Change This Manifesto
ChangeThis has published my ‘Shift & Reset Manifesto.’ Read it now.
Here is the summary:
“I am angry. There are real problems facing the world, and we, as a society, are not doing enough to address them in the right ways, not the ways we know are possible. The old way isn’t working, and we know it.
We continue to reward the same behaviors we have rewarded in the past while expecting different results. We profess interest in really doing things differently but settle into routines that are comfortable and safe, and we are fooling ourselves. There are lots of excuses for not making real, demonstrable changes in the way we live, work, and how we interact as individuals and engage in groups/communities. I have heard them all. I have used many of them myself. But they are bullshit. All excuses are. A person either truly, deeply, genuinely cares about changing things or he doesn’t. You can step up and do what it takes, in whatever way you can, or you need to acknowledge your limits and accept the results.
What might be possible if we were really committed, as individuals and as a society? I’ve thought a lot about this, and instead of remaining angry, I choose to embrace the question and figure out how I can use the anger to make things happen.”
Read it now. Share it. Talk about it. Let me know what you think.
12 Big Ideas for 2012
I am sharing these ideas to start a conversation. I want you to feel excited about the new opportunities that are available to us, individually and collectively, and frustrated that we haven’t made more progress.
Thank you for reading. And don’t forget to share.
Recent Attention for Shift & Reset
I’m proud and honored to share that Shift & Reset has recently received some special attention from some pretty cool folks:
I had a great conversation with Dr. Moira Gunn of NPR’s Tech Nation about what works well (and what doesn’t) when companies and nonprofits try to communicate their message.
Guidestar just published a version of my 12 Big Ideas for 2012 on their Trust blog.
Shift & Reset was also just written up in Fundraising Success, and I wrote about it for Triple Pundit and Wisepreneur. Check them out!
You can see a full list of press for Shift & Reset HERE.
Shift & Reset is Hiring!
I’m hiring a part-time assistant to help promote Shift & Reset. Check it out: http://www.scribd.com/doc/77543281/Book-Promotion-Assistant
Occupy Wall Street: All Bluster and No Bite? on FoxNews.com
Occupy Wall Street has accomplished what few have been able to do before - they earned a captive audience eager to hear their demands. But now that they have the microphone, will their posturing turn out to be all bluster and no bite?
Hear my answer and how it relates to the suggestions I give in Shift & Reset.
Forbes.com: Shift & Reset, entrepreneurs!
Please check out the great write-up of Shift & Reset that Martin Zwilling did on Forbes.com, called, It’s Time for Entrepreneurs to Shift & Reset. The beginning of his article is posted below. Please go directly to Forbes.com to read the rest! Thank you, Mr. Zwilling.
It’s time for more entrepreneurs to reset their focus, and shift their thinking to completely different ways of doing things. Everyone talks about innovation, but the majority of business plans I see still reflect linear thinking – one more social network with improved usability, one more wind-farm energy generator with a few more blades, or one more dating site with a new dimension of compatibility. Serious changes and great successes don’t come from linear thinking.
In searching for ways to get this message out, I came across a no excuse, no apology, new book by Brian Reich, called “Shift and Reset,” which makes some excellent points on ways to increase the range of change in a person’s thinking, or an organization’s results.
End Malaria could have been so much more…
I bought a copy of End Malaria this week. You should too. It is, as promised, a great book. And it does, in fact, benefit a great cause.
Still, as I poured over the 60+ essays submitted by leading business thinkers and innovators, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the biggest opportunity of all was simply missed. End Malaria could have been a true game changer. Instead its just a great book that benefits a great cause.
Before I get to that… let me just put in a plug for the book itself. The description on Amazon.com reads as follows:
End Malaria is more than a book, it’s a great cause.
At least $20 from each copy sold by us goes directly to Malaria No More to send a mosquito net to a family in need and to support life-saving work in the fight against malaria. Malaria No More, an international advocacy organization, is on a mission to end malaria related deaths by 2015.
In addition to saving lives, buying this book means you can enjoy essays by 62 of American’s favorite business authors, including Tom Peters, Nicholas Carr, Pam Slim, and Sir Ken Robinson. Organized into three main sections—Focus, Courage, Resilience—and eight subsections—Tap Your Strengths, Create Freedom, Love & Be Kind, Disrupt Normal, Take Small Steps, Embrace Systems, Get Physical, Collaborate—all essays in End Malaria share a desire to inspire readers to look within themselves for solutions to their everyday dilemmas and for motivation to realize their desires.
