18 posts tagged “social”

I have had a few posts on charactertics around facing adversity, challenges and playing David like 300, I Like It Rough and then my last post recently on (Pride), Determination and Resilience.

You can imagine how excited I was to read an article by Melinda Beck, from The Wall Street Journal, here on how some very successful household names had to face failure before they became what they are today. The article to me was a "Celebration of Failure"!

• J.K. Rowling's first book about a boy wizard named Harry Potter was rejected by 12 publishers before Bloomsbury, a small London publishing house, picked it up.
• Twenty-seven publishers rejected Theodor Seuss (Dr. Seuss) Geisel's first book, "To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street."
• Michael Jordan was cut from his high school varsity basketball team sophomore year.
• Decca Records turned down a contract with the Beatles, saying "Groups of guitars are on their way out."
• Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor who said "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas."

Here are some snippets that I want to make a note to self:

What makes some people rebound from defeats and go on to greatness while others throw in the towel? Psychologists call it "self-efficacy," the unshakable belief some people have that they have what it takes to succeed.

I only think that a few people rebound and most throw in the towel.

Where does such determination come from? In some cases it's inborn optimism -- akin to the kind of resilience that enables some children to emerge unscathed from extreme poverty, tragedy or abuse. Self-efficacy can also be acquired by mastering a task; by modeling the behavior of others who have succeeded; and from what Prof. Bandura calls "verbal persuasion" -- getting effective encouragement that is tied to achievement, rather than empty praise.

Some quotes:

"I've failed over and over and over again in my life. That's why I succeed," - Michael Jordan
"I didn't fail 1,000 times," he told a reporter. "The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps." - Thomas Edison
"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense." - Winston Churchill

Two big failures I have faced personally are:

1. My application for a student visa to study for my MS during my first attempt (1995) to follow my dream to the US, was rejected twice in 2 days. I could not apply for another two years as it was mandatory after 2 consecutive rejections. [I finally applied again in 1999 and made it]
   
2. My 3 years of being "vocationally challenged" during the downturn after the dot-com days. That enabled me to discover social networking online (starting with LinkedIn where I eventually went to work) since I was living it off-line. My LinkedIn profile only details those days since I value my achievements then as one of the best
   

Finally, as Henry Ford said: "Whether you think that you can or you can't, you're right."

Imagine: The Pursuit IS Happyness

I recently saw another Terrence Howard movie called Pride and the swimming team he coached was PDR - The Philadelphia Department of Recreation.

He goes on to coach a bunch of kids playing basketball on the street to win a major league but only after he makes them believe in PDR:

"Pride, Determination and Resilience"

Imagine: Startups without the above

LinkedIn always had a tradition of celebrating its milestones when a significant number of users had signed up.

They just celebrated 20M users and a HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to the much newer and larger team. See all the fun pictures on their blog post here. I started using LinkedIn:

• As a user in 2003 when they had 40k users and with it my initiation to all things social/Web2.0
  
• As an employee in 2004 when it had about 1.5M users
• Left in 2006 when it had about 6.5M users

Two of them where I was in on the journey are below. I can spot myself in the second one but had no luck with the first

It took me a day in 2003 to see that LinkedIn worked and it would always work. Why?

"People Always do Business with People

Imagine: It is that simple

It is really amazing how really simple things communicate the best. I have three books that use that extremely effectively and they all have one thing in common - they use presentation formats that appeal to children, not boring adults.

They all are:

• Simple
• Tell One Story and
• VERY importantly, Fuuuuuun!

1. Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus recommended to me by my colleague, Tom Rolander here at CrossLoop.
Two caterpillars, Stripes and Yellow are the main characters, who go on to explore the 'more' in life

2. Orbitting the Giant Hairball by Gordon McKenzie recommended to me by a mentor of mine.
The Hairball is a reference to all the policies and rules that grow and thrive at corporations. You can see many of those in personal lives through patterns and a daily rut

3. Swimmy by Leo Lionni . My most recent favorite that I picked up is from Robert Kalin, The Founder and CEO of Etsy. It is extremely applicable to startups but can be applied to the power of relationships - professional and/or family.

Watch Robert reading it below and you get the distinction of being one of those few who have read at least one book this year:

I had a fantastic opportunity yesterday to attend a Churchill Club (They organize some of the best events in the Valley, btw) event called "Who Do You Trust? Trends in Trust and Influence for the Next Generation of Business Leaders". A post on that definitely coming up later.(I tweeted this event)

Cialdini-Robert

The one reason why I attended was to get a chance to see and listen to Robert Cialdini, Author of one of my all time favorite that I had referred to in this blog some time ago - “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”

One big take away I had from the event was an observation from his studies about "credible communicators" with reference to reporters, bloggers, social media folks, msm, friends etc - anyone can be a source of information that you might trust. These communicators had two characteristics:

• They are percieved as experts/ authorities in their domain
• Very importantly and critical, they were perceived as being objective and unbiased

For the latter, those who were perceived as trustworthy were straightshooters having built that reputation over some years. If you do not have the 'many years' luxury, here is what many people do:

State a weakness first and then right after that they follow it up with their argument or statement.

