Money & Power Aren't Enough; We Need The 3rd Metric.

Huffington Post

We've all bought into this male definition of success, money and power, and it's not working. It's not working for men, and it's not working for women. It's not working for anyone. ~Arianna Huffington

Arianna burnt herself out a few years ago- literally collapsed at her desk broke her cheekbone and required 5 stitches on her eye- so she was forced to look at what she had been doing to herself. She started a sleep movement and now is expanding this thought that life is more than power and money. Wellbeing is the missing element(s) that makes both men and women more joyful and therefore more successful in the end.

She recently held The Third Metric: Redefining Success Beyond Money & Power to introduce the idea and has been speaking and writing about it a lot lately and I applaud her message. My own burnout and that of many of the people I care about is the main catalyst for my work today. Exhausted whether we work inside or outside the home and even if we're successful in many areas of our lives we're often too depleted to appreciate the good fortune. And it's not just that we are doing this to ourselves, which would be bad enough, it's that we are parenting our kids that it is normal to be constantly busy and frantic. What kind of life is that for us let alone kids?

The graphic above was part of an infographic that was posted regarding this topic and what instantly popped out at me was how the new definition resembles a ME Map. Yup, I made The 3rd Metric about ME ;)    And while some might poo-poo the idea as fluffy and a luxury they should note how 8 out of 10 employees are experiencing workplace stress and it cost businesses $300BILLION a year. Gallup recently did a study that said only 30% of the US workforce is engaged with their jobs and that the cost is closer to $500B, but you get the point.

Something tells me this is going to be the hot new topic of conversation in business. The economy is starting to get better and whether next year or 5 years from now employees are going to start exiting companies that burn them out. The attraction for talent is going to include how they thrive and not just on the power and money that is offered up. If businesses brush this off not only are they holding back the engagement that could profit them now, they will be left with a stale and numb bench to work with then.

Loving Twitter & Busting Bullies

Dick Costolo is a good guy and the perfect CEO for Twitter. He's witty, smart, and uses humor he honed in his improve days to disarm and charm folks. And so it comes as no surprise that when I sent him my last post about Tom Peters' troll issue he quickly responded. But it did make me feel kind of bad that in only 140characters I didn't have room to address issue, make a suggestion, and tell him how great Twitter is... so let me remedy that:

I dare say Twitter it is one of the most important tools created in the last decade. Yes, some people use it for mere amusement which is still worthwhile but it also helped facilitate the Arab Spring and other political movements. It is priceless in weather, national crisis, and natural disaster situations when people are trying to get information and connect with their loved ones; I myself used it to find out information on a friend who was running the Boston Marathon. And for political and breaking news it beats all other media for speed and diverse points of view to pull from.

Whack-A-Mole! Now I knew when I alerted Dick to Tom's troll that it was an issue that is already top of mind for his team. And with all that is going on with running this company and expanding the service into other parts of the world Tom's little annoyance was not going to be a top priority but I sent it as a tangible example of how trolls can drive even the most accomplished folks away. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be for the Twitter team to have to deal with spammers and trolls popping up all over the place and as soon as they kill one account 5 others pop up. Kudos for what they are already doing behind the scenes that is no doubt a huge effort.

I would like to suggest an unorthodox idea though... as good as the Twitter security folks are they are probably in-the-lines kind of people and some times we need to fight hacker with hacker or troll with troll. So, my idea is to put a bounty on an useable idea to stop trolling. Open it to anyone who can send Twitter a workable solution and heftily reward them, maybe $100K, for their efforts. Not sure if this is a realistic idea or if you'd need to know Twitter's code or other factors, but I tend to believe most every problem has a solution. And to clarify, I'm not talking by nefarious means but more out-of-box, non-corporate type thinking. If you have better ideas please list them in comments.

