ChristmaHanaKwanzaKah is once again in the hearts and on the minds of everyone from sea to shining sea – and beyond – so it’s time for a remedial lesson on How to Succeed in Business Without Really Lying.
Here are the Mighty Casey Media rules for surviving the holidays with your sanity – and your client list – intact:
Don’t be a grinch. If you’re not a big fan of the holidays, don’t trash those who are. You don’t have to go overboard and wear a pair of reindeer antlers all month, yet neither do you have to tell the office Christmas Elf that s/he is crazy for loving the holidays.
Be a gracious guest. If you’re invited to a holiday celebration by a client or a colleague, accept with thanks. Attend with intent to find the cheer. Bring a friend along who could be a good prospect for the business. Holiday gifts can come in the form of customers. Take it from one who knows.
Be a thoughtful host. If you host a holiday gathering, make sure to keep the conversation and connection flowing. Configure your party so there’s plenty of opportunity to interact, and make the rounds continually to ensure that everyone is enjoying themselves. And have a defined end-time for the party, which saves having to shovel folks out the door.
If you can’t deal, deal yourself out. If the holidays drive you nuts, that seems like a great excuse to take off on a vacation, a retreat, or a sabbatical. Deal yourself out of the holiday merry-go-round, and return to the game refreshed after Santa’s blown town.
Merry ChristmaHanaKwanzaKah to all, and to all a way to make the end-of-year insanity work for you!
Recent events have led me to believe that the world is populated by blind people. Or at least people who are easily sold on crazy.
One of those recent developments is the unfolding drama at Penn State, where icons of college sports – both the college and the coach – have been revealed to have been, if not active perpetrators, at least willing-to-look-the-other-way co-conspirators in child sexual abuse.
I use the image on the right because (a) it’s one of my favorite ad posters ever and (b) what happened at Penn State happened in a washroom.
If you see something, SAY SOMETHING. Even if you don’t/can’t/won’t DO something, at least speak up. And don’t take “it’s just [insert utterly unacceptable excuse here], don’t worry, I’ll take care of it” as an adequate response.
SAY something to someone who can/will DO something. Not the bishop that the pedophile priest works for. Not the coach who’s the supervisor of the guy who’s raping a child in the shower.
SAY SOMETHING to the cops.
“If you see something, say something” is the tag-line for a current Dept. of Homeland Security awareness campaign, aimed at stopping terrorist activity before it becomes an actual attack.
If rape isn’t terrorism, I don’t know what is. All crimes against persons – assault, rape, mugging, et al – is terrorism on a small scale, leaving marks as deep as surviving a bus bombing. In some ways, these very personal attacks leave deeper marks, because an entire community doesn’t share the victim’s experience. The person is left to deal with the aftermath alone. Just as the Penn State victim – he’s been dealing with the aftermath since 2002, essentially alone. And now the whole world is watching.
If you see something – someone hitting a child, slapping their spouse, raping a child in a freakin’ locker room – SAY SOMETHING. If you see it in your house. If you see it on your street. If you see it in the office. If you see it at your school.
See bullying? Say something. See domestic violence? Say something. See a theft, or an assault? Say something.
Find someone with a badge and a gun – and not just a university/school cop, either – and report what you saw. Keep talking until they listen.
If you see someone with a badge or a gun perpetrating a crime, call the FBI. Use your cellphone camera, and take it to the media.
See something? SAY SOMETHING.
All that it takes for the triumph of evil is for good men (and women) to do nothing. That’s always true, and never more true than in the situation where both the Catholic church and Penn State find themselves. An institution that’s trusted with the care and education of children has no excuse: if you see something, say something. Otherwise you’re approving the act.
It has become accepted wisdom that public schools in the US are failing their students.
I confess to believing some of that conventional wisdom: I think we’re losing generation after generation of inner-city and rural kids with sub-par schools and technology. I also think that inner-city schools have become both a dumping ground for teachers who shouldn’t be teaching, and a road to exhaustion and defeat for teachers who arrive fired up and get ground under the wheels of budget shortfalls, bureaucracy, and bullsh*t.
But I digress.
The Washington PostAnswer Sheet blog shared a post by Will Fitzhugh, editor of the Concord Review – the world’s only English-language quarterly review for history academic papers by high school students (smart kids + smart teachers = intellectual advancement for all!) – that puts the blame for poor student performance at the feet of … students. The title of the post: “Teachers Not Enough? Who Knew?”
And he’s 110% right there.
