Whether you like it or not, agree or not or just consider it unfair, what you say/write/tweet and pin is who you are to the world.

Based on what comes out of his mouth, Mel Gibson is a not only a bigot/raciest/anti-Semite, but a thoroughly rotten human being.  

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo claimed there are no qualified women for his Board, but it didn’t take much for outside experts to identify 25 women who are more than qualified. Of course, Costolo has a lot of company in that mindset.

In a blog post, AdRants Steve Hall self-proclaimed that for “salaciously selfish, purely prurient, Neanderthal-ish reasons” he wanted to work at ad firm Young & Laramore, because of the hot staffers; he also identified several other women he considered hot, then informed everyone via Twitter that he didn’t mean to be insulting and was, in fact, a “nice guy.”

Celery founder Peter Shih of wrote a post citing everything he thinks is wrong with San Francisco that was a cornucopia of “misogyny, homophobia and a general disregard for socioeconomic inequality” that, in the subsequent storm, he tried to pass it off as “humorous satire.”

The thing that all these have in common is that the protagonists were all innocent.

None of them meant anything bad, and some, like Gibson, even denied that they actually believed what they ranted.

They blamed booze, misguided humor, lack of context, ignorance, third-party misunderstanding and a myriad of other reasons why their words shouldn’t define them.

But your words reflect your thoughts and, thanks to the Internet, they will be around forever.

Flickr image credit: Steven Cateris

Matt Mullenweg, founder/CEO of Automattic and creator of WordPress, runs a company valued at a billion dollars with a 190 employees who mostly work from home.

While he doesn’t believe there is one silver bullet that creates great culture, he does have an overarching belief that is easy for any boss with the correctly corresponding MAP to appropriate.

“It’s hard to reduce it down to one thing, but I think regardless of what tools you use to communicate if you give people autonomy to execute on something meaningful, and bias the environment to moving quickly, amazing things can happen.”

Unless you live on a different planet or alternative reality you will have heard that Twitter went public. Biz Stone is Twitter’s co-founder and says his most important lessons came from places he failed.

Such as Xanga…

“The lesson I learned was that company culture at the beginning is incredibly important. You have to tend to it…almost as much as you tend to your product.”

And then there’s Google.

“Google had its list ordered: Technology. People. I think the right order is: People. Technology. You have to think about people first and technology second.”

People. Culture.

Or you can look at it this way, people = culture.

Culture isn’t reality.

There can be no overall reality, because each person’s reality reflects back the sum total of their experiences from cradle to present.

The result is that culture needs a firm, but gentle, hand on the rudder and constant, consistent, intelligent course correction.

The most brilliant technology now or in the future can’t do that.

As long as there’s a human race perceptions between individuals will not be uniform.

Nope, not even the much-vaunted hyper-connectivity can come close to creating a true hive mind.

And I’m even willing to bet that if humans are supplanted by robots, as discussed here on Halloween, uniformity still won’t happen.

Flickr image credit: Josh Gee Photography

What’s the holy grail of marketing in these days of multiple media channels?

Viral.

No matter the medium, every marketer’s dream is to have everyone talking/sharing/tweeting/liking whatever they did.

Viral is four million views in four days.

That’s what happened to a startup that applied a proven subscription model to a very old product and made one of the most hilarious, irreverent videos ever.

How great was the effect?

“What [revenue] took me a month, I now do in an hour,” said Hello Flo founder Naama Bloom.

Here’s the video; what do you think?

(I recently wrote posts here, here and here, with links to more information on creating something viral.)

YouTube credit: Hello Flo

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Do you use jargon or plain English when you are discussing stuff with your team or presenting to investors?

Every industry has its own jargon, AKA, terms and language, that people tend to use without thinking.

Any given time period has its own catchphrases and clichés—also used without thinking.

The problem is the former can make a discussion confusing, if not downright inscrutable, to some listeners, while the latter can render your words meaningless—or both.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but when discussing words an example often provides the same clarity.

And far be it for me to spend my time creating one when a perfect example has already been done.

Read it, heed it and take your own precautions to avoid doing it.

Hat tip to KG Charles-Harris for sending the article to me.

Image credit: HikingArtist

The ‘me first’ attitude so prevalent today makes everyday living anywhere ever more difficult.

That ‘me first’ is especially obvious when poop isn’t scooped.

“In the worldwide battle to get dog owners to clean up after their pets, enter Brunete, a middle-class suburb of Madrid fed up with dirty parks and sidewalks.”

Brunette’s mayor wanted a more creative solution that didn’t rely on substantial fines, because in tough economic times that fine could be the difference between eating and going hungry.

With the creative help of McCann Erickson, Brunete’s mayor tried a totally new approach to the poop—along the lines of ‘return to sender’.

Instead, this town engaged a small army of volunteers to bag it, box it and send it back to its owners. (…) Delivering 147 boxes of the real stuff seems to have produced a far more lasting effect in this town of about 10,000 residents. The mayor guesses a 70 percent improvement even now, several months after the two-week campaign.

The campaign wasn’t done as a surprise;

At first, Ricardo Rovira, who was part of the design team at the agency, worried that the mayor would not have the courage to go ahead with its direct marketing idea. But he did. McCann also made an amusing public awareness video, produced by Juan José Ocio, largely using actors. It was shown around town before concerts and community meetings.

According to Rovira, the campaign also netted McCann some real clients with serious money to spend.

This has been a fun little doing well by doing good story on a summer Wednesday that, hopefully, will inspire you/your company to DIY.

YouTube credit: McCann Worldgroup Spain

When Microsoft announced its much ballyhooed new strategy and resulting management changes I commented that you can’t change culture, especially an intentionally siloed culture, by edict.

I didn’t go into what seemed to me a strategy with a serious lack of solid content; these days we all know that not only is content king, but the it’s source of authenticity.

I assumed that it was my unwillingness (boredom) to read the analysis offered by media, let alone Steve Ballmer’s actual long-winded statement to the Microsofties, that made me miss it.

As has been said over and over by experts, “culture eats strategy for lunch” (breakfast, in come cases), and while clear communications is as great a focus for me as culture, I just couldn’t make myself read it.

Fortunately, Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership has more patience and he offered some great analysis and comments, which are reposted below with his kind permission.

Microsoft and the Strategy of Everything

On July 13, 2013, Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer sent a lumbering, poorly edited, 2600 word email to Microsoft employees, announcing the company’s new strategy. As awful as the memo was, the strategy is worse.

When I read some of the news accounts, I felt like I was experiencing an updated version of Akira Kurosawa’s classic, Rashomon. In that film, people who participate in the same event each describe it differently. In this case, news organizations that got the same information each describe Microsoft’s new strategy differently.

The New York Times wrote about how “Microsoft Overhauls, the Apple Way.” The Wall Street Journal looked at the same announcement and said that “Microsoft Shake-Up Aims to Speed Products.” And the Mercury News told us that “Microsoft unveils major overhaul in effort to focus on mobile.”

Those very different reports sent me to the Microsoft site and the text of Steve Ballmer’s email. There, he tells us that “We are rallying behind a single strategy as one company.” Sounds good. And what might that single strategy be? Here goes.

“Going forward, our strategy will focus on creating a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most.”

Try reading that without taking a breath or tripping over tangled syntax. Doesn’t exactly have the ring of “A PC on every desk and in every home” does it?

As I interpret it, Microsoft will make products and provide services which they will sell to individuals and businesses in the US and other countries. Egad! Is there anything Microsoft has chosen not to do?

There’s no focus at all. Being everything to everyone is usually a pretty sure way not to be much of anything to anybody.

And there’s nothing to fire up the passions that drive engagement. Would you really leap out of bed in the morning all charged up to “focus on creating a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses?”

This is not a strategy to build long term, sustainable competitive advantage. It is a strategy for rotting slowly from the inside out.

Thanks, Wally.

Flickr image credit: Masaru Kamikura

Punctuation changes everything.

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

A few days ago I was asked if it was OK to warn a startup team by email that it was doubtful funding would happen before the money ran out.

My response was ‘absolutely not!’

The final word from a variety of experts is that it is not OK to fire, lay-off, break up, ask for a divorce, ground kids or any similar action by email, text or even by phone.

These are all subjects that must be done face-to-face for a variety of reasons, but all falling under one of the falling categories,

• Respect
• Trust
• Authenticity
• Transparency
• Fairness

The list goes on, but I’m sure you get it.

That said, I thought I’d repost a slightly edited how-to for dealing with bad news that is as applicable today as it was when hard-copy memos, wires, carrier pigeons and smoke signals were the normal modes of communication.

Bosses know when they’re in trouble (duh), but they still seem to think that their people don’t know the facts (double duh).

Too many bosses, from startups through Fortune 100 and everything in-between, clamp down, say nothing, run scared, freeze, bluster, or some combination thereof and do it by email and/or text.

The result is management by rumor, which once started never ends.

The way to deal with bad news is directly, openly and honestly.

