Valleity

Nerd alert: when I was in Mr. Mellang’s fourth grade class I used a thesaurus to help me write a short paper. I’m pretty sure I got some of the words horribly wrong, and sometime around college I swore off the thesaurus, but I still take great joy in finding the perfect word whose meaning matches the reality.

At a staff retreat I helped plan last week one of the participants introduced me to the word “velleity.” As defined by the free web dictionary it is “a mere fancy that does not lead to action.” The way it was presented during the meeting is less elegant buy equaling meaningful, “a problem you don’t care enough to do anything about.”

The retreat actually went pretty well. We spoke candidly about what needed to be changed, and challenged (maybe even too much) the status quo and spoke about what could be changed to make the place better. What was particularly good was that it seemed like making the place better wasn’t just to make our lives easier, but was centered more or less around the idea of accomplishing of a mission. So, if the retreat went so well why am I still haunted by the word velleity.

I think I’m haunted because trying to define the velleity is a humbling task. Andy Stanley in his book Visioneering brings forth the idea that every great vision begins as a moral imperative. It is the deep feeling within in us that a particular situation or problem is so unjust that it must be changed and we must be the person to do it.

It’s an important, but humbling question to ask, “What do I care about enough that I’m willing to do something about it?” Part of that question makes a person face up to what they are not willing to do anything part. I have joked for years that I don’t care enough about getting in shape to give up donuts. The unhealthy eating might be a problem, and I may complain, but it’s a clear velleity, because I don’t quit eating donuts.

I have a colleague about my age who was recently diagnosed with cancer. I wonder if I suddenly had to face my mortality in a real way that I would feel the moral imperative to better care of myself in order to be around to care for my family.

There is an organizational application as well, because I think it is clear that the things we don’t care enough about to act on that kill us. It’s the organization that talks about tighter cost controls but never puts them in place that ends up in real trouble. It’s the organization that waits for someday to invest in people that realizes at some point it has lost its best and brightest.

If a person doesn’t care enough to act on a problem, then that has to be acknowledged. People and organizations that are honest enough to ask these tough questions seem to be a few steps ahead.

Texting in Church!

So after trying to disprove last week that Twitter is sustainable, I had a fascinating experience with integrating technology into communication in a new way on Sunday.

My family doesn’t normally attend Westwood Community Church, but for a variety of reasons we went on Sunday. The pastor, used text messaging during the service. It was really well done. After a short tutorial, he encouraged people to text answers which were put up on the screen in real time. It was really engaging, and no I didn’t even text. My thumbs make me text impaired, but it was still fascinating and the positives far outweighed the negatives of a few folks by me who couldn’t figure out how to get their phones on “silent”.

The up shot is that it reminded me of something about technology and communication that seems to get missed. It is about the message first and the medium second. I know that is a theory not all people subscribe to, but the longer I work, read and think about communication the more I believe it is true.

As communicators, I believe that we need to figure out what the message or the story is first, and then figure out the best way to tell it. This point hit me two weeks ago when I rented the film “The Other Boleyn Girl”. It’s actually a pretty interesting story lost in a pretty bad movie. My estimation is that is because it’s not a movie, it’s a miniseries. There are far too many events and the motivations are too complex to cram into a little under two hours. It is a story that needs nuance and background, and without it you are left asking, “Now why would they do that?” about primary characters.

For what are probably a lot of sound commercial reasons they crammed the story into a movie format. It may make sense commercially, but if you care about the story it doesn’t make any sense.

Sustainability is a big word now for business. I’d apply it to communicators as well saying that commercial considerations may make sense, but the more sustainable option is to care about the message first and the medium second.

Tweet to distraction

Anybody remember “Rico Suave”. Yeah, I do to. It is something that got overplayed, overhyped, and now it’s just embarrassing when it gets stuck in your head and you can’t get it out.

I think the world is eventually going to feel the same way about Twitter. A Sports Illustrated article today talks about how Twitter is changing sports, or at least our relationship as fans with sports stars. While they provide some compelling evidence, Twitter as the hot thing isn’t likely to keep momentum, and there are some lessons to be learned.

Twitter isn’t really sustainable from a user or a reader platform on a mass basis. A short article by Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik on Nielsen reporting that most users opt out after the first months points this out. For average people, they realize pretty quickly that letting everyone know everything that you are thinking or doing takes a lot of thinking and doing. It violates one of the basic facts of good communication which is that it has to be interesting and most of us just aren’t that interesting on a minute by minute basis. If you need further proof read my blog.

From the perspective of a fan or listener, I will admit that Twitter appears to have more usage, but not across a broad spectrum. There are a group of people that care enough to follow Stewart Cink’s every thought, but the longer that goes on the more that crowd thins to a pretty interesting few. There isn’t a profit motive for Cink and it has the making of creating a strange relationship with fans. For instance, I can’t even imagine my wife wanting hourly updates about my life let alone anyone else.

So, for those of you in communication and marketing I would say that Twitter is a potential time killer without a lot of upside. Sure it can be used for some useful things, but on an individual level the work doesn’t necessarily lead to the benefits one might hope for.