Word-of-Mouth just doesn't happen in most instances. And for most of us, it is difficult to know how to parlay our customers appreciation into WOM value.
Now along comes IKarma a WOM site that is focused on customer appreciation of goods and service. Take the tour. You'll see how the value of a good reputation can become a marketing asset.
Sign up. Test it out. See how it works. It is in beta right now.
One of the most interesting publishing phenomenons of the new milennium is Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life. Warren is a successful pastor, speaker, writer in California who built a publishing empire around his understanding of the place of purpose in human life. I've read the book and the one he wrote for churches called The Purpose Driven Church. They are both systematic, non-academic treatments for how to identify purpose or mission and develop one's life or church to fulfill that purpose. His congregation, Saddleback Church, has grown from two families in 1980 to 20,000 attending today. The original book, Purpose-Driven Life, has sold over 23 million copies since it was published in 2002.
The publisher of Purpose Driven Life is Zondervan, an evangelical Christian publishing house owned by Harper Books. The marketing director for the Purpose Drive Life campaign is Greg Stielstra. Stielstra came to my attention last spring when I heard about his upcoming book, PyroMarketing. We communicated a few times and I blogged about the book here and here.
Pyromarketing is about Word-of-Mouth, Viral and Buzz marketing, though from a fresh perspective. The book discusses his approach in the context of the Purpose-Drive Life campaign.
I had expected the book to be on bookstore shelves by now. I had expected to see the cover jumping off the shelves of the airports I flew through on vacation. Alas, nada.
I didn't think much of this until I read a Publisher's Weekly article about the disagreement that exists between the Purpose-Drive Life people and Greg Stielstra over his book.
It is best to read the article (Free 30 day registration required).
I wrote over at my Leading Questions blog about the questions that I have about this situation.
Here, I want to say something about what I perceive to understand about pyromarketing, marketing in general and the affect it should have on people.
Based on what I understand, pyromarketing is tradtional WOM, Viral and Buzz marketing recrafted in some new ways. Since I only know what Stielstra communicated to me last spring, that is my understanding.
The importance of this approach is that it takes seriously the person who receives the marketing effort. It is an attempt to emotionally connect with them so that they become passionate customers, clients, and supporters.
If this isn't what has happened at the Saddleback Church and with the community that has arisen around the Purpose Driven Life, then I want to know what has done it. No publishing marketing campaign can achieve what Rick Warren has acheived without lots of help from people who are totally unaware of the marketing presence. I bought Purpose Drive Life on the recommendation of a colleague. Word-of-Mouth in action.
What amazes me about this disagreement is how these smart marketers at PDL have totally missed read what is happening with Pyromarketing. Yes, they are marketers of ideas and systems, and are very successful at it. That is not to denigrate who they are. More is going on here than simply pastoring churches.
I fail see how this attempt to suppress the publishing of this book that will show up on the business marketing shelves of Barnes & Noble and Borders will in any way detract from their success. On the contrary, what Pyromarketing will do is open up the Purpose Driven Life story to a whole host of people who may not even know the book and movement exists.
The reality of WOM marketing is that you cannot control public perception once people begin to talk. This should be the greater worry of the PDL people than whether a marketing book will tell their story differently than they wish.
I can't wait to see what happens.
It was great to hear about the London Geek Dinner and to hear Robert Scobel talk about blogging. YOu can hear his talk here. It is worth listening to.
Other than listening to comments about internal Microsoft blogging experience, what I took away was his comments on the relationship between blogging and word-of-mouth marketing.
Blogs provide a technological tool for accelerating diffusion of ideas by word-of-mouth. As more blogs come online, and people adapt to the RSS aggregators better, the products, services and people who are the most authentic will be the ones that find success.
This will be to this generation what the radio and telephone were to my grandparents generation.
Chris Carfi at The Social Customer Manifesto critiques Seth Godin's All Marketers are Liars book. Make sure you read the comments. What none of the participants in this discussion, including myself, recognize that reactions to the book in a strange way validate the thesis of the book.
Seth's point is that consumers participate in the lie of believing things about themselves and the products they choose. And that smart marketers understand this and structure their approaches to accomodate themselves to this reality.
Chris' comments concern the ethics of this approach. From my perspective, both make valid points. They are not mutually exclusive perspectives.
Here's my comment at Chris' site:
There is another line in The Boxer that goes, "People hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest." Why? Because lots of people are searching for some way of understanding who they are. Either they like who they are, or they don't. If they don't they look for ways to be or appear different. Living a lie, in a sense. Many people look to consumer products to fill in the gaps that their own self-perception lacks.
Seth's book is a contribution to this, but not the whole story. Products can be transformative, or not. Marketers can make a difference in the lives of people. All that it takes is for each marketer/consumer to be an authentic person, foster authentic relationships that lead to fulfilling the opportunities that come from that interaction. When authenticity grows, consumers have a better idea of actually what they want, and those marketers who are in touch with them will have a better idea how to provide them the products and services they desire.
