I recently discovered a book titled “How to Deliver a TED Talk” by Jeremey Donovan. Now for anyone unfamiliar with TED.com, I warn you…once you go, there’s no turning back. To quote Jeremey, “TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to amplifying electrifying ideas from the domains of technology, entertainment and design.” And in the process, TED has developed a reputation as a hub and home to some of the best speakers and presenters on the planet. TED talks are a maximum 20 minutes long. And some of the best are under 10 minutes. But the content and delivery is often so engaging that you literally lose track of time. That’s why I offered the warning in the first place. But I’ve never regretted a minute that I spent listening to new ideas or experiencing new stories on TED.com. Anyone familiar with TED and my material will attest that some of my best stuff is based on content originally discovered on TED. But this isn’t meant to be a TED commercial. Like Jeremey, I believe we can all learn not only from the stories, but from the storytellers.

TED has garnered its exceptional reputation by carefully selecting and vetting the talent they put on stage. And part of that defining process is what is known as the TED Ten Commandments. I had never seen them before and I recognize that a few of them may not easily translate to our own presentations and sales methods. For that reason, I’ve arranged the list in an order that I believe to be from the most relevant to our situation, down to those very specific to TED’s purpose.

1. Thou Shalt Reveal Thy Curiosity and Thy Passion.
   If you’ve ever pitched to someone and their response was “I’m not interested”, it was because you weren’t interesting. If you’re not exciting, they can’t be. BTW…everyone in the room wants you to be interesting. So it’s up to you to deliver. Record yourself and then listen. Would you find yourself interesting? If not, rework and repeat.
2. Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wonderous New Thing, or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before.
   No one really wants to hear “if Facebook were a country, it would be the 3^rd largest”…unless they work for Facebook. Most everyone knows that. What your audience wants to hear is something unique…something fresh…something that makes them think.

Often people think that when you move to using social business practices, you’re just going to divert the mass of your inbox into some social stream. I was recently asked by a client for some tips (best practices) around social business…specifically around the concern for “a lot of junk showing up in the newsfeed”. Here is what I sent her.

NOTE: My response reflect how I use my enterprise social solution (IBM Connections)

Network with the people who have knowledge you can use (who you invite) or who work with you and can leverage your knowledge (who invites you).
If you go after numbers in your network, the noise level can cause issues.

Follow the people with whom you have specific relevant interest or current business need.
In IBM Connections you can network with someone and/or you can follow them. Our CEO, Ginni Rometty, doesn’t accept network invitations, so she’s not in my network. Yet I can “follow” her which notifies me of her social actions. I follow pertinent executives and I also use the “follow” feature for people on current projects that I want to keep focus on. When the project is over, I just “unfollow” them.

Tune your listening to what you’re trying to accomplish
In the “river of news” (our status updates), we can select to see the items from:

• “I’m Following” (Updates for people and things I’m specifically following and responses to my own content),
• “Status Updates” (From my network, people and communities) and
• “Discover” (Updates outside my network, but suggested based on analytics, popularity, etc.)

This allows me to dial up the “signal to noise” ratio to meet my immediate interests.

If you find people or subjects too “noisy” and of little use, un-follow or un-network them.
Don’t think it’s a personal thing. It’s business. It’s your time. So use it wisely and don’t let the noise makers clutter your listening.

Use @ mentions only when necessary.
In IBM Connections, we can include an @ mention (ie. @Louis Richardson) in posts. These generate a notification to the person mentioned. This can be in the river of news or if preferred by the individual, it can generate an email notification of mention. In either case, it triggers a “look here” type action. Historic email is cursed because of these and social can likewise be abused. So change the way you communicate and only call specific attention to someone when you must….not when you can.

Change your thinking (and culture) from “Why should I share this” to “Why shouldn’t I share this”
Open conversations and sharing should be the default. Our current transaction based systems, like email, IM, etc. have taught us to limit the people to whom we send the message/answer/idea. That’s because from the receiving end, our inbox is a “to do list” that we don’t own. Social sharing is more about making information and ideas available…when needed. So sharing socially is not an imposition, it’s an open invitation.

