Ed Batista

Top 150 Management and Leadership Blogs

(Hey, that's me!)

Jurgen Appelo, a Dutch technology manager and software developer, has devised a method for compiling "top blog lists," relying on Google PageRank, Alexa traffic rankings, Technorati Authority, other search engine links and numbers of comments.  (You can read about the process in detail.)

Earlier this month Appelo compiled a list of the Top 150 Management & Leadership Blogs, and I was surprised and gratified to see my own site listed at # 48 (two spots below Stephen Covey, of all people.)

Appelo's method seems reasonably defensible, although I'm certainly in no position to validate it (and it's worth noting that Appelo's own blog comes in at # 16 on the list.  That may be perfectly legit--I'm just sayin'.)

In any case, I'm honored to join several people on the list whose work I read regularly and respect immensely:

• Dispatches from the New World of Work by Tom Peters (# 9)
• Grant McCracken (# 16)
• Chief Happiness Officer by Alexander Krejulf (# 25)
• Work Matters by Bob Sutton (# 27)
• Rosabeth Moss Kanter (# 29)
• Trust Matters by Charles Green (# 30)
• Positive Organizational Behavior by Bret Simmons (# 33)
• WeeklyLeader by (among others) my friend Pam Fox Rollin (# 34)
• Management Craft by Lisa Haneberg (# 35)
• Employee Engagement by David Zinger (# 59)
• Marshall Goldsmith (# 61)
• Unfolding Leadership by Dan Oestrich (# 86)
• Studentlinc by Tim Milburn (# 122)

While the list's uppermost spots are occupied by high-profile types like Tony Robbins, Guy Kawasaki, and Daniel Pink, many are occupied by ordinary people like me, an executive coach in San Francisco and a Leadership Coach at the Stanford Graduate School of Business; Bret Simmons, a professor at the College of Business of the University of Nevada, Reno; Pam Fox Rollin, a coach and consultant in here the San Francisco Bay Area; and Tim Milburn, Director of Campus Life at a university.

I can't speak for the others, but my site is a strictly personal project that I support entirely with my own resources.  To the extent that we can rely on the validity of Appelo's method, it would seem that the web is doing its usual effective job of breaking down hierarchies and promoting conversations on the margins.

That said, it's also worth noting that despite this technology-enabled democratization, the list is thoroughly dominated by white men, primarily Americans.  So some hierarchies remain firmly in place.

Thanks to Jurgen for his efforts--his list is both a great collection of valuable management and leadership resources and an inspiration to further diversify this conversation.

Grant McCracken on Brainstorming as Intellectual Improv

Following up on my recent recommendation of Grant McCracken's Chief Culture Officer (as well as my appreciation for Grant's acknowledgment of the strategic importance of empathy), I wanted to highlight one more thought-provoking concept in the book: Brainstorming as Intellectual Impure.  Grant describes a brainstorming session convened by Denise Fonseca, who is currently director of global business and consumer insights for Coca-Cola:

[pp 135-137] Fonseca has assembled people with various kinds of expertise.  Most were from the academic world.  They do not play well with others.  They object, cavil, quibble, carp and niggle.

Fonseca gave us fair warning.  She said something like,

There is one rule in this room: No no's.  You may not contradict, dispute, or disagree with the things you hear here.  I am going to enforce the "no no's" rule with my M&M's.  When I hear you contradict, dispute or disagree, I am going to pelt you with an M&M.  Or several M&M's, depending on the severity of your offense.

I listened with interest.  And I tried my best.  But years of academic training got the better of me.  I caviled, quibbled and disputed several times.  The first M&M struck me in the lapel.  The second bounced off the notes in front of me.  The last one was a direct hit, caroming off my noggin.  (Nice shot, Fonseca!)

The "no no's" rule comes as a surprise to a lot of people.  It seems like a recipe for chaos.  Isn't caviling the very method of quality control?  Actually, it isn't always.  Too often it's the way academics jam the airwaves against new ideas.  But the point of this undertaking is not quality control, it's idea generation.  When what we are looking for is a sheer profusion of possibilities, no no's is the path to riches.

Good brainstorming is an act of intellectual improv.  A group of people agree to break the normal rules and reservations of interaction and "go for it."  Their objective: to go places they could not get on their own...

But how are we to separate the good from the bad ideas?  The good news is that, in good groups, bad ideas go away by themselves.  No one picks them up.  No one remains their champion...

One of the conditions of brainstorming is a "nonproprietary" approach from the participants.  The moment an idea escapes our lips, it belongs to the group...  We have to learn to say goodbye.  We get credit in general for our performance...but otherwise ideas end up belonging to everyone.  This is sometimes the hardest lesson for academics to learn...

Once we learn to say no to no, we have to learn to say yes to yes... Brainstorming works best when we commit heart and soul.  It works best when we engage in a kind of improv.  The first positive rule of brainstorming is just what it is in improv: Take up every pretext and run with it.

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Further Thoughts on Group Process

While I do find Grant's belief in the power of brainstorming compelling (and have said so before), this counterpoint from Johnnie Moore is worth bearing in mind:

Personally, I like methods that allow...people a flexibility to work at different paces and [use] different ways of interacting. I tend not to use the word "brainstorming" as for me it's too suggestive of a relentless fast-pace. With more time for reflection, people sometimes generate ideas that are somewhere in the fascinating gaps between one point of view and another. And I like rules-of-thumb more than absolute instructions for how we might all choose to play together.

Ultimately I think it's most important to be mindful of the overall group dynamic.  For example, do we tend to "object, cavil, quibble, carp and niggle," like Grant's academics?  Then a formal set of brainstorming parameters, such as a hard-and-fast "No No's" rule, might give ideas time to breathe before they're suffocated.

It's also worth considering where the group is in the decision-making process.  Do we need to begin eliminating options in order to reach closure?  Then the time for brainstorming is over, and we need to transition into an entirely different process--but until we reach that point, perhaps we need a set of agreements that will help us stay in idea-generation mode.  Sam Kaner's framework for decision-making is a simple but very useful tool in this regard:

Finally, I'm reminded of Grant's elements of reinvention, an extraordinarily thoughtful list of the dynamics that characterize change.  Put all these concepts together, and they comprise a great set of tools for stimulating idea generation, reinvention, and change while also helping a group ultimately move forward and reach closure.

Chief Culture Officer

For the past few months I've wanted to recommend Grant McCracken's Chief Culture Officer, a terrific book that came out last December, although I had to wait until I began writing again a few weeks ago.  (Full disclosure: I consider Grant a friendly colleague, and his publisher sent me a review copy of the book.)  In a feat of imagination, Grant has willed into being an entirely new profession--the CCO--and is now tackling the daunting task of telling the business world how to fill a void it didn't even know existed.

So just what is a CCO?  I'll let Grant describe it in his own words (I've added headings for clarity):

The Professional CCO

[pp 14-15] In [many] cases, someone can act as a CCO not because he has studied contemporary culture but because he comes from that culture.  He knows it in his bones.