Its more than conversations. Its relationships.
I've made the point before, here, that I am not a professional marketer. However, I believe that I have to be a marketer to be successful. I am interested in marketing because it is a communication process. It is a way people connect with one another. If Word-of-Mouth is the most powerful means of marketing, then it is the human connection that is the most compelling and inscrutible aspect of marketing.
I've decided that I cannot discern the immediate mindset of any individual, no matter what Seth and Malcolm Gladwell say, sufficiently to know what is the precise right thing to say that will make a successful marketing connection.
Instead, I have chosen to be who I am, be the best I can be, be passionate about what matters to me, set higher standards for performance than anyone else, find multiple ways to express myself in public, and trust that the people who are looking for what I have to offer will find me. I have tested this theory in practice as the leader of two organizations and have found that it works.
For this approach to work, you still have to do all these Permission Marketing things that Seth describes. But they will not succeed unless you are an authentic person whom people can trust, and your products and services have an authenticity that is part of why a "remarkable" product is an authentic one worthy of attention and being talked about.
It is all so simple in theory, difficult in application because it not a mechanical process but a human interactive one. When we forget that, we start to lose touch with the opportunity that our products and services can have in the lives of people.
John Moore at Brand Autopsy raises an important discussion about the value of blogging in marketing.
Here are the headings of his comments:
THE POSITIVES
INFORMATION SHARING
ONLINE NEWSLETTERS
BROADER PEER BASE
THE QUESTIONS
TALKING TO OURSELVES?
ARE WE MAKING A DIFFERENCE?
The reality is that blogging is another tool, a valuable tool, but just another tool that business leaders need to use to effectively market their businesses.
The benefits that I have derived from blogging the past 11 months are:
1. Clearer thought, better articulation, greater confidence that has come from writing for publication. The frequency of writing for people to actually read your words is different than writing a journal, where if you are a little unclear, you know what your were thinking when you wrote it. I began to blog at the same time I began to write a leadership column for the Asheville Citizen-Times. Here's the latest. I am able to write much faster, with much greater effect because of blogging. The responses I get tell me what people are interested in reading. The confidence piece is one that I cannot overstate. When you see people respond, and people's lives impacted by what you write, not only to find gratification in the time and effort given, but your realize how important it is to make connections with people at those most fundamental levels of concern.
2. Less isolation and more of an immediate sense of what is happening out there, wherever out there is. Blogging requires a change of personal perception of where one fits into the world. Most people I know rarely think before the immediate physical proximity of their lives. Blogging opens up the world in ways that just surfing the net doesn't. Instead of being observers, they become participants.
3. Blogging provides a way for others to find out what you are really like. One of my continued interests is the relation between the traditional brochure-type website and a blog. Clients and potential clients who don't know me have a much better chance to get to know how I think and relate to people through my blogs. The way I blog is the way I think, the way I interact with people, the way I conduct my work.
My questions:
1. What IS the relationship between the traditional website and a blog. I have both, and the blog gets a whole lot more traffic than the traditional site. Yet, the blog serves as a portal to my website (Yes, it needs updating. I'm working on it.) I ask this of web designers that I meet, and they don't have a clear answer. They are still on the upside of the blog learning curve. Who is doing the best work of combining these two facets of the online experience?
2. How to reach, in Geoffrey Moore's scheme, the Early and Late Majority of potential clients who understand blogging as nothing more than a time dump and not a valuable marketing, communication medium. Even with 10 million blogs, I find that in the world I travel, there are very few people who are blogging. They run the risk of becoming Laggards.
For me, blogging gets a resounding yes as a marketing tool. If you are in business, you are a marketer. If you are a marketer, you should be a blogger. For me that is the bottomline.
The thought occurred to me this morning whether there are many people like me.
I'm not a professional marketer. I've never had a marketing or advertising course. I've not read Kotler.
All I know is that figuring out how to communicate what I do in my business is the key area of development for me in the future.
Here is what I'm doing. I'd like to know what other non-marketers are doing to learn how to market their businesses better.
First I'm reading, not just scanning, but reading and re-reading Seth Godin's blog and books. Why? My only conclusion is that his understanding of marketing is so down-to-earth, practical, concrete without being formulaic that it is the sort of approach that even rank amateurs can master.
Incorporate his ideas in your thinking, and your thinking about how to communicate changes. It is on the level of a paradigm shift in perception.
Second, I read the following blogs almost daily.
John Moore's Brand Autopsy - Read this on the relation between blogging and marketing.
BrandShift - Always interesting thoughts.
Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba's Church of the Customer - marketers as evangelists
Jeff Kallay's blog on the experience economy - important perspective
Hugh McLeod's Gapingvoid blog - through his blog is modeling how to marketing his business
The Long Tail - about those small segments of the economy where a lot of business can be found. Very insightful
Third, I talk to people. For example, I was at a social gathering of IT people last week. I'm not an IT person. I appreciate what they do, but I don't understand programming. However there were webdesigners and marketers there. So, I asked about how a traditional website and a blog site can be melded together to create a seamless online experience. I was amazed at how few blogged, and how few had not thought about this relationship.
What does all this tell me and the rest of the non-marketing world.
1. Marketing isn't what it used to be. It is changing, and that change is accelerating. It is becoming more personal, more immediate, more "permission" oriented, more interactive, more conversational, more relational. The technical aspects of marketing remain. But those of us from a different world have something to offer, and can learn how to make this new world of marketing benefit our businesses.
2. It is about story-telling. About communicating values and authenticity, creating trust. Would a potential client be surprised in meeting you after having seen all your marketing materials?
3. Marketing is not a set of techniques, but is increasingly an organizational and professional development tool. It enhances internal communication, clarity of thought and establishing a basis for visionary commitment.
So, if you aren't learning about the new world of marketing, you have decided to follow and not lead, or worse, you have decided the long, slow decline of your business.
If you are a person with little or no background in marketing, yet are learning how to market your business on your own, let me know. Send me your stories. What blogs, magazines, and books are the most helpful. What are you doing now that is different from five years ago?
Let's talk and learn together.
UPDATE: Here's a list of recommended books from Seth Godin.
It is my contention that buzz, viral and word-of-mouth marketing have an application far beyond traditional marketing boundaries.
These techniques are being applied in an organziational development manner at the Newland Presbyterian Church, Newland, N.C. This little hamlet in the mountains of North Carolina is a community of descendents of the Scots-Irish that settled the southern Appalachians in the 18th and 19th centuries. They are family oriented, tradition in values and supply a large number of the Christmas trees that are sold throughout the southern United States.
In September of 2004, the church's pastor was removed, and I became their part-time, interim pastor in October. At the same time, floods in September had devasted many businesses in the community, displacing many people from their homes, and creating a hardship on local government to provide services. 
After a difficult few years, I knew that I wanted for the congregation to shift their attention from the trouble of the past to the opportunties of the future. So, I came up with a simple idea of building a rock cairn to symbolize the church's confidence in God for the future. I presented this idea the first Sunday I was with them in October, asking them to bring rocks to build a rock pile like I had seen in the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho along the Lewis & Clark trail.
As the rocks came in we began a simple pile on the church lawn. People in the community began to ask about "that rock pile." It was sort of an eye-soar, but no one in the church thought of it that way.
Then it occurred to me that our rock pile was not just for the church, but for the community, as a symbol of the community's confidence in the future.
On Sunday, June 12, at 3 in the afternoon, the church and community will dedicate "The Confidence Cairn" in a celebration on the church lawn. The Linville Ridge Bluegrass Band will play. The Avery County Commission and the Town of Newland will present proclamations. And refreshments will be served.
The connection to buzz marketing is that the event and the rock cairn will change perceptions about the church. When people drive by the church, see the Confidence Cairn, they will think "confidence in the future." It should also attract new people to the church, who are looking for a positive place for their faith to grow and make a difference.
This is how these simple marketing techniques can be used to build community.
Link: tompeters! management consulting leadership training development project management.
A simple comment by Steve Yastrow at tompeter.com has raised and interesting conversation about marketing that takes place within an organization.
This is one of the reasons this blog was created. To provide a place to discuss how student organizations market to their members to enhance participation.
Read the comments at respond to Yastrow. It provides a good primer on how to think about organizational communication.
Link: ePortfolio @ York.
Karina at York University is right on the money when she says
"I particularly like the idea of a student having a single blog to be used for personal, professional and class-related posting. The use of categories or tags could make this so much easier--those interested in only a particular aspect of an individual's blog (say, for example, a professor who only wants to read entries pertaining to his/her particular class) can view that category or subscribe only to that particular RSS feed."
What this accomplishes is a more concrete way to integrate all facets of the learning experience. Too often the time frame between acquiring some information that we find interesting, and the application of that knowledge in some meaningful way is way too long.
Here's an analogy that might be helpful. Eliyahu Goldratt is one of the genius minds who sees things and can turn it into something concrete and revolutionary. His work is in improving processes of production, mostly manufacturing, but also thought process. I worked with a company once that was applying Goldratt's Theory of Constraints to the manufacture of socks. The process had 17 stages, and prior to implementation, each stage was separate, discrete and disconnected from every other one. The work for a stage would take place and the materials produced would go sit on the floor as "inventory." Theory of Constraints is about getting rid of that inventory that is a cost drain on the company. TOC integrates the stages so that they work together. In the case of the sock manufacturer, they went from taking six weeks for a pair of socks to be finished and out of the plant, to six days.
