Social Context, part 3

In the last two posts, I illustrated two extremes of a person's social context within a work situation:

1. Complete dependence, as shown in the twelve disciples of Jesus, who preached in pairs throughout the land of Judea without any money or food, relying entirely on the people they met for survival.


2. Complete independence, as shown in Jesus' cousin John the baptist, who preached alone, in the wilderness, relying on nobody but himself, God, and nature for his survival.

In reality, neither of these parties operated within these extreme social contexts indefinitely. The disciples later regrouped and continued to follow Jesus; later, a few disciples used other employment (fishing, tent-making, sale of property) to provide income while they continued their Christian ministry. John the baptizer attracted disciples who lived and worked and served with him.

And in general, healthy individuals live and work in an equilibrium between these two extremes - in a state of interdependence. One might consider this to be a state of healthy teamwork.

For people to function in a team, two fundamental things must happen.

First, each team member must accept responsibility for his own actions. There are certain tasks which each individual can do better than anyone else on the team. The individual must complete those tasks with all of his heart, applying the full measure of his strength to successfully do his particular job within the team.

Second, each team member must rely on his teammates to complement his weaknesses and to fulfill the tasks that he himself cannot fulfill. He must trust his teammates to do their jobs to the best of their own strengths, just as he trusts his teammates to allow him to do his own job to the best of his own strengths. He must communicate with and collaborate with his teammates, and dedicate his efforts to the success of the team as a whole.

The way in which a healthy team works is the same way in which a healthy organization and a healthy society work - in a state of interdependence. Each of us accepts responsibility to fulfill her own role and vocation according to her own strengths on behalf of those around her. And in return, she trusts and relies on those around her to use their own strengths to fulfill those things which she herself cannot.

Interdependence, like most good things in life, is a balance. Beware of becoming too dependent or too independent. And when you sense yourself sliding toward one extreme or another, you might try a little mental experiment: imagine how you would act if you operated under the extreme opposite social context instead.

Social Context, part 2

Jesus of Nazareth had a cousin - John - whose work slightly preceded Jesus' own. John instructed the people of Israel to change their ways and to prepare for the coming Messiah.

John's modus operandi was quite different from the instructions that Jesus gave to his own disciples. Jesus told his disciples to travel in pairs, going from town to town, preaching and healing and relying on the people they met for their food, water, and shelter.

John went out to the desert, alone, dressed like a wild man, eating off the land, and the people traveled out to the wilderness to hear him speak.

If all of your work is done alone, if you are by yourself, if you are a one-man team, then who makes your decisions? You. Who plans your strategy? You. Who coordinates your communication? You. Who does all the work? You.

If, instead, you work in an office full of coworkers and superiors and subordinates, you can sometimes get caught up in soliciting everyone's opinion, or letting someone else make the decision, or leaving the work for another person to do. Sometimes these things unintentionally get out of hand; sometimes they become our excuse to procrastinate.

If your success and survival depended entirely on you and your decisions and your efforts, how would that change the way you approach your work and your life?

Social Context, part 1

In the first century A.D., a Jewish rabbi from the town of Nazareth in Galilee hand-picked twelve men to be his disciples. After a period of time, he sent these disciples out by twos to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick and afflicted among the people of Israel. And he gave them some interesting instructions for the task:

"Take nothing for your journey - no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra undergarments. And whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from that place." (Luke 9:3-4)

Strange requirements. If you travel extensively as part of your work - as a touring musician, or a motivational speaker, or a political candidate, or a sales representative - don't you usually take a suitcase? and a change of clothes? and, above all, a credit card?

So why would this Jesus of Nazareth instruct his disciples to leave these things behind as they traveled around the countryside to preach?

Likely there were multiple reasons. But consider this one:

If you're traveling from town to town for weeks (months? years?) on end, without having any money to buy food or a hotel room, you are forced to rely on the people you encounter in each town. You are forced to speak with people in each town - to meet them, to engage them in conversation, to tell a compelling story to them, to pique their interest, to build a relationship that benefits both yourself and them.

If, on the other hand, you have the ability within yourself to supply all of your own needs, you may find it easier to become an island. To be totally self-reliant. To avoid community and collaboration. To isolate yourself from others, never to connect with others (i.e. your clients, your potential clients, your coworkers) at all.

If your success and survival depended entirely upon your relationships with other people, how would that change the way you approach your work and your life?

