My experience is that collaboration can be very difficult, if not impossible, if a group isn’t working towards the same plan or goal.

A group or team can attempt to move forward without a plan or a clear set of goals, but the outcome, if any, isn’t likely to be very good or successful, and probably pretty painful.

Every group or team is different, complete with conflicting personalities, ideas, motivations and beliefs. I believe this kind of diversity makes the best kind of team, but if there isn’t a plan or goal to focus on, successful collaboration will be impossible, the differences will be emphasized rather than the common goals; chaos and piss-off will ensue.

I’ve experienced this many times, and I can’t believe how many collaboration and/or project managers still don’t understand this. The plan or goal will allow people to move past conflicts and differences towards successful completion of goals.

For entrepreneur’s, small business owners, and self-starters of any kind I would say that you should get started using social media. In fact, this should have been the first post in the Social Media Take Away series, but hey I’m improvising and making things up as I go here…

What is social media?

Social media is any web tools that allows groups to generate content and engage in peer-to-peer conversations and exchange of content (examples are YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc…)

Social media is particularly valuable for entrepreneur’s, small business owners, and self-starters in-general, I’m thinking artists – painters, musicians and the like, because it gives them low cost, high value, far reaching exposure for whatever they’re doing. As I write more about the social media value, I’ll cover some of these. For starters, I would say see this post on Twitter or items tagged with social media on this blog. Though, I’ll be covering stuff more in-depth, and high level, alike as I develop this feature of the blog.

Came across an interesting article here about a local Michigan company, Oneupweb from Traverse City, traveling around the state in a motor home offering up free advice on digital strategy, SEO and online marketing in general.

My initial reaction to this article was two-fold: First, what a great idea and second, this such an excellent example of a socially responsible Michigan firm doing their part to try and help those struggling in the Michigan economy.

However, what Oneupweb teaches here isn’t just about helping Michigan, but really it’s about outreach and social responsibility. As I said in my post here, the Web has always been social and it’s always been about sharing with others. It’s one thing to to do this only in the digital domain of the Web, from the comfort of one’s office or living room, such as I’m doing now, but it’s something else entirely to take this sharing and exchange on the road to meet the man on the street where he lives. Very inspiring.

Change is hard, there’s no question about it. Sometimes, even a change for the better is tough for a team or an organization to make peace with; and things are even worse if the change isn’t for the better. I’m not talking about the slow gradual change of degradation, as much as I’m talking about quick changes, and their short, sharp shock effect. These changes, while quick in execution, to some appear to be better and more effective (I blame this one to many Dog Whisperer episodes where the watcher begins these techniques on humans) have far-reaching effects that definitely effect morale and an organization’s culture.

In our particular epoch, this post-9/11, quasi-depression era that we’re living in, people are often running scared, and any change, one way or another, fuels core fears – loss of job, loss of home, loss of health care. There’s not a lot that we can do about this except to be mindful and sympathetic.

It’s easy to lose sight of the human element when you’re working on the digital strategy side of things. However, this sympathy and mindfulness of where your users live will help a great deal in developing a strategy that’s both successful for the organization and for the human beings that you’re hoping to connect with.

There’s a lot of talk about social media and the role that companies can and/or should play in social media; but the one thing that I’ve learned is that there’s almost no place for social media in the closed organization. Companies that aren’t transparent and are secretive don’t have much of a chance with social media because social media really requires you to put it all out there, and open yourself to public scrutiny. With that said, it’s important to note that if you’re a closed company then your employees and customers are probably already out there in the social media sphere talking about you.

This is where I qualify the first sentence where I talk about there being “almost no place for social media in the closed organization”‘; there’s always plenty of room for “reputation management” or as it was called in the bygone days of yesteryear damage control. However, this part is also likely lost on the closed organization, because they believe that keeping their head down and going with the flow is the best approach, and sometimes it is, a little passive for my taste, but I could see how some might view it as effective, at least from the perspective of ‘if you ignore something it will go away’.

However, I would submit that in the age of social media, or the Web, in general, an organization that tries to live under those old rules is really just signing their own death certificate. It may not happen right away, but like so many great companies that have crumbled, it will happen slowly, until all falls apart, and everyone stands around in the aftermath scratching their heads and asking how this could happen. Yes, it’s a leap from not using social media to an organization’s foundation crumbling, but it becomes less of a leap when the organization has closed up so tightly that they’ve turned their back on their customers.

Social media is a new term for a concept as old as the Web itself. As long as the Web, as a network of connected users has existed, it’s been a social medium. So when you have folks sharing things in a variety of formats (i.e. still images, audio, video, etc.) somehow it becomes social media. That’s it. It’s really that simple. There’s no mystery or secret to what marketers and communicators are calling social media; it’s what the Web has always been from YouTube and Facebook, today, to pimply-faced teens swigging soda on Dungeons and Dragons BBS’ (Bulletin Board Systems) all through the late 70′s, 80′s and early 90′s.

