dangerouslyawesome

I write a lot about IndyHall on this blog, but I don’t think I’ve spoken at any great length about another local organization, Philly Startup Leaders. I’ve recently joined the organization as part of a newly formed advisory board, along with a number of other people from various local organizations that support and contribute to the local scene, as well as others who have been long-time fixtures and observe Philadelphias growth from another vantage point.

Philly Startup Leaders, like IndyHall, has modest beginnings: started by a couple of people who had or were involved with startups to discuss the challenges of being a startup in Philadelphia. Those early meetings, all held over beers as far as I’m aware, have transformed into a strong mission for the Philadelphia startup community:

“…above all else, startup entrepreneurs need each other.”

So what’s been fascinating to me has been watching IndyHall and PSL, two different communities grow alongside each other with similar purpose and vision. Lots of crossover has taken place. We share a number of members. Some of us have worked together. All good, healthy things for the ecosystem.

The PSL board has done a great job of growing membership, creating and evolving new events for the membership to participate in, crafting a manifesto, and providing the primary venue for community: the PSL-Talk e-mail list.

That e-mail list, a phenomenal resource for the community, seems to also be one of it’s greatest weaknesses.

There’s currently a flare-up (well, it’s currently as public as the e-mail list is…another issue…and it’s persistent in back-channels) about “self promotion and sales” in the list. When a new thread author, or an existing thread responder, posts something that is less about contributing information to the community and instead, advertises themselves as the solution to a specific problem, they receive a slap on the wrist (public or private, at the board’s discretion). The response is usually something like this one, from PSL co-founder and president Blake Jennelle:

Steve, you could have sent this solicitation to Yasmine directly. Promoting your consulting services is not appropriate over PSL talk. This is your public warning as per the policy you see in the footer. If this happens again you will be removed from the list.

The policy in the footer that Blake refers to reads:

The PSL Talk List is /not a sales channel/.  If you use the PSL Talk List to make a sales pitch to the community, you will be warned, publicly. If you do it again, you will be removed from the list.

I want to be clear and say that I understand why this rule is in place. Lists that are primarily solicitation, job postings, and the like do a lot of harm to the balance of “has” and “needs” of a community.

I liken it to the situation that IndyHall has with recruiters and job-postings. We wanted to make IndyHall a place and a community where people can be more effective at getting their work done. If the ecosystem becomes a place where people can come to get work, vs a place where people come to do work, the has/needs balance gets out of whack.

This is a tricky situation to deal with, for a couple of reasons. First and formost, the LAST thing I want is to be the person, or organization, that gets between a person and the opportunity of their lifetime.

When there’s contact from recruiters, startups, companies, etc about the talent at IndyHall and their availability, we explain that we’re an organization that provides physical space and community resources to our membership, as well as a highly collaborative environment that they can use to get their work done. Work exchanges hands all the time, but we don’t get in the middle of it. If you [recruiter/startup/company/etc] is interested in coming to IndyHall as a member, to use the space and community resources in the same way as anyone else who walks in our door, we welcome you!

So rather than police their intentions, which are to find a candidate for the job they have open, we frame it appropriately. There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from walking in the door and joining IndyHall. So long as you can work from anywhere, pay your membership, come on by.

What’s nice is…because the culture is established by the existing membership, most anti-culture behavior sorts itself out. Rather than police culture, which is a very top-down way of looking at things, we carefully frame the situation.

If that person, whoever they are, feels they aren’t getting what they came there for, odds are, they came for the wrong thing. And most importantly, they won’t come back.

So, I came down on Blake’s response in the e-mail list where he slapped the so-called service provider on the wrist for an infraction that I’ll keep referring to as “anti-culture behavior”.