I’m now going to sound like the geezer I’m becoming, but just roll with me for a minute here. When I was in school, my job was to go to school, do my work, and learn. That was my job. The one that would set the stage for all the jobs coming after, the one without successful completion thereof I would be stamped with the storied “L on my forehead” and consigned to the career-and-success scrap heap. It was up to me to learn as much as I could, and use that knowledge to forge my way in the world.
Am I nuts, or does it seem as though students in K-12 now believe it’s the responsibility of the school to pry open their brains and pour in knowledge without much in the way of student effort? And that expectation is being driven by parents, and the community at large?
I watched the documentary Waiting for Superman recently, and found it compelling. However, something nagged at me as I watched it, and after, that only became clear when I read Fitzhugh’s Concord Review post: the film left the viewer with the impression that schools, parents, and the community were responsible for the entire education cycle. What was left out was the obligation for students to work to learn.
I’m not saying that a kid in a failing inner-city school who fails to learn is solely at fault for his/her lack of academic progress. As a society, we must make sure that each of our kids has the chance to learn as much, and go as far, as s/he possibly can in life. Charter schools can be a terrific answer for places where public schools are letting down the kids who try to learn there … but they’re not the only, or even the first, answer.
That first answer is: kids, school is your job. Act accordingly. Pay attention, do your work, do not expect to have learning pass through your ears and into your brain without any effort on your part. Life requires that you be present, pay attention, and act to further your own progress. You will not be borne through life on Cleopatra’s barge, much as your helicopter parents might have led you to believe that was your destiny.
Work. It’s what makes things happen. So go do some.
I’ve noticed a huge increase in friend requests on Facebook and invitations to connect on LinkedIn that come from logos, not faces. I don’t accept any of them, and here’s why: the word “social” precedes the word “media” for a reason. Social media is social. My Oxford American dictionary defines social thus:
1. of or relating to society or its organization; 2. concerned with the mutual concerns of human beings or of classes of human beings; 3. living in organized communities.
Nowhere in that definition do the words corporation, brand, or enterprise appear. It’s all about human beings: their activities, their concerns.
So why should I be “friends” with a logo? I’ve ignored friend requests from restaurants, insurance companies, car dealers, and a host of other branded personal profiles. I’m looking for a human connection, and only then will I consider adding a connection to a brand represented by that human connection.
On LinkedIn, this seems even more egregious. I understand that many small business owners are solopreneurs, and their company brand and their personal identity can seem to be inextricably intertwined. However, I want to see and connect with the person. And then, based on my assessment of their talents/value/contributions, I might choose to follow their company.
But they have to convince me that they’re human first.
Major brands make the same mistake on a larger scale, and have since the enterprise emerged after the Industrial Revolution. That’s been the subject of both humor – “what’s good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA!” from Al Capp’s L’il Abner was inspired by Eisenhower SecDef and former GM CEO Charles Wilson’s Congressional testimony that included “what’s good for GM is good for the country” – and rage. The rage includes everything from the Motrin Moms mess, to the #epicfail that was the BP Deepwater Horizon spill aftermath, to the continued cluelessness of Wall Street and Washington about the ultimate betrayal that is “too big to fail”.
Corporations are made out of … people. Building are full of … people. People do business with … people. Brand loyalty is really driven by the actions of humans on behalf of their human customers. It doesn’t matter if you’re B2C, slinging sandwiches from a food cart, or B2B, slinging enterprise-level cloud services to Fortune 5s. You’re a human being, doing business with other human beings.
Lose sight of your humanity, and that of your customers, and you no matter how big you are, you’re destined to fail.
And please stop wasting my time with “friend” requests from logos. Be human, then be a brand.
I don’t care what being in love means regarding saying you’re sorry. Personally, I think Erich Segal’s book sucks, but I digress.
If you’re in business – running one, managing one, working for one – you’re in the apology business. In fact, being human puts you in the apology business 24/7/365. And business always needs a good dose of human, particularly in the age of the 24-hour news cycle and the Facebook Fan Page wall post.
Not being human, and being willing to admit you made a mistake? #fail.
In a great post on INC.com, Tim Donnelly gives very solid tips on how to approach the brand apology when your business screws the pooch. His #1 tip: just say it. “I’m sorry.” Simple … so why is it so hard for a brand to do that?
I think the root cause of brand cluelessness is that businesses forget that they are, after all, human. They may own skyscrapers in cities around the world, but guess what? Those buildings are full of … people. Doing business with … people.
When your spouse, or your buddy, or your kid do something to hurt you or your feelings, they apologize. You do the same thing when you screw up. (If you don’t, let me know. I know some terrific divorce attorneys.) Same rules apply if you’re J.C. Penney, the example that Donnelly uses in his piece.
