Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo, in a recent interview, said that she believes Yahoo needs to offer its users more video. And, of course, providers such as ooVoo and Skype are helping us to participate in real-time interactive video conversations more and more. Not to mention YouTube, Vimeo, et al.

The experts are saying that we will be communicating a lot more one to one, one to many, and many to many visually. So instead of just reading (text messages) or listening (teleconferences), we will be watching. I am not all that happy about this. For one thing, I will be forced to continually own up to what I really look and sound like. Ouch. And, I can no longer do conference calls in my pajamas.

Seriously, a whole new world of opportunity is emerging around our increasing ability to see one other. Some consumer brands are already using the two-way video conversations to conduct market research with their target consumer. Think, they can talk with young people at a party who will actually show them how they are mixing their beverage products.

On a personal level, all this video communications takes personal branding and personal presence to a new level. I ran across a saying years ago that I often quote in my speeches (although I cannot find the author): “you are judged by the quality of your speaking, your writing, and your ideas, and in that order.” Note: this quote was from pre-internet days, maybe even pre-television. Now, with all of us soon expected to communicate via video, the “speaking” takes on more importance than ever. Is your personal brand ready?

Ever do this?  Ever have this happen to you?  I have been on both sides of this scenario.  You can always tell when someone did not expect you to answer.  They stumble.  They fumble.  I know I do.

Now we have Facebook, blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn and much more to help us connect with people without talking to them.  According to Microsoft’s Social Media book for small businesses,  Twitter grew by more than 600% in 2009, while Facebook grew by 210% and LinkedIn by 85%.  We are told that these social media behemoths draw their power from creating communities, stimulating dialogue, conversations and sharing.  Well, sometimes they do.  Some big brands have figured out how to make this work.

Can the rest of us really maintain a meaningful dialogue with dozens, hundreds, thousands of friends, followers and fans?  Social media for most of us is monologue.  More like a personal infomercial than a personal conversation.  And, online socializing removes our ability to take the measure of a person by their tone, their demeanor.  Yes, YouTube is visual but it is more like a performance than an interaction with the audience.

Let me stop here and say that I love social media.  I encourage my clients to embrace it, to make it work for their goals.  Social media enables us to reach a lot more people.  To give voice to our passions and to find people who share them.  Through social media, I have found brilliant people I would never have found, reconnected with people I somehow lost.  

But social media also enables us to be more unsociable than ever.   We can stay in front of our computers, feel connected, without ever really engaging with anyone.   We can click from site to site, turning e-relationships on and off.   Unsociable?  Heck , we can be anti-social.  The other day I asked a website developer if I could hire him to speak with me over the phone to go through some changes to a template of his I had purchased.  He informed me that he would do it but only online.  No dialogue.  OK.  I guess.

I think social media is in its glorious infancy.  I am looking forward to participating in its growth.

For 2009, locavore and frenemy  were two of the non-techie words among the almost 100 new words added to Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.  A locavore is a person who is committed to eating locally grown foods.  A frenemy is a person who pretends to be a friend but is actually an enemy.

Way back in the year 2000, the word “dot.com” was a new word added to the dictionary.  The definiton was a company that was web-based.  It recalls those days when we all knew people who were leaving their jobs at regular companies to go to work for dot.coms.   Very cool and meant lots of money to follow.  Do we still refer to any companies as dot.coms?  

Technology is integrated into all businesses today – into both the business model and the business culture.   Technology is not a department or a capability but is inherent in work.  You cannot carve it out.

And if the futurists are right,  technology will increasingly become more integrated into people.  Technology will allow us to become more than human.  When can I download the upgrade?

Today, change is relentless – the future is hurtling toward us – it is good to know the skills that will allow us to grab it.

When I headed a global Business Transformation consulting practice (way back in the 90′s), change management was one of our core competencies.  Transforming an organization takes people who know how to change effectively. 

As part of our research on change in organizations, we surveyed more than 100,000 people and asked the question, “would you be willing to change in order to help your organization?’  The response was almost 90% positive.  People were indeed willing to change.  However, in trying to effect major change as consultants, we discovered that people needed to know more about  ”from what….to what?”  

They needed specifics so that they could internalize or personalize what changes they needed to make.  They needed to know the starting point and how it differed from the desired destination.  So they could take ownership of getting there.

