I attended the inaugural meeting of the Portland Chapter of the Social Media Club Monday night at a downtown watering hole called The Agency. The expressed purpose of the meeting was to bring together THE people who will bring social media into the mainstream for Portland organizations – a very noble cause indeed.

There were just over 100 people in attendance – significantly more than the organizers had planned--a true testament to the interest in and awareness of social media and its potential/pending import to businesses and organizations. By a show of hands, the majority of attendees had heard of the event through Twitter and Facebook, with a distant third being an email newsletter PDXMindShare. This is NOT an insignificant data point.

This was definitely a gathering of the NEW MEDIA crowd in Portland—some looking to be involved and serve, some looking to self-promote, some looking for jobs, and some looking to be recognized (physically or intellectually). I give Chris Heuer, chairman and co-founder of the SMC, credit as he is obviously a smart guy. He laid out several key points regarding social media:

1) It provides a means and a venue to have a dialogue with customers/constituents
2) Organizations have to possess and develop:
a. Clear intent
b. Be transparent
c. Credibility
d. Authenticity
3) It’s about people and relationships – not transactions
4) Organizations must join and participate in “conversations”
5) Collaboration is not compromise.

All in all, I learned quite a bit about how the emerging technologies can impact companies and organizations alike.

However, I was quite amused by several incongruities of the whole event. First: why does the Social Media club need to have a physical meeting? I thought the media was supposed to allow us to establish communications and connections without the need for physical meetings. Second: I was highly amused that the Portland digerati spent 45 minutes futzing with the cables (as Harry Newton says: “It’s always the cables!”) in an effort to be able to project Chris’s PowerPoint presentation – which incidentally never happened. And lastly, a comment for Chris: when establishing a “dialogue” – remember it is a two way conversation. I’d hate to see you accused of practicing “do as I say, not as I do.”

You know the feeling. The butterflies in your stomach; the goose bumps; the quickening heart rate; the unintentional smile that you can’t hide, even if you wanted to. This feeling, this rush of excitement, is in many ways, the body’s way of preparing for life’s challenges, and I would argue, a powerful element of success. But the question is, when it isn’t there, when your body doesn’t naturally react to a situation with a racing heart and sweaty armpits, can it be manufactured? From my experience, yes, it most certainly can. In fact, it MUST be to continue achieving new goals.

I am a runner. I like to run organized races in my free time. There are many reasons this has become my passion, but first and foremost, the races are exciting. I feel that spark. The first time I ran a marathon, I was on a natural high most of the way through the race. It was new and exciting. It was like my first date with this intriguing sport. I didn’t even use an iPod. I just ran. I felt goose bumps as I passed each mile marker. I smiled at the crowd. I was on cloud 9 the whole time. So, I entered my second race and expected the same results, but as you would imagine, the spark wasn’t quite as strong. It faded after about the first mile and I realized that I was going to have to manufacture this feeling somehow, in order to complete this race. Then it hit me, the finish line. My singular goal; My one focus. I wanted to achieve that goal. The spark came back. When I lost it, I let Eminem or Jay Z or The Killers yell it into my ear, “keep going. you want to cross that finish line.” And I did. I wanted it. And I achieved it.

Bottom line – there are moments in life when you are going to feel the spark. Run with it, embrace it and use it to achieve your goals. And for all of the other moments in life when it doesn’t magically happen, create it by refocusing on your singular goal. It’s infectious. Just watch what happens when you create the spark in others. It comes right back to you, until it creates a fire, and you achieve something amazing together.

I used to teach a sales training class where I posed the question: “How many of you are being taken for granted in your current job?” Invariably, every hand in the room would go up, there would be exasperated sighs, snide comments and then the dark humor interpretation of the three letters of the company acronym. My response was always the same: “Oh, really?”

Let’s talk about some of the people we take for granted. When we pull a gallon of milk from the cooler at Safeway, we are taking a lot of people for granted: the farmer, the milk collection truck driver, the pasteurizer, the bottling plant, the delivery truck driver, the milk cooler repairman, the stockperson, and the store manager—to name a few. All of these people have specific roles in our lives, and we have become accustomed TO taking them for granted. Our health depends on it.

When we enter an airplane, we take for granted: the airplane assembly people, the FAA inspectors, the air traffic controllers, the mechanics, the fuel truck driver, the load managers, the flight attendants and the pilots. The 153 passengers on USAirways Flight had taken Captain Chesley Sullenberger for granted as they boarded the plane; they probably don’t anymore. What they took for granted was that he knew his stuff, had spent time in the simulators, and was up on his certifications.