Liberty, Leadership and Trust

In free societies, leadership is based on trust.

In other societies throughout history, leadership has been based on less worthy foundations: fear. greed. wealth. property. coercion. The men with the most money, or most land, or most slaves, or most socio-political power became the leaders. The rest of the people obeyed their bidding. Loss of job, loss of home, loss of family, loss of status, or loss of life came to the brave ones who refused to obey.

We have seen, however, that leadership based on this kind of tyranny is not sustainable. Dynasties built around these systems will eventually fall, usually by economic ruin or by the political uprising of good men fighting for their freedom (or of bad men fighting to attain their own positions of tyrannical power).

When people are free, however, leaders cannot be tyrants.

When people appoint or elect or hire or otherwise designate their own leaders, that leadership is based on trust. The followers choose a leader because they trust the leadership of that person. They trust that the leader will act in the best interests of the followers, and so they place their confidence and their individual power into the hands of this person. If the leader goes on to violate that trust, the people can impeach, or fire, or otherwise abandon that leader, and find another one.

During my undergraduate work I took an entrepreneurship class. In the class, we students were assigned to teams. Each team was to develop an idea for a start-up company, and to write a business plan for our start-up. Each member of the team was to be an executive officer of our "company."

In a team project like this one, in which all team members were equal, the socially comfortable strategy was to give equal power and an equal position to each member of the team. But as our professor (Dr. Phil Vardiman) wisely advised, this strategy was impractical. One person in the team was required to be the president and CEO, in order to give the final say-so if the other officers disagreed about some strategy.

So how did we, the team members, choose a president?

Among equal teammates, the rest of us had to choose the person whom we trusted with the best interests of the team. In choosing a president from among us, we voluntarily placed our power into the hands of one leader. We trusted that he would listen to our opinions and our counsel, and that he would represent our interests in his decision-making.

By entrusting him with our power, we also agreed to submit to his leadership even if a situation arose in which we disagreed with him on a particular point.

This kind of submission works because we the vice-presidents would have the power to fire our president if we ever determined that he was abusing his power.

When men are free, they are equals. When they are equals, they have equal power and an equal voice. In choosing a leader for themselves, they voluntarily place their own power and their own voice into the hands of someone who will represent them. Someone who will act in the best interests of all. Someone whom they can trust.

As a leader, you hold the trust of your followers. That trust is a precious thing, and is essential for a society - or an organization, or a team - to function. Violate that trust, and your leadership will be lost forever.

Giving Handles, Selling Blades

(or, How to Make Money by Giving Free Stuff)

I just bought my first iPhone last week. Since then, my continuing odyssey through the wonderful world of the iPhone App Store has inspired some musings on why free apps (and other free products) can be great money-makers for an organization. Absurd, you say? Let me explain with an example.

One application I have downloaded is RunKeeper Free, by FitnessKeeper, Inc. The app uses the iPhone's GPS and a timekeeper to record distance, duration, pace, and speed. RunKeeper Free also provides me with a Google Map of my route, plus allows me to save my run history to the app and/or to the RunKeeper website, where I can also view Calories burned, elevation, and start/end times for each activity in my history. And, of course, because of the iPhone's multitasking abilities, I can also listen to my tunes while RunKeeper tracks my workout.

FitnessKeeper, Inc. also offers a paid version of the application - the RunKeeper Pro. For $9.99, the RunKeeper Pro provides the same features as RunKeeper Free, as well as audio cues, training workouts, iTunes playlist integration, the ability to post geo-tagged photos and status updates, and integration with social networking sites. The RunKeeper Pro also runs without the small, silent, inobtrusive ads contained in the free version - ads which, incidentally, I did not even notice until their absence was highlighted in the description for RunKeeper Pro.

A download button (linked to the iPhone App Store) for the RunKeeper Pro is included on a screen within its free counterpart.

So, if FitnessKeeper, Inc. offers a robust $10 application, why do they also offer a free version? Won't the free version cannibalize the paid version? Would anyone pay $10 for the Pro version when he can get the most valuable features for $0 with the free version?

The answers to the last two questions are "probably not," and "yes," respectively.

iPhone users who would download the free version (me, for example) would probably only download an app like this if it were free. If the only version available were the paid version (or the $10 paid version anyway), such users would probably decide that the app was not worth downloading after all. They would choose another, free, app, or no runner app at all.

