Avoiding Black Holes

My mother calls it the Black Hole of the Internet. Because I'm on the internet a lot as part of my work, it's not like I can avoid it altogether. And frankly, more of my trouble has to do with getting lost specifically in research or worse, in problem-solving. The only cure I know is to put a time limit on it.

I set a timer for 15 minutes, 20 min, an hour, or whatever makes sense for the task at hand. I try to factor in my schedule and the other tasks on my list when I decide how much time to spend. By setting a time limit, though, I have a much better chance of staying on the friendlier side of the event horizon. I expect you'll find like I do that it makes it much easier to be able to tear yourself away before you totally get sucked into your own personal black hole.

You know what it feels like to be sucked past the event horizon on your black hole tasks. There is a sense that you must be finished before you can move on or time simply disappears on you and before you realize it, hours have gone by. Some tasks are more like the proverbial tar baby than like black holes. You know what the tar baby tasks in your life look like: you tell yourself, "Just one more thing, and then I'll be done!"

If you've got one of those on your hands, then there is an adaptation to the strict time limit approach that I find works pretty well. Do the timer thing, then if you're still not done enough to feel like you can walk away from the task for real, spend 15 minutes (or more) on one or more other tasks on your list, then come back to the problem task and set the timer again.

You'll still be making forward progress overall, and if you're stuck on an intractable problem, you'll give your brain a chance to process any new information, recover from any frustration that's built up, and get creative about what to do next. In the meantime, the rest of your task list isn't held hostage to the one thing that's taking up all of your time.

Go ahead and try it for a week or two and see if it doesn't help make you more productive all the way around. And let me know how it works for you - or doesn't - I always like to know!

What life-enriching task(s) do you love to lose yourself in and how do you balance that with the rest of your life?

Career Management with LinkedIn

When I use the term career management, I use it in the sense of taking some control over your career instead of careering from job to job, allowing your job to control you. There will always be situations you can't control but your response to something like a layoff helps shape the kind of future that results.

If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. ~ Lewis Carroll

Even though I intend for this to be about using LinkedIn to manage your career, there are other tools out there too, no tool in the world will be of much service to you if you don't know what it is that you're trying to accomplish.

Here's one important key you'll get from me over and over again - just like you have to want to know what you want from your career in order to not waste your time on a job that doesn't suit you, you also have to know what you want from LinkedIn (or any other social media tool, or any other tool for that matter) so that you don't waste your time in the great black hole of the internet.

Personally, that not wasting time on the internet is a regular battle for me and one I don't always win, but that's how I know how important it is. The only way I know how to win that battle is to determine ahead of time which tasks will support reaching your goal and how much time to set aside for each task - "however long it takes" is usually not the best answer. Face it, there is always too much to do. Make the time allocation a matter of priorities and degree of confidence that time spent on the task will yield the results you're after and you'll probably be on target.

What is it, in general terms, that you want from LinkedIn? I happen to think that in addition to building your network,, it's good for increasing visibility within that network and also beyond it. Used properly, LinkedIn can be even better at establishing and improving credibility. You can also use LinkedIn as a great research tool when you've identified a certain kind of role and/or a have targeted a specific company. Use it for finding out more about companies and hiring managers, determining what skills are needed for certain roles, and figuring out what options are available out there.

So - you've identified your over-arching goal (and it's one you can control, right? If not, we need to talk coming up with a better goal) and determined that a certain amount of time on LinkedIn is likely to help you reach that goal. Here are some of my thoughts about how you can make the most of LinkedIn:

• First the obvious - scour LinkedIn for people you know and respect and who respect you back and get connected with them. I happen to be in the quality over quantity camp (ask yourself if a LinkedIn connection could be mutually beneficial), but you decide what works best for you. If you're just starting out, expect a certain addiction to the excitement that comes with finding new people to add to your network. If you've been on LinkedIn for a while, don't forget to incorporate finding new people who may have joined and inviting people you want to be in your network as part of your ongoing maintenance program.
  
  
• If you're still employed, build your network now, before you need it. If you're recently unemployed, start adding people while your skills are fresh on their minds. If you've been unemployed for a while, this is a great time to build up your network by letting people know what you've been up to. Just remember that even if you have lots of extra time on your hands, they still have a lot to do, so keep your requests short, simple, and to the point.
  
  
• Don't overlook the usefulness of becoming connected with friends and family, even if they don't work in the same industry as you. Frankly, you never know what they know. Similarly, don't limit yourself to regional contacts, even if your work is primarily regional. If someone from out of the area (so is knowledgeable and highly respected without being a direct competitor) can say good things about you, sometimes that is the very best recommendation available.
  
  
• Speaking of recommendations, make recommendations for people in your network and be sure to show your thoughtful and analytical side when you do. Not only are they more likely to say something nice about you in return, know that the recommendations that you make tend to say as much about you and your thought processes as they say about the person you're recommending.
  
  
• If you haven't started an ongoing maintenance program yet, do so now. Identify tasks (from this list of tips, if that helps) that you'll do on a regular basis - once a week, once a month, once a year, whatever makes sense - and then stick to that schedule as much as possible. If you fall off, just start back up again wherever you left off.
  
  
• Part of your maintenance program should include periodically re-vamping your Summary and/or your employment history. You can refine what you've written and make it better, or just change it out a bit to keep it fresh. Either way, your network is notified that you've made changes, so it puts your name out there in front of them again.
  
  
• If someone who is in a position to write favorably about your work hasn't made a recommendation yet, don't be shy about asking. The thought simply may not have occurred to them. Let them use their own words, but feel free to share what specific aspects of your work you'd like for them to comment on.
  
  
• You can share up to three URL's - choose wisely which ones to use to represent you. You can label each of them with more user- (and SEO-) friendly names by choosing 'Other' for the type of website.
  
  
• Consider using your LinkedIn status update and TinyURL or bit.ly or some similar URL-shortening service to share out useful information that is distributed to your network. This way you're being helpful and they're seeing your name again.
  
  
• Link your blog to LinkedIn and members of your network will be able to see your latest post(s) if they have that service turned on. If you have that service enabled yourself, it gives you something to use as a prompt to reach out and connect with the people in your network.
  
  
• Status updates are great for maintaining a passive connection with people but make sure you also use LinkedIn in an active way too. I find it easy to reach out and say hi to past co-workers via LinkedIn messaging on a regular basis or simply watching everyone else's status updates and blog posts for interesting news items on which I can comment.
  
  
• You can also become more actively engaged with your network by finding and joining alumni groups (both schools and workplaces) and other groups created around topic areas relevant to your job search and participating in discussions so that you get to know the other people in the group better and they get to know you. Be yourself, just remember to be your best self and you're likely to do well. Pay special attention to discussion topics where you can be of service to others. I nearly suggested 'where you can show off what you know' but frankly, that's just more likely to make you look like a blowhard. Stick with being in service to others and you'll be much better off.
  
  
• Use the Q&A function in LinkedIn to find additional ways you can be of service to others and look for opportunities to provide even more information (so long as it's relevant) than what was actually requested. The person needing help can rate your answer so it's worthwhile to be as helpful as possible.
  
