Privacy versus Authenticity Keeping My Online Personae Straight

I have often alluded to my "real life/day job" when writing for this blog. This blog started out as an experiment and as part of that experiment it was decided that it would be kept separate. One, to see how it fared completely on its own without outside assistance, and two, to keep my "real life/day job" uncomplicated with personal viewpoints. Being in public administration means to a large extent that you put your opinions on the backburner and respect the democratic process that put those making the decisions in power.

Because of personal and policy changes at the "day job" my virtual and more openly idealistic online persona, which was borne of this blog, is now getting short shrift. My day job has its own online persona and is getting benefit from what I have learned during my sojourns into the World of Web 2.0 through this blog. The separation still exists, but now more tenuously. It is also getting harder to maintain because while I still have some desire to maintain the private space there is also a sense of being inauthentic or at least fragmented.

There are points of connection and it is possible to discover one of my online personae through the other, but so far nobody has seemed to have noticed any of them. Do I want to make them more obvious?

Branding as Commodity Finding Connection Through Leadership

Umair Haque, Director of the Havas Media Lab, wrote in the early part of this year on The Shrinking Advantage of Brands in Harvard Business Publishing. His definition is not universally accepted, as can be determined from the comments section of the piece, but it does give me some ideas regarding social media and collaboration.

His definition: What is a brand? It’s a promise: information from a firm promising you a set of costs and benefits from the consumption of a good or service. Brands shape your expected value.

As I posted in my other blog, I have been having an ongoing discussion of leveraging social media on behalf of the Millennium Development Goals in one of the End POVERTY / Fim POBREZA forums. What the discussion comes down to in my mind is, does one both lead and empower through social media in raising consciousness about a social cause and how? Branding a social cause can either be an empowering exercise or a form of propaganda.

What is different from Haque's definition of branding compared to others is that he seems to see it, at least orthodox branding, as an iconic devise used to synthesis the costs and benefits into one object, phrase or idea. The interaction costs are so inexpensive with Google or other online tools, it makes it easier for consumers to find the information that they seek, especially from each other. "The cheaper interaction gets, the more connected consumers can talk to each other – and the less time they have to spend listening to the often empty promises of firms." Haque's point is that information about expected costs and benefits doesn’t have to be compressed into orthodox branding logos, or slogans because your audience can debate and discuss their expected values in detail. The trouble is that for social causes most don't, they only connect passively.

Seth's Blog also had a post on the rapid growth (and destruction) and growth of marketing back in October of this year. Seth realizes something that Haque left out in his article which is that brands can also provide a vehicle for social emotion and connection, but it is a vehicle in to which the audience can imbue social emotion and connection rather than depending upon someone else to "feed" it to them.

Social media, it turns out, isn't about aggregating audiences so you can yell at them about the junk you want to sell. Social media, in fact, is a basic human need, revealed digitally online. We want to be connected, to make a difference, to matter, to be missed. We want to belong, and yes, we want to be led.

The next day Seth's Blog had a post on Leadership is now the strongest marketing strategy. He again "markets" his new book on leadership called Tribes from the post the day before. He thinks of his leadership book as actually being a marketing book and vice-a-versa. According to Seth, "The next frontier of marketing is in leading groups of people who are working together to get somewhere."

What works is leading. Leading a (relatively) small group of people. Taking them somewhere they'd like to go. Connecting them to one another. It's enough if the tribe you lead knows about you and cares about you and wants to follow you. It's enough if your leadership changes things, galvanizes the audience and puts the status quo under stress. And it's enough if the leadership you provide makes a difference.

It is easier to be merely broadcasters, putting together a list of iconic branding devises and hurtling it out at hoped for followers. Louder is easier not better. According to Seth, "People want to connect. They want you to do the connecting. Now we're leaders." It is not, however, the definition of leader in the orthodox sense. Claiming leadership regarding the branding of a cause can be a matter of hazardous hubris, both the branding and leadership require a high degree of authenticity.

It seems to be to be a matter of encouraging collaboration by first providing information, education and then following with avenues of action, but realizing that everybody else can and at least a small group should be doing the same thing. How to encourage them to do so around a specific branded cause may be the true role of leadership. How to specifically do that is still a matter to be further explored .

How to be a good manager: Be generous to everybody

One ongoing paradigm shift is looking to use my skills sets in new ways after I finish my current career. The question is not only what to do, but who to do it with. 50-plus entrepreneurs starting lifestyle businesses via RetirementRevised by Mark Miller back in May of this year provides some insights.

