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.

Academic Journals Have an Offer You Can't Refuse

(Academic journal publishers?)

The other day I referenced a post by Bob Sutton that was inspired by a recent study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology by Nathaniel Fast of USC and Lara Tiedens of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.  (Full disclosure: I know Lara and support courses that she teaches at the GSB, although we haven't worked together directly.  I was also a student of hers in a previous century.)

I wanted to check out the study for myself, so I found the Journal's website and tried to locate the article.  I expected it to be locked away behind a paywall, but I assumed I'd at least find an excerpt.  But I couldn't.  I'm hardly a professional researcher, but I'm a reasonably proficient user, and I couldn't even find a link.

I often run into problems like this with academic journal sites, and even when I successfully navigate their poor design and confusing search architecture, the article I want is almost always prohibitively expensive.  But I was so irritated yesterday that I kept up the search and finally found not just a link but the entire text of the study: Blame contagion: The automatic transmission of self-serving attributions.

Success!  And yet it's merely the exception that proves the rule.  That study was published in the Journal's January 2010 issue, which happens to be the only issue of the 60 published in the last decade that is freely available online.  Why?  I don't know--and can't find out on their website.  How long will it be available?  I don't know--and can't find out on their website.

So what if I wanted to read a article from another issue?  For example, I'd love to read Fooled by first impressions? Reexamining the diagnostic value of appearance-based inferences, which was just published this month--and I can, for just $31.50.

That's pretty pricey, but it's reasonable to assume that brand-new content is going to be more expensive.  What if I wanted to read an article from, say, ten years ago?  I'm sure I'd find it rewarding to read The Consequences of Communicating Social Stereotypes, published in November 2000--and I can, for the same low price of $31.50.

Well, perhaps the article prices are so high in order to encourage subscriptions--although perhaps not, because in order to get all six issues of the Journal delivered to my (literal) mailbox, I'd have to pay $191.00.  (Good news for students--you pay just $146.00!)  And does a subscription to the print edition include online access?  I don't know--and can't find out on their website.

Good grief.

I don't mean to single out this particular journal or its publisher--these figures and policies are typical in my experience.  But with competitive pressures transforming the business models of every other publisher, how is it that academic journals are able to stay afloat with this pricing structure?  What keeps this racket going?

My best guess is that these journals have no incentive to cultivate a market of individual readers like me via lower prices because they already hold the institutional market hostage.  Academics seeking tenure must publish their research in a small number of established journals in order to gain the recognition of their peers, so the journal publishers enjoy oligopoly control over content.  And university libraries and other institutional clients must subscribe to these same journals in order to meet the needs of faculty and other researchers, so the publishers can command outrageously high prices for institutional subscriptions--over $1,000.00, in the case of the journal cited above!

And of course, journal subscriptions are just one small line item among all the other costs passed on to the biggest "consumers" of academia, who typically pay for a aggregated "bundle" of services from the institution: parents and students paying tuition; federal, state and local governments making appropriations; donors giving gifts.  (Thanks to the Delta Project for their data on post-secondary education revenue sources.)

I'm a realist, and if I'm right about the incentives described above, I don't expect this system to change anytime soon.  But it's still a shame that so much useful knowledge is so difficult to access.

Postscript: My wife Amy, a recovering corporate attorney-turned-legal reference librarian, is a professional researcher, and she writes, "But you're married to a librarian!  You could have asked for help, you know.  But I agree that the UI sucks for most online journals."  And while I'm always grateful for Amy's expert guidance (as well as help from the great reference staff at the GSB's Jackson Library), my hope is that someday it'll be easier (and cheaper!) for lay readers like me to access and make use of academic research.

Photo of The Sopranos © HBO and TimeWarner.

Blogs I Read

Here are several lists of blogs, ranging from Management to Miscellaneous, written by people whose work I admire and from which I draw inspiration on a regular basis.  (I'll keep a link to this post on my Resources page.)

Photo by Matti Mattila.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

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.

Chris Anderson on "Free" at Global Business Network

I heard Chris Anderson speak tonight at the offices of the Global Business Network in San Francisco. He's promoting Free: The Future of a Radical Price and is tight with GBN co-founder and Chairman Peter Schwartz, who introduced Anderson and led the Q&A session, so this was presumably a friendly stopover on his media tour.

Anderson opened with the story of how Jell-O was launched in the early 20th century: they went door-to-door and gave away richly illustrated Jell-O cookbooks, creating demand for the new product among consumers, who then flocked to grocery stores seeking it.  (It's similar to the story of King Gillette subsidizing the cost of razors to sell blades, which Anderson used to open his original Wired article on the topic in early 2008.)

Anderson discussed the work of 19th century French economist Joseph Bertrand, who argued that in a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost.  (A brief exploration of the Bertrand competition model suggests that Anderson is oversimplifying to make a point, but let's not quibble.)

