terrierista

It's all about the words

Clarity happens. One of my must-read blogs, Shades of Gray by David Murray, said this at the end of a recent post: "Let’s do the work that needs to be done rather than the work that happens to be on our to-do list."

I responded: "Doing the work that needs to be done rather than what's on our to-do list  --that's the kicker, ain't it? That's following our bliss. That's knowing what in the world we're each meant to be an ANSWER to."

This all got me thinking. Terrierista's About Me page said: "I help clients grow their business or increase their influence by building healthy relationships . . . using transparent communication: candid, respectful conversations with no jargon or hype."

I need to be more explicit about the importance of words. I can do marketing, PR, advertising, strategic planning, and measurement, but I'm a writer to my marrow. Have been since I was ten. Words are "my North, my South, my East and West, my working week and my Sunday rest, my noon, my midnight, my talk, my song" (love you, Mr. Auden). My wildest successes have been about words. They're what I do best and where I'm happiest.

Words are where clients get the most value from me. Thanks for making me think about this, David.

Here--to be clear--is what I'm selling:

• I help clients figure out what needs to be said.
• Words need to reflect reality or they're, well, bullshit. I help clients decide whether they're prepared--with help from me or others--to match the reality to the words--"walk the talk." (Some clients already have a stellar "walk" and just need some help with the "talk" to tell their great story.)
• I help clients say what needs to be said, as effectively as possible and in a way that invites relationships, whether the product is an employee newsletter, a speech to stockholders, or a bad-news announcement to the media.

That's my bliss. Let's do lunch.

(Photo: Eye of God in the Helix Nebula. Credit: NASA, ESA, C.R. O'Dell [Vanderbilt University], M. Meixner and P. McCullough [STScI], T.A. Rector [NRAO])

The journey determines the destination

On Phil Gerbyshak's Make It Great! post for today, he mentioned a post on Lisa Haneberg's blog, entitled, "Which is more important: the process or the outcome?"

It's a great post. I myself am torn between two lovers: process and outcome. Actually, it's even kinkier than that, because process and outcome are married to each other.

Terrierista is about how transparent communication (process) creates success (outcome). If the outcome doesn't match the process, it's almost always temporary.

• A great outcome achieved in spite of muddy communication is temporary.
• A bad outcome after stellar communication is also temporary.

Process and outcome are a matched set, but the process--communication--is in charge. Your destination depends on the journey you've taken. (Insert deep metaphysical meaning here.)

Pulitzer-worthy names

I'm a word dog. I love it when people use language in ways that are not only clever but functional. Words want to work, and I get goosebumps at language doing what it does best.

Terrierista celebrates transparent communication, but transparent communication doesn't have to be boring. In fact, in my book, transparent communication cannot, by definition, use boring language. Boring language loses listeners and readers and thus eliminates communication. No, transparent communication is smart without being glitzy, honest without being dull, and always a pleasure to read or hear. I offer a couple of examples--a web site and a blog whose names I believe are Pulitzer-worthy--plus a little lagniappe from Italy.

Designstein is the web site of an interactive design and development firm. Could there be a cooler portmanteau word? It's fun, it's layered, it's meaningful, and, most important, it's illustrative. The word doesn't just tell what they do, it shows what they do. These guys are the Einsteins of word-design.

Velveteen Rabbi is the blog of a female rabbinic student. The blog title hints at all that and also shows that the blogger is well-read, imaginative, and doesn't take herself too seriously. Her subtitle: "When can I run and play with the real rabbis?"

As a final delight, here's the Italian equivalent of "to want to have your cake and eat it, too"--volere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca: "to want the barrel full and the wife drunk." For most of March, I'll be posting from Florence and Palermo. I simply can't wait to rub elbows, every day, with people who have such a genius for idiom.

Let the jerks have their say

Tim Hardaway is direct. "You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

    

Hardaway, a former Miami Heat all-star, made the statements Wednesday on Miami sports radio station WAXY-AM. The NBA didn't care for his comments, and soon thereafter Hardaway--well, okay, his agent--apologized: "As an African-American, I know all too well the negative thoughts and feelings hatred and bigotry cause. I regret and apologize for the statements that I made that have certainly caused the same kinds of feelings and reactions. I especially apologize to my fans, friends and family in Miami and Chicago. I am committed to examining my feelings and will recognize, appreciate and respect the differences among people in our society."

    

"I am committed to examining my feelings and will recognize, appreciate, and respect the differences among people in our society"? Some hack made a couple thou to script that.

    

Syndicated talk show host Glenn Beck had some thoughts about all this. His take is that the P.C. police have had the effect of making everyone (at least, everyone smarter than Tim Hardaway, which includes most of the world population) nervous about what comes out of their mouth for fear that someone will accuse them of "hate speech." Workplaces across the country rigorously train their employees in what not to say or do so that they can remain inoffensive.

