Teblog

Help the reader and help yourself

No-one needs to tell you that the reader is the most important person in the world to a publication.

Conventionally, the journalist is responsible for maintaining this focus. Sadly, a great deal of journalism these days, especially online, is 'churnalism' in which barely disguised press releases take the place of reader-centric writing.

There is another way. It probably won't win me many friends among my journalistic peers (although it could save their financial bacon) and that is to ask vendors themselves to write reader-focused and informative, non-selling, articles about their specialist subjects. In my case, the readers being focused on are those responsible for technology in law firms.

The trick is to have a good editor who will help the contributors to get it right - i.e. send it back with recommended changes, seek clarifications and corrections or simply give it a light polish. Having handled a couple of dozen pieces for LawTech magazine, I'm amazed how few had to go back for a rework.

Let's come back to the journalists and their 'financial bacon'. The document properties of one or two of the pieces revealed that they were ghost-written by freelance writers. If vendor staff are too busy to do the writing and publications are too strapped to pay decent rates, this represents a good 'halfway house' for a writer. They're not involved in writing 'puff' pieces, the vendor gets a mention and a web address in the magazine and the reader gets some solid information which contributes further to their understanding.

To add a little colour to what I've said above, here's my latest editorial from LawTech magazine. It also introduces Tom Foremski and his Every Company is a Media Company philosophy.

What a terrific bunch of people we have writing for us this month.They are all experts in their various fields and, despite the majority working for vendor organisations, they’ve all made a real effort to talk to you and address your needs. It’s not easy for them; they must feel tempted to give their products and services a little mention in every paragraph. But they’ve resisted heroically. The result is a collection of articles, which we hope you find interesting and informative.

Yes, each is written by someone who knows his or her company better than any other, but show me someone in a senior position that doesn’t have wider experience of the marketplace. Most bring a broader perspective, and it shows. You will find that some articles overlap others but these different points of view will all help to round out your own perspectives.

We are not here to guide you in a particular direction but we hope that by laying out these different viewpoints, article by article, issue by issue, that you are better placed to make your own tough decisions about which strategies to pursue and what sort of vendors you’d like to work with.

For me, it’s a great honour and privilege to be able to take this fresh approach to publishing. No one who’s been aware of changes in the media over the past fifteen years can fail to have noticed a rise in the “Every Company is a Media Company” sentiment. This phrase was first coined ten
years ago by Tom Foremski, a former journalist who left the Financial Times after 30 years to found the Silicon Valley Watcher blog. He’s seen first hand how important it is for companies to share their knowledge, usually through their own online media. He has helped many companies achieve this by applying strong editorial standards to the process.

And this is where we come in. We’re an independent publication with a strong editorial ethos that believes in giving the experts a chance to engage with a carefully selected audience. And that’s you.

Thank you for reading LawTech magazine.

We have some great issues planned for the future. The feature themes for the coming year are detailed on the website. The backdrop of ‘security’ and ‘cloud’ will always be there, but if there’s anything else you’d like us to cover, please drop me a line.

David Tebbutt
Editor - LawTech Magazine

 

 

telescope or epocselet? Which way are you looking?

How often do you glaze over when someone enthuses about a product or service because you don't "get it"?

They blast off without the faintest idea about your circumstances, your needs or your desires. Result, a baffled story-teller and a semi-comatose listener.

In extremis, it's the religious zealots who knock on your door. But milder forms exist - the Facebook enthusiasts who are always trying to shove some dodgy philosophy down your throat - usually through pictures or video links. (Recommendation: 'unfollow' them - they stay in your friends list but you're spared the distraction.)

Sadly, these zealots exist in business too. Some organisations are so wrapped up in their own inventions that all their publicity and promotional activities are inward-looking. Self-obsessed, if you like. And this goes for the company spokespeople too. Anyone who says 'we' more than 'you' is likely to be guilty of this.(By the way, you can get a chart of where you stand, by doing this quick assessment - it takes just a couple of minutes.)

