The ongoing challenge of striking balance
February 14 2010
This weekend has been the first truly quiet days on my calendar in over seven weeks. The new baby, run-up to Lotusphere, wonderful visiting relatives, and travel have all combined to keep things going non-stop for the last couple of months. It's no surprise that therefore, my main instinct this weekend was to do absolutely nothing as much as possible, which I've mostly succeeded at.
All of that intensity at once comes at the start of every year, but the contrast this year to the prior period was stark. Putting aside the seventeen weeks of bliss we've had with baby Chloe and her blossoming big sister, I had essentially stopped traveling after Australia last August, and only started back up four months later. We're all, obviously, still adjusting to our new roles and routines. My instincts when traveling have been off; I find myself so aware of having complete solitude in a hotel room that it feels necessary or even urgent that I do as much as possible in those solo hours. When I returned home from Saskatchewan a week ago, I was utterly exhausted -- having worked until midnight most nights, in a probably-unnecessary and certainly unhealthy fashion. Sure, I slept on airplanes and played Bejeweled Blitz to distract myself, but mostly, I was feeling the post-Lotusphere pressure to dig in and get busy on our 2010 objectives.
Everything around me has suffered a bit, and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. I haven't been blogging off-topic at all lately, and even my weekly column in the Chicago Tribune's Triblocal Highland Park edition was briefly stalled. Twitter -- sure, I can keep up with useful Twitter use most days, though even there, I was shaken a bit when someone I respect, radio tech show host Alex Goldfayn, asserted that nobody cared what airplane I was on in which day:
Other companies, and especially many executives, are using social media to give updates on what meeting they're in, where they are on vacation, or what plane they're getting on. This is more harmful than helpful: it's boring, nobody cares, and you're actually creating distance between yourself and your consumers. Most consumers in your target market don't live like you. Stop telling them how great and interesting you have it.While I seem to resemble Alex's remarks, I don't entirely agree with him. My travel movement-related microblogging has resulted in many a happy social media moment, from better connection to customers, discovery of new restaurants and establishments, and even the occasional in-person meetup. And for sure, I do not believe all that so-called glamorous business travel is really "great and interesting."
Instead, teach them about your products. Give tips, tricks, techniques, suggestions. Take questions. Give something away. Help people.
Whether on social media or in the real world, orient everything to your customers' self-interests, not your own.
But Alex is right, perhaps I can put a different angle on some of that. Of course, the hard part here is, at least for now, I have just one identity on Twitter, where all my worlds collide. I have toyed with a second Twitter personality, but it doesn't feel as genuine to try to segment by audience. It seems the exact opposite of what the whole concept of following someone really means, as opposed to being connected or linked or friended or buzzed.
The travel calendar is busy in the next few weeks, with Lotusphere Comes to You in Munich/Hamburg/Dusseldorf/Cologne/Madrid/Barcelona, and presumably more to be added. For sure, though, I'm going to approach this time period differently than I have so far this year. Of course, almost by default, these upcoming cities are a little more interesting than Saskatoon in February (no offense, Jason, it was just too cold to do anything!), so that will help. But I need a bit of a mental shift as well. Maybe that means lingering over one more beer in Munich, one more tapa in Barcelona, to hear one more story or create one more memory. The emails and conference calls will still be there; sleep can be managed. Life, however, keeps rolling, and as I am now reminded, I want to keep living these moments, with all of you as part of the storyline.
Post a Comment
- 2
Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 2/14/2010 11:23:50 PM
"I find myself so aware of having complete solitude in a hotel room that it feels necessary or even urgent that I do as much as possible in those solo hours"
Amen to that, brother. Although it's interesting that someone would interpret business travel as "how great you have it." Ummmm... you have a newborn, travelling to the Great White North in January isn't "great" by any measure. It's a hassle. Perhaps it's a necessary hassle to demonstrate customer commitment, but it still sucks.
My suggestion would be to phrase things differently:
"Leaving my beautiful wife and newborn daughter this week to cram myself on a plane to visit several important customers in person. It tears my heart out everytime to leave my family, but our customers keep us in business and it's a vital part of my job to understand from them first hand what we can do to make them successful. Alas, with all the technology at our fingertips, we have only begun to replace the face-to-face experience."
Or something similar to that effect.
The one thing I know is that anyone who describes travelling for work as "exotic" has only experienced business travel from a room equipped with a pole. :-/
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Harald Gaerttner http://twitter.com/ShadowBJ21 | 2/15/2010 2:23:28 AM
There's a lot of not very interesting stuff on twitter. So usually I would not care about what you had for breakfast or stuff like that ... but there's still a lot of things that are of course interesting because they are part of the "whole big picture". And travel information or places you visit on your travel etc. are definately part of it.
Nothing is more boring then a twitter account that just gives "business information". It's the mix that counts for a good twitterer.
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Mat Newman http://www.matnewman.com | 2/15/2010 8:08:52 AM
G'Day Ed,
This afternoon I was surprised that within 2 hours of reading a tweet containing a link that demonstrated how you use Social Networking to HELP people, I read your blog entry responding to another commentator who had suggested you should use SN tools to do just that.
It spurred me to write a detailed post on my blog, { Link }
As for anyone who thinks travelling for business is exotic - well - Nathan said it nicely. They obviously haven't spent enough time in hotels or planes being greeted by name by Hosties or Doormen to know any different.
