horsepigcow

Most all of us, whether we notice it or not, spend a good part of our lives in some form of consumer-company interaction. Whether we are shopping for groceries, banking, paying rent, shopping for clothes, picking a movie, buying a book, selling our services, working for a company whose services we are performing for customers or eating at a restaurant. I’m not sure what percentage of our lives are spent on one side of the equation or the other, but I’d guess that a good majority of our time is spent consuming or selling.

And though I dislike the term ‘consumer’, the truth is that in today’s world, that’s what it resembles. It’s transactional, impersonal and more often than not marginalizing. It’s as if it is in the DNA of business to push the limits on how badly it can treat the customer to maximize revenue. And over the years, it seems, that limit has been creeping further down the rabbit hole of customer hell. Pain limits are pushed to a level where the customer *almost* decides the transaction isn’t worth making with the business, but when the customer gets used to that pain level, the business pushes the pain further. And so on until we are so used to poor treatment, the simplest gesture that makes us feel empowered again feels like a win.

With online soapboxes like Twitter, blogs and Facebook, though, the individual has the ability to connect with other individuals to get a better deal, and the bigger the soapbox, the more we are empowered. The only problem is that business has got wind of this soapbox and works strategically on shutting it down.

I was working away at my computer today when my phone rang. I picked it up to hear the friendly voice of a representative from CIBC, the bank I deal with in Canada. “How are you today, Miss Hunt? I’m calling to see if I can help you with the issue you were having with CIBC the other day.” I paused to wait for it, “You know, the one you posted about online?”

Bingo. CIBC is using some tracking software to pick up mentions on Twitter and the blogs (most likely will reply to this post, too) and then saw that I have over 30k followers and that particular rant started a rather large conversation. Because of this, my ‘issue’ was escalated to a personal service department where I now have a personal service agent who I may call at any point with issues. Awwww. Isn’t that nice?

No. It’s strategic. And it’s a lovely and nice way to try to silence me. Like attracting more bees with honey. Or being the sun in the parable about the wind and sun in competition to remove the coat from the man. And the gentleman I chatted with at CIBC was awesome and said he’d relay all of my suggestions to the proper decision makers and gave me his personal number and released some money from the hold, but I’m still not satisfied.

Because, well, I don’t take bribes (#12) even when they don’t look like one. I want change. I don’t want to see change for me, I want to see change for everyone. I want banks to stop experimenting with how far they can push us before we cry ‘uncle’ on their policies and start thinking about how they can help us achieve our dreams with customer-empowering policies. I want business to invest in technology that streamlines and helps the customer experience, not technology that spies on us. I would even go as far as sitting down with executives at CIBC for FREE to understand what the hold up is and to consult with them on improving their system for customers. I’d even connect them to the right talent to implement the system. Hell, I want this so badly I’d even pay for this to happen.

Every business starts facing a decision to make: are we here to serve customers or are we here to get rich? Conventional wisdom, set by standards that are unproven and short-sighted, leads most businesses to pick the latter. But picking customer happiness as the core driver to your business is actually the better way. It leads to satisfaction, loyalty, positive word-of-mouth, efficiency and, ultimately, riches for the business. Happy customers means you spend less on customer acquisition and retention, employee retention and recruitment, innovation (you are more innovative, but use less resources), and operations (happy customers lead to more efficient operations as you, by definition, become more efficient). You’ll beat the competition every time because they can’t figure out why customers flock to you while they have rock bottom prices.

As I‘ve been quoted saying, ‘Designing your product for monetization first, and people second will probably leave you with neither.’ As the market tips more and more towards the whims of the customer, this will ring more and more true. Now is the time for us to use all of the power we have to move business in the direction of customer-centric thinking. It’s good for everyone.

Written by: Richard Herman

The White House has once again announced its commitment to immigration law reform in early 2010. So far, however, there is no sign that the administration, the Congress, or any other national leaders have learned the lessons from past attempts on this issue, most notably the ugly debate and legislative failure in 2007.

Ask people on the street what they think of when they hear the word “immigrant” — particularly with 10% unemployment in the country —- and you will hear statements like: “They take our jobs,” “They bring crime,” “They steal our health care,” “They don’t learn English.”

