tdog.blog

“Snow globes? It’s July 4th weekend, why is Tom talking about snow globes, for crying out loud?”

Well, I’ll tell you. I had lunch with one of my favorite people just a few days ago, and she used a perfect analogy for how most companies manage change. It was such a beautiful analogy that I asked her if I could use it, and she said okay.

Most companies approach change with a snow globe mentality. They have a snow globe and want to change it. So they pick it up, give it a good shake, and put it right back down where it was before. After a few minutes (or hours, or days, or weeks) they come back to the snow globe and realize that nothing inside the globe has really changed. The same little tableau is still in place.

Maybe this whole snow globe thing is tougher than it looks. Hire a consultant! They can come in and give it a go, all the while counting how many times they shake it, how hard they shake it, and how long it takes for the snow flakes to settle down. They might even provide a nice gap analysis that shows you how far each individual flake moved from its original pre-shake position.

But of course, the tableau never changes, so it’s time for more consultants.
An automation expert hooks the snow globe up to a system that will agitate the globe at predetermined times. A feng shui consultant will place the snow globe in the middle of a zen garden. The out-of-th- box types will hang the snow globe upside down from the ceiling, or drain the water out of it and fill it with another liquid.

But the tableau never changes. So you have three choices here:

1. Keep going until you break the snow globe, and go buy another one.
2. Keep changing the players in the hopes that you get some kind of change.
3. Hire someone who will simply ask you why you have a snow globe and not something else.

See, only #3 will get you what you really want, and that’s where the change comes in. Think about it.

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Twitter, for the uninitiated, is this annoying little technology that asks the question, “What are you doing now?” Members of Twitter then answer that question (with “tweets”) throughout the day using 140 characters or less in each posting. Being sentient carbon-based lifeforms of varying intelligence and social acumen, these members answer the question within a spectrum of sophistication and from a multitude of platforms.

What this means, gentle reader, is that if you become a member of Twitter and start “following” people, you are apt to get all kinds of things, like “I just ate a burger” or (less frequently) “I just solved Fermat’s Theorem”. And you’ll open yourself to all this from people sitting in front of web browsers, IM interfaces, and even cell phones.

In other words, it’s just like IM, but 1000x worse. A few years ago, I told my employees that I would fire the next one I caught using IM on company time. Why? Because there’s no way to concentrate and get into flow when somebody is constantly yacking at them, asking questions, sending comments, or what have you. If it’s that important, pick up the phone! Or better yet, compile all your thoughts into *one* email and send it to me! Then wait for me to take a break (which will be in a few hours because I’m concentrating on my work) and I will answer you in complete sentences.

But Twitter is far, far worse than IM. See, instead of getting a personal message like you do on IM, what you’re seeing is a message that is being broadcast to 10, 20, 100, 1000 or more people. If you receive these on your cellphone, you experience severe disgruntlement. I’m of that generation that associates calls and messages sent to a cell phone as being more important than calls made to a land line. Getting a message on my cell phone means “this person tried me on a land line, couldn’t get me, and is now trying to get to me here–hence, important!”

To have that happen and then see that hoodoo2123 (who is a good friend, otherwise you wouldn’t be following him, right? right??) is now watching Starsky & Hutch reruns, then have it happen again (now yada54 is making cream of wheat) and then again (in which yoyobot is playing with her puppy) is really very very annoying. (Not to mention expensive, if your cell phone service charges extra to text messages.)

Some would argue that this is the kind of communication that bonds people together into a social network. Excuse me, but this is exactly the kind of thinking that people suffering from some social awkwardness syndrome really believe in. Good communication is about relevance and pragmatism. If you were at a social gathering (one in real life, I mean) and everyone just constantly spammed their immediate environment with stories and feelings and thoughts helter-skelter, it isn’t bonding. It’s annoying. Real communication is about finding out what the other person is interested in, and talking about that, and then picking up on subtle (and not-so-subtle) cues that it’s okay to keep talking about that topic or time to move on.

It reminds me of a very bright computer engineer I had the misfortune of meeting at a holiday gathering a few years ago. Very very smart. MIT smart. A few of us were talking about hiking and photography and what we’d been up to since the last time we saw each other. This guy kept interrupting our flow with random comments about things he was working on at work, none of which had any bearing on what the rest of us were talking about. We would process what he had said, ask a few questions, get more cryptic stuff, and then keep talking about our lives. He was just annoying enough that we didn’t try too hard to include him (I cop to that ) but HEY, that’s the point of social group dynamics. If I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t have to! And you don’t have to listen!

I guess from a Twitter perspective, his communication strategy made total sense–just keep talking about what it is you’re interested in, and I’ll do the same, and we’ll all go home and call that a conversation. Sheesh!

