The Social Organization

The Promise of The Social Organization

Women are different than men. Women can do the same work as men. Women do things differently. Everyone should be treated equally. The debate circles on and on... and I don't tend to add my commentary very often because it has always felt like a false choice - to either assume women and men are the same or to assume they are different. However a couple of really interesting recent articles have appeared - the most lengthy by Anne-Marie Slaughter in The Atlantic called Why Women Still Can't Have it All and a shorter one that hit closer to home by my friend Morra Arrons Mele in the New York Times called Here to Stay, and That's Good for Women. Stepping back, both of these articles are about a lot more than being working mothers - they are about a societal structure that is broken for the way we live today and THAT is what feuls the passion for the work that I do. I think the structure of work is hurting all of us, both individually and collectively.

Our current societal structures are designed with the following assumptions in mind:

1. We have to be together physically to get work done.
2. There is someone at home full-time to make sure dinner is made, dry cleaning gets picked up, kids are supervised after school and the rugs are vacuumed.
3. Children need the summer off to help tend the fields.
4. Children and adults need the training to do explicit, structured tasks.
5. Corporations sole responsibility is to earn a profit.
6. Scale (large organizations) are more productive than smaller ones.

It's been a long time since most of those assumptions rang true - our society has gone through some very dramatic shifts:

1. The Internet makes it dramatically easier to work together from different locations - and take advantage of talent wherever it is.
2. The women's movement and its legacy has insured that working women are not only common but it's as expected that women would work as for men. Most families have no one at home full time.
3. I have no fields near my house that need tending... and most other people don't either.
4. Explicit structured tasks are increasingly being done by machines. We now need people to use what is unique to humans - our creativity and empathy.
5. Both the positive and negative externalities of doing business are now easier to see - as is the reaction to them (Exxon & BP oil spills, BASF running zero waste plants, JC Penney supporting the GLBT community, etc) and organizations that don't take that into account will suffer for it.
6. Technology, infrastructure and market access is now being commoditized through cloud computing, new business models and social media.

Because of this disconnect, people are struggling to figure out how to make life and work fit together in a way that makes them feel sane and happy - and it's not easy.  It would not be too hyperbolic to say that I consider it my life's work to help people and organizations figure out how to fix this so that our organizations work for us again, not against us. After all, what is the purpose of an organization if it is not contributing to our well-being in a substantive way? The organizations (whether for profit or not) that best align with how we want to live will be the ones that get the best employees, the best support - and the best results.

What do we need?

1. Explicit support and encouragement by organizations to work anywhere, which includes the responsibility and accountability to work independently.
2. Choice in whether our work is 30-40-50-60-70 hours a week so we can fit our work to our life, not the other way around (with the understanding that we also choose our compensation levels accordingly) - and that working less does not result in working on less important and interesting tasks.
3. School schedules that more closely resemble work schedules and expectations... or work schedules that can be adjusted to school schedules (see above)
4. Radically different view of education, hiring and employee training.
5. Companies that start with a purpose and then find the business model(s) that support that purpose.
6. Organizations that operated as loosely coupled networks (see Dave Gray's new book The Connected Company for more info on this)

There are examples of many of the above practices throughout different organizations - I am optimistic that we are beginning to see how this new organization is structured and operates. Look at Giff Gaff, Whole Foods, Amazon, WL Gore for examples. It's happening and those that understand the power in these new models have no particular need to share their lessons... but the rest of the world would be wise to work on catching up.

Communities - The New Strategic Imperative

By now most of us have a rough understanding of Moore's Law and the exponentially increase in the processing power of technology:

While this increase in technical productivity has been celebrated liberally over the years and has generated huge amonts of value and wealth, it has changed the cost structure of businesses in ways that put increasing amonts of stress on people. Unfortunately human cranial capacity does not evolve quite so fast - changing over millions of years, not hundreds:

What does that have to do with social media?  Well, networked communication channels have existed for quite a while but there usage was limited - IRC chats were typically frequented by the more technically inclined, for example. But as organizations have applied technology and their operational speed has increased, humans - not technology & tools - became the biggest limitation to innovation and productivity. With that change, individuals have become more and more stressed because their processing capacity has not evolved. My hypothesis is that social media took off when it did in large part due to the strain being put on individuals to keep up with the pace of technological change. Social media has created an immense improvement in the speed of which individuals can share information and make decisions. This is great as it reduces some of the stress on the individuals in the system.

The problem? Technical processing power will continue to increase and once everyone is social tool-enabled they will end up in the same spot where they were before - as the biggest limitation to operational speed. What then? Humans cannot go faster and faster without breaking the quality of their decision-making and judgement. So while social communications channels will persist, their value to the organizational system will plateau. For those most connected now, they are the canaries in the coal mines - completely overwhelmed by the amount of information coming at them from a myriad of communication channels.

This leads me to the conclusion that a strategy of faster will no longer be effective and, in fact, it will eventually lead you to crash and burn. What humans need and what will give an organizational competitive differentiation is the time and space to build quality products and services that are rewarded with higher margins. The way to acheive that time and space for people to do their best work is through highly trusting relationships with customers - and it is the only way. Customers must trust that by giving your company time to build a quality product or effectively support them, they will be better served.

That has some pretty broad implications. It means that to win, organizations will have to:

• Focus on building relationships first, rather than focus on the products and services first
• Educate and expose customers on internal processes so they understand and have realistic expectations of delivery
• Build in boundaries that allow individuals to slow down and focus
• Build trusted relationships with employees such that they not only don't feel pressure to go faster but are incented to make sure they are thorough and inclusive in their work

Communities are one of the few ways to scale some aspects of relationship development and building. Those companies who are ready for this next phase of operational effectiveness are busy investing in relationships today and not worrying quite as much about the short term ROI.  Those organizations too focused on the short term, transactional ROI of social media may find that they missed the boat as social media effectiveness flattens because their customers and prospects are off building deep, rich relationships elsewhere and, at the end of the day, those customers and prospects only have room for a limited number of those relationships.

It's time to fundamentally rethink how value is assessed, created and distributed and how we think about our competitive landscape.

Want to hear more about this from me? I'll be presenting these and other thoughts at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference on Tuesday, June 21st in Boston.

What do you think? Are you personally feeling stressed? Do you think your organization wants to keep its foot on the gas to the exclusion of quality? Which companies have always done this relationship piece well and have they prospered?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Understanding Digital Body Language

Digital Body Language is not a new term but it is new to me. I recently heard Valeria Maltoni use it and after digging a bit more, found that it was originally a term created by Steve Woods, founder of Eloqua that referred to the anticipation of customer needs in the demand generation and lead development context which is not exactly what came to mind for me when I heard it.  However, I love the term and the idea behind it - that there are ways to infer a person's intent through how they behave online.

When I initially mentioned the term on Twitter I got a lot of 'huh?' type of responses back but after years of watching people interact online it is clear to me that you can infer quite a bit about people's unwritten intent.  How?

• When a person's cadence changes from their normal cadence when they interact with you - whether slower or faster
• When a person ignores a directed update on their Wall or in their Twitter stream
• When a person does not follow another back or friend them
• How and when someone inserts themselves into a public conversation
• How a person proactively requests connections and on which platforms.
• What and who a person RTs or shares
• How reactive and emotional individuals are (are they quick to judge or slower to respond to good/bad news?)

Relationships are in large part about the exchange of energy between two people. Relationships grow when that energy and enthusiasm is reciprocated. If it is not, one person is forcing the relationship forward despite the other person's lack of enthusiasm. Companies do that all the time. Lots of people do that all the time too. If you listen and watch carefully to both what is and what is not said, you can optimize your efforts on the people who are genuinely interested and engaged. It is both more cost effective and more fulfilling in the long run.

What signals do you watch for to determine others' intent online?