  
• In all cases (Q&A, discussion groups, status updates, etc) remember to mind your manners. Treat it like a lunch meeting and ask yourself if you'd conduct yourself that way during either the formal or the informal portion of an in-person interview.
  
  
• Use LinkedIn to research skills needed to be successful in a role and/or to ask questions of people who can help educate you further in that respect. This is a great way to identify where you might need to update skills and/or education.
  
  
• Search on specialized terms to find out more about a particular kind of position or to find relevant job postings
  
  
• Use LinkedIn to find out more about a company (indirectly from the information available on LinkedIn or more directly from people you can contact that way) and/or a potential boss. Remember that network you've been growing? This is a great time to tap into it for information and (when the timing is right) for introductions.
  
  
• When researching companies, check to see which companies are related via common career paths. This can tell you a lot about the company, suggest additional opportunities and help you find more networking footholds. Compare job titles, check out top schools, and take note of the demographics information for more clues. If it's a company you'd like to consider approaching for work, check out the variety of job openings they have posted as well as the recent changes, new hires, and newsworthy updates that show up. Any of these can help you figure out a way in.
  
  
• Prepare for interviews by ensuring you're up-to-date on terminology and buzzwords, current thinking and concepts, and personnel movement within your industry. Use the discussion topics and Q&A section to keep your own knowledge and thinking fresh, regardless of whether you participate yourself. If you need some remedial help, you can keep it confidential by asking questions privately. You can search for people using a variety of parameters, including title, current and historic company associations, keywords for skills or experience, promotion time-frames, location, etc.
  
  
• Use your imagination to think of other ways of conducting research or engaging with people that might be beneficial to you. The sky is pretty well the limit.
  

No matter how you're using LinkedIn, it's a good idea to actively manage the process and take the position that you get what you give. You can show yourself to be helpful here too by sharing any of your own favorite LinkedIn tips and tricks. I'm also happy to answer questions that show up in the comments in the event I've left out any important suggestions or you need help creating the results you want.

What connection or disconnect do you see between how you show up and what results you see?

Convergence - TechFlash, SXSW & Women

In thinking about the issues raised at the TechFlash Women in Tech event this past week, it occurs to me that entrepreneurship that starts in the kitchen instead of the garage might be part of the solution in any effort to get more women involved in technology.

The notion that Mompreneurship is a great idea has occurred to me before - and I'm not the only one thinking this. Maya Bisineer (also known as @thinkmaya on Twitter) apparently is planning to convene a SXSW panel on the new CIO/CEO Mom, something I'm even more excited to see happen now that I understand how important it is to tap into all that talent somehow.

Although I actually found out about the SXSW panel over the summer, I'd forgotten all about it until today. In a fortuitous bit of serendipity this afternoon, I happened to run across a tweet from @thinkmaya announcing her intentions - I'd been saving it all this time so it was there when I went back to check a couple of tweets I'd favorited over the past couple of days. How handy is that?

If you have thoughts about how Mompreneurs can help achieve greater gender balance in the tech industry, I'm interested to hear them. I'd be just as interested to know if you think there is more harm than help in going down that path.

In what ways is past information relevant again regarding current events?

Emerging Commitment

Wednesday evening's TechFlash Women in Tech event didn't just shake up my sense of self. It also gave me some facts and figures bolstering a view I've long held regarding the value and importance of gender equality. My perspective is simple and boils down to wanting to maximize value more than caring that much about fairness. Tough girls can hack it and find a way to fit in - I did - but when it's a matter of a system that's sub-optimized, I'm more motivated to want to get in and fix it at that systemic level rather than rely on one-off solutions.

What emerged from that event was a picture that my rather passionate sense of the problems in gender inequality developed over the past 40 years is not wrong. There is indeed a system sub-optimization problem worth addressing. Some of the figures quoted that stood out to me:

• The majority of patents evaluated as highly innovative came from mixed gender teams but only 9% of technology patents have female contributors. Implied conclusion: get more women involved and you're likely to see more innovation.
  
  
• Women typically get 30% less than men in venture capitol funding but maintain similar output to their better-funded counterparts. Implied conclusion: get more for your money when investing in women because often they really have learned how to do more with less.
  
  
• Women are primary wage-earners in 4 out of 10 families but only 5% of tech startups are women-owned/led. Implied conclusion: Women are capable of doing the work; families and the tech sector would both benefit from increased contributions from women.
  
  
• Although women make up about half the general workforce, women make up only 24% of tech; in 1985, 37% of computer science majors were female, now it's down to 17%. Implied conclusion: instead of growing the numbers of women in tech, their ranks are actually shrinking; given the other stats, this is "key talent de-selecting itself and not coming to the table."
  
  
• Only 16% of Fortune 500 companies have women on their boards. Implied conclusions: not only do the numbers of women shrink in the higher ranks, there is a de-motivating effect on all women in tech/business because there are fewer role models and the system is again missing out on key perspectives.

And this was all just from the TechFlash event. I learned today that apparently the World Bank is of a similar mind, but from the perspective of poverty, that there is an economic advantage to investing in girls.

In my mind, these numbers paint a scary picture - fewer and fewer women in a key business sector that doesn't necessarily stop to consider the value they provide so doesn't miss them when they're gone. With fewer women available as role models, fewer girls and young women even stop to think of going into tech. With fewer women in the ranks of tech workers and no one else motivated enough to bring them into the fold, policies and attitudes that make tech a less attractive option to women remain in place and so they simply make other choices about the work they do. And the cycle continues to devolve in that way.

Considering what these numbers really mean, I can only conclude that it is in everyone's best interests - male and female, families and individuals, tech sector and general economy - for us to work together to find a way to bring more women into science and technology. It's not about devaluing men's contributions. It's not about playing the gender card or whining about what's fair (my personal favorite anti-feminism beef). It is simply about what is best for us as a society.

These numbers tell me that our system is more seriously broken than I'd realized, that we have reached a point somewhere along the way when it started to get worse instead of better. While not perfect, the laws and larger policies seem to me to be generally good enough so that's not the biggest problem right now. Where we're falling down is in day-to-day culture and implementation of those policies and in the choices that we each make. And when I stop to think about who is in a position to start to get that part fixed, I see a couple of obvious answers outright.

The first answer is we are all responsible for doing something about this collectively.

Men - find ways to listen to the challenges that women face in tech and help eliminate them, sometimes (perhaps) by taking them on as your own.

Women - don't give up on yourselves just because there are easier options available. Toughen up and do the hard work for yourselves and other younger women to follow and find a way to make women in tech a more, rather than less, common occurrence. Not everyone enjoys being a pioneer, but someone's got to do it or the path is never carved out for others to follow. We had one started and we let it get grown over.

Men and women both - encourage and support women of all ages to think of becoming involved in tech; be creative, it's not all just about the programming. It's about being cutting edge and changing the world, hopefully for the better. That last part is something a lot of women can get behind so it shouldn't be a tough sell. Remember to mentor individual women and also to actively advocate for their individual and collective success.

The second answer was a bit of a gulp for me. Between feeling I had so little in common with women for so many years, especially seeing so many of them not really push themselves to their true capacity, and feeling more drawn to men because it was easier for me to see what we had in common, it never really occurred to me to be that involved in advocating for women. And I say this as a person who has openly asserted how stupid many of our attitudes and policies are when it comes to women.

