Web Strategist Lab

In yesterday’s Wall Street journal, Gary Hamel reveals “Management’s Dirty Little Secret,” that most of the actions a manager takes, even those in pursuit of an engaged workplace, are more likely to stifle enthusiasm than anything. He talks about the amazing new results of a survey to show this.

What this survey reveals is that Mr. Hamel (and, to be fair, most management experts) has never been a real employee. Everyone who has a boss knows that most of their job is to avoid the boss, avoid their wrath, avoid their eyeline, and even to avoid their interest. Most employees know that bosses are like Baby Huey, taking interest for the moment in something shiny (Ooo… an intranet! Ahh… we need a CRM system! Mmmm…  personalized URLs!), turning it into a “PROJECT” that you are now responsible for (and all the requisite administrative burdens therein regardless of intent or return), and wander away to the next shiny thing. Woe unto those who’s bosses are interested in what they are doing.

This, of course, discounts the idea that some employees need that kind of supervision to get things done. But most of the people I’ve ever met in the “creative class” (the survey indicates that as knowledge workers become commoditized, the real value is in those who can be creative in finding solutions) are self-starting, self-motivating people who want to do amazing work, but have to be overly concerned with the interference of their boss.

So maybe Mr. Hamel is just waking up to the fact that employees, the ones on the front lines talking to customers, the ones coming up with new products, or the ones actually doing the work are a valuable part of the process and should be treated as such. Praise onto thee, company who knows how to encourage and respect their employees!

Okay, just a short post on what I’ve been reading this year. This list is certainly not comprehensive, but maybe it’ll give you some ideas on what to read next.

Maybe this is the year we start re-writing/re-thinking the laws of marketing and business. Not just because of the economy and the crap that’s been happening the last few years (okay, on second thought, maybe they aren’t unrelated), we’ve started to move beyond the “Four P’s” and “Centralization v. Decentralization” conversations that have dominated the landscape for decades. Let’s get to the business of selling and leading by understanding. Yes, Covey got there first, but he’s a cult leader because he wants you to buy his Covey-branded organizer. This is a broader movement, taken by many in different directions, but under the banner of “Not better marketing, better products because of better understanding of the audience” and “No more ‘Us v. Them’ because we are all ‘Us!’”

Best Book of the Year: The Three Laws of Performance by Steve Zaffron & Dave Logan. Maybe the thing I like best about this book is that it is 200 pages. It doesn’t dawdle. It doesn’t try to impress you with a million examples. It’s not trying to pad the story along. It’s written with the confidence of two people who aren’t trying to curry your favor or win your respect. They know something you don’t and are willing to tell you if you’ve got the ears to listen. I want to send this book to every manager I’ve ever met and say, “No! Really! There is a better way!”

Fierce Leadership by Susan Scott. I know, crazy, right? Managers should stop parsing words and covering their asses, get their hands dirty with the “employees” and show some real candor. Maybe the name of this new era should be called “The End of Ego.”

Brain Audit/Masterclass by Sean D’Souza (psychotactics.com). I can’t tell if this guy is insane or just insanely great. It’s a tough call. Either way, he’s eating his own dog food with a big fork laughing the whole way home.

Tribes by Seth Godin. What else could I say about this book that someone else hasn’t (which is probably the antithesis of the internet, right)?

Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik. Google should invent a pop-up application that’s embedded in Google Analytics a la “Clippy” that’s just an animated head of Avinash telling you what to do next. It will be full of chirpy wisdom that sounds like it was recorded by a helium-addled Robin Williams but actually help you. It will tell you to look for your BFFs and study your bounce rate. I will admit that I will repeatedly go to the definition page just to hear him tell me what the definition of a bounce is and crank the speaks up.  This guy is the Oprah of Web Analytics. If you aren’t reading him, you are only pretending to know what you’re talking about.

The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators by Eric T. Peterson. About as “getting your hands dirty with details” as a book can get, but it is full of smart ideas on how (and what) numbers to present.

The 50th Law of Power 50 Cent and Robert Green. I know. I didn’t think it would be any good, either.

Honorable Mentions:

• Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.
• Cult of Analytics by Steve Jackson.
• Same Game New Rules by Bill Caskey (Despite it being from 2003).

Hey! Where the hell is Tom Peters? I miss that maniac.

So, I finally figured what I needed to do to get things rolling (That sentence has been nominated as the “Most Vague Opening Statement (Blog Category, Over-35 Year Old Division)”) and hunker down and get it done. What did I do? I wrote a book.

The New Rule of Engagement: Actionable & Effective Web 2.0 Strategy for Non-Profits is self-published through Lulu.com at the moment. But I’m not planning on making it available just yet. The plan is to give it away to 50 Chicago-based non-profits during the holidays and try and build awareness that all these new ideas floating through mashable.com are not just for the dot-coms and the large enterprises. They can be done effectively (and in many cases better) by a non-profit with a little guts to try something new.

Once I send them out and try and create offline engagement, I’ll probably make it available as an electronic book, but I’ll have to see what my options are.

Not having written anything that substantial in many years, it was nice to see that I still know how to put these sorts of projects. I really love writing, but I tend to get caught up in the “surely someone else has thought of this” internal dialog and shut things down before they happen. And who knows, maybe this thing will die a quiet death and I’ll know that maybe I’m not as good as I think I am and have to take a new approach. But until that happens, if you know anyone in Chicago who needs a great (and published!) web strategist,  send them my way.

