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Permission management is here to stay, at least for a while

Published October 12, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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Once a week I dip into Confused of Calcutta for an organized yet unassuming take on the development of management.

This week has a far reaching post summarizing changes that are taking place in enterprises seen through the lens of an IT manager.

I’ve spent much of the last two years trying to figure out what the future corporation will look like. I teach management. So I want to be about 10 years ahead of events to prepare 18 yr olds for their jobs they will find themselves.

This is my thinking so far.

The coordinating role of management will stay

I don’t think management will change very much, at least in so far as it is an act of coordination.

Management provides information linking one part of an enterprise to another. The localized modules of future enterprises will still need people who let them know where they are relative to each other.

Planning and control will become more sophisticated

What will change is the idea that direction comes from the apex and filters down. There is little chance that one person can understand all parts of the enterprise in this day-and-age.   Managers and CEO’s will need the ability to chair discussions about interlinks.  It wouldn’t be wise to make unilateral decisions. Any organization that lets them is unlikely to last long.

The control part of ploc will also revert to its proper meaning of feedback – show people where their work fits into the whole.

Future management will be boosted by IT

I see two types of work within management as taking off.

# 1 Collecting data, sorting it and presenting it a la Flowing Data.

I include real-time search here.

# 2 Figuring out the questions to be asked in the analysis.

There will still be room for people who specialize in how the parts interlink. Knowing the questions to ask, and revising the questions, will remain an important specialist function.

Managing will remain managing

And then there will be the traditional role of managing. Are we able to get together a group of people who believe in each other enough to work on a project from beginning to end?

  • Can we conceptualize the project?
  • Can we reshape the project as we go?
  • Can we keep the stakeholders together long enough to do it?

There will always be a role for people who get on with it.  It is just, they are unlikely to be any more important than other players. They are simply doing an essential task the way other people do an essential task. While others will provide expertise, they’ll provide real-time communication, feedback filtered through the right questions delivered at a time when people can act on it, and continual questioning of whether we are going in the right direction at the right pace in the right company.

Permission management is here to stay.

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Positive psychology vs positive thinking

Published October 11, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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If you find it hard to explain why positive psychology is just the mindless repetition of positive phrases?  If you want examples of how we use the positive processes in life to live better, and indeed get things done, then look here at thefuntheory.com.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw&feature=player_embedded]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbEKAwCoCKw&feature=player_embedded]

A keen eye will also notice the little experiment (comparing this bin and that, or before and after); the design thinking – testing ideas in situ rather than ignoring context; and the narrative – show people doing what people do.

There is a competition too.  Deadline Mid-November

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Leading with psychology: belonging is the first competence

Published October 11, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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We can only change successfully when we belong

As a young work psychologist, I was lucky. I graduated just as Zimbabwe achieved Independence and I joined the work force when investment was high and change was rapid, far-reaching and positive.  Everything was being turned inside-out and upside-down, but in an climate of hope & expectation.

The business conditions of today are not that different – except that there is little hope & expectation. Other than Barack Obama, we don’t have leaders who are able to point us in a general direction and say “that way guys”.   And we don’t have investment flooding in. Times are tough. Failure and blame are in the air.

This bring us to a little-talked-about issue in change management. We can only change successfully when we belong.

Rethinking the work of managers

This week, McKinsey published a report on re-energizing senior managers. I almost didn’t read it. Why do I care about senior managers who created this mess, I thought?

That is precisely the point. They can’t think straight when no-one cares about them.

  • Yes, it is clear they made the mess. They know that.
  • Yes, it is clear that whatever business models they used in the past must be wrong. They know that.

But, they can only “step-up-to-the-plate” and help us work out the new rules when they know that we will accept them as they are – not all-knowing.

Remember for a long time we’ve treated managers as if they are all-knowing. We’ve given them conspicuous lifestyles because we wanted to reward this all-knowing.   And now they are not all-knowing, who are they?  What do they contribute? How are they supposed to function?

They are paralyzed.  The only way to unlock the paralysis, the only way to gain access to the skills and know-how that they do have, is to give them permission to be sort-of-knowing.  They cannot function unless we show them as they belong – as they are.

Where does belonging begin?

McKinsey write their report for CEO’s which leaves a second point unspoken. These are hierarchical organizations. The junior people do not decide who belongs and who does not. We don’t give permission to anyone to be anything.

