs.

Mr. Glocer’s answer showed a growing understanding, though he’s still breathing the air in the old media tower . . .

. . . I think media companies like ours need to experiment with both amateur and professional blogs. Reuters has been encouraging our own professional journalists to blog events, like the Consumer Electronics show – so you should not expect all the “experts� to come from the outside. To attract outside professionals you need to offer a platform, an audience and a brand that is appealing. The war will not be won by coercion but by mutual consent.

Mr. Butterworth, who makes no bones about his dislike of blogs, showed both his arrogance and his belief in the use of big vocabulary . . .

. . . there is a much more fundamental question: how many readers do you alienate as a news organisation by indulging in blogging? I think you (and mainstream media blog evangelists) overestimate, at the very least, American appetites for bloviation. Branded opinions yes; what DaveSpart68 in Ohio thinks about George W. Bush, no.

Presently, the reality of the blogathons at some newspapers in the U.S. seems to be less expert disquisition and more inquisitorial musing on American Idol or Lindsey Lohan. Fine, clearly there is a market for this kind of pop cultural chatter – but how much is it enhancing the newspaper as a business? Not as much as devoting more resources to producing original, insightful and well-written content, I’d warrant.

Second, the idea that there are hundreds of thousands of “niche experts� blogging away (or ready and willing to blog) lacks empirical evidence. I’m very impressed with scienceblogs.com – read the surgeon/scientist “respectful insolence� and you get a real sense of how the mainstream need to upgrade their medical reporting. . . .

Mr. Parry, won my favor by calling things as he sees them with the fewest words and seemingly the most experience of reality . . .

. . . The degree to which a blog is interesting to people other than its author will depend on the subject matter, the authority, the level of “new� information and the style of the writing. In short the most popular blogs will share the same characteristics as the most popular newspapers, magazines and broadcast programmes.

In some ways the blog is the digital version of the letter to the editor or the self produced leaflet but with the added dimensions or interactivity, real-time distribution and global access. The blogger who produces something of very narrow subject interest can still draw a sizable audience as they have the whole world as potential readers.

Existing media will have to embrace blogs as an enhancement to their content offer in the same way they commission articles from experts, run reader polls and invite letters.

Bloggers who do their job well will, like star columnists, attract a loyal following and will be paid (if they want to be ) to let their blog be aggregated into an existing media offering. . . .

I do have one question that didn’t get answered. If Tom Glocer, Trevor Butterworth, and Roger Parry got fired tomorrow, would they then be citizen journalists like me?

I wonder . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Start in the Middle 3: Alligators and Anarchists

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Problems and Opportunities

Starve the problems. Feed the opportunities.

—Peter F. Drucker, regarded as the founding father of the study of management

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box logo 2

Problems and opportunities are two sides of the same coin.
Your brand is the solution to the problem of how the world sees you and your business.

Alligators and Anarchists

Problems and opportunities can make anyone feel surrounded by alligators and anarchists. Too many obstacles isn’t that different from too many positive choices–both have to be tamed and sorted and decided upon based on their value and viability.

Problems and opportunities are places where the beginning is not the most prudent place to start if you want to make a difference and a decision happen quickly.

Start in the Middle

One way to make problems and opportunities more manageable is to divide and conquer–by starting in the middle. Whether it’s the deal of a lifetime you’re deciding on or you’re trying to unravel a poorly handled relationship, find a way to place the situation in front of you and take a long look at it.

  • Look for the core of the matter. Often there is one idea, event, or assumption upon which all parts hinge. If you can identify that, you know what you’re working with. In a problem solving situation, that’s what you want to fix. For a brand or an opportunity, the core idea is the goal you’re seeking. If you find you’re not seeing it, try tearing away everything you feel is unimportant or unnecessary.
  • If you can’t find the core, find a hot spot–a compelling detail, an assumption, or an idea to focus on. Make that your focus. Obsess on it. Describe that hot spot in painful detail–especially its impact on the problem, brand, or opportunity. How does changing that hot spot affect the possible outcomes? Repeat the process several times to get a feeling for your problem, your brand, or your opportunity from the inside out.
  • Then do the opposite–put the problem, your brand, or the opportunity in the middle and look at it from several viewpoints. Imagine you are a musician, a mathematician, a construction worker, a writer, an architect, a dancer, a psychiatrist, your customers, your parents, and your kids. How would each role see the matter differently? How does each new view that change the options of where you might take the possible outcomes?

At this point, STOP.

Give your mind time to rest. Any brain would need a chance to take in and sort all of the information you have just gathered. While it’s doing that, do something totally unrelated.

If you’re worried that you need to keep fixing the problem. molding your brand, or moving on the opportunity, take heart that you’re not losing time. You’re actually stopping yourself from wasting it. To ease that feeling, make an appointment with yourself to come back to the discussion–at least two hours later. Your brain will show up prepared for the meeting, You’ll get more done after this break. I promise.