It wasn't that I thought I was better than other women; it was more (I believe now - I'm still trying to figure it all out) that I didn't realize just much of an impact the advantages I enjoyed (familial support, a genetic predisposition to stubbornness, and an unequivocal sense in key areas of my ability to provide value) really had in influencing my choices as opposed to the choices made by other women. I realize now that while I am indeed different from a lot of women, I am not, in fact entirely alone amongst my gender in those differences. Compared with that subset, the real difference is that the challenges I found difficult might seem insurmountable to others - or not worth the effort. Tough as it is to admit, this thought really hadn't occurred to me.

What I truly did not realize fully was just how troublesome it is that the women who could be doing this work, aren't. And in coming to these realizations, gulps and all, knowing my own experiences - both successful and not so much - with playing in a variety of male-dominated fields, knowing my sense of history and understanding of the playing field (as it was, is, and might be), and knowing I have the coaching skills and the leadership skills, and the general business skills to do it... I can only conclude one thing: that I too am not only capable of directly influencing the short-term and long-term outcomes with regard to women in tech, but that I have an outright responsibility to do so.

That said, I have practically zero clue at this point exactly what that looks like. I only know I have to be involved in some way. First and foremost, it occurs to me that it is important to recognize that responsibility in my sense of mission regarding what I'm trying to accomplish with my business. That means actively seeking to support women and women-owned businesses in tech with my coaching and my consulting. It means making it more clear how I can help.

I also sense an importance in figuring out how I can help younger girls when they are first electing to move toward or away from tech, even though I have a son instead of a daughter. On that front, if you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them. One of things I like about being female is an increased willingness to take the crowdsourcing approach.

Feel free to also enter into dialog on the matter. Your own thoughts and observations, suggestions and conclusions. This is a big one and we'll all have to get behind it to be able to move the ball in any significant way. As they say, though, awareness is the first step.

What conclusions can you draw from the evidence around you about what responsibilities you now (or no longer) have?

Epiphany - Appreciating Women

One of my defining characteristics over the years was shattered while attending the TechFlash Women in Tech event last night and so today, I'm working on picking up the pieces and figuring out what to do with them all now. This happens a lot in the coaching work that I do, usually with other people - my clients - and now today, it's me. It's resulted in an epiphany that affects my business and, with any luck, perhaps our society as well. At least that's my intention.

Because of my interests in things like cars and airplanes, computers and technology, radios and electronics, leadership and business success, and science of both the fact and the fiction variety, I have had a lot more in common throughout the years with men than I have had with most women. I identified with men because we shared more interests and because of that, I tended to gravitate more towards them than towards women.

Early on in my life, this became a defining characteristic of who I am as a person. To illustrate, my first comment that I made over the fence to my neighborhood friends (boys) to describe the person I'd become best friends with for many years to come was, "I don't know who she is - some dumb girl!"

As much as I often felt an outsider in the world at large, it was never more true in my younger life than with my own gender. Romantic relationships with guys was tough enough, but I stopped seeking female friendships altogether. Even today there are men who are better at nurturing relationships than I am. It's probably not a stretch to suggest that most men are better at cooking than I am because at least they feel a drive to eat.

By the time I reached college, I began to have some clues that I didn't have to form friendships only with men. While there were only a handful of us in the aviation program at Big Bend Community College, I was not the only woman. Each of us was different, but we did share the sorts of commonalities out of which friendships are born - we were each driven by a love of flying and a desire to succeed that was larger than the obstacles in front of us.

But by then, the damage had been done. Whatever drives most women to seek out female companionship had been chased out of me. I hardly ever bothered to try and when I did, I didn't know how it worked. Ultimately, finding other women in the workplace who had similar interests and faced issues similar to mine made me realize I might be missing out on something by continuing to gravitate primarily toward men.

The true shift came when I was pregnant, a state that goes to the heart of what it means to be a woman and raises all sorts of issues we might otherwise ignore or never face. I was fortunate enough then to be introduced to an electronic global village of women all expecting babies at the same time - a cohort which I have deeply appreciated throughout the years, for we're all at least a little geeky (who else would have been looking for community via computer in the mid 90's!) in addition to being a caring group of women who work hard enough to appreciate and see past our differences that we are able to celebrate each other as individuals and the commonalities we do share.

Still, I continued to describe myself as a person more comfortable with male friendships than women friends - and it showed in how I thought of my business, despite the fact that I attract marginally more female clients than men. My epiphany last night, as I sat in a ballroom filled to capacity with inspirational women, was that this concept of myself was derived mostly out of habit at this point than out of any real truth. This is not to say that I don't still appreciate men or understand them - I know that won't ever go away. But there's something to be said for fully embracing a world of successful women in ways I hadn't bothered to consider before now.

There is more I have to say on this subject - much more. What it all means to me, and about me and my business. What is so important about being inspired by other geeky women and what I want to do about that. I have thoughts and opinions on the matter of women in business in general and in technology in particular that I've only shared bits and pieces of in the past. I feel like it's time to open up that dialog and see where it takes us.

For now though, I want to begin the process of assimilating these thoughts and while that will involve some talking (writing), it also means quiet, and listening - a 'feminine' skill I have managed to learn in more recent years and for which I am grateful. So, expect to see more on this subject - and feel free to enter into the dialog.

What possibilities open up by giving up long-cherished beliefs about yourself?

TV Cables and Communications Media

Reading Kneale Mann's piece on multi-media communication reminds me of hooking up a new television recently. There was the TV with all of its HDMI, component, S-video, RCA and USB connection ports. Then there were the various devices we wanted to be able to connect and a collection of various types of cables for each connection type. I found the process of hooking everything up to closely mirror my experience with differing modes of communication.

Not that I'm likely to pursue a doctorate anytime soon, but probably 25 years ago I decided that if I ever did, I would want to do my thesis on how mode of communication affects content and the quality or effectiveness of communicating and how content and/or communication intent does (or should) affect the mode chosen. My fascination with this hasn't wavered, so it's probably no surprise that trying to choose the right cables for the right devices would make me think of the choices we make in communication every day.

I'm a huge fan of Twitter these days, but certainly not for everything. This bit of musing is a good example of a thought I can't fully express in 140 characters or less. Others are not so quick to see the value or, if on the verge of being convinced, are certain it's only likely to create more work for themselves.

"I can't even keep up with my Inbox - I spend two hours a day trying to keep email under control!" whined another attendee of the Portland Lane Powell social media seminar for businesses that I sat in on earlier this summer. I say whined because this particular gentleman didn't seem particularly interested in arriving at a solution, but others certainly share his basic sentiment. My own feeling is that such people are looking at the problem wrong, and in so doing, are making it seem much bigger than it really is.

My basic assertion is that if we collectively choose the most appropriate mode of communication for the situation at hand and the specific players involved then we effectively reduce, rather than continue to increase the effort expended for communication purposes as more options come along. And this is where the TV cables seem relevant to me.