Someone who specializes in the topic of a question responds, and it’s sales. Someone who’s novice (or less experienced) responds, and it’s a-OK. Does anybody else see the problem here? I think there’s a difference between letting the group know what you do (within the list, which is the only unified point of membership of PSL) and overtly selling it to the group. What happens when someone asks about office space, and someone other than me recommends IndyHall? What if that person is a member of IndyHall? Is it better if they aren’t a member of IndyHall? It’s not me selling, but they’re selling for us (without my direct influence). What happens when somebody asks for help, like in this case? Experts aren’t allowed to be responded to in public discourse? What does that accomplish? I know that a LOT of energy goes into keeping this list anti-sales, and don’t think that I don’t understand why. Maybe if that energy went into focusing on what this list is, instead of what it’s not, the message would be clearer to people joining PSL. I don’t think the barrier to entry is to high or too low, I just think that you’ve put up the wrong barrier.

I admittedly painted some broad strokes, for the sake of illustration. But I made my point, and framed in the context of this post, I think it makes even more sense.

So Blake responds:

All Steve had to do was answer Yasmine’s question over the list and let his expertise speak for itself. This would have been a much more effective sales pitch. Alex, when you share your expertise on workspaces, when Wil shares his expertise on SEO, when Aaron shares his expertise on marketing, that unquestionable adds value to the list. It’s when you send a solicitation, beyond giving freely of your expertise, that people get annoyed. PSL talk is about helping each other for the sake of helping each other. That’s the culture that draws so many people to this community, as to Indy Hall. That’s the culture that we care so much about protecting and nurturing. That’s what PSL IS about.

Which, again, I completely agree with. Except this part:

That’s the culture that we care so much about protecting and nurturing.

I think it jumped out at me because I said something very similar in an unrelated conversation with Sean Blanda, co-founder of TechnicallyPhilly just yesterday.

Blake and the PSL board have always taken the approach of policing, posting signage (the footer warning), and warning/banning offenders.

What concerns me about this approach is that I don’t know if you can protect and nurture culture at the same time. By protecting it, you’re not letting it build up its own cultural defenses, which would truly be nurturing it into maturity.

My most recent post to the list encouraged Blake in two directions: first, to take some of the board-only-back-channel-discussion into a public forum, and make the most of the smart problem solvers he has as peers in his community. Second, to focus on what PSL is and stands for, instead of trying to keep out everything that it isn’t. Since, Blake has started a new thread doing just that, in which I’ll be sharing this post, as well as participating in the group discussion as much as is appropriate.

I don’t have the exact solution for PSL. I’m not a genie. And believe me, I’m far from perfect.

But I do know that policing culture is historically ineffective (culture’s going to go where it wants) and if the PSL board and the community it represents put more energy into nurturing than protecting, the solution would likely begin to materialize as a much clearer, and more sustainable approach to the problem.

i havent written in over 2 months. at least not here.

Since the last post, I’ve been in:

• San Francisco for WWDC with the IndyHall Labs crew
• Israel for a Birthright Israel trip
• A karaoke Winnebago driving across the US

I’ve got lots of catching up to do, but I haven’t abandoned this blog.

This post is more of a reminder to myself, than anything else, that I can write stuff down here.

As usual, it’s easy to keep up with me on Twitter

Around 4am this morning, a couple of draft posts that never were meant to see the light of day (at least not in the state they were in) found their way to published, and they (plus a couple other posts) had a bunch of spam links in the RSS.

Unfortunately, that was the result of a light hack sustained by this site.

I’ve gone through and cleaned everything up, including the removal of the spam links and the posts that weren’t meant to go live.

Sorry for the annoyance everyone.

If you follow me on twitter, you may have noticed something awry this week…I’ve been silent.

That’s because I’m on vacation, my first real unplug in 4+ years.

I had the first half of this week’s Cluetrain-a-Day series ahead of time, but now it’s Thursday, February 5th and I’m no longer ahead. Posts will resume on Monday the 9th (including some rapid-fire posts to get back on schedule) but in the mean time, I’m enjoying some fresh powder at Whistler-Blackcomb.

Hopefully this much-needed recharge will allow me to come back with fresh perspective for you to enjoy.

See everyone next week!

