In late October we started looking at how we create content for social media. Making a list of all the places we were posting was a wake up call. It was taking a huge amount of effort, and the conversation was scattered all over the place.

As our product offers have grown we thought it would be easier to break off our newest work and put it on a separate website. I post my artwork on my own blog.

The only way I can keep up with it is if nothing happens. No unexpected things that need attention. Those weeks are rare. So I end up working way too many hours trying to keep up.

What sucks up the time?

I need to redesign the way I relate to social media. While it might be ‘better’ to have separate parts of the business with it’s own special messages and branding, I am clear I can’t keep that up. We are too small a company to sustain it.

I enjoy searching out resources and pointing them out to my networks. It can be a slippery slope. I can justify aimless internet wandering as searching for content.

I think of myself as an artist, but in reality I spend most of my time writing. Is there a way I can get more balance between the visual and verbal?

Consolidating and Restructuring

I’m restructuring how our social media and communication happens. I’ve merged newsletter lists, so I am sending out one every two weeks to everybody. We are redesigning our webpages and consolidating our blogs.

We’re deep in the design cave, so you won’t see as many posts as usual.

I’ve found myself trying to follow advice of social media and marketing experts. Only thing is when I do there is no time to do all the other things I need to do to keep the whole business operating. I’m rethinking what sustainable practices look like for MY business. Looking at the metrics. What actually drives revenue? And what are things that might feel good, but don’t help move the business forward?

Hope we’ll uncover answers in the coming weeks……

Our company, VisualsSpeak is six years old this week.

Christine, our beloved commander in chief and goddess of all things visual, is celebrating her 51st birthday today and we want to include you in the 51 merriment.

51% off for 51 hours to celebrate 51 years

The 51-hour celebration ends on Thursday September 8, 2011 at Midnight PDT, so order while you are thinking about it!

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Purchase the most versatile and flexible facilitation tool anywhere for 51% off! ($208.25 after discount) Use coupon code: 51event

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NPR had a segment recently, Think You’re An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It’s Unlikely

The point is that the idea of learning styles does not hold up in scientific studies. In so far as individual learners having a style that serves them best, or that they need in order to learn. What does hold up, is delivering learning in a variety of ways.

I’m torn when I read things like this. Yes, I can learn from traditional lectures. In order to do so, I have to write things down. I may never look at it again, but it greatly increases my ability to remember it. That sure feels like I have a need to make things visual. So I’d need to see more about what they were looking at in the studies before I completely abandon the idea of learning styles.

As a learning designer, I absolutely think all learning should include as much delivery and engagement variety as possible. Even though I create visually based tools, the engagement also uses verbal and kinesthetic elements. The strength does not merely rest in the visual, but in the flexing between the various modalities.

Ah, if one could be a leader by just experiencing goodness and light. If every team member were Mary Poppins and every CEO were Dumbledore. If a lively happy tune were played every time the leader entered a room.

Well, that last one might get old pretty fast. Although the President seems to enjoy it (Bill Clinton once said it was the hardest thing to get used to after being president — he kept waiting for the music to start when he’d get someplace!).

Of course, none of these things are reality. In fact, often the measure of a good leader is more what s/he does when times are difficult than when times are good and the livin’ is easy.

Enter the Mensch

Mensch is a Yiddish word that, loosely, translates to a “real man” or a “stand-up guy.” But I mean it in a gender-neutral sense. A leader who scores high on the mensch factor is one who is upfront, honest about bad news or negative tidings, and who is direct. That’s not an easy skill to acquire, and it’s easy to slip up.

The most common way that leaders lose mensch points is through avoidance. And technology helps with this quite a bit. Have a bit of bad news? Sure, you probably should tell someone face-to-face, but why not just send an e-mail? After all, that means there’s a record of it, and the recipient can always refer back to it. Or maybe, a bit sneakier, call the person after hours and hope to leave a voice mail message. Either way, it’s the same thing: avoiding the issue.

