January 6, 2009

It’s So Easy to Get Stuck Repeating What We Already Know

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 9:23 am

A Partnered Post by Heather Rast and Liz Strauss

Knowing What We Don’t Know

He was a young man, Stephen, straight from MBA school. In every meeting he’d apply what he’d learned from this book or from that professor. He’d forget that his audience was 7 or 8 people who’d each been in business since before he knew what business was.

He could analyze, organize, spreadsheet, posit, and problem solve, but mostly we thought of him as “school smart and business naive.” Oh yeah, he knew plenty that we didn’t. Only, some days he didn’t know what he didn’t know … and he forgot that we knew things too.

I Called Him My Irritating Little Brother

I liked him, even when he had his head stick in invisible books. On Fridays he’d “dress down” to business casual, even though the rest of us wore jeans all week — and he’d get all self-conscious when he did. That’s when I thought of him my Irritating Little Brother. The affection helped on occasions like this one.

In one meeting, Stephen proposed a fairly classic plan of action. I gently tried to point out a possible hole in his approach to our situation.

“That’s inconsequential,” he said, brushing my thoughts aside with a musical word.
I smiled and replied, “Thank you!” with overdone joy and enthusiasm.
He stopped, looked at me, and replied, “What?”
Bigger smile. “Inconsequential. I haven’t had that word tossed my way for the longest time.”
He was stunned. Then he smiled back and listened. He made had room for experience that didn’t come from school.

Breaking Out of the Repeating Conversation

Stephen wasn’t necessarily arrogant or even intentionally narrow-minded. But he hadn’t considered an approach other than his own — which is to say, a linear, traditional approach. And he hadn’t considered his audience — people with real-world, complex business problems that might not be solved with an academically choreographed, sequenced formula.

What Stephen needed was to channel his learnings and solicit tested techniques and ideas from his colleagues. Together, they could discuss, debate, and collaborate solutions, all the while learning valuable lessons from one another.

Stephen would better understand that learning and solutions needn’t be centered around heavily vetted models and dogma. And that people need to be engaged if you hope to be able to lead and guide them. The audience could learn practical ideas from one another, while gaining an appreciation for how traditional texts could be applied to real situations.

In the world of the digital gap, there’s two sides to this argument.

Some folks are Business Smart, but don’t value the Virtual Conversation.
Some folks are so Social Media Smart that we’ve lost our Concrete footing.
It’s easy to get stuck repeating what we already know.

Hopefully the folks who listen say, “Thank you” and share what they know anyway.

Got some words of wisdom for breaking out of a repeating conversation?

Heather Rast writes at Insights&Ingenuity about the delicate balance between achievement and growth.

and me well, you already know.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

It’s time to Register for SOBCon09! Come listen and talk.

Filed under Guest Writer, Marketing, Successful Blog | 6 Comments »

January 6, 2009

Open Mic 7pm Chgo Time: We’re Talking About Procrastination

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 6:00 am

JOIN US TONIGHT AT 7PM

I Hear the Late Jokes Already

Oh, and bring example links.

The rules are simple — be nice.

Do be nice.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related article
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?

Filed under SOB Business, Successful Blog | No Comments »

January 5, 2009

The Traffic Game, Auditioning Ants, and How Communities Grow

Liz wrote this at 8:13 am

A True Story Can Be a Parable

Our neighborhood was the greatest space. It offered football-field-sized back yard, a huge (never filled) lot great for running down. It rolled all the way to the tree lined river bank. The river behind was an inlet, the dead end of a branching off. The our front streets were clean and wide without much traffic. The houses were occupied by quiet people with big kids who had already used what was around each of them every day. Now they went on dates and went to college.

The grown ups probably always had been too busy working to get to know each other.

But by the time I came along. the neighborhood wasn’t much more than a huge space that people came to eat and sleep.

His name was Craig. I met him when he ran across the street the day that he moved in. He was wiry, smiling, energy. I was long, curious, sincerity. He was a smarter Charlie Brown. I was a nicer Lucy.

For a little guy, his voice was deep and slurry. I told my mom his name was “Ray.” He was 4. I was 5.

The big kids totally ignored us. But as it was we didn’t have time to find things boring.
We called it “going exploring.” We rolled down hills, walked river banks, climbed rocks, learned to skip a stone the hard way. We laid back under trees and talked about the shapes the leaves would make. We heard the lectures about grass stains.

We watched my younger, older brother cut the huge backyard in the shape of baseball diamond. I spent my birthday money knowing we’d play with what I brought home. We got generous (and in trouble) picking Rose’s peonies for our mothers. We didn’t know weren’t supposed to. Still Rose and Elmer still gave us pinwheel cookies when we cut through their yard.

