Kony 2012: Mistakes Were Made (Part 1)
I have lots of thoughts about the Kony 2012 campaign from Invisible Children - what was smart (a lot), what was not as smart (a lot) and what it all means. Let me start with this:
Jason Russell, who narrated the Kony 2012 video in addition to directing it, told Reuters on Friday that he didn’t expect the incredibly detailed story of Joseph Kony and child militias in Africa to be answered in a mere 30 minutes. The article quotes Russell as follows:
It definitely oversimplifies the issue. This video is not the answer, it’s just the gateway into the conversation. And we made it quick and oversimplified on purpose… We are proud that it is simple. We like that. And we want you to keep investigating, we want you to read the history.
My view: the campaign concept and the video are not where the team at Invisible Children missed the mark — it was the follow-through that should have been done better/differently.
If you assume that the audience will be motivated to learn more about this issue, then you have to help them access and make sense of the necessary information. Invisible Children failed at that important task. While there is information online about Joseph Kony, and more news coverage and blog-driven analysis of the issue being published each day, Invisible Children missed the opportunity to guide and shape the conversation beyond the most basic introductory level.
Invisible Children should have created and promoted more information and insight about Joseph Kony to accompany the video — think a directors cut version that explored the background and characters that were featured. In addition, Invisible Children should have curated articles, books, interviews and other information from credible voices on this issue to help bolster their argument and provide important context to their audience.
The execution of the campaign and video were smart - and clearly resonated. By failing to more deeply engage on an intellectual level, however, that audience that saw the video, Invisible Children has missed the biggest opportunity of all - to keep the audience engaged, to get them more connected to the issues, and to build an army of supporters that they could mobilize to further promote their work and help fulfill their mission.
More later.
Shift & Reset Podcast at SXSW
I will be hosting a podcast at SXSW today that looks at some of the big themes trends and topics that everyone will be discussing all week in Austin – or should be discussing — and how those ideas can be used to change business, media, and maybe even the world.
I have three very smart people joining me for this conversation:
Melinda Wittstock, the Founder and CEO of NewsiT
Gemma Craven, the head of the NY team for Social@Ogilvy
Jack Madans, Project Manager at CodeForAmerica
Here is my setup/intro:
Technology and the Internet are driving significant changes to our society, and these changes are being felt by everyone. The ways people get/share information are changing - rapidly and constantly. The result is that the ways we conceive of, create, distribute, consume and share media (all forms, but especially online) are very different than just a few years ago. This provides us with wonderful opportunities to transform and innovate how we do everything - conduct business, promote media, organize communities, and drive change. And yet, it is obvious that we need to work collectively, and in decisively new ways, if we want to see real changes. We must broaden the scope of our concerns beyond the isolated needs of a single organization, market, or sector and instead address these challenges on a global level.
I will post more later.
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.