Although there are limits to how many of which kind of connections are possible, the television is happily agnostic - it is capable of receiving just about any type of input currently used today. On the other hand, the older satellite receiver I'd chosen to connect doesn't have so many choices, the DVD player has a different set of options and the Roku box handles just about every type of output imaginable. Add to the mix the older stereo with RCA as the only audio input option, and it made for an interesting puzzle.

Although there are multiple HDMI ports on the TV, I only had one HDMI cable and only one HDMI-capable device, so that choice was easy. From there, it wasn't tough to decide which device of those capable of using the component cable should get it and how best to apportion out the remaining S-video and RCA cables. Always though, it was a question of matching up device capabilities, ports, and availability of cable.

Basically we have to do the same thing with communication methods. Personally, I'm best with written thoughts. I can read them quickly when I'm the receiver and I can think about what I'm saying before I send it out. But email and Twitter aren't always available. And written communication may not be a preference for the person on the other end. Even when writing might be a functional option, it may not be the optimal mode of communication for the content itself. Just as most people still consider it gauche to break up via voicemail, I wouldn't care to learn of a close friend's death via Twitter when a phone call or even a more personal email might be possible.

Ideally, choosing the best communication medium for the job at hand increases the effectiveness of the communication while it reduces effort. If it feels like more work, someone is probably making less-than-optimal choices - or perhaps the best communication method for your particular need hasn't been invented yet.

As for me, I'm rather like the television - happily multi-modal for the most part even though I do have personal preferences. What are your preferences? And how do you apportion out your communication capabilities? It's worth thinking about. Once I'd paid attention to all of the connection capabilities with the television, I realized that it might be useful to track down one more HDMI cable. Taking careful inventory of your communication needs could yield similar insights. It all comes down to sorting out what's optimum for the players, the situation, and the job at hand.

What's the best way to share what you have to say?

United We Stand... Or Fall

It used to be that a company's worst PR nightmare was a parent dishing at a little league game or to be prominently featured on the 6 o'clock news in a negative light. Not anymore. Now a company's worst customer service nightmare is to reap what they sow in terms of suffering at the hands of someone who truly understands how to use social media to make a point.

Hint: musicians love their instruments and rely on them to make a living. Do NOT - repeat, DO NOT - mistreat a professional musician's instrument.



It doesn't matter if it's David Carroll or the previously-better-known Louden Wainwright III.

In the matter of just a couple of days, hundreds of thousands of people have watched, commented on, and retweeted Carroll's music video, United Breaks Guitars (last check, one version showed more than 1.5M views). Tough spot for United to be in at this point, but they're doing the best they can, having completely botched all earlier opportunities to handle the matter differently or avoid the trouble altogether. Sure, the fine print reads that luggage might get damaged along the way, but presumably not through gross negligence.

Lest anyone feel inclined to blame any one individual (such as the poor Ms. Irlweg named in the song), note that more than one baggage handler was involved and Carroll dealt with multiple United employees. This was a systemic failure, all the way from the lack of caring on the part of various employees to the policies that hand-cuffed those who may have wished to handle the matter otherwise.

And it's not just Carroll who has experienced such horrible customer service at the hands of an airline. You don't rack up a million views of a video just because it's clever and well-done (though that certainly helps) - this song strikes a chord with people because they've all had similar experiences. When something resonates this strongly, social media just acts like an amplifier.

Not surprisingly, Carroll doesn't want compensation at this late date. That opportunity is long gone. If United really does use the video for training, it could go a long ways toward improving future customer experience, but no matter what, they have a long haul ahead of them to get out of the hole they've dug for themselves.

If the best way to handle such situations is to avoid them in the first place, let's take a look at what it takes to deliver stellar customer service.

First, the front-line employees themselves have to care. They are the ones who are handling bags, food, repairs, whatever it is that you're selling to or doing for customers. Front-line employees are also the customer service agents, wait staff, front desk people, flight attendants, etc who are interacting directly with customers. If they don't care about customers or their role in keeping customers satisfied, nothing else matters.

So what makes employees care or not care? Each business is a bit different but making them feel treated fairly, including fair compensation, comes to mind. If the business exhibits no loyalty or caring for their employees, it is rare they will show any loyalty toward the business or caring for their customers.

It doesn't mean that you have to throw money at the employees, but in an era when there still exists a larger-than-before pay gap between executives and line employees, and businesses like airlines regularly demand (and get) concessions from employees only to renege on promises later or fail to share the wealth when more profitable times come along, it's wise to think about the impact that has on employee morale. Argue all you want about who creates the most value for the company but just remember that the effectiveness of your customer service initiative is only as strong as your weakest link.

And there are other ways besides financial rewards to motivate employees. Give the middle managers (and their managers) the training needed to find out what is meaningful to each of their employees and the power to act on that information.

Fostering a culture of caring about customers and using that sentiment to guide everyday decisions and actions is another key. This culture of customer service has to spread throughout the organization and not be limited to front-line customer service agents reading from some script. So often we talk about empowering employees to do what's right without really delving into what that's supposed to mean and ensuring it looks, acts and sounds like the ideal of ensuring happy customers satisfied with your product or service.

When it comes right down to it, whatever the excuses are for not doing the things that result in happy customers, it just means you (as a business first, as an employee second) don't care about the customer enough to find a cost-effective way to deliver what they want. Where you might have survived a little league game or a negatively-slanted news story in the past, your chances of surviving a social media body blow today are a lot slimmer.

Now is the time to fully re-commit to your customers on a company-wide basis, starting with re-committing to your employees, fostering a culture centered around satisfying customers, and providing the training needed to make satisfied customers a reality. If you don't, you're just a social media-savvy clever songwriter away from ultimate disaster.

How have you helped foster a culture of service in your organization?

Pay Attention or Pay the Piper

Some people don't take the time to pay attention, and it can really cost them. Don't be one of those people, especially when it comes to social media and networking.

I feel genuinely fortunate to have had a long and varied career. Even more fortunate that I've now lived a long enough life to make it seem possible that I've done all the things that I have. And that I've gotten over worrying whether I seem 'scattered', but that's beside the point.

The point is, that with so much past life experience and a genuine desire to help people out, I regularly contribute to conversations about a wide variety of topics when I feel like I have something worthwhile to offer. In an era of social media as business development platform, this has yielded some interesting if, in my opinion, rather moronic, results.

Although it's been nearly 20 years since I last worked in television, where I used to be a reporter and a weather anchor, I figure my experience in the TV industry and my expertise as a career management coach is occasionally useful to people. When a recent college graduate wanted some ideas from other LinkedIn professionals for how to land her first TV gig, I joined in with some thoughts of my own.

Sadly, someone else in the group apparently uses it primarily to harvest contact information with little to no thought about whether the individuals attached to that information are in any way her target market. The fact that we're part of the group is apparently qualification enough.

Because of that, soon after my contribution to the job search discussion, I received an email that claimed not to be a pitch (then later allowed that it might indeed be that) and then went on to pitch me on some product or technology for which I have zero use or interest personally. Because I no longer work in television, and haven't for nearly 20 years.

What's really too bad about this, though, is that if she'd paid any attention at all, it needn't have been a waste of her time or mine. Although truthfully, my 90-second investment did lead to this post and it probably took all of 10 seconds for her to launch her automated pre-written email, so maybe that's why she doesn't care. Again, however, I digress.