Social Media's Pull: People Want Comfort More Than Food

We don't often like to compare ourselves to children or monkeys but the truth is that we're not that different.  As adults, we often hide our needs, desires, and disappointments but when looking to understand the behavior of adults, it is useful to watch children and animals because they have no artifice masking their instincts.  One of the most powerful and heartbreaking experiments ever done was by Harry Harlow on how baby monkeys form attachments and how important comfort was to their existence.  The video below shows that baby monkeys will take comfort over food - in effect starving themselves in order to feel OK.

I can hardly watch the video but the point is that animals and people (we're not biologically all that different after all) will choose something comforting over a more obvious need like food.  To me, this gets at the heart of why the social interactions facilitated by social media and social software can make such a big difference to the individuals that interact with organizations.  Individuals will flock to organizations that offer comfort (personalized attention) even if the 'food' - i.e. salary, product cost, partnering costs - does not make economic sense for the individual. 

For organizations, this has a couple of implications:

• Resources and time spent on effective personalized experiences with employees and customers will see the returns in the form of higher margins, lower operating costs, and increased retention rates.
• The recent conversation about applying business process and integrating 'social' into existing processes should be very carefully pursued.  If the social element becomes just as standardized as current processes, it won't have much impact.  The business processes themselves must become more flexible and adaptable to individuals which is now possible because social software reduces the cost to support that flexibility.

The issue many of us have is responding to requests to quantify how much comfort is enough. In essence, we are being asked to put a dollar amount on feelings. If you have any suggestions on how to do that, I'm all ears. In the absence of being able to do that, each organization will need to experiment (which, I'm sorry to say, will cost some money) and turn the dial up and down until they find what balance of 'comfort' and 'food' works best for them given their unique market and the unique constraints of their organization.

Achieving Swing

 I rowed briefly in college and it was one of the best team experiences in the world. The learnings and metaphors are endless in terms of how we work together in organizations and businesses.  The pinnacle of a rower's experience is when their boat achieves swing.  

SWING:  The elusive, hard-to-define feeling when near-perfect synchronization of motion occurs in the shell, enhancing performance and speed.  The rower feels almost weightless.  Once they feel the swing, rowers spend many hours trying to recapture the experience.

I rowed in an eight and I can tell you that those moments of swing were few and far between - they most often happened during a race and many of them I will never forget.  I remember one race in particular when I was sitting in stroke seat - the individual who leads the cadence and is responsible for executing the coxswain's commands.  More often than not, everyone tried to do what our coxswain told us to do as she was the person tracking the length of the course, the competition, our cadence, and watching each of the oarswomen.  But this one race, we were behind and something in me clicked and I decided that I wasn't going to go down without a better fight... so I let her know I was going to take it up a bit. Now here is where things get interesting from a leadership perspective.  I could have started increasing the strokes per minute... but there were eight other decision points that had to agree in order to execute the move with swing and it had to happen within seconds.  Most of the time, one or more of those decision points (rowers) fail to completely agree and the boat may increase in speed a bit but various rowers are using their power inefficiently because they are moving at ever-so-slightly different speeds. That inefficiency creates drag which you can feel.  When you achieve swing, it feels like you are floating with almost no drag in the water.  That one race everyone fell together, trusted each other, and we screamed through three other boats in what felt like seconds. It is definitely one of the biggest adrenaline rushes of my life (and yes, we won).

In management and leadership, the thing that is really interesting about swing is that it doesn't happen with skill alone. Skill is necessary - if you can't balance the boat and row together forget about swing.  But nine exceptionally skilled rowers who want slightly different things and are not on the same page will never achieve swing - and in fact they can create a great deal of drag because they are so strong and skilled.  I was in the B boat on my crew team for a while (anyone who knows me will know why... I'm fairly darn short as rowers go). We used to laugh at ourselves a lot and thought of ourselves as type B personalities as well... laid back and good-natured (people have since disabused me of this notion - I guess it's all relative). In contrast the A boat was full of tall intense women who could kick our a**es in the gym.  For most of my first year rowing, they beat us consistently - after all they were much taller and stronger.  The really interesting thing is that toward the middle of the spring season, we started beating them on a somewhat regular basis. It was not expected but the thing was - we didn't compete against each other as much to 'prove' ourselves. We were much more likely to go with the flow of the group. There was a lot less friction and drag as a result and it was easier for us to achieve swing.  And we had more fun in the process. It didn't seem to make a lot of sense.

