Courage, Conflict and Compromise

Another set of 3 C’s - I am beginning to think that C is the most powerful letter in the alphabet… This should be a long post, but there is not enough time to do so, and I promised Nate Ritter from Eventful that I would try to be short with my posts (also means that they are a bit messier, so please forgive me).

Courage

I think this is the most important element that Champions need to make a difference. The courage to face the potential risks for doing the right thing is an incredibly important ingredient towards success. The ‘ask forgiveness instead of permission’ model has been cited more than once privately by a few very senior executives when talking about why what they did worked. Even this morning, during the breakfast I blogged about on Future of Communities, it was the courage to support the lone person who was willing to speak his displeasure that helped to turn the tide of the conversation. Many people felt the same way, but only one person was willing to support the person who risked himself to stand up for what he felt was right.

Conflict

We are really not ever taught how to fight/debate well. I know of some organizations who have specific training in ‘having difficult conversations’, but even they don’t do a good job of addressing the tension that arises from different opinions during a discussion or meeting. We must get better at managing conflict in a respectful way. This starts with the formation of the team and continuously improves through ongoing interactions between the people involved. The more trust that is built amongst the people involved, the better chance the organization has of using conflict as an opportunity to succeed rather than getting derailed.

Compromise

This occurred to me yesterday, and was validated in conversations I had this morning. Why aren’t potentially great products better? The ability of champions to courageously stand up for what they think is right, to navigate through the conflict, to collaborate well with the other stakeholders and ultimately to NOT make bad compromises. The political systems of organizations which employees need to navigate often force them to make compromises in the short term in the hope that it will get corrected in the long term. These are often bad compromises which will neglect the real needs of the consumers for want of not dealing with a very serious challenge or obstacle that can not be overcome easily. Don’t make bad compromises!

What do you think about these three issues? How are you dealing with it in your day to day work? Am I on to something here or just overly obsessive with the letter C lately?

Sphere: Related Content

What is Community 2.0 Podcast #2

Over the past 24 hours I have continued to ask people this important question around What is Community 2.0, and some clear trends are appearing which are touched upon here. This podcast includes answers from Mike Flood, VP of Community Relations for the Seattle Seahawks, Jake McKee from Big in Japan and David Churbuck from Lenovo. Listen in for some tasty bites of insight…

Subscribe to the Social MediaCast or go to iTunes and search for Social Media Cast in the Podcast Directory.

Sphere: Related Content

Social Media Clubhouse Podcast #6

On this fine Tuesday morning from Las Vegas, Giovanni Rodriguez and I drove to the Red Rock Casino for Community 2.0 and had a very focused conversation on the use of the word Community. More importantly, we talked about the real meaning of community and the interest in serving that community as opposed to selling to it as the primary intention of the interaction. Please listen and comment on this, I would really love to hear your thoughts on this important topic.

For further reading, check out Giovanni’s Post on Community with a Capital “C”: Who will Follow Craig Newmark

Subscribe to the Social MedaCast or go to iTunes and search for Social Media Cast in the Podcast Directory.

Sphere: Related Content

Social Media Clubhouse Podcast #5

On Monday morning we drove to the Community 2.0 conference and dug deeply into a conversation about What is Community? How it can be done by corporations and whether or not Community is even the right word. I was joined by Kristie Wells and Giovanni Rodriguez for a very insightful chat, which was unfortunately interrupted by some technical challenges which lost a bit of the conversation. Still a good 12 minutes….

Subscribe to the Social MediaCast or go to iTunes and search for Social Media Cast in the Podcast Directory.

Sphere: Related Content

What is Community 2.0 Podcast #1

During the opening night of the Community 2.0 Conference I had a chance to ask a few people the question what is community 2.0? There were a few good answers. On this podcast, we hear from Lois Kelly from Foghound, Sylvia Marino from Edmunds, and Social Media Strategist extraordinaire Deb Schultz. Listen in for some great insights…

Subscribe to the Social MediaCast or go to iTunes and search for Social Media Cast in the Podcast Directory.

Sphere: Related Content

Social Media Clubhouse Podcast #4

On Sunday night, our friend Giovanni Rodriguez of HubBubPR, my fiancee Kristie Wells and I headed over to the Community 2.0 reception. In the car on the way over, we discovered that Kristie is a great back seat driver (so am I) and the Red Rock is about 15-20 mins from the house. We also talked more deeply about what we are doing with Social Media Club (Giovanni as interviewer), the challenges that corporate champions face when trying to engage with community models and whether or not this whole thing can be as simple as ‘conversation’. At the end of a long day, there is some good stuff here, but I am really looking forward to the morning and some good community engagement with old friends and new peers…

Subscribe to the Social MediaCast or go to iTunes and search for Social Media Cast in the Podcast Directory.

Sphere: Related Content

Is SxSW going to be the death of Twitter?

Just about 6 weeks ago, I wrote a post about Twitter being a great evolution of IM, moving to EM, which I called “everywhere messaging”. Well, in the weeks since, I have come to realize it is really about EP, “everywhere publishing” - but not just publishing in the broad sense, but rather, it is a functionally restricted form of micro-blogging. If you look at my Twitter feed, you will see that this is generally how I use it.

Unfortunately, it feels like Fonzi is getting his swim trunks on, and the sharks are looking ferocious. Why would I suggest that this great channel that I have been touting for the last few weeks is about to jump the shark? Because of the amount of focus on the use of Twitter as a communications channel down at SxSW (did I mention how bummed I am that I am not there?). BTW, I am seriously asking the question of whether SxSW will be the death of Twitter? The reason being that we must cross over and bump up against barriers in order for us to realize they exist in new realms - the amount of traffic coming through Twitterific is just overwhelming and causing it to lose its’ intimacy for me.