As salespeople, we are responsible for the revenue of a company—we move the economy. On average 20 employees, and 20 family dependents rely on what we do for their livelihood. They take for granted that we: know our stuff, have practiced our sales pitches, are calling on the right people, have our messaging straight, and most importantly, we make our calls.

So the key question is not “are we being taken for granted”, it is: CAN we be taken for granted?

Let me know if you are being taken for granted and why.

I have been taught that a key aspect of leadership is taking responsibility. I have been completely dismayed over the last several decades at the complete and abject denial of personal responsibility.

This erosion has been evident in our leaders through statements such as: “I don’t recall…” (Ed Meese), “Mistakes were made….” (Ronald Regan), “I don’t involve myself in that level of detail….” (Jeff Skilling) and, “It depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is….” (Bill Clinton).

A true leader steps up and accepts and owns responsibility for their actions and the actions of their subordinates. This is an absolute in my book. Not only is it the RIGHT thing to do; it is amazing how quickly a situation can be defused. Most people are very forgiving of someone who owns up to their responsibilities and mistakes.

Our new President displayed his true leadership with how he handled the Tom Daschle withdrawal from the nomination for a Cabinet position. President Obama was not responsible for Daschle’s malfeasance with his tax payments, nor did President Obama conduct the vetting process. But, it was his pick and it is his administration.

He stepped up and owned the process and the outcome. Way to go! It is about time we have true leaders.

Sometimes, there is a moment of panic. One of those times could very easily have been in early October when it became glaringly apparent that this was not just a “market correction”; but, was actually a full blown recession. We were just beginning our second half, and we were on a tear having grown 60%+ half on half with the previous year. What to do? What to do?

First things first: DON’T PANIC. These are the exact words I used with the team. We then devised a very simple strategy: let’s talk with our customers. Nice to know we were right; this is what Seth Godin prescribes to increase sales during these times.

We proactively contacted all of our customers and asked them: “How can we help you through these times?” It is (however it shouldn’t be) amazing how effective this was. This approach strengthened our relationships, and actually our business continues to grow. This is what I believe true partnership is about – a good partner is supportive in good times as well as bad. Our customers are the reason we exist; we are here to serve them.

Thank you for the opportunity.

We, everyone working in software, work now with individuals who are from different parts of the world. We communicate now over email and instant messenger with vendors, co-workers and customers whom we have not met in person yet and may never meet some of them in person. There are many challenges in this environment. How can I learn about a person or group from a different culture, from a different way of living, who work-from-home, work late night, work off-shore, etc? How do I communicate about myself to persons from these groups? Can I ever master information about any or all of these? What if I learn 5 different languages? I would like to share with you a real event in this post that relates to these thoughts. My recommendation: always ask explicit questions and act explicitly when you are in doubt; especially when you think you are trying to help in a different environment.

This happened when one of the IT consultants working in software industry travelled on a business trip. It was the first trip ever for that person outside the country. Like every other industry, I think this has been happening a lot now for people from all corners of the world on IT missions: sell software, develop software, deploy software, support software, etc. After a long business day in a new country, the consultant went out exploring the city in the evening. There was a restaurant with options for dining in or taking out the dinner home. The consultant went inside and tried to understand the menu and takeout orders.

The consultant found that the restaurant served dogs. The consultant has dogs as pets and was shocked. Well, shocked is an understatement. People were ordering dogs that with the intent on cooking them at home. The consultant wanted to save a few dogs and ordered two dogs to take home. Then an idea flashed in the consultant’s mind and he checked his wallet. Called the waiter and calculated and found that there was enough cash in his wallet for 10 dogs. Changed the order, included few puppies and the count was changed to 10 dogs instead of 2. Started thinking about how to fly the 10 dogs back home and keep a few at home and present the rest as gifts to friends. After some time, the waiter returned with the fulfilled order. All 10 dogs silenced permanently and packed in a large takeout box. That was how the restaurant understood the order. The consultant was devastated. Communicating intention of the buyer was missed. How many of us believe that language is not the barrier when we want to show our love for dogs? If language was not a barrier in this event, why should it be in other situations?