Ask someone over 50 what they want to do after retirement, and you may well get this answer: "Keep working!" Surveys suggest that more than 75 percent of the baby boom generation plans to keep working past traditional retirement age. But it's not likely that many will keep laboring away in Corporate America. Most boomers [...]

The "who" applies not only to the type of organization, which defines more than anything the what, the who is also the types of people within the organization as well. It has been discussed before, but Lela Davidson's article, also in May, on 4 Generations of Workers - Can You Relate? via Business Pundit provides another look at working in a multi-generational environment.

Today's workforce is a diverse mix of generations that each come with their collective background and value systems. Understanding their unique perspectives is important in a large organization where they are likely to be working side by side. Professor at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid, Spain, Cristina Simón's study Generation Y and the Labor Market: Models for HR Management, address differences in generational values. Simón looked at our generations of workers, analyzed their values and suggested ways for businesses to get people working together.

Four Generations and Their ValuesTraditional Workers(born before 1946/over 60)

• Value loyalty and discipline.
• Tend to respect authority.
• Accomplished a lot
• Contributed to success under hierarchical systems of the past.

Baby Boomers (1946-1960/late 40s and up)

• Expect success.
• Created strong social change including
• The hippie movement,
• Feminism, and
• Civil rights.
• Optimistic and self-motivated.

Generation X (1961-1979/30s and 40s)

• Best academic training and international experience in history.
• Breaking with traditional patterns, including
• Creating informal work environments
• Transforming corporate structures from hierarchical into horizontal and flexible entities.
• Personal initiative and a healthy dose of skepticism toward large organizations
• Produced a lot of entrepreneurs from this generation.
• Key value achievement of balance between career goals and quality of life.

Generation Y (starting from 1980/under 30)

• Lived their entire lives with information technology
• Have a hard time comprehending a world without it.
• Tend toward individual needs in favor of the community good
• Often demand a high level of autonomy.
• Lacks in loyalty, makes up for with the the value they place on relationships with co-workers and supervisors.

So this gives me potentials for what to do and who to do it with, next is how to do it in a ideal environment. One of my favorite sources of insight is Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk who wrote on How to be a good manager: Be generous again this past May. I am just summarizing what for me are some of the high points here. For the details, you need to go to the original post.

So the first rule, and probably the only rule of management, is to be respectful. A lot of questions I get from managers can be answered the same way: ask yourself if you are really being respectful.

Most people don't see management as listening and thinking, but that's what it is. Because that's what caring about someone looks like. Once you get to the point where you are connecting with the people you manage, and you are helping them get what they want from their job, you are in a position to change the world. Really.

All this reminds Ms Trunk of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

She comes up with her own version of Pseudo-Maslow Hierarchy of Job Needs in which you start with get a job, and you figure out, eventually, how to use your job to make the world a better place.

1. Physiological - Take care of keeping yourself fed and clothed.
2. Safety - Work on feeling secure that you can keep yourself employed, if something happens.
3. Love and belonging - Figure out how to get a job that respects your personal life.
4. Esteem – perform well at your job because you have the resources and the security to do so
5. Self-actualization – help other people reach their potential through creative and moral problem solving

I am at the point where I am directly quoting the original article more than I prefer for these posts, but Ms. Trunk says it so well that re-writing does not seem to be of any service.

So really, management is an opportunity to self-actualize. Some people will self-actualize by being artists, or writing code. Some people will self-actualize through management. Some, a combination.

But the point here is that being in management is an opportunity to grow spiritually and give back to the world in a way that is enormously fulfilling. If you allow it. You will need to set aside real time to make this happen. And you need to give generously. No big surprise there, though, because why else are we here, on this planet, except to give to each other?

Getting Into Social Media While Having Been There All The While.

This weblog started off as an experiment to teach myself more about web 2.0 technology and as a means of educating myself in other areas of interest. Its impact on me has grown over time having opened up arenas of inquiry that I would not have considered in the beginning.

There has not been a predetermined pathway nor has there been any effort to keep to any pathway in particular. Different aspects of Web 2.0 have been tried, with some being let go and some retained.

One new pathway that this weblog has been pursuing implicitly up until now is social media. Implicitly, because it was not the original intent of this weblog to focus on connecting socially to other users. My admitted bias has been toward ideas. Ideas, however, only have life if they are communicated, and the source of new ideas are other people, so slowly I was drawn into social media. It has been to my benefit, but that would be getting ahead of myself. At first it was with a great deal of skepticism, but over time the potential of web 2.0 tools as a means of bringing about beneficial paradigm shifts has become more real for me. Implicitly, as well, because I have only recently created a social-media tag for this blog or my tagging systems. I have dealt with the subject, but only recognized it as having an ancillary and secondary role. Now it seems a great deal is being written lately about it in the blogosphere on Social Media and its supposed promises, limitations, and in some cases, its dark side.