The management lessons are particularly applicable for the networked world. Yes, skill is critical - you can't win without it. Strategy is also critical so that you all know what the goal is and how you're all going to get there. But ego, in-fighting, and people that want to win at all costs? That kills swing. 

It is better to agree and execute a sup-optimal decision collectively than to have a team of rockstars that all want to convince people to do it their way - even if each one of them is a genius.  That reality has huge implications on hiring, performance management, and leadership. It changes our ideas about what it means to be competitive. However, swing is so powerful that it can overcome strength and natural advantages.

My advice? Learn to row... or at least think like a rower. What can you do to learn to swing and how can you set up and incent your teams to think like rowers?

It Takes a Village

As some of you may know - Jim Storer and I are starting a business called The Community Roundtable. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect since it is my first go at starting a company. We are still in very early days but already I've had some really interesting insights. The biggest by far is that to build a solid business, it takes a village.  And while it is common knowledge that executives need a large 'network' to make things happen, that always had a very sterile sound to me. It always sounded a little tit for tat and transactional to me. What I've experienced is anything but - it is people going out of their way and putting their reputation on the line to recommend me to others. It is maybe the best gift someone can give you - to believe in you and your vision to such a degree that they are willing to promote it without any direct reward for doing so.

What I've realized trying to get TCR up and running is that - as hokey as it sounds - I am blessed. I didn't realize until I was in a position to be helped just how many people were willing to vouch for me and in ways I never would have expected. Many, many people have helped us get the word out and continue to do so. Others have offered to help us out on discrete tasks like creating a logo or testing out our community. Others have enthusiastically offered to affiliate themselves with us. Others have offered to help us with PR and marketing. Others have offered to put us in front of their customers.

The other thing that I've realized is related. I've been through enough of life that I've known for a while what I'm good at, what I'm bad at, what really motivates me, and what I enjoy doing. The relationships that I've built - particularly over the past five years - have all been rooted in that self-understanding. I partnered with Jim and we are building The Community Roundtable on that understanding (see our mission statement for more). That means my business is very aligned with my virtual 'village' of people. My values have driven my relationships which is now driving my business and the same is true for Jim.

People can succeed in a new business without a village but it's much more expensive and not nearly as much fun. I can't tell yet whether The Community Roundtable will be successful but I can tell you there are a lot of people who are excited about it and that is the phenominal first step - and a great foundation for making it through what will no doubt be a rocky first year as we try to keep up with everything.

While I don't want to call out people publicly here I do want to say THANK YOU! We'll figure out how to do something useful to thank them each individually. And my question to the rest of you - whether you are starting a company or just managing an initiative - is this: Do you know who is in your village? Are they the people you need to help you in whatever ambition you have, professional or otherwise? Is there enough diversity to provide the resources you might need? Will they hlep you celebrate your success?

After all, No Man Is An Island to quote John Donne. Don't deceive yourself that you can do it alone.

Ada Lovelace Day: Susan Feldman

Image via Wikipedia

Today is Ada Lovelace Day - an event organized by Suw Charman-Anderson as a way to appreciate and recognize women in technology.  You can see the pledge list here or read more about it here. What a great idea!