Americans hear the word “immigrant” and imagine the worst. They think of illegal immigrants, competition for jobs and the stamping out of American culture.

They don’t think of the tendency of immigrants–especially today’s immigrants– to create jobs, to revitalize communities, and to adopt and strengthen American culture, because no one is reminding them of this.

Humanitarian arguments to legalize 12 million undocumented immigrants dominate the public discourse on immigration law reform. This is a mistake.

Instead of focusing on illegal immigrants, policy-makers should focus on legal immigrants–the vast majority of all immigrants–and their power as an economic engine. Economic policy has never driven immigration debates —- that must change.

In the new book, Immigrant, Inc. —- Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Driving the New Economy (and how they will save the American worker) (John Wiley, November, 2009), which I co-wrote with Robert L. Smith, we document how immigrants have created millions of jobs for Americans and now represent the most powerful job-creating force today.

Consider the following:

• Immigrants are almost twice as likely as native-born Americans to start a business.
• Immigrants are twice as likely as native-born Americans to file for a U.S. patent.
• Immigrants constitute the majority of Ph.D. candidates in many science and engineering programs at U.S. universities.
• Immigrants founded more than half of the high-tech companies in Silicon Valley, and twenty-five percent nationwide.
• Many brilliant immigrants are turned away from this country because of an immigration system that does not value their skills.

To succeed in a knowledge-based economy, America needs an advanced-degreed, entrepreneurial, and globally-connected population. Today’s immigrants bring these skills to the table — with aces. Their world-class talents translate into the creation of new industries and generations of new jobs for Americans.

Immigration reform would also inject billions of dollars into the economy. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that $66 billion in new revenue over 10 years would have been generated if supporters of the 2006 immigration reform bill had succeeded in legalizing most undocumented immigrants.

Jobs and fiscal responsibility —– this should be the message —– not earned amnesty and candlelight vigils.

Recently, syndicated columnist Neal Peirce of The Washington Post Writers Group argued that a new line of thought could drive a more productive discussion. “The mere fact that immigrants are an asset, not a liability, puts a whole new face on the Lou Dobbs-style attacks on America’s 12 million undocumented immigrants,” he wrote.

Welcoming immigrant innovators and entrepreneurs is “a virtually guaranteed stimulus to our economy and to our creative capacity for this century,” Peirce argues.

The problem is, it’s hard for the innovators and entrepreneurs to get in. The current immigration system reserves only 9% of the coveted “green cards” for highly-skilled or investor immigrants. Instead of waiting in a years-long line, more and more super talent is leaving the U.S. or deciding not to come in the first place. That’s why reform is essential.

So, while the right-wing begins the public outcry on undocumented immigrants or problems with H1B visas, the pro-immigration side should not allow the powerful, economic issues to be forgotten.

A job-creating message will soften the conversation, inject rationality into the discussion, and increase the chances of something getting passed. The White House should help coordinate a public education campaign that explains how smart immigration is good for America, especially in a smart economy.

To get that message out, they should employ the services of some immigrants who have been quite busy lately: People like Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google, Andy Grove, who gave us Intel, or Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.

The President could talk about immigrant-founded companies like Dow Chemical, DuPont, Pfizer, Proctor & Gamble, Carnegie (later U.S.) Steel. He should remind America that immigration has historically been our competitive advantage.

That’s a fact that is more real today than ever before.

* * * * * *

Richard Herman is the co-author of Immigrant Inc.— Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs are Driving the New Economy (and how they will save the American worker (John Wiley & Sons, November, 2009)

From Resolution On The Oakland “Ebonics” Issue Unanimously Adopted at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, January 3, 1997:

The systematic and expressive nature of the grammar and pronunciation patterns of the African American vernacular has been established by numerous scientific studies over the past thirty years. Characterizations of Ebonics as “slang,” “mutant,” “lazy,” “defective,” “ungrammatical,” or “broken English” are incorrect and demeaning.

