My Vision

At the end of January I spent a day with a remarkable Aussie, Malcolm Cohen. As I wrote at the time, his Rocket Ship workshop helps people get clear about whatever is their life’s true purpose, their quest. Using simple Internet ‘Web 2.0’ technology you can craft a Vision Statement that is, for many of us, a 21st century mirror to the soul. Easy to say, not so easy to do.

Two weeks and countless hours of searching for the right mix of text, music and images later, I have just published my ‘brave statement’ on YouTube. Thanks are due to everyone who helped make this possible: Malcolm and my fellow voyagers on the Rocket Ship at Ft. Mason and the Sandbox Suites; Patricia, Brady and the invisible lovers; James, Richard, Dan and the men in the corner; my Mum & Dad (who paid the photographer in Derby back in 1952 to take the first picture); my Spiritual Master, Adi Da Samraj for the last picture; Emily & Neil who smiled at the camera in Laos and Limerick; Bob Geldof for Thinking Voyager 2 Type Things; and most of all for Sandra, for walking beside me. And you, of course, if you choose to click on the video and spend 2 minutes carrying a vision for me.

Signed, Maverick

Rocketship: Malcolm Cohan launches Vision Statements

Rocketman

And I think it’s gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I’m a rocket man
– Elton John

Rocket Man I spent a fascinating day at the Fort Mason Center on Saturday in the company of 30 others and an irrepressible Australian, Malcolm Cohan.

Malcolm, an ex-TV producer and video editor, who is an expert applied kinesiologist, has developed tools for people to create and deliver a video ‘Vision Statement’.

What’s a Vision Statement? According to his website:

A VISION Statement Video is a movie about your goals, your Quest, your bold idea or endeavor – use it to get clear about who you are and what you wish to achieve – and then have the world share your Vision.

Mal’s day-long workshop, humorously termed the ‘Rocketship’, uses simple exercises to bring people into balance; defuse our tendency to negativity and doubt; then walk us through a set of fundamental questions to arrive at a place where we could write a first draft of our own Vision Statement. Underneath the negativity is truth.

YouTube: a 21st Century mirror to the soul.

Malcolm calls us to write out our life’s Quest — where every aspect of our experience counts. If we then add music and images to this text and capture it on video it will feel profoundly right when we play it back. If we fail to capture it, the results will be uncomfortable. And we will then have an opportunity grow into a deeper and more profound vision. This feedback is the gift we reap from what would otherwise simply be a Narcissistic exercise. And it can be used to help others work through their issues. There are plans to use the process with the homeless, those recovering from addictions and so on.

Out of the mouths of babes

Key to a vision statement is it’s simplicity as a heartfelt appeal. Too many fancy words or jargon get in the way. A 5-year-old should be able to understand it. I found this out when Malcolm, literally, called his own 5-year-old daughter back in Sydney on SKYPE and had her critique some of the words I’d written in the first draft of my statement. She understood “I feel happy”. She did not understand “Where social and political forms of cooperative community evolve”. Oops. Back to the drawing board. This time with less mind and more awareness of what it is to communicate from the heart.

Once we were clear on our intentions, the creation of the video was a delight. The software we trained on, while not totally simple, is fascinating. With it we created the music, text and image collages which make up the finished piece. I realize I have work to do before I can deliver something as profound as this:

At the end of the day the group who came together left Ft. Mason with more awareness of the possibilities of creating a Vision Statement and seeing how true this is to our essence.

Rocketship Class Jan 25 2008

Job Security for Executive Communications Professionals

Those who employ the speechwriters, PR professionals and others in big company Executive Communications departments won’t be dispensing with these services anytime soon.

This is easily inferred from a report in Tuesday’s Financial Times which quotes a study about corporate reputation. While noting that business leaders are “trusted” it reveals that many are hamstrung by their:

poor reputation as communicators among western elites. Fewer than one in four Americans and only one in three Europeans said they regarded a chief executive as a “credible” spokesperson for the company

The study, to be presented at the Davos Conference, was commissioned by top PR Agency Edelman. It notes some challenges top executives face as communicators:

“There is an issue of pay and performance and of rewarding perceived failure,” says Richard Edelman, the PR firm’s chief executive. “In addition, I am not sure that chief executives are getting out there and tackling important issues such as the environment.”

For anyone in an Executive Communications advisory role this all means one thing – job security.

Al Gore: A well-deserved Nobel Peace prize

Congratulations are in order for Al Gore’s well-deserved Nobel Peace prize recognizing his work to raise awareness around Global Warming. Key to the public perception has been his documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, which I’ve already recognized as a masterful presentation. Garr has written at length about the partnership between Gore and the awesome folks at Duarte Design who helped him realize his vision. The Nobel Prize is a real feather in their cap – wonder why there’s no mention of the movie on their home page?

