Inspiration Conversation

On June 14th, indispensible people across the country are meeting for a completely non-commercial chance to talk, connect and inspire one another.

You really ought to look in to this.

These Meetups were started by Seth Godin, a freakishly prolific thinker who has played a major part in shaping the way I look at my work. When it comes to my relationship with business and productivity, Seth is indispensible. He's a linchpin.

Which is the focus of his latest book.

A linchpin, as Seth describes it, is somebody in an organization who is indispensable, who cannot be replaced-her role is just far too unique and valuable. And then he goes on to say, well, seriously folks, you need to be one of these people, you really do. To not be one is economic and career suicide.

- Hugh MacLeod

These Meetups give like-minded people a chance to find one another, so wherever you are, consider joining a Meetup or lead your own if there isn't one nearby.

If you're in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, we'll be at the Grapevine meeting at Fireside Pies at 8pm and we'd love to see you there.

Related and Interesting:

• Seth's Blog
• ReWork
• ZapposInsights
• Making Ideas Happen
• TED: Ideas worth spreading

There's a new site called Unvarnished that is sure to ruffle feathers once it gets out of beta.

From the site: 

What is Unvarnished?

Unvarnished is an online resource for building, managing, and researching professional reputation, using community-contributed, professional reviews.

Unvarnished reviews help you get the inside scoop on other business professionals, providing candid assessments of coworkers, potential hires, business partners, and more.

The first sentence is a sterile "sure whatever" description. The second one, now there's the rub. We've been reviewing products on Amazon, movies on Netflix and restaurants on Yelp for years. But reviewing people as if they're a video game? Seems a little odd at first.

Unvarnished is a review site for people.

When I tell you that Unvarnished allows users to submit reviews anonymously, I'm willing to bet your first reaction is to wince. That was my reaction as well, but I've had some time to think about it and I have to say that I've come around.

At least I think I have. 

I heard about Unvarnished just a week or so after reading "You've Been Yelped" in Inc. Magazine's February issue. The article is about Yelp, it's frightening ability to make or break a business, and owners' differing approaches to dealing with that reality.

For example, one salon owner offers exclusive deals on her Yelp page to attract new customers. If a new client schedules an appointment and mentions the site, she makes sure to cut their hair personally. Then there's the owner who tracked down a negative reviewer and ended up getting booked for battery. Not surprisingly, she describes the site as "evil".

Love it or Leave it?

While I was reading the article, it seemed clear to me that being angry that the thing exists in the first place and dismissing negative reviews outright instead of using the feedback to improve your offering was just pointless. Obviously, the best strategy is to engage with the site's users and proactively leverage the community to grow your business because it's not going to just go away.

But. Easy for me to say. My name's not on the door or the lease. I'm not the guy struggling to keep the lights to my pizza joint on.

Little did I know that a group of geeks in Silicon Valley were working on something that'll give me a chance to put my money where my mouth is. And, it may very well force the rest of you to do the same, whether you want to or not.

Make It Work

That's not just good advice from Tim Gunn on how to wow Michael Kors, it's going to have to be our default position if Unvarnished takes off.

Inc.'s advice to handling online criticism is to Register, Breathe and Be Gracious. Good advice for owners and applicable for individuals.

If the site takes the idea of "personal branding" to an entirely new level, I'll be looking to the practices of businesses who have grown thanks to Yelp, not commiserating with those who despise it.

At least I hope so.

I've offered 3 Ways to Use Social Media in Your Reward & Recognition System in the past; obviously, Twitter is one of them. The service is now so ubiquitous that my dad tweeted me yesterday to let me know that I don't tweet with my mom enough these days.

If employee recognition / internal communications land on your desk and you're wondering what Twitter's got to offer, here are 3 Tweets that get it right.

1. Years of Service Recognition: @Lochrane [ http://twitter.com/lochrane/status/7985989071 ]

Low-hanging fruit here and a simple way to let them see their name in lights. We're all for it, as long as this comes in addition to (not in place of) an in-person celebration of the employee's contributions to the company.

2. Employees Living the Company Values: @LuminantPower [ http://twitter.com/LuminantPower/status/6671805345 ]

It's important to celebrate the moments when employees embody company values on the clock, but it's all the more powerful when that happens outside of the workplace. Luminant places a high premium on Community and this a great representation of that value. Extra credit for including a twitpic.

3. Manager-to-Peer & Peer-to-Peer Recognition: @ddbrown / @datotel [ http://twitter.com/ddbrown/statuses/7912284392 ]

Here's a CEO taking an opportunity to congratulate employees by name. John, Stephanie and Melissa's managers & co-workers could just as easily do the same. Extra credit for linking to the company's blog post with more information about the awards.

Did we miss a good one? Leave a comment below, or speaking of Twitter, get in touch with us over there at @TheMillerCo.

As businesses continue to get more comfortable with their employees actively building and engaging their network through Social Media (although there are some exceptions), there's an opportunity to use these sites to recognize and motivate employees.

Here are three ideas to help you get started.

[But remember, as our friend Peter has mentioned as well, technology only enables recognition ... never let any of your tools replace the human touch.] 

1.  Create a video compilation of your event and post it on YouTube.
   
   Zappos recently celebrated their 10 year anniversary and some other big news with what looks to be a pretty serious party in Vegas. Not only did they post it on YouTube, their CEO tweeted about it as well.  
   
   To take it one step further, you could lend out digital cameras at the beginning of the event. Collect them afterward and compile the video using footage shot by the employees and attendees.  
   
   
2.  Create a Twitter profile for your RRS and encourage participants to follow.
   
   You could have a lot of fun with this and give your program its own "voice", or grant posting access to all the members of your recognition team to share announcements, gather nominations, and address employee concerns.
   