When this resolution was widely agreed to, the internet was still quite young. The term blogging wasn’t even coined, Twittering was nearly 10 years away and text messaging in North America was pretty much unheard of. Oh, and my son – who is quite representative of what we call Digital Nomads – was not yet 4 years old. A community that spans a country, without the web to drive a vernacular, had established a new dialect widely enough used to be brought to the attention of a ‘society of linguists’ in a Chicago meeting that ostensibly put a stamp of approval on its existence. I’m not going to start to examine what the validation means, but I do think it is an incredibly awesome thing that this happened 13 years ago.

Grammar has always been an awkward thing for me. This is mostly due to the pressure I feel from the existence of what I (and many others) call the grammar police. Hell, I’ve even mis-spelled the word (eg. Grammer). As a blogger, there isn’t a post that goes up that isn’t riddled with over-zealous commas and dangling participles not to mention the mis-spelling of a word here and there (it’s/its or effect/affect and the like). But I am writing in my own voice, usually a casual one, in order to allow the ideas to flow. To stop and think about my grammar is to stop that flow of ideas. Sometimes I read the post over after I’m finished to make sure it’s understandable, but even then I’ll miss words and sentence structures that are amiss. That’s not my strength. That’s why I had a damn fine editor for my book.

But whether I miss a typo or misuse a word doesn’t much matter to me. If I was speaking to someone F2F about a subject, our conversation would be full of pauses and misused words and grammatical errors and I like to think of my style of writing as conversational. The only thing I hope is that the core message of my post makes sense. And that is the way I read posts as well. Unless there is a glaring error (I laughed heartily over techtonic shits), I never stop to think “Should there be a comma there?” I just read the post. Which is why the linguistic shifts that are happening right now are exciting to me.

Is there an equivalent to Ebonics in online culture? Or are we still speaking in ‘slang’ or ‘lazy’ or ‘ungrammatical’? I’m not talking about throwing all grammar to the wind. We still need basic pieces of the structure of language to be able to understand one another, but we can certainly stop being so damned uptight about it. There is a point at which we stop helping people improve their grammar and start being downright annoying. Judging someone on their mastery of the language rather than the content of their message is another form of classism.

Consider these examples:

• As an Anglophone living in Montreal, my Francophone friends are kind enough to speak with me in English. As we talk, many of them speak with frequent grammatical errors, none of which register with me as significant. Sure, I could spend the entire conversation being really annoying and correcting them in order to “teach” them better English, but that would be jarring to the conversation, I understand what they are saying anyway and (the most glaringly obvious) I’m actually the ignoramus who hasn’t learnt enough of their language to put together a full sentence, so I should keep my trap shut.

• I’m a big fan of The Wire, which takes place in Baltimore and includes in-depth dialogues from the police, the people who live in a poor neighbourhood (including the drug trade), politicians and news reporters. They all speak English, but different dialects of it. Switching back and forth between the dialects made me dizzy in the beginning of watching the series, but made me smarter by the end of it. Why? Like any other aspect of culture, linguistics tells a story. The politicians speak English, the police speak in a cross between Ebonics and English and the drug runners speak in pure Ebonics. The police build a bridge. Certain characters of each group cross over. The CTO of the drug organization, Stringer Bell, speaks English while his boss, Avon Barksdale, speaks Ebonics. Power structures appear between the languages. Classism and racism run high beyond skin colour and through language. I became smarter about the culture because I started to understand all dialects.

• About 3 years ago, my son (now nearly 17 years old) began texting rather than calling me. At first I had no clue what he was trying to ‘say’ to me, using oodles of acronyms (ROFL, WTF) and abbreviations (ur, l8, 4). I thought he was writing me in code. But slowly I learned the acronyms and abbreviations myself and found them 2b not only useful for quick typing, but useful for relating to my son. When I typed his language, I gained his respect. I also began to understand the breadth of change in language and culture that we are about to encounter.

