Never Mind the Box; Can You Think Outside of the Spectrum?

Yesterday I was doing a little SMSing with an old friend, one who has a better pulse on me than most. At one point in the conversation I get back "You're an enigma" and aside from being intrigued I'm taken aback that a close friend would think that, but when asked why she thought that her response was "I never know what your brain is going to cook up". She's right.

Personally I feel like I'm an easy read. I'm a husband and father that recently moved to the suburbs, drives an SUV and has a dog. Envious aren't you? Even I'm the first to admit that it's a fairly predictable life.

However, I've always taken a road less traveled approach to everything I do. Let me sum that cliche up for you into something tangible. In a public restroom I'll look for the urinal with the least condensation underneath to assure it's the most infrequently used one. This choice is certainly not pain free and without effort, but it's where I'm most comfortable. Need more? I promised myself when I bought my daughter her first bike I'd get a new one too. This one.

I see dead people.

Lately I've been experiencing so much narrowly focused thinking that I'm curious how people survive or even evaluate success. I've seen some folks not aggressively plotting a new course over plateauing revenue. I've seen entrepreneurs stubbornly content with mimicking 125 other start-ups and thinking their product will be better. I've seen job postings written in a way that eliminates any truly smart person from pursuing the opportunity.

In the past week, I've had a lot of social media stuff thrown at me, primarily seeking feedback or input, and it's solidifying my previous opinion that "social media experts are full of shit" and frighteningly migrating like a communicable disease.

While we're on the subject can I ask all companies to ditch the Social Media Manager/Director title in favor of Engagement Manager/Director? Isn't that more in line with the role? Doesn't it ooze "Hire really intelligent and experienced people" who understand the customer lifecycle?

It's this theme of compartmentalizing a strategy within the confines of the tools that were created to support the compartmentalized term, social media. Being good within the confines of this means that you're good at tying your shoes, but you're not considering what to do with the shoes once tied; walk, run, dance, kickbox, etc.

I see the light.

That's the standard with shoes. You leave the (shoe)box and enter the spectrum when you decide that those shoes can help you walk to help raise money for your neighbor's kid who has leukemia, run to save a person from a burning building (try doing it barefoot tough guy), dance with your future wife or do your best Lloyd Dobbler impression. That's a person who took a shoe and integrated it across the spectrum of their life. Take that social media shoe and apply it across all facets of your organization and make it work.

Look in another direction.

I'm not a fan of industry specific content, because most of it is regurgitated over and over again. I also don't read "business" books in general, but two books that I've read over the past few years have really jumped out, because they teach you to look at your mission/goal/product/business in an entirely different way.

"Our Band Could Be Your Life" by Michael Azerrad. An entire book about DIY. It's fascinating. Pay particular attention to how the Butthole Surfers secured the content for their initial stage shows. (If punk/hard rock isn't your thing try "Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead" by my old boss David Meerman Scott.)

"What the Dog Saw" by Malcolm Gladwell. This is my first Gladwell book. I've read plenty of New Yorker essays. The opening essay on Ron Popeil is truly enlightening. It completely changed the way I want to approach my next interactive creation.

Find, or better yet create, best practices and apply them to your world opposed to finding the best practices within your world and following along. To me it's natural. To you, the risk aversion gene may be powerful. That's OK, but if you chip away at it little by little then you're on the road to success.