Unfortunately, the organizations often were not very helpful in answering this question.  Examples of commons answers included “be more open to change”,” be more adaptable”, and the phrase that deserves to be in the Cliche Hall of Fame, “think outside the box”. 

People differ significantly when it comes to what they need in order to change and in order to lead others to change.  But everyone needs at least some idea of  ”from what…to what.”  One good way to express the answer is to express it in terms of new skills.  

George Washington University, through its  Institute for Knowledge and Innovation, has released the results of a study they conducted on the most valuable future skills.  We have been told for 30 years now that the world is changing faster than ever.  That our skills become outdated faster than you can say “powerpoint”.  The list of  skills identified by GWU makes for a nice tool you can use  to ask yourself how you and your organization compare to the study’s findings.

I found  the exercise below many years ago and often use it in team building sessions to help teams better understand each other as individuals. 

Try it yourself before you abandon your resolutions – it may change how you approach the New Year.

What I need right now

1. Choose (mark) 5 things from the list below that you need more of.   Add your own things if they are not on the list.  But, select no more than 5.
2. Put the 5 choices in order of importance.
3. Whom should you share your five things with? 

 I need more……

 Source: Ice-breakers and Heart-warmers, by Steve Sheely

Whether it is your 1st or 21st, the year does not matter.  What matters is that you take the opportunity to celebrate your anniversary by emailing your clients and thanking them.  And share information with them that is important to them – that they can use. 

The anniversary communication will remind them (indirectly) of why they do business with you and are happy to continue to do so. Or, if they are former clients, they are reminded of why they should do business with you again. 

What if you don’t have clients?  Take the opportunity to thank the person who hired you or the people who make you successful….your co-workers, your boss, even HR!.  They will be surprised and impressed and appreciative.

It’s your anniversary but be sure it is about them.

This flies in the face of logic.  Isn’t pop music supposed to be dominated by the young and the hot?  Madonna is 50+.  She had no hit records in 2008.   She released an album, which finished in 50th place.  Her music downloads were 14th.  So, did her album and downloads just cost more?  No.  What put her at the top was her 2008 tour.

Whether you are a fan or not, Madonna offers us a great example of a powerful personal brand.    She knows her audience.   She doesn’t worry about appealing to everyone.  She focuses on delivering what her fans want. Again and again.  And they reward her with exceptional loyalty.  Which obviously translates into exceptional income.

It does not escape notice that baby boomers are 78 million strong and any rock star they embrace has a natural advantage in terms of sheer fan numbers.  As noted above, Bob Jovi was #2.   Bruce Springsteen was #3.  You have to go all the way down to #9, the Jonas Brothers, to find a young person.  The brothers earned 25% of what Madonna hauled in. 

My favorite on the list?  Neil Diamond.  He came in at #7.  Did I mention he is 68 years old?  The old man rang up $82 million.

OK, so old rock stars have a fan advantage.  But there are plenty of famous baby boomer stars that never make the top 10 moneymaker list.  Their identities are not as clear.  Their energy and commitment to give their fans what they want is not as solid.  In short, their brands are not as strong.  

We can all learn from these graying giants who may not be topping the hit singles charts, but are rocking the money charts.

image from absolutemadonna.com

We all know about the ability of our emotions to affect us physically.  Obvious examples: when human beings are sad, water might just pour from their eyes.  For some of us, when we feel embarrassed, our faces turn bright red.   Or, when we are nervous, some of us go into power sweating.   Our bodies seem determined to blatantly betray us! 

I used to be knee-knocking nervous when I had to speak in public.  I know there are many of you who have not experienced this and you think “knee-knocking” is just a metaphor.  I assure you – it really happens to people.   I have actually had my knees knock, my voice shake, my face turn red, and my palms sweat all in the same presentation.  Is there an award for this?  

 Thankfully, with practice, we all can get better at public speaking and get some control over these bodies that have minds of their own. 

There are other physical things which we choose to do that can diminish the power of our personal presence or brand.  Like sitting in a meeting and bouncing your leg up and down. Might as well say, “We need to get on with this, I have more important things to do.” 

Or, what about those people who carry on a side conversation with another person while someone is speaking to the group as a whole.  Might as well say, “What you are saying to the group is not as important as what I am saying to my buddy.” 

