communication

Cannes short film award winner, on the power of words: http://tinyurl.com/5t4dr8 .  Worth a viewing.

I don’t know how often I’ll be able to post, so let me at least tell you where I am. We’ve boarded the QM 2 through special priority boarding. Picture a cross between Disney, The Ritz, and and a Mediterranean resort. It’s Fred Astair meets Evelyn Waugh.

There are 2800 passengers, and a 1:2 crew ratio, one of them for every two of us. The concierge escorted us to our room, and our butler has been informed of our presence. There are only two suites like this at the aft of the ship, and we’re on the starboard side.

We’re sipping Moet, provided compliments of the Commodore, with some appropriate strawberries. Our travel agent has sent two bottles of wine. The room is stocked with fruit and drinks. There are three bathrooms, including two adjoining the master bedroom, with a jacuzzi.

I’ll try to report more, but we’re trying to absorb all this. Oh, yes: There is a unique stopper provided to keep the Moet fresh in case we don’t finish it immediately. I’m going to go work on that right now.

(Click on images to enlarge)

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Post from: Contrarian Consulting

With web guru Chad Barr’s help, I’m going to attempt to record our Atlantic Crossing in print, by photo, and with video. And I’m going to attempt to do that using a minimum of my time, but also trying to provide a real flavor of the experience. So, photos and video should be accompanying this.

We are at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park,which sits almost alongside the Statue of Liberty. We’ll spend the evening here, then a car will pick us up for the trip to the Brooklyn Piers for embarkation on the Queen Mary 2 tomorrow.

(Click on arrow to play video)

(Click on images to enlarge)

Woman I found in my room:

Statue of Liberty:

Battery Park:

Staten Island Ferry:

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Post from: Contrarian Consulting

(The Dog Star is a symbol of power, will, and steadfastness of purpose, and exemplifies the One who has succeeded in bridging the lower and higher consciousness. – Astrological Definition)

On the mornings when we get into the truck to go for coffee, Koufax makes it a point to run down the slope to the pond and chase all the ducks which have gathered to be fed. He does this religiously.

Koufax has never, to my knowledge, caught a duck, nor does he seem to try. He simply lopes along the declivity, watching between 50 and 100 ducks take to the air in a blizzard of feathers.

The dog appears to be smiling.

He never tires of this nor, evidently, do the ducks, because they return as soon as Koufax is safely in the truck. Sometimes they land again before he’s even in the truck. And they do the same thing the following morning.

This is a comfortable ritual for all of us. I then feed the ducks and the dogs and I drive off. By the time we’re back, the ducks have finished breakfast. If they’re lounging on the grass, Koufax will again run down, tail and head up, far more interested in the relationship than in a repast.

We all need to create positive habits. The ducks know that they get a free meal, especially important in the winter, by putting up with the dog for a few minutes. (Buddy Beagle engenders no such fear or flight, but the ducks know he’s never around without the German Shepherd.) Koufax looks forward to making these creatures fly and creating a great racket and flurry of feathers.

And I look forward to my inclusion in the fun.

What are you doing to create constancy of enjoyment and a regimen of reward for yourself? I’ve found that dogs are quite good at it, and I’m getting better and better.

And I find that Koufax, Buddy, and I are all looking up at the sky at the same time.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Post from: Contrarian Consulting

On Saturday, we created a mobile resource guide for those affected by Gustav, as many in the path of the storm would not have internet access.  As people begin returning home and begin the process of rebuilding after nearly $8billion in damage, we hope this mobile resource guide will aid the Hurricane Gustav relief efforts. 

There are three versions of the Gustav Mobile Resource Guide available:

• For iPhone
• For Mobile (including the Nokia N95 and BlackBerry)
• For Your Blog (just click "Get Widget" at the bottom of the widget on this page)

The guide offers quick access to...

News - Minute-by-minute updates from government agencies and citizen journalists.

Info - Quick references for how to help.

People and Shelters - Searchable self-reported listings of shelters, resources, aid providers, and evacuees.

Raise awareness about the relief efforts by adding this guide to your blog sidebar. Stay connected to the latest info by bookmarking it in your iPhone or other mobile device.

Mobile version

Widget version

I’m surprised this news bite I happened to catch on local TV recently didn’t get picked up more. Recently, a lady called our local TV station, to say that a company whom she purchased from, shipped her order with shredded checks used as cushioning for the product.