As for what you post, if you find it interesting, it’s likely others will as well.
Again, you’re not imposing, you’re making it available. So post freely. I often post material that I think I’m probably the only one that might be interested. I do it so I can find it again when I need it. On many such occasions I’ve been surprised how many people have used and appreciated that material. Don’t try to figure out why it’s important or to whom it would be important…just put it out there to be discovered.

If you have other recommendations, please post them in the comments below. Also if you have any questions, let me know and I’ll do my best to assist you in finding the answers you need.

I have a daughter, Brittany, who is currently loving life as a professional illustrator. But when she was 5 years old, we took her to Chattanooga, Tennessee and visited a popular attraction, Ruby Falls. The 145-ft. falls are in a cave, so the trip down builds anticipation. Upon arrival to the viewing area, the lights are turned out (which in a cave means pitch black) and music begins playing. Then the lights are turned back on and the falls are bathed in rich colors.

Amidst all the music and hoopla, I overheard my daughter simply say, “I wish I had a pencil and a piece of paper.”

She’s an artist and the majesty of what she was seeing, in her mind, could only be captured if she could but put it down on paper.

A similar event happened to me this past week at IBM Connect 2013.

I have always had a passion for the promotion of creativity in people and in our businesses. I have long believed that people are the center of our business and to connect with people we must reach them on their emotional level. I believe pictures are more powerful than words. I believe stories are more impactful than statements of fact. I believe in focusing on the “why” more than the “how” and “what”.

As I sat through the Connect Opening General Session, I was well impressed with the thought and product leadership being expressed on stage. Our product teams have done an awesome job in putting us in the market lead and our management team is working hard to make sure we leverage that leadership to help our customers succeed. And it is that leadership that has secured Kenexa as part of the IBM family.

When Rudy Karsan, Founder of Kenexa, took the stage…that was when I had my “I wish I had a pencil and a piece of paper” moment. As it turns out, I did. I had my iPad and Twitter, so I immediately reported on what I was hearing.

Here is what he had to say:

Welcome to the first meeting of CAA. Although this is a virtual meeting, I know there are a lot of addicts like me who need to come forward. It’s said that the first step on the road to recovery is to admit you have a problem. So I’ll start our meeting:

(ME) “Hi, I’m Louis and I’m a Connections-aholic”

(YOU) “Hi, Louis”

(ME) “For most of my professional career I’ve experienced this insatiable desire to ask questions like ‘why’ and ‘what if’ and do things a bit differently. For years I sought out the side hallways of companies and obscure water coolers where I would find other ‘why junkies’ and we would share our ideas and ponder what it would be like if we could redefine processes or remove the rules.”

“Early on, like others, I tried to find a fix in ‘document repositories’. For years I was a dealer of ECM. I started out pushing lightweight doc management, like Dom.Doc, but I soon progressed to the hard stuff…FileNet. But my overindulgence of content creation didn’t offer any relief. In fact, it just made matters worse. I found myself creating content dozens of times a day and yet it wasn’t having the effect I expected. I recreated stuff I already had, I lost track of ideas, I forgot where I put stuff, my desktop became a mess…in short, I was literally losing my mind.”

“So I turned to what I thought was more of a ‘recreational fix’…email. After all, how much time and effort could I possibly waste in a conversational tool? Again, like a lot of you who know the depths of nested in-box folders and the ever pressing ‘mail quota’ monkey on your back. It soon became clear that this wasn’t meeting my cravings for creative and innovative interaction.”

“Then I was exposed to this new thing on the market…a ‘social’ substance that some guys and gals in a research lab cooked up. In the early days I started getting hits on ‘blue pages’ and ‘cattail’ (internal project names). But it wasn’t long before these lab rats added other powerful ingredients and I became full scale addicted. Its street name was ‘Connections’. For me the name made sense. It was like having all my brain synapses connected and firing in tandem.”

“I began seeing content I had never seen before. And it wasn’t the stale black and white single version stuff I had experience in doc mgmt and email. It was living, breathing, interactive stuff in full fidelity. It had the flat content I was familiar with, but it added a depth of credibility. I could see where this stuff had come from and where it had been…who cooked it up, who tasted it and what they thought about the rush. Content dealers I knew began pushing their ideas and sharing from the stashes of others.”

“And it was interactive. I was experiencing content that got better almost as rapidly as I could ingest it. And it was mobile…so I could address my insatiable questioning and drive for answers from anywhere and at any time. The previous side hallways and obscure water coolers were now at my fingertips. I could get an innovation fix anytime I wanted one.”