    

The result, says Beck, is that even extremely prejudiced and hate-filled people (at least the ones smarter than Tim Hardaway) know better than to say things like, "I hate gay people." And the result of that is that the truly dangerous people have gone underground and we no longer know who among us harbors hatred.

    

For the good of society and our own safety, Beck says, it’s important that we do know who these people are. I agree. I also think it's not only pointless but dangerous to focus on what people say (Isaiah Washington, Mel Gibson, the eloquent Mr. Hardaway), send them to rehab when they say the wrong thing, and think we've made the world a safer place. All we've done is made them pick their words more carefully.

    

If the current insistence on being politically correct is driving the real creeps underground where they can still do creepy things but just not talk about them, what's the answer? Transparent communication from all directions. Let the jerks have their say. Then it's our responsibility to be equally transparent about our feelings and values--not careful, not inoffensive: transparent. If we believe in doing right and say so, the jerks won't stand a chance.

But what does it meme? Part 3

Summary from previous post: I thought I knew what a "meme" was. The definition of the word is "a unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to another." "Thin-slicing," a term coined by Malcolm Gladwell to describe "the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and people based on very narrow 'slices' of experience," is a meme.

My troubles started when Mike Wagner started a "thin-slicing meme" on his blog, OwnYourBrand.com: "The 5 Thin-slicing Observations Meme." He was inviting readers to describe five things they look for when they want to size up a person or situation quickly. Then I started noticing other "memes" floating around, such as the "five things you didn't know about me" meme.

If "thin-slicing" is a meme, what's a "thin-slicing meme"? A meme of a meme? And how are "five things you didn't know about me" a "unit of cultural information"? A fun party game--maybe--but not cultural information.

I wrote to Mike and explained my puzzlement. His response was prompt and pragmatic:

What is a "meme"? That's a good one. I think it is a fancy term for an idea or message that changes culture and society as it is passed from person to person.

I don't think of a meme in metaphorical or emblematic ways. Not saying that is wrong. But to me that is more the role of symbols and logos and the like.

The 5 Things meme I suppose could be said to have changed some things about the blogging community/society. It introduced an occasion to become more revealing about one's personal history or private life. So in that sense it altered the community at least a tiny bit.

Well, that helped a lot. I hadn't stopped to consider that asking people to disclose five things about themselves was supporting and strengthening the open, transparent blogging mentality--which I believe is a very good thing. Mike's response took me even further in reminding me that everything we do does have a consequence and that even the smallest, most seemingly inconsequential things can alter society. Maybe "five things" is passing the concept of openness and transparency from one mind to another--a consummation devoutly to be wished.

All that satisfied me--until today, as I typed this post. Sometimes trying to explain something is what it takes to help you realize that you really don't understand it. Mike's great response--which is true and correct--doesn't explain what a meme of a meme is. ("'Why, you no-good, lowdown meme of a meme!' Tex drawled.") I went hunting. Here are a few definitions from among the 21 million available:

Wictionary (third definition): "An interactive quiz or survey spread from one user to another on the Internet." (There's a caveat: "Verification for this usage is being sought.")

Wikipedia: "An Internet phenomenon (sometimes called an Internet meme) occurs when something relatively or completely unknown becomes hugely popular, often quite suddenly, through the mass propagation of media content made feasible by the Internet." However, elsewhere on Wikipedia I found: "Internet memes are catch-phrases on the Internet."

QuixtarBlog: "A blog meme is a type of Internet meme that requires active participation by the blogger and rarely traces back to an originating source. It's often a series of questions that a blogger answers to share some personal perspective or experience on random topics."

Or, as my friend Nancy wrote after reading Part 2 of this series of posts, "It seems like maybe 'meme' deserves a place on the Bullshit Bingo card."

So here's where I am and here's where I'm staying, at least for now:

• Memes were described and named 30 years ago but are only now catching on with popular (i.e., Internet) culture.
• As with any word fad, people are using this word in goofy ways.
• Internet "memes"--and gazillions of jokes, videos, and phrases on the Internet are called "memes"--may be good or bad, funny or scary or disgusting, but the only things they have in common with Dawkins' definition is that people are sharing information and it's replicating itself.
• And for now, that's just the way it is.

The word dog in me is troubled by the sloppiness, but language has a beating heart and I'm willing to give it some time.

But what does it meme? Part 2

Memes are hot these days. Dictionaries say, basically, that a meme is a unit of cultural information that can be transmitted from one mind to another. Wikipedia quotes the term's coiner, zoologist and evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins, as saying that examples of memes are tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or building arches.

I thought I understood: a meme is like a metaphor. You don't have to explain the whole thing in words because the person you use it with will, if you're lucky, understand the backstory and layers of meaning. Or it's like a universally known movie or TV line: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." "You talkin' to me?" "Where's the beef?" If you "get" these pieces of shorthand, you get them. It you don't, you don't.

