Archive for the ‘Collaborate’ Category
Collaborate Starts S l o w
Catch me if you can
One must slow down to understand.
Way back: I’m thinking back to a statistics class in college. The theater-seating room in the Psychology building at UW-Madison was packed with well over 200 people. And at the last possible minute the professor would make a grand entrance, rushing down the side of the room with flowing scarf, his cologne preceeding him and wafting across the room. Then he talked nonstop for the next 50 or 75 or 100 minutes. In my mind a bell rang at the end, but I may have imagined that. He took no questions. His purposes were served to assume everyone was with him.
Few were, naturally.
Teaching assistants did the actual work of slowly going through the ideas and problems sets. They were the ones taking the time to tee up concept after concept and watch as some statistics-averse philosophy student slowly worked it out. That’s how a multi-layered idea passes between people: slowly.
Today: Sometimes Mrs. Kirkistan will ask how teaching went today. I consider teaching a success when we have had a robust discussion about the central concept for the day. When people bring in stories and draw connections—usually there is laughter—that is what engagement looks like. It is satisfying. Once upon a time I thought if I got through my slides in time that was success. Today I believe slides are the least important thing—because delivering slides to an audience largely absent is one of the more vacuous activities on the planet.
Tomorrow: My smelly, scarf-toting statistics professor from way back didn’t care about engagement. But that attitude won’t get anyone very far in a culture pivoting toward collaboration. Broadcasting an aroma and putting on a costume scarf doesn’t actually carry all that much weight for those interested in slicing and dicing a subject. What does carry weight is passion for a topic that slows and shares enough to bring others up to speed. Collaboration takes time while we each catch up and synchronize our language. But slowing to a human scale of understanding is worth the effort.
###
Create a Conversation Zone Today in 3 Steps
Make Talk Work at Work
If it’s been a while since you’ve had a truly collaborative conversation at work, take some steps toward that today. Collaboration is starting to register on the radar of many leaders in organizations. Collaboration is the love-child of the free speech we tout in social media and the world of work. Collaboration is freed speech working its way backwards through organizations.
Create a conversation zone in 3 easy steps:
- Acknowledge the human in front of you. “What?” you may say. “That’s pretty obvious stuff.” Not so fast: how many times a day does your mind go dark when the janitor says something, or the clerk—or the boss? It’s the automatic assumptions that run ahead of those conversations that poison the water. Start with this basic thought and you may be able to strip away some of the power distance that ruins conversations before they even begin
- Listen with your eyes. Eyeball to eyeball. No listening happens when my eyes are focused on my Samsung Note II. Don’t fool yourself that you are listening—you aren’t. Not really. Multitasking does not count when it comes to human relationships. I’ve taught enough college students to know instantly who is paying attention, and 93.2% of that is eye contact (6.8% of students have mastered the art of eye contact while entirely absent).
- Expose yourself. Really: tell what you honestly don’t know and what you wonder. Stupidity is endearing when offered without guile. Be the stupid guy. Ask the dumb question. Let it be known that you don’t know.
Good things will happen if you take these three steps today.
Oh, and report back, will you? What happened in your conversation today?
###
Philip Seymour Hoffman and the Human Character
How To Bring Words Alive
Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death over the weekend is one of those shocks we’re both used to and entirely powerless before. Any death is a shock, but for an actor at the peak of his powers, his sudden absence seems a stunning reversal of expectations.
I watched films where Mr. Hoffman appeared partly because of the topics and partly because he was in them. I knew his powerful portrayals would be riveting. And they were. How he could play both the higher-ed slacker David Davis in “Twister” (1996) and then authoritative but ultimately corrupted Lancaster Dodd in “The Master” (the 2012 Scientology send up) boggles my mind. His list of films and other work is extensive—far larger than I imagined.
As writers and communicators we think a lot about how to pull an audience toward and ultimately into a story or argument. It seems Mr. Hoffman’s answer to that question would be to explore the character beyond the monochrome rendering. Lancaster Dodd seemed good until he was clearly not. Doubt’s Father Brendan Flynn had diabolical layers and was a chilling portrayal given the current round of scandals. David Davis was an exact portrayal of many of the meteorology graduate students I’ve known.