That on its own is absolutely not OK. To make matters worse, the shredder didn’t even do that good a job - parts of some checks were still intact. Adding insult to injury, the shredder used was one of those old style strip shredders what were about 1/4 inch wide that even a child could easily piece back together.

According to the reporter, they called the company and the owners said they’ve been “using it for years“, that”this is the first time anybody noticed” and “they’ll stop using it now“.

I shudder to think how many uninterested businesses handle my personal information that way. Just because they have been using it for years and nobody noticed doesn’t make it right. The report did not say if they used their own customers’ checks or worse yet, got those from other businesses. Either way, this is outrageous!

In this advanced, technically inclined world of ours today, businesses like to talk about encryption, securing their web site, protecting customer data, tools and methods to keep hackers at bay and restricting access to customer data. These are all important. I am not discounting that. But all this focus on protecting electronic information is not going to help you much when your paper system is flawed.

Protect your customer data, whether it is on paper, verbal or electronic. It is the law. But really, what should be more important than that - you owe it to your customers.

P.S.: You might want to check out “Protecting Personal Information - A Guide for Business” published by the FTC.

P.P.S.: Upgrade your hardware. 80’s style paper shredders are not good enough. Go for cross cuts or confetti cuts at least. The smaller it can shred the better.

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You’re at a networking event and someone inevitably asks you….”What do you do for a living?” What do you say?

If you’re like most people you have the generic answer, “I’m in the mortgage business” or “I’m an account executive” or ” I own a small business” and you hand them a business card and then you’re either off to the next person or you’re stuck in a conversation with someone that you have no idea if they have a potential want or need for you and your services.

We have been programmed to answer with either our title or our industry. These types of answers offer little or no marketing value. I don’t think that most people comprehend that these moments are actually the first part of the ‘marketing’ process. Let’s flash back to our definition of marketing- “Getting someone with a need to know like and trust us”. By simply answering with a title or industry we’ve missed a very valuable opportunity to actually qualify them to see if they may have a need.

We at Sticky Marketing Systems call it the “Talking Logo”. A talking logo is a carefully crafted reply to the question, “what do you do for a living?”. Your Talking Logo is created in two distinct parts. Part 1 addresses your target market, and Part 2 zeros in on a problem, frustration, or want that market has.

You’ll know you have an effective Talking Logo when you tell someone what you do and they respond “Really, how do you do that?”

For example if someone was to ask me what I do for a living, I could respond ” I teach small business owners and service professionals how to get all the clients they want.”

8 out of 10 times someone will ask, “How do you do that?

I answer them, “I use a simple 7 step process that is endorsed by Harvard Business school and Forbes Business Review, to create and install a marketing system .”

A Talking Logo is a short statement (or question) that quickly communicates your firm’s position and forces the listener to want to know more.

Here’s the formula to create your own: action verb (I teach, I show, I help), target market (business owners, plumbers, teachers, home owners), how to xxxx (solve a problem or meet a need).

Once you get clarity and comfortable saying your Talking Logo you can even take it on step further by actually getting the suspect to acknowledge the pain point (hot button) during the conversation.

For example some times I will answer their question of “what do you do for living”, with a question, like this: “You know how some small business owners struggle to get all the clients they want?” [wait for them to acknowledge "yes"] “Well I teach them a system to get all the clients they want”.

You will be amazed at how many people say things like “you know my sister is like that….” or “that sounds like my accountant…”

The formula would be: “You know how some Target Market (business owners, plumbers, teachers, home owners) struggle to xxxx(problem or need), I action verb (show, teach, help) to (solve that problem or meet need).

So go ahead and create your Talking Logo today!!

Here is a tip sheet that goes out monthly to members of SAC® which I thought I’d share with a more general audience. You can receive these regularly by joining SAC (www.consultingsociety.com).

The Society for Advancement of Consulting®

Weiss Advice

Monthly tips to improve the business and practice
of members of the
Society for Advancement of Consulting
Issue #60: September 2008

These are signs and comments of non-buyers:

• My boss will rubber stamp whatever I recommend.
• I put it in the budget, and now we have to wait for approval.
• The other partners have asked me to find the right help for us.
• I’m the one tasked to take it to the committee.
• We’re sharing the budget, but I have the priority.
• Can you provide me with a discussion document?
• Can you send me materials for distribution?
• Please provide some references before we begin discussions.
• What is your fee structure?
• I’ve been tasked to lead this initiative.
• I should be able to get back to you once we’ve discussed this.
• Do you want your parking validated?

