Notes from an Open Life

How to make yourself indispensable – inside an organization, or working with an organization

What do organizations do?

They try to hire the best and smartest people they can to address their core business.

As an information professional, will you know more than they do?

No, probably not. 

Will you know more ‘broadly’ than they do?

Yes, probably.

Can you think differently and bring value to them?

Yes.

So what do you do?

• You get a request or a project.
• If at all possible – if it’s of interest to you and to them – you meet with them.
• You talk with them.
• You get interested.
• You understand their challenges, issues, interests, goals more broadly.
• You become a part of the team.
• You trust yourself to provide information that is relevant.
• You then do so.

What then?

• You listen to them.
• You meet whom they are meeting with.
• You listen to those people.
• You get interested.
• You understand their challenges, issues, interests, goals more broadly.
• You trust yourself to provide information that is relevant.
• You then do so.
• You become a part of that team.
• Repeat.

Your Klout score and why you shouldn't give it a second thought

I just had a conversation with Brent Mills, a friend and new information professional, about Klout and the whole Klout score thing. (Justin Bieber has a "perfect" Klout score, did you know that? And I am childishly not going to link to him. Nyah.) Brent was asking, "as a social media guru" - a phrase I cringe at - "what do you think about Klout scores?"

And the guru's opinion is - don't worry about it. Don't give it a second thought. 

A disclaimer: I looked at Klout a while ago when it was first emerging, and I haven't really seriously looked at it since. I haven't found it worthwhile to look at, to be honest.

And in looking at Klout on my Chrome browser this morning, I see their tagline is "The Standard for Influence." Which is exactly the key to why you shouldn't worry about it. 

Klout REALLY WANTS TO BE the Standard for Influence. So does every other social media property, measurement method, marketing firm, etc. etc. etc. Why? Because everyone is chasing the Holy Grail of social media measurement and is obsessed with finding some kind of "standard." Ultimately, the goal of these companies is to MONETIZE that.

And as far as I can see, there is no current standard, and there never will be one standard. I can't see how one number can capture ANYONE'S social media presence or influence. Because there IS no one way to use social media effectively. That's exactly the beauty of it. It's a creative space. Some people use it well, some don't. Two people or companies in the exact same industry can use social media very differently and still both be equally "influential" and effective. 

I'm sure the Klout people would have a rebuttal to this, and I would be open to hearing that. But what I encourage YOU to think about is this:

Would you want someone to put some kind of number on your social skills? Do you want someone to assign a ranking to you as to how "influential" you are in the community? What the hell would that even mean? 

Social media is first and foremost about people. And I will always stand up for people first. I'm for compassionate, fun, interesting, open, and thought-provoking people, and I expect the same of my social media. A number will never, ever capture anything like that. 

If a company is going to discount you in some way because your Klout score is too low, well, you're probably a whole lot better off not working at that company. Period. 

End of guru lesson for today. 

Innovation, creativity and competencies

Mary Stansbury, LIS Program Chair at University of Denver, gave a presentation at the annual membership meeting of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of SLA last night in south Denver. She talked, in part, about how we teach competencies in library school, and the role of innovation in competencies. It was an intriguing and thought-provoking presentation - and I will link to it when it becomes available.

The (admittedly somewhat scattered) notes that I'm sharing here reflect some of the thoughts she shared, and some of the thoughts and questions that came up for me during her presentation.

I will confess, there is a part of me that sighs - inwardly and tiredly - when I hear the words "innovation" and "competencies".

I think "innovation" is tremendously overused. Mary pointed out that in business these days, innovation is seen as the panacea that will cure all of our business/revenue/product/company/(insert word here) woes. I agree with this, and I think this contributes to my growing irritation with the word.

I feel that "competencies" is another word that, for me, is starting to attain "innovation" status. I'll talk about this more in a bit.

Mary began by distinguishing between innovation and invention. Innovation essentially means creative change of a process (rather than an object), while invention means creation of an object. She also noted that innovation includes elements of change and risk.

Mary posited that customers - library and information customers - might not always be the most reliable sources of knowing what innovation might look like. She quoted Henry Ford as saying, "if I'd asked my customers what they needed, they would have said, 'a faster horse'." While I think it's important to ask the recipients of our services what they need - mainly because we often fail to do this - this point gave me a different perspective on innovation. Yes, we can ask our customers what innovation might look like, but part of me feels it's a disservice to our customers to ask them for what they think is innovative - why should we put all of the burden on them?

One of the most intriguing pieces of her presentation was her reference to John Isaacson, who says that, when hiring, he looks for "hunger, speed and weight". Hunger means a willingness to take risks, and to fail. Speed means intellectual agility - the ability to listen and synthesize, and to learn. (To me, the ability to learn blows the needs for 90% of our written competencies out of the water. Feel free to argue with me.) Weight, as Isaacson puts it, is the ability to use power wisely, but I also feel there's a sense of emotional maturity in this piece.

I believe that these are valuable abilities for success. Part of the discussion of the evening was, does our focus on competencies support innovation? Often, our competencies are skill-based and retrospective - they address achievement, not aptitude. Achievement measures look backward; aptitude measures look forward. And to me, Isaacson's qualities are about aptitude.

Which brings us back to my irritation with the word "competencies". We talk a lot about competencies, but I think we are losing sight of the reasons behind competencies. As Mary pointed out, one of the benefits of having competencies is that they are measurable. And we have a very high need to measure, to gauge, to be able to point to something and say "There, you see? It is a 4.5 (or an A or X or Level E-3 or 86%)."

While competencies are important, I think the qualities that Isaacson outlines are equally important. Yet, how do you measure and codify risk tolerance? How do you codify capacity to learn? Maturity?

More importantly, is there a way to build these qualities into what we teach? Is there a way to teach not only skills but aptitude? Is there a way to create an environment - really, a scenario, a safe place to take risks - that builds both real skills experience and aptitude?

I think so. Though I'm not quite sure what that looks like yet. 

Success is...

Just got a little flash on what success looks like. I think success comes to us in many forms. In some sense, an easy path toward our goals is a sign of success. Simply appreciating where we are is an appreciation of our success.

Today I received a gift basket from Springer for speaking at a couple of their eBook Summit sessions this year. They didn't have to do that - but they did, and I really appreciate it on many levels. True, it's a coffee gift basket, so they know me and my love of coffee well. But to me, it is a symbol of the success of my information consulting business, Social Information Group. It's a symbol of all the wonderful people I work with in this venture, and in the many different ventures going on right now. On a larger scale, to me it's affirming of where I'm going and what I'm doing, of this new path in life.

Maybe I'm making too much of a simple gift basket. But this really touched me. Thank you, Springer, and thanks to everyone in my life. I continue to be astounded by how each and every person I connect with is important. I'm grateful for every one of you, and for what you bring to my life. I hope that I bring something to your life, too.