Once you start putting your prospect first (in the same way that all good journalists put their readers first) your story will emerge as something your prospect wants to hear or read. Something that promises to, and will, deliver a desired value. This will lead them to your physical or digital door and, if you continue to play your cards right, you'll have a new customer.

Common sense? Yes. But, in decades of dialogue with vendors of all kinds, I've discovered that many actually fail to make that bridge. They pay lip-service to the principle, but their words let them down. When consulting (often with Martin Banks and, more recently, with Dr. Bill Nichols), we've found ourselves using the term 'looking through the wrong end of the telescope' to describe this inward-looking approach.

We've even created a website called epocselet.com (that's 'telescope' backwards) as an umbrella for our disparate but aligned services. Our focus is firmly on executive management and we'd be delighted to act as guides or sounding boards in the discovery, articulation and sharing of your stories. Use us as little or as much of us as you like.

The journalist's mantra 'know your audience' can be applied equally in business. Change 'audience' to 'prospect' if you want, but the principle applies to anyone trying to influence anyone else, whether a prospect or an intermediary. If you're in business, you may have multiple audiences but, at heart, you're trying to move the same stories through to the ultimate audience, your prospect. You may be trying to influence internal staff, analysts, bloggers, journalists and the many social media cascades. In every case you need to ask yourself, "what's in it for them?", in order to refine the basic story to best effect.

Written baldly like that, it seems like common sense. But sometimes it's hard to change your perspective without independent and objective help. It's not my place to tell you where to go for this. Anyone intelligent who understands communication skills, your marketplace and who has no axe to grind will be able to help you.

But I have to mention that Bill, Martin and I - solo or in various permutations would be more than happy to help you if you're interested. You'll find more about us and our services at epocselet.com

 

Apologies to all the marketing people I've insulted

Yes, it's true. I've been known to say rude things about marketing people. Analogue marketing people and, frankly, I can do a good job of justifying these comments.

But, as I discovered recently, there's a new breed of digital marketer about and, if they play their cards right, they can be a force to be reckoned with.

My transition started last year when I talked to IBM's CMO for EMEA (top marketing bod in Europe etc., to translate loosely). I came away with the idea that marketing is moving from an art to a science.

Earlier this year, I found myself doing some training with Marketo, a marketing automation company, among other things This, as with all my clients, involved a lot of pre-course research. I became more and more interested in the subject, way beyond the call of duty, in fact.

When I got back, I carried on digging and this led to two articles for CIO UK. The first is What is marketing automation? and the second is IT’s role in marketing automation.

For the marketers who've grasped these new opportunities, I take my hat of to you. For the rest? Well, I'll still proceed with caution.

 

Goodbye Felix Dennis

Last week, someone very special to me died. I could have sworn I posted here about his passing, but the week was a bit of a blur and I clearly hadn't.

Last year's post about him (Poetry in Motion) will give a flavour of my feelings about Felix.

Read his 'company poem' The Bearded Dwarf to get a sense of what life was like aboard the good ship Dennis Publishing, or Bunch Books as it was when I worked there. (I understand Rolls Royce was none too happy about the logo. I knew life there would be a blast as soon as I saw it engraved in the glass above the entrance door.)

Felix took me on to help create a personal computer magazine. This swiftly turned into the relaunch, in September 1979, of Personal Computer World.

 

Here are some posts I made in Facebook last week - the only place I semi-publicly shared my thoughts and feelings.

23/6 RIP Felix Dennis, wonderful man, good friend. We're gonna miss you so much.

 

23/6 Me, Sylvie, Felix and mystery person in foliage. March 1st this year. Didn't know it was our 'goodbye' to Felix. Lots of great memories of the man.

 

24/6 When I met Felix Dennis, he took me to the art room where they were laying out John Wayne's obituary. I said, "I didn't know he'd died." Felix said, "He hasn't yet, but he's very ill." Eye opener for me.