The example Dr. Cialdini gave was for Avis: We Are #2 But We Try Harder

Being personally always fascinated and studying social behavior (online and offline) - this blog being only one form of expression with the subtitle "Everything social offline, Online", I was very keen on making an attempt to sign up for his social experiments/thesis. After a quick introduction and chat, I signed up to be a part of this expertiments and thesis. He gracefull accepted my offer and now the hard part - waiting for the next steps assuming the right people in his team actually need more volunteers.

Imagine: I am not as good as David Pogue but I believe that CrossLoop is the best free software to help someone. To establish further trustworthiness, here is a Disclaimer: I am one of the Co-Founders of CrossLoop.

Well - I couldn't think of a better way to test how relevant TechMeme "is" or should I say the relevance of Techmeme.
This post has nothing to do with technology so here is some important trivia on it:

• Is is the third-person singular verb form of the copula in the English language [Source:Wikipedia]
• A search on Google for 'is' gives 4,450,000,000 results
• Is is country code top level domain name for Iceland

Imagine: iSocial instead Social Ads [John/Steve - you cool?]

This is probably one of the most exciting days for my small company, CrossLoop - we have a free and simple desktop sharing product. We got recommended by Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal! He is a personal technology columnist and is probably one of the world's most respected one at that too. Apart from his column, The Mossberg Solution, The Mossberg Mailbox (where he responds to his reader's questions), he is also the Co-Founder of All Things Digital.

Here is the question and Walt's answer recommending us:

Walt mossberg

"Q. My mom is legally blind and has difficulty working with email and downloading files. I try to help her by phone, but it never works, and we live far apart, so I can’t just go over to help her. I would like to install an application on her PC where I can take over remotely from home. Do you have any suggestions for this type of application?

A. There are a number of possibilities. One very simple option is a program called CrossLoop, at crossloop.com. Some versions of Windows, such as Windows XP Professional and Windows Vista Ultimate, also have remote desktop control built in."

As you all know, I am a big fan of the paper and read it cover to cover everyday - many of my posts here are result of articles that get me thinking [which does not happen very often, btw]. Apart from the excitement that he recommended CrossLoop to one of the Journal readers through the Mossberg Mailbox here, it was personally one of the most exciting days for me - I have been reading all his columns from the day I landed in the US in 1999!! Now to see my own company recommended by him is still a little unbelievable - I checked the column twice today to make sure it was really us!

Since as a product, our key proposition is ease of use to enable and empower anyone to leverage technology through people they know, this notice to "non-techies" at the end of each Mossberg Mailbox edition was very appropriate:

"Don't be embarrassed by your problems with computers. Just remember: you're not a "dummy," no matter what those computer books claim. The real dummies are the people who, though technically expert, couldn't design hardware and software that's usable by normal consumers if their lives depended upon it."

And oh - Did I mention we have do not have a PR team or agency?

Imagine: Anyone can help someone [now isn't that social?]

In the spirit of Halloween - Woo! Woooooooooo. Win Others Over

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials)

A while ago I had an article on how we are all selling - whether we know and like it or not. One of my all time favorite books on that has been Robert Cialdini's "Influence - the Psychology of Persuasion".

Here is a recent one that seems to be very interesting from a corporate perspective - 'The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas.'

I could not agree more that 'selling starts at home' - literally and figuratively. It is probably harder than selling externally. No idea or brilliance has value until it is executed upon.

The 4 steps they seem to advocate are:

1. Use social networks to reach decision makers
2. Addressing the five barriers:
   
• Unreceptive beliefs (Change is a common culprit here)
  
• Conflicting interests (Are the company
  

  The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas

  G. Richard Shell
  and people's goals aligned and clearly communicated?)
  
• Negative relationships (Ccorporate culture and social intelligence?)
  
• A lack of credibility (Reputation?) and
  
• Failing to adjust one's communication mode to suit a particular audience (Do you ever talk in Greek to those who only understand English?)
  
3. Presentation that is compelling. This does not have to be powerpoint only - timing, relevance, context and problem solving help
4. Securing individual and organizational commitments. A biggy- especially the last one and there you need the buy-in of the top dawg

I assume they assume that one is passionate about what one is selling, 'own' and live it.
 
One factor that is common across the board - its about people all the way.

Wharton has more details on the book here

Imagine: Social Intelligence offline

It is one of those lectures, given by Randy Pausch - a Carnegie Mellon professor, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, that he gave at the university on Sept. 18, 2007, that you do not want to miss.

Braveheart, the movie's tagline was "All men die. Not all men really live". Out of all those who die, a few know how to do it with grace and remind others - life is short and anything can happen. Once you are done with this, it should help you to identify your rocks and put them in first.

Imagine: like a child again

I had a post on The Dog, The Cat and Web 2.0 a while ago and a few on friendship, its disconnect online and offline so I think it would be appropriate to celebrate Wall Street's anniversary and the change in how we can 'get' a friend after 20 years, with Gordon Gekko's quote in the movie: