SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE

With all the conversations about monetizing social media and, specifically, brand conversations, it seems like we’ve forgotten one thing:  Kickstarting the dialogues, inside.

A long-ago research study about, yes, study groups reminded us.  Decades ago, under the auspices of Harvard, it pointed out that learning was all about relationships, that is, with whom you learned, rather than how you learned.  When compared to solo students, social learning produced more engaged, better prepared, and more knowledgeable participants.

[We also remember One L, author Scott Turow’s account of his first year at Harvard Law, wherein study groups became highly politicized – and learning-challenged.]

Today’s collaboration is yesterday’s study group.  And collaboration, most CEOs admit, is the gateway to the company future; it’s all about the ability to access people and resources when needed and drive the insight and performance business must have.  Better opportunities for learning and growth, as millennials have demonstrated, will magnetize the best talent.

In turn, the role of communicators shines.  Ramping up the social network.  Forming communities of practice.  Encouraging the talk – and walking that same way.  Encouraging leaders to role-model by working together in inclusive and diverse teams and conversations and brainstorming.  And offering references and tools and relationship-building context (in tandem with HR and other functions) that propel the business forward.

Interactive.  Experiential.  Personal.  Ever-evolving.  Now that sounds like a recipe for change.

THE E*D*U*C*A*T*I*O*N OF US

The jury’s still out, as they say.

Everyone, though, agrees on one fact:  The current (and sad) state of American education.  After that, there’s zip consensus, with remedies as wide ranging as our demographics, from charter schools and online curricula to the strict disciplines and draconian demands of the early to mid-20^th century. 

Our take:  No one’s right.  And no one agrees.

What bothers us most about this ongoing, never-settled argument are the implications for us, as mentors, coaches, and teachers for our professions.  A healthy debate, according to our thinking, should be about forever learning, or life-long education.  The skills and knowledge we accrue throughout our earlier business years only serves as a great foundation for continuing to feed ourselves intellectually.

Yet there’s always a but. 

All these ruminations got started when we volunteered last year as teaching assistants in an urban Midwestern elementary school.  Now we’re interacting with what might be would-be communicators and designers and marketers of tomorrow. 

It’s not pretty.  Kids can’t spell, can’t read, can’t do simple math – in spite of one-on-one work and patient repetitions and drills.    They do like to draw, and express themselves freely when asked for visual representations of concepts and numbers.  And they’re extremely voluble, looking for conversations about home and life and the world.  But not about school and education.

What does that mean for us as practitioners?  Where are the future change leaders and branding experts?  And how do we engage our staff, our teams in not only helping them learn and grow, but supporting  others in their brain- and capability-building efforts?

It’s a puzzlement.  And a very personal responsibility that begs for hearing about lessons learned – from others.

THE PRICE IS SO NOT RIGHT

There’s something in each of us that likes to play a game or two.

Call it competitiveness, achievement, even self-expression.  The notion of winning at something can lure us into arcades as well as casinos, seduce us with smartphone apps or a family Scrabble feud.

When it comes to work, though, gamification – the millennial word for infusing game mechanics in the Web – smacks of management control, and of automatons doing a higher-up’s bidding.

Hey, we’re being honest – and we know that the world just might be agin’ us:  August corporations use these kinds of software programs for various goals, from teaching about sustainability to exercising more effectively.  Many large salesforces thrill to using specialized game mechanics, such as badges, points, virtual gifts, and leaderboards, that help prompt higher performance.   Or so they say.  Gartner even predicted that this year more than 70 percent of global businesses would adopt at least one gamified app.

But is there truly safety in numbers?  For some routine jobs and tasks, such as onboarding and customer service, the games we play could well spark improvement.  Learning, too, deserves all the gamification we can absorb.  Yet the things that make us collaborate with our colleagues, enhance our interpersonal skills, and increase our productivity are not found in the Web-ified non-human prompts from our employers.  We want to figure out, ourselves, our own sources of motivation and good behaviors; understanding “me” from an online Chutes and Ladders-type exercise makes us want to, yes, game the system.

Besides, how would it make you feel to hear that Hezbollah uses gamification to market its philosophies to adolescents?

OF MARS AND FELINES

End-of-year musings are not natural to us.  We typically prefer to ponder events when they’ve occurred, as our “get it off your plate” psyches demand.  [No psychologists, please!]

But annual round-ups are part and parcel of the news media’s job, along with listing the 10 best and 100 worst of anything.  In particular, Bloomberg’s Businessweek catches up in December, tapping corporate celebrities and trends to forecast and prognosticate the next year and beyond.  In late 2013, Barry Diller was among those offering insights; two of his (edited) sentences grabbed us:  “We’re in a world now where it’s not enough to be smart.  You have to be curious.”

That statement was enough for a pause.  Is curiosity a trait we demand in ourselves, and within our business?  What will it gain us?  How often are we driven to explore the unknown … or do we just subside in a state of ennui?  And how will we be rewarded for incorporating this quality into our personalities?

Look no further for a tangible example than NASA’s Mars Rover, named Curiosity (of course).  It’s now exploring the ups and downs of the Red Planet, to better identify if that far-away sphere has any habitable -for-humans spaces.  Of course, it’s a robot, powered by science people who truly live to investigate.

On the other hand:  Other historical “let’s explore” precedents with not-so-successful outcomes are Eve and Pandora, much like the old saw that curiosity killed the cat.  What we’re supposed to learn from this is that all sorts of unexpected disasters will fall to curiosity-seekers. 

We disagree.

Risks begone!  We personally seek out those who have a passion for learning, and exhibit a sort of metaphysical wonder about the world.   Poking around in new tech stuff (like Twitter’s Medium).  Researching, say, average readership for annual reports.  Even working within a new industry.  All that piques our interests, holds – and then asks for more. 

Curiosity is a powerful way to experience, one that, to be honest, will help continue to shape our marketing and design, communications and change perspectives.