What has amazed me this week is that papers and online sources have had years to get the facts right about Felix, yet they still manage to screw up his biographical basics.

It makes me wonder how much of what we read is similarly incorrect.

 

25/6 I go to sleep thinking about Felix Dennis and I wake up thinking about him. It's like an infection of the brain. He's never far from my thoughts because he had such a profound impact on my life. I'm probably going to shut up about him for a while but, before I do, I'd like to share a couple of his insights with you.

One is a scan of an interview I did with him years ago for the now defunct "Sustainable Solutions" magazine. It was so completely against the sustainability grain that the publisher loved it.

The other is the pdf of his excellent lecture (Journalism or Churnalism) on why the reader is king.

Enjoy. And take heed.

Goodbye Felix. Thank goodness you've left such a huge written and recorded legacy.

 

29/6 If you think you've got a great story about Felix Dennis, check these out first. They are utterly brilliant. (They're tributes from people who've worked for him.)

 

You don't have to agree with everything Felix did, few people would, but he was a man of utter conviction, he was honest, he was an inspirational publisher and he made a massive difference to tens of thousands of people's lives. (Maybe more than that.) Including mine.

Thank you.

 

Social Business

Luis Suarez spent many years at IBM in knowledge management and social business. Earlier this year, he branched out on his own. He's a popular speaker at conferences and advisor to many about the practicalities of social business.

One of his recent blog posts about social business challenges in the workplace spurred me to respond - something I should do more of (like blogging) but rarely get round to.

Social business at senior management level is not always appreciated or understood. In fact some (many?) actively resist it. I tried to take the management perspective with comments like:

It would be interesting to know how many of the ‘resisters’ of a top-down mindset are in fear of losing their power?

Perhaps they’ve acquired it through inheritance, accident, shareholding – anything except merit.

Or maybe they consider that their unique perspective wouldn’t be understood by the ‘lower orders’, even if they were to share it.

When email first came in, analysis revealed that many middle managers were just ‘message passers’. People just started leaving them out of conversations and they were exposed and, presumably, moved out of the way.

It’s a bit different at the higher echelons of the company. I guess the answer is to find those senior management willing to engage socially and show the non-participants the value (e.g. better understanding of what’s going on – in both directions) and see if participation spreads. If it doesn’t then ‘engagement’ should perhaps be raised as an agenda item at board meetings.

Luis' responded quite fully (and harmoniously) and my response to this included:

Agree with you. Including your point on the restrictiveness (ie non-social) aspects of email.

I think that ‘effective working’ should always be the goal. I worry a bit when the goal is expressed as ‘social’ anything. Social is the mechanism, not the destination. It’s something a lot of ‘evangelists’ (not you, of course) seem to miss.

He responded again so, if you have any interest in the subject of social business practicalities, I really urge you to add Luis' blog to your list of thought leaders in this area. He's widely known as Elsua, if you want to search for him. (Saves you ending up with loads of footballer hits.)

Silo (or Solo) - Collaboration - Social

I've lost count of how many years I've been dipping my toe into the collaboration waters. Certainly, it goes back at least to Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) thirty years ago. By 1988 this was formalised into a time/space grid, so that you had remote/colocated on one axis and synchronous/asynchronous on the other. Not a bad way to characterise many of the collaboration and social tools that abound today.

I mention all this because Agile Elephant's David Terrar invited me to a Future of Collaboration Conference triggered, in part, by the opportunities created by the convergence of cloud, social and mobile technologies. (To my mind, this equates to a transformation in reach and convenience.) Each speaker had ten minutes or so to share their vision. This was followed by a Q&A session and networking. The audience was also made up of industry people, so I expected the bullshit factor to be low. And it was.

Given my background, I wondered what I would learn. Let me list the participants and their roles, and then I'll tell you what I ended up thinking. I'll spare you the blow-by-blow details.