In Anderson's words, "The Internet is the first truly competitive market the world has ever seen," and in this environment we experience "the law of gravity online: If marginal cost is zero, and competition is unlimited, price will fall to zero."  Anderson's quick to note that he's not saying the price should be zero or things should be free; he's merely observing the dynamics at work in the market for any products or services that can be converted to bits.

He also noted that it's not simply "free" vs. "paid" products and services, but rather free versions supported by advertising and "freemium" versions in which consumers and users pay to get something extra.  What will people pay for?  In Anderson's words...

• People will pay to save time.
• People will pay to lower risk.
• People will pay for things they love.
• People will pay for status.
• People will pay if you make them (once they're hooked.)

The key opportunity created by offering your products and services for free is that "free allows you to fully explore your customer space... How do we use free to increase our audience [for Wired] and convert some of them to a higher price?"  He noted that you can read Wired for free online, you can purchase single copies at newsstands for one price, and you can purchase a print subscription for yet another price.  But why be limited to just three prices?  "We need more prices... What is the $100 version of Wired?"  Referring to the recent uproar over the Washington Post's plans to host a "salon" for health care lobbyists at $25,000 a head, Anderson noted, "That wasn't the right answer, but it's a really interesting question: What is the $25,000 version of the Washington Post?"

Appropriately, Anderson is offering "Free" at a range of prices: The hardcover book was $26.99 tonight (and it's $16.19 on Amazon as I write this.)  Almost all digital versions of the book are free, but most come a with a variety of limits on how long you can access the materials.  The unabridged version (6 hours) is free, but the abridged version (3 hours) is $9.99.  (Now you know how Hyperion prices 3 hours of your time.)

And Anderson strongly believes in the future of books.  Printed materials will survive to the extent that they add value to the online version of the same content.  Anderson expects books, which are convenient for long-form content and "look nice on a shelf," to make it.  He expects newspapers to die (or at least to be radically reinvented.)  And magazines?  They'll eventually be replaced by Apple's version of the Kindle, but the rich graphic experience they offer will keep many of them safe for now.

Anderson was asked about Malcolm Gladwell's dismissive review of "Free" in The New Yorker, in particular Gladwell's skewering of YouTube as a paragon of this new economic model.  From Gladwell's review:

To recap: YouTube is a great example of Free, except that Free technology ends up not being Free because of the way consumers respond to Free, fatally compromising YouTube's ability to make money around Free, and forcing it to retreat from the "abundance thinking" that lies at the heart of Free. Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube will lose close to half a billion dollars this year. If it were a bank, it would be eligible for TARP funds.

Anderson's not-quite-compelling response was that Gladwell underestimates the power of Google's economies of scale, his figures are off by a factor of 10, and "advertising always lags the audience" (i.e. they'll figure it out eventually.)  To Anderson's credit, he deftly acknowledged and defused the issue of his apparently inadvertant plagiarism from Wikipedia in "Free" by telling his questioner, who had apologized for asking such a tough question, that there were much tougher questions he could have asked, which prompted a chuckle from the audience.  A colleague said the Anderson-Gladwell dustup was "the nerd version of Biggie vs. Tupac."  Outstanding.  (I'll let him remain anonymous, unless he asks for attribution.)

I was reminded of my "attention economy" experience with AttentionTrust and others by Anderson's comment that the 'net and its attendant armies of bloggers, videographers and garage bands has yielded an overabundance of content, and today our attention is the truly scarce commodity.  And just as many attention-focused projects touched on the related issues of reputation and identity, Anderson sees links there as well.  He believes that "Facebook and Twitter are establishing the first quantifiable reputation markets," although I'd argue that groups like Rapleaf, Opinity and Trufina tried to do just that a few years ago, leveraging data from credit reports to eBay seller status.

Finally, one of Anderson's most interesting comments tonight was his assertion that "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." (On a cautionary note, he added, "And that business can be just as dirty as it sounds.")

Although one example of this is Paris Hilton and the "fame-for-being-famous" that she embodies, the openness of the Internet means that today anyone can at least get their ideas into the marketplace.  That's no guarantee of success, of course--you'll still need some luck, even with good ideas and a talent for self-promotion.  But as Anderson notes, we're now able to tap into "the long tail of talent... The Internet has lowered the transaction costs of finding talent...[and] talent will find a way."

This fascinates me as an executive coach, both on my own behalf and on behalf of my clients and students at Stanford Business School, because what Anderson is saying is that the rules are changing.  We used to rely solely on personal networks and resume credentials to locate and identify talent (and to be located and identified by others as talent.)  But in a more open marketplace of ideas, those filters are less and less useful as they screen out more "false negatives" (i.e. talented people unknown to us who lack traditional credentials) and allow through more "false positives" (i.e. people within our networks who possess traditional credentials but who aren't really all that talented.)