Tonight, I came back to the Social Media Clubhouse from dinner with Kristie and Tom Foremski to see that my last 20+ Twitters were a back and forth conversation between my friends Chris Pirillo and Robert Scoble about Twitter. In fact, Kristie, Tom and I were just having a conversation in the car no more then 60 minutes ago about the same problem. I already can’t keep track of the friends I really care about staying connected to with the increase in usage, and now I am feeling guilty every time someone adds me as a friend when I don’t add them in return. But I can’t add everyone - I just don’t have the extra attention to invest, and to Chris Pirillo’s point

what happens when you have 10,000 followers - and their responses get buried because you can’t reciprocate?

The thing is, the very nature of Twitter, which Kristie pointed out mirrors the addictive nature of Flickr, will lead to a natural increase in the frequency in usage, the scope of usage and the number of people using the service. In the last week, I have received at least 30 friend requests, and I am not really that well known or popular. Scoble is over 1,000 already and climbing fast. Pirillo is right, but he need not go out to 10,000 followers - Scoble is already having responses and more get buried - it has happened in his voicemail where he directs you to email, and even in email and other channels, he is always going to fight to keep up, despite all his very hard work and great intentions.
The thing about Twitter, Flickr and other similarly architected services is that we like staying in touch with the people we care about, the people we WANT to have connecttions with. Unfortunately, and as I have been saying a lot lately - Humans Don’t Scale. Dunbar was really right - I am pretty much putting the Dunbar number in the same category as Newton’s laws of gravity. It is important to note that I am not hoping for its demise - far from it. I am however wondering what can be done about those of us that care about such things in thinking about some sort of guideliness to prevent usage patterns from destroying the incredible value we find in staying connected to the people we care about most.

So what are the limits of Twitter, what are the best uses? Can we put this altogether in a wiki? Am I just crazy? Or is the usage of it morphing in ways that are really decreasing the value of the channel instead of increasing it? Is there any possibility to save Twitter from Twittering itself to death?

Mea Culpa: Occasionally, I do use the dreaded @ myfriend message myself. At this time, I want to apologize to everyone for this terrible, terrible assault on your attention. Direct messages should be sent directly - or if it was/is necessary to build upon a conversational thread, I should have made the slight additional effort to have blogged it myself on my full site. Perhaps Twitter could make a C messageID, or C myfriend feature to redirect some of this additional traffic. But honestly, I think the additional volume, the experimentation and the morphing of this great everywhere publishing must give us all pause, to rethink what works well and what doesn’t - to then start modeling the behaviour we hope to see from others…

Sphere: Related Content

Social Media Clubhouse Take 2 - Community 2.0 That Is

Well, this past week showed us that despite having a great place to hang out (actually an incredible clubhouse with pool table, 180″ projection home theatre and a killer backyard), that it is hard to compete with the Las Vegas strip and the lure of neon, beautiful people and the possibility of winning the big jackpot. But yes, we are having a BBQ tomorrow afternoon at the Social Media Clubhouse from 1-5pm for those people coming in for Community 2.0 - if it is 5 of us, or 50 of us does not matter, because I am going to have a great time regardless, will be beercasting and creating some videos and playing some pool (or chilling by the pool).

So if you are coming into town and want to hang out in the afternoon with some members of the Community 2.0 Community who are not at the terrific Bootcamp being lead by our good friend Deborah Schultz along with Tara Hunt and Kathleen Gilroy, stop on by!

Since we did not have time to find a sponsor, everyone can either bring some food, or you can chip in a few dollars. If you don’t have a place to stay, and are either a member or a friend, we also have a few rooms available this week that are much less expensive than most hotels and resorts in the area at only $125 per night.

We are still talking with the good folks at CMMC about whether or not we are going to hold the “Leaving Las Vegas” party on Tuesday night, so stay tuned!  UPDATE: looks like this won’t be happening - too much other stuff to do and need to be awake for WED morning session.

Sphere: Related Content

Social Media Clubhouse Podcast #1

This morning, we had a great chat for about 13 minutes on the way in to New Comm Forum from the Social Media Clubhouse. Joining me (Chris Heuer) were Howard Greenstein and Debbie Weil. The conversation covered the prevalence of massage parlors in Las Vegas, Mit Romney’s undergarments and the deeper topic of how many people hold onto old protocols instead of holding the deeper purpose and beliefs behind such protocols. For instance, some journalists hold on to the notion of print, instead of remembering that is the uncovering of the truth and communicating it widely. It should be quite entertaining, or at least I hope it is.

Subscribe to the Social MedaCast or go to iTunes and search for Social Media Cast in the Podcast Directory.

Sphere: Related Content

Come on over to our ‘Clubhouse’ in Las Vegas

Tonight is the first event at our first ever Social Media Clubhouse, which is being held in support of SNCR’s New Comm Forum as a place where our members and friends can stay together, blog together and have fun together. There are more details on our Wiki, but if you want the secret password, you need to Twitter “D socialmediaclub” for the address.

As of this moment, we don’t have any sponsors who have signed up, but we are still talking to a few people, so are hopeful we can at least get some free beer for some of the festivities. If not sponsors, we can all chip in a few bucks and I am going to run to Costco to pick up what we need. The festivities kick off tonight after the opening reception at the Venetian, with “chillin @ the clubhouse” and a screening of Martin Scorcese’s infamous “Casino” on the 180″ projection theatre system. Tomorrow night is a Pool Tournament, sign up on the Wiki. Friday night, for any of you staying in town through the weekend, we are going to have casual cocktails and do some beercasting.

We look forward to seeing you there! (the tag for the event is smclubhouse1)

Sphere: Related Content