Some iPhone users will download the $10 RunKeeper Pro right off the bat, even though they know that a free application with most of the same features is available. These users are probably either hard-core runners (possibly), exercise-motivation-seekers, or gadget aficionados (most likely). To these users, it is worth $10 for audio cues, pre-programmed workouts, playlist integration, photo-sharing, and social networking features unavailable in the free version. Thus, offering the RunKeeper Free does not steal the business of these paying customers.

Still other iPhone users will download the RunKeeper Free, and later decide to upgrade to the $10 RunKeeper Pro. Perhaps they loved the free version so much that they were ready to try the paid version. Perhaps their curiosity got the best of them, and they just had to try out the additional features. Or perhaps they developed into such avid runners that they came to see the RunKeeper Pro as a good buy.

Whatever the reason for the upgrade, the RunKeeper Free paved the way for some prospective paying customers to become actual paying customers. The free version enabled FitnessKeeper to build trusting relationships with potential customers. And it provided opportunities for RunKeeper Free users to show off the app to their running buddies, some of whom might be the types that would purchase the paid version.

And so, one can think of the RunKeeper Free as less of a profit-less product, and more of a marketing tool for the RunKeeper Pro.

It's like the strategy of razor manufacturers. Gillette, I'm told, sends a free razor to young men on their eighteenth birthdays. Those young men like the experience of shaving with a Gillette razor, so they keep coming back to Gillette to buy replacement blades.

Also, free products (or paid ones, for that matter), like the RunKeeper Free and RunKeeper Pro can connect the organization to fans who might also pay money for other items. FitnessKeeper could have among its customers a market for more FitnessKeeper gear, like t-shirts, running shorts, sweatbands, socks, watches, etc.

What products can your organization give away for free? And not just demos or promotional products, but real, useful tools that can benefit consumers and can help you to start building a fan base? Out of that trust-relationship, those fans may become paying customers for your other product offerings. Or, even better, they may spread the word to others like them who become paying customers, too.

What They Don't Know Can Kill You

Over lunch earlier this week, my friend Howdy and I had an interesting conversation about the hoopla surrounding President Obama's speech to America's schoolchildren on September 8.

During an interview with student reporter Damon Weaver in August, President Obama announced that on September 8 he would be making a speech to schoolchildren across America. By August 21 the press had picked up the story, reporting also that the President's address was to be accompanied with a curriculum for teachers to use with the speech. The curriculum suggested that teachers engage students with questions like, "What is the president trying to tell me?", "What does the president want me to do?", and "What new ideas and actions is the president challenging me to think about?"; and with assignments such as "writ[ing] letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." The actual contents of the speech were not released.

By September 1, conservative parents, educators, and activists were up in arms.

For adults already concerned by more liberal shifts in our nation's politics and education, the speech could only mean one thing: an attempt by President Obama to push his left-wing agenda on the children of America. And the accompanying curriculum - typical of any critical-thinking exercise in American schools - must, of course, be a ploy to further brainwash the children. How does the president have the right to preach to our children and dictate curriculum in our schools?

CNN, among other news channels, covered the story of conservatives' outrage. Among conservative bloggers, a flurry of blog posts arose, displaying such titles as, "Obama's next effort: a Children's Crusade?", "Beloved Leader to Begin Indoctrination of Youth", "Dilemna: [sic] What's a mom to do? Creepy President to deliver speech to all public school children!", and "September 8, 2009: National Keep Your Child at Home Day". These bloggers compared President Obama to everyone from Kim Jong Il to Adolf Hitler to Fidel Castro.

Finally, on September 7, the day before the President's speech, the White House released the text for the incendiary address.

It was perfectly harmless.

The speech was a pep talk to America's students, encouraging them to be responsible, to work hard in school, to do their homework, to respect their teachers and their parents. It was a message that we all want our children to hear. And it was to be delivered by a man who, for some children, might be the only decent role model to whom they would listen.

This incident, says my friend Howdy, is a perfect illustration of a sagacious maxim: What they don't know, can kill you.

When people distrust an organization (as they generally distrust the government), and they don't know the full story on what that organization is doing, they will make it up. And usually, what they make up is wrong, and is the worst-case scenario, and is quite damaging to the organization's reputation.

Had the White House released the text of President Obama's speech from the beginning, concerned conservatives would have had no room for alarm. No room to assume the worst. No room to let their imaginations run wild with the horrible propaganda the president might be pushing. The administration could have avoided the entire public relations mess.