Apply this to how students learn. The go to class. They hear lectures. They read articles and books. They take tests and write papers. They have study groups. And the cycle repeats itself over and over again. The testing process is really the only integrator of all that knowledge acquisition.
What a campus blog can do is assist in taking all that information integrated into a coherent body of knowledge and then apply it quickly through the student's articulation of their ideas through a blog.
Part of what is needed in a learning process is frequency of articulation. Students need to express their thoughts in a manner that is both regular and accountable. It is impossible for a teacher to provide all the accountability that is needed. And it is frankly not realistic. We don't work for one boss along, but our work is accountable to a broad span of people. The world of ideas becomes the accountable context for students.
Using blog technology to facilitate faster learning will make for a more vital, vibrant, exciting academic environment. Competition for intellectual attention by student bloggers will raise the quality of work done in the classroom.
So the result is what Karina ends with "A connected, online campus supporting real, in-depth communications between all members of the university community."
A school that can do that will have a competitive edge over all those who are still scratching their heads trying to figure out to enhance campus communication.
A conversation at lunch today provoked me to think about a notion that I had had, but not thought through sufficiently.
What would happen to a college or university if most of the faculty, staff and students had their own blog?
Let's take a school that has 3,000 students 300 faculty and staff. And lets say that 20% of the student body and 50% of the faculty and staff start blogging. We are now talking about 600 student blogs and 150 faculty and staff blogs, or a campus with 750 online conversations happening.
How would this work?
Each faculty person could blog about a research area or about their department, or about a particular class, or use the blog within the context of classroom work. It would be an easy way to track who is actually working on study groups teams. Former students and academic colleagues both at the school and at other institutions can participate. Instead of boilerplate academic p.r., you'd have a real time conversation about something specific and not overly general.
Each student could focus on their favorite music, author, sports team, political or social issue or student organization or fraternity/sorority. It could be a program incorporated into a class that requires them to blog. The benefit is that it provides a great place to learn how to communicate ideas to a broad audience.
While all this can happen, it requires a change in culture to do so. Members of the campus community have to come to understand that a part of their viability is dependent upon foster interaction with people whether on campus or off. In essence, we are all marketers today, even university faculty and part-time day students.
How would this change the campus?
First, the degree of knowledge of what is happening will rise. Weaknesses will become more prominent, strengths as well. The core values of the institution will have a greater opportunity to become incorporated into the full life of the school.
Second, the conversation level should rise. People will develop better communication skills. As a result, problems can be identified earlier, and addressed more effectively.
Third, it should become a more alive, interesting place to be. Passion and personality drive blogs, and unleashing it on a campus will enhance what, in most cases, already is an interesting place. It should become more so.
Fourth, it should enhance the institutions relation to alumni and other supporters by providing more immediate, well-rounded information about what is going on. As a result, governing board members may be less likely to believe stories that are clearly funded by personal animus or agendas.
Fifth, it provides a way for the school to reach out to people who presently have no easy way to learn and develop a relationship with the institution. The common interests shared in a very focused, defined way provides a more tangible relationship to the school. For example, all schools have English departments. However, a school that specializes in say Southern 20th century Southern African American literature can find people who may have a casual interest that can develop into a passionate interest through their engagement with a faculty members blog.
it is all about marketing a community of relationships mediated through an online web technology that facilitates greater levels of conversation.
Finally, here is an example of what a university weblog system looks like. Thanks to Judy Gordon at Six Apart for pointing there.
Link: Knowledge Exchange: The Cluetrain Manifesto Revisited - Part 1.
It is hard to believe that it has been six years since The Cluetrain Manifesto was published. I remember picking it up in the Atlanta airport, and thinking how off-the-wall wonderful it was.
Today, this prophetic book points to what every organization seeks to develop, a greater conversation with its people.
Over at my Leading Questions blog I get more specific about the importance that conversations play in organizations.
The whole point of linking WOM, Viral and Buzz marketing techniques to a weblog technology platform is so this conversation can be made real. Increasing participation and contribution from people in your organization will increasingly take place through the vehicle of conversations that are personal and in real time. It allows for genuine human caring to happen as it is needed.
Let me know what you think.
A conversation I had with UNC-Asheville students a few weeks ago started me thinking about the connection between leadership and participation in organizations. This line of thought prompted me to write today's Real Life Leadership column - Raising your personal standards can work wonders for your organization - in the Asheville Citizen-Times WNC Business Journal.
It wasn't the first time I had thought about it, but it seemed to be the most urgent. As so many colleges and universities experience, student organizations are not a high priority with students who are constantly overwhelmed with school work, jobs and family responsibilities. Student organizations just seem to be an inconsequential part of the college experience.
The issue for student organization leaders doesn't seem to be whether they should work harder. Rather, it seems that they need to work smarter. Trite cliche? No, I don't think so.
