A Bigger Voice

Lessons from Traverse City

It's been over a week since I had a conversation about social entrepreneurship with twenty like-minded individuals in Traverse City, Michigan--people who believe in the idea of "doing well and doing good."

What I took away from that experience:

Lesson One: Dive in, the water's fine. A Bigger Voice sometimes requires that we act in order to further our thinking. When faced with the idea of presenting to a group of strangers, I found myself clarifying what A Bigger Voice is, in a way I hadn't before. For months, I had been working on the Crystallize phase of A Bigger Voice Model (formerly referred to as Full Expression.) This includes understanding how my life story has led me to this work, word-smithing what the outcome is when A Bigger Voice is as big as it can be (the answer to the question, "So, what?"), finding the nuggets to hit upon when explaining what A Bigger Voice is and is not, and honing the wisdom of A Bigger Voice (e.g., what makes it distinct and innovative.) These are not small questions. And yet, knowing that I had a deadline moved me into a creative space that helped synthesize all the discussions and emails and message threads and musings over the last 9 months.  On the plane, I wrote down these principles of A Bigger Voice:

•  Do well and do good. A Bigger Voice is about profitability + social good.
• One voice can start a community. A Bigger Voice is intended to serve the innovator with remarkable wisdom. Like any good jazz combo, one individual provides an idea that others can riff off of for a many-to-many conversation.
• Community creates stunning results. The tapestry that's woven from conversations with others is where the big payoff occurs. What we can create alone is miniscule compared to what we can create together.
• Sustainability requires monetization.  Monetization comes from creating value in the free marketplace. Without this, all the work of A Bigger Voice is for naught--the community, the innovator, the cause is not sustainable.

Lesson Two: Creating a community requires knowing one another. My goal in going to Traverse City was to plant the seed for a community--one that resonated with the ideas of A Bigger Voice. Over half the time spent at the gathering was in getting to know who was in the room--the depth of participants' passions and their experiences in pursuing those passions. Individuals talked about three decades of building communities, about speaking around the world on the importance of fresh water, about using mentors to lift the poor out of poverty, about exploring belief vs. truth, about changing the ways in which we learn as adults. Can you feel the excitement of being in a room full of people like this?  That's where community starts. By knowing each other more deeply.

Lesson Three: Communities will naturally shape their experience. During the two hours of our time together, the participants added in pieces to the experience that I hadn't thought of--as small as standing up while introducing fellow participants, as big as deciding that they wanted to meet again as a group in the near future, as innovative as creating a book club flavor by reading a recommended book before meeting again. It was thrilling to see this unfold before my eyes.   

Lesson Four: By focusing on community-building, ideas for monetization naturally emerge. It was not my intention to make money from this gathering. Yet I came away with a clearer understanding of how A Bigger Voice, when launched as a business, can provide value in the marketplace. I could see where participants struggled, where things felt fuzzy or frustrating, where they were hungry to learn more. These are all clues for monetization. I came back home with a clearer place of where to start creating a revenue stream, and the pieces that would build off of that starting point.

I have a belief that the strongest communities have both in-person and virtual gatherings. It's my hope that the community for A Bigger Voice will follow this model. Traverse City was my first experiment and I plan to do more. I'm planning on visiting Houston in November, for a similar type of gathering.

Why Houston? The answer goes back to why Traverse City and points to one of the tools used in the Build Community phase of A Bigger Voice--networking. I went to Traverse City because of Dave Murphy, who knew other connectors in the area, like Marguerite Cotto and Elaine Wood, my hosts for the gathering. The three of them tapped into their networks to get the word out about the gathering. In Houston, I'll be tapping into a friend who I met just last year, a fellow panelist at the Texas Conference for Women, Laura Bellomy.  She's an uber connector of strong, creative women in the Houston area as well as a blogger.  Laura has been running a tight group, aptly named the Power Chicks, for many years.

Which brings me to Lesson Five: Use your network to kickstart a community. It's so much easier and more enjoyable.

My thanks to Dave, Marguerite, and Elaine for hosting me and continuing to dream with me. (That's me with Dave in Traverse City.)

My thanks in advance to Laura for helping me further my dream in Houston. 

Biggest Mistake Made By Event Organizers, Concert Producers, and Corporate Trainers

I've been obsessed recently by the words, front end and back end. Front end is the focus of traditional publicists and marketing professionals, conference organizers and producers of musical events, and workplace trainers. They focus on visibility, the Big Splash, and memorable experience. They delight in airtime, broadcast mediums, and media coverage. Getting on Oprah or playing Carnegie Hall is the Holy Grail.

