Don was in Kansas City to teach the techniques of running workshops for the siblings of developmentally disabled people. I expected to hear about issues of guardianship, health concerns, behavioral issues, overwhelming concern for challenges that loom large in so many families.

I had no idea it would be such a joy.

Don’s presentations are a delight. He is exuberant and funny, using humor and silliness.

He had the crowd of about 150 people do an exercise, without speaking, to sort ourselves into teams of “one’s,” “two’s” and “three’s.” The skeptical crowd got up reluctantly, some members heading for the doorways to slink out, but within three minutes, we were not only laughing out loud but holding hands in long conga-lines winding through the conference room, circling the round tables neatly organized. The simple handshake exercise forged bonds.

What did all this have to do with dealing with the many challenges of caring for a developmentally disabled family member?

Nothing, and everything. His workshops, he pronounced, are “unabashedly playful.”

“We have fun,” he explained. The workshops give siblings a chance to meet other siblings; there’s no “therapy,” just sharing experiences and feeling OK about it. You can’t underestimate how important it is to connect with others in similar situations.

My friends and I (all with siblings with Down Syndrome, from our own home-made support group) have been sharing stories and trading tips — how to measure signs of dementia, how to address changing health needs.

His advice to us? “Have wine at your meetings,” he said. “Make sure you have lots of laughs.” We left that day with an appreciation of the light touch.

In the same way that a whisper can be more compelling than a shout, so can a shared laugh be more powerful than the sobering narrative.  I’m thinking of a favorite quote from Maya Angelou that works to illustrate this:

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Looking back is the easy part. It’s a fact-based review, or at least, it should be. I can identify the facts about my business in this last year:

• Eight active clients (two major), who I love (see my last post)
• Met my goal on billable hours, stayed within my goal for administrative hours.
• Met (barely) my goal for networking/marketing hours for my business
• Delivered more than 120 hours  pro bono work for charitable organizations (not meetings or fun, actually delivering my professional services)
• Saw my work for clients published in journals (medical, research, economics); wrote for local magazines, newspapers & blogs, contributed to an annual report; two articles published in an national online  professional trade journal; regular contributor to four blogs
• Delivered blogs, white papers, speeches, articles, newsletters, executive presentations, social media content for clients
• Organized 30+ events for clients
• Tended my own professional development with a writer’s conference (previous year), a full-day professional seminar, webinars, regular local professional development sessions, lectures (TEDxKC, Linda Hall/UMKC etc), entrepreneurial development meetings, attended paid training programs (video, government contracting, Quickbooks)
• Personal enrichment and service: Hosted a Taiwanese Graduate Study Exchange student and a Russian professional; participated in informal mentoring
• Personal horizon-stretching: travel to Santa Fe, New York (previous year) and Sydney, Australia
• Pushing my comfort level: networking, marketing myself and my business, selling…
• Following my passions: active engagement with non-profit organizations supporting the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts;  SAGA — a support group for siblings of adults with Down Syndrome; NAWBO for women entrepreneurs; IABC for professional communicators; and Rotary, an international service organization
• Survived a computer crash!
• Exercise: Ran (sadly, I report my lowest annual mileage since 1994 — 300 miles) and biked (not enough miles to count) and a bit of yoga, swimming, walking and hiking.

I can count some pleasant successes in this, my second full year in business for myself.

And I can identify some new challenges — the looking ahead part:

• Figure a better way to measure and manage my business pipeline
• Get more effective at networking/marketing my business, or,
• Figure a way to effectively scale my services, and
• Exercise more!

There are many more areas for self-improvement (which should translate to business improvement, since I am my business) … but I will include just a couple more:

• Every day, give my best effort to those who entrust me with their business
• Give thanks, love and laughter every day to the people who are closest to me
• Believe it:  Today is the best day ever

Bring on the new year!

Lately, it’s crept in anyway.

Part of it has come with my sister, who lately has been developing her own anxieties. She now gets anxious when I am not home, as it is difficult for her to keep track of my work schedule, which sometimes allows me to be at home but often requires that I am out. She gets upset and worries, wandering the house and talking to herself, unable to focus. It becomes increasingly difficult for my husband to calm her down.

She also is awakening in the night, filled with uncertainty, but wanting to arise. It becomes a challenge to convince her that it’s still night, and time for sleeping. She gets nervous and frustrated when her things aren’t Just So, exactly positioned where and how she likes them.

