This past week, as I've spoken with several professional salespeople, I've been ruminating on the importance of hope.  Again.  It seems that I'm always coming back to it...

You know about hope, right?  (It's much more than simply the birthplace of Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee.)

Hope is the meme that undergirded the entire 2008 Obama presidential campaign, best captured when artist Shepard Fairey rendered that iconic, colorful poster.

Hope is the thing which animates, in large part, logotherapy as created, defined and lived by the inimitable Viktor Frankl. 

Ten months ago, our team was asked to lead a weeklong Leadership conference for nearly 200 participants.

Simple enough.

"But it's a paperless event, so no handouts.  Please provide softcopies."

Easily done.

"Oh, just one more thing—we also need you to utilize social media throughout."

A what?

Now call me old-fashioned, antiquated, a troglodyte, a Luddite, whatever—each is, I suppose, apropos to some degree.

After all, I'm 42 years old and, to my way of thinking, a website, a periodic blog entry, an email account, a LinkedIn profile, a gauzy Facebook profile, a 1-lb laptop and an iPhone should more than suffice.  Each one was hard enough to come by, must there be more?

Apparently, there must.

A writerly friend of mine, with whom I visited over a nice meal not that long ago, was absolutely aghast when I described my blog.

"Good gosh, Blake.  No one blogs anymore," she proclaimed, drawing out the word as if having seen me tie my horse to the hitching post before entering the restaurant.  "People don't have time to read blogs.  You've got to tweet!"

And earlier today, a colleague commented, "Have you ever noticed how 'young people' (under 30 or so) don't answer their phone?  All they do is text."  He went on to share a story about a dear family friend, 22 years old, with whom he has communicated literally hundreds of times in a decade, "But perhaps only five times by phone.  I'm serious.  In several near-emergencies, I've had to send her a text saying, 'Hey, I'm going to call you.  Please ANSWER YOUR PHONE when I call.'"

We went on to laugh about 'landlines.'  "The majority of people who call are telemarketers," we concluded.

And so, with great trepidation, I have begun to populate my Twitter account (first created for me by a colleague at the aforementioned conference).  Thus far, it is merely quotes.  They are meaningful quotes, not robotically generated, and each is important to me for one reason or another.

I suppose, in time, I might use Twitter for ostensibly "important announcements" about upcoming public seminars or strategy sessions.  Or to remind folks that our daughter is selling Girl Scout cookies, and please buy a dozen boxes.  (Seriously, please do.)  Or to launch a new 360 or app or video series, each of which we have in the mix for 2012-2013.

And, if you choose to follow me (I am currently following 126 thought leaders, universities, colleagues, researchers, writers, TV shows and celebrities—in an attempt to learn the ropes), I promise that I will not tweet about my trips to 7-11 for Dr. Pepper slurpees.  Or my trip to see Snow Patrol in concert.  Or about how I mistakenly packed new shoes for a weeklong trip, "And man, do my feet hurt!"

Well, at least, I don't think I will.

After all, guns don't kill people.  People kill people.

In the hands of the masses, with a noble, shared agenda, Twitter has partially animated the topplings of militaristic, despotic regimes that might otherwise have continued governing tyrannically for several more decades.

Who am I to defile such a powerful tool with my inane comings and goings?

I will do my best to continue blogging, which itself is so far from longform writing as to (channeling something Ricky Gervais might say here), "Make the former look as classless as Kim Kardashian and the latter as classy as Kate Middleton."  (I'm not sure where this leaves tweeting.  Probably Tonya Harding territory, I would concede.)

Along the way, I'll have to learn more about HootSuite, bitly, hashtags (#) and @ symbols as I tweet Tweeple from Twiland, the Twittersphere and beyond.  And it appears I'll have to do some regular gardening and pruning, because for every 'real follower' there is one automatically generated spambot, sexbot or weed that crops up, making my wife dubious about Twitter in general and the notion of followers specifically! 

Best case, I'll be able to keep up with folks a little better, and they with me.  Worst case, well, I suppose there are three potential worst-case scenarios: (1) I'll offend someone by tweeting, and they'd rather I simply crawl in a hole and die already.  (2) I'll trip over my tail, being the ancient dinosaur that I am, and uncouthly SHOUT because I know neither the Twitter dialect, norms or taboos.  Or, and this one is most likely, (3) I'll find some modicum of value via the medium and yet, either because of my own ineptitude or time/energy/resource constraints, I'll neither consistently leverage Twitter in the months/years to come nor keep up with it (or its potential surrogates or inevitable scions, finding myself, once again, "behind the times" and dogpaddling).

We shall see.

Time reliably remains the greatest truthteller, nearly always revealing what was once hidden, unknown or altogether 'un-see-able.'  (Which, no, is not quite the same as invisible, or hidden, for that matter.)

Meanwhile, I do hope a dozen of you will tweet me your comings and goings, even if we are, now and then, reduced to sharing news about airport delays and the simple diorama the child next to us has crafted from the glops and blobs of gum beneath his seat.

Who knows, maybe now I'll be able to read about topplings and presidential campaigns first-hand, from dead-center in the stream itself, rather than waiting for my ABC News app to refresh or, even worse, until Diane Sawyer tells me in person on that large piece of glass we used to call a television set.  You know the one.  It's that thing in the room you rarely enter, was once a piece of 'furniture,' and families—so we're told, 'gathered' around it at static, appointed times, like a radio.  Or a fire.