And what I say is, "Where is the back end?" The back end continues the conversation, the learning, the connections, the joy. The back end engages and turns the one-off experience into a long-term relationship. The back end has the ability to transform.

Digital immigrants may be socialized to accept the one shot event--a theatre production that comes to town and then leaves, a conference with interesting speakers and a tote bag full of business cards and brochures, a well-done training that inspires for a few days to do things differently, a book signing at a local bookstore. I've done my share of all of these.

What digital natives want, and what digital immigrants should want, is more. More connection, more conversation, more of the story behind the story. They want the back end--the virtual gathering place to see what other people thought of that new blues band or additional commentary on that baroque chamber concert by the artistic director. They want to know what else the book author has written and what she thinks about on a daily basis and what her newest project is about. They want to know how they can get involved, even if they had to leave early from the event promoting a social cause. And by the way, they want to see data on how cause is helping others and more about the founders of the cause. They want to continue their learning on the new skills that they picked up at a workshop and ask questions not only of the instructors but also of the other attendees. Did you have as much trouble trying this new stuff out as a I did? They want to see photos and video of the four-day conference that they could only sample for a day. They go online for all of this.

If you want to have real impact in the world, a bigger voice, don't just focus on front end. Front end without back end is what we've been doing forever. It worked before because it's all we had. We can do more now and our constituents, audiences, readers, community are expecting more.

Front End + Back End = Stunning Results

Tell me your success stories using front end and back end. We need case studies, role models, best practices. Because change is not easy......

Dora's Big Adventure

I have this theory that communities provide three fundamental things that human beings seek: Comfort, Joy, and Empowerment.

1. Comfort. It's that feeling of being with like-minded people, kindred spirits, people who "get me." I know that I belong. When I did group coaching for boundary crossers last year, I heard this phrase repeatedly: "I thought I was the only one who felt like that." Communities can provide the glove that fits perfectly and in the process, give each of us comfort that we are not alone.

2. Joy. There's strength in numbers and in communities, this can translate into joy. I think of my experiences as part of a marching band in high school, as a sorority member in college, and as a member of an online coaching community. Being part of something bigger than myself makes me proud and inspired. I feel joyful. Within the ABV team of consultants and advisors, we have a mini-community. It's joyful because I can learn and laugh, with people I like and respect.

3. Empowerment. Yes, this word is overused to the point of cliche. So let me say what empowerment looks like to me. Empowerment is finding the capacity to do something that previously seemed out of reach. It creates the confidence to act. In fact, this newfound capacity compels me to act. I don't know if there's a domino effect, where comfort and joy lead to empowerment in a community. But it sure seems like if you have the first two, the third is not far behind.

I recently received a comment on my other blog, Ordinary Life, Extraordinary Living, which pointed me to what can happen when we fully engage in a conversation. It starts with advice distilled from an in-person community of smart women, then moves to comments from readers providing their own advice, to a woman, Dora, in Hong Kong, who takes the advice to heart and decides to quit her job and buy a one-way ticket to London. Click here to read the thread of this conversation. It clearly shows how the comfort, joy, and empowerment of a community can produce a stunning result.

What big adventures are in store for this community? I can't wait to see what unfolds.....

Social Entrepreneurship

In doing some research for an event I'm facilitating in Traverse City this week on social entrepreneurship, I came across two articles on the topic:

• The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship by J. Gregory Dees, a faculty member of the Center for Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke's Fuqua School of Business.  Dees makes the connection between the roots of the meaning of entrepreneurship and the social part of social entrepreneurship. Written in 1998 and revised in 2001, it gives a starting point for defining social entrepreneurship.
• Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition by Roger L. Martin and Sally Osberg. Written in 2007 for the Stanford Social Innovation Review, this paper gives numerous examples of well-known social enterpreneurs. More importantly, it makes the distinction between social entrepreneurship, social activism, and social service provision. The paper covers a lot of ground and I've only scanned it. One area that I take a different view of is the three components of social entrepreneurship provided in the paper. The authors talk about social enterpreneurship as creating a new equilibrium that improves a human condition, thus leading to transformative and lasting change. What I take exception to is the idea that the old equilibrium is "inherently unjust." Can't we improve a human condition without creating an "us" vs."them" attitude? What does the victim packaging really do for the cause? Well, those are my first thoughts. The paper deserves a closer look, maybe on the plane....