These anxieties are taking greater hold of her… and now I find that I’m sharing them too. Not the same ones as her, but anxieties FOR her, because of her.

I am working to banish them — replace them with action. So far, my meager actions haven’t won the day, but I will not nurture fear and anxiety. I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.

Instead it’s actions: Research — reading about Alzheimer’s research and practices, medical insights, etc. It’s talking with others (thanks to my friends at Siblings Are Great Advocates). It’s describing all this to others in the family and drawing their support and help. It’s working harder to help her understand and overcome her own anxieties.

Action, I believe, must be the conqueror of anxiety.

It’s happened. (Actually, it had already been described in a YouTube video from about a year ago, once again demonstrating that there are no new ideas — everything already exists on the internet. Sigh.)

The MIT Technology Review story explains how this new application combines facial recognition, database lookup and cloud computing, with augmented reality.

It’s a little creepy and raises potential issues about invasion of privacy and misuse (police, CIA, insurance companies?). The Recognizr, described in the article, takes the issue seriously and offers its service as an opt-in only, which means it can only recognize you if you’ve agreed to be recogized.

This one is going to be interesting to watch. How long before this technology shows up in a spy thriller movie? My bet — less than a year.

* * *

At the beginning of the year, I told the story of my sister’s travels from Kansas City to Columbus and the extraordinary care she received from Southwest Airlines. (“Travel Vignette on Caring“)

There’s a little bit of followup, unremarkable except that it proves, once again, that there are real people at Southwest Airlines, and they are willing to act like real people. I’m impressed, again.

After I wrote the story, my brother took the step of alerting Southwest to the post.  He got a response:

Dear John,

Thank you for your e-mail. I was thrilled to learn about your sister’s experience when she traveled with us to Columbus on January 2. We truly appreciate your family’s kind words of our airline, and we hope to welcome you all onboard a Southwest flight very soon!

Sincerely,

Lindsay, Southwest Airlines

The reminder I takeaway from this is about the power of human interaction.

Just being willing to be human — to listen, to respond, especially in a meaningful way with empathy, gratitude, care — shouldn’t be an extraordinary occurrence.

But we’ve become so accustomed to being treated as just a wallet, a sale, that when we’re treated with respect it becomes an outstanding event.

So, kudos to Southwest Airlines. Again, I’m impressed and inspired by the people there. Thanks for modeling the way it can be.

Shocked, truly, to find myself sprawled and wet and suddenly aching. I couldn’t speak for a minute, I was so jarred.

And then I slowly understood — I’d slipped on the ceramic street tiles embedded in the sidewalk under the leaves. My cowboy boots were no match for all that slick stuff. I was bruised and shaken, but not broken and certainly not going to stop and linger.

Change hits us like that. And it takes time to absorb; sometimes you just have to let the bruise form to take stock of what happened, and what didn’t happen.

It’s a new year, which prompts taking stock and getting ready. Taking stock is a way of counting up the inventory you possess — customers, opportunities, friends, ideas, gratitude. Getting ready for the new year is preparing yourself for change — building up the flexibility and resilience to anticipate what might happen, or at least be strong enough and open enough to adapt.

I’m grateful to all the businesses who have entrusted me with their stories; I’m honored to be working with you. I’m grateful to the many friends who’ve given me support in this first year of business. I’m touched by your willingness to connect, to share, to listen, to guide me. I appreciate my generous colleagues and fellow entrepreneurs in the Kansas City chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators, who welcomed me so warmly. The National Association of Women Business Owners offered a bounty of smart and fun women; and I’m glad to be part of it, too.

And in the coming year, I want to do my part to give back the kindness and support that I received. I’m planning on expanding my horizons — video! audio podcast! art! bird-watching! — and other delights as I find them. I’m open to adventure, I’m willing to experiment and take a few chances.

Even if I fall.

Here’s to a grand new year!

Credit: SALADELLES, an extraordinarily talented photographer with beautiful images from nature — go visit: http://saladelles.over-blog.com/

I heard a too-brief presentation recently from Bob Johansen, a distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future. First off, he described his task as a futurist: to offer a plausible forecast in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. VUCO world, for short.

Then he offered a secret on how he does his job: Start by looking farther out ahead, and then work your way back to the near-future. He said things are much clearer farther out, say 20 years in the future, and much harder to specify one to three years in the future. Besides, he says his role as a forecaster is not to predict, but to provoke.