This post is part of a 95 post series discussing the 95 theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto as they relate to business in 2009. Read more about the series in the introduction post. And check out the rest of the series!

Thesis #14: Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

It’s really difficult to discuss “voice” when related to text and messaging. While there are different types of “voice” related to language and communication, the type that many people most lucidly process is the audible kind.

This is going to make things difficult when it comes time to turn this series into an e-book or go to print, but in the mean time we don’t have to worry about those constraints. This is the internet!

So. It’s example time.

Twine.com – What happens when you let things unwravel

Twine.com launched a beta back in October 2007. It allows it’s users to collect, share, and discover things they are interested in. Early semantic web stuff, whatever that meant then. Cool platform. Not my point.

They launched a year later with a redesign (yay beta feedback!), some solid press. Unfortunately, most of that press left users confused about what it actually did. Semantic web is a kinda heady concept that we won’t bother getting into here. That, itself, isn’t even the problem.

The real problem was that the corporate overview language was…well…just that. Corporate. It’s bad enough that the concept is heady, why would you fill your descriptive – read “marketing” – messages with language that normal people don’t use?

Twine: The Overview

This overview was descriptive…but it’s voice was mechanical. It sounded like it was written by someone who’d been immersed in Twine for a while, instead of by someone with a voice that the audience could identify with: someone trying to understand what the heck Twine is for.

The day after the launch, a Twine employee uploaded the same overview video to their personal Youtube account. OK. Not the exact same video. Here’s the caption from that video:

Our site www.twine.com needed an overview video. I came up with this as a practical joke on the team with some help from Sam. Basically, we changed the voice over and the music to make the video a little less “corporate”.

Warning: this is extreme, and has some…um…language issues.

Twine: The (Unofficial) Overview

The video didn’t change. But the voice did.

The unofficial parody voice was extreme, but it was one that somebody could identify with. The only people who could connect with the original one were the internal people at Twine, and even they seemed to prefer the parody video.

What’s really amazing is that the company embraced it. A video like this could have come from anywhere, employees or customers, and Twine could have buried it. Instead, they have a video that got 25x more viewership on Youtube compared to the corporate-speak variation.

Disclaimer: The purpose of this demonstration is to show the difference between corporate-speak, and…the other thing. It’s not to say that every company can, or even should, convert their marketing messages into Web 2.0 gangsta-speak.

This post is part of a 95 post series discussing the 95 theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto as they relate to business in 2009. Read more about the series in the introduction post. And check out the rest of the series!

Thesis #13: What’s happening to markets is also happening among employees. A metaphysical construct called “The Company” is the only thing standing between the two.

So we’ve established that every day a trend continues to pinch companies out of the equation of providing products to consumers. Consumers rely on each other more every day for things like marketing, acquisition, even support. That change of working together, flattening the heierarchy, is allowing for greater efficiency and better experiences for customers.

Interestingly, that same pinch is happening within companies. It’s a fairly common occurance for a couple of employees from the same company to jump ship, get their bearings, and regroup as a smaller collective later, especially when the type of work they do allows the flexibility of being mobile.

“The Company” as we know it is becoming more of a formality, and more very real, very successful businesses are existing without all of the structure once thought necessary to be win.

Remember Thesis #2, Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors?  Actually, remember nearly every thesis we’ve covered so far? The lessons apply to employees, too.

• Employees are human beings, not the departments they work in. Those human beings know how to do their job better than you do.
• Employees speak a real human language when they are at home and out with their friends, because they are humans not robots. The business rhetoric and buzzwords you’ve beaten into them are all a facade.
• Fear (of rejection, disapproval, or overstepping boundaries) is the most common thing keeping employees from sharing what they know is better for the business. That, and apathy.
• Employees will confide in one another before they confide in an employer.
• Blocking Email and IM doesn’t stop employees from talking to each other. You do know that, right? They’re talking, with or without you.
• Don’t put roadblocks in the way of your employees accomplishing their work unless you want them to subvert the system.
• Separating employees into departments is like separating all of the ingredients in a meal. Fragmentation does not equal control. Unity also does not necessarily equal control, but it sure does equal productivity.
• Once employees realize they can collaborate with one another to get their job done easier/faster, the more they will seek opportunities to collaborate.
• If you aren’t giving your employees what they need, they are smart enough to figure out how to get it. That might include leaving you.

