radio

A working model of ‘Social Capital’

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

I’ve been indulging in Wikis a lot this year.

I wrote quite a bit on the topic here and elsewhere, recently. And his Monday I was in charge of the wiki portion of what amounts to the launch of the first open source business development plan in Sustainability, for Arizona. More about this here.

So on Wednesday, when I visited Gangplank to get a better sense of this remarkable working environment I could not help notice the parallel.

If Gangplank is a piece of software, it would most probably be a Wiki!

It’s a a true collaborative space, whose ‘permanent residents’ (independent businesses) don’t pay rent, though they get to use the utilities, the workspace, conference rooms, wifi etc for no charge. Derek Neighbors, co-founder of Gangplank and our guest on the radio show this week, prefers to call this an investment in ‘social capital.’ It reminded me of another semi-financial term used in the book Groundswell –how collaboration earns a person ‘psychic income.’

But to get back to the topic of wikis, if you consider how much time has gone into Wikipedia –approximately 1 million man hours, according to Clay Shirky-– it is a model that works even among largely anonymous people. So of course it world work when you get a room filled with creative people.

Just step into Gangplank, and you’ll see a working model -or a ‘use case’ if you prefer another geeky term!

When you can’t broadcast, why not podcast?

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A funny thing happened on the way to the radio station this week.

We had a great guest lined up, but were informed a day before that that time slot –7 PM Arizona time — was being preempted because the station, KFNX, had a prior commitment to carry the University of Arizona basketball game.

Rather than take a hiatus, I decided to pull out my trusty Zoom H4N and record a podcast with my co-host Derrick Mains. It happened to be a fitting week to talk of the launch of a baseline study by his company, GreenNurture and Miller Consultants. (More details here at the show web site.) This podcast also includes a report from Heather Clancy, our second on-the-ground correspondent.

The irony of this is, the radio show grew out of a weekly podcast! So, using social media-based format to broadcast a ‘show’  is more than a fall back. It’s an integral part of what I’m doing in radio in the digital era.

Do HR Managers ‘get’ social media?

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“If somebody in your industry becomes responsive to social media,” observed Jay Baer,  “then your silence becomes deafening.”

He was talking of how listening in for customer feedback, and hiring employees who are attuned to these kinds of feedback mechanisms, have huge implications for business. “Everybody in your company is in ‘marketing,’ whether they are in Marketing or not.”

Jay, a social media strategist, much sought-after keynote speaker, and author of an award-winning blog, Convince and Convert, was our first guest on the show.

We paired him off with Patty Van Leer, Exec/ VP. and Chief Strategy Officer of NAS Recruitment Communications.

We decided to do a show to talk about HR practices, and how talent acquisition (and retention, and employee engagement!) has changed and is changing. Employees today live a greater part of their personal and professional lives online. “HR is still process driven, she observed, so resumes are still used because of application tracking systems. “We still live in two worlds,” she admitted, but also recognized that for generations coming out, building a resume isn’t the first thing that employees do. Building an electronic profile is going to be their gateway to introductions with companies.”

Great show, touching on the hot-button issues of branding, customer service, marketing, and workplace behavior.

At the front end of this show, we also launched On The Ground With Abigail Rethore, a new segment, that will become a weekly sustainability report from different parts of the country.

In the last 10 minutes of the show, Derrick Mains officially announced the launch of a Sustainazility grass-roots movement, and the launch of the wiki -at www.Sustainazility.com.

The podcast is now available on iTunes.

Cross posting this from www.your3bl.com

Podcast on Green Teams

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We had a jam-packed radio show on Green Teams this Wednesday.

If last week was all about the external aspects of greening an organizations -buildings and facilities management– this week was all about how health care organizations build green teams. The best practices, and the learning moments.

  • Colleen Cusick of Johns Hopkins Health System talked about the sub-groups in the team that take leadership in many sectors of a health care system.
  • Joan Plisko talked about the corporate culture that drives behavior, and the need to have everybody on the same page.

Here is a link to the podcast: http://bit.ly/your3BL13

Barrier for social collaboration: integration not motivation

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I’m attending a webinar right now on ‘Leveraging Social Software for Increased Employee Engagement and Performance’ with Michael Fausette and Steve Paul.

Interesting slide here, earlier on, based on attendee poll.

The biggest barrier to collaboration appears to be:

NOT lack of collaborative tools

BUT: lack of integration with other systems, and that some in the organization won’t use the tools provided

The product being featured is Spaces, an enterprise platform for collaboration from Moxie.

Perfect timing for a discussion today on our radio show, at www.your3bl.com, where we are taking about Green Teams –Part II of our series. The typical tools teams have always been comfortable with are IM and email, while the more social tools such as Wikis and Twitter or even Sharepoint, pose too steep a learning curve to team members.