He described several future scenarios that appear certain to him — for example, connectedness will increase in importance, as wireless communications melds with sensors connected to everything. He gave a convincing argument by showing how Helsinki and Tokyo are using the combination today: you can use a cell phone to scan bar codes on products on grocery shelves, and you’ll get a read-out of consumer ratings on the product. You pick your shampoo based on its environmental, health or societal rating, whatever matters most to you.

The best sound bite of his talk (in my view) was his proclamation: The word “consumer” is obsolete. It’s almost an insult to be called a consumer.

Every person is connected in a social network, and technology has amplified those networks. It’s a participatory culture. Johansen noted that the Institute for the Future embraces this participatory and open-source culture, and uses crowd-sourcing techniques to solicit input to its forecasts. (See Open Source World and other related posts on openness.)

Back to the insult of being a “consumer.”  Johansen argued that a coming trend favors self-identification as “makers” — people who are actively contributing to society, in whatever form fits, whether it’s cooking dinner or writing a novel or woodworking. Makers are contributing, active, participating.

He has tracked the rise of the Maker movement, noting Maker Faires springing up to celebrate creativity vs. consumerism, including in the Bay Area (of course!), Austin and around the world. (Should we do one in Kansas City?)

I think he’s on to something here.

I think there is a new awareness about the negative components of consumerism.  Bill Moyers had a brilliant conversation with Andrew Bacevich on this topic almost a year ago, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.  (Among the best parts: his description of America as an “empire of consumption.”) You can find it here.

A common thread in both theses is the participation of the individual in the SOLUTION.

The future  isn’t going to come from an establishment. Nobody trusts corporations or government to create the future. No, it’s up to us.

Johansen had a sticker on his laptop that says it all: I am making the future.

I like it.

I am making the future.

More from Bob Johansen here: Bob Johansen – Book Section Brief from Institute for the Future.

Corporate Social Responsibility is the integration of business operations and values, whereby the interests of all stakeholders including investors, customers, employees, the community and the environment are reflected in the company’s policies and actions. (CSRwire.com)

Earth Day had me thinking about why businesses behave so differently from what we expect of people. And how that’s just not OK anymore.

How often do we see business operating without a sense of responsibility for actions? (AIG? Enron?) Is it because businesses are identified as an “it” rather than a “he” or “she”? It’s not personal, it’s not even a person — it’s something removed from the human individual and, therefore, not expected to behave as a human?

I think the old ways of doing business are changing, swept in on a wave of transparency and accountability. Corporate social responsibility appears to be taking hold for real, a response to the demands of customers, employees and stakeholders.  (Another example of individuals using the collective voice to agitate for change!)

Evidence from Daniel Yankelovich, the masterful public opinion research leader, gave me hope. In an interview with The McKinsey Quarterly, he articulates the case for real change in corporate culture.

Paraphrasing Yankelovich: The question shouldn’t be — Is it legal? The question should be –Is it good for the public?

He makes the case that corporate strategy has to answer two questions:

• Does it enhance the company’s long-term profitability?
• Does it serve the public good?

It’s a big change from Milton Friedman’s position that as long as a company is profitable, it is automatically serving the public good. We now expect more. Sure, it’s legal to pay an executive 250 times the wage of the average worker in the company … but is it right?

Yankelovich says the development of trust equity with the public will be a major competitive asset in today’s corporate environment.  He’s right — change will occur only if the public good also serves the bottom line, if there’s a true value to trust equity with the public, consumers, stakeholders.

I’m keeping his questions top of mind with my business and with my work with clients:  will the business strategies enhance profitability, AND, will those strategies serve the public good? The answer to both has to be Yes.

The one thing a business must have is customers.  And today’s customer is a lot like today’s citizen journalist.  Your customer:

• Cares. The Customer cared enough to give you money for your service or product.
• Has a voice.  The Customer can spread stories about the great or poor experience.
• Can amplify the story. Here’s where Social Media changes the traditional interaction between buyer and sell — and the outcome. Customers have always had a voice, but now Customers can easily form spontaneous organizations with others anywhere. Instead of just talking to a neighbor or coworkers, your Customer today can Twitter, launch a blog, publish ratings and build a Facebook community about the experience, etc.

So what?

Here’s a great example from November: The Motrin ad.

