Category: innovation

More on Social Media as Religion

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 3 Comments on More on Social Media as Religion

I’ve been continuing to think about this topic, and I’ve realized there’s at least one more parallel to make:

The converted – aka us (I’m including you because you’re reading this blog) – spend too much time preaching to the choir – aka the people who’ve already drunk the kool-aid – and ignoring the godless heathen infidels – aka the skeptics.

We need to stop turning our backs on skeptics with a dismissive: “Well, they just don’t get it, so to hell with them.”

Do you truly believe that social media is transformative? If it’s really that important, you need to HELP them get it.

Paradox of Choice

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

I recently had the opportunity to hear Barry Schwartz speak. He’s a professor at Swarthmore who is most well known for his work on the Paradox of Choice.

So what’s the deal with the Paradox of Choice?

In a nutshell, we act as if the following syllogism is true:

More freedom = more well-being
More choice = more freedom
Therefore
More choice = more well-being

In reality, it generally doesn’t work out that way.

So is choice good or bad? It’s good, but it’s not ONLY good.

Too much choice leads to:

  • Paralysis – just can’t decide
  • Bad choices – too many options increases one’s chances of picking the wrong one – people are not good at thinking through all the implications of complicated futures, don’t understand probability, don’t want to lose, and don’t want to spend money
  • Lower satisfaction – even if you choose well, you worry that you didn’t, feel the opportunity costs more acutely, and have escalated expectations (if there are many options, one of them should be PERFECT, rather than just good enough)

The severity of problem depends on whether one approaches choice as a maximizer (you want THE BEST) or a satisficer (you just want something that’s good enough). Satisficers are generally happier. Maximizers generally choose better but feel worse about their choices. And as choices become more portentous, we’re more likely to want to be maximizers, which means we’re less likely to be happy about the outcomes.

So what can we do? What’s the solution?

Schwartz postulates libertarian paternalism. Design a system so that people acting as expected will mostly get what they want but always allow them the ability to opt out. In a world with no limits, people end up disorganized, paralyzed, and unhappy. We need some constraints, but, as he points out, it’s very hard to figure out the right number.

 

Great quote for a rainy Tuesday

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Great quote for a rainy Tuesday

“Don’t let your imagination and enthusiasm be dampened by organizational politics or institutional caution.”

This is from a white paper on guerrilla social media strategy by Colin McKay (shout out to Mads for the link), but I think it’s applicable FAR outside social media strategy. Every organization has institutional resistance to change. EVERY organization. In some places, it’s greater than in others. But every organization has at least one person who fears change. And most have a LOT more than one. If you are the change agent in your organization (and the fact that you’re reading this means there’s a better than average chance you are), don’t let the forces of “we have always done it that way” steal your thunder.

So Fellow Change Agents, how to you keep your spark in the face of “no”?

Visual Thinking

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Still pondering the whole idea of visual thinking from Dan Roam’s keynote at the recent Great Ideas Conference.

I am not a visual thinker. There are white boards all over the offices at Beaconfire, and 90% of them have all sorts of diagrams and sketches all over them. Mine falls into the other 10% – largely blank (at least when it’s not pro football season). I’m a “Red Pen” person 100%. Actually, the point of the red pen person is that you can eventually get them up to draw on the white board if you can make them mad enough that you’re oversimplifying the problem. I guess I have an exceptionally long fuse, because I’m never going to get up and take the pen of my own accord. So I may be the elusive “No Pen” person. I’m all about words, baby.

And yet, the concept of visual thinking is really appealing to me.

Roam pointed out that ALL 5 year olds report being able to draw, if you ask them. But at some point, most of us decide that we can’t, and that’s that. No more drawing. Or as he put it, we’re “not taught to make use of our inherent visual sense.”

And I really love the idea of simplicity on the other side of complexity, which is what I think this is fundamentally all about. My spouse, who also foolishly studied philosophy, calls it the “essay paradox.” Most philosophers start out expressing their ideas in essays, generally 100 pages or less. Then a handful get famous and decide they need to write books. BIG IMPORTANT books. The next thing you know, you’re saddled with all 600+ pages of A Theory of Justice when “Justice as Fairness” says pretty much the same thing in WAY fewer words.

As Roam articulates them, the rules of visual thinking are:

  • Whoever best describes the problem is the one most likely to solve it.
  • Whoever draws the best picture gets the funding.
  • The more human the picture, the more human the response.

So how do you do it?

  • Draw a circle & give it a name (Roam says it should generally be “me” because people are usually at the center of their own problems.)
  • Divide problem into 6 slices: who/what, how much, where, when, how, and why
  • Determine which of the 6 are involved

So what about those of us who, left to our own devices, will literally NEVER do this? Are we SOL?

I don’t think so, and here’s why: those questions are the key.

  • Who/what?
  • How much?
  • Where?
  • When?
  • How?
  • Why?

Sure, you *can* answer them with pictures. And if that’s the way you work, go for it. But it seems to me that there’s no reason you can’t answer them with words, if that’s the way your brain works. And (Red Pen Person alert) with words, you can explain the thinking behind your answers. Additionally, Roam identified one potential flaw in answering “why?” with a picture – confusing correlation with causation. It seems to me that if you’re forced to document your reasoning (by using words), you’ll be less likely to fall victim to that confusion.

Or am I completely wrong and doomed to be mired in complexity if I can’t overcome my disinclination to draw stick figures?