The problem with this approach is the "best by" date stamped on knowledge.  Our community carries on without us.  In the early days, we can update our knowledge without much effort, but eventually our knowledge wears out.  We have lost our "seal" with culture.

The other problem is that we must finally transcend the community from which we come... Eventually every CCO has to know about the whole of culture, and not just the part of it he or she knows from personal experience.

This is, finally, an issue of professionalism, of systemizing our knowledge, of getting organized, of going beyond our own preferences and comfort zone.  Unofficial CCOs may rely on particular knowledge, on "hunches."  They may feel things "in the gut," as if culture were a probiotic enterprise, after all.  But the professional CCO has a breadth and depth of knowledge.  The CCO has to know the whole of the waterfront, not just his or her favorite patch or point of origin...

Standards, knowledge, continual learning, the ability to process massive bodies of data and possibility, the ability to spot the crucial development in a perfect storm of possibilities--this, and not intuition, is the work of the CCO.

The CCO and the Consumer

[p 30] [The role of the CCO is] to dolly back far enough to see the consumer in her life, in her culture.

Actually, CCOs move in two directions.  The go inward toward the consumer more than anyone else in the C-suite.  They come to know what these lives feel like.  But CCOs also move outward to capture the bigger picture.  Dolly up.  Dolly back.

The CCO and "Homeyness"

[p 46] It is topics like homeyness that separate the CCOs who are moved by genuine curiosity about their culture from those who are merely in it for the really stylish eyewear.  There is nothing in homeyness that will make you look hipper to your friends.  There is nothing here you can drop into conversation at a party.  There is no knowledge here that really works as social capital.  No, the CCO wants to know about homeyness because it is part of American culture, and that's his job.

The CCO, Marketing and Smart Culture

[pp 92-93] The world of marketing is changing at light speed.  And this is another reason to hire a CCO.  If the corporation is now going to talk to consumers, instead of shout, or lie, it needs to know how to start and sustain the conversation... It needs to proceed with a new order of intelligence.  As Steven Johnson says in Everything Bad is Good for You, "For decades we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a steadily declining path toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the 'masses' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies want to give the masses what they want.  But in fact, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more intellectually demanding, not less."  To live in this culture, to profit in this new marketplace, a CCO is called for.

This may require a complete replacement of the marketing team.  In the meantime, it will require the presence of the CCO, someone who knows the culture well enough to engage with it, to talk about it, to contribute to it.

The CCO and Profitability

[p 107] There are two ways the CCO pursues profit.  The first is in the workaday business of making the C-suite's decisions better informed of the opportunities and the risks that come from culture.  The second is by acting like an internal entrepreneur, an innovation agent inside the corporation.

The CCO and Corporate Respiration

[p 119] Things are more complicated now.  Now the corporation is not just an economic actor, it is also a social and a cultural one... Instead of the interest-seeking automaton, the corporation looks more organic, like something living and breathing.  A key part of its respiration now is the movement of culture in and culture out.  Only a CCO in the C-suite and only a very smart person serving as CCO can manage this respiration.

Paying particular attention to A) Grant's reference to Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You (another great book) and the idea that our culture is actually getting smarter all the time, and B) the concept of "corporate respiration," the process by which corporations absorb and (in turn) influence the culture at large, I'm reminded of the first three theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto (surely no accident on Grant's part):

1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

Grant's convincing case that a CCO is now a necessary function ultimately derives much of its power from the fact that the world now looks a lot like the Cluetrain visionaries said it would.  Old-school marketing wasn't a conversation, it was a broadcast, or, at best, a one-way feedback loop informed by the findings of focus groups and (gag) "cool-hunters."  That system never really worked well--e.g. John Wanamaker's "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."--and its shortcomings explain why we now need a new profession to augment the position formerly occupied by the CMO.  Marketers know how to broadcast to demographic sectors, but they don't necessarily know how to hold a conversation with other human beings (in their professional capacity, that is--I certainly know plenty of marketers who are a joy to talk with :-)

This highlights one shortcoming of Chief Cultural Officer: any newfangled CCO will face a huge challenge in navigating the complex relationship with their conventional marketing colleagues, and I wish Grant had explored that topic further.  In a section entitled "Playing Well with Others: The Rest of the C-Suite," Grant rightly emphasizes how important it will be for CCOs to never "play the cool card" or be "hipper than thou," and to collaborate with their colleagues by making themselves useful.  But I suspect that while this will be easier said than done, this is actually where CCOs will need to focus a great deal of energy to be most effective.  Even companies that buy into the concept of a CCO will likely continue to maintain a separate marketing function under the direction of a CMO or the equivalent, and the CCO's ability to help the organization make best use of those resources will depend on the strength of the collaborative relationships they build with their marketing peers.

As Grant continues to proselytize on behalf of this fledgling profession, I suspect he'll use lessons learned from the field to fill in this gap.  And this quibble aside, I do highly recommend the book--it's a thoughtful read from a skillful writer and provocative thinker.

(FYI, two other concepts by Grant have had a big influence on me: the Swift Self, and the Elements of Reinvention.)

Brand You in the 21st Century

Twelve years ago Tom Peters introduced the concept of Brand You:

We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc... [O]ur most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You...

[A]sk yourself the same question the brand managers at Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop ask themselves: What is it that my product or service does that makes it different? Give yourself the traditional 15-words-or-less contest challenge...

If your answer wouldn't light up the eyes of a prospective client or command a vote of confidence from a satisfied past client, or--worst of all--if it doesn't grab you, then you've got a big problem. It's time to give some serious thought and even more serious effort to imagining and developing yourself as a brand.

Start by identifying the qualities or characteristics that make you distinctive from your competitors--or your colleagues. What have you done lately--this week--to make yourself stand out? What would your colleagues or your customers say is your greatest and clearest strength? Your most noteworthy (as in, worthy of note) personal trait?...

Your next step is to cast aside all the usual descriptors that employees and workers depend on to locate themselves in the company structure. Forget your job title. Ask yourself: What do I do that adds remarkable, measurable, distinguished, distinctive value? Forget your job description. Ask yourself: What do I do that I am most proud of? Most of all, forget about the standard rungs of progression you've climbed in your career up to now. Burn that damnable "ladder" and ask yourself: What have I accomplished that I can unabashedly brag about? If you're going to be a brand, you've got to become relentlessly focused on what you do that adds value, that you're proud of, and most important, that you can shamelessly take credit for.

When you've done that, sit down and ask yourself one more question to define your brand: What do I want to be famous for? That's right -- famous for!

Peters concluded by noting four key skills essential to the success of Brand You:

No matter what you're doing today, there are four things you've got to measure yourself against. First, you've got to be a great teammate and a supportive colleague. Second, you've got to be an exceptional expert at something that has real value. Third, you've got to be a broad-gauged visionary -- a leader, a teacher, a farsighted "imagineer." Fourth, you've got to be a businessperson -- you've got to be obsessed with pragmatic outcomes.