When your thoughts have gelled, use the Content Development Tool to organize your ideas and the support for each one in a fashion that you can look at and share with confidence. Now all that is left to do is decide which option is the best for you–or to repeat the process if you want to take the idea a level deeper

Divide and conquer from the middle. That’s the reason my older brother–the middle child–always saw so many options and won so many arguments. Hmmm. Maybe he’s the one who taught me this problem-solving skill.

Please don’t tell him. He takes credit for more than half of what I am already.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Building a Personal Brand–YOU

Brand YOU–Capitalize on Your Strengths

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Know Your Product

Your personal brand communicates your unique value in ways that others understand who you are. Developing a personal brand is a process that takes time and requires investment. Your brand develops as you develop self-awareness. You have to know your product to communicate its values–in this case. your personal strengths.

Identify Your Strengths

By the time we reach adulthood, most of us have a sense of our strengths and of our weaknesses. It’s hard to get through school and get a job without having some idea of what they might be.

But few of us actually take time to determine our most outstanding assets – €œour highest proficiencies, our core competencies. We often discount the things we’re best at because they come to us naturally. Thinking that everyone can what we can, we tend to undervalue our natural talents. Take a moment to ask yourself questions such as these to find your strengths.

  • What am I asked to teach others?
  • What responsibilities are delegated to me?
  • What kinds of meetings and tasks am I asked to lead?
  • What special skills do I have that others rely on?
  • What parts of my job would be hardest to fill?
  • What traits make me a valuable member of the team?
  • What are the things that only I can do?

Remember don’t overlook your great personality or that talent you have at organizing a project map in 30 seconds flat. Just because it’s a personal talent, doesn’t mean it has no value. The people that you work with rely on it–so count it as a strength. Not everyone can do what you can.

Capitalize on Your Strengths

To build the strongest brand, once you know your strengths, capitalize on them to make them stronger. Play to your strengths in what you do. Determine how each strength meets a specific need of the job market. Marketers call this naming features and benefits. People call this naming problems and solutions. The market has a problem or a need. I have the strength or skill set that meets that need. I’m the person for the job.

A written version of one of my skill feature and benefit statements might look something like this.

I have core competencies in teaching others to be detail-oriented champions of accuracy. That means that any work under the care of those I teach is assured to be error-free, saving the company the time, money, and embarrassment mistakes can cause.

Do yourself the favor of writing down your skills and strengths and naming the market need they meet. The act of writing out theses feature and benefit statements to define your personal brand or the brand of your business causes you to put your value into words–to internalize it, to make it your own.

Internalizing your strengths and how they meet needs in the workplace puts you in the best position to talk about your strengths when the opportunity arises naturally within the workplace.

Being about to talk freely and naturally about how your strengths meet the needs of others is a strength in and of itself–don’t forget to write that one down once you conquer it.

When you can do that, you will be fully capitalizing on your strengths. You’ll no longer need to verbalize your brand. You will have started living it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Building a Personal Brand–YOU

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What Makes You Unique?

Mark Twain used to say that everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it. People do a lot of talking about things like branding too, but I’m not sure that many know what to do about that either. A brand can seem as nebulous as the weather . . . how do you get your head around what a personal brand is?

I can just about hear my uncle Everett saying, “Personal brand, what are you talking about? I’m not a pair of shoes, and I don’t care what you say, I’m not for sale at any price.”

Ironically, that remark is a branding statement if I’ve ever heard one.

What a Personal Brand Is

Uncle Everett underscores the idea of a personal brand well and articulately – he communicates who he is in a way that others believe in it.

Your brand is you and all you are and ever will be. It’s your uniqueness, your skills and abilities, your image, your traits, and your potential. Your brand is how you as a person will fill a need in a way that no other person can.

Everything about you contributes to your personal brand – everything you say or don’t say, what you wear, your tone of voice, the look of your space, the look on your face, the way you shake hands. The quality of your work is an immense part of your brand, but not, by any means, all of it. Even there it matters whether it’s on time, done with friendliness, with teamwork, with innovation and flexibility.

Forging a Personal Brand

From Uncle Everett’s bald head to his baggy pants, his love for the Chicago Cubs and his fierce devotion to his family were all easy to see.

To forge a strong personal brand takes self-awareness. Think deeply so that you can do these things well.

  • Identify your strengths and your weaknesses.
  • Capitalize on your strengths.
  • Find valid ways to make your weaknesses irrelevant.
  • Determine how you uniquely fit a job market need.
  • Describe and define that unique fit as your personal brand.
  • Determine how your image can communicate your brand.
  • Complete the “big idea” by checking all that you do supports your personal brand.

Sounds like a lot, but the closer you get to refining it to the smallest detail, the more credible your brand will be. Why? Because you will be living it. A personal brand is what you ARE, not how you act.

Everett knew that being who you are is a bond with the community. It the basis on which all relationships are forged. Being any less and you’re only a bad facsimile of what you could be. Your personal brand can be the strongest advantage you bring to your business life.

Be brand YOU and you’re the only one. No one can compete with that.

The best way to promote your business is by living your brand.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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