As with most topics these days, there's more information on the Internet than can be digested . One more source of ideas on the topic is on a blog sponsored by the Skoll Foundation, where there's a lively conversation on a posting, Defining Social Entrepreneurship.

Enjoy!

Case Study: From Dictatorship to Democracy

The Wall Street Journal recently profiled Gene Sharp, founder of the Albert Einstein Institute and a pioneer in researching non-violent resistance principles, based on successful uprisings to dictatorships throughout history. His wisdom is simple: Any dictatorship will eventually collapse if its subjects refuse to obey.

The Wikipedia entry for Gene Sharp goes on to say:

"Sharp's key insight is that power is not monolithic; that is, it does not derive from some intrinsic quality of those who are in power. For Sharp, political power, the power of any state - regardless of its particular structural organization - is derived from the subjects of the state. His fundamental belief is that any power structure is based on the subjects' obedience to the orders of the ruler(s). Therefore, if subjects do not obey, leaders have no power."

Sharp combines this wisdom with practical application in a 90-page handbook for political activists, From Dictatorship to Democracy. Downloadable from the Internet, the hard copy is translated into over two dozen languages. It's a testament to how Sharp's insights have impacted revolutions around the world. According to the Wall Street Journal article,

"Spread via the Internet, word-of-mouth and seminars, Mr. Sharp's writings on nonviolent resistance have been studied by opposition activists in Zimbabwe, Burma, Russia, Venezuela and Iran, among others. His 1993 guide to unseating despots, "From Dictatorship to Democracy," ...was used by movements that toppled governments in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan....He offers a list of 198 methods of nonviolent action, like the staging of mock elections to poke fun at problems like vote-rigging, using funerals to make political statements and adopting symbolic colors, a la Orange Revolution in the Ukraine."

Sharp has written other books but his handbook has been the most influential, because of its direct applicability for political activists around the world. It's an example of what can happen when remarkable wisdom is combined with practical application, concisely and effectively.

Interestingly enough, Sharp had a benefactor for his work for over two decades, Peter Ackerman, a former doctoral student who hit it big on Wall Street as an investment banker. The two parted ways in 2004, when Ackerman started pushing for spreading the word through a wider variety of mediums, e.g., video. Since then, Ackerman has underwritten production of two documentaries and the creation of a video game. His International Center on Nonviolent Conflict runs seminars and workshops for activists on nonviolent conflict.

This case study offers several important lessons for A Bigger Voice. During the pilot for A Bigger Voice, we streamlined the roadmap to having a bigger voice:

• Phase 1: Crystallization. This includes the innovator's wisdom, a vision of the "Great Result" from applying the wisdom, and the story of the innovator. Gene Sharp's work shows what's possible when this phase is done well, with an emphasis on practical application.

• Phase 2: Community-Building. A Bigger Voice uses technology, branding/marketing, and networking as tools for building a community of kindred spirits. While both Sharp and Ackerman have used all three, a look at their respective organizations' websites show a focus on research, dissemination of information, and education, not community-building. In other words, the conversation is one-way, without a virtual gathering place for like-minded activists to share experiences and learning. What is possible with a focus on community-building, especially given the global application of nonviolent conflict?

• Phase 3: Sustainability. Monetizing and monitoring fall under this phase. Monitoring is the feedback loop back to Crystallization and Community-Building. Monetizing means tapping into the marketplace value of Crystallization (Sharp sells his handbook for $6) and Community-Building. Unfortunately, the traditional mindset is to look to how non-profits are usually funded--through grants, philanthropy, and private donations. Ackerman funds his center privately through a family philanthropy. Before pulling the plug on Sharp's Albert Einstein Institute, Ackerman estimated that he had given "in the low eight figures" over two decades. Since then, Sharp has operated on a shoestring budget. Who benefits from more democracies in the world? I'd love to see what Michael Gerber could come up with for a business model on this one.

Like a good coach, I always see where there could  be more. More impact, more sustainability, more change in the world.

The Long Tail

I finished The Long Tail  by Chris Anderson a couple of weeks ago but have been procrastinating writing a post about it. Maybe it's because there's so much that resonates with me that it's hard to pick one or two things to talk about. It was the same when I read Clay Shirkey's Here Comes Everybody.

So a few points:

• The book was published in 2006 and there's not one mention of YouTube, even though the author discusses online video and viral videos (as an emerging medium in 2006.) YouTube was created in early 2005 but didn't really get on the radar screen until later that year. All this is to say that what we take for granted today barely existed a few years ago, even to afficionados like Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine. What will be the YouTube of 2010, the technology tool that's taken for granted but virtually unknown today?

