... a beginner at something

Purple people power - 2009 State of the Universe

image on flickr by emilype

Swami Beyondananda put it this way in his

Swami’s 2009 State of the Universe

... While the beliefs in our head fool us all the time, the love in our heart is foolproof. When we face up to love, we can face down the fear.

What this means in practical reality is that we must step across the “red-blue” political divide that has kept us separate, and show our true colors as one purple people. Yes, we have all been wounded by polarizing politics, so let’s give ourselves a purple heart, and take the next courageous step to cohere around our shared “heart core” values and become ... we, the purple.

I have a dream ... that the rednecks shall lie down with the blue necks, and we tune out the polarizing mainstream media, which is sadly a brainwashing machine stuck on spin. More than ever, we need forums not againstums, dialogue instead of debate. ...

Purple people power, and thank you.

What more can we say today?

DaimlerChrysler crisis - case study on a big salary

Today, Seth Godin wrote The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing).

Years ago, I heard from employees of now defunct DaimlerChrysler, why their boss Schrempp was so keen on merging Mercedes-Benz and Chrysler back then in 1998.  They said his salary at the time was only some 5 Million $ a year while Iacocca got 50 Million. 

Guess, sharing that story then worked as a kind of marketing, too. Even now it does.

For that story, got a reliable reference?

Chrysler's internet marketing crisis today

Three months after I blogged this story, they still sit on their vanishing laurels and advertise like a  punch in the face.

How to plug your product using twitter - without spam.

Is this an elegant solution to get around spamming?

Let's investigate what seems to be the logic behind it: 

1. Locate one of the questions and answers sites that your potential customers frequent, like mahalo.com.
2. Search for questions containing the keywords by which your prospects normally find your products. Put your ad-words to active use. 
3. Do not plug your product there, that looks unelegant and spammy.
4. You could try to locate this prospect on Twitter, and offer your solution there, but that could be seen as unsolicited email message according to Twitter's TOS.
5. On Twitter, invite customers of the product you would recommend (but  don't) to answer the original question. Include a direct link to make it easy for them.
6. Enjoy your customers selling to your prospects. Stand out, dare not to fit in.

Oh, wait, what if the world recommends competing products? 

Relax, watch and learn from it. Maybe your product is not the only or not the best solution for this potential customer. How do we know after just a single question-answer?   

How could you make this work for you?

Explore examples behind the links that follow, (i) inspired by Twitter user @barconati who managed to find the asker of this question about an intranet wiki and twittered him directly, too, because mahalo.com has an elegant solution. They are  @answers on Twitter.

FWIW: My personal thanks to twitter.

You must be you to see the wish to change in the world.

... be the world you wish to see the change in?

... be the wish in the world to see you change?

(i) inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, whose famous quote actually reads You must be the change you wish to see in the world according to quotedb.com, but it may have been (gasp) changed.

More trustworthy, from wikiquote,
We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.

Need pivots for change? 

Change  -  yes, we can. 
Searched for a source to quote this from Barack Obama and found - that. Changed.
Enjoy the (gasp) video.

McKinsey do what they preach: they blog - with comments

On March 03, McKinsey Quarterly alerted its subscribers to their new interactive site, What Matters, less than two weeks after their article Six ways to make Web 2.0 work. The mailing included no embargo date, so I feel free to publish it here and add to their coverage.

  What I like about the new site, it offers commenting like most blogs.

However, they say "comments may be edited" (open image on right). I wish they actually mean "moderated" but am not sure, so I sent them feedback asking for clarification.

My take: If I post comments to appear under my name, I am fine with moderation, that is McKinsey may decide to post or not to post the entire comment as authored. All or nothing, no changes, please.

I would not agree to editing anyone's comments and still put their name to it without permission for the edited version. This could reduce the chance to correct a derailing perception to "counterposting" on a personal blog. 

Now I am looking forward to McKinsey's reply (promised within 72 business hours).

How do you see this?

Oh yes, we may find out by comments on this blog (or their absence) how McKinsey monitors the blogosphere.  I follow them on twitter, @McKQuarterly, so they may get it there, too.

Transparency is the new marketing

From Clay Shirky's article on McKinsey "What Matters", 2009-02-26

...

Intel was perhaps the first organization to discover that angry users could find each other to unite. Back in 1995, Intel’s newest chip, the Pentium, turned out to have a subtle bug. The company’s initial reaction was a refusal to replace the chips, reasoning that the problem affected very few users. This backfired. While the number of online users was tiny in those days, they all were computer owners. When Intel downplayed the flaw, users became livid and their blistering public attacks eventually forced an Intel offer to replace every chip. The resulting $40 million financial charge was far more than Intel would have spent with an upfront replacement offer.

We’re all Intels now, it seems. ...

I believe that leaders and leadership teams working together in a proper design will run the business more effectively than by hierarchical, command-and-control managing. But I can't prove that. And there are no models.

Bower, M., (1997). The Will to Lead. Page 7, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, ISBN 0-87584-758-7

Now, 11 years later, there are models! Clay Shirky describes one in his 2008 TED talk (context after the hyperjump).