The Big 5 0

Bear with me here, this is a ramble on kind of post. Nothing like this one was.

Never thought I would be an author, but the chance came along, I took it and I have an author's page on Amazon.

I never made it to the cover of Rolling Stone, actually I never made the cover of any magazine. However, I was included in articles in CIO magazine and many other websites over the years.

Had some newspaper articles written about me, got included as a case study in how to grow a community on Linkedin in an executives book.

Turns out I wrote a few IBM Redbooks with people over the years, in return IBM made me a Redbooks Thought Leader. We did the first Redbooks video from the community to IBM at the time, because I wanted to give back for all the help I had received over the years.

Somehow I have written over 1,100 blog posts. When the muse is loose, run with it.

Got my name in Playbills, actually quite a few times, while I worked on Broadway. Best time of my life, aside from Ron Perlman (at the time doing A Few Good Men)looking like he was going to kill me when he was running to 2nd base during the Broadway show softball game. Stories of people I met while on Broadway could fill many posts, it was also when the Berlin wall came down.

Traveled all over South America and Europe, thanks Citibank and IBM.

Got sent to Venice, Italy, for work, not once, but twice. Best place on Earth, I proposed to my wife Vanessa while there with her, not on business.

Live tweeted the Palm Beach Opera, for 2 seasons, that was fun and free, hope it helped their ticket sales.

I miss my '62 vette, should never have sold it. I also miss the 3000GT.

Worked on Wall Street for a few years with Bankers Trust which became Deutsche Bank and in the World Trade Center on the 44th floor for Bank of America. The Wolf of Wall Street movie was pretty accurate for that time period.

Lived in London for 3 years while working for Lotus and wrote a Pantomime that was performed, I played the Godfather character. Had a great boss at Lotus and friend who recently after 49 years left IBM for HCL. I should never have let him down and left the team, but that is how life works out sometimes.

Moved to Boca Raton to be near my grandparents and mom after leaving IBM, got cable TV installed just as the 2nd plane hit the World Trade Center.

Started a business that was going to do $3 million in sales until our supplier stopped working with small companies. I tried to buy them in an auction, I lost to a VC firm by $25million. They turned around and sold it for $900 million. No thanks to GE capital who would only offer $50M. Yeah that hurt.

Worked with Burger King at their World Headquarters, twice in Miami, the 2nd time because my name was still on the names.nsf log from years prior.

I was in Caracas, Venezuela just weeks before Chavez took over.

Been on planes that engines stopped, caught fire, parts fell off, and had bomb threats, just another day of traveling when you are a road/air warrior.

Survived my teenage years and my college life, somehow, pretty sure a few people never thought I would, I never gave it any thought but to those that worried, surprise!

Worked the field at FIRST Robotics events as a robot inspector and helping kids understand there is more to life than the internet, school or work inside of them.

Mentored startups at MASSChallenge Israel the last 2 years and saw some of them get to the finals, others get funded and more succeed beyond their wildest dreams. It is a great feeling knowing you helped in some small way.

I was fortunate enough to be an IBM Champion since 2013. And thus listed on Wikipedia. My kids are impressed, the rest of the world, not so much.

My 3 kids have no idea what life was like before they came onto the scene. It is like a different world, times change, some things stay the same. I used to make an awesome Beef Wellington.

Never thought I would Home School my kids, but I did for 2 years. They claim to remember things I taught them so it was not all wasted time.

Brewed beer once because everyone should do it, but my friends who still get to do it regularly are living the dream and I am happy for them all.

It was while home schooling that I started the Daf Yomi as they started the new cycle, and 7.5 years later it will finish next January. You can have your marathons and mountain biking, this is mine.

Owned Amazon stock in their early days and sold it after it doubled. HUGE mistake.

Once parked my car up a staircase.

Tequila bowling in college. Sorry to the guys at the end of the hall.

One of my first public presentations was in front of thousands of people at Lotusphere Europe and I have enjoyed every presentation I have given over the years since then, be they business, technical or educational in person or online.

For better or worse I have worked for myself all these years since college, aside from 3 years at IBM, 2 years with an IBM Business Partner and usually from the comfort of my home.

I have all the trappings of young startup offices, Pinball Machine, books, loud music, my dog at my desk, open fridge and bar, video games, MAME and puzzles and games.

I have moved countries 4 times and pretty sure I am staying put here in Israel, but I can commute to anywhere in Europe pretty easily so what's not to like?

Even volunteered for army duty for a week because that is what you do in a country where every person matters.

If you made it this far and still reading, you probably have stories from my past we shared together and hopefully we will get to share more of them over the next 50 years or more and some of you I will see soon in San Francisco.

Thanks to Vanessa and my kids for trying to keep my young and fun.

Explaining the Mixed Mindset of a Social Organization

If you were not at my session at the Social Connections conference in Boston 2 weeks ago, you can still see and download my slides, but I don't think you will quite get the gist of the message I expressed.

A catch-22 of great magnitude that while your outside persona is free to post,  your "business" head is confused or full of fear.

Let me explain.

Email vs. Status Updates, or Single vs. Blended, is a metaphor for the way your organization works.