The point is that had she taken a bit more time and approached me as an individual and customized her message to target me, not some generic me from 20 years ago who still would have felt slimed, I could perhaps have helped her out. Because I genuinely like helping people out and because I still have a number of contacts in the industry. And I probably could have given her some advice about how to better pitch her whateveritis (I immediate sent the message to the bit bucket, so I don't even know anymore what it was). Some of the advice might even have been useful.

But because of not paying attention and the fact that one of the things for which I have very little tolerance is acting stupider than you are, I don't really feel like helping her out anymore. Should she happen to discover this post and realize it's about her, the advice here should be at least as worthwhile as anything else I could have done. And look, the rest of you get it for free! You don't have to have made the mistake to learn from it!

Paying attention to where people are, what they really want, and looking to see whether and how you fit is important. Paying attention to your own mistakes (and others) and learning from them is important. If you don't pay attention, you'll pay the price.

If you're lucky, the Piper's fee will only be 30 lashes with a wet noodle. Sometimes, though, it's worse. Sometimes it's not just a pitch that didn't land; sometimes it's a whole host of missed opportunities - or more disastrously, several potential clients or markets entirely closed to you if you happen to annoy the wrong person. Just hope they don't mention you by name if they're going to go public with their annoyance!

If you've been slimed via social media, do share. If you want help figuring out how not to slime people but still get your point across, I might be able to help. Frankly, though, Havi (with her duck, Selma) and Pistachio can probably help you out even more. I highly recommend them.

What new things have you noticed lately?

Staying on Top of Tasks

I come off as hugely process-oriented at times, but really I'm not. I've simply learned that trying to work without any kind of structure yields very bad results. I can be pretty organized when I set my mind to it; it's when I fall off the wagon that the trouble starts.

Over the years, I've come across and experimented with a variety of tools, both for myself and for clients and I've learned a couple of very important things.

First, whatever tool you use simply must be a good fit for your individual personality, taking advantage of your strengths and mitigating your weaknesses. Just because it works for someone else doesn't mean it's the best tool or structure for you.

Second, find a tool that will survive having you abandon it from time to time and develop a strategy for getting back into the game of being organized. A structure you don't use isn't nearly as helpful as one that you do.

To that purpose, I actually use two different tools myself, concentrating on whichever works best for me at the time. Ordinarily, I prefer electronic management of my task list because it gives me the most flexibility in terms of availability and in adapting to the fluid nature of my life and work. My favorite electronic task management system is still LifeBalance by Llamagraphics.

Unfortunately, my handheld device and my Vista 64 laptop aren't terribly compatible at the moment, so no synchronization these days. That's where my second tool comes in.

I've discovered that in times of great stress (or non-synchronizing electronic tools), it really helps to be more tactile about managing my tasks. Good list hygiene is important to me - I can't find what still is yet to be done if all of the other nearby items are crossed out - and I like to be able to re-order tasks as priorities shift, so putting my tasks onto sticky notes and managing them in a partitioned folder works better for me than a standard list.

My strategy is to continue using a system for as long as I can, then when it gets difficult for me to keep up, I switch to the other system - sometimes just a change in scenery is all it takes to stay organized. If I fall off both systems and have trouble getting back into either one, then I give myself a short break of a week or two and hope that I don't miss anything too important. I practice being kind to myself when errors occur and use whatever problems arise as motivation to get me back into becoming process-driven again. What doesn't seem to work (for me, anyway), is guilt.

I find it also helps to work higher-priority tasks first, but have been known to shift to focus on easier tasks from time to time when I just need to get myself unstuck. Getting stuck, however, is more likely an indicator of tasks that are too big. What works then is to break the larger tasks down into smaller component tasks.

When I do abandon my systems or get hopelessly stuck, I look for reasons for why. More often I find it is the failure of a system to accommodate my needs than it is a general system failure or something I did wrong. If I can discover the source of the incompatibility, I work on addressing that for the next iteration and then I get back to using some (new and improved) system as soon as possible.

As with anything else, it's a mistake to believe that one will become 'organized' and then have nothing else to do to remain in that state. It's even a mistake to believe that one can become more organized and simply remain in that state even with a huge amount of effort.

The truth is that we capture the state of organization only periodically and then the pendulum swings through or back the the other way and we must start the process all over again of regaining a lock on organization. The best we can hope for is to stretch out the time we spend being 'organized' and reduce how wildly the pendulum swings away from it.

If you've experienced problems or successes with organizing your to-do list, I hope you'll share by making a comment. Perhaps we can help each other.

What keeps you on task?

Advice for the Jobless

More news today about Microsoft job cuts so I figure it's a good time to remind everyone of some resources that might make facing job loss easier.

For anyone who's just lost a job, I've got a decent Top Ten list of how to successfully deal with a layoff.

If you're still waiting for the other shoe to drop, preparing for a layoff involves additional important skills and advice, aptly outlined by friend and colleague, Sylvia Taylor.

I have a different Top Ten list for what to do if you survive a layoff.

Many of the suggestions I offered about using LinkedIn for job hunting in a television interview earlier this year are just as applicable to Twitter and Facebook too so well worth reviewing and incorporating into your strategy.

And now there is also a website called Lay-Off Move On that helps support people getting back on their feet again post-layoff. Check it out and maybe you'll find some gems there to get you back into the work-force again and keep you sane till you get there.

If you have other tips, suggestions, or resources, post them here in a comment. The best way I know to deal with a layoff is to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and find a way to keep putting one foot in front of another. If I can help with that process, I'm happy to do so.

What helps you keep your chin up when times get tough?

Customer Service and Twitter

I am a major advocate of Twitter these days, now that we're beginning to see some more mature uses of the medium beyond sharing the sort of latte the person in line in front of you is ordering. Reputation and brand management is one such emerging use that makes a great deal of sense to me. Breaking news is another - I do hope 'real' journalists and citizen journalists figure out how to play nicely together in a way that drives the sort of revenue that keeps trained journalists employed. We still need them just as much as we need citizen journalists.

Customer service and technical support, the role in organizations that is most near and dear to my own heart is a bit more complicated than the brand management element and may be looking at a reinvention of its own.

At this point, there are two things that I know. Firstly, Twitter (or something like it) will be involved. Secondly, we don't yet have a serious clue exactly how that will look when it's done right.

Twitter will play an important role in customer service because that's where so many customers are and there are more and more of them on Twitter all the time. To ignore customers in the Twitterverse is to sign your own death warrant.

On the other hand, to engage in brand management efforts devoid of any response that is truly meaningful to the customer is to make only empty promises. Customers figure out pretty quickly (even more so when they're talking with one another) that empty promises are just a way of pretending you're not ignoring them.

Fine - so we'll engage with our customers via Twitter and that's customer service on Twitter.

Not so fast.

To be effective and to provide value, customer service functions and technical support even more so, must be scalable and must provide more than one-off responses that are then subsequently lost. Logging customer interactions and tracking reported incidents and making this data searchable - which ultimately evolved into customer relationship management and knowledge management initiatives - are important elements to efficiently providing effective, valuable, and scalable customer service.