I would like to recognize two women who have been phenomenal mentors in my career. The first is Michelle Roloff with whom I worked at PRTM - she is no longer in technology but as a young professional without an engineering background working in an organization where almost everyone else had one, Michelle was critical to helping me navigate and gain confidence. I was assigned to cover the semiconductor market and I hadn't even taken high school physics (skipped junior year to spend a year in Germany). Michelle had worked as an engineer at Motorola. Despite my lack of qualifications Michelle never assumed that I couldn't understand and she took the time to explain the differences between diodes, analog ICs, and microprocessors. I still remember the description of semiconductors from another woman at PRTM (there were not many) that helped me the most.... she told me to think about a map of Manhattan and assume each traffic light was a gate, either letting through or stopping the circuit in a complex pattern. I owe Michelle my early confidence to continue in technology.

It was quite a while after working at PRTM that I ran into other senior women in the companies I worked for - maybe it is the fact that I've worked at start-ups but in the three software companies at which I have worked there was only one woman senior to me in product/engineering (or really in any management position now that I think about it). While it hasn't been an issue per se, I did crave more people I could look to in order to figure out my own career.

I found that person at IDC. Susan Feldman was my manager at IDC and had been in the enterprise search space for decades and runs the content technologies group at IDC. With a background in linguistics and library science she understands the complex problem of parsing and analyzing language like few others. More importantly to me and she was a generation ahead of me - a generation of which there are indeed very few women in technology - with the associated perspective of a long career. What I loved the most about Sue - and what I shared with her - is a rich enjoyment of technology and its potential. Sue is in the enterprise search space not because she fell into it but because she loves the problem space and has a ton of fun working through its issues. For that reason, Sue was incredibly energizing and fun. Sue also helped me understand the connection between content and its 'discoverability' and gave me a lot of respect for the issues around computer mediated language. One of her greatest strengths is simply articulating the complex problems around understanding language with algorithms. Among other things, Sue also introduced me to systems dynamics as a way to model and understand markets and other complex systems. Systems dynamics changed a lot of my thinking around modeling in general. We had a lot of fun building a search advertising and online content revenue model - it gave my mind a lot of fodder on which to grind.

Sue is also rare in a way that I have not seen a lot of in women of her generation - she has a family that she clearly loves and she raised two very accomplished children while working - but she is not conflicted about having a rich professional life. And while this should be the norm, I have not found too many conflict-free women who came of age in the 50s and 60s because they understandably did not have the support they needed to thrive both personally and professionally. Understanding how Sue has approached her career has really helped me to see how to carve out my own career given multiple different interests and demands on my time - and not feel overly conflicted about making compromises, either in the personal or professional realm.

So - thank you to both Michelle and Sue - you helped me immeasurably by modeling how to do it right and encouraging me. I doubt I would have the career I do without you.

Also a more historical shout out to Jean Sammet, a fellow Mount Holyoke grad, who developed the FORMAC language and was an early computer scientist.

Deep Bench Profile 4: David Wallace

Like many people in my social media circle I knew David from online connections long before I met him in person and I can't quite remember whether it was a Social Media Breakfast or Tweetup or Media Chowder event where I first met him. Regardless, he and I share a passion for communications, innovation, and collaboration particularly from the perspective of managing those things in complex organizations.  David has a rich background in journalism and teaches in his 'spare' time trying to bring some clarity to young minds around the issues of content creation and distribution. He is also actively involved in Boston's KMForum and if you want an engaging conversation, invite him out for a bowl of noodles in Chinatown!

Here are David's answers to my questions:

What are you passionate about and what motivates that passion?

Problem-solving and sharing multiple (sometimes competing) views of the same situation. Often people see issues through their own lens of finance, marketing, operations, but getting another view often leads to more creative options than anyone expected. The passion for this comes from the split personality that emerged from working in complex high-tech companies AND in nimble, creative small ones. 

If you could construct your own job who would you be working with? For whom? On what problems?

Perhaps a consulting group or think-tank is looking at new policy initiatives that deliver more than just tax payments for local government based on antiquated maps. More complex programs to fund government services have to come from economic activity and consumption – not just the zoning of a particular patch of ground. You can take the Urban Studies minor out of the city, but not vice versa.   

Since you can't always make up a job that will support you - what are you looking for next?