The dark side come to those who put too much of their personal lives into their blogs find themselves virtually viscerated by the unfeeling masses. I have a greater appreciation for authenticity because of what I have learned through this weblog, but authenticity is different from personal confession. I choose to keep my day job/so called "real" life separate from this effort for a number of reasons. I have provided a photo of myself because hiding behind an avatar seems inauthentic, but that does not mean I have to share personal details or need to know that of others. I can be judged by my ideas and writings. Next comes its promise, mostly made by those in marketing and its limitations made by those who though they are riding the train and in many cases fueling the train ask themselves if by chance someone should warn others as to the possible consequences of the train going faster than we might be able to handle. A number of posts sit in Blogger limbo waiting to be completed on various aspects of this subject.

The ability of this weblog to provide pathways to new learning experiences has grown over time. A greater appreciation of various arenas of study, such as various perspectives on economics, design and marketing has occurred. This weblog makes making connections and seeing interrelationships ever more apparent. These interrelationships are now becoming more complex. Encapsulating a myriad number of ideas, organizing those ideas and now communicating those ideas to others, while others are doing the same with you, is all placed under the label Social Media.

What this all reflects is some concerns raised by some with more experience and creditability in the world of Web 2.0 that has to be contrasted with the growth that this weblog has seen regarding the expanse of connections spanning the globe and the depth of intellectual connections based on the insightfulness and breadth of ideas.

Lesson From Philippe Starck "Design Is Dead" Lesson From Hugh MacLeod "The Future Isn't"

Back at the end of last year Phillipe Starck took the TED stage to answer the question Why design? During that time he railed against the cynicism of Raymond Loewy in the '50s.

Now Kottke.org tells us that Philippe Starck says that design is dead...

Here is Jason Kottke's post from kottke.org by jason@kottke.org back on March 28 of this year.

Philippe Starck says that design is dead and that he's retiring. Says Starck:

I was a producer of materiality and I am ashamed of this fact. Everything I designed was unnecessary. I will definitely give up in two years' time. I want to do something else, but I don't know what yet. I want to find a new way of expressing myself ...design is a dreadful form of expression. (link)

I am going to follow Seth Godin's advice and have an opinion. Sorry, but being ashamed of producing materiality seems to me to be pretentious. Deciding that you want to do something else that has more meaning for you, yes that I could find admirable, even deciding what you personally designed was unnecessary in regards to your designing it, but to decry design because it works with the elements of this world, well I am not ready to leave the material world just yet. There are more than enough opportunities to find meaningful purpose in designing for the other 80% who could use a bit more materiality.

Materiality is not the problem, it is limiting our vision of ourselves and our world to only materiality. Equally problematic is disdaining the material world.

On numerous occasions this weblog has turned to Seth Godin and Hugh MacLeod for insights. It is not the purpose of this weblog to market anything, yet I still find ideas in their writings that resonate with me, regardless whether or not that was their intention.

MacLeod's latest post, just picked up today, justifies again my labeling MacLeod as the world's most optimistic curmudgeon, with more emphasis perhaps on the curmudgeon. The post also sets a warning marker about being pretentious myself.

The latest source of optimistic inspiration is MacLeod's post on "the blue monster is the future of marketing" via gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards" back in May of this year.

I am liberally paraphrasing MacLeod's post here for my own purposes, for his purposes go to his post.

MacLeod defines his Blue Monster as, a cartoon-based "Social Object" that me and my Microsoft buddy, Steve Clayton, unleashed on the good but unsuspecting folk at Microsoft.

I have been interested in the idea of the Social Object and how it fits into new marketing for some time. Not for marketing purposes, but how it defines how we interrelate with each other. It is too simplistic to take the position that it is just about making money. No doubt, if done well, it results in making money, but it is not at the heart of the gesture. The emphasis is on the social not the object.

5. My [MacLeod's] second big insight from this year was learning that, even with a fairly everyday product, you can create social objects simply by using your products to make social gestures.

Now the Blue Monster as a social object is arguably not material (sans pen, ink, paper), but other social objects promoted by MacLeod are. More importantly, they achieve something that perhaps Starck's designs did not, they take on a life of their own.