Howdy asked me whether I think the same principle holds true in the private sector. I think it does. Obviously, the public does not need to know all the inner workings of a company, just as we do not need to know all of our nation's military secrets and other classified information. But when a company unveils a new initiative, or recalls a product, or releases a similar big announcement, they should be prepared for full disclosure of the situation. Especially in situations of PR crises, companies should be wary of sending cryptic messages.

Remember, people will make up what they don't know. Don't leave the public to make up the parts that are important. Give them the facts, so that they can't give you their wild speculations.

Don't leave room for people to make important stuff up. What they don't know can kill you.

Radical honesty is in your best interest

Do you remember the Miracle on 34th Street customer service phenomenon?

In the 1947 movie, Santa Claus comes to work for Macy's department store, and promptly starts sending Macy's customers to other stores when Macy's prices are higher than those of competitors.

The result? Rather than hurting Macy's sales, this practice draws more and more customers to shop at Macy's, effectively boosting sales and causing competitors to follow suit in sending customers to other stores for cheaper prices.

Why? Why did sending customers to competitors cause Macy's to gain more customers and more sales?

Because customers like honesty. We like people we can trust. When a person (or company) openly admits his weaknesses (like Macy's charging higher prices than a competitor), his listeners believe that he is acting out of their best interests, not his own. The company who practices this becomes known as (to quote Mr. Macy) "the helpful store, the friendly store, the store with a heart." And people like to do business with that kind of company.

Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, and Robert Cialdini cite real-life examples of this principle in their book Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. They quote the U.S. debut of the original Volkswagen Beetle ("Ugly is only skin deep"); Avis rental cars ("Avis. We're #2, but we try harder. When you're not #1, you have to."); and Listerine mouth wash ("Listerine: the taste you hate three times a day." Progressive car insurance proudly advertises its comparisons with competitors - even when competitors' insurance rates are cheaper than Progressives'. Since Progressive began comparing rates, it has continued to grow an average of 17% per year.

What other industries could use this technique to improve customer service? Automakers? Electronics? Universities?

Are you using this principle to better serve your customers? Do your customers know they can trust you?

Trust Comes First

Yesterday I saw I an online ad that read, "Click here to build a custom network for your brand." It had a little graphic and logo and another button that said, "Take 60 Seconds to Build Your Network." I had no interest in hiring a marketing services company, but, being a fellow marketer, I was interested in seeing what these guys were doing with this marketing piece.

I clicked on the ad, which took me to a microsite by a company called Casale Media where I could build a "sample custom network". I was curious; I wondered what Casale Media could do with this "custom network" thing; and I was okay with building a little free sample for fun.

So I picked some random "target demographics" (B2C, Miami area, males, 18-34, interested in fishing) to plug into the form. BUT, in order to submit the demographics and generate my free sample custom network, Casale Media wanted me to submit my Name, Company, Email, and Telephone number. Bad move. I left the site.

See, I knew nothing about Casale Media. Had never heard of them before. Had never seen their work. As a "prospective customer," I wasn't yet interested in Casale Media's services. I was willing take two minutes to check out their product, get a free sample, and learn whether Casale might actually provide a beneficial service to marketers. If they did, and I were a marketing manager at a company, I might have pursued further a relationship with Casale Media.

But, until I could see and learn about what Casale Media actually did, I was in no way interested in giving my contact information to this company about which I knew nothing. They had given me no reason to show them that kind of trust yet. And since I was only curious about the company (and not actively seeking any marketing services), I was happy to leave their site and never give them a second glance, if I could not test their free sample without submitting that information.

They lost me as a prospective customer.

If Casale Media truly wanted to attract new customers (which is ostensibly the purpose of most advertisements), this is model they should have followed:

1. Offer their free, fun little interactive application which generates a sample of Casale Media's "product" (the custom network).


2. DON'T require any personal information to run the app.


3. Let the viewer (who has already taken the first giant step by clicking on the ad) see the results of their very own sample custom network.


4. If the sample custom network shows that Casale Media has a fun and useful product, THEN invite customers to submit their information to learn if Casale Media's services are right for their company, or to visit Casale Media's website to learn more.

Casale Media needs to create some modicum of trust by allowing prospective customers to see a sample of their work. By requiring a yet-unearned level of trust from their prospects, they turn people away and sabotage their marketing efforts.

Trust comes first, Casale Media. Give them something free. Then, if they like it, they will come.