Another chance to work with smart people on a venture that values creative thinking, social collaboration across departments and a chance to offer a product or service to solve a longstanding need. Innovative, multi-disciplinary approaches such as Zipcar or Bright Horizons fit the bill. 

What project/activity from past jobs gave you the most joy?

Not sure I’ve experienced workplace joy since the tech crash bubble and explaining why Enron and some other companies couldn’t just go on forever. Every story has an ending – not all of them end well. 

What non-work related activities make you the happiest?

My family, a long bike ride, a relentless interest in travel and the never-ending quest for the perfect fried clam. 

What's your most amusing work-related story?

Shortly after “Caddyshack” gained huge popularity I met Robert Trent Jones, famous golf course designer. A pump station failed and dumped sewage all over a posh South Florida country club. “All just sounds like a lot of crap” he said to me, in what passed for a one-sentence interview. 

What are your thoughts about the US economy and what is going on?

Larger brains than mine are trying to comprehend billions and trillions of dollars. But perhaps this will finally dim the lights on the “Don’t Worry Be Happy” approach to blind consumerism and the hero worship of Ayn Rand as a model for runamuck commerce at all costs. 

Interested in following David? Visit his website or follow him on Twitter

Want to help? Repost this interview on your blog or RT.

Want to know more about the #deepbench series, see my original post on The Deep Bench of Social Organization Management

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Deep Bench Profile 3: John Johansen

John is a social media buddy - I haven't met him in RL (i.e. real life) and I still think of him more as jljohansen - his Twitter handle - than by the name John. Funny how that works. But while I have not worked with John directly, he's been in my circle for quite some time. John was a Bostonian that is currently in Austin...part of that trend last year of some of Boston's brightest moving to Austin...what is up with that?!?!  To me, John exhibits all the best behavior of a community manager - even though that has not been an explicit role - he shares his knowledge and information freely, engages in conversation, and is not into gratuitous self-promotion.  I would guess that those qualities are what make him so plugged in.

If you are in the Austin area and looking for an interactive or social media marketer, you should snap John up quickly.  Here's his response to my questions - I love the Speedo incident!:

What part of the social web world are you most fascinated by and why?

I'm most fascinated by how the social web continues to change. Not only is it changing everything it touches but it keeps changing itself. It's nearly impossible to keep up with everything that's happening but the broad trends are starting to emerge and you can see how they start applying to specific situations in social spaces.

I'm also fascinated by the change in search and discovery using the Internet. I had an instance this morning when I was using Google for a search and switched to Twitter Search because I wasn't getting results that were useful to me. Real-time search is a powerful tool.

 
What are you passionate about and what motivates that passion?

I stopped to really think about this question and came up with some very interesting answers. Part of what I'm discovering in my re-assessment of my career path is that I'm passionate about solving problems. I thrive in situations that need me to be creative and innovative. Keeping up with my blog is an example of this, I post sporadically because once I find a topic that I want to explore my single post quickly grows into full-blown series. 

In the arena of social media, what drives my passion is that I have the opportunity to be exploring the space before the 'rules' are defined. There are a great many smart people that I respect in the social media arena. I read their blogs or follow them on Twitter because I'm interested in what they have to say and want to be influenced by their thoughts. But, I'm also doing my own thinking about the gray areas. I absolutely feel that the 'answers' to social media can come from anywhere and I want to be a part of that.

 
If you could construct your own job who would you be working with? For whom? On what problems?

Moving to Austin was a conscious choice for me. I came down here before I had found a job in the area. (I was fortunate enough to keep my job back in Boston.) One of the main reasons I decided to come to this area was because of the industry in the area. Austin has its share of large companies (Dell anyone?) but it's also got a significant number of smaller companies and start-ups.

I want to work for a small- to mid-sized company that is looking to improve its marketing program. When I look at job postings, I don't take them literally. I make sure I meet the requirements (I don't want to waste my time or theirs). Then I look at the essential functions but I read them as the starting point for what I could do. What ideas are sparked when I look at what they're hiring for? What improvements can I make in the areas that I'd be responsible for?