Here is my explicit question: what was the latest challenge you faced when working with people whose native language is not your strength? If readers have communicated successfully or faced problems in a culturally different environment than the ones they familiar with, I would like to hear.

As we migrated to Microsoft SharePoint 2007 this last year, there were some obvious pain points.  It is a lot of work migrating content from one system to another. Even though we were only moving to a newer version of the same program, it had a lot of new features we had to learn.  Making this change also gave us the opportunity to work in improvements to our “Dewey Decimal System” for our library structures. 

I now have even greater respect for librarians that have to perpetually give order to the unordered universe of human thought and endeavor in trying to make a library and card catalog practical.  We are facing many similar issues.  It is like a music collector or music writer trying to describe or categorize a type of music – how to define a genre?  What if the music fits more than one genre? How many sub-genres are acceptable?  Do you put a song (i.e. piece of content) into more than one genre or do you create a new genre that encapsulates both?  Or maybe you add two or more genres to the song, giving it more than one ‘genre’ value it can be filtered by.

Ok, so that doesn’t sound too hard.  But how do you keep the library from breaking when it grows exponentially?

Metadata and filters that are too specific can be too limiting.  The result is that you might as well hard code the asset into the template file.  But if the metadata is too vague (such as not having enough columns and values filled in), the content may pull into the wrong message.  We need to make sure we filter on enough unique values so that content remains accurate while the content libraries grow.  When working with this kind of complexity, it is easy to see why people can get doctorates in the field of ‘information science’.

It does take more set up time and more pre-planning to create these libraries in such a flexible fashion. But the long term payoff is well worth it.

I had the privilege of seeing and hearing Roger Ehrenberg, former “Wall Street guy” and former co-CEO of Monitor110, speak about the meteoric rise and fall of Monitor110. (See his presentation here.) I must say, it takes a mighty man to very candidly and publicly rate himself on what was a very public failure of a high-flying start-up.

Ehrenberg lists four reasons why Monitor110 failed:
1) Lack of a “buck stops here” leader
2) Too internally focused
3) Too much PR, too fast
4) Too much money.

Lisa P. and I compared notes on the presentation when we got back to Portland, and she urged me compare with this list to see how Prolifiq rates. So here it goes:

1) Lack of a “buck stops here” leader – Kirby, our Board Chair, and I have had many conversations about the management structure and style of Prolifiq; it is unique. The four officers of the firm (Neil, Hemingway, Jim and me) have all sat in the senior executive chair here at one time in the company’s history. The “change-outs” have been driven by the stage we are at, and what skill sets are needed at the time. I believe it says a lot about each of us, that we are able to cede control to the next leader without our egos getting in the way. This has led to a very collaborative management style among the officers/senior leadership team that others on the team may not truly understand or appreciate. What it also creates is a confrontational management style among the officers (and our teammates) where every idea or decision gets challenged; and rightfully so. In the end, it prevents dictatorial decision making; and all of the team rallies behind the decision/direction. I will say, it does take some patience to work in this environment. Overall grade: B-

2) Too internally focused – Prolifiq has never had the luxury of being internally focused. When we first conceived our messaging platform, we decided we should sell our idea to a particular, large company. We approached them and they bit. They bit hard; and they are still our largest customer. Their end-user requirements have been key drivers in the evolution of the platform. As a result, the entire Prolifiq team has developed a keen sense of listening to customer requirements as we evolve and grow. The only drawback to this is that customer requests come fast and furiously, and sometimes it feels like they can outpace our ability to keep up. This sometimes prevents us from focusing on our long-term strategies. Overall grade: A-

3) Too much PR, too fast – Lisa M., our PR firm, would say this is NOT our problem. She has been frustrated with me/us for years as I would not “let her off the leash” to tell our story publicly. One of our most impactful PR events was a magazine award that we instructed her NOT to pursue. She defied us and did it anyway, and our customer was honored with the top award. Go figure. We have stayed stealthy, not because of secrecy or humility, we just felt our money was best spent on our products and our people. It is only within the last 3 months that I have allowed Lisa P. and Lisa M. to do any kind of PR activities. Overall grade: A+

4) Too much money – this may seem anathema; but, yes you can have too much money (and conversely, you can have too little). I worked for a start-up during the “bubble” that had raised $52 million and had not achieved meaningful revenue. We got STUPID; we did stupid things; and,  the internal politics were stupefying. Prolifiq does not have this issue. We are angel funded. The entire board and management team are investors. We are not only managing our investor’s money; we are managing OUR money. We watch every expense. We build only what sells. We sell only that which helps our customers and rewards our shareholders. And, we are not over-valued. In 2005, our Board required that we prove the business model by being profitable and generating cash. We met this objective and then went on to further invest in the business. More is on the way. Overall grade: A+

Prolifiq was born during the aftermath of the 2000 bubble, and as a result, we are technologically bold, fiscally conservative. Sometimes our grasp exceeds our reach (meaning we do great things; however, not enough people know about us); sometimes we can be intimidated by big opportunities and approach them more humbly that we should; and, sometimes our growth is slower than our investors had hoped.