Simply responding to customer complaints that show up on Twitter doesn't take that into account so while it might work for a short time - and look good while it's working - it can't last. And then what you've got is a PR nightmare that no amount of brand management effort on Twitter or anywhere else can save.

That means we've got to figure out the why, the how and the detailed logistics of how to make it work. I believe this is a much bigger conversation, and some companies are clearly beginning both the discussion and the experimentation needed to move it forward. And that is truly just the beginning.

There is a great deal of work to be done on this front, which is rather exciting to me even though I'm reasonably certain it's a bit frightening to those organizations figuring out this train is already running much faster than they feel like they can catch up.

Hint - if you don't feel even a bit concerned about that, then chances are pretty good you don't even realize there is a train to catch, which means you run the risk of being run over by that train outright.

But I digress...

Before we can make much progress, we have to identify what customer service needs Twitter satisfies - and also what needs it creates. We have to identify tools and create process that help fully integrate Twitter into existing "best practices" and create new "best practices that are possible within this new paradigm we're creating. True, Twitter is just another communication method, but I've long held (about 24 years, actually) that the mode of communication actually influences the communication process itself. That too is another digression.

One "for instance" on the tool side, Socialtext might provide a solution for some needs; other tools probably exist as well and there are more needed to be built once we better understand the requirements.

On the process side, it's important to work out how best to handle the matter when a customer captures the attention of the CEO instead of a technical support agent as well as how to drive conversations toward customer service rather than away from them to someone else seen as more effective.

This is an old issue writ even larger by the existence of Twitter. Most customer service professionals dread this happening. Not because CEO's shouldn't talk to customers - they absolutely should - but that they should know enough about their inner workings of their own organizations to make the problems better, not worse, and in so doing, still follow established processes so that someone doesn't jump the line just because they know the right @ name to use.

What it really comes down to is that it's probably no less true of organizations than it is of individuals that the increased attention that comes with something like Twitter doesn't change you so much as expose you for who you really are.

In the meantime, I have some thoughts of my own about what it will take to pull this off and make customer service and support work in a world that seems inclined to tip more and more toward Twitter. First though, I'd like to hear what you think, what your questions and concerns happen to be at this point, and what you've seen and heard that works for you.

What do the people depending on me really need?

LinkedIn Job-hunting Tips

For those of you who caught the KCTS show, About the Money, tonight with a story on using LinkedIn to improve your job-hunting chances, I sure hope you got something useful out of it. If you didn't see the show, you can already find the story online so you can still pick up some quick tips if you're so inclined.

Even in 4 1/2 minutes (a lifetime by TV journalism standards) you can't really get all the information squeezed in that you might want, so my thought is to expand the list here on Survival Strategies for Techies and provide some additional detail as a companion to the story that aired.

If you've got some questions about using LinkedIn (or other social networking sites) for job-hunting, let me know and I'll make sure I address them in that post. Questions you hear from other people, or things you notice other people don't do right (even me!) on LinkedIn count too.

As another thought - if you think there might be some folks who would find a short class helpful, I'd certainly consider that as well.

In the meantime, I want to make sure to thank Krista Canfield from LinkedIn for connecting me with the KCTS crew, to Terry Murphy, the producer of the story, to Greg Davis, one of the videographers and to Tim Griffis, the other videographer and the editor for making us look and sound so good.

I also want to thank Jeanne Cost for agreeing to be a much more involved interview subject than was originally explained and to each and every one of my friends and neighbors (and their friends) who were kind enough to take my calls and return them when I was in the challenging position of having to seek someone out at the last minute. There's nothing like saying "I understand you can't help, thanks so much for considering it - do you know anyone else who could?" to make me feel like a reporter again!

For that matter, there's nothing like saying a heartfelt, "Thanks!" for making you feel pretty good about life.

Who can you thank for helping you?

Twitter - Jumping the Gap

Perhaps it's because I'm more involved in Twitter these days but I'm finding more and more evidence that Twitter is jumping the gap - beginning to cross the chasm between early adopters and going mainstream.

Of course, for some, this is about as welcome as jumping the shark but this is the stage of maturation I really love. I love the discovery of something new, figuring out how it can be useful, and then sharing that vision with others until they get it themselves. My first experience with this whole World Wide Web aspect of the internet was like that and now with Twitter, I'm actually melding that with a return to a comfort zone distinctly reminiscent of the early days of BITNet.

Near daily, we're finding new uses for Twitter. Now that it's not just about what sort of coffee drink the person in front of you is ordering, it's not just about marketing either. During the snow storms last month in Seattle, finding out weather and road status were invaluable tools for coping with all the disruption.

And Twitter is great for breaking news. Tweets today started full of news and speculation about Steve Jobs and quickly moved on to subjects like the plane crashing in the Hudson River and other topics that regularly take a bit more time to reach mainstream media.

In fact, it was at least three days between when I heard about the pantsed Vail skier via Twitter and the first forwarded email in my inbox. News junkie that I am, I'm following news-oriented Twitter accounts as fast as I can discover them.

From these uses, it's not at all a big leap to thinking of using Twitter in emergency situations including using Twitter as an emergency broacast system and the possibility of having Twitter play a role in a larger technology solution for emergencies and disasters.

Twitter has been a great discovery mechanism as well - finding new people, finding blogs like the one published by Washington State Department of Transportation and finding lots of other great sites and interesting information.

It wasn't so very long ago when the notion of being rescued with Twitter was a big deal. Now that this seems an obvious go-to, I wonder where we'll head next with this technology. We like to make predictions this time of year - how do you see Twitter being used in the future and what would it take to get there?

In any case, the pattern I've noticed is technology is often used for fun before it's real usefulness is identified and put to work. It doesn't hurt to think about what's fun in our own lives and how that might be made useful.

How do I use technology to move me forward?

Fail Big - Count Me Out

When startups are encouraged to fail big, I'm pretty sure no one had in mind the recent troubles with Count Me In, the same company Small Person's soccer and baseball teams have used over the years to handle registrations. I'm just glad now that I did not end up working with them as I'd imagined a year ago that I would. Sometimes there does seem to be some grand design in the universe.

At the very least, it's one more reason to believe the adage, "it's better to be lucky than good."

For those impacted and those associated with the company who I know to be good people, I wish the best. I'm sure this isn't an easy situation, but hopefully it can all be resolved with a minimum amount of damage all the way around.

For the rest of us, I'm sure we're just glad to be clear of the blast zone.

What are the potential long-term consequences of today's decisions?

Raising a Compassionate Geek

Amidst the chaos of students readying their collection of engineering contraptions based on ancient Chinese technology, Kristen found me and put a copy of ParentMap into my hands. "The story on the Dalai Lama starts on 42," she said as I started to thumb through the pages.

The story wasn't about the more general relationship between the Dalai Lama and his native Tibet. She had read an article I'd written about Small Person's encounter with His Holiness last spring and wanted follow up on what sort of lasting effect he and I had noticed since then.

The educators at Seattle Country Day School get it - science and technology are important, but these are not the only keys to success. Learning how to collaborate with others and to see the world from more than one point of view are important too.