Chris Anderson recently built on Peters' last question--"What do you want to be famous for?"--and added a fifth key skill:

The key talent of the 21st century is self-promotion and creating celebrity...[and] the goal is to create celebrity, or reputation...and convert that into something that pays the rent.

One of the most skilled practitioners of this process is famous-for-being-famous Paris Hilton, cited by Anderson as "the perfect 21st century business model."  He wasn't holding her up as a role model--he was simply noting her success at defining a personal brand through self-promotion and using that reputation to pay the rent, so to speak.

And obviously I'm trading on that reputation here by assuming that Ms. Hilton's presence alongside Messrs. Peters and Anderson above will capture some additional attention.  I'm not suggesting that Hilton's a role model, either, but she's a logical (if regrettable) result of the dynamics that Peters and Anderson describe so well.

So what are you doing to take advantage of those same dynamics?  The technical and social transformations of the recent past have given all of us the ability to independently present our ideas, our talents, our passions to the world at large (or at least to that segment of the world that matters to us.)  We're now our own brand managers in a very tactical, tangible way.

Peters challenged us to identify the essential qualities that define our brand, and exhorted us to adopt four specific skills to enhance that brand.  Anderson is challenging us to use the new media environment at our disposal to build our brand equity.  He's saying that it's not enough to have all these terrific qualities described by Peters if no one knows about them--and it's never been easier to get that message out.

That's not always a good thing, of course--cf. Hilton's success.  And Anderson is quick to admit that the business of converting celebrity into something that pays the rent "can be just as dirty as it sounds."  We can interpret Hilton's prominence as a dismaying indicator of the rise of bad taste and the coarsening of popular culture.  But we should also view her as the product of a system that every one of us can take advantage of in one way or another.

No traditional cultural gatekeepers saw Hilton as an untapped talent waiting to be promoted.  She followed Anderson's formula to the letter--she promoted herself, created a celebrity identity, and converted that reputation into an ability to pay the rent.  Is the world a better place as a result?  No, but I don't blame Hilton for that.  She saw a market need and filled it.

No matter what we think of the "acting," "singing" and public misbehavior that made Hilton famous, she's worthy of attention as a "perfect 21st century business model" and as an example of the power of a personal brand.  I'm not suggesting that we should follow her lead in any specific way, but if she can take advantage of these dynamics to create and maintain a business based solely on that brand, they're clearly accessible to all of us in our own communities and markets, using our own talents and abilities.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Carl's Jr. commercial to make.

Photo of Tom Peters uncredited, photo of Chris Anderson by Joi, photo of Paris Hilton by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.

Social Network Tools (From AlertThingy to Zemanta)

One year after my last review of some social media tools and networks, here's the 2009 version.  Included are:

- UPDATES on the services I reviewed last year and how I've integrated them into my work (or not) as an executive coach and consultant: Tumblr, Twitter, Utterli and (on the lighter side) Don't Break the Chain.  (In this section I also reference a number of Twitter clients, but I don't discuss them in depth--more on that front later.)

- Reviews of a few NEW TOOLS I didn't discuss last year or am currently trying out: Tumblelog Facebook Application, FriendFeed, Tumblr Post Firefox Add-on, and Shareaholic Firefox Add-on.

- QUICK LOOKS at some tools I'm considering trying or have ruled out for various reasons.  This includes a number of "social network integrators" -- AlertThingy, HelloTxt, Ping.fm, Posty, and TarPipe -- as well as some assorted blog-related social tools: Blogrollr, BlogScrobbler, Lijit, Disqus, IntenseDebate, Psolenoid and Zemanta.

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UPDATES

Tumblr has become my tool of choice for sharing interesting links.  A "linkblog" like this occupies a perfect niche between my Delicious bookmarks and my blog posts here.  My bookmarks are publicly searchable, but they're intended primarily to help me keep track of resources I might otherwise forget about, and they're often related to topics that are unlikely to be of interest to others.  My posts here are original essays, and although I hope a personal voice comes through in my writing, I typically focus on topics related to executive coaching and change management consulting.  In contrast, the links I post to Tumblr are (hopefully) of interest to a wider audience, and they touch on a wide range of subjects, including a number that I'm unlikely to write about here, although they're still more tightly focused than my bookmarks.

I publish content from my linkblog in several different places.  First, I've configured Tumblr to send my posts to Twitter and to FriendFeed as updates--more on both of those services below.  I'm using script provided by Tumblr in yesterday's Interesting Links post as well as in the left-hand sidebar here (at least for now).  And I've added the Tumblelog Facebook Application, which creates a new "Tumblr" tab on my FB profile.

Two features on Tumblr I haven't yet done much with are the option to follow other people's Tumblr blogs, and the ability to customize your own blog's look-and-feel.  Tumblr generates an RSS feed for each blog, but I haven't yet bothered to find other blogs I want to keep up with, subscribe to their feeds, and integrate them into my regular reading--that seems like way too much work right now.  Tumblr allows you to aggregate blogs you're following on your Tumblr "dashboard," but I'm not inclined to work yet another web page into my routine.  And because I'm publishing my Tumblr links in so many other places, as noted above, I don't expect many people to actually visit my Tumblr page, so as long as it doesn't look too awful, I don't really care about it.

All in all, Tumblr's a great resource, and I expect to use it even more intensively in the future.  (I wouldn't mind having all my Tumblr posts tagged on Delicious as well to make it easier for me to access them in the future, but I haven't bothered to take that extra step.)

I'm sorry to say that I haven't yet come across any other executive coaches or change management consultants who are using Tumblr consistently (which isn't to say they're not out there--I haven't been looking all that hard.)  Mark McGuinness clued me in to Tumblr in the first place, but he hasn't posted there since June '08--given that he's the most web-savvy coach I know, I assume he's just channeling his energy elsewhere.

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Twitter didn't seem that compelling to me a year ago, but it's come to serve several useful purposes.  As noted above, I send any interesting links I post to Tumblr to my Twitter account.  My assumption is that if you're following me on Twitter, you're likely to be interested in links that I find interesting, and integrating with Tumblr in this way allows me to share them as easily as possible.  But I've also begun to make more use of Twitter as a social network.  I initially synched Twitter with Gmail, which allowed me to begin following nearly 200 people, but I've whittled that number down to about 50 (with the help of MyTweeple, because Twitter's admin features are pretty minimal), with an emphasis on people I know personally and/or people who share my focus on coaching and consulting.

Although you can lock your Twitter account, preventing people from following you without your approval, I allow anyone to follow me because Twitter's not reciprocal--unlike Facebook.  (One of the downsides of Facebook, particularly in the "new" FB, is the huge amount of stuff the system sends me that I'm not interested in, simply because I'm connected to people who haven't taken the time to "weed their feeds."  As a result, I'm much less likely to accept friend request on FB now and will probably begin culling that network as well.  But with Twitter, this isn't a problem because the system allows one-way relationships, so I can follow people who aren't necessarily interested in my tweets, and vice versa.  Fred Wilson recently described how he downsized his Facebook network while continuing to use Twitter and Tumblr to broadcast to a larger audience.)