Be human, don’t be a brand-droid.
You don’t have to literally fall on your sword, or drape yourself in sackcloth and ashes (I still have random PTSD episodes from 12 years of Catholic education) to apologize. You don’t have to take responsibility for every goof since the beginning of your brand’s recorded history, either. Just say you’re sorry, and then you can move on.
If your factory releases a cloud of toxic gas that kills a few thousand people, you’ll have to do a little more than say “sorry” – just ask Union Carbide. Oh, right, you can’t ask them, because they never actually said they were sorry about poisoning Bhopal. Which explains why they WENT OUT OF BUSINESS.
See how powerful an apology could be? And how not issuing one might literally kill your business?
Use words that convey regret without taking responsibility for every hurt the offended party has ever suffered. Just saying “I’m sorry” can completely defuse a brand revolt. Couple that apology with a clear outline of how you plan to remedy the hurt: priceless. Really. Try it.
We all make mistakes. We’re human, that’s part of the journey. A business that recognizes its own humanity, and that of its customers, by making a sincere apology when they screw up will ultimately drive more loyalty for their brand than a business that’s 24/7 shiny-happy-people. ‘Cause shiny-happy will eventually fog up, or blow up. Trust me on that one.
The headline on this post is the title of Richard Branson‘s business memoir. The full title: Screw It, Let’s Do It: Lessons in Life and Business. The link will take you to the book on Amazon, so you can just do it and buy the book.
I had the opportunity to literally see Branson in action on Friday, 9/9/11 at Richmond Unite’s #DSRPT11 conference right here in River City (Richmond VA), which also featured some other visionary thinkers who exhorted the crowd in attendance to get out of their business comfort zones and create some disruption.
Richard Branson has disrupted many industries: music, aviation, travel, mobile, broadband, just to name a few. He talked about his failures (Anybody here remember Virgin Cola? Yeah, me neither.), and was anxious to convey the message that his “screw it, let’s do it” rallying cry became even more important to him because of those failures. There is only do, or not do. There is no try. Thanks, Yoda.
The other big thinkers on the stage all shared the same ethos – look beyond what you perceive as your borders, whether those borders are physical, mental, geographical, or just imaginary. If you have an idea, chase it down and make it real. If you fail, get up and chase the next idea. Immobility is your only enemy.
One of the speakers, Harry Singer, said two things during his presentation that really stuck with me, and with other folks I talked to at #DSRPT11:
Don’t ask why, figure out how
Don’t tell them what it is, tell them what it does
The first is something we should teach children from birth, and keep on teaching them and each other throughout our lives. The second is a titanium nugget if you’re in sales or marketing: what your product or service does for your customers is much more important than what it is. Communicate the doing rather than the being.
Kelly O’Keefe, a branding guru who’s also on the faculty of Virginia Commonwealth University’sBrandcenter – which is one of the top design schools in the world – spoke about the opportunities present in our current economic downturn to focus on social entrepreneurship. He talked a lot about Detroit – his home town – and the true crisis that city has been in since the Japanese started eating the lunch of Detroit’s Big 3 car makers. That crisis has deepened into a catastrophe as the global economy has imploded. Kelly said it was the outliers – the nerds, the artists, the revolutionaries – who were making a true difference in Detroit, and helping that city rise from its own ashes.
I too had the opportunity to take the stage. I was to have eight minutes, and was invited to create a slide deck for it, which I did. My slice-o-time was to be during lunch. As will happen, the morning speakers ran long, and since Richard Branson was to take the stage at about 3:30pm, the time was to be made up during lunch come hell or high dudgeon. Each of us would have only TWO minutes, no slides. Two of the eight presenters dropped out because their presentations were so visual. The remaining four that weren’t me did what they did, some ran over.
I was always slated to be the last speaker. My topic was that patients need to seize control of healthcare, which is the only sane path to real and meaningful healthcare reform, no matter what your politics are. I knew I had to do two things: Keep it tight – I took the stage at 1:26pm, the afternoon session was starting ON TIME at 1:30pm – and, since there was a post-lunch food nap induction driven further snooze-ward by the fact that the attendees had been in their seats since 9:00am, WAKE ‘EM UP.
My attitude? Screw it, let’s do it.
Here’s a from-the-seats clip of the last :56 of my total 1:48 (I timed myself like every pro speaker must). The full version will get posted as soon as I get it from the video group who did the gavel-to-gavel coverage. Let me know what you think – I really DO want to know.
Yes, kids, it’s that time of year again.
Recent events have led me to believe that the world is populated by blind people. Or at least people who are easily sold on crazy.