 

Let me get back on track here. I don't see this as an "if" question. I take it as an imperative that if I get hired by a company, I am going to construct my job role in such a way that will push both myself and the company to learn new things and do them better. With that reference, it makes it very easy to answer the rest.

I would be working with a company that has a solid business model with objectives that marketing can support. I would be working in a department, or for a manager, that respects my ability to perform my responsibilities but also supports my initiative to branch out beyond those. And I would be solving problems related to demand generation, measuring marketing results, developing effective lead nurturing -- in other words closing the marketing loop.

Since you can't always make up a job that will support you - what are you looking for next?

Hmm. I think I wrote myself into a corner with the answer above. Maybe I can side-track again. I've had a wandering path through the realms of marketing. I began my career with a PR degree and a position at a PR agency. I've explored direct mail, project management, web design, webinar production, email, search, web analytics, marketing communications, and social media. Up to about a year ago, I probably would have considered myself an Internet Marketer because I'd been taking more of a focus on online tools. But, I don't agree with all the connotations that Internet Marketing conjures.

What I've realized is that I can use another handy marketing label: Demand Generation. I've been responsible for bringing in leads, in the B2B space, for about 5 years, so I think it's a reasonable space for me to continue looking.

What project/activity from past jobs gave you the most joy?

I had a wonderful opportunity back in Boston to roll up my sleeves straighten out the online marketing for Snowbound Software.

One of the first projects I took on was a major re-focus of the newsletter. Rather than using it to re-hash our press releases, I began writing in-depth articles related to our industry (document imaging and viewing).

From there I took a serious look at our Google AdWords account and discovered a significant amount of spending on keywords that were unproductive for us as a business. I took drastic measures in the short-term to cut our spending by nearly 40%. Then spent the next two years tweaking the campaigns and was able to bring in more qualified leads from SEM while keeping our spending down.

I also implemented and monitored Google Analytics for our site. I learned so much about the value (and limitations) of web analytics. We were able to shift our focus off the pages we thought we should be spending time on and started making improvements where our visitors were spending their time.

And, finally, I researched marketing automation systems and implemented Marketo for use with lead qualification and nurturing. This was also the spark that triggered my passion for lead nurturing. I believe that it's going to have a major impact on marketing and, again, I want to be part of that answer.

Now, I know that sounds pretty self-aggrandizing but what brought me joy in my role was seeing how my projects were affecting the business. It wasn't just that I got the newsletter out on time (which I did) but that customers were telling my CEO how much value they received from it. That's hard to beat.

What non-work related activities make you the happiest?

The ocean. Seriously, the ocean makes me happy. I grew up near the Pacific, it's a major factor in my childhood narrative. I could be quite happy going swimming, snorkeling, or scuba diving on a daily basis. 

When an ocean is not available, I like to read. Most of what I read is fiction or science fiction, it's engaging and easy. But when I have time, I enjoy picking up a real piece of literature. My most recent read in that genre is probably East of Eden by Steinbeck. And if I can carve out some time, I've got my sights on One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

 
What's your most amusing work-related story?

My wife is a big proponent of looking professional. When I know that I'm going to be doing a job search, she always makes sure that I have a nice suit to interview with and wear to work if appropriate. Each time that I've bought a new suit at the beginning of a job search, I've ended up working at an office with a casual dress code.

At one company, when I was making sure to get an explicit definition to bring back to my wife, I asked what the dress code was. The HR person told me, "No Speedos."

 

Needless to say, I was always in compliance with that one.

What are your thoughts about the US economy and what is going on?

I don't think that the economy is a surprise. The market is righting itself and because it's been bolstered artificially (sub-prime loans, I'm looking at you) for so long, it's going to be messy before it gets fixed. 

