July 2009
Email: gcohen@co2partners.com
Dear Just-In Readers;
Answers are not the Answer
Our public education system encourages students to come up with answers, not ask questions. The student/teacher ratio has grown larger, not smaller, so if every student shouted questions, the classroom would get unruly. Teachers want behaved students, so they can share lessons without disruption. They offer good grades to students who demonstrate that they can follow along and provide correct answers, without disturbing the learning environment. Good grades lift self-esteem, so is it any wonder that strong students get addicted to answers? When the teacher asked if anyone could point to Africa on the map, did you resist the urge to lift your hand faster and higher than the others?
In college (should you answer enough questions correctly on entrance exams), you might learn that great questions have many possible answers, but the urge to answer will still dominate the urge to ask. The reward of good grades and positive affirmation is hard, very hard, to resist.
After so many years of conditioning in school, you approach your first job similarly. Your raise your hand as quickly and often as possible. If all goes well, your boss and your boss's boss recognize you as a rising star. Before long, you become obsessed with knowing all the answers. You spend fifty hours at work and another thirty doing research to cement your standing as the go-to person.
The more answers you provide, the more satisfied you feel, but eventually the "rush" gets harder to achieve and doesn't last as long. You have gained so many responsibilities, you don't have time to enjoy the rush, even if you still felt it. The best you can hope for, in some ways, is to feel the relief of being right.
Meanwhile, wave after wave of answer-givers are arriving at the organization, full of bright young energy. Since you've built your reputation on giving answers, you tell them what to do. Some of the solutions that worked for you are now outdated. Or you may find that the new arrivals don't want to be spoon-fed answers, since that takes away the excitement of discovery and learning. They might lose initiative and the organization suffers as a result, even if you continue to get promoted.
Eventually, you learn that you can't do everyone's work or you die from exhaustion. You may also learn that to lead and inspire others, you need more than answers. You need great questions. Unfortunately, you haven't been schooled in asking questions.
It may feel too late, but, thankfully, it isn't. To ask great questions, you must: take a selfless approach (be willing to grant the credit for finding solutions to others), make sure the questions are open-ended and not directed toward the answer you want to hear, and demonstrate you are genuinely interested in learning from your coworkers.
Now, more than ever, we need great question-askers. The answers are out there--a surfeit of them, actually. The world captured over four exabytes of data in the past year; that's more data than existed in the past 5,000 years altogether! Google searches have risen from 2.7 billion per month to more than 31 billion per month in the last three years. Technology is advancing at such a rapid rate, too, that what a student learns in technical college may be obsolete before they graduate.
The data pile is enormous, often free, and readily accessible to everyone. If you need a business model, you will find more two-by-two matrixes on the Web than you will have the patience to examine. Need a Harvard Business School case to go with the matrix? Log-in, pay $10, and have a read. Want a knowledgeable professor to interpret the case for you? A simple search will likely churn one up for free.
The answer is no longer the issue. It's getting the question right. Questions help guide individuals and organizations through the ever-growing data pile.
Get hooked on questions and impart their value to others. Share the pride of discovery. In the process, ward off exhaustion and reinvigorate both your organization and your own desire to learn.
Some Twitter Basics
by GL Hoffman
Twitter is the new MySpace, the new Facebook--only smaller. Think of Twitter as microblogging. Each post can only contain 140 characters, so one needs to be concise, and it pays to lrn how to abbrv.
Each "tweet" may be tiny, but don't underestimate the power of Twitter and other social media. In 2006, Facebook had 12 million active users; today, Facebook has more than 200 million (half of whom use it daily, and more than two-thirds of whom are over college age) from over 180 countries. Twitter is on that sort of trajectory, so businesses leaders would do well to jump on board now. In this day and age, not using social media amounts to gross negligence.
Go toTwitter.com and sign up. It's free, of course. Then download Tweetdeck, which will help you organize all the posts or "tweets" from your followers. Followers are people who find you so fascinating and charismatic that they want to know every time you post something. Click on the name or "handle" and you can see the contact information for your followers and the people you're following.
Here are 10 basic Twitter tips:
1. Pick someone important that you want to follow and go to his home Twitter page. You can hitchhike on his popularity with your tweets. Many of his followers will become your followers. Your list of followers will grow and grow, to the point where every week, you should "un-follow" some people who either do not follow you back, or who are just too weird. I know a guy who chose to wear a stocking hat in his picture. I un-followed him.
2. By using "#jobs" or "#HR," you can see everything about jobs or HR that has been tweeted. It's important to learn techniques like this to keep your Twitter universe a manageable size, geared toward your interests.
3. Beneath people's pictures, you are given four action options. The bottom right one, called "actions," allows you to create groups. Start using groups right away, rather than have to sort a large number of people into groups later.
4. "RT" means re-tweet. If someone says something you like, hit RT, which will send that person's tweet to your followers. The original tweeter will appreciate the added exposure. If you just want to send a message to only one person, use "DM" (direct message). BTW, there is no spam on Twitter because you can't DM someone who isn't following you.
5. On Tweetdeck, the blank under the main box automatically reduces your long url into a smaller one. These links are then in your tweet and your followers can go to your blog or website by just clicking on it.
6. Browse Google for Twitter tools. I found "tweetlater," which allows you to schedule your tweets around the clock. Guy Kawasaki does this too much, so I un-followed him, but when it's not overused tweetlater is a helpful tool.
7. Don't forget your manners. Twitter can de-generate into a bunch of people figuratively yelling at each other: "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!" Fight the urge to promote your business constantly and don't use links all the time. Be sure to RT often though, since if you promote others, they will be more apt to promote you.
8. If you want someone to RT you, ask them nicely: "Please RT". They will do it, especially if your tweet isn't too long (less than 120 characters). It's amazing, but 140 characters can get to feel pretty long.
9. Best time to use twitter? In front of the TV, assuming you have a laptop.
10. At the bottom of each column in Tweetdeck, there is a filter icon. Type in "RT" and you can see all the RTs. Type in "http" and you see all the tweets that are linked somewhere else.
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