In hierarchical organizations, the process of signallng belonging begins with the Board, goes through the CEO, through the senior managers to the managers and, only then, to the front-line.  Of course, this begs the question of who soothes the Board.  Well, we’ve hit on the fundamental weakness of hierarchical organizations.

Until we have sorted that out, the lesson for senior managers and change management scholars is that change will never happen unless everyone feels they belong. The first competency required of managers in a hierarchical organization is signaling that belonging. I have never seen that competency in an assessment center. It should be there.

How do we communicate belonging?

The American psychologist, Baumeister, can demonstrate in a lab that we are all up-ended rather easily.  He asks people to play a computer game.  Half are treated nicely by the computer.  Half get snubbed.  Those who are snubbed don’t look in a mirror as they leave.  We are that sensitive!

Should we develop thick skins?  I haven’t seen any experimental work but I’d be willing to bet that ‘thick-skinned’ people feel snubs more deeply.  They just pretend to themselves that they don’t and become even more boorish.  We’ll let the lab rats test that for us.

The point is that in give-and-take of life, we do get ‘up-ended’; we do get snubbed.  Our internal equilibrium is upset.  At that moment, reassurances that we belong are invaluable.  Leaders who can accept our misery for what it is, without making it worse by threatening us with expulsion, are invaluable.  From that starting point, we can figure out what to do next, and spread the sense of belonging along to the next person.

How can develop resilience?

Not by being thick-skinned, that’s for certain!

Probably in three ways:

1.  Understand our deep fear of being ‘cast-out’.

People who need to cast-out others are deeply worried about their own status.  We need to reassure them of their worth before they will be more compassionate towards others.

In plain language:  Ask, why is this person being such an [insert your favourite word here]?  What is s/he worried about?

2.  Work with others

We are human!  When we have had enough of someone’s carping & complaining, get people who believe in the person to work closely with them.  Build the teams that form naturally and step-back to make the links between the groups.

“To be clear”, as politicians seem to have become fond of saying, I am not advocating you put up with bad behavior or subject yourself to hours with someone who depresses you.  I am suggesting proactively putting together those people who reassure each. Then when the group is positive, link it to another positive group.  In that way, you remove yourself from provocation and provide positive alternatives.

In plain language:  When you cannot deal with someone, find someone who can.  What counts is getting along, not demonstrating our right to a temper tantrum.  Indeed, when you throw a temper tantrum, we have to ask the question under #1 – what are you afraid of?

3.  Take casting-out very seriously

We aren’t running a TV reality show.  We should only cast someone out when it is very clear that we will really be able to achieve a positive state and knowing that once the positive state is achieved, that we can invite them back in.  Tough criteria but the only criteria that tests whether or not we just throwing a self-indulgent wobbly.

We should make casting-out such a serious event.  We should document it and hold people accountable for getting it right.  I once taught with a Professor from West Point. He told me that if a student there fails, there is a full scale inquiry. The students are bright.  The Professors are good. They have the resources they need.   System fail – what went wrong?  The ethos, I was told, is that you don’t choose who you go to war with.

When we make casting-out difficult, then we are motivated to find other solutions and we may be well pleased with what we find.

In plain language:  Make casting-out rare and hard, so you can’t treat it as a cop-out.

4.  Look after your ‘interiority’

We have to keep ourselves emotionally fit.  Just as we eat, sleep, wash and exercise [do you?], we need to keep ourselves in emotional balance.  It sounds silly to say that our first job is to be happy.  The truth is that emotion is contagious.  When we are miserable, we make everyone around us miserable.  When we are in a good mood, we much more able to make space for others and much more likely to find unusual ways to get along – even if we don’t like each other very much.

But happiness takes hard work, and ironically, discipline.  We are happier when we take time to reflect on the day and get to the point that we are summing up and thinking about what went well and what we should do more of. We are happier when we spend some time in the morning thinking about what is important in life and allowing the pressures of the day find their smaller place under the greater umbrella.

In plain language: We are much more likely to be knocked off-balance when we are too busy to find the time to be happy.

5.  Build a strong positive network

And we do need to remember that we are all sensitive to rejection.  We need to cherish the social support that we get.

A neat trick that most people don’t know is that giving support is almost as good as getting support.   So when your support networks are thin, help others.

