Iterations

Another bit about “modern society” that people bemoan is our mobility.  Sometimes our excessive moving about is blamed on job and career, but more often than not, its just on the list of self-evident reasons for complaint.  Like the weather.

The more I pay attention to the human past, however, I find this received wisdom puzzling.  Indeed, I would argue that our ability to move is what keeps us from falling back into serfdom.  If the job sucks too much, we can always move.    If there’s a better than good job, we can move for that, too.

Oh, I understand that moving is a pain.  Especially, if you are poor.  But it’s neither against the law nor required by law.  (At least in this country, or in most of Europe.)  Oh, we have passports and immigration rules (sort of), but most of those are restrictions on entry into a place, not restrictions on exit.

And it is the exit possibilities that really make for a non-serf world.

All that said, I’ve always considered myself more an exception to the rule rather than its illustration.  I’ve spent most of my life in two states (Wisconsin and Iowa), and with the exception of one semester in London when in college and a couple other extended research-based visits to England, I’ve never lived farther South than St. Louis or more than 125 miles away from the Mississippi River.

But I decided to count the numbers of homes I’ve lived in over the years.  And the number — 16 — shocked me.

Because this number isn’t particularly padded.  To be sure, I did count multiple places in the same town some.  But I only counted places where I have lived for at least two months.  And even there I didn’t count as separate each return to the town of my birth unless it was to a physical location (once because my mother had moved, the other because I was practicing law and wanted to live in a house rather than a duplex apartment).

But even if you count only the number of different towns or cities, even my number of discrete homes — seven — would have been amazing to  a feudal serf would have considered substantial.

That serf would have likely had at most two different homes in his lifetime — the one he was born in, and the one he lived in after being married. (Many times in fact, the places would have been one and the same.)

From 2 to 7 is an increase in mobility of 350 percent.  From 2 to 16 is an increase of 800 percent.

And I guarantee that I’m far down in the lower tail of the distribution, even among those who have lived most of their lives as I have in “rural America.”

That, I submit, is evidence a fortiori of our escape from serfdom.

And it is a greater protection against tyranny and poverty than industrialization and the Internet combined.  Far more than any revolution, and far, far more than any “political” protection.  More even than modern plumbing.

We can move.

I may be able to choose serfdom.  Sometimes I think a lot of my fellow citizens are willing to do just that.

But you can’t make me choose it.

Nanner, nanner, nanner.

There are two kinds of bullies.

The kind who control the way you play a particular game.   And the kind who insist you play their game.

Most Americans reject the first kind (save for those who like to be BMOP (big man on playground).

But, if truth be told, the first kind is pretty easy to get away with.  You can just walk away.  Life isn’t grade school.  If I think Joe is a bully, I just decide to hang out where Joe isn’t.

It’s the second kind of bully that can be the problem.  The second kind of bully wants to keep you on his playground, playing his way by his rules.

And, unfortunately, our “system” encourages such bullies to get together and seek power.  They know that it’s a lot easier to keep on bullying if you’ve got a gang of bullies who stand with you.

Economics says that a cartel contains the seeds of its own destruction.  That cartel members have an incentive to cheat, since they can reap extra economic benefits from doing so.  But bullies aren’t driven by economic incentives.  They’re driven by the pursuit of power.

That’s why a Constitution of enumerated powers combined with a t Bill of Rights was such a critical thing. The founders knew their would be bullies out there.   Bullies who would see majoritarianism as a tool.

Unfortunately, “we the people” have emasculated both Constitution and Bill of Rights by converting them into a tool of utilitarianism.  And in so doing, we’ve enabled bullying on a huge scale.  Indeed, we’ve converted the greatest innovation in government ever into an unprecedented affirmation of the bullying ethos.  If we don’t like what other people want to do, the solution has become to pass a law to make what they want to do illegal.

We’ve professionalized and legitimated bullying.  Look at your typical Congressperson, your typical President, your typical bureaucrat.  They’re almost all bullies.

They’re just bullies that look good and promise better.   All at the expense of the evil on the other side of them and us.  We don’t want our bullies to be jackbooted thugs.  We want them to be expertly coiffed with business suit and nicely shined shoes.

Why is political correctness such an evil?  Because  it is nothing more than another excuse for type 2 bullying.  To convert taking offense into taking over the schoolyard.

