Whether you drink Starbucks coffee or not, whether you agree with their business model or not, you have to admit that they’ve really nailed the art of communicating ideas and values using very simple presentation styles and dynamic, text-based messages (Garr Reynolds calls it Kinetic Typography). Very similar in style to the Girl Effect presentation I discussed earlier this month, these two presentations not only communicate a good message, they move people to action. And that’s the key to good presentations: moving people to action. Plus, I love the theming in both of these. Simple, clear, effective: “What if?“. So, enjoy these two “What if?” themed videos below and if you’re moved to action, do something about it. The first is for (STARBUCKS) RED: Starting today, November 27, every time you buy a special (STARBUCKS) RED product, a contribution will be made to the Global Fund, to help save lives in Africa. It’s all part of Starbucks commitment to give back to the communities where Starbucks does business, which is a key component of Starbucks Shared Planet. The second video was from Election Day and moves us to care about voting as much on November 5th (and all the time) as we did on November 4th. Enjoy and be inspired!
Twitter is cool. Wikis are neat. SharePoint is, hmmm, good? And email is email. These tools are all useful in helping us communicate with each other when we’re separated by great distances. They help us bridge the gap by providing fast, efficient means of communication. It doesn’t get more efficient than Twitter’s 140 character limit. But take a close look at these tools. They all share a common characteristic. They’re all based on written communication. While the written word may be very efficient for transferring information, it is not very effective at persuading people or making a real impact. And there is a tremendous difference between being efficient and being effective.
When it comes to organizations and team work, nothing is more important to success than communication. If your organization or team is is striving for continuous improvement, it’s imperative that really rich communication occurs between all team members, from top to bottom and everywhere in between. So why, if this is such an important practice for the success of organizations, do most of us choose to put some of the most important impediments to our success into emails or Wikis? Sure, we transfer the information that something is wrong and needs to be corrected. But that’s all we do, transfer information. Emails, Tweets, Wikis, and SharePoint don’t help us move others to action. Action, not information, is what moves us toward continuous improvement and success. And nothing moves people to action more than the spoken word.
Wow, Monday was quite the rollercoaster ride for EdgeHopper.com. Apparently, someone named GST on Reddit.com submitted my post “What Toyota knows that GM doesn’t” to his Reddit list at around 7:45 in the morning (Thanks GST). By 9:00 am., I was getting emails and Tweets that my site was down. Apparently, I was exceeding my CPU quota:
Yesterday, I mentioned that I spent a week with my in-laws in Wisconsin. They live in a small town called Kiel. It’s truly a small midwest-American town in every sense. It’s the kind of town with a water tower with the word KIEL painted in large white letters across it. The volunteer fire station blows a whistle every day at noon. Friday night high school football is a big event. The town’s three biggest employers are quite literally two small cheese-processing plants and a machinery supplier for those plants. One morning while I was out running, I could have sworn I passed the same old guy in a Green Bay Packers jacket 5 or 6 times, but I couldn’t be sure. That same morning, I passed an auction at the local ammo and archery shop where at least 150 camouflaged people were anxiously bidding on pieces of hunting art. On a walk down the half-mile stretch of Fremont Street, the main street in town, I counted 9 bars and 4 churches. Kiel is a pretty little town though. A beautiful little park sits alongside the Sheboygan River as it slowly ambles it way through the town center. Kids play on tire swings hanging from tall shady maple trees. Norman Rockwell would have loved Kiel.
Although the world around it is moving ahead at breakneck speeds, Kiel (and other towns just like it) is a living anachronism. My father in-law still uses a dial up modem connected at 54 kbps to find things on “those interwebs”. There is a 48-inch LCD flat panel television in his living room with rabbit ears attached to it. Yes, no cable, no satellite. I’ve been wondering who all of those digital television transition commercials were talking to and now I know. In my in-law’s home you hear statements like “This wind energy is just a temporary thing” (I’m not sure if they mean we’ll run out of wind or if wind energy is just a fad). To me, Kiel seems like a town straight out of Bill Bryson’s “The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-town America“.
Yesterday, I mentioned that 