Here’s another chilling thought: using this technology as a true marketing platform. Amazon and others are already starting down this path. Reminds me of web pages crammed full of deals at airline ticket travel sites. Or the meaningless emails you get from places that list 500 rolex watches for sale.

The key here is not amplitude, it’s relevance. I want to take Hope on a trip to Scotland. I want to see airfares for Scotland. Not anything else. Sign me up for that, and I’ll be interested. Or, if I were to continue using Twitter, I’m interested in just seeing tweets on things that relate to a certain set of topics, and you can keep all the rest.

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While you’re making out your holiday card list, don’t forget to send a card to a wounded American veteran. Here’s all you have to do:

Address your cards to:

A Recovering American Soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue NW
Washington DC 20307-5001

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If you’re anything like me, and live in a place like Austin, you’ve noticed that things are about to slow down for Thanksgiving. Already, traffic is lighter, emails and phone calls are starting to trickle, and there are fewer bodies fighting for seats at the bars. It seems that everyone is traveling and taking some time off to be with their families.

Presumably, the logic goes, everyone is going out of town, and that’s why it’s so not busy where you’re at.

Right?

Okay, so think about that. If everyone is traveling (and yes, not everyone is traveling, but lots and lots and lots of us are) to be with family, then presumably, there’s got to be a place in America that is just jam-packed with narcoleptic Uncle Dave’s, smelly Grandma Sallies, lots of screaming kids, nervous/overwrought mothers with their beloved turkeys, and enough familial ill will to power the nation for a week.

I mean, those people aren’t here, with me, so where are they?

Do you see where I’m going with this? I mean, there can’t be some kind of “Thanksgiving Town” where everyone goes to enjoy the tryptophan.

Does this make sense to anyone else, or am I just…touched?

Don’t answer that.

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Okay, so don’t start laughing, but I had an extra 15 minutes and decided I’d call my insurance company to figure something out. I ended up spending more than 15 minutes and still didn’t figure anything out.

Let me back up. Back on New Year’s Day 2007, when this awesome year was just minutes old, I decided that I would finally do something about the smoking, the weight, and the general health thing. So on January 9th, I finished the last cigarette in my last pack, and about two weeks later, I started to ride my bike to work and jog. In April, I started taking classes at the Krav Maga studio in Pflugerville, which amped everything up (like way up).

Results? Lost 20 pounds of fat, put on 15 pounds of muscle, increased my endurance by 100x, dropped two pant sizes. Injuries so far: sprained ACL, right knee; partially dislocated left thumb; bruised rotator thingie on my right shoulder, etc. Not too bad.

So today I call up my insurance company. I won’t actually shout out who they are, but their name rhymes with Unicare. Oh, oops. Anyway, I had an extra 15 minutes to spare, as I was driving to a client to pick up a DVD so I could convert it to MPEG for a landing page they were putting together.

So I call while driving (yes, I’m bad) and navigate through their obscenely detailed auto respondent menus. I finally figure out what I think I need (policy change) and wait 6 minutes listening to some easy listening muzakification of some long-dead true American jazz artist’s work. At precisely 6 minutes and 40 seconds, a young lady comes on and asks me for my group ID, my birthdate, and my phone number (never mind that I’ve already told the computerized voice all of this). She asks what I need and I tell her…how do I change my policy to reflect my not-so-new non-smoking policy?

She puts me on hold for 2-3 minutes, and then an earnest young man comes on. We repeat the whole shtick with group ID, phone number, date-of-birth, mother’s maiden name, then he fools around with my computer records for about four minutes and realizes that I’m a small business owner and punts me off to someone else.

I’m on hold for another three minutes (and by now, sitting in the client’s parking lot, not wanting to hang up and start over) and then a young lady comes on the line and asks me what I need. I tell her what I want, and also inform her that I’m getting a bit impatient. She shrugs that off and asks for my group ID, phone number, and date of birth. I almost, *almost* don’t give it to her. Instead, I sigh and say it all one more time.

By this point, the two guys taking a smoke break in the parking lot could probably assume my identity, but Wedon’tcare can’t keep my info up on their computer screens when they transfer me?

In any case, she sees that I’m a group policy holder within the small business group, so she decides to transfer me to her senior account manager, who after two more minutes, comes on and informs me that it doesn’t matter if I change my status to non-smoker, as it won’t affect my rate.

“Say what?” I ask, glancing at the little call timer on my cell phone. We’re at 27 minutes and change.

“You have a group policy, so changing your status to non-smoker won’t affect your rate.”

“So,” I venture helpfully, “If I were a quadruple amputee with cerebral palsy, my group rate would be the same as an Olympic athlete’s?”;

“Sir, HIPAA regulations keep me from discussing these kinds of issues with you.”

WTF? Anyway, I thank the senior account manager for her help, chastise them for taking so long to get me this information, and she refers me to their web site for my future informational needs.

There you have it…half an hour of my life I’ll never get back.

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