The TrueTalk Blog

Agility

The time it takes for great ideas to be recognized is enigmatic. Some move like lightning, while others languish for years before "catching." John Boyd's thinking will fall into the latter category.

This isn't to say that Boyd's ideas aren't known in many circles, but they definitely do not get the attention they deserve.

Why?

It's partially due to his preference for using oral rather than written communication. While his Pentagon and Capitol Hill briefings were legendary, and a well-written biography undoubtedly raised his public profile, I believe his thinking remains broadly unknown because of its military origin.

Business people don't know what to do with military ideas. On the one hand there clearly are relevant lessons for corporate leaders to gain from military strategists and tacticians. On the other, the fundamentally different purposes of business and war throw off many leaders, particularly women. A woman friend of mine whose ideas I respect a great deal does lots of thinking about business, leadership and marketing, absolutely won't consider military sources or metaphors. It's as if the source contaminates the message so profoundly as to negate any wisdom it might contain.

And that's a pity, especially in Boyd's case. His thinking about agility is particularly sharp. He says developing the ability to adapt rapidly to changing environmental circumstances is a function of three key organizational characteristics: trust, cohesion and initiative.

Leaders develop trust, Boyd says, in the classic fashion: tell the truth, stay in touch, keep your agreements.

Cohesion is a function of establishing a clear, compelling mission, one that others can commit to.

Initiative is the local decision-making/action step that emerges when individuals trust that they've been given the flexibility to act on the mission.

Simple, compelling thinking that is at the heart of many of the world's most successful organizations, and yet, oddly underappreciated by many in the business world.

And, Down Stretch They Come...

No, not these guys, these guys! It's off to Dallas for the greatest day in Thoroughbred racing! What fun...

Real Hacks

We've all watched the wave of "reality" TV shows in the US spawned by "Survivor." I don't know about you, but my experience with these shows has been something like this:

1. "Oh, this is the show everybody's talking about, let's watch it."
2. "Hm, this is kind of interesting, I wonder who's going to win?"
3. "OK, it's down to the final two, I hope she doesn't win, I hate her!
4. "Alright, that's over."
5. "What, they're doing that again??"

One thing's been clear: if these shows are anything, they are not reality.

And now, here comes "podcasting". What's podcasting? I've written about this phenomenon a bit recently.

What struck me today is that this is "reality radio." Not this or this, or this. Today's reality ("talk"...is that the way people really talk?) radio is a mess. The same kind of drivel as reality TV.

But now we see that reality radio, (and soon reality TV?) has been hacked. The term "hack" has been though an interesting evolution. When I was young, it signified someone who was a poor craftsman, an incompetent who went through the motions but produced little of quality. Later, we started calling cyberterrorists "hackers." The folks who actually hack, however, took offense, and made distinctions between "hackers" and "crackers." It is the latter, they said, who seek to break in and destroy.

So, in that spirit, hackers create. They start by working with something (a video game, a song, broadcast radio) and quickly start creating something else by changing it. In that vein, you could say, HBO hacked network TV years ago. The Deaniacs hacked politics. Instapundit hacked Dan Rather. Jon Stewart hacked 24 hour news networks. And now we're about to see Adam Curry, Dave Winer and others like them hack radio and TV, no matter what the guru's say.

So what? So, authenticity, that's what. Remember, even as big bloggers move toward commercialization, tens of thousands of others are busy hacking newspapers. The genie is out of the bottle. When this much expressive power gets in these many hands the outcome is destined to be overwhelming.

Now, this message...

SatisMaximus

Barry Schwartz presented his well-reasoned ideas at Pop!Tech on Saturday. His thesis: we're drowning in a sea of choices that challenge our ability to psychologically stay afloat. But, oddly, he omitted one of the key points of his book from his talk.

In the 1950's, economist/psychologist Herb Simon framed up an important concept. He called people who strive for the "very best" in any set of choices, "maximizers." Those who established a set of conditions which needed to be met in order to make a choice, "satisficers." Essentially, maximizers continually seek perfection in the domain in which they search, while satisficers find an item that meets their conditions and stop.