• Business language has long been riddled with acronyms, abbreviations and buzzwords to describe broader concepts. Depending on the context of using this language, you sound either brilliant or like a ‘douche’. In the boardroom, I learnt, structuring a sentence with a series of buzzwords and acronyms, such as “We need to broaden our horizons, breaking through the clutter with a value add to this paradigm shift while using best of breed practices to capture mindshare and increase our ROI” will bring on respect and promotion, whereas if I used that in a blogpost or tweet, I would be laughed at and called names. The use of any ONE of those buzzwords would strip me of my street cred. Alternatively, speaking in my son’s lingo in the boardroom brings puzzled looks and potential discredit to my message. It will be interesting to see how the business world will cope with the Digital Nomads because as Jack Lynch says in A Lexicographer’s Dilemma, “the crimes-against-the-language rate is going to skyrocket here in the electronic age“.

• Something I learnt during the editing process on my book is that, apparently, Random House has a very different grammatical system than Penguin than does Wiley than does the Department of English at Penn State. Funny thing that none of the experts can really agree on sentence structure, punctuation and proper spellings and capitalization of things like the Internet…or is it the internet…or maybe they prefer the Web? Who knows, but after having an outside editor look at my manuscript, everything changed and then changed BACK once returned to Random House. What a funny bunch the English experts are! What I love about English grammar standards is that there are so many to choose from.

David Mitchell in a rather fun column describes the reality of the rules of the English language:

I should have said that correctness in language is vital to avoid unintentional ambiguity. But it usually isn’t. No one ever accidentally bought more potatoes than planned because they were told to buy less rather than fewer. Of all the times I’ve typed: “Hopefully see you then” in an email, no one has ever subsequently complained that, when they saw me, I didn’t seem hopeful. We sticklers say we fear confusion of meaning but it’s the feeling that we’ve learnt and obeyed a set of rules that doesn’t matter that really spooks us.

But goes on to say:

In the end, though, the rules do matter – it’s just that obeying them doesn’t. They need to be there to create a tension between conservatism and innovation.

And I (sorta) agree. The absence of rules is not the way to approach English grammar either. The tension is good to keep us at least partially understanding the gist of what we are trying to get across.

Language changes and morphs, both resulting from and driving cultural shifts. If it didn’t we’d still be speaking in Olde English like we did a goodly length in times past (p.s. there were way more commas back then). On top of that – and much like web ‘standards’ – people disagree on what is proper and up to date anyway (wait, does up-to-date have hyphens?). There really isn’t one source anymore, nor should there be. There isn’t one English anyway. Not in the same country. Not even in the same city. But somehow, unlike the Tower of Babel, we manage to survive it. Is it the rules, like Mitchell points out, that keep us from throwing one another to our deaths? Perhaps, but I’d like to think it’s more than a group of the highest ranking grammar police ordaining from above us all that keeps us understanding one another. I’d like to think it’s a sense of community, where when I say Staycation, even the first time you’ve ever heard it, you understand what I’m getting at. I did. And it stuck.

[p.s. I know that some of you will think you are being smart alecs by correcting some part of this post's grammar.]

I love how the relationships I form online are pretty much exactly the same as the relationships I form offline (even before the internet). It begins with someone appearing here and there. They retweet me, @ me and are included in some of my friends’ conversations. At first, I don’t notice because I’m pre-occupied with conversations with current group of friends, but after a while I start to think, “Hmmmm, who is this person?” and I pay more attention. I start conversing back, looking deeper into his/her profile. Maybe even Googling him/her.

Then we get the chance to really connect – either through a deeper conversation or I start following him/her and find out little nuances about him/her that connect me. She is a startup entrepreneur and a mom. He went through a rough divorce last year. She likes to surf. He listens to R&B. I start to comment back. We connect more and more. Then the next thing you know, we interact like old friends, joking around, supporting one another through tough days and maybe even finally meeting up when given the chance.

This is much like how people enter our lives offline. They show up at events or coffee shops or other public spaces where at first you don’t notice them. Then they become familiar (a similar story is actually told in Julien and Chris‘ Trust Agents) and you start asking, “Hey, who is that guy/gal?” and the interaction begins until you are hanging out for beers on a Friday afternoon on the patio talking about the crappy week you had.