“And it was easier to find. ‘Communities’ began popping up where knowledge junkies would hang out and trade expertise and opinions. If you wanted to experience a ‘blog’ or ‘wiki’, it was always right there in easy reach. And it went mainstream when they combined it with my other addictions. I could get this social in ‘portal’ and ‘mail’. They even combined it with ‘FileNet’ which increased the potency of both components. I soon realized that there wasn’t a place or a time when I wasn’t a few clicks from another taste of Connections.”

“I’m Louis and I’m a Connections-aholic. It’s been mere minutes since my last social posting. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to excuse me while I hit the ‘post’ button and feel the rush one more time.”

EDITORS NOTE: I do not (and never have) condoned the use of illegal mind altering or performance enhancing substances. But the legal mind altering and performance enhancing substances, like Connections, are awesome!

For anyone interested in IBM Connections and our social business solutions, please visit www.ibm.com/social

And on a more serious note, I hope no one has been offended by this posting. But it’s commonly known that the only two industries that have “users” are technology and the drug trade.

Looking at me today, you might not believe it, but I played soccer (or football) in college and during my Air Force years. I’ve also coached and officiated. One reason I fell in love with the game was that the rules just made sense.

The other reason was the way players participated. You had a “position” which was based primarily on your specific skills and talents. And you were responsible for that “position”. However, when the opportunity arose, you could “switch” with adjacent players to take their role and they would assume yours. For instance, a defender with a clear open field in front, could progress the ball down the pitch and the midfielder would take care of the vacated defender’s space. The only player relegated to a well defined space was the keeper who was the last defense of the goal. And any fan will recall games where the keeper left the goal area near the end of the game to add offensive pressure. I once played on a team that had an agile 6’9” keeper who would be called forward on our corner kicks because of his height.

Because there was one ball and 11 players (per side), I learned that much of the time I spent on the pitch was going to be “without the ball”. But that didn’t mean standing around waiting my turn. It meant running into open space to create opportunity. It meant talking to the other players, keeping them informed of what was happening around them. It meant thinking of the team’s objective ahead of my own desire to control the ball.

Knowing I’m not a sports blogger, you’ve probably already discerned the parallels of soccer and business.

In a Smarter Workforce, the company (team) and its coaches (executives and managers) will strive to put the best players (employees) possible on the pitch (company). The employees should be aligned to their specific strengths and talents. Within the course of the game (doing business), employees may be given the liberty to extend beyond their current role into other spaces, knowing their adjacent player (peers) will cover and protect them. And they should always be talking (sharing) with others to keep the entire team informed and alert.

Be a Smarter Worker. When you don’t have the ball, look for the open space to create new opportunities. Don’t crowd other players; give them the space they deserve to perform to their best. Encourage others and share openly for the benefit of the entire team. And when you have the ball, keep your head up. Look for open teammates. Listen to those around you. And when you score, celebrate with everyone else on the pitch, because they made it possible.

Now go out there and play the best game that’s in you.

Let me know if I can assist you. And for more information on how you and your company can field a Smarter Workforce, check us out at Kexena – an IBM Company.

When considering social business, most companies will at some time try to address the issue of “Return on Investment”. I’ve worked with many companies who have achieved “hard dollar” results. Some have realized great results in cutting costs and others by bringing in new revenue or opening new markets. While these are awesome reasons for a company to adopt social, we have to remember that the core of adoption is the individual. So ROI often starts with the answer to the personal question of, “Why is social good for me?”

One of the least considered but often most personally appreciated is what I call “the ROI of +1″.

Many of us are involved in decision making and reviews that involve a team of people. Years ago when I was selling document management solutions, we used workflow solutions to achieve this type of collaboration. Interesting enough we started with sequential routes (one approver after another), but that only mimicked the paper based “interoffice email” we were trying to address. Being digital, it cut down on the time spent in route, but it didn’t really change anything significant. So we went to parallel routes, where you could send the information to the entire team at one time and they would individually do their review or make comments. That solution reduced the time to decision which resulted in more efficient processes. Oddly enough, this is the exact method many of us use today when we send information or a document to an email list for review or comment.