Help the person who is obviously stressed-out-of-their-heads at the airport or railway station.  Smile at the rude guy in a paroxysm of road rage (while you are wondering why his wife stays married to him).  Fake like they are human, as the saying goes.  You feel better.  And they calm down.

In plain language:  Don’t network for gain.  Network because it is fun.

Belonging in plain words

We can only function when we belong.  We can only lead positive change in awkward times when we like the people we lead. Sometimes they can be hard to like.  So our friends help us out and work more closely with the people they can bond with and we can’t.   Then we can link positive groups to each other.

We have always known this, but it takes the ‘crisis of capitalism’ and a ‘McKinsey report’ to bring it all home.  Remember that senior manager may still have a big car, but he (or she) no longer knows whether s/he are coming or going.  Someone has to settle them down.

In the meantime, connect with people who are positive.  Connect people to each other.

We will succeed in direct proportion to the amount that we trust each other.

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What managers – and work psychologists – get paid for?

Published October 10, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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Every one would like to be a manager

In my years of teaching at Universities, I found students queuing up to learn management and personnel psychology, industrial psychology, organizational psychology, etc.

Few though, had any idea what management entailed. And they are horrified when they find out.

. . . it is well paid, but . . .

The financial rewards are high. Yes, the trappings of good clothes, assistants, and international travel are glamorous.

I could say that “this is what is wanted in return for these goodies”. But that sounds like a bargain. You give us this – and we give you the rewards that you desire.

It doesn’t work like that.

On the surface, yes. Incompetent managers, who have themselves made a Faustian bargain, will tell you that your job is to brown-nose the boss. The website is full of how to impress your boss.  Well, the same skills will be valuable when you want to impress the gangs in prison-where you just might find yourself.

Management is NOT about impressing the boss. If you boss wants impressing, he, or she, is a pratt. End-run them. I suppose that is why most big organizations are run so badly. Most people understand this rule and end-run their boss.

Management does have a purpose

Management is about coordinating the various parts of an enterprise. I’ll give you an example.

Psychologists are part of general management

As psychologists, we belong to the general management function

Let’s take a real example. A few weeks ago, in an effort to stop a visiting friend from stepping into a busy street in Edinburgh, I took my eyes off my feet, tripped over some metal protruding out of the concrete.  I fell flat on my face.

It hurt, a lot. It was Edinburgh after all, so it hurt my dignity too. I looked drunk, which I wasn’t.

Fortunately, I didn’t break anything – including my glasses. I just bruised and grazed my knee.

My point is this. That metal has been there a long time. I am not the first to trip over it. It is a menace to the blind, the elderly, wheelchairs . . . and me.  A decent psychologist looks out for such situations.

Why? Dozen of city officials walk that street – they issue parking tickets, they inspect shops. How is it that a metal obstruction that trips people has gone unnoticed and unsorted?  A decent psychologist would look at the organizational structure that allows the error to occur and to persist.

This is the UK – we have ‘targets’ the way other countries have ‘bandits’.  An organizational psychologist would be alert to the consequences and their own responsibilities in the face of such a policy.  A decent organizational psychologist would bear in mind that his or her job is ‘general management’ – the way parts of an organization come together to form common cause.

When an accident happens, a relative junior will investigate what happened and why.  A relatively junior lawyer will review the legal liability.  A more senior psychologist thinks about the incident at a systemic level. They ask

  • Who follows up these incidents?
  • Who is responsible for minimizing these incidents?
  • What is the relative importance of checking for hazards on the pavement and checking for unapproved adverts, for example, which we have paid many people to do?
  • How did we get to the point that none of us have sorted out an obstruction on the pavement for years?

Within an organization, a psychologist will ask a manager why his or her subordinates have walked past an obstruction, again and again?

If targets are to blame, remove the targets! If the manager say that s/he has no authority to remove the targets, they have abdicated.  In a Weberian bureaucracy, they have said clearly “I cannot make the decision. Please refer to my superior.”   If they do not put your through, or make an appointment for you with their superior, then you only have one choice – to seek that appointment yourself.

If you are external to the organization, and their organizational structure is concealed, then go directly to the Chief Executive – with that argument.

This happened. I inquired from the public officer nominally responsible. They did not have the authority to solve the problem. They declined to refer me to their manager, which I understand is their obligation when they do not have the authority to resolve my request.

I now refer this to you  and ask you to direct it to someone who does have authority.

To psychologists, if these incidents are happening in your organization, you aren’t fulfilling your responsibility as general managers. Different sections aren’t meshing.