Another method of building up a mensch deficit is through mealymouthing. By this, I mean sugar-coating something to the point that it doesn’t mean anything anymore. So if a leader is trying to address a performance problem, the message “Your work isn’t working because of X, Y, and Z” becomes “This approach may not be the best,” which then becomes “As you work, you might think about some other ways, too” which then becomes “Be sure to be thoughtful about your approach.” By the time you complete the coating, it’s all sugar and no content.

The Band-Aid Theory

Sometimes, it’s like the best way to get a Band-Aid removed: you just have to rip it off. Yes, it may sting for a few moments, but then it’s done and you can move on. It’s just the same thing with menschy leaders. They know that the news or feedback or content is important and that people need to know. So they deliver the information. That’s just how it’s done. And then it’s done.

Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean being rude, or being abusive. Those are on the other end of the spectrum, and also lose you points on the mensch factor. People who are accused of being too abrasive or rude will sometimes justify their actions by saying they “just give it to ‘em straight with no sugar-coating,” but that’s not really true. Those folks are into shock therapy, and that’s rarely the right approach.

Instead — and it’s a really novel concept — approach the conversation on a person-to-person basis. Be firm, be direct, but be kind. Those aren’t mutually exclusive characteristics.

And they’re just what you need to be a real mensch of a leader.

In the current issue of the Harvard Business Review, a team of folks wrote a piece about Why Fair Bosses Fall Behind. It is, for the most part, an interesting and well-sourced read.

In brief, the authors’ position is that two otherwise equivalent managers will be seen differently if one is “demanding and occasionally abrasive” and the other is respectful. The latter may be more admired (especially by members of her team), but the former will be seen as more powerful — and will be more likely to get picked for a top spot.

Of course, in the anecdotal example that the authors cite (they also incorporate some more scientifically-conducted experimental data), the end result is no good: the more “powerful” person gets promoted to the top spot, a bunch of promising executives that were mentees of the respectful manager left, and the powerful big boss gets forced out by the company’s board a few years later.

Throwing an Elbow on National TV

It may be an apocryphal story, but the legend is that basketball player Bill Russell — an amazing talent on the court — was having lots of trouble in the paint because he didn’t want to throw an elbow. He was, in our analogy, the respectful manager. So the team’s owner, Red Auerbach, sat him down and told him to throw the elbow — just once — on national TV.

So that’s what Russell did. And it was an elbow seen around the world — Russell got left alone after that. It only took one.

In the HBR article, one of the experiments cited showed that participants’ opinions about who was more powerful, the respectful or the abrasive, were shaped by only a single incident. They saw one being respectful, the other being abrasive, then “worked for them” each displaying respectful behaviors. Yet the one-time abrasive manager was rated higher.

Impressions Count

So perhaps the moral of the story is that it’s useful to have some balance — an occasional edge along with a more rational and supportive center. Or maybe it’s that a little theater can be helpful when leading teams.

Either way, consider the impression you leave on others around you. Working toward the longer-term success of being respectful and kind may be more difficult than surrendering to a baser instinct to be abrasive, but it will certainly pay off in the end.

It was a week ago that Cy Twombly died. If you’re not familiar with Twombly, a 20th-century artist who used painting and drawing, along with scratches and etches, to make his art, it’s worth taking a minute to look him up. The evolution of his work is fascinating.

So is the evolution of the reception to his work.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, critical reception was, to put it mildly, not welcoming. As in some other fields, critics took Twombly to task not only for the perceived quality and artistry of his pieces, but also for how he lived. He decided to move to Italy when the art world was fleeing The Boot in droves. The horror!

But Twombly’s style, with graffiti scrawls and mixed techniques, was always something a bit different. A risk. And for those initial decades, it seemed to many that the risks just didn’t pay off. It remains unclear what the artist thought, as he virtually never wrote or talked about his own work or its critical reception. Given that he iconoclastically kept painting, however, one imagines that he was relatively unfazed.

Fast forward to the late 1980s. Cy Twombly is around 60, and has been an artist for decades. And people begin to ramp up their appreciation. Museums and galleries open wings to showcase his work. His paintings begin selling for $1 million and up at auction. And the tide has turned.

The Virtue of Patience

It’s certainly an object lesson in the virtue of patience. But also the value of pursuing a passion despite the external voices telling you that your work isn’t worthy.

