Monthly Archives: October 2012

What does it mean to be social?

I guess Facebook is kind of important with over 1 billion users. But, did you see their first ad campaign? Are they overdoing it a little comparing themselves to a chair? Here’s a great cartoon about it from my favorite marketing cartoonist, Tom Fishburne.

I still know a lot of people who are not on the Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter and their lives go on. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like chairs. I also know a lot of people who are on Facebook who don’t seem like they are accomplishing much of anything. But I guess they are trying to redefine being social and I’m all for progress.

Then there’s enterprise social, or using private social tools inside the firewall. There are a lot of players in that market too but I’ve worked with NewsGator, who is doing a great job of making big companies more social. Sure, it’s easy if you have a great corporate headquarters where everyone sits and gets free snacks. But, what about everyone outside of corporate? Don’t you want your corporate marketing people and your remote sales people to be better connected? What about your global supply chain? How about that consumer insights person in Asia that just ran a test on a new product that you may never see? If you’d like to learn more about building a successful social workplace, check out NewsGator’s latest white paper

What about people who are actually social? In our new neighborhood, where we’re all new and trying to build a community? We do things like get together – you know, in person – every Thursday night. And last night, we were sitting in our living room minding our own business just after it got dark and our doorbell rang. The guard dog sprung up from the floor and ran to the door and I was expecting a desperate politician or a gutter salesman. I was pleasantly surprised to look down and see a little pumpkin container filled with candy and a note. The note encouraged us to make a copy and share a “boo” with two other neighbors. What a nice change from e-mail chain letters right? We’re doing it tonight, making copies, filling containers with candy and ringing doorbells. What about you? Are you social?

Katy Perry’s Parents

So, we all know Katy Perry right? She’s kind of a big deal. She did something in popular music that no one else has ever done – her first five hits from one album all went to number one. We just watched her new documentary, “Katy Perry – Part of Me” with our daughter this week. I loved it and am not ashamed that I laughed and cried and most importantly danced with my daughter and golden doodle. I read some other reviews of the film; professional movie critic Dana Stevens for Slate magazine wrote one of the crabbiest. I’m not sure what movie she saw. I guess you come to expect that professional critics are going to hate some of the stuff that you like right? Rotten tomatoes actually was 77% positive or “certified fresh” on the tomato meter, here’s a link to their page: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/katy_perry_part_of_me/ So, there you go, fair and balanced. I thought it was a fun movie about a weird girl with a dream and it showed the ups and downs of making it in the music business but sacrificing your personal life. Katy Perry’s music has drawn criticism for being obscene but I’ve got to say, she’s an adult and is writing songs about being an adult. It’s a parents’ job to manage the content that their kids consume, not the artist. Besides, Katy has a decent public reputation – no trouble with the law like many of her peers – so it’s not like she made this movie to spin her public image.

I’m not writing today to encourage you to buy or rent her new movie or download any of her songs, I’d like to comment about Katy Perry’s parents instead, Keith and Mary Hudson. You may have read about Katy’s upbringing in an evangelical Christian home with minister parents. If you watch the movie, you will get a taste of it as well. They were a little nuts – overprotective, overbearing, and sure that they were doing God’s work. Here’s the interesting part. Even with where her parents stand, they love their daughter. They thought that songs like “I kissed a girl and I liked it” and “Friday Night” were going to ruin their ministry and be a negative force on the world but guess what; they still love their daughter. Look at some other young celebrity’s parents with names like Lohan, Cyrus, Jackson and try to find love and support. The Hudson’s are parents that look at their daughter and openly disagree but they haven’t disowned her, they come to concerts. That surprised me and encouraged me to be a better parent. Our kids all have dreams right? Some of those dreams are long shots like playing in the NFL or becoming a pop star but that’s what dreams are, sometimes they are silly and improbable. How many of us had dreams like that and got no encouragement and support? Think what you will about Katy Perry and her success but here’s what I got out of it – there was a little girl that loved music who had parents that weren’t so sure but they loved her and her dreams came true.

How do you hire people?

There are lots of tools out there to help you hire people. But, let me ask you this – have we gotten better at hiring because of application management systems, standardized corporate assessment practices, and industrial psychologists? What about new social tools like Klout? Here’s an interesting article on how Klout recommends you consult their scoring system before making any hires and one man’s view of that:

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/29/klout-would-like-potential-employers-to-consider-your-score-before-hiring-you-and-thats-stupid/ 

I have to admit, I signed up for Klout and got all wound up about it and realized my score was 10 on a scale that goes to 100. That’s not great but I’m going to play the game and see if my score improves. It may even get better with this blog post and your reaction to it.

I have some personal experience with industrial psychologists, don’t we all? A friend of mine recently spent a whole day being tortured by pre-work, online assessments, a series of personality and intellectual tests under time duress and then role plays that included responding to an e-mail box full of e-mails and acting out a live scenario. Really? I think I’d rather just pay for therapy so I’d get something out of it.

This reminds me of one of my favorite movies – Tommy Boy. Do you remember the scene where Tommy (Chris Farley) was trying to make a sale using an old joke of his dad’s? His prospect said that he’d like to get a look at the new brake pad line before making a decision about buying break pads. Tommy was trying to overcome this obstacle with “when you’re trying to buy a good steak, do you stick your head up a bull’s ass or would you rather just take the butcher’s word for it?” but instead I think he suggested that his prospect stick his head up a butcher’s ass and there wasn’t any steak involved. I laughed until I cried. Eventually, he found his own style and was successful at influencing people using that style, not trying to be someone else.

I was in a meeting recently where two different senior people said that their interviewing style drives their HR people crazy but they focus on “intellectual curiosity” and have different ways of getting there. Their focus is on trying to get to know the person and how they think, not asking a bunch of questions about problem solving ability and conflict management. My favorite interviewing strategy is from Zappos.com. They are quite seriously looking for weirdness and trying to harness creativity to deliver great customer service.  They have some very different interview questions like “What’s your theme song? When you enter a room, what song should be playing?” Mine is probably “Small Town” by John Mellencamp. Why don’t we trust people to hire people anymore? Isn’t that how it used to be done when people spent an entire career at one company? I’d hire Chris Farley if he were still around.