Collaboration or as the marketers call it, social business/media comes in many forms. Companies, or rather, executives, are trying to understand how to integrate this into their sales or internal efforts of transforming their companies into something new. Is email the old world or just a part of the new one? Are status updates the new way or just email by a new name?

One one hand you have a handful of people that "get it" and are always sharing, open and looking to help others be it via email or some other methods.

On the other side you have the opposite. The same employees want to help people, and they are Facebook active, but when it comes to work, they are not so forthcoming.

Why? What is the problem? If they share outside the office, why not in the office? Do they send one line emails or explanations regularly? are their status updates more like blog posts or just time stamps for their billing hours?

Setting aside the need to set goals for people (every employee should post once a day or twice a week,...) in order to prove to the executive that you are now a corporate social media titan, let's discuss the people factor.

People naturally share information with friends and family, some more than others, but inside all of us is a need to share, to bring people closer to us, or to help others understand us, and our unique worlds.

Facebook, Twitter, support forums, photography sites and numerous other examples are just some of the ways one can share their experiences. And it is great, usually for fun, but also for sad times as well and you do it from your home or while at a party or dinner.

Then you leave your home and go to work, your commute probably is not short or fun, and you arrive at the office and in some cases are told, by your immediate management, NOT to post anything about your work or the teams, even though the company itself is a strong proponent of social and collaboration.

Maybe this is a bit harsh of me.

Let us say instead, you believe that by posting a bunch of information on your company intranet or ESN (Enterprise Social Network) your manager will think you are not doing your work or billing enough hours. True, you are probably posting great content, or details that are needed, but that is not how some managers see it.

The corollary is the same, if you do not post anything, people think you are not working at all or maybe even left the company. And if we take the target/goals idea  you have not met your quota of posts!

There is also a numbers problem here. The data shows that about 15% of the people are posting over 85% of the content. Take a different view of numbers, direct marketing works on a 1-3% hit rate.

Before your company starts turning everyone into social drones, realize that it will never be an all or nothing effort. Are you prepared for this "failure"? Have you decided to congratulate those that would be social anyway, over the ones that are breaking out of their shells? How will you know the difference? Will there be different expectations? In the age of personalized everything, can you be so granular inside your company? If not, why not? If you need help, contact me to discuss it.

Many people will not post, tweet, update, podcast, video message or whatever you ask of them for many reasons and that is okay. Really, it is. It does not mean they will never do it, just they have not been exposed to the right thought process to help them along. Time of course is a big issue and we have so little of it but everyone can forgo something for 2 minutes to post a simple update or comment or to vote or like something posted.

Baby steps.

However, what if you are the only one who has certain information and you are part of a team or organization that should you not be able to work or be missing while traveling, could your team survive without you? Of course, some may say, if you have provided all this information, they could survive without you and fire you all because you were collaborating.

Yes, the corporate world does work this way sometimes, but also has greater need and respect for those that provide the data. Usually. But not every time.

Just like the first time you tell someone you love them. Maybe they love you back, maybe they don't, maybe you are 5 when you say it, maybe 18, maybe 25. The outcome and expectations are different at each age and level. So it is in the corporate world.

In the US where capitalism has reigned for all of our lives, it is very hard to suddenly change that mindset of me, mine and 1+1=1, to yours, ours and get to 1+1=3. A friend of mine suggested collaboration is the ultimate capitalism. I am not so sure, but I am willing to bet that a shared culture will be evolving over the next 10-15 years more so than we have seen in the years since 9/11. Post 9/11 we have seen some drastic changes that enable us to be more global, more open, more reliant on others for information and sharing more information while also becoming more insular at the same time.

This schizophrenia of the Enterprise will continue until the current levels of management evolve or get pushed out. The newer companies maybe better at sharing, while smaller, but the jury is still out if they stay the same or revert to Enterprise ways as they get older and larger.

I believe organizations can be more open and collaborative but we need to hep them realize there will be a mixed bag of engagement from within for a few years to come.

Fix my printer or why remote management..

Doesn't work for every situation. There is nothing worse than a client agreeing to let you work for them remotely and then demanding someone be onsite every week.

So how do you do it? Will this break the deal? Cost you too much?

There are always possibilities but planning is key. Few issues really require onsite visits as remote connections to clients, servers and routers is common. So why do you need to be onsite?

Executives and their assistants usually are primary reasons. But unless a failure of their PC is involved, almost anything else can and should be resolved remotely.

Printer failure? Print to another printer and someone will get there to fix the printer, but when?

In this day of instant servitude(thank you Twitter and IM programs)how long can you make someone wait? Should a client of ours in Canada wait for me to catch a flight there? Of course not, but some will insist on it.

Why is it business people can partner together, but our clients refuse to accept anyone but us doing the work? Is it fear of shoddy workmanship? Is it fear of the unknown? If we do not have any other way to help service them as clients, as far as onsite efforts, what should we do then?

Remote service does bring excellent help to many outer areas and out of the way locations, sometimes war zones. Yet so few businesses accept that it can be more productive, less expensive and even provide excellent service. Yes, sometimes you get some problems, but would you rather have Wally around all the time? Or Dilbert?

The reality is you just want things fixed...now...and you don't care how, who or what does it...until it's your turn with the problem.