One of the reasons I haven't talked about it much lately, is simply because there is no longer the need. To paraphrase Steve, "It's already out there, it's already working its magic. It has a life of its own and it no longer needs us."

Perhaps Starck's designs practiced "Subversion as a marketing tool". Starck would not have called it "marketing", but whether it's marketing or telling stories or finding meaning, it can be counterproductive if not done with authenticity, especially if it comes from above, whether hierarchically or metaphorically.

Understanding the Blue Monster means understanding the need to be "bigger than yourself".

The Next Move Post Career

Work has a tendency to define the flow of our days. There will still be a day though when it is time to find other pursuits. So some time needs to be devoted every now and then to think about the future. The following website professes to offer a possible pathway for Baby Boomers.

Encore: Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life Diigo Annotated

diigo tags: encore, work, career, 50Aspire

Baby boomers are inventing a new stage of work. As their numbers swell, they are transforming work itself – and creating a society that works better for everyone.

So there is a pathway, but how do we move to it from the one we are on? Penelope Trunk, the Brazen Careerist offers Steps to figuring out your next career move.

For me, it is post career move, but I can still find some applicable points within her post with some revisions.

1. Eliminate stuff: Cross off your list opera singer, Chicago Cubs Owner - If it hasn't happened by now it is not going to. That leaves fun but even if it probably will never pay well it doesn't matter: working in local government - been there, done that, working in a nonprofit - has possibilities, being a travel writer - or maybe a blogger, but it would have to be far different from this one to make money.

2. Look at what’s left: risk-taker then entrepreneurship, not a risk-taker then corporate life, third option not-as-much-to-risk then maybe change-agent or social-entrepreneur.

3. Just because you love something doesn’t mean you need to get paid for it. Especially if you are retired.

4. Be honest about what you love. If you’re not making time to do it regularly unpaid, then you probably don’t love it. Well, there is eating and paying the mortgage and right now its the best job I can find that fits all of my parameters.

5. Admit if you lack a clear passion. OK, I lack clear passion or at least hot passion. I am a slow-simmer-the-spaghetti-sauce-all-day type.

6. Get busy. Doing anything. The best way to find yourself is to start doing things. When it comes to ourselves, we find by doing, not philosophizing. This weblog is a small start.

diigo tags: careerist

Choosing the next company you work for: Leverage research about how Gen Y is parenting via Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk from 3/28/08

The odds are working a post-career job will mean working with a different generation at the helm.

One of the hardest parts of managing your career is getting clear on what's most important to you in the work you do. And it's ironic that the true-but-clichéd exclamation from new parents – "the kids force me to see what is really important in my life" — comes after we have navigated a big chunk of our careers.

Your generation is never a perfect mirror of you, but it's usually fairly accurate. Otherwise people wouldn't continue to pay for the research, right? Well no, they can pay because they like what they hear. Like so many others, I claim to be the exception.

Parenting styles reveal one's true values, so reading this research is like giving yourself a jump-start on self-knowledge that usually comes after you've slogged through your twenties. Based on research about values that guide new millennium parenting, here are three things to seek out in new millennium work.

1. Look for good flow of information Generation Y sees information as a personal differentiator, as employees, having access to premium information in their field, and being able to share it in a productive way, is very important to feeling fulfilled.

I am not one of those Baby Boomers who think good advice comes only with age.

I have had my fill with offices that use "hierarchy as a way to make people feel useful and important."

2. Make sure you can customize your environment. In the workplace, customization is a must in order to feel like you are being recognized for your authentic self by co-workers

You won't feel like you are making an authentic connection with your workplace if the workplace does not make an effort to address what is different about you.

3. Surround yourself with people who have faith in the future. Gen Y deals with the uncertainty of the future by living more in the present.

In the workplace, these values play out in the quest for lifelong learning.

Make each day one where you learn and have fun because putting that off for some maybe-payoff (like making partner at a law firm, or getting a fat paycheck) will make you feel like you're not being true to yourself. This is all the more true when your "someday" days are now behind you.

Still Thinking About Marketing And Web Complexity

I am still thinking about Anita Campbell's article When Did Online Marketing Become So Complex? OPEN Forum Blog from American Express OPEN. This post will address the questions she raised more directly. It has been revised since the weekend.

Below is her chart on how she organizes web 2.0 programs as business tools in terms of their return on investment.

The chart uses concentric circles to outline an online marketing strategy. Here is the chart I've come up with (click image for larger version):
The most important elements of an online marketing strategy appear in the center two circles. Those are the activities you will get the greatest return from, for the time and money you spend on them.

