Are You Throwing Rocks or Cookies?
A Tale of Two Neighbors
Last week, my girlfriend had to go out in the rain and get her dog, Pearl out of the back yard because Pearl was barking at the neighbor on the other side of the back fence. Pearl is a rescue dog and has a highly developed sense of “her” territory. It apparently extends to anything she can hear.
This neighbor, upon moving in several years ago got tired of Pearl’s barking at him every time he was in his own back yard. His solution was to throw rocks at Pearl. It was witnessed, and after being challenged, he stopped throwing rocks. But Pearl never forgave him. As a result, he has no peace in his own back yard unless my girlfriend is home to call Pearl into the house.
When a new neighbor moved into the house next door, Pearl of course began barking at him. His response? He came over, met Pearl and brought her a cookie. There after, anytime Pearl would bark, he would talk to her over the fence using her name and occasionally throw over a cookie. This neighbor is now Pearl’s new best friend of course, so she doesn’t bark at him anymore.
Which neighbor are you?
We are in a tough economy and when people feel threatened it tends to bring out their more primitive, protective nature. You are working with and around “Pearls” every day. Any client, customer, or co-worker can fall into that role.
Yes, Pearl “shouldn’t” feel threatened. Yes, you should expect to have some peace in your own back yard. Yes, the vendor should have sent you the price list. Yes, the customer shouldn’t expect an extra round of revisions for free. Yes, your coworker should have kept his deadline.
So what?
Which are you more interested in, being “right”, or getting the results? Are you throwing rocks or cookies?
A Celebration of the Now
The significance and excitement of Tuesday (1/20/09) has been almost more than I can fully realize. Yes, there is great work to be done and immense problems to be solved, however; this is a rare time for me when the emotional bests the pragmatic in my own heart. I hear the calls not only from my own practical self but others to throw off the pageantry and simply get to work with the business of turning the country around, but my heart asks a basic defiant question.
Why shouldn’t we allow ourselves and our nation to celebrate the good for the same duration as we require ourselves to mourn the bad? Certainly we elected Barack Obama to lead the nation, we expect him to hit the ground running and by all indications this is exactly what he will do but I am compelled to stop and savor this moment by allowing it to sweep me up in feelings that I would typically brush aside as having little practical merit. I feel a sense of hope and optimism and I am resolved to allow myself to experience these emotions without regret, cynicism, guilt or embarrassment.
What follows is beyond my control, but what is fully within my control is my ability to enjoy the now without hesitation, knowing full well the call to “get to work” will eventually supplant these less than pragmatic feelings. Everything we are told is important indicates that we should always look past today and into the future for inspiration or hope. If you work hard you will be promoted in the future, if you study hard you will get a better job in the future, if you are faithful you will be rewarded in the afterlife, but what these things miss is the happiness that can be experienced today.
If you are moved by Tuesday’s events I encourage you to allow yourself to get emotional and fight the urge to shake off the excitement as something which makes practical progress on the real problems facing our country impossible. Enthusiasm, optimism and hope are the fuels of change and without them the fundamental ideals of our country are impossible to achieve.
How Disillusioned Do You Want To Be?
Reading FriendFeed tonight and a particular comment stood out and got me to thinking more about disillusionment.
If 2008 goes down in history as nothing else, it will go down as a year when many realized that they were laboring under some very large illusions. The shock of those illusions falling away is evidenced daily in our headlines: the housing market, the stock market, and even personal tragedy as a result of the Madoff scandal.
We all have our illusions. And if you’re reading this, odds are that you’ve had a few of them shattered recently. I’ve certainly had my share of disillusionment and disappointment this year and frankly I don’t expect that 2009 is going to be much different.
Further more, I really don’t want it to be. By definition, to be disillusioned means to no longer be under an illusion. And how is that not a good thing?
As Stephen Covey put it so eloquently in Seven Habits, “The map is not the territory.” So, if the map isn’t the territory, the difference between the map (how we view the world) and the territory (reality – the way things really are) must be the illusion. And I think there is still a lot of gap left to be exposed.