I see this pretty clearly when I'm coaching geeks. When technology professionals have more than sufficient technical skills but still aren't achieving all that they want, we often discover that the missing ingredient is further development of their (sometimes neglected) soft skills - collaboration, compassion, and building strong working relationships.

Small Person is most definitely well-rounded in that respect. As innovative as he is, and as good as he is at building things on his own, he also shows a talent for working well with others, listening to differing viewpoints and integrating them with his own ideas. I have no doubt he'll go far.

As a parent, I encourage that balance because I see how much it helps my clients. It is important to play to our strengths, and it can also be a good idea to take another look at areas we may have dismissed in the past as unimportant and consider the possibility that there may be some value there too.

What role does compassion play in your work and life?

News for the Pressure Prompted

On balance, I'm not a procrastinator; I'm simply pressure prompted. Last night I finally registered for the PSCA coaching conference. If you are a leader, an educator, a coach, a parent, or anyone else who is interested in self-improvement, you'll want to register too, I'm sure of it. There's still time to get the Early Bird discount but time is running out, and that is the primary distinction between being pressure-prompted and procrastination.

Being pressure prompted (for real - not just a rationalization) means that the closer we get to a deadline, the more crystallized our thoughts become. Where earlier on, there seems like too much time and too much space, suddenly when it simply must be done, everything becomes clear.

Sometimes I let it go too far and I'm sure others do too. Too much pressure, and then my thoughts become muddied; I've gone past the point of clarity and I'm too stressed to think clearly anymore. In this stage, I begin to feel slightly panicked.

Being pressure-prompted is often a good thing but it's not without its problems. Sometimes in the midst of all that clarity, I realize I have a perfect idea or solution... but without enough time to execute. This puts me back smack in the middle of procrastination-land. Nothing is happening or plans have to be dramatically shifted to accommodate the issue of not enough time.

When it's a matter of being pressure-prompted, there is still action. Like a seed germinating, the activity is just all internal or underground, where you can't see it. Procrastination generally involves being stuck, with no real action, activity, or progress taking place at all.

Sometimes I perceive (rightly or wrongly) obstacles in the way of my goal that I have trouble seeing my way past. When I'm smart, I realize that I'm stuck and I get my coach on the phone. Usually a quick conversation is all I need to get myself back on the path of movement. This external viewpoint helps get past the blinders we each tend to have - yes, even those of us who are trained to know better.

You can benefit from some of that training too, even if you're not a coach. You're going to hear more about this upcoming conference in the next few days and I promise to make the rest of the information that I include worthwhile, even if you're not planning to attend the conference. Be sure to subscribe to the TechSurvivor blog to receive updates so that you don't miss anything.

In the meantime, be sure you check out the information about the conference, Creating Conscious Choice and Change - Learning and community-building for individuals and organizations to be held on February 5, 2009, in Seatac. Do it now, before time runs out.

What are you waiting for?

What To Do If Your Job Survives the Lay-off - Top Ten

Today we've all just begun to absorb the news about the Washington Mutual layoffs yesterday, significant enough to necessitate early notification under the WARN Act. At 34,000 affected over the course of the next year or so, the actual number on the WaMu layoffs is huge. While that is a lot of people planning to be out of work, some people will be dealing with survivor guilt rather than dealing with losing a job.

For the people hititng the streets, it can seem like an enviable position, still going to work every day. The truth is that it doesn't always feel that way when you're the one wondering how you were spared when so many of your co-workers were let go and you're trying not to think about how you're likely to fare in the next round of layoffs that could come along later. Surviving a layoff can be just as stressful as getting a pink slip. Officially hearing what we've suspected for a while now, that we're in the midst of a recession, just makes it worse, wondering if and when the other shoe will drop.

Despite the downsides, there are clearly considerable upsides to surviving a layoff. Here are some tips to make the most out of the opportunity.

1) Take time to grieve - Grieving can seem counterintuitive when your job has been spared, but the significant changes involved when others around you lose their jobs means that your life and work will be different somehow. Those changes mean some kind of loss for you too, so take time to recognize that loss.

2) Take Stock - Take time in the midst of everything else to identify your strengths and your accomplishments and collect evidence of these while you still have easy access to that. Not only will it help you realize that you do indeed deserve (as much as anybody) to continue working, it will be helpful material in the event you too find yourself looking for work.

3) Identify top priorities - Figure out what work most needs doing now that there are so many fewer people to get it done. And decide what tops your personal priority list. You may have a lot more on your plate for a while, so it's more important than ever to plan on purpose how to spend your precious time and attention.

4) Sieze opportunities - Change generally means chaos and while that can be uncomfortable for a lot of people, it also can mean increased opportunities. Take advantage of being in the right place at the right time and step up to meet the new challenges with vigor.

5) Stay positive - You may be asked to do a lot more with a lot less and you may worry about your own job down the line, but for now, you can protect yourself best by keeping a positive outlook. If you do find it necessary to speak up about a problem, look for the most positive way to present it and make it clear you are willing and able to participate in finding and implementing a solution.

6) Start (or keep) networking - Network to help out-of-work friends. It will help them now and can help you in the future if you should find yourself pounding the pavement later on.

7) Save up - With the possibility of more uncertain times ahead, this is a good time to use the job you still have to set aside money as insurance against loss of income, even if it means cutting back expenses to do it.

8) Stay in touch - Go ahead and meet with ex-co-workers (or soon-to-be) for coffee, lunch, or drinks. They're your friends and you can help each other network. Try to keep it one-on-one, though to avoid large numbers of ex-employees who may still be in grief mode or to spare a handful of ex-employees the "business as usual" conversations likely to predominate amongst groups of people still employed.

9) Cultivate a new perspective - Take advantage of the changes going on around you to spend some time questioning assumptions and playing with new perspectives. You never know where these might lead.

10) Get help - Find a helpful and supportive online group or form your own mini-support group to get through some of the biggest changes, If you feel like it's worthwhile, you can also hire a coach to help you strategize your next move. Just don't think that you have to figure it out and deal with it by yourself.

If you are in the more awkward position of being in a job that's on life support, do the prudent thing and take advantage of being able to work for as long as you can, look to Sylvia's list for how to prepare for not having a job later on, and plan ahead for what to do if you're not working for a while.

How can my friends and I help each other right now?

Customer Service Fiasco at Seattle City Light

Remember Lily Tomlin from the days when there was a monopoly on phone service? "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company." Apparently, the same has been mostly true for at least one power company the past few days. The good news is that with a spotlight on the story, and enough public outrage, apparently Seattle City Light discovered they do have a heart after all - or at least found one they could borrow, under pressure from the mayor's office.

In what surely must have been a PR nightmare, a 13-yr-old boy who is well-known in his neighborhood for fundraising for good causes lost his cat up a 40-ft utility pole when it was chased by a dog. When KING aired the story in their news broadcast last night, I wasn't the only one shocked and bothered by the stupidity of SCL in claiming the cat could come down on its own from that high up a pole (as opposed to a tree), surrounded by buzzing electrical wires.

While plenty of trolls began advocating rocks and BB guns, there is something about the plight of an animal that finds itself in trouble through no fault of its own that tends to get people motivated to take action. Eventually SCL was talked down out of their own tree and apparently rescued Kitty from the pole. Hurray for angry customers.