What’s more, the life and experiences of Cy Twombly speak to the shifting sands of public opinion. What is considered passe or superfluous or tedious or ugly today may be the aesthete’s masterpiece of tomorrow. Or the Next Big Thing, to use the language of tech innovation.

Popular culture seems to love the idea of an Overnight Sensation. As far back as the myths of anonymous girls being discovered right off the bus at Schwab’s drugstore in Los Angeles — and probably back to ancient times! — the idea of being plucked from obscurity to fame and fortune is a collective fantasy.

But the reality, as proven by the life and work of Cy Twombly, is much different. Persistence, effort, some selective listening to the voices around you, and passion — not necessarily in that order — are much more likely to get you where you want to be. A little “right place, right time” doesn’t hurt, either. But it’s never enough without all the preparation that comes beforehand.

The most costly disruptions always happen when something we take completely for granted stops working for a minute.

Or so says Aaron Sorkin, writing for fictional president Jed Bartlet on TV’s The West Wing. And upon reflection, that’s probably true. If water service just stopped altogether, for instance, or (as in the case of the fictional TV episode) there’s a US outbreak of mad cow disease that threatens the nation’s beef supply.

But perhaps a corollary to that is that the most significant innovations are those that alter things we take completely for granted. Yet it seems like the pace of these innovations is pretty slow.

Open Wide

As an example, think of your teeth. Good practice in taking care of your teeth involves taking a stick, slathering some pasty substance on it, and jabbing it in and out of your mouth. Multiple times a day! And more or less, that hasn’t changed in 5000 years!

In an age where pills can unclog blood vessels, robots can clean our carpets, and lasers can polish surfaces, doesn’t it seem like there could be an innovation in this department, too? And if such an innovation came along, think of the worldwide ramifications!

What’s Next?

To come up with a new form of cleaning teeth takes some degree of knowledge and skill in dentistry, of course. But we each have our own areas of skill and experience, and surely we could apply those to the banalities and ubiquities of our lives.

The other prerequisite for such an innovation, though, is something we all can do — and something we all too rarely do. And that is observe. Really observe. As I sit here writing this, I am noticing the surface of my work table, the swivel mechanism of my chair, the hum of the lights and computer fans. I’m seeing how the curtains wrinkle at the bottom and how, if I listen hard, I can barely hear some birds chirping outside. Each of these sensory experiences (and there are many more) could be opportunities for innovation.

Observation is the foundation for innovation. So why not see what you can see?

As consumers, we want what we want. Many successful companies that sell to consumers have capitalized on that very thing. Take, for instance, Burger King’s “Have It Your Way.” Or the way Subway and Chipotle will each make your food exactly how you want it while you watch. All of these are great examples of leveraging customer choice. (All are also food examples — can you tell it’s almost time for lunch?)

Some authors have even extended this logic to people seeking work. Elizabeth Wagele and Ingrid Stabb wrote a book on how to find the perfect career based on your personality, as one example of many. (Recently, Wagele has been following it up with posts on the Psychology Today blog.)

Check It At The Office Door

So why, then, are we so often forced to abandon choice when we become employees? Why do managers of companies and organizations large and small so often expect that staffers will be happy when all the meaningful occupational choices are given to them?

It is all too frequent that employees in the workplace begin to feel marginalized — out of the loop and stuck in a rut, to combine two apt metaphors. This can stem from a fundamental lack of choice. (It can also stem from actually keeping people uninformed or outside of key decisionmaking processes, but that’s a different post topic.)

One of the amazing things that we’ve witnessed when teams use the VisualsSpeak facilitation processes is that previously marginalized team members start to emerge. They often bring new ideas and new perspectives that were simply swept off to the side before. Sometimes, after feeling constrained at work for so long, people just shut down and stop offering new insights. Effective facilitation starts to reverse that effect.

Making It Better

Of course, sessions with tools like the VisualsSpeak team-building or leadership development sets are only one component of empowering the workforce.

Another good place to start is a little empathy. Put yourself in the place of each member of your team. How would you feel in that position? What would you want to see change? Certainly, people react differently to the same situation, so it’s important to verify your reactions with the team members, but it’s a helpful launching point.