The main objective is to sell some service or product, but to my mind the web doesn't sell anything, it makes connections. People then sell to themselves. The primary focal point of connection is the website (or whatever one uses as their primary platform) and each concentric circle should connect to it in some way to it.

The difference between the inner circle of blogs, e-mail marketing, SEO, Pay-Per-Click and Online Press Releases is that they are more direct and focused than the outer circle of tags, and social-networking. The outer circle is less direct but it is the arena where viral marketing can arise. One could make a MySpace site dedicated especially to a particular business or service. That though should put it into the inner circle. The same could be true of listing like the yellow pages, though that does seem more passive than other components in the inner circle. Overall, it seems to be a matter of achieving authenticity.

Ms Campbell has a number of different web 2.0 programs on the outer circle, but I believe that they could be grouped into broader categories. They could also be divided by demographics, Linked-in for professionals, MySpace for younger kids. Delicious appeals to a different group then does Digg.

Ms Campbell argues against spending too much time on the outer circle which makes sense to me. Having an established and dependable foundation at your center and inner circle allows customers to respond on their own to what you have to offer. This is an essential point in my view. Your customers have to have the option to respond on their own. Your job is to figure out who your customers are.

This weblog is on the other end of the exchange. It is one of the potential consumers. It is more likely to be a secondary marketing platform. According to FeedBurner, Ms Campbell's article has been clicked on 42 times in the last month through my Delicious account, most before I got around to posting about it. How people got to it, I don't know. It is the fifth most popular item clicked on in the last 30 days. Yesterday, it got three clicks. My post from yesterday in which it was featured got one click.

Yet, according to Delicious, her article has only been bookmarked by one other person. I "discovered" it on StumbleUpon. There is also the question of how my connections with others effect this weblog. Over the last week the number of clicks to posts or sites featured on this weblog per day was around 20. Yesterday, it was 60. It is no longer a one-way discourse, even if we are not in direct conversation. It is a cascading flow of information that needs to be studied more.

New Marketing Authenticity Over Exaggeration

GapingVoid raises the question, which I have been pondering for some time regarding new marketing.

gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards": so what's all this new marketing stuff, anyway?

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Part of the answer comes from this article from Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.

Authenticity over Exaggeration: The New Rule in Advertising — HBS Working Knowledge Annotated

tags: communications, marketing, web2.0

The new rules

But what does this all boil down to for companies that want to be successful in this relatively new environment? In the working paper, Deighton and Kornfeld discuss 5 aspects of digital interactivity, including



• Thought tracing. Firms infer states of mind from the content of a Web search and serve up relevant advertising; a market born of search terms develops.


• Ubiquitous connectivity. As people become increasingly "plugged in" through cell phones and other devices, marketing opportunities become more frequent as well—and technology develops to protect users from unwanted intrusions. A market in access and identity results.


• Property exchanges. As with Napster, Craigslist, and eBay, people participate in the anonymous exchange of goods and services. Firms compete with these exchanges, and a market in service, reputation, and reliability develops.


• Social exchanges. People build identities in virtual communities like Korea's Cyworld (90 percent of Koreans in their 20s are members). Firms may then sponsor or co-opt communities. A market in community develops that competes on functionality and status.


• Cultural exchanges. While advertising has always been part of popular culture, technology has increased the rate of exchange and competition for buzz. In addition to Dove's campaign, Deighton cites BMW's iative to hire Hollywood directors and actors to create short, Web-only films featuring BMWs. In the summer of 2001, the company recorded 9 million downloads.

You Are Commodified When You Lose The Ability To Changing Things

HBS Working Knowledge had an article on When Your Product Becomes a Commodity — Annotated The source of this link was from Businesspundit When Your Product Becomes a Commodity

The truth is, even when a raw material has no value added and quality standards are set by law or the industry, there is still plenty of opportunity for differentiation around availability, delivery, shipment quantities, payment terms, and all the other services that accompany the core product. Marketers must use their imagination. As the saying goes: "There are no mature products, only mature managers."

I see it relating to the concepts I am trying to get my head around from Gapingvoid, Seth Godin and even Kevin Kelly. Not in terms of a specific product but how to relate to this as a manager providing service. Moreover, I am trying to look beyond just the "mechanics", which I sense from the readings is only a veneer that wears through quickly.

