Jul 28

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“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.”- Lao Tzu

Some of the best strategic alliances are between a Critic and a Creative. The Critic drives the Creative to higher heights, the Creative gives the Critic his content for analysis and, really, the healing of a personal, and often collective, wound. In business, a culture’s wounds offer the largest sources for financial reward AND a positive giving-back: the essence of cause-related marketing.

It is said that the Creative invented the airplane, while the Critic invented the parachute. There are seasons for transcendence and seasons for grounding. In both actions, one needs the Critic and the Creative. Both are relentless beings made of the same stuff in important slices of their personalities. There is an old proverb about men sharpening one another like iron on iron.

Humanity has NO time left for people to figure out how profitable HUMANITY-SAVING VENTURES will be for their own Parea (Tribe) AND then shop those around. That is WHY we are seeing so much giving happening. Time is perceived by many as being short BUT for those who have found their tribe and their gift, these are the BEST DAYS to be alive. Everything is becoming visible before our eyes, everything is opening in the transparent eco-system of social networks.

And yet, as all of this revealing is going on, there seems to be a realization by many of what Carl Jung meant by the unconscious taking up far more of human experience than consciousness. Humanity is currently mapping its consciousness through the building of countless social networks and circles. This consciousness is a jumping off point for diving into the depths of the psyche…into the unconscious itself. And it is the complexes, archetypes and currents within an individual, communal and the collective unconscious that animate human thought, speech and action.

Identifying one’s archetypes and listening to the needs of those archetypes is just a first step in facilitating the design and assembly of useful social communities and tools. The next step involves a kind of deep sea exploration of what has not been spoken of and NEEDS speaking of in times such as these: the unconscious motivators/animators that, once brought into the light, no longer rule us and can be used by humans for solving the problems these self-same animators caused.

Look within to find the reason for what is without. And then ENGAGE!

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Jun 23

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“The Realist Optimist is the most 
powerful and effective of the open 
leader archetypes, somebody who 
can see the benefits of being open 
but also understands the barriers.”



~ Charlene Li, Open Leadership, 
published May 2010.

Focusing on the customer, listening to what he/she wants remains the number one most important first action for any organization desiring a satisfactory engagement. Social networks have initiated the world to completely personalized channels of content production, distribution and consumption. The engaged user can now create his/her own TV channel on YouTube, Google TV and numerous other video channels. The Conversation Prism is an excellent image of the variety of social networking sites available to an individual in his or her establishment of an online tribe.

When we listen to our customer, then we can select brands, products and services geared toward his/her needs. The customer-centric approach in social media specifically requires listening via social network monitoring tools like Radian6, Trackur, Compete, Webtrends and Cymphony.

A Chief Customer Officer will instruct brand manager, product managers and interactive/asset managers on the best use of energy within a given demographic/vertical after having participated in a listening project. Now more than ever, customers are becoming wiser in their choices about products and services sold online, primarily due to the vast amounts of time users spend online AND due to the phenomenon of user-selected/created channels. The mechanics of this has to do with personal choice and responsibility, along with the blossoming of sub-sub-cultures/niches beyond anything seen in previous societal configurations. Social networks allow us to know ourselves better, which in turn gives us more exact and precise opinions on what we want.

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May 24

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On Transparency

Author: nathaniel
POSTED AT 02:05 PM

Since speaking at the Social Media Business Summit in London on March 18, I’ve been pondering the meaning of transparency and what this paradigm means to business and the social realm. The topic is HOT on the tongues of many as Facebook works out its kinks and philosophy in this area.

I’m convinced that humanity is entering a fantastic age, where undiscovered aspects of ourselves and the world appear the moment we imagine. And I firmly believe that our social networks offer us the means for this evolution to take place. And I believe that transparency plays a significant role in this growth process.

We have entered an age where fantastic job titles are possible, careers for Social Relationship Architects, Social Strategists, and Social Physicists, among others. These careers are for people who have training in existing disciplines AND who are able to think metaphorically, drawing lines across right and left hemispheres of thought, weaving new worlds of relationship. Many brands are using liquid metaphors and the overall ethos in business culture implies, and actually demands, porous, permeable forms.

We live in a time when our networks contain people who are super-relevant and specific to our dreams, aspirations and challenges. Goethe’s quote could not be more true at this time: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” It takes a boldness composed of genius, power and magic to enter one’s social networks and begin creating and synthesizing relationships. It takes a willingness to ask questions, be awe-inspired and open to what your particular network has for you, for where you are right now. No other person has the same network that you have. No other person sees the world like you do. And no other person has the opportunities to contribute to this customized network than you…you are, after all, the one who built it and owns it. Corporations, communities, and the numerous other forms that humanity has created for progress MUST be more like the clear waters of the Mediterranean vs. the opaque waters of the Pacific.

Transparency is not something to be feared. It is the greatest opportunity to be exactly who you are meant to be, no shame, no fear: a wild animal out in the open, a tendril springing across the earth for all to see as you bloom and root into the soil of your community and offer your fruit. And, of course, as in the animal and plant kingdoms, there are associated dangers of competition and survival of the fittest. As human beings, our challenge is to balance all of the shades of experience: thought and heart, mind and body, civilization and “the wild”. And it is this very weaving of opposites, of varying shades, that creates the patchwork quilt of the human family and our social networks. Transparency offers benefits to progress that cannot be ignored. Learning implies freedom of movement and communication. Transparent environments offer us this.

My observation is that an alignment is taking place globally that is akin to a holographic puzzle coming into wholeness. Before, with Google, we looked and found. Now, with social networks like Facebook, we see in multi-colored, multi-dimensional space, what the community surrounding a keyword looks like…we see the faces, read the updates, hear the music and taste the journey that this key-phrase is taking. The paradigm of transparency is revealing the living nature of our languages and images. This is a good thing!

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May 19

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The socializing of media and tech is a bid by the human heart to transform the cold, hard, and un-feeling processes of “bottom-line, quantitative” thought INTO a tool for saving all that is beautiful about this planet, the human spirit and our beautiful flora/fauna. The season of the heart has arrived AND, because our tech was born from the imagination, it MUST serve that same SOURCE. Here are some steps you can take to HUMANIZE your entrance into the social fabric of the internet:

1. Discover communities closest to your heart through the use of free monitoring tools. To do this make a list of 40 keywords/keyphrases that match your heart/passion/goals. Then go to this page and find the FASTEST climbing Facebook pages associated with those keyphrases: http://bit.ly/facebook_leaderboard.  “Like” these.

2. Observe the choices, challenges, impressions, and wants of the people within these Facebook pages AND other networks Most of the monitoring tools available to do this observing are listed at this wiki: http://bit.ly/social_monitoring_master_list

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