For all intents the ‘debate’ over Global Warming is well and truly over. The race is on for solutions. Organizations like Chevron Energy Solutions are making a difference.

Leave it up to the dinosaurs in the British Judiciary to take issue with the film. Judge Michael Burton apparently feels the need to warn British teachers wanting to show the film about the “distinctly alarmist” tone Gore uses in the film.

Dinosaur … Dinosaur…
Justice Burton … Justice Burton…

Well, hello? What tone would his judgeship prefer? Something more, moderate, more ‘sound’? Perhaps I say, chaps, things are getting a little warmer, but nothing to get alarmed over. Why, we’ve been through this as an Island Race before. Back in Roman times they had vineyards in Sussex. Decent glass of claret resulted by all accounts, what?

Aussie Tech Companies visiting Silicon Valley

ANZA Technology Network Vicki and the good people at ANZATechNet are hosting their annual showcase of Australian technology companies in Sunnyvale October 22-24. It’s amazing the innovation that comes out of the southern hemisphere. Four years ago I was blown away by David’s In The Chair flight simulator for classical musicians. The conference helped launch them.

This years crop is an eclectic mix of companies. Check out:

  • eComPress and their blazingly fast alternative to Adobe’s PDF technology
  • Tallstoreez (have you seen a more creative home page?) who offer multimedia training solutions
  • Silenceair who are part of the green building movement providing fresh air without the noise which opening a window can bring (don’t I know it – my neighbor leaves for work at 4:30am and I’ve heard him drive away more mornings than not this summer!)
  • PocketPhrase – a software solution for mobile devices, which is designed to assist suffers of Autism to integrate better with society by providing communication and socialization aids.

… plus a host of others.

What’s more, they evening events are drinks parties with the best wines Australia and New Zealand have to offer. What’s not to like?

Subterranean Homesick Blues

Jackie Wullschlager’s review of British Victorian artist John Everett Millais in the Weekend Financial Times brought me face-to-face with one of the essential elements of my heritage: the suppressed yearnings of the patriarchs of the UK at the height of their power for virginal innocence.

On the one hand Industrial Britain was all about iron & steel, grit & determination, mad dogs in the noon-day sun and gunboat diplomacy. The British in the 19th Century imposed their will across continents. They were men of action whose deeds brought them prosperity and the certainty that God was an Englishman.

Yet, as Wullschlager comments, Millais’s paintings illustrate how the Victorian sensibility was “obsessed with preindustrial innocence” which found expression, above all, in an infantilism which art celebrated by “arresting childhood on canvas.”

We’re talking little girls; sultry portraits of sweet things “whose ruby lips, longing gaze and flowing burnished hair make today’s teen models look chiselled and chaste by comparison.” Yearning virgins with a “subterranean sexual charge”.

Millais Sophia Gray
Millais Cherry Ripe
Millais Ophelia

But what possible relevance can the repressed sexuality of an imperial power obsessed with foreign adventures and fraught with fundamentalist alarm about moral codes have today?

I can’t possibly imagine. Can you?

Silicon Valley Today

Hewlett-Packard Executive Briefing CenterOne of the more interesting things about my job at Hewlett-Packard is meeting customers in the Executive Briefing Center. Sales teams from around the world bring customers to HP’s headquarters for a variety of reasons – to close a deal, discuss the latest technology with engineers or develop relationships with key executives.

Many of the meetings kick-off with a company overview and I’m one of a number of HP employees called on to give the the ‘HP Today’ presentation.

Since many customers come from across the country and around the world this can often be as much an update on Silicon Valley as it is specifically about HP.

In the last couple of months I’ve spoken to Catholic priests from Korea; MBA students from China; Japanese bankers; spies from Sweden (OK, “signals intelligence operatives” from Sweden) and bureaucrats from Britain.

Haight-AshburyI’m struck by the fact that for many visitors to Hewlett-Packard the experience of seeing how business is done in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area must be as strange as, say, a trip to Haight-Ashbury was for Midwesterners in the Summer of Love, 40 years ago.

The visiting delegations are homogeneous: Chinese engineers come from China; Koreans come from Korea; middle-aged Caucasian males come from IT departments across the USA.

They fly in to one of the most ethnically diverse, cosmopolitan, mongrel areas on earth.

Silicon Valley’s competitive edge is that it is a unique habitat for innovation and entrepreneurship. It all started with Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tinkering in their garage in 1939 and the pace of change has been relentless ever since.

