In This Issue

• Progress, Not Perfection, by Matt Arnold
• For Twitter Newbies—Twitbies, by Fritz McDonald
• (Creating) A Culture of Candor

Progress, Not Perfection
By Matt Arnold, Director of Interactive Media Strategy

Progress, not perfection. That was a mantra I was taught by a wise manager of mine. I believe it is imperative for those responsible for delivering an online experience to keep this mantra front and center for at least three reasons:

1. No website is perfect
2. It helps avoid a “build and abandon” mentality
3. It supports continuous improvement

No Website is Perfect

Websites and interactive assets are never perfect when they launch. They have so many internal masters to serve, the myriad institutional stakeholders as well as the visitor experience. Even if they are perfect when launched, they’re quickly dated. For example, a site built three years ago may not have been designed with any hooks for modular social media elements, such as follow us on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook. In a short period of time, Twitter and Facebook have moved from novelty to expectation among many users.

Avoid Build & Abandon

The build and abandon, or “one and done” approach, tends to plague many institutional websites or interactive presences. For example, look at the budget for web at your institution. Is the budget for limited maintenance for a limited basis? What resources are established for ongoing improvements and the addition of new features? How do you account for the next wave of social media features or extensions of Web Squared? Try to avoid “just get something up, we’ll get back to it later.” While we don’t know what features may be expected of us in next two to three years, we can have a pretty good picture by seeing how far we’ve come in the past two to three years.

Continuous Improvement

Closely related to avoiding the “build and abandon” syndrome. Continuous improvement means measuring, assessing, evaluating, testing. Or as Deming simply put it, plan-do-check-act. Or, as my shampoo bottle tells me, rinse, lather, repeat.

How often are you assessing the effectiveness of your web efforts or user satisfaction with their experience? You can measure and assess more formally. But there are ways to measure and assess informally and more frequently. For example, in Rocket Surgery Steve Krug outlines ways that you can conduct ongoing usability testing to continually reduce usability problems.

"A good plan today is better than perfect plan tomorrow."

— George S. Patton

For Twitter Newbies—Twitbies
By Fritz McDonald, Vice President Creative Strategy

Although Twitter has been with us for a while now and has become a major social platform in a short time, many of us are still new to it. I've been on it since fall of last year, and I still consider myself a Twitter Newbie or Twitbie. This is not a bad thing to be—in fact, it's kind of a favored status. Unless you behave badly on Twitter—dissing and/or spamming folks—the community respects your newness and will even help with your education from time to time. I'’ve been lucky enough to have received great advice and guidance—here are few things I’ve learned over the past months, thanks to a very generous community:

1. The sign-up for Twitter is remarkably easy. Don't forget to add a photo to your profile—it will help people remember you. If you’re creating an institutional profile, pick a photo that is both memorable and brand worthy.
   
2. The best way to learn to use Twitter is to follow for a while and watch what happens between and among users. You’ll see how and what people tweet, find people of interest, and see how things like retweeting work. However, if you follow for too long you’re not really participating and people will eventually notice and take you less seriously—the best way to get any benefit from this is to participate. Give yourself a couple of weeks, then start by sending a tweet or two each day to see how it feels. If you’re stuck for content, write down some ideas for tweets before sending them out—this will build your confidence. Also, you can visit Web pages and blogs that are particularly interesting and share them by retweeting (defined below). Look for a "share" or "retweet" button—this is probably the easiest way to get involved and will also earn you followers.
3. You don’t have to—and shouldn't—send out hundreds of tweets a day to gain followers. I send out 4–6 tweets on average per day and there are some days when Twitter is impossible to get to. Others send many more—what you’re putting out content-wise and why can help you decide on quantity.
4. Decide whether you're using Twitter for personal or professional reasons. Keep in mind that Twitter is not like Facebook and that many people are having great success using it professionally. Either way, be careful of the boundaries.
5. Focus on developing a quality following as opposed to a large following. It's easy to build up a large following, but essentially meaningless. You should follow people who are of specific interest to what you do and who you are.
6. Think of yourself as someone offering a service to your followers. How would that help you decide what to tweet? Another way to think about it is what is your personal brand? If you were a character, what would that character say? Deciding on this will help you focus and decide on the content you should be tweeting.
7. Trending—you can follow the hot trends about what people are tweeting. You can find the list on the lower right column of your home page. Click on a link and you will go to the tweetstream (conversation) on that topic. You can also change the list—hit the change link just below "Trending" to update. If you want to, you can participate in these conversations, but you must stay on topic. To learn how to participate, go to the Trending Topics help page. Unfortunately, the higher ed community is not all that large compared to other communities, and doesn’t often spark trending topics.
8. Do not direct message people you don't know. It’s seen as a form of spam and considered an overly aggressive action. People will stop following you if you do it to people you don’t know. You can direct message people you know or people who have sent you a direct message. I would not direct message anyone too often—again, this is not like Facebook.
9. @replies are public replies to individual tweets—they should show up in your tweets to your followers. This reply/update starts with a user name: @+username and then your message. It’s one way people talk to each other on Twitter without spamming them, and a good thing to do but not overdo. You should do it when you want to begin or be part of a conversation. You can also get mentioned in other people's tweets—you’ll see your @username. Usually, this is a positive thing.
10. Download and use TweetDeck—a very useful tool for tracking and being alerted to tweets, friends, and communities. It’s still free as far as I know.
11. Tweetie is the iPhone app you can use to connect to Twitter when you’re on the road. Twitterberry is an RIM app that does similar things. Check the apps your phone offers—if you can’t get Tweetie, you should be able to get something like it. This will save you from getting text message charges.
12. Like all good websites, Twitter has a great help/resources page. The link is up in the top right corner of your home page.
13. Be aware of the 140 character limit—it sneaks up on you. However, if you use TweetDeck it will automatically shorten most tweets that are over the limit. If you are 200 characters over the limit, it won't shorten them, but you can link to services like bit.ly or tinyurl to shorten them. TweetDeck will do this automatically, but every now and then it won’t work on something way too long. It’s better to master the art of short messages. Get to the point and remember you only have room to make one point.
14. Retweeting is a great way to make new friends on Twitter. You have to be following whoever you retweet to do so, but when you do it you attract interest from other people who are not currently following you. On your Twitter profile page, you can do it manually—you'll see the 'reweet' button on the right side of the tweet. TweetDeck gives you the tools to do it automatically and easily. Don’t retweet everything and don’t retweet all day long, but get into the habit of retweeting things you think are valuable and worth repeating. It’s a great way to build community.
15. You can and should block unsavory characters who are trying to follow you. Twitter is so-so on monitoring spam and sleaze; you have to be on the alert.
16. Hashtags are a way to group tweets around a particular subject—they are commonly used at conferences and events. A hashtag looks like this: #simtech09…the # symbol always precedes the title or name. When you use them, you participate in the discussion at the event or on that topic alone. You can also follow the tweetstream on that topic or event.
17. Remember that Twitter is still new—it's the youngest major platform—and we’re all still trying to figure it out.
18. If you really like Twitter, then this book is the best guide I’ve seen on the subject: The Twitter Book