Editor Michael Bungay Stanier envisioned End Malaria as a book that would marry the best writers of the business world to a deserving cause. Michael assembled and edited this collection with a goal to leverage that breadth of expertise these writers represent for an issue of global importance.
At its core, End Malaria is about doing great work including the hard work to save lives. All of the writers in this collection and all of the partners involved have waived fees in order to raise the maximum amount of money.
To summarize, by purchasing the book you will help to raise money to support a very important cause… the effort to end malaria around the world.
Why is that so important?
Seth Godin, who contributed an essay, and whose alternate publishing concept, The Domino Project, published the book, explained the benefits of buying a book where the proceeds are donated to the cause of ending malaria are simple: “A child wouldn’t die from malaria, a disease that causes more childhood death than HIV/AIDS.”
His post continues:
It’s that direct. Malaria bednets are simple nets that hang over a window or a bed. They’re treated with a chemical that mosquitos hate. The mosquitos fly away, they don’t bite, people don’t get malaria.
Every single penny spent on the Kindle edition goes to Malaria No More, giving them enough money to buy one or two bednets and to deliver them and be sure they’re used properly. Low overhead, no graft, no waste. Just effectiveness. And if you buy the beautiful paperback edition, you can easily give it away when you’re done and the same $20 donation gets made. None of the authors or anyone at the Domino Project sees your money, there’s no ulterior motive, just the fact that a kid won’t die.
Again, I think its a terrific project. The essays are smart. The money raised has the potential to be significant. The buzz surrounding the book will surely generate even greater awareness, and the potential for more fundraising and action.
So what’s my complaint?
End Malaria could have been so much more than just an interesting book. End Malaria could have been so much more than just a collection of essays from smart, innovative thinkers. End Malaria could have been so much more than just a tool for raising money.
What could it have been?
A collection of essays about business and innovation from some of the world’s leading thinkers doesn’t have anything to do with ending malaria. Giving readers an understanding of how to improve productivity, pursue excellence, embrace systems, collaborate and more — all of which are areas of focus in the book — won’t actually change anything. Well, it won’t change anything in the context of helping them to understand and stay deeply involved in the work needed to end malaria.
Imagine what would have happened if you had pressed the dozens of brilliant marketers and strategists for answers to really difficult questions about ending malaria, or addressing causes generally? Imagine what the book would have delivered had the contributing authors had been asked to apply their intelligence, experience, perspective and energy towards truly solving this cause, instead of just serving it with greater awareness?
Some possible examples:
- Mitch Joel is a brilliant digital strategist who writes in the book about the importance of developing and maintaining a personal brand. He could have explained how working to end malaria enhances your brand and creates connections to others who are committed to important causes, creating all sorts of powerful personal and professional opportunities.
- David Allen is an absolute genius when it comes to organizing and prioritizing how you spend your time and focus on your work. He could have explained how to find a little bit of time each day, with everything else happening in your life, to commit to recruiting more people to support this cause.
- Barry Schwartz is a professor of psychology and has written several best-selling books about how to make better choices, and create better choice environments for customers. He could have written about how to expand the number of options for how people could work to end malaria, instead of limiting them.
- Nancy Duarte knows more about how to create compelling presentations than anyone I have ever encountered. She could have written about how someone reading End Malaria could have passed the lessons contained in the book (assuming they related to ending malaria) along to others, so they resonated and inspired action.
I could go on, and on, and on… there are 58 more authors.
Ironically, Jonah Lehrer writes in the book that “When we’re faced with a difficult problem, the most obvious solution - that first idea we’re focused on - is probably wrong.” Fundraising is quite possibly the least interesting potential outcome from an impressive project of this kind, but it has become the primary focus of the promotional efforts around the book. The big message is that by purchasing the book you will help to end malaria around the world. In reality, by purchasing the book you will accomplish two things: 1) get yourself an excellent collection of essays and b) contribute money to a worthy organization. Everything beyond that is a bit more fuzzy in terms of meaningful, measurable outcomes to the effort to end malaria.
Was creating an inspiring book to raise money to support this cause was the most obvious solution that the organizers could develop? If so, that’s exactly why it was the wrong one.