Bring it to the attention of a line manager, once. Once. Then go to their managers. And keep going. Politely. Sweetly. That is your job.

Psychology requires the exercise of authority, not brown-nosing a boss.

That is why not everyone really wants to be a manager .   .  . or a work & organizational psychologist

That is why a lot of students duck out of organizational psychology, once they get in to it.

Our trade is not only about earning money. It is not about brown-nosing a boss.

It is about exercising responsibility in accordance with the law. Pay bonuses that lead to recklessness or metal protuberances in the pavement, are prima facie evidence that the common cause of the organization is being neglected  If they aren’t resolved on first raising, that is prime facie evidence that some general staff are asleep.  To put no finer point on it – problems that persist are prima facie evidence that people earning much beyond 25K are stealing their wages.

That includes us – psychologists.  It is our job to raise these matters and insist they are resolved.

That’s why, after all, a lot of students don’t want the job.

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The secret gestures and signs that give our lives meaning

Published October 9, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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Do you wear a hat? Do you wear a tie?

I knew someone once, who would put on a hat if he wasn’t wearing a tie. He said you only get taken seriously if you wear a hat or tie.

I never quite got that. But it is clear that little things are loaded with cultural meaning.

The Parker pen in the shirt pocket that says : “I need a pen at all times. I sign things. I am a manager. Despite the casual clothes. Despite the grease on my hands. I am in charge here.”

The laptop that says “You should find out who I am. My real authority comes from the other end of the wireless connection.”

The payment by cash which says “I am not an employee. I don’t have to use a swipe card to access my salary.”

What do you use to signal to people who you are?

Or rather, what things make you anxious if you do or do not do, or have or do not have them?

Anxiety = importance = meaning

We are only anxious when our place in the world is threatened.

Which place are you seeking that little gesture or symbol seeking?

Who would you be without that place?

Too scary to answer. The meaning of our lives does make us anxious.

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I’ve cracked the ‘whinging’ pom!

Published October 9, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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Whinging poms

Have you ever seen a psychological study of why the English complain about the weather?  Or why the English complain .   .   .

We all know the English talk incessantly about the weather.  The Aussies remind us that poms whinge.  Or rather, the Aussies dismiss “whinging poms” with a frisson of superiority!

Folklore has it that poms whinge about the weather to make small talk.  That smirk of satisfaction begs explanation in turn.  Why is it considered polite to whinge about something we can do nothing about?

If  a South African is talking, they would advise you what to do about the weather. The focus would be on action and the focus would be on the battle of life fought successfully against willful, unhelpful and unbiddable elements.

If an Australian is talking, they would be proud of Australian weather.  I’ve never deciphered that either.  Proud of something you had nothing to do with making???

I know how to treat with a South Africa.  They want to “do”.  They want to be competent.  So simply ask to borrow their umbrella!  They will make sure you get back to your car dry – and probably get your shoes cleaned for you to.

I’ve cracked the English whinge.  You say sweetly:  “I like English weather.  Everything changes so fast.  If you don’t go out for a single day, you miss the daffodils, or a tree that has changed color”.

The English man or woman is left in a dilemma.  Continue whinging and imply England is not up to scratch?  Won’t have that!

So they start being informative.  You’ll hear all about the plants they love.  Your walk to work, or your previously insalubrious train ride, will take on a fresh look as they point out all the best bits of scenery to look out for!

And it works on other topics too.  The English are as volatile as their weather.

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Anything, but please, not the bludgeon of a huge ‘to do’ list

Published October 8, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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It’s October. In January, I found myself with far too much to do.

I tried all the tricks of the trade. I decluttered. I prioritized. I still had too much to do.

At last, I quietened my panic by drawing each goal as a spoke, coming in to a central hub. I marked off months and quarters. And wrote down some milestones.

Bicycle spokes for planning

Inevitably (and it is inevitable), I made heaps of progress. I am sure that resolving my panic was important, if only because I could do something useful with the time that I would otherwise spend panicking!

I am still busy. Horribly busy. Work is cutting in to my sleep as well. So, I am motivated to give my planning system a thorough overhaul.

Umbrella goal

Fortunately, I am much clearer now about what I want to do. I’ve managed to phrase a super-ordinate goal and the many goals that gave me such grief in January, all contribute in their own way. When I make a decision on one project, I’m able to check in my mind how work on that project fits in with the overall goal and all the other projects.

