Story-Telling and Social Media

I already talked about Jennifer Aaker as the guru of personal branding. In that blogpost I posed three questions:

• what sets you aside from the rest of the crowd?
• why is it difficult for others to be what you are?
• how do you communicate your personal brand?

Some of the answers can be found in Jennifer´s new book "The Dragonfly Effect", which mainly talks about how social media can help in building your personal brand. One of the four “dragonfly wings” that comprise the authors’ framework and give the book its name is engagement, which they define as “truly making people feel emotionally connected to helping you achieve your goals” through storytelling, authenticity, and establishing a personal connection.

Here is just one of the stories featured in the book... but how inspiring!

Social-media engagement: A case study from The Dragonfly Effect

Scott Harrison was at the top of his world. The 28-year-old New York–based nightclub and fashion promoter excelled at bringing models and hedge-fund kings together and selling them $500 bottles of vodka. He had money and power. Yet his lifestyle brought something else: emptiness. Harrison felt spiritually bankrupt.

So he walked away, volunteering to serve on a floating hospital offering free medical care in the world’s poorest nations. Serving as the ship’s photojournalist, Harrison was quickly immersed in a very different world. Thousands would flock to the ship looking for solutions to debilitating problems: enormous tumors, cleft lips and palates, flesh eaten by bacteria from waterborne diseases. Harrison’s camera lens brought into focus astonishing poverty and pain, and he began documenting the struggles of these people and their courage.

After eight months, he moved back to New York, but not to his former life. Aware that many of the diseases and medical problems he witnessed stemmed from inadequate access to clean drinking water, he decided to do something about it. In 2006, he founded charity: water, a nonprofit designed to bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.

Harrison launched the organization on his 31st birthday by asking friends to donate $31 instead of giving him a gift. It was a success—the birthday generated $15,000 and helped build charity: water’s first few wells in Uganda. In the three years that followed, Harrison’s simple birthday wish snowballed into donations that today total more than $20 million, translating into almost 3,000 water projects spanning everything from hand-dug wells and deep wells to protection for springs to rainwater harvesting. The organization has now provided clean water to more than 1.4 million people spanning 17 countries. Its success can be explained through four design principles for generating engagement with a brand through social media.

Tell a story. Harrison’s personal journey—evoking themes of redemption, change, and hope—engaged others on an emotional level. By candidly discussing in media interviews and YouTube videos why and how he started charity: water, the thoughtful, accessible, and youthful Harrison helped viewers fall in love with him and his cause.

Empathize with your audience. Let people engage with your brand to learn what’s important to them and how it relates to your campaign. charity: water evoked empathy through the use of photographs and videos that revealed the urgency of the water problem in the developing world. Instead of relying just on statistics, the organization promoted compelling stories that forced people to think about what it would be like to live without access to clean water.

Emphasize authenticity. True passion is contagious, and the more authenticity you convey, the more easily others can connect with you and your cause. Because of charity: water’s commitment to transparency, donors not only understand the history that gave rise to the organization but also know exactly where their money goes. Reports and updates on the charity’s Web site connect donors directly to the results of their generosity.

Match the media with the message. How and where you say something can be as important as what you say. charity: water has a staff member dedicated to updating various social-media platforms and creating distinctive messages for Twitter and Facebook fan pages. The organization also relies heavily on video. One of charity: water’s most effective video projects involved convincing Terry George, the director of the film Hotel Rwanda, to make a 60-second public-service announcement in which movie star Jennifer Connelly took a gasoline can to New York City’s Central Park, filled the can with dirty water from the lagoon, and brought it home to serve to her two children. The producers of the reality TV show American Idol agreed to broadcast the spot during the program, ensuring that more than 25 million viewers saw it.

The Morning Glory

The mother of the protagonist in The Morning Glory says,

At 28 having a dream is officially embarrassing. You need to stop until it's heart-breaking.

Crude as it may sound but that is exactly the message that the society is sending to us. This movie (no matter how flaky and Hollywood it might be) deals with two important topics related to motivation: dream jobs and spillovers.

The character of Harrison Ford has had it all. He's reported from a burning jeep in Kosovo, interviewed Mother Teresa and Dick Cheney, and generations of American grew up watching his broadcasts. Television has been his life and emptiness was what followed once he had been let go. His work spilled over into his personal life to such an extent that it nudged out everything else that was there - interests, friends, family... He grew into an old grumpy bitter ghost of a someone who used to be famous.