I could conceivably send my Twitter updates to my Tumblr blog, but I've decided to make that a one-way channel.  The links I post to Tumblr are all (conceivably) of interest to anyone following me on Twitter, but tweets are likely to be more personal and ephemeral, and I don't really see the need to "archive" them on a linkblog.

All this said, I know I'm not using Twitter to its full potential.  We seem to be at an interesting juncture in Twitter's evolution--perhaps a classic chasm moment--when the true innovators (the Twitterati?) have become intensive users, and the early majority are just hearing about it for the first time.  Early adopters like me (who know just enough to get ourselves in trouble) are still figuring out precisely how it adds value to our lives.  I do realize I could make much more extensive use of Twitter if I found better interfaces--on the web and via my cell.

I've looked at a few web clients--TweetDeck and TweetGrid seem popular among the people I follow--but choosing one over another and getting up the learning curve hasn't been a priority.  I'm probably at a point where I need to just pick one and get on with things.

On my cell, I just realized that I can use Twitter's mobile site--the browser on my Treo 680 isn't great, but it works reasonably well (and the mobile site looks pretty good on a laptop, too.)  And I'm testing MoTwit, a Palm OS application that provides a slightly better interface to enter updates (it fills the screen, rather than limiting you to a tiny text box), as well as links to your primary Twitter pages (accessible via your mobile browser.)  If I was motivated to change my cellphone plan, I could text or SMS updates to Twitter, but they currently cost me a nickel each, which is just enough to hold down my usage.

Unfortunately, the best mobile channel for me is email--that's the main reason I've stuck with a Treo for so long--but Twitter doesn't currently allow updates via email.  There's an interesting work-around (involving a dummy Blogger account, TwitterFeed and OpenID--uh, no thanks) and some third-party apps like TwitterMail, EmailTwitter, and MessageDance (which offers more extensive social network integration as well), but I haven't tried any of them yet.  (Although my next post on the subject will probably be a review of all these options.)

There are few coaches and consultants I follow on Twitter who seem to have sorted it out, and Pam Fox Rollin is first among them--she seems to have a perfect feel for this new medium.  Eric Pennington, Kristen Beireis, and Mark McGuinness (that's where he's been!) are also well worth following.

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Utterli (formerly Utterz) is, among other things, an easy way to 1) record a conversation using your phone and generate an audio file on the web, 2) add a photo or other contextual data, and 3) share it as a podcast.  It works well for this purpose, but the admin and network controls leave something to be desired--for example, I'd like to have more control over who can view certain files.

But Utterli is more than just an auto-podcasting service--it's really a "social network integrator" (much more on those below) or even a "rich media cross-posting platform," if you like.  You can configure it to post photos, audio and video not only to different social networks but also to multiple private blogs.  I do think it's a useful service, but I've realized that I'm a writer, not a podcaster.  And while it's nice to know it's there if I need to record an interview, I'm not going to rely on it regularly until the admin controls are improved.

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Don't Break the Chain isn't really like any of the other tools I discuss here, but it's worth noting because it's probably had the biggest impact on my life over the past year.  You simply tick off days in a calendar to create a colorful "chain" that shows how many consecutive days "you've been getting things done."  In my case I use it to track my exercise, and it's been an incredibly powerful motivator.  I've configured Firefox to open up the site as a new tab each time it launches, and I can't help but want to extend the chain every day.

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NEW TOOLS

As noted above, the Tumblelog Facebook Application allows me to add a "Tumblr" tab to my FB profile.  Pretty simple, but what's not yet clear is how best to integrate it with FriendFeed (see below), which is currently also publishing my Tumblr links to FB.  I'm not sure what advantages, if any, the FB app offers over FriendFeed.

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FriendFeed is the first "social network integrator" I encountered (although I didn't call it that then).  I started using it just over a year ago, although for some reason I didn't think to include in the first version of this post I wrote at that time.  I'm currently using FF to integrate content from this blog's RSS feed and feeds from Last.fm, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook.  In theory, the content from all these feeds is aggregated on my FriendFeed page (although no content from Last.fm or LinkedIn is appearing, and I'm not sure why.)  In turn, I use the FriendFeed Facebook Application to publish some of this content to FB.  As noted above, I have some redundant links on my FB profile, and I have to take a look at which apps are posting what content to whittle it down.  (I used to have FriendFeed configured to integrate my Delicious bookmarks and publish them on FB, but that was way too much unnecessary content.)

As you might expect, FriendFeed also allows you to subscribe to your...wait for it...friends' feeds.  But I really have no idea how my current network of friends on the service became established, and I just unsubscribed from most of their feeds, leaving only a handful to experiment with.

FriendFeed's been useful as a FB publishing app, operating in the background, but I'm certainly not using it to its full potential.  I'm getting enough content from my various networks via FB and Twitter at the moment, so I don't really want more--but given how much useless stuff I have to wade through on both of those networks, FriendFeed may offer some way to increase the signal-to-noise ratio.

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The Tumblr Post Firefox Add-on is a great way to post interesting links to my Tumblr linkblog.  The official Tumblr bookmarklet relies on the URL that's in your navigation bar at that moment, so if you're scrolling through a blog and see a post you'd like to share on Tumblr, you have to find that post's unique link and click through to it before you can use the bookmarklet.  But with the Tumblr Post add-on, you can drag-and-drop any link on the page to a small icon at the bottom right corner of your browser window.  I've configured it to allow me to add text and tags as well before posting to Tumblr, but even with that additional step it's faster than the official bookmarklet, and I prefer the default formatting (although the bookmarklet does give you some more flexibility in determining what text will be displayed.)

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And the Shareaholic Firefox Add-on is another way to post to Tumblr, but it's also a more full-featured social network integrator that allows you to post to nearly 30 other services as well, from bit.ly to Y Combinator.  In my case I'm testing it with bit.ly, Delicious, FriendFeed, Tumblr, and Twitter.  I love the Firefox integration--a nice drop-down menu added in the navigation bar, as well as a listing in your right-click menu--BUT apparently Shareaholic relies on the basic Tumblr bookmarklet function, so you get the same (slow) pop-up and (worse) you still have to click through to the actual page you want to post, so that the URL is displayed in your navigation bar.  It's nice to be able to post to a range of services simultanously, but Shareaholic isn't nearly as helpful as the Tumblr Post add-on.  (There's also some unintrusive but unwanted integration with Bzzster, which apparently developed this add-on.)

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QUICK LOOKS

Below are some tools I've taken a quick look at but have either rejected or haven't yet tested.

First up is a list of social network integrators that allow you to post to to multiple networks and services (Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Plaxo, etc.) simultaneously.  I'm only active on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and I'm connected with different people in those networks so I'm inclined to use them for different purposes (although I'm still in the process of discovering just how they differ and just what those purposes are), and--as noted above--I'm still exploring FriendFeed's capabilities, so I don't feel an urgent need to test these integrators.  That said, it's been interesting learning more about my alternatives:

AlertThingy allows you to post updates as well as to receive content from the services you select.  It also serves as an RSS reader, which is appealing.  However, it runs as a separate application, which make it a non-starter for me--I want as few apps open as possible.