• This quote from the book caught my eye:

  • "People are re-forming into thousands of cultural tribes of interest, connected less by geographic proximity and workplace chatter than by shared interests. In other words, we're leaving the watercooler era, when most of us listened, watched, and read from the same, relatively small pool of mostly hit content. And we're entering the micro-culture era, when we're all into different things."

• Anderson points to three forces leading up to the Long Tail:
  • Democratize the tools of production. With a PC, you can be your own sound studio, radio station, and author. The result is more stuff, which lengthens the tail.
  • Democratize the tools of distribution. Anyone can submit a podcast to iTunes or sell their book on Amazon. The result is more access to niches, which fattens the tail.
  • Connect supply and demand. Tools like Google help me find that needle in the haystack. The results is that business moves from hits to niches.

All of these points gets me excited about A Bigger Voice, because it speaks to how the time is right for the innovative solopreneur, the quirky artist, the social activist, and the wise author to make use of the landscape to be seen and heard and attract a community of kindred spirits. And even monetize.

My brother pointed me to a Harvard Business Review article, "Should You Invest in the Long Tail?" that seemed to refute a passionate discussion we had at a family dim sum outing over the summer, on just this topic about monetizing a niche.  I argued that with the same forces that give rise to the Long Tail and niches, even long-struggling artists have a chance at making a living (ala Kevin Kelly's concept of 1,000 True Fans.) My brother argued that "the long tail per se is not a commercial space for creators, only for aggregators. It is instead a place for passionate people to find expression and community. If you are talented and lucky, you get to the second level of sustainable niche, and a very few superstars make intense amounts of money. Very much like being an actor, I think." His original point at dim sum was that the Internet only served to make the superstars (the head of the tail) even bigger but did nothing for the guy at the end of the tail, the quirky artist.

The HBR article and an opportune posting on Anderson's blog by none other than Kevin Kelly helped me to put the missing pieces in place. The impact of focusing on community-building is not reflected in the Long Tail. It only shows what happens when lots of people can create, distribute their stuff, and be found. That is the "place for passionate people to find expression and community" that my brother talked about. And when we focus on building a community, instead of regarding community as happenstance, it suddenly becomes possible to move up the tail, towards the head, where commercialization is viable with a big enough market.

Now at this point, I can hear Beth, my colleague who lives and breathes community-building, protest loudly, that I've corrupted the intention of community with monetization.  I don't think we have to throw the baby out with the bath water.  A community worthy of notice must mean something in terms of monetization, without poisoning the purpose of community. It's not clear in my head how all this works out. And it's what keeps me coming back to the concepts of ABV. Focus on community-building, then add in monetization. Both are needed for sustainability. The seeds for both are planted at the same time.

Stay tuned. More fun to follow.....

Ambient Awareness, Twitter, and Eco-Systems

Two people pointed me to this blog posting about Twitter and how it creates "ambient awareness" of each other. Actually, the posting is an excerpt from a New York Times Magazine article published on Sept 7. What I notice is how quickly the news spreads because it's excerpted on a blog (that viral thing), more than if it just came out in print. So of course, I tweeted the blog posting. I don't even want to check how many people have blogged and tweeted about the posting or the original article. My incredibly unresearched guess is...a lot. Based on a Googling of the words, ambient awareness, I'm actually late to the game in blogging about this.

All of this serves to remind me of Simon's concept of eco-systems. We actually don't know what the entire eco-system looks like until it's put to the test--when a natural disaster like an earthquake hits or a presidential candidate announces his running mate or a celebrity makes a gaffe in a public setting.

Twitter helps the ordinary person create a more robust eco-system, without the need for a dramatic event as an excuse to connect. The NYT article points out that it's not the mundane items that people are telling us about on Twitter that's important. It's the shape of our lives that is revealed by tweets over time. When we understand the shape, anyone at any time can connect to us where we left off.

I suppose it's no different from my experience of meeting someone in person who had read my other blog for years. He sprinkled throughout our conversation things that I had blogged about--my sister moving to Colorado, shopping for a toilet, and god knows what else. I blog and then I forget. But other people don't. It's eerie.

All of this is to say that technology, social media in particular, is changing who and what we know about each other. You can use that capability wisely. Or not at all. It's your choice.