Greater awareness will always help to advance a cause. But if the cause of ending malaria suffers from a lack of awareness, this book won’t solve that problem. Most of the people involved, or who will end up purchasing or reading the book, are already part of the community that is aware of this issue. This is a convenient new way to raise money. Those who are new to the cause won’t find enough in the book to keep them engaged with the issue, or committed to the work necessary to end malaria. More celebrity authors and innovators won’t change that. No amount of money raised will ever be enough. And perhaps most frustrating of all, when people see lots of books sold and money raised, they’ll think that we’ve settled on a model that can be used to address other issues. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a book next month that raises money to support breast cancer, and the following month to support education around multiple sclerosis or chronic fatigue syndrome. And so on.
But this project, the collected intelligence and insights, experience and perspective available from these incredible authors, could have changed the way we think about this important cause, or any cause. So much new and better thinking is needed. The authors could have provided real solutions that individuals and organizations around the world could have used to tip the balance towards truly ending malaria. But they didn’t.
You should buy the book. You should celebrate the project and the contributors. But you should also feel just a little disappointed that such an incredible opportunity to truly address this serious in a meaningful, measurable, and sustainable way issue was missed.
I write about how we need to move beyond simply generating awareness for causes in my new book, Shift & Reset: Strategies for Addressing Serious Issues In A Connected Society. The proceeds from my book don’t benefit any particular organization, but I hope the insights will help every individual and organization committed to changing the world think about things a little differently.
Revolutionary Transformation?
Technology has changed the way we get and share information. In the context of education — in this case I am referring to the education system, the whole going to school thing — the established methods for teaching and learning are being disrupted. In some cases technology is providing new and better opportunities for people, of all ages, to make sense of complex subjects and learn new skills. In other cases, the technology is serving as a distraction, an unnecessary add-on. I can argue both sides.
Earlier this week, the New York Times published a fantastic story about technology in schools, and more specifically about the fact that the investment that school districts have made in technology has not resulted in noticeable/significant improvements in test scores. The promise of technology as the solution to the educational challenges that exist in the United States, and around the world, simply has not yet been fully realized.
There are so many different issues wrapped up in this one article. Education is a huge and important issue. I wrote a whole chapter in my new book, Shift & Reset about education, and how our approach to teaching/engage, not to mention the ways we use technology to support both formal and informal learning need to be reconsidered. For now, let me offer two thoughts:
1) Technology is not the solution to our educational problems. Technology is not the most serious problem either. Successfully getting technology into, or out of, classrooms is not going to significantly change anything - not unless the underlying problems are addressed. We don’t have enough qualified teachers. Many teachers don’t have basic supplies to support their interactions with students. Too many young kids don’t have access to books, and enter school without the basic literacy and social skills necessary to succeed (organizations like Jumpstart, are focused on this challenge specifically). The organizations focused on addressing education challenges at different levels aren’t coordinated well enough, aren’t sharing their data and resources, or doing enough to support kids throughout their educational life.
I can keep going. But the simple point is this: fix the analog problems first, and look at technology as a way to help speed and scale the delivery of information or facilitate other efforts that support learning. When you assume that technology can solve the problem, the underlying issues will persist.
2) A key requirement is that content must be present, across many different platforms. There is a powerful role for technology to play in supporting and enhancing education, but you can’t fix a person’s ability to learn to a particular tool - a smartboard, an iPad, a calculator, nothing. Just the same, you can’t teach someone in a classroom environment only and expect them to have a full understanding and appreciation for a subject. Their experiences in life are part of the overall learning process.
NOTE: You can get a little more insight into my views on this subject from this thinking paper I wrote last year for an event with Former First Lady Laura Bush about the global literacy challenge (it was delivered at an International Literacy Day event hosted by the UN). You can also go buy Shift & Reset, which talks all about it.
In the meantime, go read the article. Then let me know if you start to think a little differently about technology and its role in education.
Digital Diplomacy For All
I want to see a commitment to digital diplomacy in the context of all the serious issues and challenges that exist in our society today.
What am I talking about? Alec Ross would know what I am talking about. Ross is senior adviser for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the subject of a brief profile in the September 12, 2011 issue of Time Magazine (the one with the ‘What To Eat Now’ article by Dr. Oz on the cover). As Time explains:
“Over the past two years, Ross, 39, has been incorporating [Facebook, Twitter and YouTube - along with other digital platforms] into the daily lives of U.S. diplomats.”
His efforts are part of a larger effort to exert a new kind of technology-fueled ‘smart power’ that helps advance American foreign policy interests around the world. Again, from Time:
“Ross’s effort is a key component of Clinton’s 21st century statecraft agenda, which aims to harness communications technology and information networks to address the U.S.’s grand challenges on the international stage: aiding democratic movements, providing disaster relief and alleviating poverty.”
