Archive for the ‘photography’ Category
You Gotta Find Ways to Tell Your Story
Don’t dumb down. Don’t be boring.
One client is a thought leader in her particular industry. She writes and presents papers around the world. In doing so she thinks brand new thoughts, adds to her credibility and drums up potential clients for her firm. She is disciplined about two timetables:
- Timetable #1: Industry Papers. She includes time in her schedule to research and write, which allows her to build out topics of interest to her customers. Those topics also interest editors of professional journals, so she maximizes her research and writing time to open up new venues to be heard as an expert.
- Timetable #2: Everyone is a Publisher. My client also understands that she is not just speaking to the industry-folks who crave the details she has synthesized. She is also speaking to a broader group of people—those who have a nominal but urgent interest and may benefit from what she has to say. This second, broader group of people drop their questions into the oracle of Google. My client hopes her investment in social media (her firm’s blog, Twitter, and Instagram accounts) will reach these people. She routinely takes papers she has published and breaks them up into smaller chunks that more easily relate to the rest of life.
We need your annotations.
But this second piece is less about research and more a journalistic/writerly function. This part is more about connecting the dots with the work and life and less about laying bare abstract research findings. She understands this second communication need has nothing to do with dumbing the topic down. In fact, just the opposite she employs her best writing to say things as simply as possible without relying on buzzwords and tribal knowledge.
Marketers of consumer products have long focused on Timetable #2. Academics and specialized industries have long focused on Timetable #1. How long before we all use Timetable #2 as the route to Timetable #1?
Remember: we are the gatekeepers now.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Wait—English Majors Win in the End?
Start Writing Your Own Future
- Announce your goal to lose weight and chances are better the pounds will flee.
- Sign up for NaNoWriMo and chances are better you will actually write that novel (no matter how badly it turns out).
What we tell each other has a way of happening. What we tell each other about our preferred futures has a way of guiding next steps.
- Write a letter to your collaborative, inventor friend about a business idea and find yourself planning concrete marketing and distribution steps at Spyhouse Coffee.
- Write a business plan for your startup and suddenly remember your friend who became a venture capitalist. And then remember the friend who bootstrapped her idea.
See the pattern? Each step forward started with communication. You may say,
“No. the idea came first.”
True—maybe.
Create in real time as you go.
But consider: the communicated idea created a spark. And—given the right collaborative conditions—the spark lit a fuse. And the fuse burned, gathering other ideas until the explosive, disruptive future no one had considered.
What if English majors learned entrepreneurship and began to see their talent for orderly, persuasive, deeply-rooted writing as a way to help themselves imagine new futures and chart forward-movement for others? What if they learned to solve real-world problems with story and emotion and analytics? Their solutions would drop-kick the spreadsheet & PowerPoint crowd. What if some English majors created Lake Wobegon while others created the next Google?
What if English majors learned business lessons alongside the standard fare of reading and writing? What if they were expected to serve up the occasional business plan or marketing strategy along with the usual essay, short story and poem?
If that happened, English majors would connect earlier in life that art and work and commerce and fiction and meaning-making all fit together in the same world. And they would begin to write their own future vocation.
By the way: 16 Wildly Successful People Who Majored in English
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Caveat #1: I was never an English major.
Caveat #2: I teach English majors. They are smart, innovative people.
Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Why Work Out Loud?
Living out loud—even at work
Way back when our first child was born (lo these many years ago), back before there was language, when crying and inchoate grunts were the sum total of signals this small being could muster (along with unblinking stares), a strange communication pattern emerged in our household: narration.
Mrs. Kirkistan and I both found ourselves narrating in real-time to this youngster. His wide eyes and (relative) silence seemed enough to make us think he was curious about, well, whatever. We narrated pacing the floor at 2am (“We’re walking back and forth because someone is crying. But we’re not pointing fingers. No sir.”). We narrated cooking and cleaning. We talked about sitting on the couch and driving in the car. We told the story of outside—every window had a story.
It seemed to work if only because it was met with silence which we took for interest. Eventually he started narrating back at us.
Thank you, Veterans.
I’m reminded of this as I read John Stepper’s blog and anticipate his book, Working Out Loud: How to build a better network, career & life (Due Feb, 2015). Mr. Stepper makes the case that we do ourselves a favor when we “work in an open, generous, connected way.” The benefit is to ourselves and to others. Check out his “5 elements of working out loud.”
Lately I find myself talking more with clients about how they communicate internally and externally. I continue to see the emphasis wrought by free and open social venues (Twitter, bloggery, Facebook) working their way backwards into the way organizations conduct business. I predict more collaborative encounters and less monologue from a guy with a tie and a pen to sign your paycheck.
