Mike Lehr's Blog

Wow! I’m excited about my 200^th post. More and more people have entered my life – real and virtual – for whom I am thankful. This post is longer than my norm, need to tap into the power of thank you’s.

I continue to be thankful for those I mentioned in my 100^th post, including my wife, Kathy, who even as I write this is adjusting her schedule so I can keep my deadlines.

The second hundred had a more public feel for me than the first hundred did. Yes, some is due to substantially more visitors, but that is the smallest part of this story.

I’m thankful to the #usguys (Twitter) and 12Most families. Jeannette Marshall (Blog: optioneerJM) introduced me to the first and Daniel Newman the latter. Daniel “discovered” me on Twitter and Skyped me. Consequently, I ended up with three posts on 12Most, one drawing fairly heavy traffic (and controversy on Goggle+ ).

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the international aspect of the second hundred. I’m extremely thankful for Sandra Semjonova from Latvia. Anybody who follows me on Twitter knows she is a huge supporter. This world would be better by a factor of ten if it had just a few more Sandra’s. There’s also Vanina Santana-Sweeney from Australia who tracks me on several social media sites. Finally, there are cities like Marrakech, Belgrade, Pelotas, Melbourne, Manila, Bangalore containing regular readers. It’s reassuring to know we have commonalities; maybe those world problems aren’t so daunting after all!

Still, my biggest surprise has been locally. I’m thankful to those who meet me like Eric Mann and Tammy Wilson who then follow up by visiting here and wanting to know more. Or those, like Tom Wyatt who want to just meet to see if I’m for real. Then there are some high school classmates who wonder if I’m the same person they knew.

Moreover, locally, I’m extremely thankful for ProSource Solutions, LLC. A great client who requests much of my time but encourages the flexibility I need to grow this effort. Its Managing Directors, Lowell Messner and Jeff Welch, are extremely supportive of my ideas and work.  Additionally, their many employees make it all very enjoyable and rewarding. If you have IT-related skills, you should definitely look into them.

Finally, there are many unknown and unmentionable readers for whom I am thankful. I might only know some from their obscure towns. Others, for various reasons, including censorship in their communities, need to remain unmentioned. However, even if unknown and unmentionable, they certainly aren’t unappreciated.

With that, thank you – again – and I look forward to your continued inspiration. Now, I must close the door on the second hundred and open the one in front of me for the third hundred. Fortunately, you have given me the key. I promise to use it wisely . . . and, of course, intuitively.

Have a good one!

Referenced posts from 12Most.com:

• 12 Most Important Unspoken Truths about Experts
• 12 Most Effective Morale Builders That Don’t Cost a Cent
• 12 Most Crucial Business Lessons Learned from Battle

The article, “The Modern Matchmakers,” from the February 11, 2012 edition of The Economist contained two major business lessons that I’ve discussed earlier regarding the solving of people-related problems:

1. What people think they want isn’t necessarily what they will choose
2. When faced with too much choice, people have less energy to think about them

For example, the article cites the work of Eli Finkel of Northwestern University on speed-dating in which he found that “people’s stated preference at the beginning of the process do not match the characters of the individuals they actually like.” Furthermore, “that when faced with abundant choice, people pay less attention to characteristics that require thinking and conversation to evaluate . . . and more to matters physical.” In short, just as Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University and Mark Lepper of Stanford concluded that too much choice is demotivating,” Finkel found it can dull thinking processes.

As I had also done in an earlier post on online dating, we can translate these themes to our business efforts by asking three questions:

1. How much freedom does someone want?
2. What does someone really want; what will he really do or decide?
3. How much (and what kind of) thinking will someone require from a leader?

These further translate into more tactical questions for managers and executives such as:

1. How much flexibility or process must I give someone?
2. What differences do I see between what he wants and what he actually does?
3. What kind of decisions do I give her to make and what (or when) do I decide for her?

Complicating this further is the fact that the answers will vary for each employee, requiring deeper and more interpersonal skills from managers and leaders. Are your managers up for the challenge?

Previous post on online dating:  What the Failures of Online Dating Can Teach Us

Managing your Twitter account is like using smart bombs. No matter how smart the technology, you can never guarantee a good target unless a human evaluates it. In other words, you have to read tweets to determine who the good tweeters are; you can’t rely upon Twitter or the various Twitter-related applications to do it for you.

Consider that recently, I retweeted this tweet by Justin Harrison:

Cleaning up my twitter clutter for more effective and meaningful communication…been doing that a lot lately

To which I received this from Dr. Mitchell Friedman:

would love to hear your definition of Twitter clutter, and how you clean it up

So, let’s explore this.

Twitter clutter is the group of tweets you endure from followers just so you can increase your following. You follow them so they are encouraged to do likewise. Both benefit because your followers increase. Twitter creates this condition because size matters and because it has no good way of quantifying tweet quality, only tweet quantity.