Schwartz's point: maximizers drive themselves crazy through all manner of doubt and regret while satisficers happily choose and move on. Learning how to determine when to be which type of searcher is the key. If we adopt a maximizer approach for every choice we make, anxiety is inevitable. If we learn the "when," and "when not," of maximizing perhaps we can manage the overwhelming set of choices presented by our economy.

Unfortunately for those who hadn't read Schwartz's book before the presentation, this important distinction was lost.

Talk The TrueTalk

We're used to hearing people talking about "walking the talk" as a measure of authenticity.

Now, Seth puts it well when he says any CEO who decides to blog better be ready to "talk the talk." Unless a blog has the already-recognizable "bloggeringtone" to it, it'll do more harm than good, for sure.

More Branding Talk

Whether you like it or not, the key to leverage this new open-conversation marketplace is to hide nothing.
Here's Robin Good talking about blogging, branding and TrueTalk.

The more transparent, open, ready to be criticized and to listen to your users you can be, the more influential your newly generated credibility and authority will be.

It's not anymore an issue of brand. Who is mixing brand with these new grassroots user-driven marketplaces is still mixing old media buzzwords with a completely new way of doing business.

I don't want brands.

I want credible companies, that have real people standing behind them. Brand to me is the complete opposite of that. It is a completely fabricated "image"/perception of a product/service built on the idea that the "brand" will occupy a definite space in my customer mind as it becomes associated with positive/rewarding concepts.

What I want is transparency, personal accountability, and professional reporting.

Having the courage to be transparent and allowing for conversations you do not control are hallmarks of the new credibility. Those who act this way routinely will be rewarded by those of us who want to have confidence in the companies with which we interact. This won't be all companies with whom we do business. Some will function as commodity providers, and we'll treat them accordingly. Others will mean something more to us, and we'll treat them accordingly as well.

I know where I want our company to be. Where do you want yours to be?

Pop Tech Thoughts

After a couple of days, the Pop!Tech experience continues to be stimulating. I've been thinking about Doug Rushkoff's wrap up and the reactions I heard from others. Several attendees were disappointed in what one called Rushkoff's "pinball" thinking and delivery. Another said he'd heard several women expressing their displeasure with some aspect or other of his talk. Still another said he was unhappy with Rushkoff's appeal to anti-capitalist values.

I had a different take. I found myself focusing on the Rushkoff's comparisons between the "first Renaissance," the "old Renaissance," and the "New Renaissance." In his view, the "first Renaissance" (Ren A), was the movement from hieroglyphics to the alphabet. Ren A distributed the power of literacy into the hands of many people, thereby diminishing the role of the priests. Rushkoff characterized the "old Renaissance" (Ren I) by way of changes in five important areas:

1. Perspective Painting - movement from 2D to 3D representation
2. Circumnaviation of the Globe - movement from 2D to 3D model of the Earth
3. Spencerian Sonnet - the entension and dimensionalization of metaphor
4. Calculus - movement from 2D to 3D to 4D space/time conceptualization
5. Printing Press - movement from priests as keepers of truth (one-to-many) to the development of personal perspective on truth (many-to-many)

He characterized the "new Renaissance" (Ren II) as addressing the same issues from a new perspective:

1. Perspective Painting - movement to the hologram
2. Circumnaviation of the Globe - movement to orbiting the globe (or, blowing it up)
3. Spencerian Sonnet - movement to hypertext
4. Calculus - movement to the fractal
5. Printing Press - movement to the Internet

Ren I changed the individual from passive recipient of the story to active interpreter of the story.

Ren II changed the individual from active interpretor of the story to author of the story.

This is an elegant, powerful way to speak about the transformation of the individual into a connected node of the network...a huge change in our way of thinking about people.

More on this later.

Why "The Wire?"

Wonder why people (including this one) consider HBO's The Wire the best drama on television? (I know, it's not TV, it's...)

One word: authenticity.

Now, you might ask, what does a middle-aged Italian guy from Connecticut (me!) know about the authenticity of a show about cops and drug dealers in today's Baltimore?

A few things.

Let's start with an understanding of what we're talking about. "The Wire" is a tragedy. Not in some melodramatic sense, but in a classical sense. What does that mean? Aristotle told us:

Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality - namely, Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song.

