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Listening to Crowds — Gathering Wisdom One at a Time

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The Wisdom of Crowds

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It’s only human nature to want to name things. Names are the first step to a definition. A definition is the first step to knowledge. Knowledge leads to understanding.

Yet the names we choose can limit our thinking as much as they shape it.

Writers, Readers, Teachers, Sales Reps, Users, Customers, Marketer, Bloggers, Vendors, Workers, Managers, Employees . . .

All of those words refer to people. Individuals grouped together as a crowd.

The wisdom crowds is the aggregate of independent decisions by the individuals who form the crowds. To get the whole story when we listen, we need to the group, but we also need to listen one at a time.

Gathering Wisdom One at a Time

To get the rich context and detail, we have to listen to individuals talking — not a whole group shouting. Every person has a different story. In those stories are the reasons people care; why tell their friends about us or move on by. Individual views and experiences put the heart in the data.

People share wisdom one at time.

To listen actively, picture the person and the experience, and consider questions like these . . .

  • What’s the message of this person’s story?
  • What’s surprising about what this person is saying?
  • In what ways, is this person like me? In what ways, is this person unique?
  • What might this person want or need that I never expected?
  • What might this person want or need that everyone wants?
  • What can I learn from this person’s story that I didn’t know or always knew but forgot?

You get the idea. If we hear — really hear — individual stories, we can sort to find the universal truths we share.

Would you tell me a listening story that you’re thinking of right now?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Buy the ebook. Be sure the message you send is the one received.

Social Networking: How to Keep True Direction Down Trails of Connections

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Passion, Connections, and Directions

The Living Web

When I was a kid, I wasn’t looking for my direction. No one said to follow my passion. I was a kid. I was on a quest to do extraordinary stuff.

When I was a kid, I wasn’t bombarded with information from every dimension. My social circle was small. The proportions between my size and that circle have changed since then. My life is replete with relationships and complex connections. Now I have more social network passwords than the number of friends I had when I was kid.

Conversations bifurcate, trifurcate, and splinter off in bit and pieces. They move like a soccer ball on this field where I hang out. I’m following echoes down weblike trails of plurkshops and twebinars to hear what my friends are saying now.

Underneath all that, the kid I was still has dreams, still wants to do extraordinary stuff. Here’s my recipe for getting back to what I’m about.

  • I turn it off.

In a minute or so, I remember my quest.

Passion needs direction, or it gets lost.

How do you hold onto your true direction?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Buy the ebook and find out the secret.

Bloggy Question 84: Social Networking and Reputation — What Should Doostang Do?

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Reputation Management

For those who come looking for a short, thoughtful read, a blogging life discussion, or a way to gradually ease back into the week. I offer this bloggy life question. . . .

It’s a real-life question tonight. . . .

In March, I wrote a post in response to a bad experience at an “elite” social networking site. I’ll wait while you check it out. . . .

In a day or so, two things happened.

  1. My post made the first page of Google for the keyword doostang.

  2. My LinkedIn account showed that someone from Doostang had visited my profile. No one attempted to contact me.

Mid-May that post started to draw 5% to 10% of my daily search traffic. As you can see by the comments there, it can’t be helping Doostang’s elite self-defined profile as social network for top tier talent.

This week, I saw traffic from The New York Times article by Andrew Ross Sorkin, called Social Networking on Wall Street. The comments were less than favorable. Someone named John had left a link to my original article there.

I’ll wait while you take a look.

Doostang just launched a new look targeted at college elite.

If Doostang asked for your advice, what would you tell them to do?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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Bloggy Question 83: $10MIL, Luxury Home, Would You Go Back to Web 1.0?
Bloggy Question 82: It’s the Truth, Well, Sort of . . .
Bloggy Question 81: A Nice Gesture
Bloggy Question 80: Internet Business Isn’t Credible?
Bloggy Question 79: What’s a Social Media Expert?
Bloggy Question 78: Like an Intriguing Blog Post Headline

Catch the Moment

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Beach Notes by Guest Writer Suzie Cheel

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Catch the Moment

Sometimes an moment arises that can create joy, open up a business opportunity, sometimes even change our perception. We can take the moment and embrace it or we can say no not today.

Catching this amazing sunrise on Thursday morning was an instance of this.

Walking on the beach early that morning, I nearly missed the magic moment. We had gone to the beach early thinking we would see a sunrise. We were a little too early so we thought, next time, We walked away from Rainbow Bay  towards Greenmount. I turned around before we headed aroung the rocks and saw the golden light of the sun glistening on top of the clouds. Des said did I want to go back? yes I said. As I saw the red of the sun begin to peep above the horizon, I thought  ” Catch the Moment”, this will be my Beach Note this week. I took this photo and then a series which I am thinking I will turn into a slide show with words, maybe even an e-book.

This then became a positive story I used to illustrate positive vibes on Friday Morning. If  hadn’t turned around at that precise moment  would have missed the joy that seeing the sun rise brings, it warms my soul.

Sunrise

Can you think of time where you have caught the moment and it has been an inspiration or moment of change?

Images: suzie cheel

Thanks to Week 140 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Critical Skill 10: The 4 Keeper Traits of Productivity — Are YOU the New Killer App?

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Think and DO!!

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box logo 2

Are you guilty of having too many ideas?
Do people run when you get a brilliant thought?
Been there. The Internet and the innovative offline world are bursting with what ifs and how abouts.

BUT . . .
ideas vaporize when all we do is think about them.

We need to DO something with ideas to make something happen.

The 4 Keeper Traits of Productivity

In this series, I’ve laid out critical thinking skills important to success in a world of thinkers. Each is a way of using our minds to work with information and ideas to solve problems and move actions forward. The first nine skills aren’t much without the ability to manage and to apply them.

Productivity gets noticed because it produces results.

Various Language Products Written or Managed by Liz Strauss

Self-sustaining productivity gets noticed.

Whether it’s millions of books made especially for kids or it’s millions of kids who learned to read, because teachers cared that they did.

Results are the point. What good is all of this critical thinking without something to show for it?

Self-sustaining productivity has four keeper traits.

They all begin with C.

  • Commitment. Keep believing in your goal. Self-sustaining productivity demands that we stick to plan even when something shiny looks attractive right now. Commitment brings our priorities into focus when we’re distracted.
  • Competence. Keep training to achieve it. Without high-end abilities, skills, and experience, it’s hard to produce high-end results. Things move more quickly and with fewer problems when we’re geared for the challenge. It’s hard to be productive, if we don’t know what we’re doing.
  • Consistency. Keep your standard high. Self-sustainining productivity relies on effective and efficient performance.
  • Credibility. Keep your promises. We’re most productive when do what we say we will. Credibility is the trust and confidence that inspires people to help.

Self-sustaining productivity is confidence in relationships on the street, in the workshop, and in the boardroom. It’s confidence in ourselves and confidence that others invest in us.

I wrote this paragraph in the introduction to this series.

Intellectual property–content–is an asset that not only gets produced, but reproduced, reconfigured, and repurposed 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.”

Be social. Network all you can. But don’t neglect the time to stretch your mind.

What are you doing to think ideas, solve problems, and make new realities?

Yeah, you. Can you be. . . will you be . . . are you the new killer app?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
The 10 Skills Most Critical to Your Future
Finding Ideas Outside the Box
Personal Branding: Strengths Assessment Tool
Brand YOU–What’s the BIG IDEA?