Stepper’s “working out loud” codifies some of that collaborative energy that rises like Spring sap with honest and open communication. I think of it as another perspective on the “dumb sketch” approach to life.
Narrating our day, asking for input, remarking on a remarkable idea—it’s all part of human contact and cannot be separated from the business of making meaning.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Thought Leadership Takes (too much) Time
And don’t be deadly-boring
In content-creation, I talk with clients and potential clients about telling their story in a way that promotes them and their business as thought leaders. Most clients have a business expertise that is poorly understood outside their niche or industry. And that is always the way: who really knows or cares how someone else spends their day?
One of the big challenges with our social appliances (Twitter, for example, and blogs) is telling the details of our story in a way that, a) shows we know what we are talking about, and b) communicates something not-deadly-boring to a casual passer-by. This is a huge challenge because most of us are interested only in what we are interested in.
Telling what we know in a way that engages the passerby is the challenge. That’s why I often use the metaphor of talking with the stranger or telling something to a ten-year-old. When eyes glaze or when they simply walk away, then you know you’ve not told your story well.
The thing is, our social appliances do not let us off the hook with the casual passer-by. Yes, we write our messages to our core audience, those are the people we seek to help and serve and engage. But those messages still must have enough hook to stop and (possibly) engage the conscious human passing by our web page/tweet/handmade sign. Building our brand, whatever that looks like: whether marketing a medical device, marketing a specific line of knowledge about medical devices/healthcare or marketing your own book—all these require that we tell our story in a way that keeps detail in focus while showing why it all matters to life on this planet.
Of course, the best way to do this is to know your topic well. Once you know your topic, mix in notions of how a stranger or passer-by would react and adjust accordingly. I find that knowing a topic and then adjusting the topic to the needs and interests of a particular audience has a miraculous effect of providing something I simply must say:
https://twitter.com/AdviceToWriters/status/529996620620763136
And that is a beginning of thought leadership: building out from what you know, day after day. It is very time consuming but if you are passionate about a topic, product or service—or a particular way of looking at life—than you can hardly keep from building the topic anyhow.
By the way, whether you write or not, everyone on earth should follow Jon Winokur’s tweets (@AdviceToWriters). His tweets should make anyone eager to create.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
But Vote (Out of Spite If You Must)
Just say No to Bilious Lies
It’s hard not be cynical around election season. The little bits of television I’ve watched have been be interrupted by the usual bilious lies presented by deep-pocketed political action committees. I’m guessing 99% of the nation exercises the mute button when one of the toxic deception-events plays.
But there are all still all sorts of reasons you should vote. It is our duty as citizens (of course, we hear that all the time), and a very minimal duty at that. It doesn’t take that long. And even if you are disillusioned, try to find a reason to go to the polls.
Shine today.
Two reasons motivate my voting today.
- I’m sick of the lies and twists and obstructionism the Republican Party puts forth again and again. Wait—don’t leave yet: my Republican friends (of which there are many) are entirely justified in leveling the same charges against the Democrats. It seems today all political persuasion amounts to one-sided arguments that even a child should question and reject.
- Democracy will continue even if you don’t vote. That’s because our corporations and institutions have a vested interested in making our democracy work—especially to make it work in their favor. One reason I want to vote—which is also a reason I’m becoming increasingly curious about the gears that turn our form of democracy—is to begin to lay bare how corporate interests have trumped the will of the people again and again. It’s simply not true that what is good for GM/Medtronic/UnitedHealth Group/Super Value is good for the rest of us—at least not without a few close questions. Those interests compete with the citizenry at times and they spare no expense to win their argument.
So vote.
If you cannot vote for something you believe in, vote against something you despise.
This system is an imperfect mess, but at least it is a mess that allows you to voice your (limited) option. Don’t sit out this opportunity to make your voice heard.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Burning Down the House: Stop. Drop & Adopt.
How social greases the gears of change
One way we begin to dispose of our sheltered and separatist clubs and churches and work is to talk about them out loud. When we start to tell a stranger about a sacred ritual inside the walls of our church, we stop and realize, “Wait—this probably sounds like nonsense.” And so we back up to start earlier with the “Why?” and “What for?” And then we drop the insider words and adopt common words.
Same with our work: when someone asks how we spend our day, we don’t use our office or shop-talk words. Most people don’t understand lingo of the workplace (especially folks in the workplace). So we stop. We drop the shortcut words in favor of the basic words used by the rest of the humans that speak our language.