Do I consider some speech offensive?  Sure.  Absolutely.

And as an adult, I have a pretty easy solution available to me:  I can walk away.

But political correctness doesn’t work that way.  If the PC bullies are offended, they’re solution isn’t walking away and associating elsewhere.  They’re solution is that of serfdom.   They want to build a 10,000-volt fence around the schoolyard, and then, when the offending person can’t escape, pummel him unmercifully until he speaks better.

Look at today’s newspapers.  Look at the stories and editorials where people are calling for government action.  Look carefully at what people are asking for.   Are they asking for enforcement of the Constitution and its protection.   Or are they asking for help in bullying other people?

If you have to, start with those whose causes you don’t share.  (It’s always easier to see bullying on the other side.)  But after you’ve identified the opponents’ bullying tactics, move to those who you agree with.  Look in the mirror.  Look real carefully at what is being proposed with respect to the choices of your opponents.   I hate to say this, but more often than not, you’re seeking to take advantage of the same bullying tactics and threats.

This isn’t meant as America bashing.  Bullying using state power has been the default of political action since long before our republic was founded.   Indeed, what made the American Experiment so special is that it attempted to formulate rules that prevented legitimized bullying and that discouraged just the sort of bullying we now practice.

It’s just that we no longer hear the voices of the Founders well enough.   We’re too busy trying to be bullies.

Regular readers know that when it comes to “the effects of the internet”, I tend to be an optimist.  Even an apologist.

I have to be honest, though.  My position is to a large extent, one of faith rather than one based on “conclusive scientific evidence”.  No, not the capital-F faith that my July 18 post was all about, but small-f faith.  The “I believe this, well, just because” sort of  faith.

Oh, my reasons are a little better, a little more sophisticated than that.  (At least *I* think so.)  But compared to, say, what is collectively known about the economic effects of the American railroad, or the size of GDP in 1970, our overall empirical sophistication about “the effects of the internet” is amazingly low right now.

Not just mine, but thine and all the Nobel laureates, too. (And we won’t bother mentioning how little clue the Nancy Pelosi/CNN/New York Times crew have.)

And its not for lack of babbling on the question.  Consider the subquestion of: “what is the internet doing to the quality of social relationships?”

Quite frankly, we’re barely getting to the point where we’re even asking the right questions.

On one key empirical point, virtually all the pro-internets and virtually all the con-internets agree:  the network of social relationships looks very, very different today.

But, despite all the “debate,” most discussing this empirical reality fail to engage the real question:  is this good, or bad, and why?  Because virtually no one explains why web-of-relationships-A is categorically “better” or “worse” than web-of-relationships-B.    Worriers point to the decline of traditional connectivity (churchgoing, newspaper reading, political participation)(“A” was better!), while pro-internet people (raising hand) point to all the marvelous-ness of LinkedIn and blogs and Twitter.

But do we ever really engage the question of “what makes A (or B) better?”  I’m not convinced.

Two examples:
1.  Two “differences” you’ll observe if you live any length of time in a small town, one positive and one negative.  Positive: you can leave your car unlocked with less risk.  Negative:  more people will mind your business.  So which is more significant?

2.  Google “twitter whore youtube”.  You’ll find a two part video by one LisaNova.  Watch it.  Are you appalled or do you find it amusing?

With the exception of interludes in London, St. Louis, and Iowa City, and various bits of business travel, I’ve spent all my life in towns and “cities” of under 10,000 souls.  And I can tell you that I haven’t answered #1 satisfactorily yet.

And as for #2?  Well, I have no clue.  I found the video originally because I was searching for what people were saying about twitter;  and then I spent another half an afternoon trying to figure out a subset of the splinter cultures that use/live on YouTube.  (After a bit of searching on LisaNova, I discovered one such splinter culture, populated, at least temporarily, by people blogging as  CommunityChannel, Channel Reviews,  Danny Diamond.  What does it mean that the total views of part 1 of LN’s “twitter whore” parody are approaching 1.5 million, or that her 2007 “last blog ever” (which isn’t parody at all) now has 648,000 views?

Clearly, there is no mainstream anymore. We live in an urban world — with tens of thousands of small town communities out there on the web.  Is this bad, maybe Tower of Babel bad? Or is it good?  Tocqueville’s America of associations writ large?