There is a lesson in this, I think.  Don’t discard your competing goals.  Live with the strain until you can see why you are attracted to apparently conflicting projects.

Eventually the bicycle wheel takes shape as an umbrella!

From wish to intent to action

Now I am more focused, my attention has shifted from goals – to critical mass & priorities.

I could list everything I have to do.  I could even put everything on a spreadsheet.  But I think I would throw up.  There is too much to do and seeing it in one place won’t help.

That kind of planning is better when there are lots of steps that are critical, and when they must be done in a specific, and known, order. That will come later.

Impact vs ease

I had a brain storm last night. I remembered a technique which I learned from Zivai Mushayandebvu in Botswana.

Sort tasks into four piles (2×2):

  • What will make a huge impact and is relatively easy to do.
  • What will make a huge impact but is hard to do.
  • What will make a small impact and is easy to do.
  • What will make a small impact and is hard to do.

The first, we do.

The second, we see if we can buy in.

The third, we might get do as filler tasks.

The fourth, we discard.

Keeping it simple, cheap, disposable (and green)

This whole project can be done on the back of old envelopes and a set of shoe boxes. My guess is that the priorities to develop critical mass are going to emerge quite fast.

I am going to try it. Anything rather than the bludgeon of a huge ‘to do’ list.

UPDATE: In another phase of overload, I think I shall rate my tasks like this again!

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Help the caterpillar of your professional profile metamorphize into a butterfly

Published October 7, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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From something to nothing

I came to the UK two years’ ago. Before coming here, I had taught in two good Commonwealth Universities. I published articles in journals. And as a work & organizational psychologist, I had consulted to household-name multi-nationals.

I worked on major projects that many psychologists would give their right-arm for.  I led the post-graduate training of occupational psychologists in one country for over a decade.  I represented us at international forums and negotiated inter-country agreements.   I taught on an MBA ,and I taught a huge class of first year class of 850 students.  An experience, indeed!

But when I came to the UK, only a few people knew me.   I had little name-recognition.  Without an university affiiliation, Google no longer recognized my name, and no longer put me at the top of its page.

In short, without institutional affiliation I went from being central and prominent to invisible. Overnight, other psychologists didn’t see me. Clients didn’t know me. Google didn’t tip its hat when I typed my own name.

Back from nothing to something

Over the last two years, I’ve rebuilt my profile. I’ve become known, well-known, in foreign land.  When I type my name into search, Google returns my Linkedin profile and my blog.  At the top, of the first page.

  • Yay! Google no longer minds that I don’t work at a University.
  • Yay! I rank higher than Jo Jordan, the power weight lifter (sorry Jo, but Google rankings are competitive).
  • Yay! I rank higher than all the other Jo Jordan’s out there – psychologists, academics and management consultants. And believe me there are a lot of us with this very common name.

How did I do this? How did I go from nothing to something in two years?

Believe me getting recognition in a place as big and crowded as the UK is hard.  I can put the names of leading British psychologists into Google and struggle to find them.

Where are they? Page 56? Page 87? Academics come up because Google privileges University urls – did you know that? Many people don’t. Until they leave the university sector and they drop off the internet as it they have never existed at all.

This is how I re-built a solid online profile. I used social media.

Social media is the two-way, readwrite web. Most of us know Facebook and Twitter. These are the two best known ‘social networks’, or ‘platforms’ in the UK

Some people dismiss these platforms as trivial socializing. Trivial socializing, if socializing is trivial, does happen on these networks. But that is not why they are important for managing our careers. Nor are they the whole story. Not by a long shot.

The two-way web is a place where we can relate directly to each other, without going through a third party.  And it is an opportunity to use virtual space to expand our world, just as the penny post and the telephone did when they were first invented.

‘Social’ means the opportunity to interact. This is the central idea.   The opportunity to interact.  can talk to you and you can talk back.   When you talk to me, I can reply.

We meet people fast on the two-way web.  As psychologists we know that when we meet people. we get feedback.  And when we get feedback, we develop really fast. We develop our thinking quickly. We develop our relationships quickly.

And then our professional practice begins to take shape around what is ‘good and true, better and possible’. It takes shape in ways we would never have dreamed possible, and at speeds we would never hope for in our wildest dreams.

