Author Archives: Steve Mays

Scott Adams: Advice for new graduates

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  • Teamwork is what you call it when you trick other people into ignoring their priorities in favor of yours.
  • Leadership is a form of evil. No one needs to lead you to do something that is obviously good for you.
  • Business success is mostly about waiting for something lucky to happen and then taking credit.
  • Preparing a Powerpoint presentation will give you the sweet, sweet illusion of productivity.

I also kind of liked one of the commnets: “Unprofessional” and “passionate” is the same thing.

Naked Conversations

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Robert Scoble and Shel Israel co-authored this excellent book on “how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers.” Just a couple of chapters in but finding a nugget on almost every page:

  • Tool Lust –People develop emotional attachments to things that empower new, faster, easier or cheaper activity (blogging)
  • Interruption Marketing — Unanticipated, impersonal and irrelevant ads, repeatedly hurled at involuntary audiences. (Seth Godin)
  • “First there were phone books, then web sites and [businesses] know that if they don’t have [one], it works to their disadvanatage. Blogs are just the next logical step.” — Betsy Aoki, Microsoft blogger
  • Corpspeak — An oxymoronic hybrid of cautious legalese seasoned with marketing hyperbole. Corpspeakers talk to people when they want to speak, not when people want to listen.
  • If you’re afraid to share ideas, you shouldn’t blog. One time someone asked Walt Disney if he wasn’t worried about telling so many people about his ideas. And Disney said, ‘Those were last year’s ideas.’ (pg 94) If you’re paranoid about your ideas being ripped off, don’t blog.
  • If the company culture is manipulative, employees are not treated with respect, and customers are thought of as commodity items, then that company should not blog. That company should close its doors. (pg 95)

If you’re not sure if your sales proposal or corporate brochure or news release is corpseak, stand in the middle of a room with some of your co-workers and read the copy aloud. If they laugh, it’s corpspeak.

I’ll update this post as I move through the book.

You = Your iTunes

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Tom Peters says his #1 belief about management is: You = Your Calendar.

“All we have is our time. The way we distribute it is our ‘strategic plan,’ our ‘vision,’ our ‘values.’ Period. So how’d you spend your precious time today? Tell me, and I’ll tell you what you actually care about — it’s simple and unerring.”

Maybe. But I don’t want to be my calendar. Nobody has to guess what bloggers care about. It’s all right here. But if I weren’t a blogger, you could look at my iPod and get a sense of who I am. In fact, here’s what you can do in lieu of a memorial service for smays: Plug my nano into a good sound system…put it on shuffle… and let it play until the battery runs down. Friends can stop by for a few minutes and listen.