Why do I bother to speak out about this in public? I regularly comment on customer service issues because it's not just about technology for me. It's technology AND interacting well with other human beings with an eye toward making the combination personally and professionally profitable whenever possible. In this instance, Seattle City Light shot themselves in the foot though with any luck, their efforts this morning may have redirected the shot so that they'll only have suffered a glancing blow.

Telling strangers motivated only by their own sense of justice to call in support of rescuing a cat on top of a utility pole that (as reported by one such caller) that the owner should have kept better watch on the cat is not good customer service. Some of these people were even in the neighborhood expected to be impacted by a brief power outage, were it to be necessary to rescue the cat and if they are willing to go dark for a bit, then that ought to have been a good indicator of public sentiment.

As a customer service agent with no power to actually change policy, what could these folks who were receiving phone calls have done? Tough call, but here's my best guess from the sidelines...

First, once you realize that you're dealing with more than one call, get more information and take the time to check out the story yourself. It should not be a surprise, even to people who don't care that much about cats, that this issue isn't going to just go away on its own.

Next, notify a supervisor immediately of the issue, just like you would report a power outage or any other big event that is likely to result in a lot of calls. Then begin collecting data on the calls and let each caller know that they are not alone in their outrage and that their comments are being collected and forwarded on for further review of the situation so that they truly feel heard and that some sort of action will result.

For those callers who tried to reach supervisors and were denied, my recommendation is the agents should have put them through. This is not the sort of thing you should try to deal with on your own. If the supervisor already on the line with another outraged caller, then say as much and ask if the individual would like to hold or to have their comments added to the others.

Ultimately, it may be necessary to point out that there is such an extensive response on the matter that supervisors can't talk to callers and take action but worded correctly, this should be taken as good news by the callers.

If they were really smart (and it's probably not too late for this), SCL would begin posting cat rescue updates on their website. I realize that might sound like poor resource management, but really it's not, when you consider the importance of call avoidance. Now that the cat is no longer up the pole without a way down, you don't really want to keep fielding more calls from irate pet lovers. Plus, if you have some good photos and a good story to talk about how you came to realize the situation was a much bigger deal than you originally figured it to be, yada yada yada, you might even be able to turn a PR nightmare into something else that makes you look a lot better.

Whether you're an employee (of any kind), a politician, or a power company, it's as much about perception as anything else. SCL has stopped the bleeding in that area but could really benefit from a blood transfusion now after the fact. Openly pointing out what they did right along with an appropriate amount of humility over what they did wrong will go a long way to improving their public image.

How do you recover from personal PR nightmares?

Before the Lay-off

My post about dealing with a lay-off seems to have struck a nerve with some, so I'm glad I put the information out there where it can be useful to people. It was very much written from the perspective of dealing with the shock of going home from work early one day and not going back for the rest of the week - or the week after that.

There is another perspective - when you know (or suspect) the shoe is about to drop - and my friend and colleague, Sylvia Taylor, has excellent suggestions for facing a lay-off. In five important points she details how to prepare for getting laid off and begin moving on from there.

I agree wholeheartedly with Sylvia's suggestions, believe they dovetail nicely with my own that apply a bit more after the fact, and I totally love her writing. Regardless of whether you might foresee a potential lay-off in your future, you should check it out. It's good information to keep in your back pocket, if nothing else, and chances are good that in this economy you will know someone who needs it, even if you don't need it for yourself.

In the meantime, I encourage everyone to hang tough together and help each other out as best you can. That's what makes the ride worthwhile.

What moves now will prepare you for greater success later?

Some Off-the-Grid Internet Scenarios

A while back, I mentioned the possibility of a future where we might have internet off the grid. Based on comments I've received and ongoing search statistics, this seems to be a popular topic these days, so maybe it's time to elaborate further.

First, let me make extremely clear - while mostly knowledgeable in most of the areas I delve into here, I am far from expert. I would, however, love to get a dialogue going on the subject, as I believe it's a useful converation to have. At the very least, there are enough different implications here for multiple science fiction stories. There may be some business opportunities too.

Scenario - Commercial power available but in limited quantities
If society has access to some but somewhat limited amounts of commercial power, then obviously there would have to be some kind of prioritization or auctioning to decide who has access to that power. Think television/radio spectrum frequency distribution. Under such a set of circumstances, I can imagine that at least some server farms might have access to at least some commercial power but it might not be 24x7. Average businesses and individuals would likely not have access to commercial power - if they did, we wouldn't need this conversation.

If this scenario were to come about, then much of the internet might look from the outside like it does today, except that businesses and individuals would need individual power supplies such as from solar, wind, or geothermal sources in order to connect to it. You'd have access to the internet pretty much as you're used to now, just not all the time like we have today.

Since others would be in similar circumstances, you might be able to access static data (such as website pages) right away but something like an email response to a question (especially involving other individuals and smaller businesses) would be somewhat delayed. Solar-powered wi-fi routers mentioned in my previous post would be an important element in keeping such a system working.

Scenario - Little or no commercial power available
In a more post-apocalyptic scenario, there might not even be enough commercially-available power to run server farms but that doesn't mean the internet has to go away altogether. We've gotten used to the near-instantaneous nature of data transmission across the internet but those of us who remember the days of Store and Forward know that data can still move even when it gets held up for a while.

In my imagination, it would look a lot like the ham radio National Traffic System which uses local traffic nets to help move information. Ad hoc peer-to-peer connections would come up and down according to each individual's access to power and like a bucket brigade, or BitTorrent sharing, we'd pass along each other's traffic while accessing what we want for ourselves the same way.

Quite possibly, the data requests we make ultimately will be delivered to servers that aren't themselves up 24x7. The result would be request, delay, fulfillment - or, a lot like how cross-oceanic calls used to be placed where the request would be made of an operator who would make the connection while you're off-line and then ring you back when it was available. If that's too challenging for modern minds to fathom, think instead of holding for a call from the President.

In such a situation where data must regularly travel multiple intermittently-available routes, it may be that some additional protocols must be developed to optimize transmission but it's surely possible, even if it means falling back to simpler data types. Error correction would be the biggest problem. If a packet gets dropped along the way, it could take days to put it all back together again, depending on the severity of power accessibility. We're definitely talking about a different sort of animal than what we've become used to.

The solar-powered wi-fi routers would be a virtual necessity to make such a system very workable and almost certainly some social engineering would be required too along the lines of scheduling uptime so that data requests could be made and forwarded in a "timely" fashion.

Each scenario would have its own impact on what everyday life might look like but some commonalities exist. With a shortage of fuel, it's likely we'd be living in smaller communities oriented around food production. But instead of the near-isolation of frontier towns or the relative lack of communication between older European villages, we could still communicate and share with one another digitally.

If there is enough commercially-available power, we may even be able to continue with much of what we've come to expect is normal in terms of information-age business and commerce except that working in remote virtualized groups would be more common than larger groups housed together in cities.

Of course, if cities get better about their own food production, that would be another game-changer and there are some interesting possibilities around that as well. For that one, you'd have to talk to my brother-in-law - he's got some great ideas. If it's something that interests you, let me know and I'll put you in touch.

How do you see the future?