A young hardworking executive producer (played by Rachel McAdams) has the same spillover issues but she is on the uphill road and genuinely believes in what she is doing. She is passionate, committed and cutely naive. The drama starts unfolding when the two collide in the makings of a morning show, and neither will budge. Luckily for both (it's a Hollywood story after all - a happy ending is guaranteed), he finds meaning in his new job and she learns some important lessons:

• get a boyfriend (a cute one)
• keep your blackberry in the fridge (not Vitamin C type)
• do not tolerate non-professionalism (fire the bastards!)
• know the difference between the sexy job and the dream job

If you have not seen the movie yet, check out the trailer and maybe it will whet your appetite:

How's Beethoven's 5th similar to an iPod?

I don't think that there will be anyone over the age of 5 who would not recognize these two and a half bars of music when they hear them. The immortal Beethoven's 5th Symphony. For those of you who need some recollection, here it is (before we progress any further) conducted by spectacular Gustavo Dudamel:



When I got a home assignment to listen to Beethoven's 5th for the next class in our Connections & Inflections Course (can you believe that title is for real?!?!), amusement was too mild of a word to describe my feelings. Listening to music over the MBA course is a luxury one can hardly afford, leaving alone doing that for a grade. The following class was about innovation: how companies innovate, what is innovation exactly, can we agree on a common definition of innovation, etc., and the professor introduced this whole topic by comparing Beethoven's 5th with Mozart's 38, 39, 40, 41 and Haydn's 79, 80. They are similar in their form, but so radically different in composition. The classical sonata form is preserved:

... but the whole piece is so much more economical, shorter, contained... The first 3 bars is not a melody at all, it is rather a gesture - a gesture that gets repeated regularly throughout the entire piece - Beethoven never lets go: it's an experience of rhythm and we are manipulated by it.

So what made Beethoven break off the tradition set by the father of symphony (Haydn) and continued by the genius of Mozart? We claim that it is an example of disruptive innovation: finding a new way and deviating from the establishment. The language of Mozart and Haydn was exhausted and novelty was called for, even though this novelty came in the same old sonata form.

This is where the most interesting part comes: the iPod. Coming in the same old form of a cell phone, it has a totally new look and feel inside and largely performs a different function. It is another example of disruptive innovation (as contrasted to incremental innovation).

Humans cannot grow constantly: there is a limit to our development - is it the same for organizations? What model is most appropriate to describe innovation? We discussed the Sequoia Model: you must grow as high and as quickly as possible and stop once you are above everyone else in order to survive and reproduce. You cannot be too low, otherwise you won't get enough sunlight and attention; you cannot be too high, as there are dangers of breaking down or being hit by a lightening. So basically growth is locked in its essence - only organic and natural growth is good for you. Think how many companies "grew" themselves into oblivion...

Yet... tumor is also a growth, no?

Workplace Drinking

An amazing post from Vault - reminds me of the times when there was an open bar on Friday afternoons at the Cape Town Shell office. At the same time, I fired so many operators who reported drunk to work and failed the breathalyser test... Corporate and operating environments will ever have different standards on such issues as drinking and smoking purely on the safety grounds, but we also need to factor in the cultural differences: imagine a corporate party in Russia without a drink in the hand of the CEO.

Workplace Drinking Is Back, But With a Catch

Posted on Tuesday, March 15, 2011 8:28:29 PM GMT   |   Post a comment

Drinking on the job is back.

Or at least, that's what startups like Yelp and Twitter are promoting. Bloomberg's Businessweekreports that Yelp's headquarters in San Francisco is not only equipped with "a keg refrigerator" but it also "supplies its employees with an endless supply of beer."

What's the catch, besides the picture of perpetual hangovers and fraternity fests?

"In order to help keep folks drinking responsibly, everyone who drinks the beer must check in on an iPad, which records every ounce they take." And the logic is that because you don't really want to be on the top of that list very often, workplace drinking remains a privilege yet to be abused.

Not to be confused with images from Mad Men, the Bloomberg piece quotes a Twitter spokesperson saying, "We treat employees as adults, and they act accordingly."

These are just two examples, and ones that can easily be attributed to the work culture of small companies and entrepreneurial setups, which often tend to prescribe to a recipe of long hours and flexible days. But they also represent a large population of today's workforce.

So, is a generational trend of socializing, flexible work schedules, and a workplace culture that promotes freedom over regimental processes, bringing booze back to today's workplace?

Should it?

Leave a comment, email In Good Company or connect on Twitter. Does your company offer endless alcohol in the interest of higher productivity and committed employees?

Related:
Brewing Up Success: Career Advice From the Founder of Dogfish Head Beer
Managing Your Hangover at the Office

Online assessment tools

Have you recently had a chance to take an online assessment as a part of the recruitment process? I should tell you from my personal experience that those things can be quite tedious and long, but also you are constantly riddled by the question: how do I trick the system?

The system can be tricked - no doubt about that. I am making this bold statement purely because anything created by one human being can be reverse-engineered by another. In the past couple of months I have completed quite a number of various online questionnaires, forms, tests and other forms intended to find out who I am and what I do.