Unlike many regions, companies in Silicon Valley have access to a high quality and mobile workforce comprised of talented people from around the world. No one racial group is in a majority. This ethnic diversity fosters an equality of opportunity startling even by American standards — 39% of all residents were born in a foreign country. In contrast to the more rigid social hierarchies of Europe, the Valley operates a results oriented meritocracy where talent and ability are king. The region’s merit-based system of rewards encourages the best and brightest to knock themselves out in hopes of being part of the next new, new thing.

What is remarkable about the Valley is the lack of an identifiable landmark. Unlike instantly recognizable symbols such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris; Big Ben in London; Times Square in New York or the Ginza district in Tokyo, there’s no building or street which symbolizes the place. As Po Bronson remarks in his amusing book The Nudist on the Late Shift, it’s not the buildings or physical surroundings which distinguish Silicon Valley, it’s the people. And they are sometimes as wacky as the hippies in the Haight in 1968. There really was a programmer in one Silicon Valley company who chose to work the night shift so he could sit at his computer au natural.

Walk the corridors HP, or any company in the Valley, and you’ll hear as many accents from Asia, Europe and Latin America as you will from the United States. It’s something the visitors to the region would do well to notice. For it’s an undeniable fact that immigrants to the area are responsible for much of the wealth. Sun Microsystems was started by a German engineer getting together with an Indian businessman; Google billionaire Sergey Brin came from Russia, albeit at the age of six; dozens of other Silicon Valley companies were founded by Indian and Chinese immigrants.

Pascal Zachary argues persuasively that diversity defines the health and wealth of nations in today’s world. What he calls ‘mongrel’ mixes of people fare better than regions other regions, such as “the great monocultures of Germany and Japan.” Whereas Germany does have immigrants, they are mostly kept outside the mainstream, as guestworkers. The Japanese remain uneasy with the idea of absorbing outsiders into the mainstream.

There’s an amusing story when, back in the Summer of Love, Grey Line (aptly named!) started bringing mid-western tourists through the Haight to gawp at the hippies, the flower children held up mirrors to the bus windows. The mirrors reflected back upon the tourists the wonder, shock or fear they experienced when they saw the free thinkin’, free lovin’ tripped-out voyagers of the new culture (some of whom, like Cap’n Crunch, inspired Jobs and Wozniak; others like Stewart Brand were early into the web.)

It may be that, by visiting Silicon Valley, businesspeople from elsewhere have a mirror held up to their own culture.

Branding: Consistency and Confusion

One of the lessons from Dick Bruso’s weekend workshop in branding was the importance of consistency in a brand image. A brand is a promise. Customers recognize the brand not just by the name of that organization, but by the shape, color, size and location of the brand logo.

Many small businesses and independent entrepreneurs are sloppy with their brand image. They buy a QuickPrint business card, use stock paper from Kinko’s and download a standard template for their blog or website. Nothing matches. There is no brand consistency. Not so with large corporations. Their brands are instantly recognizable and consistent. Coke uses the same shade of red on its cans of soda worldwide.

But what about a company which owns an image in its market, but other companies, in other markets, use the same name and project a very different brand image?

HP LogoConsider my employer, Hewlett-Packard. Legend has it that Bill & Dave decided whose name was to come first by tossing a coin. Heaven knows the confusion if the coin had come up tails! Anyone care to explain what acidity and alkalinity has to do with computer equipment? But were they aware that since the 1880’s the British had been slathering their breakfast sausage with HP Sauce?HP Sauce

Of course, overlapping corporate logos with very different brand images are usually not a problem. No-one would mistakenly pick up a bottle of sauce instead of a computer. Although I’m sure some computer user in the UK must by now have spilled HP sauce on their HP computer.

Sun Microsystems Logo

Another computer company, my previous employer Sun Microsystems, competes for people’s attention worldwide with a British Newspaper and a brand of French detergent.The Sun Newspaper Sun Detergent

Trouble is caused when previously unrelated markets collide, as seen in the Apple vs. Apple controversy which pits Steve Jobs against the Fab Four.

Apple vs. Apple

Try as they might, companies will run into potential brand confusion, as these examples of various companies other than Hewlett-Packard who use an “HP Logo” show.

HP Training Logo
HP Enterprises Logo
HP Church Logo
HP Auto Logo

The 800-lb gorillas of the Fortune 500 probably don’t lose sleep over this (unless they work for McDonald’s who are famously aggressive in closing down any enterprise started by descendent’s of the Clan McDonald anywhere, any place, at any time.)