Then start a dialogue — sometimes, even just getting the conversation going will relieve some of the pent-up frustration about people’s roles and their confinement. (Again, we have tools to help that.)

Regardless of how or where you begin, begin. If you have people working on your team and you can increase their choice and their satisfaction even a bit, you’ll see a measurable increase in both productivity and longevity. And that’s certainly worth it!

Happy solstice day!

For those of you playing along at home, it’s the summer solstice today (or, for those of you south of the Equator, the winter solstice). It’s one of two times a year when the “sun stands still” (the meaning of ‘solstice’). It’s the point where the Earth is most tilted toward the sun.

For most of us, that means it’s around the longest day of the year — at least in terms of daylight. It’s also when some people consider summer has really begun. For those using a solar calendar (as some traditional East Asian calendars are), it really is the beginning of a new season.

Have a Dance!

Culturally, it’s an important time of year for many. Several Native American tribes have ritual dances and celebrations for the solstice. (If you’ve never read about the Sioux version of this celebration, it’s worth a little looking.) Some even think that Stonehenge was constructed as a sort of solstice alarm clock — to know when to celebrate!

So this fine solstice day, why not take a few minutes to cut a rug, or sit and reflect, or walk through a field, or patronize a farmer’s market?

Carpe solstice!

I usually lead a fairly busy life. Chances are, you’re pretty busy, too. So why doesn’t it always feel like we’re getting lots done?

Often, it can be the difference between motion and progress. But how do we get stuck in these ruts, and how do we get out again?

Administrivia

There’s overhead to almost everything we do. Hassles. Whether it’s something mundane like getting Girl Scout Cookies (where the overhead may include getting cash from an ATM or finding a checkbook — and certainly finding a Girl Scout) or something significant, like having a wedding (which is nearly overrun with administrivia — or Highly Important Decisions, depending on whom you ask).

Either way, there’s detail. Heaped on the details of everyday life. Like laundry. Groceries. And so on.

One way to avoid spending all your time on administrivia is to structure it. Contain the time you give over to it. So if you’re spending lots of time on personal administrivia, constrain it to one weekend day and two hours two weeknights a week. Or whatever works. But move from it being an ad hoc draw on your time to a structured one, and you can regain some bandwidth.

SImilarly, at work, there’s such minutiae everywhere. Most common is the siren call of e-mail. The same advice applies — set aside blocks of time to attend to it all, and when it’s not in that block, don’t do it. If you get distracted by the notification that new messages (whether they’re tweets, e-mails, or whatever) are coming in, then quit the program and come back once an hour for 5 minutes. Or whatever schedule works for you.

Spending Time on What’s Important

This has been covered in other blog posts, but an easy way to fall into the motion/progress trap is to spend too much time on what’s not really important. This can often be triggered by Shiny New Thing syndrome. SNT syndrome is where one gets overtaken with what’s new, whether or not it’s important.

For example, take a small crafts business that is just getting up and running. They’re relying on sites like 1stdibs and others to market their wares, and they enable people to pay with PayPal. Ahhh…but just last week, there was an announcement of a nifty new way for people to use their credit cards and you can swipe them with your smartphone. So why not spend some time looking into that and playing around with it? It might be useful sometime in the future.

Why not? Because it’s motion, not progress. Is is important now? Will it move the overall objectives ahead today? If not, move along; there’s nothing to see here. When it comes time to re-assess payment options, it won’t have gone anywhere.

A Time-Study Man

There’s a great song in the Adler and Ross musical, “The Pajama Game” called “Time-Study Man.” It’s a song of braggadocio where a key character talks about how he saves time all day long. (One of his methods includes shaving each morning in bed, an act of messy dedication to the clock.) And although the song is farcical, the underlying ethic isn’t such a bad one.

Think efficiency while you’re working. Train a small piece of your brain to consider how you could be doing your current task faster. Over time as you build that muscle, you’ll be able to increase the pace of what you’re doing, too.

Between compartmentalizing administrivia, focusing on what’s important, and always considering efficiencies, your level of progress may double or more — with as much (or even less) motion. Whatever will you do with your new free time!?