Tom sent me a nice tweet thanking me for my post and it's too soon to tell but it looks like his troll might have actually decided to move on to more useful and positive endeavors- fingers crossed. I want to thank Dick for all he is already doing to make Twitter great and thank his team for all the work they do behind the scenes. And to Tom: I hope this stands as a tiny example of the effort people are willing to go through to thank you for all you've done for us. You and Twitter are so great together so tweet on :)

Tom's Twitter Tainted By Troll

I love Twitter and adore Tom Peters so you can imagine how disappointed I was when last week he almost stopped tweeting because he was being harassed by one kooky follower. When he posted his intention to leave I along with many many others chimed in: why didn't he simply block this jerk? Seemed too simple of an answer and apparently it was. Turns out this stalker was setting up multiple accounts for the sole purpose of hassling Tom, as soon as he blocked them another would pop up.

Aside from the annoyance that one unbalanced person was going to ruin the rest of our fun interacting directly with Tom, it made me wonder what kind of person has this kind of time on their hands and what's with all the hostility? Then I realized, as did Tom, that it doesn't matter- there are some nutty people in the world and it would be a shame to let them spoil all our fun.

But that said, this is a real issue that social media sites are going to need to step up and handle better. Blocking, un-friending, etc are all good for the casual annoyer but for a persistant pest or heaven forbid a more menacing scary threat there needs to be a way to address the situation more proactively. Twitter and the other sites are going to need to implement a stronger harassment barrier. I'm not sure of the legality of it all but there should be a way to block the IP address so that even if someone makes up another email or account attempt it would block them from signing on to the service permanently.

If Tom, a fully grown accomplished adult, can be worn down by this sort of thing I can only imagine what a teen or more vulnerable person would have to deal with. There are obviously reasons people want/need anonymity and privacy for certain types of interactions on the web but there should be a way to control who comes at us too.

To Catch a Predator caught and hopefully made online child predators fear they would be arrested and exposed - maybe it's time for the same treatment for these trolls and expose and shame them into stopping the bullying. There have been many cases of teens being bullied into suicide so it is not a victimless annoyance. And even if they are not life threatening in nature, we should be able to go online and interact without being driven away by a few badly behaved bullies.

Some Seeing With The Saying

Publishing is changing and will look completely different in the decade to come with multimedia experiences and the switch over to digital devices, but no matter what you read or what format you choose- business and self development books will need to include visuals. Take the video above- three minutes spent watching this or even flipping through the book's images alone and you'll get more than you could reading the plain text version for 30minutes.

People don't read. Ok, some people read but they make connections and think ideas through more thoroughly when presented good images to go along. Text is ok, but text and visuals are twice as good.

When Dan Roam introduced his book Back Of The Napkin a few years back he attempted to merge the verbal and visuals worlds by teaching people they can get their point across more fully with simple drawing basics. Anyone interested in selling ideas or solving problems- no matter the industry- could benefit from incorporating back of the napkin techniques.

Michael Port wrote Book Yourself Solid a couple of years ago but then took the same concept and cut down on the text and added illustration with Book Yourself Solid Illustrated (see video). The book is beautiful thanks to the work of Jocelyn Wallace, his co-author who is a visual strategist.

I just went through Book Yourself Solid Illustrated and I'll tell you I loved it! The exercises were so much more fun and helpful with visual cues to spark my thinking.

I felt the same last year when I read the personal growth book The Tools (by Phil Stutz & Barry Michels). Phil started using little simple sketches to explain the concepts he uses in therapy sessions with his clients and includes these simple images in the chapters of the book. I liked them so much I made up my own little cheat-sheet so I now have the whole book summarized in one double sided sheet. Can't tell you how much clearer the ideas hit when added to something as simple as a stickman drawing.

I think there has been a separation of "real" books and "artistic" books and even "academic" books for too long. If we want people to understand what we write we need to use a visual when it fits. Even as speaking has gone beyond using bullet point and canned clip art in Power Point, non-fiction books need more of the seeing with the saying. 




Here are a couple other gifted visualists to check out if you are thinking of going beyond just text:


Sunni Brown: Who is starting a Doodle Revolution:




Brandy Agerbeck: Who teaches others how to visually organize information for maximum impact.

ME Mapping: The Basics & Worksheet

ME Mapping is a technique I developed to look at our lives- the good, the bad, and the ugly- and then sort out what's working from what's not. Check out the basics but you won't really get it until you create one for yourself. You can map on a simple blank piece of paper or below you'll find the worksheet I use when I give quick introductory talks- try it out, it's free and virtually painless ;)

ME Mapping from Joy Meredith

[WORKSHEET]

This is a brief taste of how it feels to get started with ME Mapping- this slide-deck makes up about 25% of my workshop- so if you like it... you'll LOVE joining me for the full workshop.
Next event June 1st: CREATING2013

Mini-ME Talk: If you'd like me to come speak to your group and present ME Mapping Basics please contact me by email with the dates and details for consideration.