Are you the company that’s in the way of your employees’ success? Do you realize the implications of that? Your employees’ success is your success.

You’re not as in control as you thought you were, and your employees knew it before you did.

Time to stop being big brother, and instead, be big mother.

Start by asking yourself, “what can I do to guide my employees towards successful experiences, besides getting out of their way.”

This post is part of a 95 post series discussing the 95 theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto as they relate to business in 2009. Read more about the series in the introduction post. And check out the rest of the series!

Thesis #12: There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.

The tone of this thesis related to transparency, which is more relevant now than ever before. For two reasons:

1. Your (that’s your company, not just you personally) every move online is being watched by somebody (apologies for getting all “big brother” for a second)
2. The watchers are almost as busy watching each other as they are watching you.

That’s the power of a networked market. For every ounce that it can work for you, it can also work against you.

This is the point where companies freak out about the internet, and understandably so. They are no longer the only source of information about themselves, and the press wire is no longer the only channel that information travels along.

You can’t stop it. Hiding from it doesn’t make it go away. So lets turn lemons into lemonade.

Growing up, my mom always told me not to lie or try to keep secrets from her. I don’t know if my mom had a “networked market” at her disposal, but “I’ll always find out”, she said. And more often than not, she did. Eventually, I learned that it was easier to just be forthcoming all the time, since she went much easier on me if I told her how I’d fucked up, rather than having to deal with admitting to lying AND cleaning up whatever I fucked up.

Companies are going to need to learn the same lesson I did from my mom, and be a part of that networked market response.

If the market talking, good or bad, they’re also talking with or without you. If your company isn’t a part of that discussion, what happens? You breed mistrust within your customers, and you scorch any loyalty you may have already built.

Two examples.

Recently, Hulu did a great job of handling a mis-step that could have easily been spit back in their face. When there was a customer backlash about removing episodes of a very popular show, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, they could have said “tough, our content partner said we had to take them down”. But instead, Hulu’s CEO openly admitted to dropping the ball and apologized, avoiding a potentially messy cleanup with their customers, and FX (the content provider).

Another recent example of this sort of open, transparent reaction was when Cork’d was hack’d. TechCrunch, notorious for being one massive megaphone for the networked market of startups and technology startup culture, and its’ rabidly opinionated fingerpointing audience began speculating. Their speculations were stopped dead in their tracks when the site’s owner, Gary Vaynerchuk, showed up in the comments of the post with a video. There was no finger pointing, no blame on anyone but himself. Gary admitted to Cork’d having fallen out of his priorities, and explained his roadmap for recovering the site. Later, he went on to post a video on his personal blog recapping the day. Gary didn’t just avoid keeping secrets, he turned the whole day into a lesson for his readers!

Again, the lesson is simple: for better or for worse, your every move is being watched. By a networked market, or my mom, you will get found out, and everybody will know.

Be a part of the networked market to know that people are talking, and use that as an opportunity to regain footing.

Be honest. Be authentic. Be transparent.

And end up looking like the hero.

This post is part of a 95 post series discussing the 95 theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto as they relate to business in 2009. Read more about the series in the introduction post. And check out the rest of the series!

Thesis #5: People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

Listen first. Introduce yourself. Interact like a human being. Repeat.

What about the time in between that cycle, or between those cycles? Another aspect of marketing is establishing yourself as a leader in your field. Every day, more and more companies are beginning to get their heads around blogging, tweeting, and other methods of online publishing as a mechanism for posting news updates about their businesses.

