Q and A: Groupthink

Can we teach ourselves to think ahead; to think beyond our colleagues? Can we know enough that we are conscious of the daily progress of concurrent explorer actively working on new ideas?

My answer at this time is, “no.” We actively as individuals – in disjointed unison – work almost tirelessly on ideas that others are concurrently exploring, evaluating, solving, manufacturing etc. It is also my belief that other factors exist that do allow us to get ahead of mysteriously competitive counterparts if we work diligently. Time-to-market is necessity.

Internet: "propel the Internet forward”

Disclaimer: This is in response to an email that I received from someone in my social/political network. He has articulated several interests and ideas to me recently. This is more or less my response. In the beginning this article is about exploring the production of more content where I antagonize if this is a good idea without a more complete focus or reason. I then go on and open the doors to explore evolution of the web, the indexing of the web, advertising, consumer purchasing, ethics and business decisions. In this articles current state of chaos it is, what I believe to be information rich, but discontinguous and random. It is abstract and ab-scure (obscure) but it is the foundation for some very interesting research. It is my starting place and hopefully will make for some good discussion.

Business Writing: "Principles of composition” (Strunk and White).

I have been writing since I was very young, we all have.  It has taken me since I was very young to become, at my best, an acceptable writer. For years I have struggles with long perplexing sentences, comma usage and poor organization.  Sometimes I think it is not because I don’t know the rules and constructs of the English language but instead it is that thoughts rush-to and pound tirelessly at the exits of my mind. I literally cannot get ideas from my thoughts, the clouds in my head, to paper fast enough. As a result my papers, that seemed so beautifully composed in my mind, fall apart for myriads of reasons like the Roman Empire.

Mr. Strunk and Mr. White fell into my life when I started college.  A teacher that I admire very much, Donald Cecil, a professor at the University of Alaska Southeast gave me his copy of “The Elements of Style” that he had in college.  I read little snippets from it at convenient times and every time I pick it up I am astounded at how dense it is.  They have managed to boil down textbooks of information describing the English language into just a few less then 100 pages. I have to thank them for this marvelous work and for helping me write more concisely. 

Principal 17 is titled, “Omit needless words.”  I haven’t really caught on to this yet but the concept grows on me.  The reason that I am discussing writing today is because it is your most powerful tool in negotiating and understanding business transactions and your relationship with clients.

Clean, clear and concise writing is growingly important as we continue to increase how we use email, instant messaging, and increase our participation in on line social networks. I advise anybody and everybody to begin understanding the language they use — even programmers can benefit from a book like “The Elements of Style.”

Business: The hard determinism axiom of compensation

So many of our philosophical discussions occur at random times and often for me with my girlfriend Stacy.  Stacy is amazing at remembering terminology and concepts as we learned the academically, recalling them and applying them in our philosophical discussions whereas my strengths often come from observations, my experience, common sense and what I believe is my ability to recognize abstract patterns and how they relate. 

This is of course very rough thinking and it is more contemplative then anything, but I believe that there are some sound arguments that compensation or human value is determined by a few properties of a person, the trust or integrity of that person compared to competitors, the expanse of ones social network, and the skills which they are being compensated for.

My compensation axiom would state that,

“A person with a known skill and an expansive direct and indirect social network in which they have demonstrated integrity will reap the benefits of a higher compensation relative to the demand of their skill.”

This came about after determining through recognition that corporate executives are paid significant compensations for who they are, what they do, and who they know.  It is my belief that people do not understand fully why these individuals are compensated in the way that they are.  This may in fact be an act at defending my future, but I believe that it is actually related more to integrity and it’s confirmation through the size and respect of one’s social network. 

At this time I haven’t quite developed a complete philosophical argument but I have a example that I believe is adequate for now that supports the axiom stated above.

A person named Joe of company X is very social and has spent years focused on his field while building his social network.  As Joe demonstrated success in his skill to his social network his network became more competitive by compensating Joe more for Joe’s time — though, why does Joe of company X have command a higher price that Sam of the competing company? It is because Joe has demonstrated a 100% integrity over years to his social network.  This is phantom value, it is value that exists that isn’t quantifiable but results in a compensation that has a yield that is either a multiplier or exponentially higher then Sam who has had a few holes shot into his integrity over the years. Now why wouldn’t a Pete, who has more skills, and a very small social network not be able to command the same levels of compensation?  It is assumed that a persons integrity to deliver, if proven historically, is more important then having more skills.