The whole idea of digital diplomacy is super exciting, and includes far more than just the creative use of some new technology platform or application. But the conversation about digital diplomacy is too often limited to how governments (and the groups they work with on government-related matters) can address international political and policy issues. Individuals and organizations at all levels, here in the United States and around the world, are facing the exact same grand challenges that the State Department has prioritized. The State Department doesn’t own the idea of digital diplomacy, and they shouldn’t.
We should all be working to harness communications technology and information networks to help support democratic movements, provide disaster relief and alleviate poverty. At all levels. The same concepts can be applied to any issue or cause. By anyone. Brands, media, educational institutions, and non-governmental organizations of all stripes should be embracing the very ideas behind digital diplomacy better and applying to a wide variety of ‘grand challenges’ that we know exist today. Individuals can serve as ambassadors for the issues and causes they are committed to addressing, with or without formal training or an official posting overseas. We can all be a little smarter with our power.
This is what my new book, Shift & Reset, is all about — rethinking how we address serious issues in a connected society.
Some individuals and organizations are leveraging technology in the right ways, but not enough. Why not? Most people are thinking about how to apply technology to address serious issues in the wrong way. What separates Ross, and the rest of the crowd working to develop and advance digital diplomacy efforts around the world, is the role they assign to technology as a part of their larger overall strategic approach. Here is how the Time profile summed it up:
“Ross insists he doesn’t take a utopian view of the power of information networks. ‘Technology gakes on the values and intentions of its users,’ he says. ‘Governments that try to use these nteworks to control their people are ultimately swimming against the tide of history.’ And therein lies the crux of Ross’s position: technology is just a tool, for good or ill. Its up to people to decide how to use it.’
My view: there are far too many groups focused on building their own organizational capacity or elevating their brand, and failing to recognize that those efforts often come at the expense of truly engaging their audience in a way that motivates greater action or drives meaningful, measurable outcomes around an issue or cause. You can’t compare well-meaning organizations failure to leverage technology in truly compelling ways to efforts by authoritarian regimes to suppress individual freedoms or violently undermine political opposition. But in today’s connected society, with all the potential that exists to address serious issues available and waiting to be directed in better, more effective ways, our refusal to change the way we operate and realize the potential that exists when we do, is just as disappointing.
Clearly we need more people who think like Alec Ross - and they need to work in organizations and on projects that exist outside the walls of the State Department. Or put another way, there is an urgent need for digital diplomacy, at all levels and applied to all the most pressing issues and important causes facing our society today.
I write more about the idea of digital diplomacy and how organizations must re-think how they communicate and engage audiences in a connected society in my new book, Shift & Reset. Buy a copy today. Seriously, what are you waiting for?
More than ‘Just Salad’
The web is littered with stories about brands/organizations who have fallen short of customer expectations (I write about some of these in my new book, Shift & Reset). Often the complaints are isolated to a single cockroach in a hotel room that went unaddressed or a one-star take down of a cheaply made product. The complaint is available to anyone who goes looking on Yelp or Amazon but ultimately has little impact on how people perceive a brand, and even less influence on how an organization behaves. Other times, when a company fails to respond to a complaint or follows an ill-advised communications policy that suggests a lack of respect for its audience, the situation goes viral - and the brand/organization is taken to task, publicly, for all to witness.
What happens next? Money is spent on PR. More money is spent on making changes and improvements to address the issue. A few months later, even more money is spent on marketing to explain that everything has been fixed. If a brand/organization is lucky, and they are still in business after the crisis has subsided, it becomes a very expensive lesson in how the world now operates.
We have all heard theses stories (and watched many of them unfold in full glory on YouTube). I’ve posted numerous complaints myself, and though most seem to fall on deaf ears, I have regaled friends, colleagues, students, and family members with my disastrous brand experiences and customer service failures. I have even worked several of them into speeches and interviews. Bad customer service stories can quickly become legendary.
But what about the good stories? What happens when someone has a really good experience with a brand/organization? What happens when a company does respond thoughtfully to a customer complaint? You don’t hear those very often. Well, I had a situation arise the other day — and it actually ended well. So, I think its to share it.