And then we paint that ritual or work or favored topic in the best possible light. It’s a little rhetorical flourish we do without realizing. I want you to be excited by what excites me, so I talk it up. I punch it with bits of enthusiasm and look for ways and words that help you get the same vision I have.
Do what you must to pull in the stranger.
Getting others interested by telling the juicy bits of what interests us is one of the basic ingredients of any social media. It also happens to be a basic expectation of story-telling.
What’s that?
You don’t have contact with strangers?
You only talk with other insiders?
Is it time to reconsider your circle of friends to pull in outsiders? There’s much to be gained from relating your passion to someone who has no clue what you are about.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
About the Node Not Taken
Steady There, Young Philosopher
My hardworking, entrepreneurial colleague surprised me in conversation the other day:
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like had I stayed in the corporate world—what would I be doing now?
My friend was in one of the periodic slumps that happen to anyone building a business of their own. Those slumps squeeze out long-suppressed questions. These are the questions that precipitate momentary crises of faith for those constructing wings as they plummet.
No. Really. Is there an actual “Afton State Park”?
Young philosophers like to ponder the “What ifs” of life:
- What if I had dated that person rather than this person?
- What if I had taken that job rather than this job?
- What if I had studied engineering rather than philosophy? (One certain answer: the world would have to cope with a very bad engineer.)
- What if had dived 12 inches to the left and missed that rock in the lake?
One problem with our casual “What ifs” is that they often assume a straight line from the point of decision. You go this way. You go that way. Two roads diverging in a yellow wood.
But what if our lives are composed of nodes that become roads? What if each decision is followed by another so that our paths are constantly changing in real-time?
Another problem with casual “What ifs” is they forget the tiny but forceful pinpricks of relationship and conversation and motivation that accompany every choice. Thousands of tiny insights and histories and dreams contribute to each action as well as each subsequent action.
Personally, I cannot help but wonder if the nodes that become roads all lead to the place/people we were meant to be in the first place. Wait—don’t call me a determinist yet. Stick with me: what I mean is that whether we stayed in the corporation or went on our own or dropped everything to join the circus, would we end up as the kind of people we were meant to be?
This is not a perfect thought: we build things into our lives, good and bad, by daily habit. We grow, or not, because of those habits and subsequent opportunities. Admittedly, the determinist take on choice has holes.
But I’m reminded of that inveterate letter writer who wrote his friends about walking in the “good works” begun in them.
Today I’m looking for nodes and roads.
And I hope to step in a good work along the way.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Moments of Impact: Making Work Conversations [actually] Work
This third kind of work conversation involves divergent thinking
In Moments of Impact: How to design conversations that accelerate change (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2014), Chris Ertel and Lisa Kay Solomon make the case that we need a third kind of conversation at work. Here’s how Solomon and Ertel categorize most work meetings:
- Typical meeting where someone stands at the front blathering on with slides while attendees multitask with Facebook, Twitter and occasionally, actual work.
- Brainstorming meeting where people attend to think brand new thoughts (and to eat donuts). But brainstorming meetings are routinely dismissed today as producing far fewer ideas than if the attendees sat in isolation producing ideas before coming together.
- Strategic Conversations. This is Ertel and Solomon’s new kind of conversation. Rather than engaging in the typical presentation/multi-tasking meeting, they want attendees to deeply and viscerally engage in a compelling question.
Mindful like a hungry hawk.
Moments of Impact is all about how to make this third kind of conversation happen. The book develops five points to help make strategic conversation an experience versus another bout of human downloadment:
- Declare objectives/define the purpose
- Identify participants/engage multiple perspectives
- Assemble content/frame the issues
- Find a venue/set the scene
- Set the agenda/make it an experience
Nothing earth-shattering so far, right?
And yet, as it is so often, our connections provide the earth-shattering stuff, rather than any consultant’s formula. Where we connect—with 100% attention—that’s where the magic happens. In connection there something mystical that lies beyond engineering technique and management principles. Moments of Impact is about setting the stage for that connection.
One thing is becoming clearer very day: when we employ mindfulness rather than pursuing mindlessness, we find ourselves deeply engaged rather than seeking more distractions.
Mindfulness in the service of creating an experience also seems to honor humans as human (versus as corporately-owned human capital to be rejiggered at will).
That old attitude may have worked for an assembly line (doubtful), but for our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, we need the best each of us can bring.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Charles Chamblis: Photographer’s Notes
Story told by numbers
Charles Chamblis didn’t take too many days off from photography. With his camera he captured slices of life in the African-American community around Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota in the 1970s and 1980s.
Go see his collection of Minneapolis-Saint Paul photos at the Minnesota History Center.
More on numbers here.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
conversation is an engine 