But let’s think about that for a moment. If you’re like most, you’ve been on a review distribution list and received a document or some information for your review and comments. You take the time to read the information and invest your time and efforts in crafting a response. For this example, let’s say you spend 20 minutes in reply. Then you send or submit your thoughts. In the next check of your email in-box you find the results of other’s comments and views. Interestingly, one of the other team members have mentioned the very items you flagged and their ideas are right in line with what you have suggested.

What if you had seen their comments first? You’re reply could have been a simple, “I agree with what Mary said.”, thereby saving yourself 20 minutes. Additionally, Mary’s comments might have offered you a new perspective on your original thought. Using an email method, that would call for a reply all. Multiply that by the number of people on the team equals a lot of individual emails bouncing around. Not to mention the time it takes for you to go “on and off” task to consider the subject each time a new email is received.

One approach to this would be the “wait and see” method. This is where you hope others comment first and you just wait until you receive their emails at which time you add your perspective…possibly saving yourself the effort. The problem with this approach is if everyone took this approach, nothing would get done.

Social business solves this by allowing you to participate in “open conversations”. The same process could have been done with a single blog/wiki post or maybe an activity event. The reviewers could be notified from the post itself and their comments or suggestions would be instantly displayed with the post. So if you see someone else’s comments that reflect your opinion, your response is a simple “+1″. You’ve saved your time and also acknowledged your support for your like-minded team member’s idea…win/win.

This social approach to team collaboration allows individuals to “follow” specific topics, documents or discussions. So you don’t have to keep returning to the source to see if anything has changed. The social system will automatically alert you to changes or new postings. That way, you can stay on whatever task is at hand knowing that you’re not missing any happenings related to your team review efforts.

I know a company can take a guess at how much time this might save the organization (number of reviews X number of participants X repetitive work X avg. hourly cost of resource X etc.). It’s been my experience that social business usually far exceeds numerically derived expectations. Something as little as “+1″ can revolutionize the culture of your team’s collaboration. It saves your time. It affirms other’s ideas and efforts. It’s just one of social’s “low effort/high impact” benefits.

IBM Connections is the market leader in revolutionizing the collaboration culture of organizations, but more importantly, it can provide YOU with the tools you need to be creative, stay connected and exercise your choice in your daily work life. Check it out…and if you like what you see, +1.

We know we are in a time of consumption and excess when in the US we have a TV series dedicated to people who hoard material things to the point they are facing eviction or loss of parental rights based on health issues. And recently I saw a commercial for an air freshener that shows the blindfolded test subject sitting in a room of foul and disgusting objects…but because the air has been sprayed, they only smell “meadows” and “flowers”. Yet when the blindfold is removed, they are repulsed to find the squalor around them.

Our corporations have been blessed with technologies to create and spread information. Years ago desktop publishing gave everyone the privilege of the press. And now with broadband and mobile apps, we can broadcast our every move and thought.

Yet as I travel around the world and speak to business audiences, there is a constant theme. We have too much stuff…too much noise…too many demands on our attention. We’ve become hoarders of information…to the point we can’t function.

Many companies are looking to “social” solutions to assist them in addressing these overwhelming concerns. And I should begin by telling you that “social” is a great way to do just that.

But I am greatly concerned that for many organizations, they are attempting to spray some “social” and aren’t addressing the hoarding and waste. They add social as a technology mask and don’t really fix anything. So it’s no wonder they never realize any substantial business benefits and their employees are quickly disillusioned of social when it doesn’t make their individuals lives easier or more productive.

I speak often to employees who know and appreciate the benefit of social business. They have learned to live outside their inbox and use blogs, wikis, etc. to have open conversations that not only alleviate email hoarding, but offer a broader reach to the knowledge shared. They know how to alleviate time consuming meetings by leveraging social communities where goals, status, questions and advice can be shared openly and at times convenient to the participant’s other activities and demands.

But these same employees tell me that in some organizations, it’s not working. Their managers, while “open” to the concept of social, have not abandoned their culture and practice of hoarding. They still require these socially empowered employees to email reports, attend status calls, and duplicate much of their work. Some of the more passionate social evangelists stay true to their calling while others are worn down.