Playing out the full-color, full-orbed, fully human version of a character remains an elusive goal. Fully illustrating a notion so it comes alive is something Mr. Hoffman was gifted in.
I’ll miss Philip Seymour Hoffman.
###
Kristina Halvorson & The Discipline of Making Stuff Up
Content Strategy and Brain Traffic
Someone asked a perfectly reasonable question:
What is content?
Our Social Media Marketing class is composed of collegiates with a passion for writing and communicating. Whether from the Journalism/Communication school or from the English department, we’ve come together around this notion of producing content in pursuit of a vision.
So we write.
While “content” seems a rude way to talk about the deep thinking that goes into a paper on, say, the merits of determinism, it’s a term that works pretty well for less lofty/more human conversation. The kinds of conversation suited to inviting in semi-interested onlookers.
Content is the stuff we use to describe our vision for…whatever. If we’re building a coalition to alleviate homelessness, the content we produce will point to the problem, tell stories about real people, show the inadequacy of current solutions and keep offering attitudes that illustrate the need and humanity of the man on the corner with the sign. If we work for a company that makes implantable deep brain stimulators, our content will highlight the current science behind Parkinson’s disease, show current (inadequate) ways of dealing with the disease, harp on the benefits of such stimulation without hiding the downsides.
Kristina Halvorson, founder and CEO of Brain Traffic and co-author of Content Strategy for the Web will join us today (provided she can plow through 4-6 inches of new snow) to talk about the disciplines involved with making stuff up. Because that’s what content is: making stuff up. For a purpose. Making stuff up in accordance with a discipline, toward a specific end, to meet a particular business or social objective. That’s why content and writing go so well together: there’s nothing a writer likes more than stepping into a big idea and exploring the main streets, side streets and alleys and foot paths with words and images and video. Sometimes we have a map to start with. Sometimes we make up the map as we go.
Mostly we do both.
###
Image credits: Brain Traffic
Now #SOTU is a Spectator Sport
My Friend, With Whom I Disagree
Listening to Mr. Obama’s speech last night while following Twitter was a brand new thing for me—and much invigorating (so tweetful). To respond to phrases and gestures in real-time, and to see other responses, felt like I was hearing the speech in a room crowded with passionate and at times silly people.
GOP friends got all huffy and defensive and exercised:
While the other side went self-congratulatory:
What pleased me most was the rapid-fire dissenting opinions and funny stuff happening right before my eyes—in a way that actually helped me pay attention to the words. I like hearing both sides in real-time.
###
Image credit: @nick_pants via latimes
Hey: Where did that voice come from?
Don’t be stung by inauthenticity
Some in my class are English majors and don’t mind wading into the waters of how words work. So when Content Rules (Handley and Chapman) talked about voice, a close reading ensued. Handley and Chapman lobby for authenticity in voice: voice is your own way of corralling point of view and word choice and rhythm (meter?) and pressing it all into service. Voice is making language work to express your words in your way. Voice is what you sound like when you talk (and we’re aiming for conversational writing in this class, so writing and talking sort of blend).
But voice is also something that gets companies and organizations all hepped up. To give your brand a personality by adopting a particular point of view (which leads to word choices/meter and etc.) is what companies and organizations seek these days. Voice helps a brand stand out from the crowd.
And one must stand out.
But this:
How can you write with an authentic voice when you are adopting the voice of the brand?
Good question, English-major-friend. Two answers come to mind:
- Sometimes we use voice in the service of some larger purpose. So we might submit our voice to the larger brand purposes and adopt as best we can the machinations of the brand voice. Some people may naturally embody a brand voice. The rest of us have to work at it. This adding and adopting is part of serving the larger goal you believe in (at best. At worst: you adopt voice to make coin for rent). This is the collision of craft, faith and service.
- If you find yourself stinging with inauthenticity as you write for your brand—look for a different job.
I’ve maintained all along that when people add their voice to a project, new things happen. Sometimes a new voice provides new electricity and a new approach to a time-worn topic. Even old-timers can learn stuff from new voices.
Of course, people must voice up.