5 common social media tools help us build our professional profile

In the two years that I have been settling successfully in the UK, social media has developed with dazzling speed. Some of the platforms and techniques I used 2 years ago are outmoded now, and some of the techniques I use now were not popular 2 years ago.

These are the 5 that I recommend that you use at October 2009. I’ll keep it brief to get you started and hold the nuances for other posts.

1 Keep your CV uptodate on Linkedin and the European equivalent Xing

You’ll get established quite well using the free version of Linkedin . By all means, connect with me, Jo Jordan, to get started.

2 Blog under your own name

Set up a blog and start writing.  WordPress, Blogspot, Posterous, and Tumblr are all free.

Remember, though, you are writing to be heard.  Don’t say anything silly.  Do write about professional matters that interest you.

Also set up your About page. There is no point in being anonymous when you are developing a profile. When your blog is set up, let me know and I’ll be your first reader.

Don’t agonize. Pick one of the four services and begin. The marvel of these services is that it is easy to change things.

3 Read and comment on other people’s blogs

To find good blogs, set up a Google Alert using keywords that interest you. Then make a folder for these Alerts in your email. There will be a lot of Alerts.

Everyday, scan the headlines and visit the blogs that interest you.

And now for the social media component: leave useful, helpful comments.

When you comment, you leave your full name, your email address (that won’t be shown) and your blog name Far from being alarmed, be happy. You email address protects the blog owner. You benefit in 4 ways:

  • By writing down your comment, your clarify your own thinking.
  • You make a friend of the blogger who likes to get replies.
  • Anyone who visits that blog and thinks your comment interesting will click on your name and visit your blog.
  • Google notices the link between your blogs and puts a tick against both. Google likes sociable people!  The more ticks you have, the higher up you come when someone puts a relevant keyword into Google Search.  Get found by getting sociable!

4 Organize your feeds

In the last step, you set up Google Alerts and found interesting blogs. Now you have found other people in your field, you want to visit them often.

To save yourself time, you subscribe to their RSS feed and receive a message everytime those blogs update.

Fortunately these don’t go to email – or don’t need to. You store all your feeds in a feed aggregator. Most people use the Google feed reader. I use Pageflakes. It has become a little unstable since it was bought out but it has a great advantage from my point of view.

I organize my feeds as ‘flakes’ into ‘pages’. Each flake has the headlines of 5 to 20 of the latest posts from the blog (my choice). I have a page for Morning, another for UK, another for Further, another for Evening, another for Sunday. You can see where I am going with this: attention management. I don’t want interesting articles to catch my eye when I have more mundane work to do on my desk!

5 Yahoo Upcoming and Meetup

And finally, for the biggie. Sign up to Yahoo Upcoming, put in you postal code, and sign up to events that seem worthwhile. You can RSVP positively, or “watch”.

Go back regularly and always check whether any event that you are going to anyway has been posted here.

Why?

Because you see who else is going. And that is not all. You can check what else they are going to.

No, you are not going to stalk them. But when you find someone whose does interesting work, you see what other events they go to.  That is how you find your way around cluttered, crowded UK!

This is how you find out where the interesting work gets done. This is how you find out where business gets done.

The mainstream media covers the big events – the anonymous events, the too-big-to-meet-anyone fairs. We use the self-connecting character of 2.0 to find our niche.

You can also sign up to another service, Meetup. I find Meetup organizers spam a little. Tolerate some junk mail to get started. Then cut them off. Once you are moving in productive interesting circles, you will work ‘on spec’ less but you;ll still come back here to relook at your horizons from time to time.

And now to the social networks: Facebook and Twitter

You’ll haved notice that I haven’t mentioned Facebook and Twitter. They are important too because they are the most popular networks in UK. Join up!

Try to choose names that are short, memorable and easy to spell. On Twitter, do NOT protect your updates. And join in! If you follow me @jobucks, I’ll introduce you to get you started.

On Facebook, connect with all your relatives and friends. DO protect yourself there. Or rather, protect your relatives because anyone coming to you sees a lot about you relatives as well.  Later, we’ll tell you how to set up a Facebook ‘page’ for your professional practice. Begin now by meeting your friends and relatives there.

The 7 basics of professional networking in virtual space

So those are 7 things to get you started.

1. Your resume/CV on Linkedin and Xing

2. A blog

3. Comments

4. Feeds

5. Yahoo Upcoming and Meetup

6. Twitter

7. Facebook for your personal network.

Meet you in virtual space – and watch your professional practice metamorphize from caterpillar to butterfly

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Psychologist in the wilds of social media – pleeease edit my elevator speech!

