When you have come to the edge of all light that you know and are about to drop off into the darkness of the unknown, Faith is knowing One of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.
[ by Patrick Overton, author and poet via thedailylove.com ]
Trudging my way through my inbox this morning, I encountered an email newsletter product update announcement that I actually enjoyed reading. The message didn’t even matter. The experience was everything. Sadly, this joy was an unexpected sensation.
In theory, there is no dfference in time or cost for good communication over poor communication. One way or the other, you are simply typing words and paragraphs. The distinction arises from the willingness to execute with intention and purpose.
These intentional form and format decisions caught (and kept) my attention:
Maybe someday I’ll come back and share more thoughts on each of these points.
“Well, it’s mostly just starting with an idea and then putting in a whole lot of hard work. It’s not really more than that.
[ Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno via the99percent.com ]
[ via Albert Einstein ]
The sea cleanses me with its noise and lays a rhythm upon everything in me that is disturbed and confused.
[ via Rainer Maria Rilke ]
Like any reasonable thinking human, the topic of most interest to me is myself. But, I guess it is that understanding of my own ego that makes all of this “being human” think work? With that in mind, I will redirect my attention towards my own little obsession with understanding others focus on themselves. Which describes my my new found interest in studying influence, motivation, and whatever that other fancy word is for “what makes people do the things they do.” I am currently naive enough to believe the way to change the world, and make it a better place, is to master the art and science of influence.
This is why gaming theory is so interesting to me right now. For better or worse, social gaming has discovered a way to drive people to do things that are not necessarily in their best interest (a.k.a. give someone else money for no tangible ROI) i.e. spend $3 on a “flower” that is nothing more than 2k bits of completely un-unique data.
What if some of the lessons learned by these companies could be applied to social-change and make the world a better place? What if we could derive ways to inspire people to do something else that is not necessarily in their best interest (a.k.a. give someone else money for no tangible ROI) i.e. spend $3 towards the drilling of a water well that potentially saves more than 2k lives.
Fortunately, a lot of the research has already been paid for by the entertainment industry. So, my real task will be discovering a way to get them do do something that is not in their best interest. I guess it is time to go back to studying ego.
I would love to come back to these tweets and dig in a little further under the surface. But, I wanted to at least quickly capture some of the thoughts inspired by this morning’s sessions at DreamForce. (The #’s link out to the original tweet.)
Do you have a visual, defined, roadmap for customer success that you use internally AND share with your customers? #
Learning how Starbucks implements Salesforce products to build customer community. Incl. mystarbucksidea.com #
Community Building Goals: 1 communicate value 2 build internal support (culture) 3 Engage ALL users. Also, understand purpose of new ideas. #
Types of Customer generated Ideas: Top, First, New, Sleeper, or Validates (an internal assumption). Name and treat accordingly. #
Healthy communities increase customer loyalty, attract quality prospective customers, and acceleratecompany learning (transform us) #
“OMG! If we create customer communities, we might have to listen to them, and have a conversation.” FastForward: We got richer. #
You probably don’t have ONE community. Build in neighborhoods. #
Visionary leadership essential to transition into community engagement. Business value (though likely) cannot be proved up front. #
Ricardo Nunez made a comment in a previous post, that got me thinking about the transition from “engage and help everybody” to “the community maintaining itself”? A noble goal for cultivating a community. Though, like infinity, it is a goal you can never really reach. But, I wanted to share a few observations I’ve made that help move communities in that direction.
Part 1: Over Eager Greeter
This one took me quite some time to recognize. My own excitement about greeting new members the second they joined the community (most services have the option to shoot off an email when there is a new member) meant that other members of the community didn’t get the chance. Obviously they could have gone up to greet people as well. But 8 (or 8000) “hi, welcome to x, let me know if you have any questions” would be awkward. and overbearing.
Related to this, some people just want to check out a new community. Maybe they don’t feel like they have *joined* anything yet, so pouncing on them the minute they “walk in the door” can throw them off guard and cause them to raise their defenses.
I don’t believe there is a magic number (i.e. 1 day or 386 minutes) of how long to wait before greeting new members. All communities have different cultures and purposes. Some have hundreds of messages/notifications per day. Some only meet once a month. Etc.
With each community (you probably have more than one in each organization) I try to figure out how much time someone might need to get a feel for the place, as well as the average time it takes for members the seize their opportunity to say hello first. Finally, I write the numbers down, and ask a few members if those numbers make sense. With that information in hand, I have a decent guideline for how long to wait before extending my own greeting.
photo credit: Photo Denbow
coming soon:
Part 2: Helping Should be Easy
Part 3: Make it Safe
Charitable Giving by Household Income, based on IRS data:
| Income Class | Entrepreneurs | Non-Entrepreneurs |
| $65,480+
$37,381-$65,480 $21,661-$37,380 $10,661-$21,660 $0-$10,660 |
3.23%
3.47% 3.29% 2.25% 1.55% |
2.42%
1.84% 1.14% 0.74% 0.35% |
| Average | 2.53% | 1.27% |
Most people only understand scarcity.
Entrepreneurs understand abundance.
[ via Perry Marshall ]
Start
If I had to concentrate the startup advice I’ve absorbed over the past 2 years, I could limit the list to:
I’m gonna let that marinate * for a bit, and then come back and expand on these a bit.