Happy Mapping!

Ann Rea Markets Art Beautifully

This interview with Ann Rea by Jonathan Fields for Good Life Project is fantastic. Ann quit her job and turned back to her love of painting- and that is wonderful and all, but it's how she created her own marketing successes that is really remarkable.

She didn't just try and sell her art, she got creative and focused in on an underserved target market: who has money to buy art? where do collectors hangout? where did she want to spend her time and create some of her best art?

And when she narrowed in on wineries she took it to the next level and created salon events where folks could experience her, her art, and taste the wines- how brilliant is that?!

Then with an idea from Bob Proctor she began offering An Experience of Art for high-end clientele with their own custom paintings of what location means the most to them and a storybook she creates with details of the experience. What more personal and profitable pairing can there be? For an artist she is one savvy business person!

Ann is such an inspiring case of questioning our assumptions. Simply starting with her, a friend (and I'm going to guess some wine), and a blue skying session she changed her life.

I don't think it is as easy as she makes it seem, but so what? Why not try and take our ideas and talents in a different direction and see what we can create? Her art is not just lovely to look at, the way she is delivering it and living her life appears to be as artfully done as well... Cheers to her and the lesson she shared so beautifully!

Emergency Tweet Stop

Tweeting to me is connecting with people and finding out the latest information going on in the world. People and companies might have different uses which is their business but when something like yesterday's bombing at the Boston Marathon happens it should be a flag up that you need to either rethink you social media plans or build in an emergency tweet stop. It was annoying to say the least when trying to get information on a friend running the marathon that all these scheduled tweets kept showing up in my feed. My annoyance is not the point though... your branding is. 

Gary Vaynerchuk summed it up best:

If you must use someone else to tweet or use an auto program (which you totally don't have to!) make sure you have plan when a national tragedy is striking. Out of respect, out of decency, and selfishly out of your own branding value: don't tweet when others are looking for news, mourning, or trying to really connect- otherwise you look like an ass.

Attention TweetDeck: My suggestion is to have an auto-stop on scheduled tweets in times of national crisis. This can be an option that is chosen at set-up and sends a notification to user that their tweets have been stopped due to X-reason which can be restarted easily. Or a second option is a notification that gives them a heads-up there is a national tragedy/disaster and that they have option to reschedule all tweets to resume X-hours later. I believe this would be a highly useful and appreciated option for your users. 

Jimmy-ing Late Night Ratings

Last week it was announced that Jimmy Fallon would be taking over for Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. I like Jimmy Fallon he's talented, sweet, entertaining and all but it's a mistake. I'm not a big fan of Jay Leno but from the business side of things they should leave him in the spot for a few more years.

Why? He's still number one in the ratings, Jimmy Fallon will not beat Jimmy Kimmel in the demographics they think they want, and NBC is trying to compete for a small share of younger demographics instead of owning the older and it won't work.

Letterman has a solid audience and most will stay with him; Jimmy Kimmel's audience is unlikely to leave in droves; Jon Stewart (my personal favorite) is on 30 minutes earlier so some of Colbert's audience might go to one of the Jimmys but most likely all NBC is doing is alienating their older more conservative audience.

If NBC had moved Fallon before Kimmel's move then it would have made sense but now Kimmel has a whole year to hook the 10:30/11:30 slot and Fallon is going to not only have to pick off others' viewers he will have hard time keeping all of Jay's.

Yes young demographics are great if you can get them but better to own the older and be on top then to try and fight among many to get a slice of what they think they'll want. Now Jimmy will be competing with Conan, Colbert, Letterman and Kimmel. And that's if Jay doesn't hop to Fox or someone else to do his own thing.

Bottom line: If NBC is going to go for younger, fresher audiences they need to lead and go first with things or they should not give up on they ratings and profits that the Boomers bring. Boomer bucks are way better than nothing.