Here's to tomorrow, the future, and the dawn of a new era.  Or, as your teenager might say, "So yesterday."

p.s. I can't help but wonder, so surely you do too, "What would Gutenberg think?"  Considering it took roughly 10 hours for a typesetter to create a typical, one-page document as recently as the turn of the 18th Century, or a monk several days to do the same prior, I cannot help but be, and I'm quite serious now, in awe of today's media.  What was virtually impossible two decades ago has become pedestrian today.  We live in AMAZING, breathtaking, awe-inspiring times.  May we relish them, treasure our personal liberties and endeavor to more fully exploit and capitalize on our technologies virtuously, that they might improve the quality of life for, literally, billions who rise each day and surely wonder, "Will tomorrow be any better than today?"  Communication holds this potential and this promise.  It always has and always will.  From the most enlightened to the most evil, all influential leaders know this in their bones.  Contribute to the message, and you may influence more.  Lose the message, and all the rest is in vain.  

*  *  *  *  *

"Ideas are more powerful than guns.  We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?"  (Joseph Stalin)   

For this gorgeous Friday, I have four diverse quotes comin’ at ya…each of which, I hope, speaks to the true heart of leadership, which is service.

“If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”  (Mark 9:35)

“Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve.  You don't have to have a college degree to serve.  You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve.  You only need a heart full of grace.  A soul generated by love.”  (MLK)

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.  The last is to say ‘thank you.’  In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor.  That sums up the progress of an artful leader.”  (Max DePree)

And to these, one might add, “To succeed, assume the responsibility to communicate.  To fail, presume it is others’ obligation to understand.”

* * *

Cock-a-doodle-do & Happy New Year to You!

This morning, five "articles for 2012" jumped out at me.  Because I thought they might 'speak' to you, too, I have assumed the responsibility of "aggregator" by combining them into one PDF.  (I have made zero efforts to modify, clean-up, or edit any of them, of course, so caveat emptor.)

I believe you will enjoy them.

Reading them in one brief swath, you will see a common thread: more and more, the Customer-Client-Student is CENTER.  Not peripheral, but front-and-center.

Now, of course, this is a multi-millenia reality, but never as focused as today.  The magnifying glass has found the sun, and the diffused light has become a laser beam.  I can see the smoke and smell the sizzle.

The first article, "Physicists Seek to Lose the Lecture as a Teaching Tool" describes the transition from 'Sage on the Stage' to 'Guide on the Side.'  In short, students who are required to answer questions and wrestle with reason via 'peer instruction' learn 3x more than those who sit idly by and listen to a professor pontificate.  Historically (e.g., before Google... "BG"), the 'gathering of information' was the hardest half of learning, when compared to 'making sense of information.'  Today, gathering information is easy--it almost happens passively, as we are immersed and awash in it hour by hour.  This allows, therefore, professors to invest their time provoking, guiding and leading inquiry and understanding...rather than transmitting data.  While this is no great epiphany, it will ultimately upend the teaching model as we've known it, challenging all of us to 'adapt or become extinct.'  (Read it to see how the student, not the professor, should be at the center of the learning process.)

The second article, "The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives" speaks to the importance of humility (respect), boundaries (character), curiosity (followership), receptivity to disagreement (retention), authenticity (vs. attention), reality (vs. hype) and change (vs. worshipping the past).  It is an interestingly nuanced and subtle juxtaposition to Walter Isaacson's biography about Steve Jobs, describing why (perhaps) several of Jobs' core behaviors were exceptions--not the rule.  (Read it to see a balanced view on market, customer, and leadership vision and strategy.)

The third article, "Five Resolutions for Aspiring Leaders" outlines simple-yet-transformative things you can tackle in 2012 to continue your professional development.  (Read it to see how 'gaining knowledge,' not 'defending it,' will keep you front-and-center...and relevant in the months ahead.)   

The fourth article, "What Americans Keep Ignoring about Finland's School Success" describes something I tackled in Cultivating the Strategic Mind: the value of cooperation rather than competition.  Equity vs. Excellence.  I know, I know, it sounds heretical!  (Read it to see 'the bigger picture' and understand how--and why--putting EVERY student at the center of an educational process makes Finland a North Star.)    

The fifth and final article, "Five Predictions for Higher Ed Technology in 2012" shows, by way of Stanford and MIT, that online learning is here to stay and, given that more and more college students are drowning in debt and questioning the value of diplomas in a soft economy, universities must find alternative delivery methods.  From 'peer' and 'distance learning' to replacing bulky, back-breaking-backpacks full of anachronistic, outdated and overpriced textbooks with iPads and tablets, the future is here.  And now.  Once universities get their own act in gear, the dam will burst, the watershed will overflow, and those 'lockers' we all experienced from K-12 will be about as useful as a hitching post at your local watering hole.  (Read it to see why, once again, the customer--aka student--is king.)

5ArticlesFor2012.pdf (235.13 kb)

On this, the sixth anniversary of your birth, you are on the hearts and minds of all who know and remember.

Thankfully, it was gorgeous today; the sun shone brightly and warmly on our faces.