Your response should be consistent:

“As you can imagine, I have an ethical obligation to meet with the person actually deciding on the investment and who has fiduciary responsibility for the project. Nor is it fair to have you serve as my marketing person.”

“Who is the key decision maker who can approve this, and would you prefer that I go alone or would you like to accompany me?”

Those simple phrases, which so many people are afraid to utter, will save you years of time in both gaining access to a buyer and in eliminating prospects who have no intention of doing business with you to your benefit.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Post from: Contrarian Consulting

For the last three years I have been quite intrigued by virtual worlds and all the various capabilities we group under this term.  I believe they are ushering a new paradigm for user interfaces, as well as a whole round of innovative, more human-oriented, intuitive applications.

While many are excited by these possibilities, others remain skeptical.  Virtual worlds continue to be most popular in video games and massively multiplayer online environments.  Despite our high expectations, the number of virtual world applications in serious areas like education, business, and health care remains small.  Some think that this is just one more example of the kind of hype that the IT industry comes up with from time to time.

At this early stage, both fans and skeptics are right.  The promise is there, but it remains to be realized.  I, most definitely, remain positive.  Let me attempt to explain why. 

To begin with, what do we mean by serious virtual world applications?  While there will undoubtedly be many different such applications, I’d like to focus my comment on three specific categories.

Visual, Interactive Places   

In its simplest form, a virtual world can be viewed as a highly visual, interactive application or website.  We are taking the visualization technologies first introduced a few decades ago in supercomputing visualization, and later made popular by video games and applying them to many new kinds of applications in a variety of fields like education, business and health care.

For example, you might want to visit an online museum.  Pretty much all major museums have very good websites, with lots of information including pictures.  But, a virtual world representation of the museum would be far more visual and interactive.  It should let you actually walk around the virtual museum, see all the works arranged the way they are in the real or physical museum, or in whatever order a curator might choose to organize them.  A curator could assemble special exhibits only available online, choosing the works of a certain artist across many different museums, and assembling them in a particular order without having to physically move the paintings.  The possibilities are endless.

Or, say you are taking a course in astronomy and the online material includes realistic depictions of the surface of the moon, Mars, Venus and other planets and satellites put together using the best available pictures and simulations.  You can actually walk or fly around the surface of the planet, pick up rocks, zoom in on them and take your time exploring the terrain.  That is a very different experience from just reading about the material, looking at a picture, or watching an educational film, all of which would still be part of the website complementing the new virtual world capabilities.

One of the their most interesting feature, is the ability to immerse yourself in the virtual world via an avatar.  You need a way to navigate through the museum, the surface of Mars or whatever other world you are visiting, and walking around them using your avatar is a particularly innovative way of doing so.

Many virtual worlds are also social in nature, giving you the ability to see and communicate with others via their avatars.  In that sense, they are a kind of visual, immersive Web 2.0 site. Most popular consumer virtual world environments like Second Life and Club Penguin fall into this category.

One of the main criticisms directed at virtual worlds is that they are just places to go play games and hang out.  Who, other than teenagers with nothing to do, - critics ask - has the time to visit different places just to hang out and see who else is around to chat with?

Similar criticisms were directed at the nascent World Wide Web in the mid 90s when people where trying to figure out what surfing the Web was all about.  But, those criticisms were quieted as increasingly useful websites were developed.  For the vast majority of us, the Web became a place to go to for information, banking, shopping and other useful applications.  Something similar will undoubtedly happen with virtual worlds as more useful places are developed over the years.

Scheduled Events 

The defining characteristic of Web 1.0 is the content found in its many websites or places.  Web 2.0 is all about people and communities.  While virtual worlds are also about content, places, people and communities, what really brings them to life is the notion of events.  The most useful applications in virtual worlds will likely be online events, where we and others gather together at a specific place and time.