Several summers ago I read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and learned his take on the phenomenon he calls "thin-slicing"--"the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and people based on very narrow 'slices' of experience." Thin-slicing means sizing up a person or situation quickly based on available evidence. All humans do it, and most of us do it amazingly well.

The term "thin-slicing" is a meme. It's "a unit of cultural information" because it's about something important that we all do. Gladwell's two little words convey many encyclopedias' worth of meaning and intent.

So far, so good. Then Mike Wagner started a "thin-slicing meme" on his blog, OwnYourBrand.com: "The 5 Thin-slicing Observations Meme." He was inviting readers to describe five things they look for when they want to size up a person or situation quickly. I also started noticing other "memes" floating around. One that caught my eye in particular was the "five things you didn't know about me" meme.

What gives? If "thin-slicing" is a meme, what's a "thin-slicing meme"? A meme of a meme? And how are "five things you didn't kow about me" a "unit of cultural information"? Some days I gots culture, and some days I ain't.

In my next post, I'll try to lay this issue to rest for a while.

But what does it meme? Part I

Mike Sansone at ConverStations has tagged all readers of his great blog with a "Why Do I Blog?" meme: name the top five reasons you blog.

I'm an old-timer in the blog biz, having been at it since last Friday. I blog because:

• I'm suffering from the Deepwinter High Plains Windchill Blues and wanted to have some interesting conversations on interesting topics
• I have a brand-new business--a writing and editing consultancy--and wanted a way to show prospective clients my writing ability and philosophy; and
• In spite of my tumultuous 2006, I needed a new challenge, and sending words out into the bottomless chasm of the Blogosphere--and having those words read and responded to--seemed like less of a challenge than the last ten years of my life, spent trying to get my ideas and words heard and responded to in government and agency settings.

So that's why I blog. Oh, and also because Mike Sansone is a great coach.

My next post will be about memes: what the word means, what they do, why I initially had some issues with the way we're using the word, and why memes are wicked cool.

Brain-sucking buzzwords

Robert Rosenthal, founder and creative director of Mothers of Invention, a direct marketing agency, has a blog called Freaking Blog. Do yourself a huge favor and dive into this web site and blog—but they’re not the point in this post.

In a recent post on buzzwords, Rosenthal lists ten that are “heavily used as copy points in b-to-b marketing” (“b-to-b” is itself a buzzword). His list:

    

1. State-of-the-art (125,000,000 Google results)
2. Industry leader (2,040,000)
3. Best-of-breed (1,940,000)
4. Best-in-class (1,780,000)
5. End-to-end solution (957,000)
6. Leading solution (719,000)
7. Best-practices approach (606,000)
8. Unparalleled service (439,000)
9. Lowest cost of ownership (270,000)
10. Unprecedented visibility (151,000)

Bullshit Bingo, anyone? Anyone?

    

Rosenthal writes of buzzwords, “The more they're used, the less effective they become.” This is true. What makes them buzzwords—frequent use—is precisely what makes them ineffective. Why do words that originally meant something specific—words that provided an elegant shorthand for something hard to describe concisely—become buzzwords, the bane of the Transparent Communicator?

    

It happens when we aren’t vigilant about communicating with each other. Take “unparalleled service.” Yowza, that sounds classy: like something a tuxedoed maître d’ would say through his nose as he interviewed a prospective waiter, or like something the CEO of, say, Nordstrom’s would put in his company mission. It’s classy because “unparalleled” is not a commonly used word and makes the speaker (or writer) seem to have a killer vocabulary. (And thus a killer sense of business? Hmmm. Fodder for a future post.)

    

“Unparalleled” means “without equal.” Better than any similar thing in existence. Now, the odds are that this is not literally true, no matter who says it about what service, but that's not what makes this a buzzword. No, it becomes a buzzword when hundreds of thousands of people start saying and writing “unparalleled service” with no intention of going through the arduous task of actually becoming unparalleled—when what they really mean is “pretty good service” or even just “better service than you have a right to expect, you whiny idiots.”

    

When hordes of people start using it in such a lazy way, the magic is sucked right out of the phrase. The term starts to mean everything instead of one very specific thing. It becomes meaningless. It becomes useless, and worse than useless: misleading. It makes hearers and readers think they know what's being communicated to them when, in fact, not even the person using the buzzword knows exactly what he or she is trying to communicate.

    

That's the evil of buzzwords. They're brain-suckers in sheeps' clothing. They help us roll the conversation along without thinking—which always leads to disaster.

    

So stay vigilant. Make your words work hard, and question the words you hear from others. A lot of research is involved in making an approach truly a “best practice”—is that what the speaker means, or something less? Is the visibility really “unprecedented” or just “better than we’ve managed before”? Who’s blowing smoke and who’s really got the goods? Only you can figure that out.