But for small businesses it should be a matter of some concern. If you are starting a small company and someone else on the web has one with a similar name, be sure to aim for maximum consistency with your logo, printed matter and other branding elements.

Apple tattoo Windows tattooHowever, the ultimate validation of a brand’s popularity might be when your customers start tattooing it on their bodies. Here’s a couple of examples from competing side of the computer industry.

One can only wonder what would happen if they started dating.

Second Life – My avatar has descended…

Second Life Logo Moving quickly on from my novice experience with Facebook, I’ve now discovered Second Life (SL).

I heard SL CEO Philip Rosedale present at the Stanford AlwaysOn Conference. This was remarkable because he used his SL ‘avatar’ (the descended incarnation of a deity – or the persona you create to represent your SL ‘presence’) to conduct a tour of the virtual reality. Thanks to some nifty translation software he was able to chat with Japanese vistors to SL (only 30% of the 8+ million people who’ve registered are from the US). He also mentioned 5,000 IBM employees have a presence on SL and use it for virtual meetings. Other companies like Dell and Sun Microsystems have online stores. More to the point, there are people making thousands of real dollars selling virtual things to others in SL. Sounds like the early days of Ebay.

So, off I went to check it out. There’s a number of steps to set up a basic free SL account. The first that tripped me up was choosing a name for my avatar. Shouldn’t be a big deal – just find a unique name and off you go, right? Well, SL only allows you certain last names such as Akina, Back, Ebbage, Price. Some odd, some ordinary. I eventually chose Fouroux since it sounded French but when twinned with the first name ‘Three’ had a certain wit. Then my wife suggested mimicking the way phone numbers are given out in the UK, and so I switched to Double3 Fouroux (as in 3340, geddit?).

Second Life SceneThat out of the way I soon downloaded the app and was off to my first experience of virtual reality. It is like being reborn – into an environment where you have to learn to walk, run, sit, fly, turn, speak and so on. Somewhat frustrating, but the compelling presence of other novice avatars keeps things amusing.

Once the basics are handled (in an environment called ‘Orientation Island’) then one can teleport to other areas of SL. Somewhere in the 30,000+ people online at any one time are fascinating people I can chat to. Somewhere there are instructive conversations, presentations and people with expertise to share. But there’s also a lot of porn, trivia and timewasting. Not much different from RL (Real Life) in that regard.

It’s lilely that SL will appeal to some and not to others. People who communicate for a living (professional speakers, trainers, consultants) should find it a valuable way to extend their RL relationships. And, who knows, when Avian Flu hits, a virtual meeting place might have compelling advantages.

German executives – failing as public speakers?

The British Daily Telegraph newspaper reports that, surprise, surprise, German executives are not known for delivering inspirational speeches.

It seems Teutonic boss’s rely on statistics and charts at the expense of compelling rhetoric:

German managers are generally good at their jobs in a technical sense, but preparation for public appearances seldom goes beyond a series of PowerPoint charts. These are often prepared by somebody else, and there are far too many. When the number is truly overwhelming, the presentation is nothing but a slide show and not a speech at all.

There is simply not a presentation culture in Germany, and the saying goes that “German manager’s work better than they talk”. Der Spiegel complains of an excessive concentration on facts and figures at the expense of charisma and conviction. It seems that the mentality and ideology of dealing with hard facts in a depersonalised manner is at odds with a healthy emphasis on giving impressive presentations in public. Voice and the use of both talk and body language tend to be neglected.

Winston Churchill I can’t help but think of the John Cleese Fawlty Towers sketch where he goose-steps around the dining room instructing his staff “Don’t mention zee war!”. For while it may be tasteless to refer to the Second World War in relation to contemporary German managers, it’s undeniable that many British and American executives (and politicians) openly admire Winston Churchill and ape his rhetorical style and freely quote him.

Adolf Hitler This puts modern German executives at a severe disadvantage. After all, the Holocaust aside, their wartime leader was a renowned public speaker. He used his public speeches to persuade his audiences and, one could argue, never forgot to include a call to action (it just happened to be one the world would have been better without). But I doubt German managers can freely quote or mimic the rhetorical style of ‘Corporal Hitler’. So who do they use as a model for their speeches? Apparently no-one. Stripped of all emotion (since their role models are negative ones) they face down their audience with facts and figures.

The Telegraph article concludes with a plea for effective presentation coaching for German executives:

They should rely less on manuscripts and charts and more on presenting well. A successful presentation will grab the attention of the audience and ensure that they believe in what they are told and in the person telling it.

There are many executives in the English-speaking world who would do well to heed that advice.