Conference rooms, classes, plays, concerts and ballgames are not places we visit simply when we feel like it.  We go to them for specific purposes at specific times.  For example, the curators of a special virtual museum exhibit might invite us on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3 pm to guided tours through the virtual exhibit, where we can listen to descriptions of the works and interact with them and other guests in the tour.

Or the online astronomy course could meet on the surface of the planet being studied, rather than in a classic classroom.  Quite a number of universities have established virtual world sites and are exploring how best to use them in their online education programs.   

Companies have also started to use virtual worlds for training.  I recently heard from an executive of a company that has thousands of convenience stores around the world.  Training their staff is a huge challenge, especially given their high staff turnover. So, they are planning online training courses in a virtual world replica of one of their stores.  Similarly, IBM has been using virtual worlds to help onboard and train new employees, especially in more remote locations with no resident HR staffs.  There are a number of similar examples out there.

Over time, you can imagine all kinds of innovative virtual world events.  Imagine, for example, an advanced capability that lets you immerse yourself in a live baseball game and watch it from any location you wish, including from the point of view of a player in the field.  I am not sure what new technologies may be needed to develop such sophisticated applications, but I am pretty sure that they will start appearing in the next few years. 

Architecture, Design and Management       

The last two categories of virtual world applications were first developed in consumer markets.  This next one, is an evolution of engineering and design applications developed over the last couple of decades.

When a new building is being planned, the architects will not only come up with detail drawings of the outside and interiors of the building, but they will typically also develop a scale model of the building and its environment, to give everyone a better appreciation of what it will all look like.  Such high level architectural models are particularly important with major projects, such as the planned infrastructure for the 2012 London Olympics.

Virtual world capabilities are a natural for such projects.  The architects and engineers can develop very detail depictions of their proposed designs and the surrounding environment.  They can invite their clients to walk around the building, go inside, step out and look at it from different angles and distances.  The architects, engineers and clients can all work closely together, exploring different choices until everyone is satisfied.  At the right time, they can also invite a wider community to see the plans to make sure there are no serious objections that might significantly delay the project.

The tools and platforms to develop such high level designs are quite different from what is currently used in Second Life and other consumer oriented virtual worlds.  They will be closer to the kinds of tools used in Computer-Aided Design and Computer-Aided Engineering.

Another important area where visual, human-oriented designs and tools are very important is in the management and operations of such complex engineering systems.  We now have the ability to gather and analyze huge amounts of real-time data in order to better manage a complex infrastructure, whether it is a skyscraper, a manufacturing plant or an IT data center.  Virtual environments are a natural way to present all that information to the people that have to understand what is going on, anticipate problems, and perhaps make a split-second decision in the middle of a crisis.

As an example, earlier this year IBM announced an environment, which collects real-time data from all the different resources in a data center and presents it as a realistic 3-D virtual data center using varying colors and other cues to visually represent what is going on.  This will enable operators to better monitor and manage key measurements like energy usage, server utilization and performance hot spots.  You can easily imagine other application areas where such real-time visual management capabilities could have great value - traffic congestion in a city, electric power grids, an oil pipeline, a refinery, and many others. 

It is much easier to envision a future than to predict how quickly or in what ways it will happen.  There is little doubt in my mind that the virtual world capabilities and applications discussed above will happen, in one form or another.  We need lots of progress and innovation, both at the technical level and to understand what will work best in the marketplace and appeal to people.  Above all, we need both patience and hard work.

Is discipline the same as self-control and why is it important? What are the 6 reasons for poor discipline and what to do about it? You need to listen to Alan’s podcast to find out.

Click on arrow below for podcast to start

    and now also on iTunes   

Click Here for entire podcast series table of contents

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Post from: Contrarian Consulting

(Click on image to enlarge)

The most recent class of Speaking with Alan, the most intense program available for creating, practicing, and marketing a speech. The 2.5-day workshop is held at Alan’s home, and includes fine dining every night.
Left to right: John Weathington, Danville, CA; Pat Lynch, Long Beach, CA; Angie Katselianos, Milan, Italy; David Gammel, Salisbury, MD; Pam Harper, Glen Rock, NJ; Roberta Matuson, Brookline, MA; Koufax, the Wonder Dog; Alan Weiss.

Post from: Contrarian Consulting

The nomination of Barack Obama, an African-American, is a moment I never thought I'd live to see. Here are a few thoughts.