On one episode of TV’s “Hoarders”, there was a home that consisted of a hoarding mom who amassed so much stuff and garbage that it filled every space in their home. So much so, the local authorities were going to condemn the structure. The father, wasn’t a hoarder, but had long ago resigned himself that there was nothing he could do. What was interesting was their teenage son. He saw the hoard and what it was doing to his family and their health. His room was immaculate. He did not allow the hoard to impact his immediate space. Yet his home was a health hazard. Even as much as he kept his room in order, the air circulating through the home carried dangerous spores that aggravated his asthma

I’ve seen companies like this. Individuals leveraging social in hoarding organizations will have some impact. But unless the leaders and those responsible for the hoarding recognize the damage and change the behavior, any social they may talk about is just air freshener to mask the symptoms

So when you see someone who talks about the value of social business, ask them to tell you how they have changed their hoarding behaviors. Ask them to give daily examples of how their personal business lives have been dramatically impacted by leveraging social tools. If they can’t, look for the can of air freshener…it’s not far away.

And one last note…don’t give them credit for telling you how others are doing it. It’s like a hoarder standing in their filth pointing to the neighbor’s immaculate home and praising the value of cleanliness and order.

In his book “Telecosm”, George Gilder proposes that we are limited by 2 factors — The Speed of Light and the Span of Life. In his book he states:

The speed of light is the most basic constraint in information technology. As a key limit, the speed of light shapes the future architectures and topologies of computers and communications. For example, the light-speed limit dictates that the fastest computers will tend to be the smallest computers. Electrons move nine inches a nanosecond (a billionth of a second). As computers move toward gigahertz clock rates–a billion cycles a second–the longest data path must be decisively smaller than nine inches. Pulses of electromagnetic energy–photons–take some 20 milliseconds to cross the country and one- quarter second to reach a satellite in geostationary orbit (as you notice in a satellite phone call). At a gigabit per second, this means that as many as 250 megabits of data–many thousands of IP packets, for example–can be latent (or lost) in transit at any time, thus playing havoc with most prevalent network protocols, such as TCP.

Thus light speed is a centrifuge. It abhors concentration in one place, ordains that these small supercomputers will be distributed across the globe and will always be near to a network node. Although the networks will be global in reach, they will depend on the principle of locality: the tendency of memory or network accesses to focus on clusters of contiguous addresses at any one time. Light speed imposes limits on the pace of any one processor or conduit, and pushes both computer and communications technologies into increasingly parallel and redundant architectures.

What I think is relevant today is his second constraint

As a governing scarcity in the new economy, no less important than the speed of light is the span of life. Just as light speed represents the essential limits of information technology, lifespan defines the essential shortage of human time. Although medical and other health- related advances have increased the span of life in the United States some 5 years in the last 25–while the media focused on aids and cancer, and zero-sum pundits declared that our descendants, the scions of our science, will live less well than we do–the ultimate lifespan remains limited. Indeed, the modal economic activity of the information economy is exploitation of the technologies of the speed of light to increase the effective span of life by increasing efficiency in the use of time.

Gilder’s point is that we know all we know based on our life expectancy. There is no way to magically transfer all of our knowledge into the heads of our successors. We can leave behind our knowledge and records of experience, but each generation must learn for itself.

Enter Watson….

I’m at an age now where I recognize the wisdom of elders…I’m rapidly becoming an elder. My life experience has provided for me a great deal of time and exposure to new ideas…time that has enhanced my ability to evaluate options and see possible solutions.

Imagine a grandfather adviser who doesn’t age. Imagine a senior physician who knows and can apply the medical marvels of generations. Imagine an engineer who has been solving problems for hundreds of years. This can be Watson.

Through the work accomplished by IBM and the Watson project, mankind now has the ability to contain knowledge and continue the applied learning process without the fear of death overtaking us and causing us to start over from birth.

I believe with such creative spirit, we’ve made significant progress in breaking through Gilder’s second limitation “the span of life”.  Now….let’s see if we can do something about that “speed of light” issue!

For more information on Watson

On a recent flight, I was revisting a TED talk from Jason Fried titled “Why work doesn’t happen at work”. In it he suggests that the audience consider cancelling their next meeting.

I might suggest that instead of cancelling it in advance, you let them show up (especially if it’s a conference call) or if it’s an in-person meeting, contact them just prior to the start time. If not, they will just fill the time with another meeting.