I don’t know.

It’s definitely a different world.  But “better or worse”?  Well, er, um, it is better.

I think.

Why?

Well, just because.

Sometimes life is just surreal.

My current iPod playlist seques from “Amazing Grace” (Paul Schwartz, State of Grace) to “Push” (Prince, Diamonds and Pearls CD).  Bizarre.  Whyever did I set it up that way?

No clue.

I wish I had more time to spend on marketing research.  I keep thinking of things that need measuring but never seem to find the time to develop the metrics.

Take the term I use in the title of this post:  “time to cliché”.   It may be a WOT (in both “Wade original term” and “wot?????” senses), but I’ll leave to those less lazy than I the task of  searching for prior use.

I get an awful lot of email that isn’t technically spam, but might as well be for all the likelihood of my opening the messages.  (For me, the technical definition of spam is something like “unsolicited, without offering double-opt out, etc.”)  It might as well be spam because the subject line tries to pull via cliche.  Using phrases like:

?    ”free web summit”
?    ”"double your …”
?    ”the secrets to …”
?    ”official notice”
?    ”save up to…”
?    ”how to … Now!”
?    ”you’re invited…”
?    ”only XX hours left”
?    ”I don’t usually do this, but …”
?    ”I blew it…”

And the same is true for the teaser copy on the snail mail solicitations…
?    ”urgent update”
?    ”final
?    ”official correspondence”

And so on.

Now, I understand that these cliches are used because they worked in the past.  And, direct response being what it is in the Internet age, abandoned when they don’t pull enough.  That I’m still getting all of the above means they probably are still working to some extent.

But it’s amazing how quick they become tired and unproductive.  Take the first one.  I’ve been offered more web summits than there are peaks in the Rockies, Himalayas, and Andes combined.  “double” and “secrets” and all the others — instant trashing.

And it happens faster and faster all the time.

And I don’t think its just me finally developing better bullshit filters.  I’m still pretty gullible, after all.  But I think individual pieces of language are getting worn out faster and faster.  Scroll down your inbox (if that’s where you keep your clutter), or though your email trash before you hit “empty” — look at all the phrases that bring forth that delete key in your mind….and think about how recently it was that the same subject line phrase would have pulled you into opening the email.

For years I’ve taught about the dangers of cliché in writing.   But a hidden assumption of that teaching was that it takes awhile for something to become a cliche, a while during which the word or phrase has social or economic value.  How should one approach the use of cliche when the half-life of meaning begins to resemble that of a transuranic element.

I don’t think the answer is obvious anymore.

I’ve remarked briefly before about my changing business model for Iterative Listening. Part of the story lies in my realization that, for lots of reasons, I wasn’t interested in having “direct mail/emaill copywriting (business-to-consumer)” at the center, as it was in the original plan.  One reason:   I’m just not convinced that the “tried and true” of direct response will work with the various Gen Y-related demographics I’m most interested in..

It isn’t that Gen Y won’t respond to some direct mail/email solicitation.  They have, they do, and they will continue to.

But their information filters work very, very different than older direct response demographics, and that makes some of the DR marketer’s traditional techniques highly problematic.

Think of it this way:  any given marketing activity can engender three types of “response”:  (i) positive response (leads, sales, other conversion goals); (ii) non-response (the most frequent, call it “send it to the trash” response; and (iii) negative response.  This last is the most dangerous, and the kind that an awful lot of direct mailers simply seem to ignore.

I call it the “pissed-off percentage”.  People in group (iii) don’t just trash your letter or email.  They remember.  They take umbrage at your wasting their time.  They remember, and they spread the word.  And the word is not good.

As long as the positive response is “big enough,” traditional direct mailers have always been happy.  (And so are those who write copy for them, by the way, since copywriter fees/royalties are directly a function of the copywriters ability to “pull”.)

And it’s worked.  I can point to dozens of copywriters whose own financial success (and their clients’ financial success) is directly related to their ability to pull.  Focus on making group (i) as big as possible.  Period.

Look closely at the demographics.  These successful writers get their  greatest successes with whom?   How often are they aiming at Gen Y?  Or even Gen X?  How many of them are focusing on Boomers.  Seniors?  Super-seniors?