Founder of Flickr on Community

A quote from Stewart Butterfield, founder of Flickr:

"A lot of our success came from George, the lead designer, and Caterina. Both of them spent a lot of time in the early days greeting individual users as they came in, encouraging them and leaving comments on their photos. There was a lot of dialogue between the people who were developing Flickr and their users to get feedback on how they wanted Flickr to develop. That interaction made the initial community very strong and then that seed was there for new people who joined to make the community experience strong for them too."

My thanks to Ellen, one of the ABV consultants, for bringing this quote to my attention.

Several thoughts come up from this quote:

• Communities work best when they make participants feel welcome, encourage participation, and create a culture of valuing contributions. This happens by design and intention, not by accident.
• Flickr is a great example of a community helping to shape a business. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the most successful features of Flickr today came as a result of input from the community. (If any Flickr fans can give an example of this, I'd love to hear it.)
• Vibrant communities are generative. It builds on itself. It's not static. Something new is always emerging.

What great communities do you belong to and what makes them hum?

Traverse City on Sept 18

I'll be in Traverse City, Michigan on September 18 to lead a discussion about social entrepreneurship. My hosts will be Marguerite Cotto, from Northwest Michigan College and Elaine Wood, from the Northwest Michigan Council of Governments. Both of these women are active in promoting business and community development in the Traverse City area. Marguerite tells me that our venue, on the campus of NMC, has beautiful views with a treehouse-like feeling. Just what's needed to feed the dialogue with our imaginations.

You may be wondering, why Traverse City?  Dave Murphy, who is a long-time resident, and an advisor on A Bigger Voice, has been telling  me for some time how beautiful the area is. Living near Boulder, Colorado, I know something about living in a place with gorgeous views. But then Dave tempted me with photos--of cherry orchards and Ma Murphy's cherry pie, of the shoreline literally across the street from his house, of delicate spring flowers in wooded areas, of colorful fall foliage, and of icy rock formations spawned from winter storms.

In addition to painting a picture of the Midwest's version of paradise, Dave described to me something even more special--the people who live there. Dave and I have had many long conversations, a labyrinth of topics woven from our shared interests. Inevitably, Dave would say, "I think you would love to meet a friend of mine. She's doing this interesting work....." After awhile, I began to wonder how so many remarkable people could be found in such a modestly populated area.

It seems that this part of Michigan attracts people who have passionate causes, innovators with wisdom that can change the world. Perfect for a conversation about social entrepreneurship. I'll be especially interested in seeing what happens when the conversation takes place in person, as so much of my work is done virtually.

Many individuals who focus on creating social good consider "profit" to be a dirty word. I'm not one of them. Ever since I first heard the phrase, "doing well and doing good," I've embraced it as a model for social entrepreneurship. My ability to do good in the world increases exponentially when I create a community of kindred spirits around a big idea. And I increase the likelihood of sustainability of such an effort when making money is part of the picture.

The pilot clients for A Bigger Voice showed me that building a community and building a profitable business are parallel, not sequential paths. It's a "both/and," not an "either/or." Early on, the emphasis is on community-building (witness the start of this blog last December). And the seeds of a profitable business need to be sown at the same time. (I started writing a business plan for A Bigger Voice last spring, even though I knew I was a long way off from launching it as a business.)

Some of the ideas that we'll be exploring in Traverse City:

• What role does story play in attracting kindred spirits to a community? 
• How do community building and PR work hand in hand?  How are they different?
• How do you meld the wild and wooly nature of community with the structure of business?
• When is community-building a parallel, but separate path and when is it intertwined with building a business?
• How does technology (e.g., social media) change how communities form and what they can take on?
• How can virtual communities inspire and affirm our work with local communities, where there is a physical presence?
• How is bottom-up change possible now, more than ever? And why is focusing only on top-down change becoming less effective?
• How are "digital natives" changing the way that social causes develop?

While I have plenty of opinions about the answers to the above questions, I'm more interested in starting a long-term conversation, one that will continue well after I leave the sandy beaches of Traverse City and return to the foothills of Boulder. My experience with A Bigger Voice team of consultants has taught me that the "third way" always emerges from vibrant dialogue.

If you are already registered for the gathering through Marguerite or Elaine, please say a little about yourself in the comment section of this post--why you are attracted to social entrepreneurship, the big idea that you are trying to spread in the world, and what you'd like to get out of the discussion.

If you would like to join the gathering, please email abiggervoice [at] gmail.com for details on location and time.

My thanks, in advance, to Marguerite and Elaine for organizing this event.  I can't wait to see who shows up.