From a personal perspective, my writing on this site on coaching, leadership, change and related issues over the past few years has given me a reputation as someone with something of interest to say on these topics--a reputation that can be quantified in data such as my feed subscribers (932 today), my site visitors (192 so far today), even my Twitter followers (302 at the moment, enjoying all 105 of my tweets to date.)  These aren't big numbers in any absolute sense, but they're big enough (particularly given how infrequently I post) to give me a sense that what I'm saying is being heard, a sense of presence.

Calling this reputation "celebrity" would be a serious stretch, but that's a matter of degree.  And if you're interested in a topic such as "double-loop learning" or "ground rules for meetings" or the "definition of organizational effectiveness," you'll find me in Google's top 10 results for those terms (at least as of today), and that's certainly celebrity in a strange, narrow way.  (Hell, if you're just interested in "ed batista" I'm #1!)

What's the connection with "Free"?  Well, even though I don't post that often, the hours invested in my writing here over the past few years would add up to a substantial amount of unpaid time.  And I publish everything here under a Creative Commons license that gives anyone the right to share and remix my materials as long as they attribute it to me with a link and make any resulting work freely available under the same license.

So free work and free content have been the essential elements in developing a verifiable reputation and an identity as a trusted subject matter expert in my field, and I don't know how I could have done it any other way.  And seeing my own experience in this new light makes me wonder if I should be encouraging my clients and students to do more of the same.

Thanks to Chris Anderson for a thought-provoking and entertaining talk, and many thanks to Andrew Blau, Nancy Murphy and their colleagues at GBN for being such gracious hosts.

Some Inspiration from Corey Ford

One of the great satisfactions of being a coach is the opportunity to work with some truly extraordinary people who are seeking to experience as much as possible in life and to fulfill every ounce of their potential.  Corey Ford, who's appeared here before, is one such person, and I enjoyed another thoughtful conversation with him yesterday.

I learned that back in March he'd been invited to give the keynote address at the annual banquet of the University of North Carolina's Morehead-Cain Scholars Program.  The program--whose motto is "Create an extraordinary life"--offers high-potential students a four-year scholarship at Chapel Hill and access to a wide range of academic and professional resources.  In his inspiring talk, Corey discusses how he made the most of this opportunity, and a few of his comments in particular stood out for me:

On becoming an entrepreneur: My Morehead-Cain experiences had allowed me to grow from a boy who energetically climbed the ladder placed before him to a man who started to build his own ladder.

On his decision to leave a high-profile job: I thought I was at the top.  I thought I would be there for the rest of my career, but I faced a choice: Stay and stagnate, or make my own way.

On exploration: We all have unwritten endings.  Life is a journey, but not a linear one.  Just like design, innovation and entrepreneurship, in life there are times to focus and times to flare, times to execute and times to explore.  Congratulations—it's time for you to explore.

Kudos, Corey--I know there are a lot of people at Stanford (and I'm sure at Chapel Hill) who are looking forward to hearing about the next steps in your own non-linear journey.

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.

Interesting Links

UPDATE May 2010:At this point my Twitter stream has replaced Tumblr as the place where I post interesting links.  Twitter's interactive user community turned it into a vibrant conversational space for me, while Tumblr came to feel like a glossy version of my Delicious tags--useful as a personal reference, but disconnected from my work with other people.  So ignore the reference to my Tumblr RSS feed below and follow me on Twitter instead.

I post interesting links that I come across on a very simple linkblog using Tumblr.  The 10 latest links are below (and the list will stay updated), but you can search for others at edbatista.tumblr.com.  To keep up with the list you can bookmark this post, subscribe to my Tumblr RSS feed, or just follow me on Twitter.  (All my Tumblr links get tweeted, but not all my tweets get tumbld.  Got it?)

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.

Carol Hymowitz on Leadership and Good Relationships

I wrote yesterday about leadership and kindness, just as Carol Hymowitz was declaring that Effective Management Remains an Art Steeped in Good Relationships in her "In The Lead" column for the Wall Street Journal:

The more executives I interviewed and wrote about [after launching "In The Lead" nearly a decade ago], the more I realized that the effective ones review their own performance at least as frequently and as thoroughly as they review the work of their employees.  They also constantly adapt their management styles to meet different challenges and to motivate different employees...

The best leaders...studiously avoid being self-absorbed.  They celebrate their employees' ideas, knowledge and commitment, and they understand they must be both bold and kind to attract talent. [my emphasis]

Hymowitz echoes Bill Curry on the importance of leaders' kindness in building and maintaining high-performing teams, and again I'm struck by how often we cite leaders' boldness and toughness and how rarely we cite their kindness when seeking to understand effective leadership.

Postscript: Sadly, this was Hymowitz's final "In The Lead" column, as she has accepted a buyout offer from management, apparently as part of the paper's post-acquisition restructuring.  (Jeff Bercovici has suggested that Hymowitz's departure reflects a larger pattern of bias against women at Murdoch-owned papers.)  I truly appreciated Hymowitz's perspective, and "In The Lead" will be missed.  Here's hoping she finds another outlet for her talents soon.