I’m going to ask our listeners to take a quick poll during the show to tell us what type of tools they are using today, and what they might consider for their team.

If you care to listen in, here is a link to the live stream: http://bit.ly/Your3BL
The show is at 7.00 pm (Pacific)

  • Ping us at @your3bl
  • Email us at contact@your3bl.com
  • Call us, toll free at 1866.536.1100

A formula for going viral? Picking Everett’s and Brown’s brain

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I had a great conversation with Brown Russell, former Chairman of Gum Tech (GUMM:NASDAQ), last evening on our radio show.

Brown was behind (and by this I mean he led) the launch of Zicam –the cold remedy, medicine. I didn’t know this but Zicam was one of the fastest growing new cold treatments in recent history.

The reason I thought he would be a great guest was because of a book I noticed on his desk one day. It was one of those thick books on communication that communicators who have just graduated may have not even heard about: The Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers, first published in 1962. (By the way Rogers published 30 books in 15 languages.)

To put this in perspective this was before the Internet was ‘discovered.’ And some of the concepts Rogers analyzed presaged  viral marketing by what, 40 years, maybe?

How do ideas spread and products take off, I asked? Is the diffusion of innovations across networks (the unwired kind) dependent on a marketing and PR push? Derrick brought us a good point –that demand, could possibly be influenced by planned scarcity (as in Apple’s play); by game mechanics (as in earning rewards), and filling the need that nobody has quite recognized (as in Facebook).

Here’s the podcast, if you’re interested. http://bit.ly/your3bl11

By the way, if you occasionally use terms such as ‘early adopters,’ ‘late majority’ or ‘laggards’ you’ve been borrowing from Roger’s theory!

What’s a ‘Great Place To Work?’ Podcast of radio show

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Employees are either ticked off or raring to go.  That’s the commonly held wisdom, right?

I wanted to find out and conducted a survey before my radio show, Your Triple Bottom Line.  Some pleasant surprises: A large percentage of responders have positive things to say about the workplace. (The survey is still open for a week, so that number could change.)

However, when asked to describe what a terrible place to work was, one respondent cited “Filth, blind micro-management, too many chiefs.”

Hmmm! Too many chiefs is a common refrain whenever I speak to companies about what’s the biggest stumbling block to a more collaborative workplace.

I conducted this snap survey because we were planning on asking our guest, a much-acclaimed author of the book Fired Up Or Burned Out, about what kind of leadership makes workplaces so dreary or at other times, inspiring. The book (it’s received great reviews on Amazon!) takes you into the ‘power of connection’ at work from the American Revolution to… Starbucks!

Show # 8 – with Michael Stallard

Download a PDF of the book free here.

Cross-posting this from the Show blog, Your3bl.com

What’s your story? Dump the ‘pitch,’ find your story!

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I’ve said it before: radio, which seems a lot like ‘old media’ has one leg up over new media because it’s where people come to expect to hear stories. Not sound bytes, not pitches, not bullet points, not all those forms of condensed communication snacks we have come to expect in every other form of media.

Don’t blame it on TV entirely. There are TV programs that refuse to do the truncated story, shun the fast cuts, and slick camera work so as to let the story unfold. We have ingested this packet switching mentality that the Internet brought with it, and forced our stories into the tiniest bits of content. It’s become the default format, and we go along with it.

But guess what? It is not the only format that works.

Exhibit A: I listened to a long segment today on a new trend Daryl Hall started, called Live From Daryl’s House. It’s an internet phenomenon. But if it hadn’t been thoughtfully told as a story by NPR reporter Robert Smith, I would have skipped it.

Exhibit B: Radio again. This time I have to bring in the show I co-host with Derrick Mains as an example of how we make  ‘talk show’ (in most people’s minds it’s where the hosts yak all the time) into a storytelling space. We bring people around the topics of business entrepreneurship, innovation and corporate sustainability, and let their stories unfold.

Everyone’s tired of hearing pitches. Too many people tell you what they do in that distilled, dehumanized format. Stories have a different pace, and in fact, different goals. Yet they break through the clutter in a more powerful way.

What’s your pitch? Could you turn it into a story? Try it. Record it and listen to it. You’ll never want to talk in bullet points again!

Podcasts of first six radio shows!

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For those of you who have asked, here are the links to the podcasts of the radio show I co-host on KFNX 1100, every Wednesday.

Show # 6:      8 Sept 2010 – Michael Muyot

Show #5: 1 Sept, 2010 – Park Howell and Donna DiFrancisco

Show #4: 25 August 2010 – Tom Szaky

Show #3:         18 August 2010 – Kathy Miller and Marty Metro

Show #2: 11 August 2010 –  Joe Turturica and Stan Alpert

Show #1: 4 August 2010 – Cindy Laurin and Andrew Nisker