   If you went with the team approach, it could be designed to be similar to Best Buy's @twelpforce customer service (customers send their message to @ProgramName, and anyone on the team jumps in to help).
   
    
3.  Create a Facebook Fan Page for your RRS.
   
   Just as the participants who follow your program on Twitter will receive announcements and have another venue for interaction, Facebook members who become a fan of the program will see updates and photos in their News Feed.
   
   The Fan Page's Wall could also serve as a venue for Peer-to-Peer recognition. Like I mentioned off the top, ideally this would serve as a place to reaffirm a congratulatory note or pat-on-the-back already delivered in person, i.e. "Just wanted to acknowledge Jim's commitment to teamwork once again. Thanks for your enormous contribution to the Bridges 2010 project, Jim!" Not, "Hey Jim, thanks." on Facebook without an actual word ever being spoken in the office.

That's got the trifecta of Social Networking sites covered (with apologies to MySpace which is still statistically popular, but is being shown the door).

Explore the additional features within each of these sites and you'll no doubt discover ways to add even more character and interaction to your program (quizzes on Facebook, ReTweeting recognition notes, etc.). Have other ideas? Share them with us @TheMillerCo.

Twitter was down this morning as a result of what appears to be a relatively successful denial-of-service attack.

Here's a line from an AP story about the incident:

"For users of the fast-growing messaging service, the outage means no tweeting about lunch plans, the weather or the fact that Twitter is down."

Really? Snark from the Associated Press?

The outage also means that influential people aren't sharing new thoughts with their network this morning. Why not mention that? Even with Twitter's undeniable role in the Iran Election protests (#IranElection continues to be a daily trending topic), it still has a reputation among some people as merely being a peddler of so much drivel. It must be said that that reputation exists almost exclusively among those who don't actually use the service.

We deal with this sort of inaccurate reputation and these kinds of snide remarks in the world of Recognition don't we?

A prospective client once said to me, "Yeah we've got a great Incentive program. Every two weeks we cut our employees a check, and in exchange they show up and do their job."

Bravo, sir. But there is a wealth of untapped potential in your middle 60% if you were willing to listen, learn, and try motivation on for size.

How do you win over someone who sees little value in a service that has earned your enthusiasm?

It might feel good for me to say to someone who makes fun of Twitter, "Oh yeah, real nice. Say, have you figured out how to program your VCR yet?" Complimenting their 8-track collection might also be in order. (I could go on...I've got a stockpile of these.) But no, while that might be more satisfying, are they at all likely to become a convert? Absolutely not.

Probably much better to bite my tongue and share a story. Last fall I was in Chicago on business, and one evening I posted a Tweet about something I had just seen at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Some minutes later I get a message from an old friend I hadn't seen in years who also happened to be in Chicago shooting a commercial. He had read my Tweet and sent a reply. Two hours later we're toasting one another on Ohio Ave. I think that's impossible to make fun of.

What about those who don't believe that Recognition and Employee Incentive Programs are vital to your organization's success? Do you feel like saying, "Ok, nevermind the stacks of perennial research validating Recognition. Nevermind that even NFL-bound college athletes proudly collect stickers (stickers!!) on their helmets as a symbol of their accomplishment! Nevermind all that!"

Instead, let's take a breath and keep sharing stories. Stories about how, yes as a matter of fact, that thank you card that your co-worker sent in appreciation of your efforts meant a lot. That the plaque congratulating you for personifying one of your company's core values not only makes you proud but encourages you to repeat those behaviors more regularly.

What's your best story? What is it about Recognition to you that is impossible to make fun of?

We've just returned from the 12th Annual RPI Conference in Naples, FL and spent a good bit of the morning debriefing and sharing big ideas and takeaways. If you're not familiar with RPI and you've got any stake whatsoever in your organization's recognition strategy, you owe it to yourself to spend some time on their site.

In short, it was a great trip. We heard and shared ideas, made new connections, and reunited with friendly faces. And like most organizations, RPI was doing exactly what they should be doing: experimenting with how to incorporate social networking in to the event. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. You know the chorus.

RPI's leaders have done a great job of giving us all the opportunity to connect before, during, and after the conference. I'll be very interested to see how the online community evolves over the next year.

But this is what I want to get to: some people have suggested that apps like Twitter, LinkedIn and Ning will replace organizations like RPI and conferences like the one we just attended. That if anyone, anywhere, with any interest, can connect online, for free, with anyone, anywhere, with the same interest, then why should they pay for dues, lodging, and airfare to be a part of a community?

Why? Because the book is usually better than the movie.

Let me state for the record that I am a strong advocate for Twitter and its cousins. I've been Twittering since March of '07 when there were just a few hundred thousand users. There are now fifteen million. It feels a bit like a guy who used to watch Dave Matthews in a bar in Charlottesville with thirty-two other people. Now he's going to consecutive sold-out shows at the Garden. And there are hecklers! What's that about?

So yes, I love Twitter, but I love it for what it's good at, deepening friendships, not creating them. I think online communities are a fantastic invention, but most valuable when they lay the groundwork for conversations that will take place face-to-face, or to continue the ones that were cut short.

A few of us had some free hours one afternoon so we went down to the beach for a swim and came upon two other attendees. One we'd been in touch with for years, the other we'd become closer friends with on this visit. Simply put, Ning does not have an answer to floating in the Gulf of Mexico and sharing funny stories about our kids with one another.

That night at dinner, the topic of Modern Art came up quite organically and our table had a lively discussion about creative expression. Again, as much as I love it and for all it's @reply and direct message features, nobody was speaking in 140 characters or less.

This is not to say that online communities and social networking will not replace conventional organizations and conventions, just that if they do it will be akin to choosing Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings (which is great) over Tolkien's (which is unparalleled).