But the most common thing we do that discounts our presence,  is interrrupt others when they are speaking with us.   Interrupters are saying “I have something more important to say than you do.” or “I have heard enough from you.”    Interrupting is so common that when I am with someone who never interrrupts me, I never fail to notice it and am impressed by it.  It makes me want to be sure I am earning their attention and that I am adding value. 

And guess what?  People who are at the top of organizations interrupt far less often than people lower in the organization. It’s not that people at the top are more fascinated with us, they just understand the power of completely focusing their attention on you.  Try it.  It is one of the most powerful things you can do to increase your personal brand’s influence.

Pre-recession, there were articles, entire books, seminars and webinars devoted to how to change the workplace culture in order to make it more  Gen-Y or Millennial-friendly.  I even did a seminar once for a client on how to market to Millennials.  It was a hot topic.  Definitely, hard times have diminished the Millennial-centric workplace as a theme in pop-business culture. 

However, I remember that one of the truths that was being bandied about regarding Gen-Y’s or Millennials was that they flourished in a team environment, in fact, they demanded it.  This was particularly interesting to me since I had done my thesis on the team player vs. the individual performer in U.S. companies.  This was back in 1991 when we were in the throes of Six Sigma and TQM and were captivated by Japanese business culture.  “Team” was the organizational rage, particularly in the manufacturing industry.   Even though I had taught Six Sigma and was certified in TQM, I was skeptical about the cultural fit to American business society.

Nowadays we don’t do much manufacturing in the U.S. anymore but we hold on tenaciously to the concept of team as foundational to a successful business culture.  Senior teams, project teams, management teams, design teams, and so on.  In working with Fortune 500 clients in multiple industries over the past 15 years, I know that “teamwork” is one of those corporate-speak words like “vision” or “innovation” – it takes on very different meanings from company to company, even companies within the same industry. 

I once worked as a consultant to two different banks – both big players.  At one bank, the culture was  overtly competitive and confrontational – people clearly climbing over dead bodies so to speak, on their way to the top.  At the other bank, there was plenty of competition but being overtly competitive was considered bad form.  Indeed, the individual who could advance an agenda without ever creating any noticeable conflict of any kind was much admired.  Both banks said that “teamwork” was a core value.  But, neither of these banks would have described their culture nor their teamwork the way I described it – not for the record anyway.

So, what is my point?  Three points really.  One, being branded as a person who is not a team player is rarely career-postitive.   Two, the real rules of teamwork at any company are unwritten – no one will spell them out for you.   What you think team means and what team really means may not be related.  Three, watch how the most successful people in your organization go about managing their relationships – that is how to make teamwork work for you.

 

We all are aware of the power of scarcity.  Not long ago, the Nintendo Wii was scarce around the  holidays and people went crazy trying to find one.  Never mind that the toy companies do this to us every holiday season – we still allow them to drive us to desperate measures with scarcity. 

A client of mine in the restaurant business told me that when it comes to a buffet line, the restaurant should keep the pans full (not let the amount of food diminish too much) or the patrons will think the food is scarce and will rush to fill up their plates with it, even if they don’t really want it.  I knew there was more than one reason why I shy away from buffets.

So scarcity can change our behavior dramatically.  What about the opposite?  What about when we have way more of something than we can deal with?  Like too many choices.  Think about paint colors – you can go insane trying to find the perfect color from among of hundreds of shades of yellow.  If we can afford it, we hire an expert (a decorator) to make the selection for us.  Even then, we are never sure we got the best yellow – after all, there were so many good ones.

Today, you can lose your mind trying to get your mind around the information available to you over the internet on any given topic.  Or, you can exhaust yourself trying to sort out the implications of business analytics available to you to run your business.  Technology has made it possible to delve so deeply and widely into the information available regarding any decision in front of us, that we become stymied about the best way forward.  We get stuck in neutral.  Enter the decorator, I mean the expert.

Information is easy to come by.  The internet is making it easier for people to present themselves as experts because with a little effort, they can show up with a lot of information.  But real experts advance the information – they make it relevant to your situation, they reach conclusions and recommend a course of action that you know is right.  Real experts sparkle with an aura of authenticity that comes from having done something remarkable with information. 

If you want your customers to love you more than they love the competition, know things they cannot easily find for themselves.   Data is easy.   Experience and information that includes implications, not so much.