But, if you want me to use this as a soap box, I think that this is also a good time for individuals. The lay-offs that are happening are shaking people out of the mindset of "I belong to the company." People are recognizing that they can, or may need to, create value themselves. The rise of social media is helping facilitate the concept of individual value. This series by Rachel is a great example of creating individual value, it's useful to me as a job searcher, it's useful to Rachel's readers to get perspective from others in the social media space, and it's valuable to Rachel because she becomes a hub.

That's where I see the economy going. We're getting so connected these days that it's increasingly unnecessary to take risks on people we don't know . If you're hoping to just find a quiet desk to sit behind until someone hands you a gold watch... well, good luck with that.

Anything else?

I think I've said too much already. ;-)

Want more? You can find John at Original Comment or on Twitter.
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Deep Bench Profile 2: Heather Strout

The Strout name may ring bells for some of you in social media/enterprise community circles but you may or may not know that there are two heavy hitting Strouts out there. While Heather is a little less 'out there' than Aaron, she is equally experienced and has done some incredible work with customers to get them going in the right direction.  She is dedicated and passionate and takes a true partnership approach to the companies with whom she has worked. I've heard many a customer rave about her and seen first hand how well she acts as a customer advocate - both fighting for them and often telling them what they needed to hear in a way they could appreciate it.

Here are her answers to my questions:

What part of the social web world are you most fascinated by and why?

I look forward to seeing the change in the way businesses are run by using social media, online communities and knowledge sharing.  Using new tools to communicate to and with customers is a start but to see that bleed further into other areas of the organization such as customer service, R&D, knowledge sharing, innovation etc. is really what I’m looking forward to.

What are you passionate about and what motivates that passion?

I am passionate about helping people understand the value of social media in a way that affects how they think about personal and business relationships.

If you could construct your own job who would you be working with? For whom? On what problems?

I know that creating online communities can fundamentally change the way that companies do business, employees interact, and stakeholders find value in an organization. The challenge is that it’s difficult to get organizations to change. I’d love to help companies recognize the value and fundamentally change the way that their employees exchange information with each other, and with the company stakeholders.

Since you can't always make up a job that will support you - what are you looking for next?

I am interested in a job at a company that consults businesses in building social media strategy or a job where the hiring company is looking for someone to build a social media strategy and then execute on that strategy for their own organization.

What project/activity from past jobs gave you the most joy?

Seeing EDR’s commonground hit its stride in the summer of last year was really exciting. The employees that I worked with at EDR understood the affect the community could have on their business. I felt that they had poured their soul into the community, as I had. It was exciting to see all our hard work really come to fruition. I still visit the community on a regular basis and it’s really going gangbusters.

What non-work related activities make you the happiest?

I’m blessed with an extended family and all of them work really hard to stay connected. Being with them is awesome.  Also, traveling is a huge passion of mine. Learning how other people live in other cultures and eating their food is something I’ll never get enough of.Sitting down to a meal with my husband is my daily joy.

What's your most amusing work-related story?

Sitting in a San Jose, CA motel parking lot and working through business strategy with Barry Libert. Driving with him is a hoot also. He always wanted to hire a driver or get in a taxi when we traveled for business together and I always insisted on renting a car and being the navigator. That was always exciting.  He’s very enthusiastic. He’d be in the middle of a thought, and I’d be yelling, Left, here, now!

What are your thoughts about the US economy and what is going on?

It’s frustrating to lose your job but I’m hopeful that these difficult times bring individuals a deeper understanding of what’s important to them. I also hope it helps businesses shift to become more efficient, sustainable and valuable to employees and customers.

I think we’re going to see an uptick in jobs in social media in the next few months. I think our field can’t sustain this contraction and companies will start hiring in our field as well as in other white collar high-tech jobs.

Anything else?

Thank you to my family and friends who have been so supportive this past month. So many people have offered to help in a variety of ways. Everyone’s support has really helped me land on my feet and focus on my next move. I am confident that my next job will be a great fit for me and it will allow me to progress in my career.

Check out her blog, Social Media Building Blocks or find her on Twitter.