But I really love that what the internet HAS changed is that the whole world is my coffee shop and/or event. I can grow a rapport with someone sight unseen (except for an avatar). As Bruce Sterling once said, “National borders, they’re like speed bumps.” I’ve met people in person (usually at SXSW) that I’ve ‘known’ for years online. And there is no awkwardness about it. It’s like we’ve been hanging out in person for that whole time. I can’t wait to see people like Elizabeth Weinstein and Jorge Jaime in person. I’ve been interacting with both of them online for a while and I bet there will be hugs and squeals from minute 0.

Like any relationship, it’s taken time to get to that point, but I feel like I know them as well as any of my new friends offline. And though I’m a little unsure as to what my point was when I started this post, I just wanted to say that I’m excited about the sprouts of relationships that I have with all of you and can’t wait to see them emerge organically over the next few years.

[photo credit: JLMaral on Flickr]

I love disruption, especially when one is disrupting towards a positive end. When there is the ability to disrupt a dominant system that discriminates against people or favors those already in power – such as well, North America – I love it even more. So firstly, to outline what I propose to disrupt:

1. Stereotyping – somehow, even though we examined stereotypes eons ago, the attitudes seem to persist. The problem is that now they persist in more subtle ways. Not so easy to put our finger on it and call it out, which is an issue.
2. Individuality over community – this one is easy to spot and many will tell me it’s a good thing. I don’t think it is. There should be a balance, but if anything, I believe the balance should tip in the favour of community. Many studies have shown that putting community interests first actually benefits the individual more in the long-run. See: Non-Zero and The Origins of Virtue.
3. No-Choice Consumerism – I’m not referring to monopolies as much as I am referring to the lack of choice we actually have in choosing to opt-in or opt-out. I love to shop. Anyone who knows me knows I have a bit of a passion for it. But when I do, I struggle to keep in charge of my own experience and outcome. There are too many situations where pressure, scare tactics, smoke and mirrors and general exploitation come into play while I’m trying to make a decision.
4. Life Inc. – Also the name of an awesome book by Douglas Rushkoff, it’s also the reality of a world of people emulating corporations. I see this all of the time: people concerned about their personal brand, creating an elevator pitch for their lives, choosing friends based on ability to connect to powerful people, creating an image they can never live up to and when it falls apart, they try to sweep under the carpet. It’s emotionless, inauthentic and getting really boring if you ask me. I wrote about it a little here.

There are a few other themes, but I want to move along to the disruptions. Disruptions are unlike movements or protests or even flashmobs. They don’t require a great deal of organizing and you can’t really plan when you are going to perform them. The one thing they DO require is courage because they are about being hyper aware of the moment in which you see one of the above themes playing out and then questioning the theme openly – at the expense of being called a party pooper. But the awesome part of disruptions is that they are extremely powerful. When someone tells a racist joke and, instead of laughing, you say, “That’s not funny,” they will think twice about telling that joke again. So…here are 15 easy everyday ways to disrupt a system:

