Bloghound

Why is it that many of us who are fairly smart do stupid things? While doing research on why CMOs’ fail, I came across a book that has some relevancy, Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid, by Robert J. Sternberg, IBM professor of psychology and education at Yale. The most interesting chapter is by Harvard researcher David N. Perkins, who believes that you can be really smart but not know when to engage your smartness, and the extent to which this happens is “stupidity.”

Perkins highlights eight deadly sins of the stupid smart person:

1. impulsiveness (doing something rash)
2. neglect (ignoring something important)
3. procrastination (actively avoiding something important)
4. vacillation (dithering)
5. backsliding (capitulating to habit)
6. indulgence (allowing oneself to fall into excess)
7. overdoing (like indulgence, but with positive things)
8. walking the edge (tempting fate)

While I’m early into the research, my hypothesis is that CMOs fall into stupid territory most often by engaging in #s 1, 5 and 8.

Your thoughts?

One way companies can keep customers happy — maybe not loyal, but reasonably content — is responsive customer service, especially in small ways that matter. Here’s an example. This morning I sent my bank a simple question and here’s the response.

Two days to reply to a simple email question? Now there’s an area marketing should tackle.

Tony Snow, former White House press secretary who died Saturday, was a true communications professional, devoted to helping people understand even the most complex issues. I will always remember what I learned from him:

• Communications is about making meaning and helping people understand. People may come to a different conclusion and not agree with you, but they will never see your view or agree if they don’t understand the context and relevance of the issue in the first place. Tony was first and foremost a meaning maker, not a political spin doctor.

• Be helpful and open. Tony wanted to be helpful to the press — more so than any other press secretary in recent years. Most others have been defensive and annoyed with the media questions. Not Tony. He answered questions vs. dancing around and throwing empty answers back. He was positive, optimistic, and seemed to genuinely like and respect the media — despite differing points of view. I think he knew that that democracy is based on debating and discussing, not issuing statements and refusing to engage in dialog.

• Living in a world of optimism and possibilities is a good life. Though ill for many years, Tony’s optimism and energy was a constant reminder of how rich life can be. University of Chicago educator Robert Hutchins once said, ‘The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.” Tony was the antithesis — engaged, passionate and constantly nourishing.

Who are the up and coming Tony Snows and Tim Russerts? We need them now….

I predict that marketers will have great fun but lose even more credibility with this new strategy: tuning in to business psychics. That’s right. All kinds of businesses seem to be turning to psychics, otherwise known as “intuitionists,” to make important decisions, according to a Newsweek article, “The 10,000-a-Month Psychic.”

Kevin Clancy, author of Your Gut is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head, has a good post on what this trend means to marketers over at The Marketing Fray.

“Aside from the utter lunacy of a business hiring a psychic for anything other than entertainment at the company Halloween party, we’re concerned that when business folk want to make sense of uncertainty in the present, they get completely preoccupied with the future as if they have no control over it. It’s understandable, but it can be dangerous if they forget that the past and future are not mutually exclusive. “

All that said I am looking forward to tuning into a webinar on July 11 over at Learn From My Life with psychic Ainslie MacLeod, author of The Instruction: Living the Life Your Soul Intended. Why? Maybe it’s summer and I just need a fresh point of view that has nothing to do with marketing, the recession, or presidential politics.

On Friday, June 27 at 1 p.m. EST, I’m going to be sharing what I’ve learned so far about marketing, social media and word of mouth marketing over at Learn From My Life. (And answering calls and email questions.)

There are some great interviews over at Learn From My Life from people like free-agent author Daniel Pink, former CNN reporter Daryn Kagan, legendary basketball coach Dale Brown, and Dan Ariely, author of the must-read new book, Predictably Irrational.

Hope you can make it!

I recently came across two companies that block employees’ access to blogs. (”Don’t want people wasting time while at work.”), yet are trying to encourage employees to read newspapers more often. Yikes!

I listened patiently while the executives explained the value employees would get if they would only read the newspaper every day — and how much more valuable that would be than “surfing the net.”  I then told them — both around my age — that the first thing I do in the morning is to open my blog reader — not my newspaper.

Then I shared how blogs are replacing trade magazines, go into more depth than many newspapers are able to, and are becoming the preferred way of learning, keeping current, finding and networking with  new people, hearing about emerging trends.

Blocking blogs is like saying you don’t want your employees to learn or help you find great talent or help you grow the business.”Really?” they asked. “Really.”

Two small breakthroughs in opening up senior executives to the social media age. But hearing their views makes me think we have a long way to go in educating the people who control the controls.

Pope Benedict plans to text thousands of young Catholics during World Youth Day in Sydney in July; the church plans to also set up a Catholic social networking site and use digital prayer walls. The goal: make the Catholic church more relevant to younger churchgoers.

