A Warrior’s search for Synchronicity

Think about what eBay did. They provided a platform for people who wanted to buy and sell things. Paypal enabled anyone to be a seller and anyone to be a buyer by bringing credit card transactions between individuals possible.eBay provides ratings of buyers and sellers and displays recommendations thereby helping newcomers to the site to tap on to the collective wisdom of the crowd.

Facebook connected people socially and LinkedIn did the same professionally

If educational institutions provide profiles of needy students and the financial needs, Facebook and Linkedin can provide a platform for that to be displayed, making it searchable, visible and emotionally connecting to potential donors. If Facebook and Linkedin can embed an eBay style financial transaction mechanism to these profiles thus enabling people to donate directly to educational institutions that would create a channel  for willing donors to reach students in need. In return what the educational institutions need to provide is the performance details of these students to be displayed on the website. This provides not only transparency to the money spent, but the impact it makes. Facebook wall can be a place where students and donors to exchange conversations and build relationships. Think about the emotional value and enrichment this platform will add to the lives donors and students. This will definitely demand a lot of intellectual investment from professionals. LinkedIn being the big player in the professional networking world, they could display the involvement of professionals in the project against their profiles, thus making the contribution of these individuals visible to potential employers

Any initiative takes on momentum and start making social change when a critical mass of people adopts it. In the modern networked world,  why not make use of the successful platforms like Facebook or Linkedin invest their intellectual capital into projects that make social change and make it mainstream rather than have a separate wing for corporate social responsibility

There is more than money that people can give and people to receive, like internet enabled information superhighway, which next organization will provide a web 2.0 highway for a high quality exchange of culture, direction and finance to the needy?

Tweet your way into the intranet…why not use twitter to organize content in corporate intranet? why not tear down the top down broadcasting spit out by the corporate hierarchy and pave way for the “real news from the ground” to take its course towards the top of “trending topics” by merit and value it offer to readers. Let the ‘wisdom of crowds’ take over the information pipeline. This will be an answer to the sad state of ‘upward mobility’ of real information that the top executives are terribly deprived of having relied on specific channels to feed them filtered news. This will bring the ‘water cooler’ into the ‘boardroom’ and vice versa. This will encourage corporation to depart from ‘Henry Ford’ era of top down management to collaborative management , with smart employees bringing smart markets into the decision making table. As ‘Cluetrain Mainfesto’ puts it why not make the intranet an ‘intranetworked corporate conversation’ without editing and without control and without the prospect of punitive action for speaking their mind out. Let transparency be the rule. Let candour be the code.

Twitter still has not found a business model to make money. Here is one….help those corporations who are not afraid of transparency and who are genuinely interested in employee engagement rebuild their coporate intranet in twitter model. Sell the benefits of free flow of information and ideas, removal of bottle necks. Let “the flat world” outside into your compound and that way organizations become more relevant (not advanced)

Yesterday when I went through the ’95 Theses’ of the Cluetrain Manifesto I felt these should be embedded into the culture of any organization, who wants to survive in this highly competitive and demanding world.

I have signed up to the manifesto – have you

I started loving the phrase “compete, connect & collaborate” more & more as I see the multidimensional possibilities being opened to anyone who is willing to leverage the power of connections and is bold enough to experiment. Technologies, social groups, innovations are springing up everywhere and the only way to keep track of which is going to be the next big hit is by being involved. The advantage of my generation is that we are not intimidated by the vast array of choices available. We by nature have fast processors in our brains, which can sift through headlines and assume the news and the strategic interest of the publication that is printing the news or the person who is conveying the news. We even scrutinize the info we get from our trusted allies as we consider everyone as humans and capable of influences and mistakes. All this happen effortlessly by nature. We throw different ideologies at our brains, listen to people, find stories and connections and behaviours and keep track of them to see the next tipping point in action and take advantage of them.

One such tipping point that I can anticipate happening is in the world of marketing. More and more people join the crowd who hate being broadcasted to. More and more people hate the tone of marketing messages.(For a generation to whom media was a novelty and personal messages and relationships were abundant, marketing messages were welcome. They did not mind being interrupted. The new generation has grown up in the abundance of media messages and scarcity of personal human messages.) Marketing to the current generation should be through meaningful conversations and subtle. This marks the end of the one size fits all marketing era, which calls for the death of marketing and broadcasting. Organizations which thrive in the new era will be the ones who can encapsulate the soul of all their workforce not only to create ourstanding products but also to communicate to the customers, the benefits, without the marketing tinge and with the personalization and authenticity that the nature of the conversation demands. Organizations will have to compensate their employees for being their marketeers based on the value they create. This being a chain reaction organizations will have to change their business model to include anyone as their salesperson or marketeer and also to compensate them(Amazon Associates). Digital tracking of performance will be easy, non- digital tracking will need to be monitored carefully and assumptions associated. Just think about the marketing prowess of a company like GE (327,000 employees and their networks) if they choose to leverage the potential of this medium.

People of diverse origins used to bring their tribes to the table and one of the pre-requisite of old corporate world was to have diverse people so that different points of view get thrown to the table and choices of decisions were offered. Generations like mine come to the world devoid of allegiance to the roots or society and with a huge arsenal of blank space within us. We start asking questions, what do I really want, where do I really belong and the answers are very dynamic. We keep on catering to the multiple realities and diverse cravings within us, ever exploring new dimensions and collaborating in new ventures, experimenting with our skill sets and pushing our limits and when are we really at peace,” when exploring the unknown”. What can’t we handle, status quo. Our world view do not have nations, we see nations and their militaries as drug lords and their thugs with different vested interests. We respect individual inclinations and believe these inclinations when channelled through correctly and collaborated efficiently can become the skills, that shape the answers of the challenges of tomorrow. We leave no barriers to information and willingly offer our spiritual, mental and physical real estate to anyone who is able to fascinate us. We shun being broadcasted to and have no trouble picking out our choice from the wide range that is available (What if we make a mistake, we love making them early and enjoying the learning) We don’t settle for mediocrities. We don’t want to conquer the world or leave our mark on it. We want to involve in the sublimities of working on a mission that sucks us in and encapsulates our soul, we know those are short outbursts of productivity, however we want to get those done and move on probably to our next life.

http://themostluckyblog.blogspot.com/ comments

We are not individuals. We are tribes. The individuality is an illusion. A network has a purpose and if a particular station synchronizes itself with the whole,it serves and succeeds in its mission. Am I confusing?

My reply

Many thanks for the comment…. I agree and have I stated otherwise? Our individuality do not end with our physical borderline, it emanates into the whole network and we are the tribes we belong to. However belonging is not determined by genes or geographical proximity or cultural similarities. Belonging is determined by the everchanging self-awareness of the individual and and the longing he or she feels to connect with the vast impulses of the global community (not even people as a whole, specific impulses) that will drive the mission or inclination forward towards the realisation of a greater whole. We are not determined by the packages we come in, we are determined by the environments we create. We are, what we create and we create tribes. We are not products, we produce, we don’t fancy being broadcasted to, we fancy co-creating and mindcasting. Am I tapping into the endless possibilities available to each and everyone of us too much and luring you to do the same leaving behind the shackles imposed on you by your thoughts?

I am trying to get in grips with the world of online search, landing page relevance, search engine optimization, homographs, cloaking, organic search, paid search etc. It is not an easy task to understand an alien world, however this well-written book really gives an in depth view of this world (I chose to read this because I saw this on Soledad Guarch‘s wishlist on LinkedIn. The book has a step by step guide to mastering Search Engine Optimization and thus achieving your goals and it has all the worksheets and tools filed on http://www.yourseoplan.com/.

Any book by Seth Godin is a treat and Meatball Sundae is no exception. It is about permission marketing, engaging customers in conversations, listening to them, being available to be emailed or phoned by them, it is about redesigning your business to suit the new marketing trends, choices available to customers and not interrupting them to market, but joining them in what they do, and being discreet and polite . Still most of the big organizations or CEOs have not started opening up their inbox to customers or listening to what they say in their blogs or twitters, the most valuable source of market research. Still many have not woken up to the reality of the unlimited choices available to any one now as the new inventory seldom compete for shelf space. Many organizations still have not tapped the power of ‘real conversations’ for they do not allow any one other than their marketing or sales people to talk to their customers, what about the other large pool of people who will be part of a network, why not do away with the limitations of typical marketing talk, and start listening into the conversations, holding conversations, building rapport, building relationships and at a very later stage, if you truly believe what you sell is the right fit for your customer, then recommending it.

Watch how Blendtec market their product and blend it with Meatball Sundae