Or they’re writing B-to-B copy.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that B-to-B copy looks different than B-to-C copy, and pretty much always has.  Business buyers — well, they just don’t have the time or the patience to deal with those things that work in many B-to-C markets:  constant upselling, daily autoresponders, telemarketing.  And their “piss off factor” is very high.

And Gen Y is the same way.

Take up-selling.  Nothing wrong with it.  Gotta do it.  But do it “too much,” and the recipient stops reading you completely.  They see the envelope from the Upselling Institute, and it goes immediately to the trash.  They see UI is the sender, and one click removes the message from the inbox.

And if they keep seeing UI, and you make them scroll down to the unsubscribe button — well, they don’t see that as “easy”.  They see that as someone wasting their multi-tasking time.  And they’ve joined the pissed-off percentage.

And guess what?  A lot of those Gen Yers on your mailing list?  The ones who haven’t unsubscribed yet?   You might think they’re still warm or semi-warm prospects.  But they are colder than cold.  They’re as cold as a bath of liquid nitrogen.

They’re illustrations of the Klingon/Sicilian proverb about revenge.

Okay, perhaps that’s stretching the point — since most of them simply aren’t going to be bothered to waste any more time with you.

But they are going to talk about you.  Because they don’t like being “just a customer.”

By the time you identify how to transplant your upselling strategy and “discover” a new marketing channel like Facebook or Twitter, they’re already living their real internet lives somewhere else.  Somewhere else where they’re spreading negative vibes about you.

You’ve violated the authenticity principle.  You’ve entered the realm where the best that you can hope for is that they ignore you.  And the worst — they spread the word about how your only interest is your revenue stream.  They don’t mind you wanting to be rich.  But they do mind you only wanting them for their money.

Whether they should have such a view of the marketplace is beside the point.  The fact is, they have it.  And they live it.

They’re not into “doing business” (at least not when they’re behaving as prospective buyers).  They’re into relationships.  And they’re not interested in relationships with people who see them only as prospects.

It’s basic marketing, really.  Learn the psychology of your market first.  Then choose from your box of tools.  Not the other way around.

That hasn’t changed.

What has changed are the consequences if you don’t do it.

These prospects have choices beyond “yes” and “no.”

And they know it.

It’s that day again.

Last year I spoke of the Declaration of Independence.  Of how “we the people,” following the mad example of King George, have become addicted to our own abuses and usurpations.

This year, I’m too tired to try and improve on what I said a year ago.  Just read the Declaration, America.   And look in a mirror.

Me, today I start flying the Gadsden flag.

How the worst managers are addicted to their own urgency?

If you want a list of “12 managerial practices guaranteed to ensure employees [or collaborators, or students] listen less rather than more, and do so sooner rather than later,” put “constantly press for the urgent” near the top of the list.

Every urgent request interrupts the employee’s workflow.  “Urgent” says put aside that long to do list I’ve already given you.  “Urgent” says put aside that thing I’ve already got you working on.

“Urgent” says, “I can’t manage my own work flow, so I’m just going to push it off on you.”

Well, I’m sorry, you’re the manager.  That’s ass-backwards.

And if you keep doing it?

Trust me, no one likes constantly having to smell a certain part of the anatomy.  If you press your employees constantly about what’s urgent?  They’re going to find ways to avoid you and that smell.

And guess what *that* will do to your to do list!

One downside of my now having a mission, after not having had on for most of a half century, is that “outside” interruptions of that mission tend to inspire too much anger.

For example, I’ve spoken before of my aging mother and her propensities to nag and interrupt.  I haven’t handled this well.  Too often I’m on a short fuse.  Snappish. Quick to anger and yell and mutter under my breath.  Combine the fact that I’m on a mission now with my certainty that my disregard of my health over my first half century means a significantly shortened life span, and the urgency takes me too far.

Impatience often rules.

It’s not a small irony, given how often I’ve given others grounds for their own impatience.  How many times I’ve procrastinated, even with important things.  How long I’ve taken to get some things done.  How often my own lack of focus has got in others’ way.

But there’s no doubt.  As my mission has become more clear, my impatience has grown more powerful.  And so has the anger.

Part of it may be good.  It shows I’m concentrating on the path.  It shows I’m more focused.