HelloTxt allows you to post to over 40 services via your phone, email, IM and their Facebook app. 

Ping.fm allows you to post to over 30 services from another network, your phone, IM, or email.

Posty but it's unclear to me whether it's strictly web-based or provides access to your networks via other channels as well.

Tarpipe is another social network integrator, but with a very cool user interface (although it seems aimed at a user who's a bit more technical than I am.)

Finally, here are some assorted tools and services that I've taken a look at recently:

Blogrollr is a new service launched in the last few weeks as a result of Fred Wilson's wish for a better blogroll.  This tool supposedly* allows you to install a widget that tracks the blogs you visit and compiles a rolling list of the most popular sites and the most recent posts.  Thanks to an astounding response from Fred's commenters, Blogrollr launched just two days later.  Interestingly, this would have been a perfect application for the AttentionTrust recorder--and it's not surprising to see Stan James involved--see below.  *Unfortunately, the site crashed before I could even install the widget, so I haven't been able to try it out and don't know much other than that it looks good on Fred's site--currently just below his sidebar ads.  I'll keep trying. Their site's back up, and I was able to install their Firefox extension and set up a widget on another site. It's pretty slick and seems to be just what it's billed as: a Last.fm for blogs.

BlogScrobbler is another application developed on the fly in response to Fred's initial post--and this was created by Stan James, who developed the AttentionTrust recorder.  (The name derives from AudioScrobbler, the application that underlies Last.fm, because what Fred wanted to replace his static blogroll was "a Last.fm for blogs"--in other words, a dynamically generated "playlist" of the posts and sites he visited most often.)  BlogScrobbler is a Firefox extension that tracks your blog reading habits within certain parameters (recording a site only after you've been there for 15 seconds, for example), and then sends a list of "scrobbled" posts to a Twitter account.  You have to create a display of your scrobbled post data using one of the many Twitter widgets out there.  Very interesting stuff, and it was nice to learn a little about what Stan's been up to as a result, but it involves a bit more "bolting together" than I feel like dealing with at the moment.  (Which is why I'm an early adopter, not an innovator.)

Lijit is a social network search service that allows you to create a customized search box for your users that includes content from your site, your social networks, and any other sites you designate (such as your blogroll) in the results.  Lijit was founded several years ago by...Stan James!  (It's hard to believe that I haven't been in touch with him since my AttentionTrust days and then ran across his name on three projects in a single post.)  I created an account at that time but never actually set up a Lijit search box--I'm currently trying it out on a test site to see if it's worth including alongside my site's standard Google search box.

Disqus and IntenseDebate are blog comment services that offer a variety of features that improve upon the (very) basic functionality offered by, in my case, TypePad.  Both services improve the user experience for the commenters, but they also allow your commenters to interact as members of a social network, in a sense, and it seems to me that the service that succeeds in encouraging a critical mass of commenters to register will win.  This isn't a high priority for me right now, and I'm not ready to ask my commenters to choose one over the other--I'd rather follow the market on this one--but if TypePad doesn't make some improvements in this area, I'll take a closer look at implementing one of them.

Psolenoid allows you to reciprocally connect your blog posts to related posts by other bloggers.  I appreciate the potential value of a network of people writing on related topics, established through a series of direct connections between specific blog posts, but at this point it doesn't seem worth testing to me.  Both you and the other person need to have Psolenoid accounts activated on your site, you have to manually establish the connection between any two posts, and it looks like it'll add some clutter to the bottom of the post.

Zemanta is a browser extension (for Firefox, IE and others) that suggests "tags, links, photos and related articles" when you're composing a blog post and when you're using a web-based email service.  Their demo is fascinating, and I appreciate not only the potential time-savings but also (if true) the range of purported benefits, such as their claim that their suggested tags will improve your SEO.  That said, I haven't tried it out yet--it looks like it adds some clutter to your blog posts, and (at least at this point) I actually like taking the time to "hand-roll" my posts, without content that's automagically created for me.

PowerPoint Slides

Updated April 2010

I'm a visual learner, so I occasionally create PowerPoint slides to provide another way of understanding and communicating the concepts I'm writing about.  I wanted make it easier to reference these slides, so here's a compilation of posts where graphic images have (hopefully) helped to augment the text.  (If you don't have PowerPoint, you can download a free viewer from Microsoft or use Google Docs, another free alternative.)

The title and image both link to the original post, but there's also a direct link to the actual slides at the end of each excerpt:

Awareness and Spontaneity

Conflict Modes and Managerial Styles

David Bradford on Real Options

Decision-Making

Developing Your Professional Vision

Double-Loop Learning

Double-Loop Learning and Executive Coaching

Double-Loop Learning, T-Groups and Feedback

Energy vs. Intensity

Experiential Learning Cycles

The Influence Pyramid 2.0

Joel Peterson on What's Important

Joel Peterson on Why We Work

Organizational Effectiveness

On Change: Inclination, Motivation, Action

Safety, Trust, Intimacy

Three Things You (Probably) Won't Learn in Business School

Time Horizons

Trium on Agreement vs. Alignment

Trium on Responsibility

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Awareness and Spontaneity

Two (of many) dimensions that describe our actions are 1) our level of awareness and 2) our degree of spontaneity at a given moment. Mapping these dimensions across each other results in four distinct ways of being, four "modes," although the boundaries are arbitrary and highly fluid. There's no implied hierarchy—no one mode is "best"—but a given mode may be best suited to our needs at a given moment...

[Download Slide, 58 KB]

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Conflict Modes and Managerial Styles

How do you deal with conflict? Most of us have a "natural" conflict resolution style that corresponds with one of the five modes identified by Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann... It's worth noting that the TKI and Kraybill's version are built on the Managerial Style Grid, developed by Jane Mouton and Robert Blake in the 1960's...

[Download Slides, 53 KB]

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David Bradford on Real Options

If we can push beyond our current limits in any of these areas--our model of leadership, our skills, our personal style--we expand the range of options available to us in a managerial situation...

[Download Slides, 29 KB]

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Decision-Making

None of this is rocket science, by any means, but I'm struck by how often our decision-making (particularly in group settings) could be improved by a more conscious application of this simple framework.

[Download Slide, 58 KB]

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Developing Your Professional Vision

"Truly great [professionals] understand the difference between what should never change and what should be open for change, between what is genuinely sacred and what is not.  This rare ability to manage continuity and change--requiring a consciously practiced discipline--is closely linked to the ability to develop a vision."

[Download Slides, 148 KB]

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Double-Loop Learning

A number of people wind up here after searching for "double-loop learning," a topic I've addressed before while discussing meta-work, executive coaching and feedback, so I thought I'd provide a simple graphic overview....