If there is anybody who wants to help me create a more formal proof of this axiom I would greatly appreciate, I will probably revisit this in a couple months.  Thanks for reading my work and leaving your comments.

—

See “Hard Determinism“ (Wikipedia).

technorati tags:Blogging, Business, Money, Compensation, Philosophy, Axioms, Social, Networks, People

Marketing and PR: The tight social networks anomaly

Alaska’s captial city is RESISTENT to TRADITIONAL MARKETING AND ADVERTSING as a mainstream method for connecting with the consumer, is your city or community like this, maybe there are some tips in here for maximizing your market share through INTEGRATING into THE COMMUNITIES TIGHT SOCIAL NETWORK.

Hansen Gress is based in Juneau, Alaska (economics, go “Juneau“) and through a painful process of trial and error I have discovered that traditional marketing mixes that are known to be effective in other communities do not work in Juneau, Alaska’s capital city.

When we incorporated in 2005 we did what many businesses do, pull advertising, produce marketing materials, cold calls etc. We rapidly learned that we weren’t receiving as much recognition as I felt like we should have. Hansen Gress was wasting money. To correct this I severed all previous efforts at marketing and advertising and even though we may have had the perfect marketing mix in almost any other community — the prices, promotions, placements, and rock solid products (4P’s) we couldn’t stir up any interest in the community. To quantify how bad it was I would spend $1000 for every $45 dollars earned. Essentially 22:1 earning ratio, a total loss. 

That is when I decided that if Hansen Gress was going to succeed I needed to “sell the business” personally.  I needed to become part of the community and start utilizing the social networks that I had been building my entire life.

I started finding people who were “the right people” and those who like to generate “hype” and “buzz” and that people flock to for advice. I learned about the people and their businesses and as a result of doing that they would develop a strong trust and rapport with me and indirectly Hansen Gress.  Maybe it was because I was more tangible then a product on a piece of marketing collateral, maybe it was because I was just a good sales person, or maybe it was because I was the product.  I was building the brand, “Hansen Gress.”  Now when companies were ready to do business they knew to come to Hansen Gress, they knew to come to me. 

We became heavily involved in the community and primarily the Juneau Chamber of Commerce, we knew that the Chamber represented most anybody who was anybody in Juneau since the organization had been around since about 1924. The people who have been involved in the Chamber are actively involved and are the same people who are determining the future health of the City and Borough of Juneau.  I noticed that these individuals, these business men and women don’t do it alone, they do it as a very tight social network and “the network” is the medium for educating people, creating ideas, motivating people to progress and catalyzing change.

“The network” as I call it is composed of a mix of old-Juneau, middle-aged-Juneau, current and past politicians, politically involved parties from across the State, and individuals that have been integrated into the community through non-profits by providing support services.  There was a complete absence of youth involvement in the Chamber of Commerce and that was my entry way into the business world.  By regularly attending all Chamber functions it became very easy for me to become readily recognized as a young, motivated, entrepreneur that had built a successful enterprise with very little assistance from the Community.  Now that I had the attention or at least drawn the curiosity of the Chamber it was easy to then become a strand in “the network’s” social fabric, but how?

It is as easy as this: lay in bed before a Chamber meeting and focus purely on motivating people like yourself; after you have recognized your lever, leverage it.  For me it was my age, I was able to then come out and promote my peers by offering a little bit of money to join the Chamber of Commerce so they would have a voice in the future of Juneau.  This action right here was a turning point for my business, this confirmed my integrity and bought the trust that was necessary to then become involved with the Board of Directors and Committees of the Chamber and later become a Board Member where I would be able to continue to prove myself and earn the trust and respect of my peers in the tight social network of Juneau, Alaska.

By becoming a strand in the social fabric of Juneau’s business community we were able to command the price, educate people of the value, build the brand and turn the flywheel.  It has continued to deliver amazing, high quality clients and the respect of the community.  This is something that you can do, if you find yourself in a community that you feel is resistant or not responsive to advertising and traditional marketing use a creative PR method to access your clients, then let them do the work, let the social networks create trust in you and your product or service.  Let the people do your selling so you can work on your core focus, your business and your product or service.

Please post any feedback, questions or comments.

technorati tags:Marketing, PR