How do you clean it up? Well, I use my lists. Everyone whom I follow goes on a list based upon tweet quality. I define good tweeters as people who are:

• Causing me to stop and ponder
• Making my life better
• Promoting me or my ideas
• Possessing personalities I want to see flourish
• Being good friends
• Puzzling because I don’t why I like them

Yes, some sites measure clout, but heck Satan has a lot of clout. How do they determine whether it’s good clout, bad clout, confusing clout, disruptive clout, nonsensical clout or any type of clout?

In the end, only a human can clean up Twitter clutter; qualitative assessment is a job for a human.

Several folks on Twitter inspired this post: Ted Coine, Kevin Vonduuglasittu, Tim Steigert, Peggy Fitzpatrick and Michele Price. Their discussion centered around the merits of Twitter relative to Facebook and other social media sites.

While every social media site has its advantages and disadvantages, the challenge is not deciding where to spend your time but rather how to use them integratively. A military analogy can serve well here.

For instance, Twitter is the Air Force. It’s quick, fast and covers a lot of ground. You can meet more people per hour than on other social media sites. However, they are shallow meetings.

Blogs or blog-like sites that change frequently are Armor. It’s the first solid dose people can get of you. More importantly, its content adapts quickly to attract people repeatedly.

Facebook is the Infantry, the human side. Yes, networking can be frustratingly slow because it’s a friendly domain; many types are there for many different reasons.

LinkedIn is the Heavy Artillery, the business side. Networking is less personal and more business. It allows the display of the full, unvarnished impact of your business efforts in a social setting.

Websites are home; they link all the above forces and allow people to engage for the effort’s central mission.

The Air Force makes initial, quick contact. The Armor advances to exploring expanding that contact more thoroughly. Infantry arrive to solidify the relationship, and the Heavy Artillery follows later to show that this is business. Finally, if all of it works, people accept an invitation home to engage.

Every situation is different, and it will likely require different sequencing and coordinating. No military can succeed using only one branch of its force; therefore, no outreach effort can succeed using only one avenue. Integration is a natural force; look at nature.

You are reading my 100^th post. In the beginning, I just wanted to see if I could stay committed to publishing twice a week for a year despite other commitments. I did that, but I had help. I felt this post was a symbolically opportune time to give thanks for that help.

First, I want to thank my wife, Kathy. She was extremely tolerant in my self-imposed urgency to meet my publishing goals while I was also trying to run several businesses.

Second, I want to single out four people, Craig Palenshus, Bill Forsyth, III, Jeannette Marshall (Blog: optioneerJM) and Mary Duckworth-Demis Mimouna.

Craig quickly got me set up and running. He intuitively knew a design and color scheme that suited my preferences and purposes. Bill was instrumental in giving me a publishing strategy for my content goals and initial SEO advice. Jeannette encouraged me throughout and was an early commenter while trying to keep me abreast of the latest blog functionality. Mary encouraged me by frequently commenting and giving advice on the more technical aspects of writing for a blog.

Finally, I want to thank you. While anything can inspire me, interactions with others are my main sources. In that regard, the internet and social media have enlightened me. I now have access to people all over the world and their works. I am no longer solely dependent upon traditional media.

True, many of these “virtual” people don’t have the viewers, listeners and readers of that media or even the visitors of older websites, but they certainly don’t lack the talent to write, discuss and inspire. In fact, I’m now convinced that there is only one difference between them and the old order . . . opportunity.

Again, thank you. I look forward to your continued inspiration. Cheers!

I recently read in the Schumpeter column, “In Search of Serendipity,” of the July 24, 2010 edition of The Economist about the book, The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things In Motion, by John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison. Automatically, the vision of bell bottoms returning to vogue arose. The concept is very similar to Carl Jung’s 1920’s introduction of synchronicity.

As stated in Schumpeter, the basic premise of the book is that “success in business increasingly depends on chance encounters.” It’s these chance encounters that seem spontaneous in the present but more purposeful with future’s hindsight. This is synchronicity repackaged.

About ten years ago, a good colleague was asking about the connections I’ve made to see if I could support this conclusion about his connections: the most profitable ones tended to come outside of his traditional, planned sales efforts. They originated from “out of the blue” encounters at non-business events when he didn’t expect them. I could relate.

It’s a basic premise of my blog that technological advancements are allowing us to see better and better the powerful impact our emotional-related processes such as intuition have in our everyday lives. As Schumpeter supports, advances in the internet – with the social media that it delivers – increases our ability to connect. This is giving us a larger sample population in which to observe that chance encounters really might not be that coincidental. It’s easy to discard one or two coincidences, but a dozen? But, make no mistake that is a concept that has been around for thousands of years in many American Indian and Eastern philosophies.