David Terrar chaired the event.

Speakers:

Jon Mell, Social Leader, IBM UK
Alan Patrick, Agile Elephant
David Moore, SAP
Simon Levene, Jive
Janet Parkinson, Agile Elephant
Chris Boorman, Huddle

Questioners (apart from David Terrar and me):

Phil Wainewright, Diginomica
Lucinda Carney, AdvanceChange

Baker Tilly, chartered accountants and business advisers, provided the accommodation and refreshments. (Lovely, thank you).

The first thing I noticed was the lack of evangelism, thank goodness. Quite often you turn up at these events and they're more like a religious revival meeting than a pragmatic look at business needs and applications. Okay - one chap said work should be fun, but he got a slight ribbing for that from some of the others. Work could become pleasant, fulfilling or rewarding maybe, but not fun. God forbid. (Mind you I quite often have fun when running training workshops, so I have some sympathy with his point of view.)

While 'email' and 'social' can be good in the right context, neither is much cop as a sole collaboration strategy. In fact two people branded email 'the enemy' of collaboration and another branded social on its own as 'a waste of time'.

Previous events have banged on about the need to change a company's culture or boasted of coming 'disruption'. Utterly unhelpful. This isn't how stuff gets done. Far better to introduce collaboration tools which fit business needs and, if possible, integrate it with what exists. Do this in a few key areas (with board level support, of course) and things start to catch on as others see (or are told about) the business benefits of these new ways of working.

Social - people communicating openly and freely (with business intent, of course) - isn't going to happen without trust and that doesn't come without knowing each other (usually through at least one face-to-face meeting, but relationships can form through voice, video and even, dare I say, email).

As collaboration, then social, activity spreads vertically and horizontally through an organisation, culture change will follow. When it extends beyond the company boundaries to partners and customers, it will alter the way the organisation listens, responds and collaborates. Silos will be breached and individuals will become more aligned and harmonised with business drivers.

Everyone - the company, the workforce, partners, customers and prospects will benefit. That's the promise. And it sounds good to me.

And now I'd better go, before I'm accused of being an evangelist.

Blog navel gazing over

My last blog post prompted Euan Semple to post two more of his own. These grabbed far more attention than mine and led to some interesting debate, much of it on Facebook where he's recently taken to repeating his blog posts.
 
Before Euan got involved, I was getting an even mix of opinions. Some who thought I was right to not post much, if at all, and others who thought I was mad to even think of stopping. Then, when Euan got involved - the first time to share my angst, the second time to rail against someone who said "blogging is just showing off". (One riposte to that was the sensible, "Blogging is so varied you can't make blanket statements.")
 
Let's cluster some representative comments. Draw your own conclusions.
 
First of all, why blog at all?

• Your blog is your gravitational centre
• Write for your community
• My community is so small we may as well meet down the pub
• My community is global, we can't meet down the pub
• I'm going to move back to my blog to serve my interests rather than some IPO'ed profit engine's
• If I post knowledgeable/interesting stuff it leads to opportunities
• Writing forces me to think and get feedback
• Co-creation results in greater/deeper insights
• Co-existent thoughts rob dominant thoughts of power

And here are some tips for would-be bloggers

• Don't do it if your heart's not in it
• Be selective and deliver gold
• Be an example of good writing
• You stand or fall by your content
• Get people to think, not tell them what to think

Some commercial organisations see blogging and commenting as an obligation. (See the 'heart' comment above.) Someone suggested it's a publishing strategy, just like the pamphleteers of old but with the world as their potential audience.
 
When I was an established columnist, Dave Winer wrote his first blog post. I remember thinking "Who does he think he is?" One of Euan's comments took me right back to that moment. But it's only now, 19 years later, that it’s dawned on me what irritated me so much. It was his use of the first person. He was writing as himself, as if he were important. In several years as an editor, writer and columnist, I always tried to avoid the first person. My attitude was "I'm not here to promote myself" (except through the byline, which few people notice).
 