[Download Slides, 64 KB]

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Double-Loop Learning and Executive Coaching

To make this distinction clearer, I've applied the concept to an issue that often comes up in executive coaching engagements and one that I've dealt with on a personal basis--communicating more effectively.  In my own case, I received some feedback that helped me make a strategic decision to express my emotions more fully when speaking in order to have a greater impact.  Here's an illustration of this strategy...

[Download Slides, 52 KB]

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Double-Loop Learning, T-Groups and Feedback

How effective are your interactions with others? What behaviors enhance your effectiveness, and what behaviors undermine your effectiveness? How do people perceive you? What behaviors positively affect the way you're perceived, and what behaviors make a negative impression on others?

[Download Slides, 66 KB]

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Energy vs. Intensity

Our interpersonal communication behaviors can be defined not only in terms of their energy but also in terms of their intensity. These qualities are similar but distinct, and understanding the subtle difference between them can help us be more aware of the choices we're making and allow us to tailor our approach to a given interaction...

[Download Slide, 36 KB]

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Experiential Learning Cycles

The value of these models isn't in their conceptual elegance--it's in their ability to help you be more effective in the world. Applying them shouldn't be a time-consuming or difficult process, and in some cases it may involve nothing more than a few moments of thought after an experience and prior to its repetition... The point is to recognize how much can be learned from our every experience and interaction, and to begin to capture more of that learning on a consistent basis.

[Download Slides, 37 KB]

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The Influence Pyramid 2.0

Much of my work as a coach involves helping people be more influential, even--especially--when the thought of their own influence makes them uncomfortable. Last year some reflections on the dimensions of cultural difference--and specifically the concept of "power distance"--led to further thoughts on interpersonal power, which in turn contributed to a rough model of how we become more influential, which I called the Influence Pyramid...

[Download Slides, 78 KB]

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Joel Peterson on What's Important

What's important isn't necessarily urgent...and what's urgent isn't necessarily important. We all have plenty of urgent matters we're compelled to deal with, despite the fact that they don't really have much bearing on the course of events. But what about those truly important matters that go neglected because they don't compel our immediate attention?

[Download Slide, 70 KB]

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Joel Peterson on Why We Work

"Don't settle for work that's merely rewarding; find what you love to do and do it. Don't settle for superficial good feelings; strive for a deeper sense of meaning and purpose."

[Download Slide, 98 KB]

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Organizational Effectiveness

What makes organizations effective? For that matter, what do we even mean by effectiveness? I've been giving these questions some thought recently and the following graphs are the result...

[Download Slide, 75 KB]

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On Change: Inclination, Motivation, Action

How do we make change happen in our lives? What supports our efforts? And what gets in our way?

[Download Slides, 57 KB]

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Safety, Trust, Intimacy

[S]ome groups are more effective than others at helping the members learn, increase their awareness and change their behavior, and I believe that the group's levels of safety, trust and intimacy are the key factors in determining its effectiveness in this regard.

[Download Slides, 268 KB]

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Three Things You (Probably) Won't Learn in Business School

I learned a hell of a lot in business school, but it wasn't until after I graduated that I fully realized how much I still didn't know... One of the reasons I find my current work with MBA students so gratifying is that I'm helping them explore topics that will allow them be better prepared after graduation than I was. I recently had a chance to talk with Corey Ford, a former GSB student.. We talked extensively about what he'd learned in business school, but I also asked him about what he didn't learn...

[Download Slides, 90 KB]

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Time Horizons

When we assess our lives--our fulfillment, our effectiveness, what's working, what's not working--how far ahead do we look? How far ahead should we look? Is that time horizon a good fit for the issues under consideration? And what issues are most relevant to us in a given time horizon?

[Download Slides, 111 KB]

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Trium on Agreement vs. Alignment

Extend the Frontier: Why? In order to make more important decisions more quickly and easily. How? Increase trust among group members and link personal and group goals.

[Download Slide, 23 KB]

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Trium on Responsibility

How do we act when we feel "responsible"? How do we act when we don't? And what are the implications for our organizations and our colleagues?

[Download Slide, 56 KB]

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Photo by b1gw1ght.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Forces for Good and High-Impact Practices

What common practices are shared by "high-impact" nonprofits?  And can organizations in other industries benefit from these same practices?  Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant tackle the first question in their soon-to-be-published Forces for Good (due out October 19), and based on an excerpt that came out today in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, it's clear that the answer to the second question is an unqualified yes.

In the SSIR article, Crutchfield and McLeod Grant discuss the six high-impact practices that make up the heart of their book, and in my opinion all of these concepts have relevance beyond the nonprofit sector.

Their key theme is that what's happening outside an organization is more important than what's happening inside, and yet so many of our efforts aimed at improving effectiveness are focused on activities within an organization's formal boundaries.  (And not, I suspect, because that's where we can have the greatest impact, but because that's what's easiest.)

Here's are the six high-impact practices identified by Crutchfield and McLeod Grant, with brief excerpts from the SSIR article and my interpretation of how these concepts could be applied more broadly:

1. Serve and Advocate

High-impact organizations may start out providing great programs, but they eventually realize that they cannot achieve large-scale social change through service delivery alone. So they add policy advocacy to acquire government resources and to change legislation. Other nonprofits start out by doing advocacy and later add grassroots programs to supercharge their strategy. Ultimately, all high-impact organizations bridge the divide between service and advocacy. They become good at both. And the more they serve and advocate, the more they achieve impact.

So what's the equivalent of "advocacy" outside the nonprofit sector?  Lobbying.  Just take a stroll through the Lobbying Database to see how much "high-impact" companies are spending.  Microsoft has topped $8 million annually for the last 4 years, and Google went from $200K in 2005 to over $800K last year.  I'm not saying this results in good public policy, but it's reality.

2. Make Markets Work

High-impact nonprofits have learned that tapping into the power of self-interest and the laws of economics is far more effective than appealing to pure altruism. No longer content to rely on traditional notions of charity, or to see business as an enemy, these nonprofits find ways to work with markets and help companies "do good while doing well."

Not much to add here.

3. Inspire Evangelists

High-impact nonprofits build strong communities of supporters who help them achieve their larger goals. They value volunteers, donors, and advisers not only for their time, money, and guidance, but also for their evangelism. To inspire supporters' commitment, these nonprofits create emotional experiences that help connect supporters to the group's mission and core values.

What jumps out at me is the emphasis on "emotional experiences."  Is your organization creating any emotional experiences for your supporters?  And if not, why would you expect them to evangelize on your behalf?

4. Nurture Nonprofit Networks

Although most nonprofits pay lip service to collaboration, many of them really see other groups as competition for scarce resources. But high impact organizations help their peers succeed, building networks of nonprofit allies and devoting remarkable time and energy to advancing their fields.

This is more industry-specific.  If you're in a mature industry and focused on stealing market share, collaborating doesn't make as much sense.  But if you're in an emerging industry and growing the overall market is a quicker and cheaper path to success, you need to take a broader view of the competition.  A zero-sum perspective will limit everyone's growth potential.