Oh, I also “wrote” a book called “The Perfect Notebook” which is a variety on the Muji Chonotebook (“variety” in that it uses some neat ideas it proposes and that it will be available online and not just Tokyo and NYC boutiques).  Once things get settled, I’ll shoot and market that and see what I can make happen.

That just seems like a simple maxim.

From a VP of some sort:

“We’ll do that based on our  five strategic directions.”

Someone should let this VP know that moving in five directions at once is the same as going nowhere.

Yeah, I know. It’s “semantics” but I am perpetually amazed by the looseness and vagueness of language at some places. And frankly, if being clear isn’t important to the VP, it won’t be important to their employees, who will make it very unclear for their customers.

This is the same place from whence “I don’t think there’s a difference between strategy and tactics” came.

Today’s definition of frustration: I brought a proposal to a client, one they didn’t expect but achieved everything they wanted to achieve, using a technology they hadn’t considered before, for a cost that was dramatically different than they expected to pay (how dramatic, they were putting a proposal to ask for $50k to hire a company to build a magazine site from scratch, and my propsal costs less than $1k to use WordPress).

You’d be thrilled, wouldn’t you? Like a fairy godmother had stepped in from out of nowhere to bring you a super-cheap solution to your problem (for the record, I don’t think I look good in a tutu and magic wand)? Maybe you’d even thank them for solving their problems.

Nope.  In this case, you’d be pushed aside to allow print designers and print managers pretend to know how a web project worked, how to design for function not for look, how to plan for a steady stream of different types of content but stil have a cohesive look and feel.

And when you mention that no one on the project has more than 6 months of web design or web thinking experience, and that you have 12 years, you will be marginalized and mocked.

I’m not sure what I expected when I brought this project to the client, but I can assure you it wasn’t this.

A new trend has popped up on my side of the world in terms of web strategy.  Clients aren’t interested in joining the conversation online via social media if they can’t “get credit” for being there.

I work under the assumption that users want great content first.  The best way to get your message out to people is by bundling it with other content you know they want.  That’s how commercials worked: you bundle your message about a great new fabric softener in between bits of “Friends.”

You build a channel people like, that they know is full of good stuff (including your stuff) and they will read ravenously. If you sent them your brochure by itself, do you really think anyone will read it? Let alone read it ravenously? 

For example, maybe a organization with rabid fans all around the world shouldn’t have a Twitter account based on their mascot that grabs news and other information from around the web (including inserting stories about and for the organiation itself).  They don’t see the value in creating a channel of data that contains information that users want because the organization doesn’t get credit for delivering it to them. The users won’t know that the users should be sending the organization patronage (via memberships) becasue the users don’t know (or care) that the great information they get is coming from the organization.

How about you build a community site based on something related to what you do? A place where all the rabid fans can talk about you (let’s pretend that users actually want to talk about you, because in this case, they do) in a free and open way. You want to build a Tribe (see: Seth Godin) and let people become more enthusiastic about something.

In that case, what happens if throwing your organization’s logo all over everything dampens (or really destroys) the conversation? What if your car community is run by Ford (for example)? Sure, you can talk about your Audi, but the conversation is going to talk about Mustags, not A4s. And if Ford is the clear owner/maintainer of the site, would you assume that criticisms about recent models would be left to flourish or pushed to the side? And if conversation isn’t free and open, then who the heck is talking on this site? No one.

But if that’s the case, why still do it? Why not create the site anonymously and let the conversation happen, allowing for and interjecting great (true, no astroturfing) stories about Ford (and GM, and Mini, and Hyndai and Lotus, et al) into the mix? Yes, Ford is no longer the only one talked about, and yes some people may say some disparaging things, but so what? They’re already having these conversations on forums and Twitter and Facebook without you, so stop pretending that they don’t happen and be part of them.

Why do organizations feel the need to get credit for having done these things? Isn’t it enough that you are growing a conversation around you organically (read: more useful and valuable) that you can harness? Isn’t it enough to have rabid fans you can talk to without having to hit them over the head that you are being paid to do this?

You have a plant in your office. It’s a gift from your mom and you keep it on your desk.  It is “yours.” If people want to see the plant, they have to come in to your office to see it. But that plant will never get bigger than this because it’s inside in a pot. 

What happens if you move it outside and plant it in the groud? It gets bigger.  Much bigger. But its no longer yours.

Why is everyone obsessed with getting credit?

Which is why I haven’t been posting the last few weeks.

I want to thank Google for being both a pain to work with and a welcome solution-provider. One department would create a problem for us, andothe rprogrammer would just happen to have some alpha solution he or she’d been working on in their spare time that saves our bacon.

This is the new distributed workplace? Messy.

More when I can catch a break.

If you haven’t seen it, you need to:

http://www.brepettis.com/blog/2009/3/3/the-cult-of-done-manifesto.html

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

To everyone who talks about social media without a Facebook/Twitter account, I direct your attention to rule 9.

Was all about becoming frustrated (again, seemingly for little reason) over a project I see landing in my lap that I will have control and the burden of responsibility over without actual ownership. If it fails, I did it wrong. If it suceeds, someone else will claim credit.

So in order to handle myself I completed a dozen minor tasks only to have someone tell me I should consider changing all my priorities to theirs. Which I will have to do.

But I got some amusing responses to my tweet about third-party email systems very quickly, including a vendor who noticed I mentioned their name and dm-ed me within 20 minutes.

To sum up: I dislike projects that don’t know what they are and twitted has clearly hit some sort of critical mass