In summary, keep doing what you're doing. I'm not an expert, but your mix of professional and personal information helps me keep up to date with what's happening in the Yellowverse, and an insight into the kind of person you are. I appreciate both.
Keep it up Mate
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Alex Kassabov http://kassabov.wordpress.com | 2/15/2010 10:16:40 AM
Interestingly enough, just on Friday I was having a similar discussion. And now your blog post and Alex Goldfayn's view. So people are noticing that a lot of social networking is useless noise. Even the self-proclaimed social media gurus seem to struggle with making things like Twitter useful. So much of it has become "having lunch with @SoAndSo. Great idea exchange", "off to the next conference". Great for them. Useless for me if they don't tell me what those great ideas where or what they're doing at that conference. I'm not following them to keep tabs on their appointment books or culinary delights.
I think the value would be increased exponentially, if you were to tweet about having one more tapa in Barcelona with a customer who is telling you how they are increasing their investment in Lotus and use Lotus products to build new mission critical applications. It would've been even better if you were to substitute that tapa in Barcelona with a pizza or a beer in Chicago -- we all can dream, right?
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Alex Goldfayn http://consumerevangelists.com | 2/15/2010 10:38:21 AM
Ed,
The respect is mutual. You've been a social media maven for years, and I admire what you've accomplished. And congratulations on your new baby!
Regarding your post, I just think there's a difference between being accessible to your audience and blasting hourly whereabouts and activities. On the side of this blog, for example, you have miles flown and cities visited. It's a neat counter, but who does that help? If you wrote one or two tweets per day that featured little-known Lotus tips and tricks, THAT would be help a lot of people and create interest.
It's your blog, it's not my really my business, and in my post I was speaking generally and not at all specifically about you.
Now then, have you been to Brooks Brothers lately? :)
Alex
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Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 2/15/2010 1:15:10 PM
I agree that the mix of business and personal is good. All work and no play, as they say.
If you're truly concerned about things not being useful, how about using social media to update your customers and potential customers on the work you're doing that impacts them? There is plenty to be done, and while there may be wheels turning to address the issues there is not a whole lot of transparency about it. I know IBM/Lotus is very close-lipped on future developments, but that's not always in your best interest.
- 8
EP | 2/15/2010 1:28:08 PM
I don't agree at all with this Alex guy..I find your tweets a nice mix of personal and business, if they were all business I would probably not be interested. And no you do not need to tweet Notes tips and tricks, give me a break.
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Bill McCuistion http://www.edna1550.com | 2/15/2010 6:55:39 PM
Hi Ed,
For some reason, I tend to follow your blog via a RSS newsfeed-reader. This topic stirs me to respond. In particular, I expect these types of Blogs to be a mix of personal and business. Not that I am particularly interested in your personal-life, but I do gleam some sense of how you use this technology to weave together your business and personal life.
<quote>Instead, teach them about your products.</quote>
I don't know if your blog is the right place to post this, but one thing I'd LOVE to have is a nice CONCISE catalog of LOTUS products, maybe with a FEW bullet-points about each one showing features, functions, application-domain, platform-support, and related products. Not more than one printed-page for each.
More to the point, perhaps you could keep this updated to show how YOU use these components in your day-to-day life, both professional and personal. This could take the form of a "static" page (or series of pages), sort of like, I don't know, a web-site, and not so much like a BLOG.
Maybe, something like HOW you go about authoring your community-newspaper column, or HOW you manage your BLOG, EMAIL, Mobil-toolkit, desktop-toolkit, your family's toolkits, your team's toolkits, etc.
Maybe, something like WHY, other than being IBM/Lotus-based products, you find these toolkits compelling, from your personal point of view.
Maybe, some observations about how you see others using (or misusing) these solutions.
I'm not suggesting that you turn this into a REDBOOK project, but it might not be far from that. You have chosen to put your life "on-stage", and a little "asset-inventory" might help from time to time keep this in perspective, and interesting.
BTW -- What is all this "Traveler" chatter about anyway?
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Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 2/16/2010 7:31:26 AM
@9 - I agree that you don't want to show all your cards, and some things are necessarily more private. There are still areas that directly affect customers that you can speak more openly about, though. There are many points of pain that need to be addressed that are not specifically related to Lotus Notes or Domino strategy.
To give a specific example, you committed to getting Passport Advantage filenames updated. That was nearly a year ago and they're still a mess. Many people expected all the filenames to be updated and you could update us on the status of that without tipping your hand.
While I cannot say i care one way or another about what flight you are on, as I live in a suburb of Chicago, I do read you Triblocal articles. While I read some of your post twice to make sure I get all of it, I gloss over others. Some in each category are technical and non-technical.
My guess is that few who are not married to you area about everything you write, but I have to wonder what Alex Goldfayn was after, or he has not quite gotten the gist of what social networking is. I am pretty sure its not making everything important to everybody. I am pretty sure that most of it is putting something out there which is of interest to anybody, and the rest with more finite audiences.
I am sure your customers are, if nothing else, reassured to know you are on the way to an appointment with them. I doubt every customer cares about every posting, but who could expect them to be. That is, to me, one of the strengths of social networks. It serves the niche markets and the mass markets at the same time.
I just see no harm in having something take up half an inch of my screen now and then.
I just don't get the objection. Keep on rolling.