It has been Gapingvoid which as given me the closest sense of this, though I have not zeroed in on it fully yet. The mechanics yes, but there seems or maybe I am looking for something more. I see it related to an ability to make change in the world for the better. If one's ability to make self generate change in the world is compromised, then one becomes a commodity.

gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards": meatball sundae: ten questions for seth godin Annotated

Here's my challenge: I want to change things. Sometimes, the best way to do that is to reach out to committed individuals and give them some ideas to run with. On the other hand, big changes, sea changes... those happen in larger organizations with leverage. So, my books have sort of struck a balance, sometimes emphasizing one more than the other. In this case, it's clear that the digerati 'get' what's going on with the new marketing. But we're frustrated. I wrote this book to help us out. The phrase, "meatball sundae" is designed as a rallying cry, something to sneer at in a big meeting.

gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards": why marketers are so interested in blogs Annotated

Yesterday, while Johnnie Moore, Mark Earls and I were recording a podcast, Johnnie came up with a wonderful metaphor to describe this phenomenon.

He told Mark and me about being 12 years old in science class. To demonstrate that yes, indeed, a stick of celery is full of capillaries, even if you couldn't see them with the naked eye, the science teacher dipped the end of a stick of celery into a beaker of blue ink. An lo and behold, the kids watched in amazement as the ink traveled up the celery capillaries, turning the rest of the green celery stalk into blue.

Suddenly that which could not be seen before, could now clearly be seen. Glaringly so.

I think Seth said it pretty well to me the other day: "The web is a giant compiler for marketers. You can experiment here for less money, in less time, than anywhere else. If Al Gore hadn't invented it, I'd be seriously bummed out."

The thing about creating a blog is that lines keep continually crossing and there does not seem to be any constraints or parameters. Within the web as 'defined' by web 2.0 organizational permeablity does not seem to be an issue allowing what Kevin Kelly wrote about and for authenticity in our efforts to connect.

tags: design, entrepreneurship, gvoid, marketing

Authenticity Accessed Or Acquired? Re-write

It should be our intention to strive for authenticity when defining and presenting ourselves or our life's endeavors . The writings of Finn McKenty, who blogs at Lightheavyweight inform us that design also has authenticity as a purpose.

Finn McKenty extends the concern regarding authenticity to endeavors of social-engagement. Specifically using the example of the Greener Grass project, which is about connecting people with ideas designed to have a positive impact.

The source of insight that he sought was John Moore from Brand Autopsy , who provided the original link for this post on Authenticity .

Finn asks John asks a few questions in a short interview about the of role "authenticity" in branding which you can read here ...snippets below.

Greener Grass: Can authenticity be created? If so, how can companies build a culture that values authenticity, transparency and honesty?

John Moore:

"This belief that authenticity can be created is what gets companies in trouble. Authenticity comes from evolution, not from creation. No magic pill exists and no big bang will cause a company to become authentic. The honor of being authentic is earned only over time and through consistent, deliberate actions. Same goes for building a corporate culture. A company that respects its employees and treats its employees like family will be rewarded with being viewed by insiders and outsiders as an authentic company."

*** READ MORE ***

Learning to be True is Better than Learning to be Right

Another blog that this site connects to is Seth Godin's. One of Seth's post particularly applicable is on “The need to be right”. Often more energy is spent trying to support our positions than in trying to find the truth. Seth offers a different perspective.

I like being wrong. Not enough to make a habit of it, but enough to realize that I'm actively testing scenarios. Take a fact of dubious authenticity, riff a scenario around it and see if it feels right. That act of scenario building is a key factor in brainstorming, in creativity and in problem solving. If you need the core fact to be guaranteed right and perfect, you're doomed, because facts like that are in short supply.

Another insightful post was “What you need to fight the manual” on how to change yourself to keep from being outsourced. The idea of depending upon a manual can be expanded to the rest of life. Because we all write our own standard operating paradigms in life, which we come to depend upon. Combining both of these perspectives of Seth give the following insight.

I know, there's a huge need to have right facts and right practice, particularly in jobs where quality of service is essential. Got that. My point is that we're so good at getting those sort of facts right that maybe, just maybe, we need to spend more time teaching people the other stuff. Short version: if your job can be completely written up in a manual, it's either not a great job or it's going to be done by someone cheaper, sometime soon

Finally Seth provides a great connection for the Web 2.0 realm. How to do everything better (online). According to Seth,

The folks at mashable.com do absolutely amazing work. In addition to a useful news feed about what's up online, they regularly put together lists of stuff to make you more productive

Seth also provides his own list of impressive mash-ups