The missed opportunity here is to use these publishing platforms for sharing more than the robotic, formulaic contents of press releases. Progressive companies are allowing their employees to share knowledge from the inside. The more editorial control that the company removes, the better these efforts tend to be. One of the original Cluetrain concepts was trusting your employees to know more than you do about whatever they’re best at. That’s what you hired them, right?

Then let them speak, and in their voice instead of yours!

This is a scary barrier to cross. What if they say something offensive? What if they misrepresent the brand? What if?

I think one of the best examples of a company embracing their internal voices on a large scale, and having more success than any of the negative alternatives, is Zappos.com.

Tony Hsieh (pronounced “Shay”) is the proverbial “Tweeting CEO”. Beyond Tony himself being extraordinarily accessible and candid about his life and his business on Twitter, he’s gone one step further. He’s encouraged his employees to tweet, too. And not just about business stuff, but about whatever they want. Whatever they are thinking. Whatever they are doing. It’s up to them.

But Zappos didn’t stop there.

Zappos built a website that consumes all of their employees’ tweets and republishes them. A megaphone for the collective voice of Zappos employees, in real time, for anyone to read.

But Zappos didn’t stop there.

Zappos also runs a blog network within their company, with contributions from the CEO and COO, all the way through the depths of the company. These blogs share not just company news, but insights, event announcements, musings, and more. They rarely link back into their product catalog. Instead, Zappos uses these opportunities to provide value, and establish natual dialogue between their customers and their employees.

Why? Because people are interested in other people. We recognize the human voice in others, and identify with them. Companies are not human, so we humans do not identify with their voice. But if the voices within the company, the human voices, are allowed to shine, customers can once again identify with “the company”.

Rather than have an ivory tower with now windows or doors, Zappos purposely put not just one human face on their company, but hundreds (435 at the date of writing this). What are the odds of calling in an order or customer service request to Zappos and getting a twittering CSR? Reasonably high. And that’s the Zappos way. Tony explains that Zappos culture, the collective voice of Zappos, is Zappos brand.

The result is what we’re really interested in, right? Well how’s this for results.

Right before the new year, Zappos announced that they had achieved $1 Billion in annual revenue a full 2 years ahead of their anticipated goal, and attribute every bit of success to their customer inteaction and extrodinarily high value placed on corporate culture. From Tony:

Our focus continues to be on building our brand and our culture around providing the very best customer service and experience. Our hope is that 10 years from now, people won’t even realize that we started out selling shoes online. (emphasis added).

Zappos is close to that hopeful goal already. More and more people know that Zappos sells shoes, but they’re never talking about how great the shoes are; they’re talking about how great the service experience is. Need more evidence? Take a look at this tweet from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

This post is part of a 95 post series discussing the 95 theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto as they relate to business in 2009. Read more about the series in the introduction post. And check out the rest of the series!

Thesis #2: Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

On Christmas Eve of 2008, I had a phenomenal dinner with some friends visiting from NYC, UX Designer Whitney Hess and Flex/Flash developer Orian Marx. During that dinner I took took the opportunity to pick Whitney’s brain on what some of the pieces of her client projects look like. One of the core techniques she utilizes heavily is taking user and stakeholder interviews and molding them into user types, often called personas. What’s great about the way she goes about it is she gives those personas names, faces (literally, pictures!), and back stories. This gives the entire team a point of reference for decision making, and instead of it being against abstract cases and market verticals, they get to refer to people. Additionally, when Whitney makes recommendations, it turns her into the communicator (which is really a larger part of her job than being a “designer”, per se) speaking on behalf of the “users”, rather than just expounding her opinion.

Why is this important (and in my opinion, extremely effective)? Because market verticals don’t use your product or service. Human beings do. And those human beings don’t have singular interests or backgrounds, they have complex sets of interests, back stories, turn-ons and turnoffs, etc.

When putting together a marketing plan, don’t base it on abstract target groups and demographic sectors. Demographic sectors lead to speculation. Base it on real people. Real people lead to real answers, which lead to real results.

via Mike Galpert’s tumblr.