Published October 7, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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How many times are you bored silly by someone’s elevator speech?

Sometimes I find myself furtively looking past someone’s left ear, scanning the room desperately to find a way to escape from this person who simply cannot tell me in a few words what they do and what they want from me?  Just like this sentence – wordy!

Oooh, and how often do I bore other people?

I try to work hard at listening.  I find myself cross-examining other people to find out what they do. Then I rephrase what they say they do to make sure “I get it”. I even introduce them to other people using my summary to save time.  I find it quite easy to summarize someone else’s elevator speech – though they don’t always thank me for it.

I sweat to edit my own though. I wish some one would do it for me. And that person is YOU!

My elevator speech

I’ve given this a lot of thought.

I want to give people some idea of where I am from, and because I have a fair bit of business experience, I want to convey that too but without wasting time, or being overbearing.

Then, I want to find out from them what they do so I can figure out what we can do together. Of course, if they aren’t really sure what they do, then they’ll depend on my framework to guide their response.

I also need to be ready to provide details, explain where I live and tell people where I am from. (Locals will be curious about my accent.)

Here goes.

My name is Jo. I’m a work psychologist. I find the smallest way you, or I, or [the business who is our host] can use social media to achieve our biggest dream.

  • We use the self-connecting features of social media networks to get opportunity to find us.
  • We show you how to do it. Simply.
  • And we stick with you as you try it out.

In a year, if you have the guts, you’ll have a viable business doing what you love.

(Or for an established business: If you get started in small ways today, in a year, the world of Facebook and Twitter will be making money for you.)

How do we work?

We come to you – where you live your life – in cafes, on trains, on line.

We charge a fee to match the task and what you can afford.

Or we work out a joint venture.

Whichever, we only work on big dreams that have little steps that we can take today.  We want short punchy projects that show results, or get dropped and we try again.

My company?

Is Rooi – one word – Rooi – red. The colour of our future together.

My town

Olney, north Bucks. Where you are coming to do you Christmas Shopping. British Art.  50 miles from London on the M1. J14 East.  The opposite way from Milton Keynes. Great to stop off on a long journey.  Great to see the best of Britain and 24 places to eat beginning with a great New York deli!!

Where am I from?

My accent?  Zimbabwe where I learned to organize profitable businesses and the New Zealand where I learned to play a little.

Over to you

  • Do you know what I do?
  • Where am I being long-winded or vague?
  • Is it clear where we can have an interesting conversation?
  • Can you see how some aspect of your business or life would get a lift by working with me?
  • Would you want to take the conversation further?

All comments appreciated.  Not only by me, but by the next person I bump into on the rounds of business networks!

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Yay! The greatest green app of all time!

Published October 6, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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This is the greatest application of all time.  It rests on a basic idea that you can have my attention, you can use my telephone line, but you will pay me for the privilege!

Making junk callers pay for their calls

1.  When you telephone me, your caller ID is matched with several ads and you are redirected in the first instance to your competition, whereupon you hear an ad, and I get 25p!

2.  If your caller ID matches anyone on my list, then the call comes straight through.

3. If your have a promotional code that you add to the end of my number, the call comes straight through.

All calls are tracked.  So I can find out quite easily who is giving my special number away.

The sister app works for email

1.  When your junk mail arrives, I press one button and a message is sent back to the server who work out the sender and send one email back to them for every email they sent out.  And I get 25p!  Someone who blasts out 1000 unwanted mails is going to get 1000 back!

2.  The email that is returned reflects their competition.  For example:  when emails arrive from a scammer in Bakino Faso, they are sent scrumptious ads of something in Bakino Faso (what is scrumptious in BF?). Or a message from Interpol!  When Virgin Media sends me an email full of pictures, we send back an email about the thing they are obviously short of – social media specialists!  And so on.  Anyway, the app does that.  I get 25 p.

The cousin app works for junk mail

The cousin app works similarly but takes more work from me.  Instead of sending my junk mail to landfill, I strip off my name for security and put it back in an envelope and return to to the sender – in their envelope.  They pay the postage.

The app makes it money by collecting the returned junk mail from the big senders and recycling it properly.  They work out the cost details with the junk pushers.

I told you life is getting better!

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