There are many ways to deliver a marketing message. One that is often overlooked or erroneously dismissed as being too expensive is producing a video. YouTube has changed some perceptions in that arena but not so much in the marketing field.

In reality, the return on the investment can be significant, even if you get a top notch professional to shoot your video. Some of the advantages are:

~ Delivers the intimacy of extended one-to-one communication.

~ Compared to TV ads, non-interruptive.

~ Allows three-dimensional views of products, show a product in use or a service provider in action.

~ With music, action and color, generates emotional impact.

~ Can bring your employees and their passion for your business to life.

~ Can be combined with CD, DVD, or streaming video technology to translate to an easy direct mail piece or web page content.

~ Is a powerful storytelling medium.

Wondering where you can use your video? Your lobby. Your website. Your e-mail campaign. Your annual meeting. Staff recruitment. New business pitches. And that’s just the beginning.

This is not a political endorsement or even comment, but simply the observation of a consultant and coach on the selection process.

If Senator Hillary Clinton received 49% of the Democratic primary vote, and is given great prominence at the convention, and her supporters are threatening in some cases not to vote for the party’s presidential nominee;

And if there are many more registered Democrats than Republicans among the electorate, and the only way for Republicans to win is to attract independents in great numbers along with some disenfranchised Democrats;

And if the Republicans are currently struggling with eight years’ residue of a largely unpopular administration, amidst serious economic problems and foreign affairs threats;

Then not choosing Senator Clinton as a running mate, a move that would almost certainly ensure election, tells me that Senator Barack Obama would rather risk losing the election than spend the next four years with Senator Clinton and her husband within his administration should he win.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Post from: Contrarian Consulting

Positioning your brand is probably one of the most important aspects of branding. It is the unique strategy that will introduce your target audience to exactly what it is that differentiates your product or service from your competitors. I am working with a number of companies right now developing exactly this.

It is absolutely fascinating what gems come out of discussions on positioning. At the outset, many companies are hard pressed to recognize a difference. All they see is the obvious. My strength is that I want to understand how the product or service is delivered, how is it made, what is the experience that surrounds the product or service? Several times the difference is not in the actual product but the delivery of the product or the follow-up. You have to look at the entire product cycle from conception to happy customer and beyond. There is an opportunity in there. You can count on it.

Compliances offer up positioning opportunities. Training offers up positioning opportunities. Frankly there is much to learn from every angle and nuance. For example, I worked with a consumer food product customer. They felt that their fruit product was much like all their competitors across the world. All were grown exactly the same way, with the same ingredients, under similar conditions using the same technologies and marketing and shipping conditions. I refused to believe that there was no opportunity and so I dug deeper into the industry standards. I wanted to know how one product is rated over another. What was intriguing was that the very standards for grading our produce was the opportunity for a very BIG aha moment. Here is the skinny on fruit standards. They are judged on 3 criteria - size, appearance and firmness.

Consider these criteria again: size - appearance - firmness. Is anything missing? I suggested there was and it was huge.

Taste.

You see, taste isn’t a criteria. That is left up to the individual. I suggested that there must be at least a minimum standard that a good sample must taste like. With watermelon, it’s the sweetness - a lemon, its tarty characteristic. Everyone agreed that we were on to something.

Once this particular fruit standard for taste was established, we then contracted the two leading agricultural universities in Canada and the United States to independently develop processes that tested for taste based on the bar we set. While other competing fruit have may won taste competitions judged by consumers, we now have established a definitive test for taste not unlike the the test for size, appearance and firmness. The processes were legally protected and are now proprietary to us.

We were now the ONLY fruit tested for taste!

Our fruit’s taste was now a guaranteed standard of quality NOT based on differing opinions, but on quantitative data. The bar had been raised.

A very compelling difference. This my friends is positioning. In this case the customer had to change how it did business and in doing so, introduced a new standard to their industry. This is not the work of a follower, but a leader.

Positioning can be very powerful if you are savvy enough to recognize the opportunity and bold enough to implement it. The real gems are far beyond the obvious. Look all around the edges of your product or service.

One other small example I will tantilize you with involves a current customer who has a software product. He is in a saturated market where all developers (including them) use one simple digital tool as the basis for determining solutions inherent to the software. If they carry out one small alteration I am suggesting to this simple tool they will instantly make that common tool the achiles heel for every competitor they have - over night.