Social media has evolved, the technologies have changed, and the user-interfaces have gotten better, but the core of what the Web is, has changed very little. In recent years, particularly since the Web 2.0 hype began, marketers have tried to frame social media as something else, some kind of communications or awareness panacea whereby you herd your fans/customers into some kind of digital stable, and get a direct, captive audience. This has worked to a very limited extent because as soon as there’s somebody building a fence or stable, there are ten other people building wide open pastures where users can roam free. I’m not sure a model that promotes captivity over freedom will ever exist, online or elsewhere.

Doing the right thing isn’t easy; it takes courage, follow-through and a near-constant defense of what’s right. It’s not that people don’t want to do what’s right, but it’s not the path of least resistance. Sometimes, though, you can’t fight all the good fights, but rather you have to pick your battles strategically.. What will have the best outcome? What are the pros and cons? How would this  benefit the team, the organization, the world, etc… Sometimes this makes it easier to choose, sometimes not. Doing the right thing, often, is tough, but there’s personal solace in knowing you did the right thing. Somehow, this is what matters more than anything.

I came across an interesting  article in the New York Times called Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest by Douglas Quenqua. This article definitely touches on the other side of the blog coin, and that’s the number of blogs that go the way of the ghost ship. The ghost ship is a term that I first came across here, that could be defined as a site  that had been abandoned by their authors or Web masters, and left suspended in time. The article talks about how the price of admission is so low to become a blogger, that many try, but give up, because of either time, dedication, or the absence of other perceived rewards for doing the work.

This article presents a perspective that I’ve come up against personally and professionally, and it’s often the reality just beyond the hype. Blogs take a lot of work and dedication. I’ve started a half-dozen blogs, only to get bored, and have them turn into ghost ships, myself. In fact, I’ve had the idea for this blog for three or more years, but I knew I wasn’t ready so I waited. I’ve had clients, numerous clients, who’ve wanted blogs, and I inform them about what’s involved with doing a blog and getting it out there, but after a while, the inspiration dries up or the sense of urgency that created the blog dissipates — ghost ship.

I don’t think that this is a reflection of the medium. The blog is a very powerful thing. Not everyone is going to be a Seth Godin, or Michael Arrington. However, that shouldn’t deter anyone from giving it a shot. The beautiful thing about the Web is that we have this tool for communicating to everyone that’s open to everyone; that’s a profund reality! With the openess, though, there will be some (Read: many) who get involved and can’t keep it going. That’s Ok, give it a shot. The next hot blog could be anecdotes from a rural plumber who always wanted to be a writer and shares stories of his life’s experiences, or the rants of house wife driven insane by ordinary madness, and uses the blog as a way to vent, and tell amusing stories.

Therefore, a few tips for a successful blog (whether professional or personal) might be:

1. Express yourself.
2. Do it because you want to do it, not as a means to an end (i.e. a book deal, praise, because everyone else is, etc…)
3. Be genuine; people will see disengenuousness a mile away and never come back…
4. Do these things, do them fully, and don’t put a time line on it… the universe and the Web works on its own time. If you’re doing items #1-3, then just doing those will be enough, allowing for item #4 to unfold on it’s own…

Hopefully, these tips will help you avoid the ghost ship, and give you a better idea of what’s involved with a blog before you get started.

You can’t do much without a plan. It doesn’t have to be a super-detailed plan, because that kind of plan doesn’t allow for the organic expanding and contracting that comes with anything living. Yes, a plan is a living thing. Especially when people or an organization are living and breathing that plan every day. So you have to have a plan.

Without a plan there’s no strategy.
Without a plan there’s no way to calculate ROI.
Without a plan there’s a journey, but no destination.

Sometimes, it’s Ok to be on a journey without a destination, but other times it can lead to a feeling of purposeless meandering into infinity.

Even a very loose plan is better than being without any kind of plan whatsoever…

There’s a great Wall Street Journal article here that talks about how Google is using an algorithm to track and identify which of their employees are most likely to quit. Taken from Scott Morrison’s Wall Street Journal Article:

“The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.

“Google officials are reluctant to share details of the formula, which is still being tested. The inputs include information from surveys and peer reviews, and Google says the algorithm already has identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.”

This is a really interesting article that illustrates Google’s ability to be proactive, and really ahead of the curve. Imagine if most companies cared enough to not only see how their employees felt, but to actually take action to do something about it. A lot of folks in HR and management pay lip service to trying to help the employee out, but when the rubber meets the road that rarely comes to pass, either because the organization is too busy reacting, or because the pro-active and dynamic nature of employee engagement and internal communication is something that’s shuffled about into a communication purgatory that many managers believe falls outside the scope of their responsibilities and/or daily business. Leave it to Google to have their pulse on this.

It’s no secret that I am biased towards Google. I’ve experienced first-hand their openness and generosity while attending a Joomla conference that they hosted at the Googleplex in 2007. In fact, Google is a company that absolutely embraces the idea of the gift economy that has made the Web great, and to some extent, I would say made the Web happen at all, and also they are totally indicative of the openness that I’ve talked about here before. Google’s not going anywhere. They get the joke about what it takes to be successful; they understand, holistically, the requirements of that success. We’re sure to hear about more great and innovative ideas from them.