Our belief is that: 1) we elate our customers, 2) the most important thing is for us to survive to fight another day and, 3) our shareholders will be enriched by our continued execution. This philosophy has allowed us to weather two economic storms; and, allowed us to deliver 50%+ growth this year. The future is never certain; but, I am exhilarated by what I see for FY2009. It promises to be an amazing year, fraught with many challenges. I have faith in our philosophy and our team. We will continue to grow and prosper.

I am especially grateful for Roger Ehrenberg’s candid assessment of his own performance and for causing me to look in the mirror and assess our team’s performance. I am interested in your thoughts as you apply his filters to your business and to ours.

 

I’m old enough to remember the early days and excitement of 3-D movies and those funky-looking paper glasses handed out at the theater. I’m thinking maybe the original “Thirteen Ghosts” directed by William Castle in 1960, in which you could only see the ghosts on screen with the 3-D glasses, and were warned with an on-screen prompt and music.

Fast-forward almost 50 years to Super Bowl XLIII in High Definition on a 50” LCD flat panel with a group of friends from my same era. The special half-time gimmick is a Disney movie trailer broadcast with special effects that you need those same funky-looking paper glasses (albeit now with corporate sponsor logos printed) to view. Two of the guys remembered to pick up plenty of the free glasses for everyone.

Our host’s twenty-something daughter (both huge Steelers fans), who was out at another party with some friends viewing the game, came running in to the house at the beginning of the second quarter, and plopped down in a prime sofa spot to watch the rest of the game. She proclaims, “That other party was so lame – most of them were rooting for the Cardinals and they didn’t have any 3-D glasses like you guys”.

I may be just working too hard on the conversion to our new SaaS-based accounting system, but it made me think of Prolifiq, and our customers. We provide marketing and sales professionals with an easy way to put their best foot forward in communicating with customers, allow them to separate the signal from the noise, and really see how their messages (read “special effects”) are resonating with the audience, one-on-one. It’s like using 3-D glasses to see things you can’t see without them, and have some fun while you’re at it. The audience reactions may sound more like “I get it” or “I’m interested – tell me more”, instead of the “ooohs” and “aaahs” or scary shrieks in the theater seats, but you get the idea.

Make sure your next party isn’t lame – get the 3-D glasses.

The metaphor for our Content repository is aptly called a library.  In setting these up, we have to take the client company’s whole infrastructure into account.  We create a content library that is organized to grow and remain flexible.

It is like creating a Dewey Decimal System.  We have to categorize the type of content, who can access it, and finally what type of person will be the recipient.  We create a lot of metadata for this.  It can take a while to set up initially, but once it is running, it can be quite powerful.  It is rewarding seeing this functioning across various product lines or markets to pull in content that is still timely and relevant to the customer.

We can pull documents like PDFs, DOCs, and PowerPoint presentations.  We can pull in images and videos.   Pulling in text strings and HTML blocks means we can create more flexible and dynamic HTML templates.  This can help our efficiency quite a bit.  If we have to update a string across all templates for a client, we can just update the string once in the library instead of editing the text in each template file.  The same goes for updating hyperlinks. 

The power in this is especially noticeable when working to localize messages and content into different languages.  We can put all the localized content and text strings into SharePoint and then simply filter on the Language metadata column.  This means we can create one message that lets you choose the language and then all the content is rendered in that language.  All the XML & XHTML code is done just once, instead of creating XHTML files for each language.

It is easy to recognize the benefit of using these dynamic content library structures.  We see metadata being used every day – for search results when shopping online; metadata added by default to image, audio, and document files; and it is used in targeted ads.  When making a business case for a project, how much time and resources do you allocate to creating a robust metadata infrastructure?
Next up:  Feeding the Library – what happens when you feed the library lots of content?