This is no small boast. When I suggested it, the customer saw the potential immediately. So simple.

Currently the tool has no real value to the software only to say that it has to be there. Much like a car has to have tires to move smoothly over a road - they are important, but they are a given in every model and simply not seen as important or influential enough to warrant a mention in the marketing of a car. This simple tool is such a animal. We are not complete on this yet, so I can’t mention specifics.

My tease is to inspire you look deep into the soul of your product or service and develop a positioning strategy that goes way beyond fancy advertising slogans and resonates with target audiences, by eliminating pain points (defined in a previous article) and making customers want to work with you. A great positioning strategy will excite you, your company and ultimately lead customers to love you.

Are you up to the challenge?

Astute observers will have noted that I have not posted here since August 6, 2008. That period, nineteen days, is the longest I've gone without posting since I began writing the TrueTalk Blog in May, 2004.

Well, what the heck has been going on?

It's kind of a long story, but I'll see if I can keep it reasonably brief.

First of all, the introduction of professionally-produced material (and YouTube's natural promotion of that material in the service of the currency of the realm: views) meant that the average vlogger became lost in the shuffle. That's not to say that anyone harbored fantasies of competing with the likes of Oprah or Diddy (well, maybe some did) but that it had become very difficult for vloggers to discover other vloggers and people who might be interested in following their material.

Secondly, YouTube's inability (unwillingness?) to uphold its own Terms of Use quickly made the site a haven for every form of Internet predator. If you're at all interested in such things, you've seen story after story recounting the impact that a small, but fiercely dedicated band of miscreants has had on bloggers and vloggers alike.

So I, along with this group of YouTubers, decided to see if we could create something different. Our vision? A vlogging-focused site that was relatively free of vitriol (this is the 21st century, after all); a community in which vloggers could thrive.

Well, visions are great, but complex websites are hard! We kicked around ideas via email threads, Skypes, Google groups, etc., etc. We prepared design documents. We constructed business plans. We talked to lots of people. But, something was missing: a site!

And so, four weeks ago, Paul Robinett (known on YouTube as renetto) and I took the bull by the proverbials and launched a Ning-based site called VloggerHeads. The point: to see if all this talk could actually become a reality.

So? What happened?

Well, the last four weeks have been quite a ride. We knew that Ning wouldn't be able to provide all the security-enabled functions we required, so we decided to issue invitations to a small group of trusted individuals; a group that would come in and kick the tires. Sound familiar? Yeah, the same thing every new site does today.

Immediately, two things happened: first, the invited group loved the site; second, we were immediately trashed as a bunch of snobs creating an elitist gated community. Even by people who should know better.

As we opened up a bit more, allowing in some of the people who had created a modicum of mischief on other sites, people started testing our seriousness: would we really show the door to people who engaged in behavior that violated the Ning TOS and VloggerHeads' simple rules?

Yup.

And, naturally, that led to more tests.

But, that's not what I want to focus on.

What I want to focus on is the remarkable response of the vast majority of the ~550 people who have participated in this pre-alpha VloggerHeads experiment. This group has produced some of the most creative, heartfelt, funny, snarky, interesting material any of us has every seen. Our verdict: Concept proven.

A little over a week ago, YouTube friend, vlogger and blogger Kevin Nalts posted a piece about our new site. Almost immediately, Wired.com reporter Jenna Wortham contacted renetto and scheduled an interview with he and I, resulting in this very fair piece a few days later. As Nalts later reported, his VloggerHeads post garnered the greatest number of comments ever by a Will Video For Food entry. (Oh, and for the record, not all of us are in need of hair transplants!)

So...that's pretty much where we are. Four weeks and three days into an experiment that has proven highly educational, frustrating, gratifying and enjoyable. I could recount many other twists and turns on the road we've traveled and know that there will certainly be more on the one ahead. But, for now, I hope that explains where I've been and why I may not be blogging with my normal frequency for the time being.

Oh, and if you're interested in being in the next round of VloggerHead invites, leave a comment or drop me an email and we'll put you on the list. Unfortunately, among other things (that's another story), Ning doesn't have one of those sign-up thingies that real sites use to collect prospective users.