5. Master the Art of Adaptation

High-impact nonprofits are exceptionally adaptive, modifying their tactics as needed to increase their success. They have responded to changing circumstances with one innovation after another. Along the way, they've made mistakes and have even produced some flops. But unlike many nonprofits, they have also mastered the ability to listen, learn, and modify their approach on the basis of external cues.

I love the phrase "external cues."  What cues are you picking up from beyond the boundaries of your organization?  But listening is just the beginning--what are you doing with that information?

6. Share Leadership

The leaders of these 12 organizations all exhibit charisma, but they don't have oversized egos. They know that they must share power in order to be stronger forces for good. They distribute leadership within their organizations and throughout their external nonprofit networks, empowering others to lead.

I'm reminded of this comment on from Bill George: "To me, the great leaders today are able to align people around a sense of purpose and values and get that consistency all around the globe, and then empower other people to step up and lead.  And I've found that in organizations that are really effective at generating leaders, there are thousands of leaders because people empower them to step up and lead."

Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good People

Why do so many well-meaning people give such bad presentations?  Last year Andy Goodman and Cause Communications sought to answer that question in Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes, an outstanding book that I can't recommend highly enough.  (Ironically, I've been involved in planning a series of presentations this year, but I only just rediscovered Goodman's book because my wife and I are moving to a new apartment and sifting through all our belongings. Timing really is everything.)  The title's emphasis on good "causes" stems from Goodman's work in the nonprofit sector, but his conclusions are broadly applicable in any industry.

Goodman's perspective is similar to Seth Godin's Really Bad PowerPoint, but he dramatically expands the scope of his critique with the help of data generated by 2,501 respondents to a 43-question online survey in Q1 2005.  Here are Goodman's "Fatal Five," common problems that can derail a presentation, with comments from survey respondents:

1. Reading the slides. ("Watching someone read PowerPoint slides is a form of torture that should be banned under the Geneva Convention.")
2. Too long, too much information. ("Too many slides with too many words, too many points, too much data, too long, too didactic.")
3. Lack of interaction. ("Presenters have a responsibility to mine [their audience's life and work experience], direct it, and facilitate the economical sharing of that information among the group.")
4. Lifeless presenters. ("Even if I'm interested in the topic...if the speaker is boring, I'm easily distracted by other goings-on in the room like someone's cool shoes or outfit.")
5. Room/technical problems. ("The frequency with which respondents mentioned these kinds of problems suggests that...presenters often do not anticipate them or fail to have a backup plan.")

But Goodman's respondents didn't just complain about bad presentations--they also told him what factors contribute to an excellent presentation.  Their "Three Most Wanted" list:

1. Interaction. ("Interactive presentations that create opportunities for the audience members to work together and with the presenter are almost always top notch.")
2. Clarity. ("Clarity of three to four well-framed key points the speaker wanted the audience to take away, coupled with smart use of metaphors/anecdotes that helped drive them home.")
3. Enthusiasm. ("Whether respondents used the words energy, passion, engaging, dynamic or lively, they all wanted the same thing: presenters who were enthusiastic about their topic and conveyed that interest to the audience.")

If an audience and a PowerPoint deck are in your future, "Bad Presentations..." is well worth your time.  And if you're a full-time employee at a nonprofit, foundation, government agency, or educational institution, you can get one free copy.  (If you work for The Man, it's still just $17.50.)

UPDATE: A digital version of "Bad Presentations..." is available for free from Andy Goodman.  Printed  copies are no longer available from Goodman, but you can usually find a few copies on Amazon.

Top Posts

PLEASE NOTE that as of April 24, 2010, this list has been moved to my site's Top Posts page, where I'll be making all future updates.

I'll leave this post intact in case anyone's linking to it or it turns up in any search results, but I encourage you to visit my Top Posts page for the current list.

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Here are a few posts from recent years that continue to resonate with me.  Topics include executive coaching, personal and professional development, leadership, management, motivation, organizational culture, and the process of change.  I'll update this list every few months, (Future updates will be made on my Top Posts page) but if you're looking for a post that's no longer shown here, you can always find it using the search box on the left.

Are You in the First Half...Or the Second Half? (April 2010)
Asking ourselves where we are in the time horizons that matter most to us is a useful way to get even more specific about our feelings and how they impact the choices we face within that horizon.

Developing Your Professional Vision (April 2010)
"Truly great [professionals] understand the difference between what should never change and what should be open for change... This rare ability...is closely linked to the ability to develop a vision."

Peter Drucker on Excellence, Careers and Planning (March 2010)
"Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values..."

David Rock on Neuroscience, Leadership and the SCARF Model (March 2010)
"Rock's SCARF model is a great example of his ability to translate the science into language appropriate for a lay business audience..."

Safety, Trust, Intimacy (March 2010)
"[T]he group's levels of safety, trust and intimacy are the key factors in determining its effectiveness in this regard..."

David Rock on Neuroscience, Coaching and Leadership (November 2009)
"Rock's central thesis is that neuroscience research has revealed four big (and surprising) truths with implications for coaching and personal development..."

SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness (November 2009)
"1) Cognitive Training Can Lead to Behavioral Change... 2) Experiential Learning Has a Neurological Basis... 3) Structured Learning Supports Peak Performance..."

Teaching Leadership with Stanford's Leadership Fellows (August 2009)
"Leadership is learned, not taught... Peers are guides and facilitators, not teachers... Leadership is everywhere, not just at the top..."

David Foster Wallace on the Meaning of Life (July 2009)
"[T]hese words strike me as so true, so fundamentally right that I can't believe that they lacked the power to save the life of the man who wrote them."

Time Horizons (July 2009)
"When we assess our lives--our fulfillment, our effectiveness, what's working, what's not working--how far ahead do we look? How far ahead should we look?"

Leading is Lonely and Other Thoughts (June 2009)
"Leading is lonely.  Information-gathering is not decision-making.  Position power is not influence."

Do You Have to Leap...Or Can You Grow? (April 2009)
"[O]ne of the many topics we talked about was how you move from one stage of your life to the next. And the way we framed the issue was: Do you have to take a leap, or can you grow there?"

On Decision-Making (March 2009)
"Initiate the process in divergent thinking mode, generating as many options as possible. Be deliberate about keeping all options on the table in this stage, and stay there as long as necessary and no longer."

Authentic Leadership and Your "Crucible Story" (February 2009)
"A transformative experience may come at any point in your life... But as much as we all want positive experiences...transformations for many leaders result from going through a crucible."

Sonia Lyubomirsky and The How of Happiness (February 2009)
"What makes us happy? How can we become happier? And is happiness sustainable?"

Three Things You (Probably) Won't Learn in Business School (January 2009)
"I don't know that we'll be teaching these lessons to our current students, either--perhaps because they're best learned after graduation."

The Influence Pyramid 2.0 (January 2009)
"We can understand at ever-deeper levels not merely how to be more influential but what implicit and unchallenged assumptions we hold about power and influence."