(Creating) A Culture of Candor
By Bob Sevier, Senior Vice President, Strategy

The June 2009 Harvard Business Review had a great article by James O'Toole and Warren Bennis entitled, "What’s Needed Next – A Culture of Candor."

The authors make the case—and it's a strong one—that today's organizations, more than ever, need a culture of candor among senior leadership if they are to survive and thrive. Unfortunately, candor is often not our first instinct. There is the tendency to delay or hide bad news, shoot messengers, and push blame for our own mistakes on to others.

In the article O'Toole and Bennis cite a study done by NASA in the 80s on how poor cockpit communication between the senior pilot and his or her crew was the culprit behind a surprising number of airplane accidents. Crew members were either reluctant to provide a key piece of information that might have kept the airplane from crashing, or their insights were dismissed by the senior pilot. The report concluded, "The stereotypical take-charge 'flyboy' pilots, who acted immediately on their gut instincts, made the wrong decisions far more often than the more open, inclusive pilots who said to their crews, in effect, 'We've got a problem. How do you read it?' before choosing a course of action."

The authors say what was missing in those cockpit conversations—and among many senior teams in these challenging times—was a culture of candor. Without candor, they assert, there is little chance that the right information will be communicated, the right insights will considered, and the right decisions will be made.

The article suggests that a culture of candor must be created, demonstrated, and valued by the leader. In creating this culture, the leader must:

• Tell the truth. We all have an impulse to tell people what they want to hear. Wise executives tell everyone the same unvarnished story. Once you develop a reputation for straight talk, people will return the favor.

• Encourage people to speak truth to power. It’s extraordinarily difficult for people lower in a hierarchy to tell higher-ups unpalatable truths—but that’s what the higher-ups need to know, because often their employees have access to information about problems that they don’t. Create the conditions for people to be courageous.

• Reward contrarians. Your company won’t innovate successfully if you don’t learn to recognize, then challenge, your own assumptions. Find colleagues who can help you do that. Promote the best of them. Thank all of them.

• Practice having unpleasant conversations. The best leaders learn how to deliver bad news kindly so that people don’t get unnecessarily hurt. That’s not easy—so find a safe place to practice.

• Diversify your sources of information. Everyone’s biased. Make sure you communicate regularly with different groups of employees, customers, and competitors, so that your own understanding is nuanced and multifaceted.

• Admit your mistakes. This gives everyone around you permission to do the same.
  
• Build organizational support for transparency. Start with protection for whistleblowers, but don’t stop there. Hire people because they created a culture of candor elsewhere (not because they can out-compete their peers).

• Set information free. Most organizations default to keeping information confidential when it might be strategic or private. Default, instead, to sharing information—unless there’s a clear reason not to.

The authors state, "We won’t be able to rebuild trust in institutions until leaders learn how to communicate honestly—and create organizations where that’s the norm."

Vol. 13, no. 8

Insights into leadership, strategy, and integrated marketing for colleges and universities by Dr. Robert A. Sevier, Senior Vice President, Strategy and other thought leaders at Stamats, Inc. (bob.sevier@stamats.com).

View other issues of QuickTakes online.

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