Managing Your Day

Managing your time is one of the key ingredients to success. Here is a great article by Peter Bregman in Harvard Business titled An 18 minute plan for managing your day.

Yesterday started with the best of intentions. I walked into my office in the morning with a vague sense of what I wanted to accomplish. Then I sat down, turned on my computer, and checked my email. Two hours later, after fighting several fires, solving other people’s problems, and dealing with whatever happened to be thrown at me through my computer and phone, I could hardly remember what I had set out to accomplish when I first turned on my computer. I’d been ambushed. And I know better.

When I teach time management, I always start with the same question: How many of you have too much time and not enough to do in it? In ten years, no one has ever raised a hand.

That means we start every day knowing we’re not going to get it all done. So how we spend our time is a key strategic decision. That’s why it’s a good idea to create a to do list and an ignore list. The hardest attention to focus is our own.

But even with those lists, the challenge, as always, is execution. How can you stick to a plan when so many things threaten to derail it? How can you focus on a few important things when so many things require your attention?

We need a trick.

Jack LaLanne, the fitness guru, knows all about tricks; he’s famous for handcuffing himself and then swimming a mile or more while towing large boats filled with people. But he’s more than just a showman. He invented several exercise machines including the ones with pulleys and weight selectors in health clubs throughout the world. And his show, The Jack LaLanne Show, was the longest running television fitness program, on the air for 34 years.

But none of that is what impresses me. He has one trick that I believe is his real secret power.

Ritual.

At the age of 94, he still spends the first two hours of his day exercising. Ninety minutes lifting weights and 30 minutes swimming or walking. Every morning. He needs to do so to achieve his goals: on his 95th birthday he plans to swim from the coast of California to Santa Catalina Island, a distance of 20 miles. Also, as he is fond of saying, “I cannot afford to die. It will ruin my image.”

So he works, consistently and deliberately, toward his goals. He does the same things day in and day out. He cares about his fitness and he’s built it into his schedule.

Managing our time needs to become a ritual too. Not simply a list or a vague sense of our priorities. That’s not consistent or deliberate. It needs to be an ongoing process we follow no matter what to keep us focused on our priorities throughout the day.

I think we can do it in three steps that take less than 18 minutes over an eight-hour workday.

STEP 1 (5 Minutes) Set Plan for Day. Before turning on your computer, sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide what will make this day highly successful. What can you realistically accomplish that will further your goals and allow you to leave at the end of the day feeling like you’ve been productive and successful? Write those things down.

Now, most importantly, take your calendar and schedule those things into time slots, placing the hardest and most important items at the beginning of the day. And by the beginning of the day I mean, if possible, before even checking your email. If your entire list does not fit into your calendar, reprioritize your list. There is tremendous power in deciding when and where you are going to do something.

In their book The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz describe a study in which a group of women agreed to do a breast self-exam during a period of 30 days. 100% of those who said where and when they were going to do it completed the exam. Only 53% of the others did.

In another study, drug addicts in withdrawal (can you find a more stressed-out population?) agreed to write an essay before 5 p.m. on a certain day. 80% of those who said when and where they would write the essay completed it. None of the others did.

If you want to get something done, decide when and where you’re going to do it. Otherwise, take it off your list.

STEP 2 (1 minute every hour) Refocus. Set your watch, phone, or computer to ring every hour. When it rings, take a deep breath, look at your list and ask yourself if you spent your last hour productively. Then look at your calendar and deliberately recommit to how you are going to use the next hour. Manage your day hour by hour. Don’t let the hours manage you.

STEP 3 (5 minutes) Review. Shut off your computer and review your day. What worked? Where did you focus? Where did you get distracted? What did you learn that will help you be more productive tomorrow?

The power of rituals is their predictability. You do the same thing in the same way over and over again. And so the outcome of a ritual is predictable too. If you choose your focus deliberately and wisely and consistently remind yourself of that focus, you will stay focused. It’s simple.

This particular ritual may not help you swim the English Channel while towing a cruise ship with your hands tied together. But it may just help you leave the office feeling productive and successful.

And, at the end of the day, isn’t that a higher priority?

Is Your Company Ready To Change Its Culture?

Peter Bregman wrote recently about changing a corporate structure. In the article he cited a study by the University of Illinois researcher Leann Lipps Birch. In the late 1970’s a series of experiments was conducted on children to see what would get them to eat vegetables they disliked. This is a high bar. We’re not talking about simply eating more vegetables. We’re talking about eating specific vegetables, the ones they didn’t like.

You could tell the children you expect them to eat their vegetables. And reward them with ice cream if they did. You could explain all the reasons why eating their vegetables is good for them. And you could eat your own vegetables as a good role model. Those things might help.

But Birch found one thing that worked predictably. She put a child who didn’t like peas at a table with several other children who did. Within a meal or two, the pea-hater was eating peas like the pea-lovers.

Peer pressure.

We tend to conform to the behavior of the people around us. Which is what makes culture change particularly challenging because everyone is conforming to the current culture. Sometimes though, the problem contains the solution.

First we have to decide why we want to change the culture. Think carefully because this is not going to be easy. It took a long time to build where you are and the people, even though it may not be pleasant are used to it. The rules are established, changing them now will bring resistance. Want to proceed?

Then you need to change the story.

“You change a culture with stories. Your culture tells one type of story. Those who toe the line get promoted. No value of an employee or their personal life. Micromanaging of projects or no trust . Whatever it is it’s the story everyone knows.

If you change culture change the story. Begin rewarding the behavior you want to see. Let others see the reward and talk about it. Keep moving forward with the new stories.

Here is an example from Bregman: if you want to create a faster moving, less perfectionist culture, instead of berating someone for sending an email without proper capitalization, send out a memo with typos in it.

Or if you want managers and employees to communicate more effectively, stop checking your computer in the middle of a conversation every time the new message sound beeps. Instead, put your computer to sleep when they walk in your office.

Don’t begin by changing  the performance review system, the rewards packages, the training programs. Don’t change anything. Not yet anyway. For now, just change the stories. For a while there will be a disconnect between the new stories and the entrenched systems promoting the old culture. And that disconnect will create tension. Tension that can be harnessed to create mechanisms to support the new stories.

To start a culture change all we need to do is two simple things:

1. Do dramatic story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then let other people tell stories about it.

 2.  Find other people who do story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then tell stories about them.

What about your company? Are you changing culture? If you are I would love to hear your stories.

Transforming The Future Part II

 Earlier this month I posted an article by Future of Work that talked about transformation and what fundamental change looks like. It’s irreversible, substantive, changes our identity, and shifts our purpose. This is part two. Addressing the dramatic change that is happening and considers what it may mean for our collective future.

Scotty, Take It Up To Warp Factor 5.6!

We believe that western society (and quite possibly the entire planet) is being transformed in five very specific ways:

• Forecasting and understanding change:  the arts and media
• Individual rights and collective choices:  government
• Buying, selling, and trading:  economics
• What we know and how we think:  education
• Where we belong and are welcomed:  community

This is about as basic as it gets.

Back Story:  The Drivers of Change

Johann Gutenberg’s printing press was by far the most significant change of its time.  It shifted the world at large from an oral means of communication to printed, reproducible documents.

Today we are shifting again—from analog to digital forms of communication. Our ability to communicate with one another has gone from one-to-one(pre-Gutenberg days), through the print-based and “broadcast” media of one-to-many, to a many-to-many model (through the Internet) where everybody has the possibility of communicating with everyone else (at least among those who are on-line). And of course, our notion of “many” has gone from a small number to literally millions of people. Just as importantly we are using multiple kinds of media to communicate with each other—print, sound, and now video (e.g. YouTube and other web-based video systems) being the most common.

In its day the printing press changed basic perceptions of space and time. We went from focusing on the past (what had already happened) and being able to experience only those things that we could directly sense, to being able to experience interactions with people who are completely outside our everyday experience (and in some cases don’t even exist in the real world—ala SecondLife). Today our focus is also changing from the present to the future—a world in which we can now actually create sights, sounds, and even smells that don’t exist anywhere in nature; they “live” only in an explicitly-created digital world.

In addition, our mental energy has moved from being largely automatic (simply reacting to external stimuli) to becoming formally conscious of our place in a larger social context. We believe we are now at the threshold of shifting from ego-based behavior to purpose-directed behavior. That means that with the Internet we’re now learning who we each are (e.g., Facebook), all for the purpose of discovering why we are (e.g., communities of interest supported by tools like Ning, Facebook. LinkedIn, and all the other social networking sites).  Communication technologies have transformed human society several times in the past, and they are doing it once again.

Component	Printing Press	Internet
Technology	Oral to Print	Analog to Digital
Time/Space Perception	History to Present	Present to Future
Mental Energy	Automatic to Conscious	Conscious to Intentional
Behavior	Reactive to Ego	Ego to Purpose

The Deep Dive

Given that, let’s go back to those five big societal changes. The arts and media have changed considerably. In the 1500s, people’s ability to appreciate and understand only those events and objects in their immediate, direct experience evolved into to an ability to appreciate people and ideas outside their “normal” experience (think of the power of a written text to make places, people, events, ideas, and emotions come “alive” to a reader—even they are entirely fictional). The media transformed from one-to-one or person-to-person to one-to-many.

Today we are creating a dynamic, “virtual” environment in which we “live” every day—including many of our social networks. Not only do we have access to many things outside our direct experience, but because of that we must also learn to question the authenticity of almost all of what we see, hear, and sense. We’re now moving into an age in which the media actually lets us construct the environments that we want to be in and experience.  

Fueled by the power of the printed word, governmentsmoved from feudal communities to empires to nation states. Now those nations are struggling once again to take the next step in their evolution, both as independent cultures and as members of a global community.  What does it mean to be a “global citizen?” The Internet is at the heart of this evolution. The last Presidential election in the United States was a prime example; U.S. voters could not avoid taking into account how the candidates and the issues “played out” in other countries, and many non-U.S. citizens played active roles in the online conversations about both the issues and the candidates.

In the 15th century economies shifted from agrarian to mercantile models that were designed to speed up the pace of transactions in the rapidly expanding marketplace. This mercantilism matured into a capitalist structure supported by democratic forms of government. Now the old economic rules of mercantilism, based on scarcity, ownership of private property, and economies of scale are running out of gas.  (Don’t worry; we’ll come back to this assertion at a later date.) Something new is emerging as global financial markets converge and electronic commerce brings everyone into what may soon be a unified planetary marketplace.

Educationhas undergone, and is once again undergoing, equally dramatic change. The informal, almost pre-literate, form of education in the Middle Ages gave way to a centralized structure built upon the printed word and books. The 15th-century model of education (what we now call the University) was spatially centralized; students traveled physically to specific places—centers of learning—to get their education.

Today learning is becoming accessible to “students” wherever they may live and/or work (and the whole concept of “student” has broadened to include just about everyone, all the time). Earlier, basic education was the private responsibility first of families and then of local communities. Now, however, we believe that all sorts of learning venues, funding models, and methods will soon replace, or at least augment, existing public school systems. Education—beyond the very basic level needed just to survive—will be delivered by the extended communities and the work organizations to which we belong.

Lastly, our whole idea of community has changed and is changing once again. “Community” used to reflect the largely homogeneous views of a few relatively authoritarian religious institutions. The printed word began to pull apart those societal structures, and its impact was immediately seen in the way communities began splintering and differentiating. Many new communities arose, often espousing distinctive belief systems. During the Renaissance, many people gained the freedom to move physically into the communities that they wanted to belong to.

Now we have thousands of on-line, virtual “communities” that thrive completely independently of any one geographic location. We can reach out beyond our local neighborhoods to discover other people anywhere on the planet who share our interests, beliefs, fears, and desires. We can then use digital technologies of all kinds to establish communications directly with them and ultimately band together, first electronically and eventually even physically, as a market or political force, if we want to do so.

	Printing Press	Internet
Media	Direct to Indirect Experience	Physical to “Virtual” Experience
Government	Feudal to Nation States	National to Planetary
Economy	Agricultural to Mercantilism	Industrial Capitalism to Supra-National Market Regulation
Education	Informal to Formal and Spatially Centered	Universal at elementary level; work-based and continuous for adults
Community	Cultural or Religious, based on geography and tradition	Cognitive or Spiritual, based on unity of purpose

Why It Matters

Simply  put, if somebody could have told people in the Middle Ages what was about to happen to their lives, they probably wouldn’t have believed any of it. The changes that were about to occur were quite simply beyond their capability to imagine. And we are convinced the same thing is true today.

We are at the very front end of an incredibly broad and fundamental transformation. And we all have the opportunity—and the responsibility—to look for emerging patterns and make important choices about how we shape the future, both individually and collectively. So what are you going to do this Monday morning?

Want To Be An Agent of Change?

Harvard Business Review recently published an article on change. Before we embark upon a change in Business or Career we need to make evaluations by asking ourselves some relevant questions….

1. Do you see opportunities the competition doesn’t see?
IDEO’s Tom Kelly likes to quote French novelist Marcel Proust, who famously said, “The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.” The most successful companies don’t just out-compete their rivals. They redefine the terms of competition by embracing one-of-a-kind ideas in a world of me-too thinking.

2. Do you have new ideas about where to look for new ideas?
One way to look at problems as if you’re seeing them for the first time is to look at a wide array of fields for ideas that have been working for a long time. Ideas that are routine in one industry can be revolutionary when they migrate to another industry, especially when they challenge the prevailing assumptions that have come to define so many industries.

3. Are you the most of anything?
You can’t be “pretty good” at everything anymore. You have to be the most of something: the most affordable, the most accessible, the most elegant, the most colorful, the most transparent. Companies used to be comfortable in the middle of the road — that’s where all the customers were. Today, the middle of the road is the road to ruin. What are you the most of?

4. If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would miss you and why?
I first heard this question from advertising legend Roy Spence, who says he got it from Jim Collins of Good to Great fame. Whatever the original source, the question is as profound as it is simple — and worth taking seriously as a guide to what really matters.

5. Have you figured out how your organization’s history can help to shape its future? Psychologist Jerome Bruner has a pithy way to describe what happens when the best of the old informs the search for the new. The essence of creativity, he argues, is “figuring out how to use what you already know in order to go beyond what you already think.” The most creative leaders I’ve met don’t disavow the past. They rediscover and reinterpret what’s come before as a way to develop a line of sight into what comes next.

6. Can your customers live without you?
If they can, they probably will. The researchers at Gallup have identified a hierarchy of connections between companies and their customers — from confidence to integrity to pride to passion. To test for passion, Gallup asks a simple question: “Can you imagine a world without this product?” One of the make-or-break challenges for change is to become irreplaceable in the eyes of your customers.

7. Do you treat different customers differently?
If your goal is to become indispensable to your customers, then almost by definition you won’t appeal to all customers. In a fickle and fast-changing world, one test of how committed a company is to its most important customers is how fearless it is about ignoring customers who aren’t central to its mission. Not all customers are created equal.

8. Are you getting the best contributions from the most people?
It may be lonely at the top, but change is not a game best played by loners. These days, the most powerful contributions come from the most unexpected places — the “hidden genius” inside your company, the “collective genius” of customers, suppliers, and other smart people who surround your company. Tapping this genius requires a new leadership mindset — enough ambition to address tough problems, enough humility to know you don’t have all the answers.

9. Are you consistent in your commitment to change?
Pundits love to excoriate companies because they don’t have the guts to change. In fact, the problem with many organizations is that all they do is change. They lurch from one consulting firm to the next, from the most recent management fad to the newest. If, as a leader, you want to make deep-seated change, then your priorities and practices have to stay consistent in good times and bad.

10. Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?
I first heard this question from strategy guru Gary Hamel, and it may be the most urgent question facing leaders in every field. In a world that never stops changing, great leaders can never stop learning. How do you push yourself as an individual to keep growing and evolving — so that your company can do the same?

8 Niche Sites To Find People Like You

Niche Social-Media Sites

Consider linking up with one of these social-media sites to narrow down your business’s target audience. You’ll find other professionals, enthusiasts and consumers who are most likely already interested in what your company has to offer.

1. Pixel Groovy: Web workers will love Pixel Groovy, an open-source site that lets members submit and rate tutorials for Web 2.0, email and online-marketing issues.
2. Mixx: Mixx prides itself on being “your link to the Web content that really matters.” Submit and rate stories, photos and news to drive traffic to your own site. You’ll also meet others with similar interests.
3. Tweako: Gadget-minded computer geeks can network with each other on Tweako, a site that promotes information sharing for the technologically savvy.
4. Small Business Brief: When members post entrepreneur-related articles, a photo and a link to their profile appear, gaining you valuable exposure and legitimacy online.
5. Sphinn: Sphinn is an online forum and networking site for the Internet marketing crowd. Upload articles and guides from your blog to create interest in your own company or connect with other professionals for form new contacts.
6. BuzzFlash.net: This one-stop news resource is great for businesses that want to contribute articles on a variety of subjects, from the environment to politics to health.
7. HubSpot: HubSpot is another news site aimed at connecting business professionals.
8. SEO TAGG: Stay on top of news from the Web marketing and SEO (search-engine optimization) industries by becoming an active member of this online community.

First published in InsideCRM

Top 12 Bookmarking Sites

InsideCRM had some great information recently about sites every business should know. These sites are just as important for indivduals and non-profits.

Social-Media/Social-Bookmarking Sites

Share your favorite sites on the Web with potential clients and business partners by commenting on, uploading and ranking different newsworthy articles. You can also create a member profile that directs traffic back to your company’s Web site.

1. Reddit: Upload stories and articles on reddit to drive traffic to your site or blog. Submit items often so that you’ll gain a more loyal following and increase your presence on the site.
2. Digg: Digg has a huge following online because of its optimum usability. Visitors can submit and browse articles in categories like technology, business, entertainment, sports and more.
3. Del.icio.us: Social bookmark your way to better business with sites like del.icio.us, which invite users to organize and publicize interesting items through tagging and networking.
4. StumbleUpon: You’ll open your online presence up to a whole new audience just by adding the StumbleUpon toolbar to your browser and “channel surf[ing] the Web. You’ll “connect with friends and share your discoveries,” as well as “meet people that have similar interests.”
5. Technorati: If you want to increase your blog’s readership, consider registering it with Technorati, a network of blogs and writers that lists top stories in categories like Business, Entertainment and Technology.
6. Ning: After hanging around the same social networks for a while, you may feel inspired to create your own, where you can bring together clients, vendors, customers and co-workers in a confidential, secure corner of the Web. Ning lets users design free social networks that they can share with anyone.
7. Squidoo: According to Squidoo, “everyone’s an expert on something. Share your knowledge!” Share your industry’s secrets by answering questions and designing a profile page to help other members.
8. Furl: Make Furl “your personal Web file” by bookmarking great sites and sharing them with other users by recommending links, commenting on articles and utilizing other fantastic features.
9. Tubearoo: This video network works like other social-bookmarking sites, except that it focuses on uploaded videos. Businesses can create and upload tutorials, commentaries and interviews with industry insiders to promote their own services.
10. WikiHow: Create a how-to guide or tutorial on wikiHow to share your company’s services with the public for free.
11. YouTube: From the fashion industry to Capitol Hill, everyone has a video floating around on YouTube. Shoot a behind-the-scenes video from your company’s latest commercial or event to give customers and clients an idea of what you do each day.
12. Ma.gnolia: Share your favorite sites with friends, colleagues and clients by organizing your bookmarks with Ma.gnolia. Clients will appreciate both your Internet-savviness and your ability to stay current and organized.

Gaining Efficiency in Marketing through Social Media

At first it is awkward and time consuming. It may be frustrating but engaging your customers or potential employers in conversations can produce the highest and best results possible for the effort. When a conversation happens it becomes more personal and when it is personal people become stakeholders in your success. Then the rewards of time spent in marketing through social media become exponentially greater than the effort. Get organized and get going. This article from CNN Money has some great advice.

What About Social Media And ROI

Measuring ROI can be confusing when it comes to Social Media EggandCo. created a presentation detailing some if the issues.

Not sure what to do next with your social media strategy?
Contact me: vbrannock@OrganizationalArchitects dot com

Transforming the Future

As we watch various industries collapse or beg for bailouts we will begin to see new industries and products emerge and thrive. How will you manage your career or business to take advantage of the new economy?

Transforming ourselves and our world is a uniquely human ability. Other species can adapt we can transform. The latest issue of The Future of Work Newsletter centers on four dimensions of transformation.

What are you doing to transform?

Fundamental transformation of anything has four basic dimensions:  it is irreversible, it is substantive, it changes your identity, and it shifts the purpose of the organization (in this case). Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Transformations are irreversible. We’re now changing in ways that go beyond mere shifts in opinion. The interaction of technological, personal, and organizational forces is giving us an education that forces us to view the world in a completely different way. At the end of this transformation, we won’t be able to give up the new knowledge and revert to our old ways of knowing. Butterflies can’t go back and become caterpillars. There is no “way back” machine.

Transformations are substantive. Transformations create new realities that are greater than the sum of their parts. For example, you don’t transform by moving into positions of more power and authority; you move into positions of substantively different, often richer, kinds of power and authority. Kings evolve into presidents, CEO’s into talent managers.

Transformations change who you are in the world. If everything around you is changing in substantive and irreversible ways, then who you are in the world must be changing too. Quite simply, you are called something different. New systems emerge from combinations of technologies, people, and organizations that have never been connected before, meaning that you’re now part of something completely new.

Identity is a most powerful force in our lives; all transformations (if indeed they are transformations) involve a change in identity. Key to this new way of being in the world is who you are in the world in relation to others. In the world we’re transforming into people are no longer defined by their “job” or their company affiliation; they are defined—and they define themselves—by the social network(s) in which they are enmeshed.

Transformation shift your purpose. Right now we see an emerging awareness that there is an interconnected web of existence. The important question then becomes: What is your purpose within that web? From an economic point of view purpose today must include more than “commercial profitability.” Now it also includes environmental and moral considerations.

History has given us numerous examples of these fundamental transformations. The shift from medieval to modern civilization is the one we all share as a cultural history. There were others too; for example, think about the earlier shift from a Greek cultural dominance to a Roman one. That was far more significant than most of us today can even imagine. And we have all seen transformations at a personal level—recovery from addiction, a religious conversion, shifting one’s life style after a severe accident or near-fatal disease. Our point is that we (as a Western society) are currently moving together through another profound transformation.

Individuals, communities, and societies will never be the same. The changes we’re now experiencing are affecting how we earn our livelihood, how we learn, how we organize our communities and, even more fundamentally, how we see ourselves and think about what we are doing on this planet. If, as we submit, these are the characteristics of “our becoming,” then, looking at the events around us through this lens should help us focus on investing our time, energy, and resources into efforts that will further enable the transformation, not fight against it.

In a community context this perspective means not trying to re-live the past. Certainly we should acknowledge our heritage, but don’t get stuck in it. General Motors did get stuck; its executives tried for far too long to maintain a business model that was right for a long-bygone era. And ghost towns are examples of entire communities that didn’t grasp the “irreversibility” principle that characterizes fundamental transformations.

The substantive part of transformation means that everything is connected to everything else. You can’t just “re-engineer” one part of the organization, or make improvements in one part of the community infrastructure. When the market shifts, so must your development processes, your distribution systems, your “back room” support processes, and your customer-facing activities. How many companies today still send out paper invoices? Is your company or community the one that puts the no in innovation?

Let’s review these ideas one more time.

Who you are. That’s brand, pure and simple. Brands change, names change, logos change. What’s the new identity? Maybe if GM had changed its brand (and its core identity and its skill sets and its processes) into a “personal transportation product/service company” instead an automobile manufacturer it might have survived the transformation of its industry. Caterpillars are bugs, so what are butterflies?

Purpose. Again, In Our Humble Opinion (gosh, we haven’t used that in a while), purpose must now include more than profit for companies, and, for communities, be more than simply a place to consume goods and services. And it has to be about stewardship of the environment and investment in structures and processes that build social capital.

The fundamental economic and social changes we are experiencing right now clearly have the basic, knowable characteristics of irreversibility, substance, shifting our identities, and expanding our purpose. Organizations and institutions (and even individuals) who aren’t embracing these changes and using them as an opportunity to prepare for the future are destined to fail.

Measuring Your Online Success

Part Two of Social Media for your Community Organization.

As the online shift from “markets are conversations” to “conversations are markets” continues to unfold many tools are emerging to help companies track and measure their progress in attracting and maintaining clients.

User friendly tools that provide simple and affordable tracking for twitter, facebook, YouTube and blog mentions like SociafyQ are helpful in tracking your progress. But how do you decide on what is important in measuring success.

Success is not necessarily how many “hits” to your site or page. Because web 2.0 is about the conversation and transparency of communication you should think about quality as much as quantity.

Here are some ideas for businesses and community driven organizations to consider:

What percentage of visitors to your media engage in conversation? What is the conversation? Are you creating evangelists for your product or service that are speaking on your behalf? Are visitors telling their stories?

How many problems/questions are answered and resolved?

Are new ideas emerging from your participants?

These are just a few areas to consider as you establish your metrics for measurement. There are certainly many others depending on your organization.

Remember that it takes time in any circumstances to build a quality community whether on-line or not. People usually take things slow, get to know you and see what you can offer. Offer quality in your relationships and you will be rewarded with loyalty.

Next the value of LinkedIn.