When an organizational leader cares about their group so much that they take on the whole responsibility they deny others the privilege of contributing. It may begin with a structural change. Or, it may begin with an appeal. It may begin with allowing a grand failure that wakes up the attention of members who have fallen asleep.
Whatever seems the logical starting place, what must come first is the leaders own conviction that the organization's mission is essential. And then characterizing that mission in terms of a vision that clearly demonstrates the impact that can be achieved.
People who are looking to participate and contribute will find you. Those who are only interested in a name on a resume will not join up.
Yes, it is counter-intuitive to think that raising standards will increase participation. For we see all around us evidence of groups lowering standards to achieve their goals. But what they do not understand is that every organization is in a talent competition.
I recently read two quotes in a PowerPoint presentation from management writer, Tom Peters about the value of talent. (The slides can be found in this posting at his weblog.) Here they are:
"We believe companies can increase their market cap 50 percent in 3 years. Steve Macadam at Georgia-Pacific changed 20 of his 40 box plant managers to put more talented, higher paid managers in charge. He increased profitability from $25 million to $80 million in 2 years." quoted from Ed Michaels, War for Talent.
"The top software developers are more productive than average software developers not by a factor of 10X or 100X, or even 1,000X, but 10,000X." quoted from Nathan Myhrvold, former chief scientist, Microsoft.
This is part of the challenge in building participation. It is finding people who want to contribute and want to contribute at a high level. And it all begins with the leader's own performance. Raising your standards is how you will attract talent to your organization and weed out those who are not interested.
This is will be a major part of the work of leaders in the future.
Depending on one approach to communicating with your group or organization means that only a small portion of your group will get the message.
Seth Godin makes a comment in a posting that I found worth noting.
I wonder what happens when our digital culture has nothing to do but spread pale imitations of the original experiences? I wonder what happens when the media companies that depend on our attention start losing it when all we've got is a ringtone.
I think my books change a lot more minds than my blog does. But books don't spread the way digital ideas do.
If you want to communicate with your whole constituency, you have to use many different approaches. So, if you aren't using a blog as one of your organizational communication tools, you should.
One of the principles that guides my thought on this blog is that the information we share with friends, family, associates, and colleagues functions within a network of relationships or community.
We communicate with people we know or would like to know, or we feel need to know about the things that interests us or we are promoting. This is true whether that is an organization or a product that we are promoting.
Using a blog to facilitate better communication between the members of a community, whether it is a college fraternity or a local non-profit organization or several generations of a multiple generation family, our experience will be fairly typical of others who are involved in online communication. There can be a lot of email traffic, and often it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Just piling up. There isn't a point, or anything that connects all of it together, and thereby it isn't going somewhere productive.
Lee Lefever at Common Craft describes this interaction using the language of Stocks and Flows from the world of systems dynamics. If you are familiar with Peter Senge's work with The Fifth Discipline, you will know some of what SD is.
Stay with me here as Lefever provides insight that is helpful in understand how to utilize online communication technology to build your organizations. Read on...
Continue reading "Online Communication and WOM - How it can develop" »
Here is a powerpoint presentation that captures much of what I was trying to express to student leaders at UNCA during our Fill The Seats project
Greg Stielstra's Pyro-Marketing is a type of viral marketing that can work in a wide variety of settings. Even with student organizations, churches, non-profits and small businesses.
Here is the text of his presentation. Read along with the powerpoint.
Here is an excerpt from the book.
John Moore at Brand Autopsy attended the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association meeting in Chicago recently.
Here are some his commen.ts on George Silverman and Guy Kawasaki
(My comments in RED.)
Are student organizations subject to the 80/20 rule?
Twenty percent of a student body is involved in student organization, while 80% either don't have time, or have not figured out what they perceive the cost/benefit ratio for participation is.
Twenty percent of participants in student organizations do 80% of the work. Or, is it more like 95/5?
Twenty percent of organizations are viable, while 80% tetter on the precipice of irrelevance.
My Story
I've spent the past seventeen years in and around college and university student organizations. My entrance into college employment required me to create and develop a student leaders program at a small college. For three years, I tried and failed to develop a program that all the leaders on campus wanted to participate in. Rather, let's just say that NO ONE wanted to participate. They weren't really interested in leadership. It was pretty pathetic.
These student leaders were interested in what their organizations did, and leadership, for them, was how they participated. Leadership was some abstract academic subject that really didn't hold much interest for them.
So, after some further education, reflection and a number of "aha" moments, I came to the realization that it is better to focus on involving a whole group/organization in doing something leadership wise, than just trying to extract the "key" leaders of the campus into a program that was basically an information brain dump.
So, we create two programs. One to serve the elementary age children of local adolescent mothers, and the other, a Habitat for Humanity campus chapter. Both programs took off like rockets. I'd ask the baseball team, the German club and a fraternity to program an afternoon event for these kids. They loved doing it. After a few weeks, there were a handfull of students who would show up every week.
