It is very rainy and I had been driving for almost 2 hours.  I had to go to DFW yesterday for a meeting.  I have found that a great way to pass the time in my car is to listen to audio books.  This is not a secret.  What my be a secret is the public library has a ton of audio books.  I have been running through their catalog as fast as I can listen.  I have killed two books in two weeks.

My latest slaughter was Leadership Therapy:  Inside the Mind of Microsoft. All in all a clinical study- but effective in certain areas.  Here is where I found the most interesting information:  Belief Systems.

At our core-  we all have beliefs driven by our experiences.  As leaders it is our job to identify what events shaped our lives and how those became beliefs.  Once we know what happened and how events  formed us-  we need to communicate those beliefs to our teams, families and through our online personas.

I have drafted a list of events that defined me.  I will begin to post those and address how each one has changed me as a person and a leader.  Once I have completed my exercise, I will translate that information to my leadership manifesto that I will post on my Bio.

Posted as a Proclamation

My beliefs may change over time-  I HOPE they change-  but at least this way-  I do not have to wonder about why I feel a certain way about a topic.  I will not have to try and explain where I am coming from to others on my team and to my bosses.  I will have a clear manifesto of what I believe and everyone can see it.  This will be challenging-  difficult to grasp and one of the most important things I have done.    If you can do it-  I recommend getting started on your own.  Feel free to comment, follow or share.

I have been trying really hard to provide entertaining content on what is a pretty dry subject for most people.  I LOVE leadership and management.  I believe that there are opportunities for the subject to be engaging and entertaining because the subject is dynamic and deals directly with…. Wait for it…..

Direct Personal Interaction.    Can’t be any more compelling than that. RIGHT?!?!?!

Evidently-  I am not right.  I am finding some real boring crap online.  I mean really boring.  How can a subject about interacting with people be less compelling than say this article title I found on Reddit.com:  ”UK parliament science and technology committee says Homeopathy has no evidence beyond placebo effect and spending NHS money on homeopathy can not be justified.”   I clicked on the link-  and there was no porn or free online money or anything that would lead 420 people to comment on the link!  :o (<-sarcasm and disbelief face)

Should not have gone shopping when I was hungry.

I have determined that the reason the general subject matter is not good is because the contributors (about 1% of all online users according to Seth Godin) are stuffy, starch shirted managers who do not really understand the actual JOY that a person should get from creating a leader or managing something with skill and focus.

My cry to leadership bloggers:

• Be Personal-  Even if it hurts and might be difficult for your bosses
• Be Witty-  I do NOT want to hear a dissertation or case study
• Be Effective-  I have too much actual management to do.  If I use my time to read your blog I better laugh  or have a light bulb go off
• Focus on People-  That is the core of leadership and management- SERIOUSLY!

Focus on these topics and you will find response- interaction and readership.  I will not purport to be all of these things in every blog I write-  but I am trying.  I will get better and I will LEAD the rest of the bloggers in my field to do the same.

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I opened a Twitter account about a year ago.  I looked for a few of my friends.  I “followed” them.  I “tweeted” that I was working hard.  I waited and nothing happened.  No one followed me.  I tweeted that I was heading to a meeting.  No one followed me back, replied to me.. nothing.  I had concluded that Twitter was junk and that no one would want to know a person was sitting on their back porch eating a snack.  I did not log into my account for another 8 months.

Web 2.0 and Counting....

During the same time period I had opened a Facebook account due to total pressure from my wife.  I got involved quickly as I connected with people I had not seen in decades.  I posted pictures and thought of witty things to talk about.  People posted back.  There was reciprocation.  I was excited by the volume of friends I had.

After a few months of connecting with the people I cared about and having the newness wear off, I began to see that there was far too much clutter on my account.  People would post about how their kid had a very personal internal illness or a picture of drunken idiocy that no person would be publicly proud of.  I then got nailed with pokes and Mafia Wars and Farm Town…  I began to lose my connections due to all the noise.

I began to take a different look at Social Networking as part of an effort to solidify my personal brand.  I had decided that if there was going to be a wealth of information about me on the web, why not streamline it and control the message and image.  I then began to look at Twitter again.

Web 2.0 had taken over.  Oreilly talks about Web 2.0 as a platform for development.  Without getting into mind numbing nerd talk-  the idea is now that the “web is interactive”.  Before- people would email and wait for a response. Sites were designed for one way communication.  Either people put information online for others to see or a person emailed a site for information regarding something.  Suddenly, sites had real-time collaboration and interaction.  Not only with the site but with others using the sites.  The world was changing….

As wireless connectivity became a staple for companies and was made affordable, Cell Phones took the Web 2.0 leap a step further.  In 2005 25% of companies used wireless broadband.  In 2016 that number is expected to be 83% according to Information Week.  Interactive websites and applications were mobile.  Couple this with the ability to take, store and upload photos and videos-  the interactive age of technology was upon us.

This all leads us to where we are today.  Web 2.0 is here and it is everywhere.  Twitter was the linchpin.  Twitter was what tied it all together.  What I had failed to realize was that Twitter was built around a zero reciprocation model.  Twitter was able to be so simple that it suddenly was the foundation of how all Web 2.0 tied together.  Twitter was texting, but it was online and could be integrated into ANYTHING.

You could post to Twitter which posts to Facebook and Linked In.  You could write a blog and have the RSS feed post to Twitter which posts to everything else.  The ability to reach hundreds or thousands of people with your thoughts was now in place.  Now… was anybody listening or did they even care??

I will talk more about the ramifications and how it all ties together in my next post…