Good for the rather conservative Catholics to use new ways to connect — especially in view of the declining number of members of the Catholic Church in many Western countries like the United States and Belgium. According to a recent Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life study:

Catholicism has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes. While nearly one-in-three Americans (31%) were raised in the Catholic faith, today fewer than one-in-four (24%) describe themselves as Catholic. These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not for the offsetting impact of immigration.

The question for the Pope, as it is for all marketers,  is whether using social media tools can help  attract and keep members without also changing the message and experience.

Tonight I’m going to hear the brilliant designer Stefan Sagmeister speak at RISD. His topic is the same as his new book: “Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far.”

He came up with the book concept while taking a year off, and then came back to work with a whole new perspective. Here are the 20 things he’s learned so far.

1. Helping other people helps me.

2. Having guts always works out for me.

3. Thinking that life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now.

4. Organizing a charity group is surprisingly easy.

5. Being not truthful always works against me.

6. Everything I do always comes back to me.

7. Assuming is stifling.

8. Drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on.

9. Over time I get used to everything and start taking for granted.

10. Money does not make me happy.

11. My dreams have no meaning.

12. Keeping a diary supports personal development.

13. Trying to look good limits my life.

14. Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses.

15. Worrying solves nothing.

16. Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.

17. Everybody thinks they are right.

18. If I want to explore a new direction professionally, it is helpful to try it out for myself first.

19. Low expectations are a good strategy.

20. Everybody who is honest is interesting.

And here’s the talk he gave at TED.

When I called Andersen Windows today to make an appointment to get an estimate for replacement windows the sales representative asked me if my husband would be home for the appointment. “I don’t know. But one of us will juggle our work schedules to be home at that time.”

“So your husband will be there?” she asked, pushing it. “We’ll give you a $100 discount if your husband is there with you.”

What?! I’m so offended by Andersen’s approach. Am I the weak little Missus with no buying and decision power? (On the other hand, it might be that we women ask the good questions and bargain tough — and Andersen’s market research has found that the guys are pushovers.)

Nonetheless, the sales angle has backfired. I’ve shared this story with several people today, and now with you. Word of mouth at work.

I went through crazy hoops buying my first house as a young single woman 26 years ago. ( A network television affiliate even came out to do a spot because I was such a novelty.) House decision sexism was bad then. Today it’s unforgivable — especially as part of the sales process of a well known brand like Andersen.

There’s one big thing holding companies back from innovation, growth, attracting and keeping amazing talent, realizing the possibilities of emerging trends like social media: obstacles. (aka fears)

Reflecting on some recent experiences I see it everywhere.

• I spoke with a small group of Fortune 500 executives about social media and they zeroed in on what don’t like about social media: losing control.
• A group of brilliant IP attorneys got really involved in a session about conversational marketing, but suggested I spend much more time on one particular slide: overcoming obstacles.
• A workshop for a Fortune 50 company resulted in a powerful point of view that management, sales and marketing collaboratively created –and loved– but a then decided to stay with a safe, bland message platform. Why? The official reason was “internal politics;” the real reason was fear to have a point of view so different and evocative from the industry norms.
• A pharmaceutical company hired actors to pose as customers because they feared what real customers might say to their employees.

Going to fear school

Every year I do one big thing for my own professional development. There’s only one criteria: it needs to scare me, shake me out of my comfort zone so I really learn something.

This week I’m taking a workshop on how to design and develop transformational workshops at Kripalu. I’m the only business person among medical professors and educational activists, healers and shamans, ministers and coaches. Dropping into this touchy-feely environment where people chant in the morning instead of firing up PowerPoint made me feel very, very uncomfortable — so much so initially that I wondered whether I could learn anything at all. My own obstacles and judgments kept whispering in my ear, “Get in the car and get out of Yogi Dodge.”

Then in a session called “Going Beyond What Usually Stops Us,” David Silberkleit led us through an exercise where we had to articulate those obstacles (and the fears lurking behind them) that stop us from pushing forward to accomplish more, reach higher, take risks. Unarticulated fears/obstacles are what usually stops people. Acknowledge the obstacles, then you can go forward faster. (And David should know; he acknowledged his professional obstacles and walked away a sizable family business and inheritance — Archie Comics.)

During the program I thought about how thrilling social media is, opening up new business models, changing product development, innovation, customers service, CRM, marketing, public relations and leadership communications. Yet for so many companies and people the first step in realizing the possibilities will be acknowledging the very real obstacles of social media: eliminating job types and functions, reallocating budgets, losing control, lacking new skills, feeling irrelevant. I’m sure you can add more as there are many.

Mindset vs. toolset, human change vs. program change

Just as social media is a mind set as much as a tool set, success will require human change as much as functional and program change.

Just as we marketers know strategy and creativity, so we will need to learn how to guide our organizations through tremendous behavioral change.

So for my final project tomorrow morning I’m trying out a new workshop: “Burn Down the Obstacles.”

Oh yeah.

PS — warmest thanks to teachers Ken Nelson and Lesli Lang and my brilliant fellow workshop participants for teaching more in a week than I’d learn in a year of business conferences.