Even when the subject is no funding or lay-offs this axiom applies; in fact, it’s the only approach that gives your company or your reputation a chance of emerging intact.

Here are six basics to keep uppermost in your mind—whether they are comfortable or not.

1. Bad news must be communicated in person—just like good news.
2. Employees aren’t dumb—they know something bad is happening—and if they’re not explicitly told what it is, rumors will make any difficulty a catastrophe and a catastrophe a death knell.
3. Management must be explicit about the ultimate potential consequences. In a situation that’s unfolding, such as a funding or economic crisis, when no one knows the ultimate outcome or can predict when it will change, frequent updates are effective.
4. Everyone hates uncertainty, which is all you may have to offer, so analyzing and then explaining the worst case outcome as well as what you’re doing to counter it and how your people can contribute goes a long way to stabilizing the team and gaining their buy-in to your plans.
5. Successful plans are dependent on how well they are communicated, which is what determines employee buy-in; if you choose the delusional approach of minimizing the situation then you should expect minimal results and maximum disruption.
6. Share the outcome of your thinking, whatever it is—layoffs, plant closures, project cancellations, etc. If you don’t trust your people with the information your problems are far more serious than you realize.

Any solution to a crisis must be seen as fair, reasonable, and businesslike. If management’s reaction is illogical, petty, slipshod, unrealistic, draconian or any combination of these, then it’s likely employees will conclude the ship is about to sink and leap off.

People understand that difficult situations demand difficult remedies, and they appreciate that management must at times step up to harsh challenges. But if solutions are irrationally or whimsically applied, they become a demoralizing factor, increasing the difficulties that people encounter in trying to do their jobs.

Finally, you should always attempt to find a positive note to leave with employees. Everyone already knows that things are bad; it’s your job to find a potentially favorable course of action.

Just remember, you hired your people for their brains, so don’t expect them to suddenly go dumb. Employees easily spot propaganda masquerading as a solution.

Predicting an impossibly favorable outcome not only demeans your reputation, but also could affect your future entrepreneurial efforts.

Image credit: HikingArtist

When you want to create change, whether of culture, process or something else, there are seven steps you need to follow whether you are CEO or a first line supervisor,

1. Know who you are: This step is strictly between you and yourself, so you need to be brutally frank as to your attitudes, motivation, what’s important, what’s OK to do, etc., if you want to create authentic change.
2. Define your goals: Whatever change you want to effect needs to be well-defined and make sense to those affected.
3. Know what you have: Honestly assess (warts and all) whatever it is you want to change.
4. Be aware of the cost of change: Every/any action has a price and change is no different, so it is important to be sure the improvement/ROI is worth the cost.
5. Don’t assume: The human race functions to a great extent on various sets of unconscious assumptions. In the workplace people tend to assume that people with similar educations, experience levels, positions, etc., have similar mindsets, attitudes and philosophies. Predicating acceptance of change on the assumption of deep, unproven commonality is a recipe for disaster.
6. Don’t overwhelm the troops: Whatever the target and goal of the change recognize that you can’t just come in, make an announcement, and expect people to buy into the vision. Present it in small bite-size pieces and such a way that people feel they have input in the process, which creates a feeling of ownership.
7. Communicate and sell—don’t order and tell: No matter how positive the goal of the change you can’t just walk in on Monday and announce the new whatever and expect people to cooperate for understandable three reasons.
   1. It’s unlikely that anybody will believe you (talk’s cheap);
   2. if you’re new it’s unlikely they’ll trust you (no track record with them);
   3. whether you’re proposing a radical change or just tweaking something, generally speaking, people hate change and need a compelling reason to get on the bandwagon.

In the final analysis what you do carries far more weight than anything you say, so be sure you have the courage to walk your talk.

Flickr image credit: Jannes Pockele

Bosses’ tasks may differ depending on their position, level, industry, etc., but one thing is identical for all of them—communicating.

Here is my small effort to clearly explain exactly what is required of every boss at every level in every company and at all times.

• Your goal is to provide your people with all the information needed to understand how to perform their work as correctly, completely, simply, and efficiently as possible.

• You do this by providing clear, concise, and complete communications at all times. This is about more than talking clearly, it’s about providing all the background necessary for people in the company to understand why they are doing their jobs, as well as what jobs they are to do; it rarely involves telling them how to do their jobs.

You will know you are doing it correctly because productivity will improve, as will innovation; your company will be more successful, you will be a more effective manager, have less turnover and better reviews.

And as an added bonus everybody will be happier.

Flickr image credit: Wesley Fryer