The Habitat chapter partnered with an affiliate that was about an hour away. It was great. We had fun, did good work, and provided the impetus for a local affiliate to get started in our town.
I tell you this because the problem that student organizations have in building participation doesn't have to be that way. It is all in how you approach their purpose, and how you structure the interaction between members.
Student organizations should be a place where students are learning how to lead, organize, manage, market, conduct and evaluate a small business or organization. These are skills that make them more attractive to future employers. "Oh, we went from 3 active members to 36 in a year and a half."
Is this a realistic prospect on most college and university campuses? I don't know. It is from a logistics, programmatic approach. But that really isn't the problem.
The problem is believing that campus organizations can effectively serve 80% of the campus instead of being satisfied with just 20% or 5%.
A campus culture is driven by the social gathering points of students. Student organizations, like resident halls, like Greeks, like apartments, like the library, like the local watering hole, have an unrealized potential that is waiting to be reached.
What is the purpose of all that unrealized potential? Well, that is a good place to start a discussion on your campuses.
A campus culture is also driven by non-student participants involved in the social gathering points of students.
Who are they? Faculty, staff, local alumni, local organizations that have a common interest in specific student organizations - all have an interest or a basis for an interest in the welfare of students and in their organizations.
How do you do address this situation?
It starts in believing that things can be better, and becoming passionate about making it happen. Start talking with people about it. Tell your story. Don't settle for the 80/20 rule.
Then you look for some help, both internally and externally.
For example, do the campus organization advisors ever meet as a group? What good are they? Does the 80/20 apply here? Twenty percent of advisors are effective, while 80% have no more than one contact with the president of the organization a semester?
We can always do better. It comes down to a matter of leadership. Leaders initiate to do the right thing to move forward the progress of their organization. It may create more work. It may create conflict. It may not be easy. However, if you can find a 20% improvement in 20% of your organizations, you have laid the ground work for 20% improvement in 80% of your groups.
It is just like eating an elephant. Its one bite at a time. And you have to take the first bite.
Lee Lefever at CommonCraft makes this comment about online communities.
Community often failed because of poor implementation- an underestimation of what it really takes to reap the rewards of “community” in a business setting. In the past (and now), social tools were implemented as an application that would immediately start creating value after being installed. The tools were seen as an end instead of a means to an end.
The same is true with blogs. Though I think they are a tremendous tool for fostering communication within an organization, people have to use it. People have to decide that it is worth the effort to learn how to communicate using this medium. We learned how to use computers, PDAs and IPods. The difference is that those can be done without having any human interaction. Blogs beg conversation.
So, the great challenge for anyone who is involved with an organization is to learn how to find your voice, and take part in the conversation that needs to happen.
Its a human thing.
Its all about the conversation.
The conversation we have with clients, employees, friends, colleagues, associates, strangers, opinion makers ... and the list could go on and on.
It isn't about selling something. It is about developing a conversation that elevates our understanding of what we are doing, and how we can do it better.
This is why this tool of a weblog is so valuable. It is an excellent place to hold an online conversation.
Seth Godin has started a weblog to feature his new book Marketers are All Liars.
His point is that most marketing pitches are not true, they are lies. One of his postings is a send-up of this point.
Seth is onto something here. If you are lying when you tell your story, you are no longer in conversation with people. You are selfishly just trying to get them to do what you want.
Here's another example from Seth. It is one where a company choses to get another company to sell through threats and litigation.
If you are not interested in the conversation, then you are basically deciding that you will exclude an increasingly number of people from your client list because they are interested. It is more experience. It is about trying to integrate all aspects of our lives into something that is whole, complete, well connected.
This is why the conversation matters. Stay tuned...more to come on this...let's talk about it.
Is it odd to talk about a marketing technique as an organizational development method?
I don't think so. Here's why.
Word-of-Mouth marketing is built upon the notion that people share the things that matter to them with people that they know. And people that respect their opinion listen to them.
So, products are now being promoted using an increasingly sophisticated WOM method. BZZAgent is the most notable.
What I have found repeatedly over the years, especially with non-profit organizations, of all types, is that communication is extremely poor. In many places it is non-existent, and that the only communication that happens is an extremely inefficient and easily manipulated form of Word-of-Mouth.
So, I see a more intentional approach to the use of Word-of-Mouth ideas helping to improve communication, and therefore the level of participation, collaboration and commitment by members, clients and employees.
But it has to be very intention, very up front, and very much systematized to the organization.
Why? Because it is an innovation that requires people to leave their comfort zone, even if it isn't satisfactory, and try something new.
The advent of weblogs provides a tool for assisting this process. What this tool provides is a common place that is easy to find, access and use that allows every person within the community of the organization to participate.
As a result, the communication level of the organization improves as all sorts of people are not only accessing information, but are able to be involved an ongoing conversation about the meaning and use of that information.