It ticked off some blogging moms who wrote about it — here’s the original post.  Next a Twitter army spontaneously formed and quickly spiraled into a movement, including a campaign on Facebook to boycott Motrin.  It spawned parodies and hit mainstream media and generated lots of angry customers for Motrin.  Motrin responded but even a big company with all its resources and smarts didn’t get it exactly right.

Need more examples? How about SciFi — er, SyFy? Or Tropicana’s new labeling?

Being a Customer today is a participatory experience — another example of mass collaboration. As a business, you can listen and engage, even empower your customers and employees to speak for you. After all, they are already.

Why not participate?

Sure, for a business, it’s a change and it can be disruptive — but probably more disruptive if you don’t.

To be successful, you’ll also have to balance top-down hierarchy with participatory technology, and maybe rethink your perspectives on control vs. freedom.  You’ll want to relinquish any belief that you know where the good ideas come from or that you know all the good ideas, and replace that with a willingness to listen, learn and respect the individuals who care enough to engage with you.  Sure, it can be messy (remember Motrin?) — but also authentic and powerful and rewarding to the business.

There are other, more tangible and practical things you’ll want to do too.

• Do an audit — what’s the marketplace really saying about you right now? What’s happening with your competitors here, too? (Although, again, this one  starts with the soft skill of listening.)
• Define your strategy. Know what you want to accomplish.
• You might need policies on the changes and on managing risk. (Like email, you have some ownership in tracking, auditing, defining what’s unacceptable, storage, privacy, etc.) Don’t lose sight of the collaborative nature of social media, use the culture to help with self-policing and honest engagement.
• Engage slowly.  Don’t lose sight of the need for authenticity — don’t let corporate-speak take over.  Be real.
• Over time, engage in full.  Your employees speak for you, so do your customers. You initiate conversations, invite feedback and give something back to those individuals who care enough to engage with you.  Build relationships.
• Over time, build this process into your standards and culture.

It’s your community, and it’s already there. It’s up to you to join in.

UPDATE:  Here’s a nice summary from the LA Times, incorporating some other incidents (Amazon, CNN, Dominos) and describing the need for rapid response.

Hard to miss all the chatter about the pending demise of newspapers and the first to fall — Rocky Mountain News, then Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Next …?

It’s true that we are in the midst of a social transformation, driven by: the availability of information on the Internet at all times; the declining relevance of newsprint; Web 2.0 technology and new social media;  an embrace of open-source culture and mass collaboration, democracy in action, citizen journalism, the rise of blogging — add your drivers here.

These changes touch newspapers, but also are transforming public relations, marketing, branding, broadcast media (television, radio, cable), books and all publishing … maybe all relationships?

Yet most visibly, it’s the newspaper industry that’s struggling to maintain relevance.  It is time for reinvention — a news organization rather than a newsPAPER. I’m not the first with this, although I started thinking about and working on online, interactive, two-way, participatory journalism in the early 1990s. See the brilliant commentary by Tom Foremski’s Silicon Valley Watch “25 ideas: creating an open-source business model for newspapers.”

I think he’s 100 percent on target, and he hit some of my favorite hot buttons, too. News organizations have got to understand their communities, and that means being part of the community — not above it.  News organizations should be the valued, trusted source of information in their communities — deep in the neighborhoods, visible, authentic and real people, not some institution with blurry or dueling motivations.

It won’t be easy to drive change; critics are quick to bemoan the rise of “amateurs” and the lowering standards of reporting.  You won’t need proof beyond David Simon’s dead-on commentary — even news organizations and journalists aren’t as skilled / knowledgeable /aggressive as they should be.  But that doesn’t mean that a concerted transformational effort isn’t worth a shot. Let’s welcome disparate voices from all corners of the community and rather than bemoan the lower standards that “citizen journalism” implies, let’s teach the principles of the trade.

Maybe there are new ways to help “grow” the next generation of journalists … I’m thinking of organizations like the ACLU, grassroots activists, watchdogs, the schools. I love the example here from Jeff Jarvis — let the Journalism schools lead the change to drive collaboration as the valued skillset, instead of the institutional arrogance that I witnessed in J school.

Start with deep local news. Recruit the people who care about the topic, whatever it is.  Help train the next generation of newshounds — and recognize that they (we?) might well be pre-teens, retirees or the out-of-work population.

Count me in. Again.

Update:

Can’t help but add this insightful compilation on the topic, from PressThink by Jay Rosen at NYU. He’s helpfully pulled together a dozen of the best commentaries on the state of the newspaper industry: Rosen’s Flying Seminar In The Future of News