I have a massive list of more great comments eked from the Euan posts, but I'd like to conclude this post with a rather elegant contribution from Vicky Smith (reproduced with her permission). Thank you Vicky. Here goes:
 

"Blogging offers egotistical natures a platform to broadcast and attention seek. For others, it's a release of private thoughts in a more therapeutic manner (one could maybe say both make the blogger feel better). For others again it's for money... This discussion has prompted me to think of blogging like art or painting, a form of self expression, which just happens to be shareable online. I'm sure many artists would like their work seen more, be it for making money or for ego, others less so because it's more a private hobby for personal reasons. It all just depends. We're all different, and it's a platform for expressing those differences, if one so wishes in whatever way one wants."

 

Poetry in Motion

The title of this post comes from a Johnny Tillotson song (mp3). The reason I chose it is because someone I know is in the middle of a poetry tour.

The person in question is Felix Dennis; a man whose friendship I treasure and whose publishing values I aspire to. He knows, better than any other publisher I've met, that the reader is the most important person in the world.

We went to his show at the Stratford-upon-Avon RSC Courtyard Theatre via a long detour to avoid a traffic clag-up on the M40, a check-in at the olde worlde Falcon Hotel, a cream tea at the Emporium and a tasty meal at Loxley's. Ah, not to mention the six free glasses of wine at the theatre. Cheers, Felix.

Off the top of my head, here are ten verbs that attempt to capture the Felix style. He whispers, growls, barks, laughs and shouts. He cajoles, implores, questions, stirs and delights. Not really what I expected, but I should have done, it's exactly how he behaves face-to-face.

Truth be told, he also promotes, begs and sells. He seeks donations for his Heart of England Forest charity, his poetry books and his periodicals - especially The Week and its associated wine retailer. Oh yes, he moans too about the state of our nation, of Europe and several of its individual countries, and of the poverty in St. Vincent, for which he's Honorary Consul in Warwickshire. He urged audience members thinking of a Caribbean holiday to go to St Vincent for a better welcome, wonderful scenery and lower costs. (A crude summary of what Felix actually said.)

Perhaps because he's become a local lad - his main home in the UK is in the nearby village of Dorsington - or maybe because of the free wine, or both, he was well-received in Stratford. The audience was on his side from the off, and stayed there through an interesting mix of sad, funny, moving and thought-provoking poems. All linked together with cameos from his life and illustrated with back-projected images, movies and words from his poems.

I spotted a Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band placard in the sequence from the 60's. A friend of mine played with  them when they were called The New Jungle Orchestra. All a long time ago.... I also spotted a typo or two in the poetry texts. "Baffoon" was one. And I think I saw a "wilt" where I expected a "wit", or maybe my thoughts were elsewhere.

An evening with Felix is unusual, to say the least. He shares his life's learnings in an enjoyable way. He talks about life aboard the Bearded Dwarf - his company poem. The staff used to call him that, so he adopted it as a pseuonym for his companies. I didn't, but I could have nodded all the way through that poem - in agreement, not exhaustion. I probably learnt more about publishing, editing, writing and life in my own 27 months as a crew member (from mid '79) than during the rest of my life..

Thank you Felix, for the show last night and for inspiring the second half of my life.

How sticky are your labels?

(First published in "The Right Thing To Do?" 9th August)

As editor of "The Right Thing To Do?" I've tried to stay in the background but, due to a monumental workload elsewhere in recent weeks, I've failed to find a guest writer this week. So you've got me. Hope you don't mind.

As a subject I thought I'd look back at my own life and figure out what the most important lesson has been. And I reckon it's 'authenticity'. Whenever I've tried to be someone I'm not, I've ended up unhappy at best and stressed at worst.

The trouble is that companies quite often force you into these uncomfortable situations. And, without some kind of training - in management skills in my case before I secured my first managerial position - you either busk it and get away with it. Or you do what I did and try to satisfy everyone and end up so stressed my wife had to call a doctor. (I don't remember, but I was apparently banging my head against a wall at the time.)