Let's look at each of these elements:

1. Plot - Wow, this show has great plot. Loyalty, betrayal, love, hatred, pathos. All of it tightly woven around a modern-day tale of urban decay, political power, sex, drugs and money. A humdinger of a story every week.
2. Character - Oh my, what characters. Jimmy McNulty, heroic cop marred by alcohol abuse and failed relationships. Stringer Bell, drug lieutenant turned entrepreneur, haunted by the entreaties of both Malcolm and Dr. King. Lieutenant Cedrick Daniels, long-suffering black flack-catcher who languished in police limbo before being given the dubious opportunity to lead a crew of misfits eager to overachieve. Kima Greggs, hard-edged lesbian street cop wearing a perpetual smirk and ready to take one for the chance to bring down a player. Avon Barksdale, vicious drug lord imprisoned and now released to find his way in a totally transformed world. Omar, gay drug outlaw, seeking revenge and humiliation for the murder of his lover and the opportunity to steal the kitty whenever possible. There's more, but you get the picture. The people in the world of "The Wire" make sense...all of them. There are no fairy tale wings or horns in evidence, just recognizable humans acting in ways you'd expect them to act in the circumstances in which they find (or better, have put) themselves. They simply ring true week after week.
3. Diction - Hmm. This is a tricky one. Precisely what does it mean?

   The articulation of speech regarded from the point of view of its intelligibility to the audience.

   Ah, OK. I get it. This speech is completely intelligible, even if you don't understand every word. What? Yeah, the conversations fly by so fast, and the street patois so thick, you usually miss about half the words, and more than half of their specific references. But it doesn't matter. The meaning is always "intelligible to the audience." How it's done is a little mysterious, but you always feel like you understand what a scene is about.
4. Thought - Plenty of this. Each episode is wonderfully crafted. Lots of thought goes into each detail. You know there's an active intelligence at work here trying to communicate a message, so you always pay attention. And plenty to think about after it's over, if you're of a mind to.
5. Spectacle - Now we're getting somewhere. Fights. Sex. Cop/drug dealer confrontations. Political wranging. Laughs. Sex. Petty jealousy. Loyalty. Betrayal. Did I mention sex?
6. Song - I love how the old Greek guy saved the best for last! Most of all, this show is about the melody of language. That's how come you don't have to understand every word to get the meanining. The melody of language propels everything here. I grew up in The Bronx. Language meant a lot to us there. If you didn't talk like you belonged, you didn't. This show gets language. There are so many examples, I don't know where to start. But, let me just quote one. Stringer Bell, drug lieutenant turned entrepreneur (who sounds like he just came out of a Harvard Business School Exec Ed program for small business leaders), running a meeting of drug suppliers, makes the final sale for cooperative buying/selling by saying, "No beefin', no drama, just business." A man who obviously knows how to talk about keepin' the noise down and the profit up. The the language in this show drives it from first line to last word.

So, there you have my recommendation. TrueTalk on TV = "The Wire." You may have to do a little work to get beyond superficial imagery when you watch this show, but if you do, you'll be rewarded with a memorable, if tragic, narrative experience.

Hard Blog

This was a simple, provocative post. Operative idea:

My first thought was to say that corporate blogging is hard, but that is not true. It really isn't that hard. There is no lead-time needed before you can do it. There is no technology barrier.

Maybe, it is hard for companies to talk to people. Without the veneer. Without the lawyers and message makers in between.

Fact is, it is hard for companies to talk to people straight up, in real, simple, language. They're trapped in the web of their own brand/image-driven speech. And we've gotten so used to hearing companies "send messages" that we wouldn't know what to do if something simply true snuck out.

But the companies that break this rule and start having real conversations with their customers (and employees) are going to make some very different things happen, quickly.

Bloggy Truth

Evelyn Rodriguez blogs consistently great stuff. This is an example:

We've all developed our own truth-telling networks. Blogs and other customer-generated media online are a highly efficient format for the creation of global truth-telling networks especially among opinion-leaders. And corporations and organizations would be insane to ignore them.

The assumption here, of course, is that corporate leaders are eager to hear the truth. This is not always the case, since the truth is often in conflict with their beliefs, wishes, desires, or promises. We all know this lesson, but it's particularly apt regarding leaders and truth: always watch what people do, not what they say.