If you're a member of an association, or are an executive at one, you'll want to check this out.  Our friends over at Principled Innovation have just published the Association Social Technologies Executive Summary.  Some really great information in here.  A few highlights:

• 31% of associations have a social networking presence
• 10% of associations will have a social networking presence "soon"
• 31% of associations are exploring the idea of using social networking
• 24% of associations report that their association has a blog
• 92% of those blogs allow reader comments (sweet! - ed.)
• 14% of associations report using a wiki

A lot of really, really great stuff in the exec summary; can't wait for the full report.  Check it out here.

Related: Social Networking for Businesses and Associations

The study of complex systems has been a common arc in my career.  It started with physics at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, where I was studying complex natural systems - atomic and molecular physics in particular.  Later on, when I joined IBM Research and became a computer scientist, my main research interests were centered on large computer systems, including mainframes, supercomputers and distributed systems.  In the last twelve years, my work has focused on the kinds of complex systems made possible by the advent of the Internet and the Web.  Then, in the last five years, my interests have gravitated toward market-facing complex systems involving people and services.

What makes such complex systems complex?  I found the most satisfying answer to this seemingly Socratic question in an excellent paper - Complexity and Robustness - by  professors Jean Carlson and John Doyle from UC Santa Barbara and Cal Tech, respectively.

Complex systems, whether natural or engineered, are composed of many parts.  But it is not the mere number of component parts that makes them complex.  After all, a stone or a table is composed of huge numbers of molecules, yet we would not consider them complex.  According to Carlson and Doyle, a truly complex system must consist of many different kinds of parts, intricate organizations and highly different structures at different levels of scale.  Humans, bacteria, advanced microprocessors, modern airplanes, global enterprises, urban environments, national economies and healthcare delivery are all examples of complex systems exhibiting these massive, heterogeneous, intricate characteristics.

But why are these systems so complex?  Whether they were designed by humans or evolved in nature, why aren't they simpler?  What purpose does this complexity serve?

The answer to these questions is both elegant and profound.  You can find much simpler biological organisms in nature, and you can design far simpler objects.  The key ingredient you give up is not their basic functionality, but their robustness - that is, the ability to survive, for biological organisms, or to perform well, for engineered objects - under lots of different conditions, including the failures of individual components.  Robustness implies the ability to adapt and keep going in spite of a changing environment. 

There is a continuing struggle between complexity and robustness in both evolution and human design.  A kind of survival imperative, whether in biology or engineering, requires that simple, fragile systems become more robust.  But the mechanisms to increase robustness will in turn make the system considerably more complex.  Furthermore, that additional complexity brings with it its own unanticipated failure modes, which are corrected over time with additional robust mechanisms, which then further add to the complexity of the system, and so on.  This balancing act between complexity and robustness is never done.

For example, as part of their evolution, biological organisms - from plants to mammals - have developed highly sophisticated control and regulatory mechanisms designed to help them survive in dramatically fluctuating environments.  In humans these control mechanisms form the Autonomic Nervous System, which includes involuntary functions like breathing, digestion, heart rate and perspiration that must be carefully monitored and regulated to keep us alive. 

These control mechanisms are so sophisticated, especially in higher organisms, that they generally bring along their own problems.  One of the most important protection mechanisms, for example, is the immune system, which guards against disease.  But the immune system is subject to its own serious diseases, such as immunodeficiencies when its activity is abnormally slow, and autoimmunities, which are caused by a hyperactive immune system. 

Computers, airplanes and other machines have become increasingly reliable over the years, including the ability to better tolerate individual component failures.  This enables them to use standard, relatively inexpensive components and keep prices down.  Their sophisticated designs also enable them to adapt to their environment and function adequately under a wide variety of conditions.  But as we know, such robust machines are much more complicated than their simpler predecessors, both in their design and their support requirements.  Furthermore, as machines get increasingly complicated, it becomes practically impossible to identify or test for every possible cause of failures.  So, hopefully rarely, unanticipated failures can still cause catastrophic results.      

How about complex social organizations - that is, groups of people pursuing collective goals, such as companies, industries, urban environments, economies and governments?  Do the concepts of complexity and robustness as used by Carlson and Doyle apply to complex organizational systems? 