If you don’t say what you’re thinking, the new thing just around the corner will sit there in silence—just around the corner.
###
Image credit: red-lipstick via 2headedsnake
First Boule
A conversation between flour, water, yeast and salt. At 450 degrees F.
I think I’m going to like Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (Hertzberg & Francois)
###
Image Credit: Kirk Livingston
Do The Dumb Things I Gotta Do (They Might Be Giants)
Memo to Myself: I cannot control what others think
Tell me again: why did we think we could?
Maybe you are a fan of They Might Be Giants (TMBG). Maybe you are not. I’ve just stumbled onto a wiki that attempts to decode the (typically) obscure lyrics of the two Johns.
Songs by TMBG should never substitute as sacred texts but, “Put your hand inside the Puppet Head” has something to say to those would begin to organize a community. That’s the task we’re starting this week in our social media marketing class and I’m trying to help us understand the old command and control ways of marketing have fallen by the wayside. By the way, it’s those old command and control notions that led to the monologues that made us think whatever we said was also what people heard. That has actually never been true—people will always hear my words in the context of their lives, which means mostly hearing what they want to hear.
In short, there is no puppet head. In this social media world there are transparent people who write from passion and experience. People who build communities because they want to. People who invite others in—but never force others in (a phrase that is almost nonsense today). What we can do is to assemble a clear picture of the people we want to join our party. And we can have an image of how these people interact, where they show up on the web, how active or inactive they might be in their webby habits. And from that we can begin to sort how our social media contributions might serve them and pull them toward this community we want to build. That’s the task today: Who are these people and what do they need?
By the way, there certainly are social media puppets out there: people without transparency who bark out some corporate message or ideological pap. But the blogosphere is not kind to them, because nobody out here likes being the victim of a drive-by monologue.
Transparency gets heard and gets a toe-hold in people’s psyches. We’re shooting for transparency and the credibility it builds.
###
Image credits: TMBG via Vimeo, Button via UnrehearsedKickline
Working Together: A Final Frontier
Talk Inc. Buries the BS Meter
Collaboration is hard for a lot of reasons. One reason is the power distance between people in a company. How can I say what I really think when I know my boss disagrees? Can I have a real conversation with an automaton who spouts corporate messaging and controls my salary?
Talk, Inc.: How Trusted Leaders Use Conversation to Power their Organizations by Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind starts with good intentions: to lay out this new challenge of interacting with employees as if they had something worthwhile to say.
But I should back up: old styles of management were about command and control: I’m boss so I’ll tell you what to do. And you’ll do it. New ways of thinking about the work of leadership and managing tout a more generous and collaborative approach to personal relationships. But these collaborative ways still have a hard time sifting down through the ranks of gatekeeping managers who intuitively see their mission as that of controlling others.
Talk, Inc. has a terrific vision, but the first section (three chapters on intimacy) is off-putting in that it quotes CEOs and VPs and various bosses at length, each talking about all they are doing to encourage collaboration. 
But Groysberg and Slind may have done better to start at the other end: giving voice to employees who have been given a voice. As it stands, the first three chapters are a difficult slog because anyone who has spent time in a corporation will recognize the smarmy PR tone of the program-of-the-quarter. My corporate BS meter kept pinging into the red.
The book gets better, but all the way through I struggled with the “trusted leaders” part of the subtitle. For a book that intends to talk about the power of conversation, there is still an awful lot of command and control monologue. Whether it was the suits from Cisco or Hindustan Oil talking, it was hard to take their comments seriously.
Talk, Inc. is, however, smartly organized into four sections (Intimacy, Interactivity, Inclusion and Intentionality). Each section has a chapter that plays out the vision, followed by a chapter that shows a company trying to carry out that particular part of the vision, followed by a “Talking Points” summary that helps the reader play it forward. The Inclusion and Intentionality sections offer more thoughtful reasoning and vision-casting for changing corporate culture so real conversation can happen. Groysberg and Slind offer solid examples of organizations that work hard at listening. But this is a story that really needs to be told from the “newly-voiced” perspective.
###
Image credit: Bill Domonkos via 2headedsnake
conversation is an engine 