Instead tell them this:

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me for this hour. It’s an hour of your time you are willing to invest…60 minutes you won’t get back. Except I want to give it back to you. You came prepared to devote 60 minutes to a topic. I want you to instead use this time to do something unique. Take a fresh look at a presentation you’ve been giving and think about how to make it crisper or simpler. Read an article or a portion of a book (like “Enchantment” by Guy Kawasaki) with the goal of finding one way to do something fresh or differently. Search for and listen to 2 different TED talks on a topic that interests you with the goal of taking away some new inspiration or approach to selling or presenting or building relationships…just spend the time on you and your mind…getting better.”

“Don’t use this gift of time to answer emails or instant messages. Close your email client, put your instant message on “Do not disturb”, turn off your cell, unplug your phone, close your door, don’t talk. Sounds outrageous? It shouldn’t be. You’ve already committed to be in this meeting. So the time is already blocked.”

“Now go do it.”

Then close the call. Don’t get caught using the remaining part of the hour explaining to people what this is about. Don’t try to manage their time. Turn them loose.

I’ve been to a number of internal company meetings where we waited for some key person to join. When it was discovered they weren’t going to make it, the host would say, “Well, I’m going to give you back this time and we’ll look to reschedule.” Not surprising, the world didn’t stop turning. The company didn’t grind to a halt. While relieved to get back some time, most of us just divert it to some other “catching up” effort.

If you are in a position to call a meeting, please remember that you are responsible for all of the time that people are investing for your meeting. Is it worth it? Could you use a social business approach, like a community or discussion forum to get the same results…just on their time?

So cancel your next internal company meeting and maybe check back with your audience and ask them to share what they did with the time.

People are amazing and creative. Give them time to be themselves.

I’d like to encourage you to take a minute to consider how you deal with “light”.

In our business world, life giving light can come from a variety of sources. Fellow employees may voice their thanks or approval. Customers we serve might acknowledge the benefit they’ve received. Partners we work alongside might show their appreciation for assistance. And with the advent of social networks, these light giving moments can arrive as “likes”, “downloads” and reuse of thoughts or ideas.

How do you deal with this light? And how do you impact the light others receive?

When you see someone’s work is being acknowledged, do you amplify it by adding your own approval and making sure your network is aware? When someone’s efforts have assisted you, do you make sure they know that you are aware of their efforts and thank them publicly? If so, you are casting light.

People who cast light are those that make sure their own accomplishments and recognition doesn’t get in the way of those around them. It’s not wrong for you to strive to work in such a way as to attract light. That is what is expected of you as a valued contributor and leader. So when you are put in the light…great! You deserve to be there. But just as hard as you work to be in the light, you should strive to make sure others are getting the light they deserve.

I’ve been and continue to be blessed by being around very smart and creative people. A day doesn’t go by that I’m not reminded that there are plenty of people around me that have knowledge I can benefit from learning or skills that can enhance our combined efforts. They comprehend numbers better. They have better contacts. They are more organized than me (not hard). They are better communicators. These people have gifts and aptitudes that surpass what I can do alone.

Recent studies have shown how much individuals value “being appreciated”. At IBM we have an annual award that is given to those who make significant contributions. In the past, I suppose the recipients were notified via email and maybe their manager would let their peers know about the recognition. Our new CEO, Ginni Rometty practiced a light casting approach. Using our internal social network, she posted a personal message on each recipient’s profile board…where everyone could see. I’m sure if you asked the individuals involved, they would tell you how much that meant. Light has a warming effect.

IBM also practices casting light through a program called “Blue Thanks”. With a single click, we can call out someone for their contribution. The “thanks” is automatically sent to the recipient and their manager. More importantly, programs like this help remind us to cast light. Light can spread.

I’m not a fan of undeserved praise, so I’m not suggesting that you just go around “spreading sunshine”. But I’ll wager that if you took a minute, you could think of a handful of people who probably could use a little light shed on their work and contributions. Find a way to do that. Be creative. Surprise someone.

And if you are someone who is always in the light…check out your shadow. There are no doubt a number of people who have helped you get into the light you are enjoying. Share the light with them. Show sincere appreciation for their work. Put them in front of you when you can. And you’ll both benefit from the experience.

And if you’re someone who doesn’t care about those in your shadow, you probably aren’t reading this anyway.