Fortunately, I was able to resign fairly amicably and move on, to better things as it happened, but with some lessons learned in a very hard way. After that, instead of pretending I was some kind of superman, I tried to be more open and honest about things.

Sure, we have to pretend a bit. Some years later, when I became editor of a magazine, it was a massive departure for me. I didn't feel like an 'editor'. I lacked the authority of many of my writers. But I found that, because I had the label 'editor', people treated me like one and it took very little time to grow into the new role. One that was completely compatible with my skills, motivations and values.

Again, I was lucky. A fantastic publisher (Felix Dennis) gave me a wonderful feel for this new profession (I'd had a series of IT management jobs before largely switching to publishing) and, best of all, I was able to be 'me'.

How many people get that opportunity? How many people are labelled and feel obliged to live out those labels? 'Nerd', 'air head', 'superstar', 'disabled', 'tycoon', 'housewife' and so on. The only labels you need to conform to are those you choose for yourself. You have only one life and, while it might take courage to break free of the comfort of your label, if your inner self and your label are incompatible, you need to do something about it before the stress gets you.

If you want to hear and see someone who's learned this lesson in an astonishing and profound way, take a look at this TED video by Caroline Casey. She had two massive 'change moments' in her life, at 17 and at 26. The first threatened to bestow an accurate but unwelcome label on her, and her denial of it led to the second which was close to a breakdown. By then accepting what she was and acknowledging what she really wanted, she was able to perform what you and I might regard as miracles.

Enjoy!

 

The right thing to do?

Recent events have drawn me away from Teblog and I think they're likely to keep me away. But I am involved in something much better.

First a bit of background: editing and writing much of the original paper version of Blue & Green Tomorrow gave me massive opportunities to write about the environment up to May last year; on the communication front, media skills training hit an unexpected peak in January; and, since June, I've spent at least half of my time with a company which hits every Tebbo hot button: communication, environment and IT.

The people I work with are great and we've created a neat website, demo and knowledgebase plus various social media presences. The company itself, 6Connex EMEA, is all about online events, content and collaboration, thus accelerating work and cutting the costs (financial, social and environmental) associated with travel.

But it gets better. Tracey (the boss) and I wanted to do something extra but non-commercial. Inspired by the work of the Lunar Society at the dawn of the industrial age, we wanted to get right-minded people to share their practical insights with each other and with anyone who cares about making the world a better place. (The motivation is similar to Blue & Green Tomorrow's. The difference is that it goes way beyond environmental issues.)

We've had direct contributions from people like publishing mogul, poet and forest builder, Felix Dennis and green investment wizard Ben Goldsmith. We've covered some interesting TED videos - one on Gross National Happiness and another on why things will get better. We've also had people who are at the heart of change in educational systems and one who argues that growth and sustainability are incompatible.

 

Some pioneering contributors and featured presenters in The Right Thing To Do?

Top row: Euan Semple; Clive Longbottom; Ben Goldsmith; Ray Maguire.
Bottom row: Matt Ridley; Chip Conley; Felix Dennis; Salman Khan.

 

Just this week, social networking guru, Euan Semple, contributed a great post entitled "Bloggers are the rag and bone men of the information world."

Everyone is giving their time and ideas for nothing. No-one puffs their business directly, although they can all share their credentials in their mini-bios. TRTTD exists for knowledge sharing and discussion which will provide a bedrock of thoughtful considerations for our collective future. Depending on individual circumstances, posts are either contributed, the product of an interview or are written up around an online video.

Curating TRTTD seems to me to be a much better cause than continuing with Teblog. I'll keep it open for now, but expect most of my energies to be spent elsewhere. And, if you like the sound of "The Right Thing To Do?" why not come on over. It would be great to see you there. Here are the Website and Twitter links.