In other words, you have people who were once on the periphery of the organization all of sudden becoming an integral part of an expanding leadership base. As that base expands, greater collaboration can happen, and therefore the reach of the organization expands with it.
This is why I believe that relationship based marketing techniques and relationship based online technologies are the future of organizational development efforts in every kind of organization you can imagine.
Let me give you an example as I have applied this to my sons Boy Scout troop. This is just one aspect of how this is working for us.
We've talked about having a troop website for several years. One parent put a page on his with the troop schedule. But we never really promoted it well.
So, I set up a weblog for the purpose of communicating information in a more timely, effective manner than emails and phone calls. Those still matter, but what the blog provides is a site where the information remains, and people can track it down days, months, years later.
Let me be more specific. Any organization that deals with kids has to address the issue of scheduling during bad weather. Our policy is: if the public schools are out, we don't meet. We are now modifying this through the use of the weblog. So, if there is snow in the morning, and schools are closed, and the sun comes out and by 2 pm the roads are clear, then we will meet. Our policy is now, we'll make a decision by 3 pm, and post it to the weblog and also send out an email. We've encountered this already, and it has worked.
What has to be accomplished is the training of members to go to the blog for information. This is a change in behavior and attitude. Within a short period of time, I believe this will take care of itself.
I am interested creating a conversation about the use of these methodologies and technologies to faciltate greater communication and effectiveness for organization. If you have thoughts please share them, so we can all learn to do better.
Jon Udell, two years ago, wrote an article for InfoWorld on project blogs.
"If you're managing an IT project, you are by definition a communication hub. Running a project Weblog is a great way to collect, organize, and publish the documents and discussions that are the lifeblood of the project and to shape these raw materials into a coherent narrative. The serial nature of the Weblog helps you make it the project's newspaper of record. This kind of storytelling can become a powerful way to focus the attention of a group. The desire to listen to a compelling story and find out what happens next is a deep human instinct."
"The value of a project Weblog has a lot to do with getting everybody onto the same page -- literally. You want to deliver a manageable flow on the home page, drawing attention to the key events in the daily life of the project. To do this well, think like a journalist."
This is exactly what this blog aims to achieve. To create a place where projects related to the application of Word-of-Mouth can be discussed and managed simply and efficiently.
Blogs serve as a gathering point for people who share a common interest and commitment to a particular goal. It is a place to point new people to the conversation that has already taken place.
It is all about the conversation, and capturing that conversation so that it doesn't disappear into the netherworld.
Links to all the postings of the FILL THE SEATS Project can be found on the left side column. They go from oldest to newest, and all were posted between Thursday, March 17 and Wednesday, March 23.
1. SERVANT LEADERSHIP
A Presentation to student leaders at the University of North Carolina at Asheville
By Dr. Ed Brenegar / Community of Leadership Institute
March 23, 2005
2. "If they lied to me, they don't
respect me.
If they don't respect me, how can they love me?“
Commodus
Gladiator, 2000.
from
The Servant as Leader.
“…the leader needs more than inspiration. He ventures to say, “I will go; come with me!” He initiates, provides the ideas and the structure, and takes the risk of failure along with the chance of success. He says, “I will go, follow me!” when he knows that the path is uncertain, , even dangerous. And he trusts those who go with him.” Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader.
“The leader needs two intellectual abilities … to have a sense for the unknowable and be able to foresee the unforeseeable.” Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader.
Awareness of opportunities, resources and see what is happening with some objectivity.
“The lead allows followers the freedom to make mistakes while accepting them as they are. He deflects praise to subordinates and accepts criticism from superiors for mistakes made by followers under his authority.” John Sullivan, Servant First!, p.80.
Holder of a liberating vision“A servant leader is confident in his abilities and strengths. He recognizes his own weaknesses and works to improve them. He has the confidence to all others to make decisions and even to make mistakes.” Sullivan, p.80-81.
“Servant leaders are visionaries who are able to see beyond the here and now into the future and are able to lead others toward that vision.” Sullivan, p.81.
“Servant leaders strive for consensus through persuasion. They are open to the ideas of their followers and recognize that they don’t have all the answers. Rather than force an issue by coercion, they will attempt to persuade their followers of the benefits of their solution. The result will be commitment to the decision on the part of the followers, not just compliance.” Sullivan, p.81.
“The servant leader builds community by caring for her followers and encouraging them to care for others, too. She builds trust by being trustworthy. The result is an organization that holds the needs of its people equally important to the needs of the organization.” Sullivan, p.81.
“The servant leader uses power to promote the good of the whole and not for self-promotion. However, he is a pragmatist who recognizes that sometimes power is needed to bring about change but he does so with the highest ethical standards.” Sullivan, p.81.
This blog was set up Thursday, March 17, 2005 to micro-blog the UNCA FILL THE SEATS project. The project was simply to fill the seats of the room where I was scheduled to give a presentation on Servant Leadership. My hope was for 50 people. We had 14.