And we got a little cranky, our moms would send us outside with two lawn chairs, some KoolAid, our lunch, and tell us to play the Traffic Game. We might have seen about 10 cars an hour.

The rules to the Traffic Game were simple …

Choose a color. (Craig always choose blue or red — his favorite colors. I picked the best seller.)
Count the cars of that color that drive by.
The winner was the first to get to 21. It took a while.

We’d always start, but we never knew who won the game — it’s hard to have fun when you’re playing a game someone else made up..

We would do so many other fun things. We’d start with conversation — like the grownups had the kitchen table. That was while we got our lunch out of the way. We made up sci-fi stories about the people in the cars. We wondered how my school had letter grades when his school didn’t have report cards?

When lunch was officially over, we would use Craig’s magnifying glass to burn holes in the paper towel that had wrapped our sandwiches.

One day, we held auditions for a circus act. We held that magnifying glass to light a path for each fat black ant on the sidewalk — you might note fat black ants don’t have the right discipline to be in a circus.

In the middle of this serious auditioning, another kid ran up with a butterscotch cocker spaniel at his heels. He wanted to know what we were doing.

He said his name was Scotty. He lived in the house next door to Craig and his birthday was two days and two years after mine. We started showing him around. A few months later another family moved in, the three of us showed them the best way to attack the sledding hill and where to sit when you put your ice skates on by the river.

And in the spring, the six McGuire girls came — in time to see yard where the Tulip lady has tulips of every color and a windmill. It was a bike ride so close their parents wouldn’t mind. We learned the Dutch words for “Will you put on those wooden shoes by the door?”

By the time that Craig was 7 and I was 8, we had a community. We put on the best carnivals. Our parents paid to attend them. Our big brothers brought their big friends, including the girls — the ones they liked a lot. By then we’d sit our moms in chairs like this to watch the plays that we put on.

By the next summer the whole neighborhood was watching fireworks on lawn chairs and blankets in the huge backyard down by the river. Craig and I were trying to figure out who might star in our next community show.

That’s how small communities grow.

How does this align your ideas of how communities are and how they grow?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

It’s time to Register to for the life experience of SOBCon09

Filed under Marketing, Successful Blog | 21 Comments »

January 4, 2009

Beach Notes: Friending Offline

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 8:12 am

by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

It came to us while walking on the beach last week.

You know how, what with Facebook and Twitter and Plurk and all the other social networking communities we all have these hundreds or thousands of friends online? Well, what if we were to friend some of those people we see offline?

That’s right, friends we can talk to, hang out with, but without having a keyboard or microphone or videocam to help us communicate!

Novel idea.

What triggered this particular brainwave, which we are currently seeking to trademark as “Friends in the Flesh”, was when, as we say, we were walking on the beach.

Now just by way of background, when we walk on the beach early in the morning there are several people we see most days. Some form of greeting or acknowledgement is exchanged, ranging from a hearty “Good Morning! Beautiful day!”, through to a friendly but fairly emotionless nod. You always know who the visitors holidaying from the city are: if you say “Good morning!” they look at you nervously and might manage a smile but you know their city reflexes have them suddenly in fight or flight mode.

Anyhow, the other day, a chap we’ve actually chatted with a few times and another who has been in the “nod or make a small, unostentatious sort of waving motion with the hand” category of morning beachgoers, stopped us to actually introduce themselves by name and discover our names.

Now when we see them it’s all “Suzie!”, “Des!”, “Pat!” and “Greg!” - and since they have introduced us to another of their friends, “Grahame!”.

We discovered we like this and now we are on a bit of a campaign to get to know the names of the other regulars.

Who knows where this could lead? The League of Offline Friends perhaps? With a list, in - what do they call it - a printed book?

Given the instantaneousness of friending on Facebook and following/being followed on Twitter, the four years or so it has taken for us to know the names of people we greet every day and have them know our names, and even stop for the occasional chat, seems - no, is - an extraordinary amount of time.

Is it possible, while we build amazing and multitudinous friendships online, that we are neglecting - literally walking past - opportunities for friendships in our offline lives?

What if 2009 were to be a year when we did some serious offline friending? Going beyond the wave or the non-committal half-smile exchange with people we see every day or regularly but really know nothing about to exchanging names and even having a chat or two.

A chat offline? You mean it’s ok to do that? Cool.

Do you have a story to tell about going from a “courtesy” wave or nod to actually friending someone offline? Care to share, here?

Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh wishing everyone an wonderful friendful 2009.

Filed under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 3 Comments »

January 3, 2009

Thanks to Week 167 SOBs

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 1:56 pm

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Filed under SOB Business, Successful Blog | 2 Comments »

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