Yet impatience, and the way it shapes one’s response to interruptions, must remain proportionate to the interruption.

A bit of anger can be good, cathartic even.  Just as a bit of salt when cooking can bring out amazing flavors.

Too much salt, however, and all you taste is salt.  Worse, nasty things start developing with the rest of your body as you become addicted to that taste.  The retention of excess fluid.  Heart disease. Key system after system screwed up.

Unfortunately, just as taste-inspired salt use is far easier to build up than to reduce, so it is with mission-inspired impatience and anger.

I’ve struggled.

With practice cooking, I’ve become much better at using salt.  I’ve learned to substitute other spices that do even more.  I’ve learned more about “when” in the process to salt.

But the spices of impatience and anger?  Those have, so far anyway, evaded improvement.

How do you deal with those who would interrupt your pursuit of mission?  How do you strive to correctly season with impatience and anger?  Have you discovered substitutes that bring out more good flavors and fewer bad ones?  Have you discovered anything about when a touch of the salt of anger helps and when it simply feeds your addiction to it?

What’s your mission?  What do you do?  What’s your purpose in life?

Questions like that used to annoy me.  In fact, for the longest time, I considered “mission statements” and the like to be the epitome of useless corporate management-speak.

Now that I have my own mission, of course, I see the world differently.  I see how the annoyance I used to feel was one part frustration at those who, yammering on about mission and its importance, weren’t being clear and precise in what they were talking about.  And three parts (maybe more) the consequence of my not having one of my own.  Of never having had one.

Because, never having had one, I had been so unfocused for so long that I had no idea how to go about finding mine. All I heard was abstract gobbledygook.

So when it came to writing my own personal mission statement, much less making it part of my daily life, I kept putting the ask off.  Oh, periodically I would try following the advice of the gurus of mission, the Coveys and the Palmers and the Attwoods and the others.  But always there would be something missing.  Something that didn’t quite fit.  I might follow them part way, but no farther.  And, because I didn’t go all the way, any partial “mission statement” I might come up melted away.  Disappeared into the depths of my hard drive or the mess on the desk, never to be seen again.

(Somewhere on the other end of a tiny wormhole, there’s a planet where nothing lives, a planet-sized landfill containing nothing but discarded and forgotten mission statements and resolutions.  A landfill in which I own prime real estate.)

Now, of course, things have changed.  I have a mission.  To help people listen better.

And, to quote the Blues Brothers, it’s “a mission from God.”  Or to quote the letter of Paul I’ve been focusing my Bible study on this week, its a mission in “the obedience that comes from faith” (Romans 1:5).

Oh, even now, I’m nowhere near as focused as I ought to be.  Having a mission hasn’t prevented me from getting distracted from its path multiple times per day.  It certainly hasn’t stopped me from getting discouraged, even deeply depressed, about the pointlessness of life, about my failures of competence.  From wallowing in self pity for days, sometimes even weeks, at a time.

And, despite all my pontifications about listening, here and elsewhere, I’ve clearly a good ways to go before I might become a master at that mission.  Yes, I believe I’m onto something with the “iterative listening” paradigm. Yes, I believe, in this little piece of human understanding anyway, I see more clearly than 95% of the world.  Yes, I believe I have something worth sharing.   Something worth my selling and your buying.  But notwithstanding being above the 95th percentile, I’m so far away from mastery of the listening thing that it’s scary.  And stays scary despite my faith in He who defines mastery.

Nonetheless, despite the continuing distractions, despite the recurring bouts of depression, despite my grokking that I remain “only an egg,”  I’m something different now.   Because with apologies to Grandmaster Heinlein and Michael Valentine Smith for stealing their metaphor, now I’m a fertilized egg.

And so, mixing my metaphors even more, there’s something, when I fall off the “helping people listen” wagon, that’s worth getting back onto.

Put me in the ranks of the mission speaking.  In the group who tells you that if you can’t put yours in a sentence, trust me, you’re asking for trouble.

And it needs to be a simple sentence, not one of those academic sentences with multiple subjects, verbs, and objects.

Single subject:  “My mission…”
In the ‘aspirational passive’ voice:  “… is to …”
Single mission:  “…help people listen better.”

That’s mine.  What’s yours? Why are you here?  What connects you and your life to the rest of life, the universe, and everything?