Undoubtedly, there are many advantages to using an online tool in the selection process: they save time, money, efforts and provide consistency alongside with objectivity. At the same time, inadvertently they will sort out potentially brilliant employees who get bored with online assessments / are having a bad day / press wrong buttons / or because the system has been configured improperly. Obviously, each company will be looking for different things in candidates and each assessment tool will be tailored made for them - there are no cookie-cut solutions when it comes to selecting future employees. Still, my success rate so far has been around 50% with those and I can never really predict if I am doing great or poorly on the test.

For instance, I applied for the Sony European Graduate Prorgamme. They offer you to rate the responses to typical management situations according to the degree of their appropriateness in that particular context. There are 20 of them and thinking of each one can get quite tedious. The system is fully automated and there is surely a cut off score that defines if you are progressing in the process of if you receive a "we are sorry" letter. Well, I did not get in.

A different example is The Momentum Programme at Prudential. Their online assessment tool is a combination of pre-selected response choices and free-text answers. While this approach is more time and effort consuming, you get much better results, primarily because they are qualitative.

Which one is better? As always - it depends. For the candidate, doing an automated "click-the-button" test is easier and faster: those normally get completed in about 20-40 minutes. Writing essays is more difficult and you need more time - it took me a couple of hours to complete the Prudential online assessment, but that effort paid off: I have received an invitation for the assessment center at the end of March in London. I am not sure what conclusions we can draw from this, but my observation is that when I get a chance to convey my personality and experience through a narrative, my results are much better. If I am dealing with a robot, I normally fail.

I am still undecided about online assessments. Yes, there are advantages as well as drawbacks and in some situations they can be real life savers. As long as one fully understands the risks associated with using those and uses the tools effectively, there are definitely large organizational benefits that can be reaped. In the meantime, I should be packing for London!

A fleeting visit to Morocco: Thoughs

This weekend I went to Marrakesh to get my busy head out of the orderly European life and immerse myself into the 1001-nights-like atmosphere of that ancient city. It was not my first visit - I have already visited Morocco back in 2007 when I virtually did a round-trip across the country: Casablanca, Rabat, Fes, Meknes, Marrakesh and Es-Saouira. I was thinking to myself then, "This will change in the next 5 years. With the rapid pace of development everywhere else in the world, this country will not escape the burden of modernization". This time around, I was travelling with a friend who said exactly the same thing, and now I am not really sure how much is going to change in the next 5, 10 or even 20 years.

Think of Morocco as a country where

• a red traffic light is merely a suggestion to the driver to look both ways before proceeding
• a signed contract is a great place to start negotiations
• travel is still measured in hours and days instead of kilometers
• mules, bicycles, camels, people and buggies are equal members of the chaotic mess lovingly referred to as "traffic"
• a bribe is not corruption but simply a "facilitation payment" to speed thing up
• in bars you will see only men, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes or shishas, while women stay in home taking care of the house and children
• telling lies is an acceptable negotiation practice (and oh so many tourists have suffered from that!)
• etc, etc, etc

How do you do business in that country? Surely not by deploying a pack of Western managers blindly believing that they are able to change people so that they adopt the Western cultural practices. To me that sounds like a sure way to schizophrenia: being one person at work and at home - another. At the same time I understand the business imperative to carry out transactions in a consistent fashion, with integrity and within the legal boundaries. The people issues in such cases are key: values transfer, adapting Western management practices, dealing with "double bind" issues... I would really enjoy an assignment like that :)

Female-dominated industries

In their recent study Forbes identified 20 industries where women outnumber men. Thus... while we are talking about gender equality in the workplace, the numbers tell us a different story.

Finance (Accounting, Auditing, Insurance, Assurance, etc.)

1. Accountants & Auditors (61.8%)
2. Financial managers (54.7%)
3. Insurance Underwriters (62.8%)
4. Tax Examiners, Collectors and Revenue Agents (73.8%)
5. Budget Analysts (59.3%)
6. Tax Preparers (65.9%)
7. Claims Adjusters, Appraisers, Examiners & Investigators (60.6%)
8. Financial Specialists (66.6%)

Communications/Social Skills

1. Meeting & Convention Planners (83.3%)
2. HR Managers (66.8%)
3. Advertising & Promotion Managers (56.5%)
4. Elementary & Middle School Teachers (81.9%)
5. Social & Community Service Managers (69.4%)

Health Care

1. Medical Scientists (56.9%)
2. Veterinarians (61.2%)
3. Psychologists (68.8%)
4. Registered Nurses (92%)
5. Medical & Health Services Managers (69.5%)

Operations/Administration

1. Education Administrators (62.6%)
2. Business Operations Specialists (68.4%)