So, what do you think is it going to be? “Back to Reality” or “More of the Same”? Which will be more difficult in the long run? How disillusioned do you want to be?
Who are you reading?
As anyone that knows me well is aware, I keep two or three non-fiction books going at all times. (Saves me having to drag them around with me you see.)
I’m currently working my way through the following four:
Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
Buying In by Rob Walker
Welcome to the Creative Age by Mark Earls
I’m of the opinion that it’s not so much what a book says that’s so important, but what it makes you think. Each one of these is making me think differently about my industry, the economy, and my opportunities. And frankly in trying to synthesize what I’m seeing, reading, and experiencing right now I’m coming up with more questions than answers. Here are a few of the excerpts that I’m wrestling with…
From the end of Chapter One of Reality Check:
“Instead of pursuing professional entrepreneurs, we should figure out how and why ordinary people can do heroic things. Dr. Phillip Zimbardo of Stanford University and Zeno Franco of the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology wrote an article called ‘The Banality of Heroism‘…about this very subject.
The short explanation is that heroism requires the presence of a ‘heroic imagination,’ which the authors describe as ‘the capacity to imagine facing physically or socially risky situations, to struggle with the hypothetical problems these situations generate, and to consider one’s actions and the consequences.’”
From p-69 of Here Comes Everybody:
“Professional self-conception and self-defense, so valuable in ordinary times, becomes a disadvantage in revolutionary ones, because professionals are always concerned with threats to the profession. In most cases, those threats are also threats to society; we do not want to see a relaxing of standards for becoming a surgeon or a pilot. But in some cases the change that threatens the profession benefits society, as did the spread of the printing press; even in these situations the professionals can be relied on to care more about self-defense than about progress. …evidence that the ecosystem is changing in ways they can’t control usually creates considerable anxiety, even if the change is good for society as a whole.”
From Walker’s introduction to Buying In:
“When marketing experts in particular talked about the birth of a new consumer, what they were really talking about was the re invention of their own business. Many popular business gurus have become fond of declaring that the advertising business is, as one announced not long ago, ‘on its way to extinction.’ What these people mean is the end of “traditional” advertising…”
And finally from p-76 of Welcome To The Creative Age:
“Everything has changed; all of the condition of the world which spawned the ‘Marketing Revolution’ and on which the current order was built have been demolished. Marketing is a product of its time and that time has gone. All swept away. All flotsam and jetsam.
Out goes the idea of a grateful attentive consumer. Out, the idea of a pliant punter, ignorant of our trickery. Out, too, the idea of the proud and powerful organization. And out the idea that we own our employees. Hey, like our customers, have a choice and know it.”
Four different authors. Four very different viewpoints. And yet the same themes of revolutionary change, the impending death of our existing models, the need for action, and new ways of thinking are peppered throughout.
Charlene Li of Forrester and Groundswell fame said something last week that bears repeating. Paraphrasing: “Pay attention to the relationships, not the technology.”
So I ask, who are you reading? What are you thinking? What are you doing differently than you were six months ago, three months ago?
How to Sync FriendFeed with Twitter
How many times have you wanted a way to sync FriendFeed with Twitter? Since I use FriendFeed as an expanded version of Twitter I wished for it every time I follow someone new in FriendFeed. I typically go look and see if I can find them on Twitter, but the search by username functionally of Twitter is next to impossible.
Wish no more. Carter Rabasa has a solution for you at “Twitter-to-FriendFeed Contact Sync (v 0.62). Hat Tip to @markobon for passing this along.
Here is a quick review of how it works:
1. Go to Contact Sync: https://twitter2ff.appspot.com/
2. Type in your Twitter username and password
Sync - Step 1
3. Type in your FriendFeed username and remotekey (there is a link to FF to retrieve the key)
4. Start following your friends in Twitter that you follow on FriendFeed.
Nice work Carter! We’ll be looking forward the ability to sync Twitter with FriendFeed next. 