The key new ingredient introduced by organizational systems is the presence of people as one of their key components.  The concept of robustness applied to such systems implies the ability to perform well despite large variations in the performance of their key components - people - as well as rapidly varying conditions in their environment - the marketplace.  People's behavior clearly exhibits far more variations than the components of a machine or a simpler organism.  And the evolution required of organizational systems to be able to adapt to changing market conditions clearly happens on far more compressed time scales than for biological systems. 

Consequently, understanding and managing complex organizations as holistic systems is a very hard problem, indeed.  Many might say that this is far more of an art or craft than a discipline to which you can apply science and engineering principles.  Despite the difficulty of the challenge, though, it is one we must face up to.  The forces of global integration require far more discipline in how we deal with our increasingly tough business, economic and societal issues.

Fortunately, advances in information and communication technologies are enabling us to develop new kinds of tools and methodologies to better deal with such complex organizational systems.  Let me briefly comment on some of these promising opportunities. 

A critical requirement for dealing with a problem in a more scientific way is information – that is, understanding what’s going on.  Whether in medicine or astronomy, the ability to gather and analyze information makes all the difference in our ability to attack and solve new problems.  As we know, we now have the ability to gather huge amounts of information about the real-time behavior of organizations and markets, which we can then analyze and model with powerful supercomputers so we can make better informed, more intelligent decisions.

In engineering, one of the fundamental principles for improving the productivity and quality of a task is to transform the task into a well defined, repeatable process.  Processes have long been used in the design and manufacturing of all kinds of objects, from cars to semiconductors.  Achieving product excellence at competitive costs generally requires a sharp focus on specialization, standardization and technology, and that is what processes are all about. 

Processes are widely used in business.  Companies generally do very well with highly repetitive, back-stage processes such as those involved in manufacturing, logistics and transactions.  However, productivity and quality have significantly lagged in front-stage processes involving people and services - e.g., marketing, sales, accounting and human resources.  The advent of services sciences in the last five years is all about bringing specialization, standardization and technologies to bear on such front-stage, people-intensive processes in business.

But while technology, information and processes are required, the capacity to innovate and differentiate your business, or region depends on unleashing the imaginations and enterprise of people, both as individuals and as part of innovation communities.  Navigating today’s incredibly complex organizational systems requires highly skilled people.  While they must have strong technical talents, they must also be comfortable working on real-world, market-facing problems, and do so as part of multidisciplinary teams.  Collaborative innovation must be an integral part of their culture.

Let's remember that we have been studying biological and engineering systems in depth for many decades.  But, we have barely scratched the surface in our understanding of complex organizational systems, and how to analyze and manage them.  One hopes that with the new technologies, tools and methods now at our disposal, our progress can now accelerate.  This is truly one of the most fascinating challenges in the decades ahead.

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Post from: Contrarian Consulting

Permit me to draw your attention to three important offerings coming up:

NEW: SELF-ESTEEM WORKSHOP
December 2-3, Providence, RI (The Crowne Plaza Hotel)
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The intent is simple. Building on my work with individuals around the globe, I want to help you: Identify the uncertainties, perceived vulnerabilities, and situations which cause you to perform at less than your optimal capacity; understand the causes of those dynamics, and receive timely yet non-threatening feedback about how to resolve them; master and apply techniques that will help you maintain and manifest a high self-esteem level “in the moment” when it is most needed; avoid the debris and detritus in your life which tend to damage self-esteem, and focus on the routes of least resistance to self-worth and its manifestation. In brief, personally and professionally, you will be able to deal with daily routine and exceptional circumstances; with varied and often tough personalities in your life; and to overcome the problems caused by pressure, unfamiliarity, and perceived threat.

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A half-day on value based fees, and a half-day on how to make top money in a bottom economy. For newcomers and veterans alike, boost your business immediately. Attend both sessions and receive these bonuses: Lunch, a session on maximizing your web presence and marketing, and free membership for one year in the Society for Advancement of Consulting®.

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Sydney, Australia, February 19-21, 2009
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Only unique people will share this 2.5-day program to learn the major tactics required to move to and through the million dollar mark. THE US SESSION IS ALREADY SOLD OUT IN MARCH. We will help you become a visible thought leader in your field, create “communities” of support, engage in advanced promotional tactics, and a lot more. We’ll also be sharing the best practices of the Million Dollar Club. This will be quickly sold-out. It is the first program I’m premiering outside of the US.

Post from: Contrarian Consulting