Disappointed? Not really. Realistically, my high expectations set me up for disappointment. I know that. Even so, the numbers were better than expected, by a little.
The two presentations I gave will posted to this blog shortly.
To the students that attended, thank you. You attention and engagement in the material was great.
To the students who were not able to attend, nothing has changed. The challenge to lead your campus organizations are still with you. If you want to know more, all you have to do is ask.
So, with the posting of the presentation material the FILL THE SEATS project comes to an end, and a new project is born - How to use a WOM Micro-blog as a community building/organizational development tool.
Stay tuned, more to come.
Let's FILL THE SEATS In Highsmith 221 today at 5pm.
Let's do it.
Bring your friends, colleagues, significant others, faculty, pets - no, no pets - and yourself.
We will start at 5 and be done by 6. One hour. Sixty minutes. It will go fast, so be there on time.
I will not overwhelm you with content. We will take some basic concepts about servant leadership and campus student organizations and talk about how you can make your organizations better.
That is why we are doing this. To help you lead your organizations better.
Are you ready to make some history?
Let's do it.
Let's FILL THE SEATS!!!
Don't let anyone kid you. Leadership in the 21st century is hard.
The hardest part is not what you expressed to me last week during our SOC meeting. It isn't building participation.
The hardest part is maintain a high level of standards, consistently, day in and day out.
How do you do this?
First, your vision must be clear and compelling.
Second, you must recognize that you can't fulfill your vision alone. You need more than help. You need partners.
Third, you must have a personal character this is relentless in pursuing your vision. By relentless, I don't mean doing whatever is necessary to win. No, I mean relentlessly maintaining an optimistic perspective, and persistently seeking for the resources you need to succeed.
I call this resourceful optimism. What this leadership character requires is a tough flexibility to understand how to use whatever is given you as an asset. This type of character is earned in hard work.
My favorite example of resourceful optimism is the Lewis & Clark Expedition. During the summer and fall of 1805, the Corps of Discovery traveled through present day Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. While traveling upstream on the Missouri River, these men pulled their canoes and pirogues in mud the consistency of glue and over sharp shale fragments. They covered 10-12 miles a day, every day, day in and day out. On average, each man would eat 9 pounds of meat a day ... that's right 9 pounds. 
Their trek was to discover a commercial water route across the continent. What they found at the end of the Missouri were successful snow-capped ridges as far as the eye could see. Here's what they found at the Lemhi Pass on the Montana/Idaho border. Here are some more pictures of the Lemhi Pass.
If the disappointment of not finding the long sought NorthWest passage was enough, they encountered the Bitteroot Mountains where there was very little food and the winter snows began to fall as they crossed. Here are more pictures of the Lolo Trail in the Bitteroot Mountains of Idaho
They kept going because they did not allow themselves to entertain the thought of giving up. This is the type of character that modern day leaders need. Resourceful, relentless, resilient, persistent optimism.
I am absolutely convinced that there is nothing that cannot be done if you are willing to work smart, hard and with partners.
This will be a message that you will hear tomorrow.
Our Fill The Seats project
concludes tomorrow with my presentation/ our conversation.
Here are some other people you
could invite.
FRESHMAN/SOPHMORES: Do a quick
inventory of the freshmen and sophomore students that you know. Whether it is
from the residence hall, your organization, another organization, hometown
connection or his best friend is dating you third cousin.
Give two or three of them a call
or send them an email.
RESIDENCE HALL ASSISTANTS: Invite you RA. What we are going to talk
about is very relevant to them.
ORGANIZATION ADVISOR: Your advisor is a good choice because she or
he can provide support and insight into what we are trying to achieve.
Our discussion tomorrow is relevant to everyone, not just organizational leaders. It is because everyone must learn how to work within an organizational environment. This is what our conversation will be about.
Our project and the presentation tomorrow provides student organization leaders an opportunity to change the tone of conversation in their organizations.
Part of what your friends, guests, team members, and organization members will hear is about how to measure the effectiveness of an organization.
The relationships within the organization is a key to whether an organization can meet its opportunities.
Servant leadership is a leadership approach focused on the importance of those relationships.
We'll talk about that tomorrow.
The key idea is that you have to provide a way for your members to understand that they are partners with you.
We collaborate with people in almost everything we do. The same is true with organizations.
In some cases, collaboration is internal, and others, it requires working with other groups.
Bring the people who you want to have a conversation about your organizations. It could be a turning point for you and them. If you don't believe that it can, then it won't.
Today is a good day to send your emails to those people who respect your opinion.
What do you say? Tell them that it will be a presentation event unlike any they have probably experienced. Why? Because it will answer questions they actually have.
We are going to talk, have a conversation, think "I'm part of this presentation."
We are going to talk leadership, respect, and what servant leadership is about. Not just theory, but real world practice. Tell them that.
See you Wednesday.
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