If our military were failing miserably, that's one thing. But when there's progress, what the hell is the top senator in Congress doing making statements like that, other than coddling his base? It can only hurt our guys and strengthen the enemy. Calling Reid's remarks "outrageous" and "regrettable" is euphemistic; his comments are traitorously opportunistic. On the backs of our troops, such malice is horrific and worthy of disdain by every Amercian.
Dennis Miller had a few words for ol' Chicken Little. Hear, hear.
Business is a triangle of management, employees, and customers.
Each has a job to do.
Management provides tools and materials to employees. Employees serve customers' needs and requests. Customers give something to management.
And no, it's not just dollars.
Customers give their desires and opinions to management. Or at least they want to. Customers cry out for management's attention. Customers want management to listen.
Customers bid for response.
The thing is that management doesn't always do a good job of listening, and generally, when they are listening, they do a poor job of showing it.
The companies most loved are those that listen to customers and then show that they listen. Customers reward management with loyalty.
Listening is the first and most important job in any company.
In astrological terms, "dark matter" is an elusive substance. According to Martin White, professor of physics at UC Berkeley:
"We believe that most of the matter in the universe is dark, i.e. cannot be detected from the light which it emits (or fails to emit). This is 'stuff' which cannot be seen directly."
And yet, dark matter might be having a big impact on the universe due to its gravitational effect, just as we detected an unseen Neptune long ago by its pull on Uranus.
In business, there is also dark matter. The dark matter of business are those transactions that take place in your industry without your awareness of them. It's the stuff you don't see, and that you don't know you're missing.
What disruptive innovations will take place to radically change your business? What competitor will come along and challenge your bottom line? What customers are you missing?
Who's the 800-pound gorilla in retail today? Wal-Mart, right? The mom and pop stores never saw that coming when Wal-Mart first came onto the scene and challenged local businesses.
But look at Wal-Mart again... the online world hasn't rubbed out Wal-Mart like Wal-Mart rubbed out the mom and pop stores, but it's funny how Amazon sells mom and pop items and how eBay has its plethora of stores from mom and pop operations. Some people buy from eBay and Amazon far more than they ever set foot in a Wal-Mart.
Does this concern Wal-Mart? Do you think this impacts Wal-Mart?
Did you know that eBay gets twice the visitors to its online site than Wal-Mart does? 51 million for eBay in a month versus Wal-Mart, which had 24 million. Amazon also handily beat Wal-Mart, as Amazon had 43 million visitors in a month. The youngsters whooped up on the gorilla.
Wal-Mart has dark matter - business that happens without Wal-Mart's awareness. It bugs 'em. And it should. They're working hard to catch up.
Just as dark matter should bug you where you work. Whether you're the owner, a manager, or an employer. You can't miss what you don't know, and the attractive tug of what some unseen competitor is doing might affect the traffic to your store.
Where's the dark matter for your business? How can you tap into it?
As a child, we learn that we have importance as we can gain the attention of others. It starts with inarticulate cries - of hunger, for touch, for a diaper change. We cry out to get attention to our needs. If response comes easily, our world is secure. If not, we panic.
Fast forward to adulthood. Does this formula change?
We all want significance.
When you talk, do people listen? Or do you feel like the proverbial tree crashing in the forest?
John Gottman, an expert on relationships, writes in his book, The Relationship Cure, of what he calls the "bid."
"Let's make sure you understand what I mean when I talk about bids. A bid can be a question, a gesture, a look, a touch - any single expression that says, 'I want to feel connected to you.' A response to a bid is just that - a positive or negative answer to somebody's request for emotional connection."
If response comes easily, our world is secure. If not, we hurt. The formula doesn't change. When you bid for connection, and you receive the response of listening, you feel valued and important.
By showing that you listen to others, you also tell them that they matter.
I finished my blog's search engine. It synthesizes both posts and comments into an integrated search, plus allows filtering by media (pictures, video, and sound files) and a search by commenter.
Personally, I like the search results. If there's a picture in the post, it grabs it and shows that along with the initial text in the post.
I "finished" with tags and stories. You can check it out here.
I haven't tagged every post appropriately, but I will be. Just as I'm not done entering all of my favorite people, places, and things in the Thumbs Up section. Lots to do.
I say "finished" above because all projects are never really done; you just find interesting places to pause. The one thing I want to do yet with tags is to set up RSS feeds for them. But it's nice to have them working now.
The one page on the site not done at all is the Search page. Because beatcanvas is my own doing, I can set up search for both posts and for the comments made. I don't think other blogware allows for search of comments. But frankly, all of them should.
I had lunch with a friend today and we discussed an idea that I gave him two years ago and more recently two months ago. He's the PR guy for a local business I know pretty well, and he gets it. He understands that the world is participatory. Businesses ignore these trends at their peril. But good for him and the company he represents that he is on the ball.
I'm working on re-implementing tags within the web site this morning. One thing that's important, I think, in blog platforms but is glaringly missing is the notion of story. A story should be told in order. In the past, I've used that with the story of each painting - a reader could click into a story link here on the site and see the blogged progression of each painting - earliest post to most recent. Blogs, by nature, show the most recent post and then walk backward through history from there.
I wrote to SixApart (the makers of Typepad) about a year ago and asked why they didn't offer something like this, but in my request I called it a thread. That was too geeky of me - I should have called it what it is: a "story" - and they rejected the idea and said, "That's what tags are for." Which is true, but tags show in typical blog order. And they should. Tags are topical, and not necessarily well-represented when read as a story.
But some elements of what's displayed across multiple posts in a blog and tagged should be shown as a story. That just makes more sense. Like someone's weight loss. Or a painting. Fill in the blank for yourself.
Know of a blogging platform that allows you to choose the sort order of tagged posts? I'm interested to see how they do it, if you know of one.
So here on beatcanvas, I'll have tags, but I'll continue to have stories and they'll be separated. Stories appear in chronological order. Tags appear in reverse chronological order.
Another thing I've done here recently is introduce a random quote generator. If you go to the home page, you'll see a random quote pulled from a list of about 600 that I have. Refresh the page and a different quote appears. It's dynamic every time.
This morning, one of my favorites popped up:
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. -- Jack London
With a club... amen. If you want it, find a way to make it. Don't settle.
I've been blogging on Typepad over at Listen Well. And after a week, I have to say that Typepad is the most search-unfriendly unfriendly platform one could imagine. Evidently, I have more editorial control if I pay more money every month, but that's awfully silly to me. It's not a true web site where I can upload files. It's a writing platform, and that's all.
What's the sense in that? And even at that price, it's quite limited.
Here at beatcanvas, which I wrote myself, I have total control. And here, I have a friendly way to manage my search engine placement, right down to the page title, keywords, and metatags in each post.
Besides, I have readership here, about 100 daily (or so) readers, and about 1,000 who show up sporadically each month.
So unless I find a domain I like where I can host the site, I think I'll skip the extra payments and let the Typepad platform expire. I don't see the value in it.
In the meantime, I'll post the content here beatcanvas.