Here’s what happened:
On Friday (September 2, 2011), after attending a meeting all the way across town, I went to get lunch at Just Salad, a chain of watch-someone-make-your-salad-right-before-your-eyes take-out restaurants with locations in New York and Hong Kong. I had never heard of Just Salad, but the concept (think Chop’t) has become pretty well established, especially in New York, so I knew what to expect. I chose an item off the menu, answered a half-dozen questions for the Just Salad employee behind the counter about how I wanted it prepared, and took my lunch back to my office.
I ate at my desk, while reading an article and fielding phone calls. I finished the first half of my wrap - and it was really yummy. I was excited to eat the rest… but when I reached down to grab the other half of my wrap I saw a small bug crawl out from between a grouping of black beans. I re-packaged my lunch, let out a big sigh, and tossed it in the trash. I turned to my computer and typed in: “I was so excited to eat my lunch from Just Salad… until I found a bug walking around in it. So much for that idea.’ and published it to my twitter feed.
I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t sickened. I was disappointed. I wasn’t going to take my wrap across town to complain. I wasn’t interested in making a big issue out of it — I didn’t even look to see if Just Salad had a twitter handle. My tweet was an outlet for my disappointment. I just needed to vent. I wasn’t expecting anything.
Within minutes I received a message from the @justsalad twitter handle asking me to DM my email so they could follow up about my experience. I responded with my email.
The first email message from Just Salad came at 2:16pm EST:
Good Afternoon Brian,
Thank you for providing your e-mail! I am so sorry to hear about your experience with us earlier today. We hold the quality of our food products in the most serious regard, and I would like to address this with our management, store staff, and supplier immediately. Would you mind elaborating on the details of your order (i.e. store location, time you visited, and what you ordered)?
Thank you, and I look forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
—
Jennifer Konde
Director of Customer Relations, Just Salad LLC
Phone: 212-244-1111 (office)
Follow us: Twitter | Facebook | Blog | Newsletter | SaladMatch
I wrote back at 2:29pm EST
Thanks for your note (and bravo for catching my tweet). I bought a Texas two-step wrap from the Just Salad location between 39th and 40th on 3rd avenue in NYC. The in-store experience was fine… a little slow (and I think I had someone who was training handling my order). But the main issue is that when I got back to my office (which is in Soho, I was out at a meeting, so I had to take a taxi back, and am on the other side of town - or I probably would have gone to return it to the store)… I started eating, and after I had finished half of my wrap I saw a small bug crawl out from the other side. I threw out my wrap and tweeted my experience…
Hope that helps.
Brian
Jennifer from Just Salad replied at 4:31pm:
Good Afternoon Brian, Thank you for the details!
I am deeply sorry about this. I have already spoken to the General Manager at our Third Avenue location, and we will be going over our food handling procedures with the entire staff of this store, in addition to contacting our supplier, to be sure that this does not happen again. We truly apologize, as this is definitely not representative of our usual level of quality.
I would love to treat you to a complimentary salad/wrap on us. Please accept the following coupon for use on your next delivery or pick-up order.
Code: XXXXXXX
Active from 09/02/2011 to 10/02/2011
Use at http://www.orderjustsalad.com Your feedback is extremely important to us, and please do not hesitate to contact me with any additional comments or concerns in the future.
Thank you, and have a great weekend!
I was surprised to receive any response from Just Salad, and beyond pleased with the personal, direct, and efficient way in which they addressed the issue. As I noted above, most of the time my complaints go unanswered — even those I direct to a particular individual (or twitter handle) at the offending brand/organization. Not here. Just Salad reached out to me. Just salad took it upon themselves to resolve the situation. And more than just offering me a coupon (which they did), their response seemed to suggest they were responding specifically to the issues I had raised, not just hoping to make the complaint disappear. This was no auto-response, that’s for sure. And I suspect that if you asked Jennifer from Just Salad, she would tell you it really wasn’t that difficult to reach out as she did.
I will probably eat at a Just Salad again — they have earned a second chance. More importantly (for them) I will regale friends, colleagues, students, and family members with details of this positive customer service experience, and work a reference into an upcoming speech or interview. I am still disappointed that my lunch came with more than just salad. But I know that someone at Just Salad cares enough about my business to reach out and try to address the situation. I appreciate that. A lot.
To all the brands/organizations out there who wonder what it takes to be successful in today’s highly-fragmented, fast-moving connected society… my advice is this: TRY. There is no perfect response, but a response is necessary. The rest you will have to figure out on your own.
I write more about customer service and how organizations must re-think how they communicate and engage audiences in a connected society in my new book, Shift & Reset. Buy a copy today… then read it. What are you waiting for?