Gestalt Coaching (January 2009)
"When we speak of using Gestalt therapy with organizations or at the organization level, the fact remains that we ultimately are going to be using this approach with individuals or groups of individuals."

Peter Drucker on Knowledge Workers, Management and Leadership (October 2008)
"Am I being managed, or am I being led?  Am I managing, or am I leading?"

Technology Is Soft (May 2008)
"Thinking about technology as 'soft,' as an aspect of an organization's staff, style and skills, may seem counterintuitive, but increasingly this is where it truly resides (and it's where you'll have the greatest leverage when driving technology-related change.)"

Double-Loop Learning (May 2008)
"A number of people wind up here after searching for 'double-loop learning'...so I thought I'd provide a simple graphic overview."

Organizational Effectiveness (May 2008)
"What makes organizations effective?  For that matter, what do we even mean by effectiveness?"

Energy vs. Intensity (February 2008)
"Understanding the subtle difference between [energy and intensity] can help us be more aware of the choices we're making and allow us to tailor our approach to a given interaction."

Experiential Learning Cycles (October 2007)
"The point is to recognize how much can be learned from our every experience and interaction, and to begin to capture more of that learning on a consistent basis."

Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good People (September 2007)
"Why do so many well-meaning people give such bad presentations?  Last year Andy Goodman and Cause Communications sought to answer that question."

Ground Rules for Meetings (September 2007)
"What makes a meeting successful?...The culture we established at the outset with these ground rules seems to have helped the group stay focused and productive despite the disruptions."

Successful Debriefing: Ask, Don't Tell (September 2007)
"To get people to talk in clear, readily understandable and quotable language, you have to ask really simple questions that can have the effect of making you look uninformed at best and foolish at worst."

Bill George on Teaching Leadership (August 2007)
"The hardest thing we have to do is see ourselves as others see us.  And do you gain that self-awareness?  Some people think they have it, but they've never really tested themselves, and that is crucial."

The Dip: Seth Godin on Strategic Quitting (July 2007)
"Only excellence matters.  Improving from incompetence to mediocrity is worse than useless... Where can I deliver excellence?  Where should I expect excellence in return?   And how can I focus my time and energy to make this as likely as possible?"

T-Groups, Feedback and Double-Loop Learning (March 2007)
"How effective are your interactions with others?  What behaviors enhance your effectiveness, and what behaviors undermine your effectiveness?"

T-Groups, Trust, Leadership and Management (February 2007)
"Why are personal issues relevant in a professional setting?   How do our internal dynamics shape our external effectiveness as leaders and managers?"

The Problem with Positive Feedback (February 2007)
"[T]oo much praise will eventually have the same effect as no praise at all.  But by uncoupling the feedback from any goals other than rewarding the recipient, you'll increase its value as a motivator."

The Value of Soft Startups (January 2007)
"[S]pouses are much more likely to resolve difficult conversations successfully when they use a soft startup, and I'm inclined to believe that the same is true in most of our professional relationships as well."

Double-Loop Learning and Executive Coaching (December 2006)
"When we begin a double-loop learning process, everything comes to a full stop while we ask such challenging questions as 'Why do we do this task this way?' and 'Why do we do this task at all?'"

Agreement vs. Alignment (October 2006)
"Agreement = Everyone gets their first choice (difficult and time-consuming to obtain.) Alignment = Everyone can fully support the choice that is made (much easier to obtain.)"

The Inner Game of Work: Who Are You Working For? (September 2006)
"We need to listen to our inner voice and work freely for ourselves without simply giving in to indulgent whims.  And we need to be of service and to create value for others without simply responding to external demands."

Johnny Cash on Doing it Your Way (June 2006)
"It doesn't matter to me that I only know three or four chords... I just believe that when it all comes together it's the right way for me to do it."

Organizational Development: Is Humanism Overrated? (June 2006)
"A better understanding of how our brains function will allow organizations to embrace change and tackle new initiatives much more effectively.  But I wouldn't throw the humanistic baby out with the bathwater just yet."

Pfeffer and Sutton on Leadership (May 2006)
"We tend to assign more credit and blame to leaders than...they actually deserve... But...leadership can make a difference, and Pfeffer and Sutton have a short checklist to help leaders be as effective as possible."

Matt Doherty: Live and Learn? (February 2006)
"There's more to leadership than command authority, and Matt Doherty's experience during and since his time at UNC suggests three big take-aways for the rest of us..."

Jeff Jarvis: Agent of Coalescence

Companies and organizations that continue to resist blogging often do so because they view bloggers as isolated individuals with hidden agendas and axes to grind.

Dell initially made that mistake with Jeff Jarvis, but as Jeff noted yesterday, they're taking a different approach now:

...I had a rather infamous run-in with Dell here at Buzzmachine when I complained about a bad machine and service. They ignored me, but thousands of similarly frustrated customers did not. Dell’s attitude toward blogs at the time was “look, don’t touch.”... But things began to turn around when Dell opened a company blog, which was off to a puffy start until Lionel [Menchaca], the chief blogger, entered, speaking with customers in an honest, direct, humble, and human voice. Next they put together a team to reach out to bloggers who had problems...

It is clear, through [Lionel and his colleagues], that at least at some levels, Dell has changed its culture and certainly its attitude toward bloggers. They now see value in reaching out. As they’ve said before, bloggers tend to state their problems clearly, which makes it easier (and, I assume, more efficient) to solve them. A problem solved is not only a customer likely to be saved, but also often leads to good PR and branding as the bloggers recount their happy endings. And the Dell guys say they get information and data from this; they hear about problems that may arise before others in the company do, because their customers are talking about it...

Lionel, who came from years of customer service and PR at the company, said the team working on the blog and with bloggers loves it. Aren’t there a few people out there who just can’t be satisfied, no matter what you do? Lost causes? Bozos? They agreed that there are a few and the outreach people don’t always say yes to their demands. But my drinking companions agreed that in an open forum, other folks tend to know who the bozos are. And the bozos tend to stand alone.

That, you see, was the real moral to my story. Whether or not I was a bozo, I did not stand alone. My story wasn’t about me but the people around me, the ones who said, “me, too.” I was merely the agent of coalescence. That’s what you have to watch for on the internet. That’s what the internet enables. [emphasis mine]

The "agent of coalescence"--I love that phrase.  It may have been easier for Jeff to step into that role because he's a big-name blogger with a sizeable readership, and because he tapped into frustrations shared by thousands of Dell customers, but any one of us can do the same, albeit on a smaller scale.

We blog because we care, passionately, about something.  And thanks to the live web, others who share that passion will find us.  If we're not bozos, they'll join us--they'll say "me, too," in any number of ways.  This is how movements and constituencies and networks of all sorts are built today--they form around agents of coalescence.

Which leads me to two questions: If you're blogging, how might you serve more effectively as an agent of coalescence on behalf of a cause you're passionate about?  And if you're a company or organization, how might you identify and engage those agents of coalescence who are passionate about what you do?

Photo of Jeff Jarvis by Doc Searls.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.