1. Flip around your pronouns when storytelling, especially where they have been heavily gendered. Refer to a man caring for the kids/doing housework, refer to a woman as the CEO, etc. Not only are you breaking the cycle of bias in the brains of your listeners, you will get their attention. Like Chip and Dan Heath say in Made to Stick, the #2 way to make your idea stick is through unexpectedness.
2. When talking to someone who uses gendered pronouns (or having someone tweet or blog gendered pronouns), gently suggest they read the previous suggestion. OR you can answer back flipping the pronoun if you want to be more subtle. It will make them think about it from that point forward.
3. Look people in the eye and smile at them as you walk by them. Add a nod or ‘good day’ once you get the hang of it. This one is super simple and incredibly catchy. Research has shown that smiles spread.
4. Diversify your examples. Find out what is happening beyond the whositwhatsits in your professional world and educate yourself on the people doing great work at the edges. In technology, it’s me looking at what’s happening in India, Europe, China, etc. as well as what’s happening in Silicon Valley. Bring up these examples in conversations that highlight the whositwhatsits over and over again until people spread it onwards.
5. Call out sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic or any other ‘minority group as stereotype’ jokes, references, slurs or language. This sounds like a d’uh thing, but it’s really hard. Doing so makes you look like a party pooper. But really, the person making those comments should know that they look like an arse. You are doing everyone a favour.
6. Don’t buy products from companies that offend you or treat you badly. Most of us do this already, but sometimes it’s really really convenient. Hell, I have a plan with AT&T. I need to not do that anymore. And I buy from American Apparel, even though their ads make me really angry. I need to stop that, too. It’s inconvenient, but important to send the message through not spending our money to support bad companies.
7. Take the time to talk with people with vastly different opinions. This is really hard. I usually get about 5 minutes into these conversations and want to scream and run away, but persistence (and patience) pays off. The first step is to stop trying to get them to listen to you and listen to them. Find a point of connection. There is usually more than one of those. Hear them out. Understand where they come from. Believe it or not, we usually want the same things, we just disagree on how we get there. Once the defenses are down, you’ll find great solutions together and inform your own opinion.
8. Take the time to get to know people with vastly different experiences of the world. This always blows my mind. I learn WAY more from having conversations with people who don’t fit the ‘mainstream’ experience of the world than I do from bestsellers.
9. Start taking people to task who talk about new media marketing in the same way Mad Men used old media marketing. If I see another new media guru use Don Draper’s creative style as the ideal to uphold in marketing, I’ll scream. No, that ‘carousel’ episode is still the epitome of how things ‘were’ (creating some sort of illusion to sell a product) and does not represent really connecting to one’s customer. The real power in online communities comes from the ability to connect with new friends and old on a human level. Emotional. Real. It’s less about how a company can co-opt and exploit that and more about what companies can learn from this. (more about this at a later date)
10. Admit to your mistakes. Openly. Brutally honestly. And take responsibility for them. Then learn from them.
11. Get to know your neighbours. Even the crab apples upstairs who tell you to turn down your bass. Spend time getting involved with your neighbourhood associations, events, etc. Reach out and create a supportive community. This is something else I need to do. I find this really scary. I don’t know why. The benefits outweigh the potential rejection.
12. Don’t take bribes. What I mean by this is don’t take a free voucher or delivery or whatever a company offers to you alleviate the pain they caused you with your transaction with them. Instead, ask for them to fix the problem. Take them to task and offer to give suggestions that may help them improve their service. For instance, I ordered a microwave from Future Shop and then got totally dicked around by their awful call in center. When they figured out I had >25,000 twitter followers, they contacted me offering all sorts of things, but I refused. I said, “I don’t want you to fix this issue for me, I want you to fix this issue for everyone.” Who knows if it’ll be effective. I haven’t shopped there since. I told them to call me when the call center is fixed and I’ll try them again.
13. Leave product reviews. There is a reason why sites like Yelp, Chowhound and Amazon are so popular. It’s because of people like you and I leaving product reviews. I rarely buy anything – even offline – without checking the Amazon reviews. Yelp and Chowhounds are my personal foodie guides wherever I go. And in Montreal, I found this amazing list of restaurant reviews. Generous people sharing their knowledge everyday makes the world an easier place to navigate.
14. Demand your data. Why? Because if this awesome group has their way, the future will be driven by the customer and then you’ll want all of the content and reputation and identity and history you’ve been depositing around the internet for years. It will be valuable for your experience and for YOU to leverage your own power. So, click on that little ‘suggestion’ tab or ‘feedback’ button and say to the networks you are making more interesting with your contributions: “Hey, have you thought about giving me the opportunity to export my reviews/tweets/photos/connections/shopping history/preferences/etc to use elsewhere?” The more requests they get, the more they’ll be pressured to do this.
15. Use all the tools available to you to call out injustices and bad experiences. The beauty of the web is that there are literally hundreds and even thousands of others who have experienced similar situations. If you get pissed enough and have enough momentum, you can even start to do something about it. The United Breaks Guitars videos did an amazing job of getting dozens of people to share their experiences (and also refused to take a bribe by asking United to make a donation). And as I wrote here, even spreading the word through blogs and tweets makes a difference.

Of course, these small steps are only icebreakers to apathy, but we all get so busy that starting somewhere that fits in our schedules yet is bigger than a tweet is a good start. And each of these small disruptions packs a big punch. Good disrupting!