Right now, small is the new big.  Small and nimble, solve small problems, small teams.

How do you make a big difference then?  Because, after all, we're not in this to put in all this hard work to make a small impact.

You want your smallness to be "big-enabled".  And the last thing you want to do is to over-small any of your big ideas.

A CEO is tasked with 1, 3, and 5 year goals for a company.  Big.

To reach those goals he needs to create an action plan that includes things like improving customer service, hiring some key individuals, adjusting the advertising message maybe...  Lots and lots of little things that require detailed examination of every aspect of the company.  Small.

However, each of the items on that action plan, and this is where I think many companies drop the ball tend to get oversmalled.  The person put in charge of them doesn't think big enough with each of these little tasks.  A lot of times its because either the people on the ground don't have the incentives to think big with their small, microchunked tasks, or the culture is such that people thing its only to CEO's job to think big, and their job not to get in the way.

Are your departments and staff big-enabled?

So, for example, General Motors knew it needed to overhaul its car offering.  They had successfully done it with trucks, but now their car line needed a lot of work.  Big.

One area they tackled was the retro muscle car market.  GM decided it wanted to bring back enthusiasm for a powerful sedan that was sporty, but not sleek like a sportscar... Their GTO.  In the grand scheme of things, it was on model out of 77.  It wasn't going to make or break the company.  Small.

The implementation, however, was unfortunately small as well.  They took an existing model from an Australian affiliate, the Monero, and just stuck some Pontiac nameplates on it.  While they did sell, it certainly hasn't generated the kind of enthusiasm that the totally redesigned Mustang is, or the Dodge Charger.  They got a two year head start on the Charger, but I'll bet you anything that Dodge sells more Chargers next year than Pontiac sells GTOs.  Whoever is behind the Charger was thinking big.  One model in a big company, but they put had the goal of making as big an impact as they could with their small piece of the overall Daimler Chrysler pie.  If ever single person at Daimler Chrysler or Ford started thinking the same way the product manager of the Mustang or the Charger thought, those companies would be in much better competitive positions.

Sometimes, its not just about incentives, though.  Its about creating an environment where even the small people feel empowered to take a risk here and there to shoot for something big. 

I had the same personal experience when I helped Fordham start its alumni mentoring program.  When I first pitched the idea of launching a program that matches young alumni with younger students for three months of mentoring, I pitched it straight to the top.  The people at the top encouraged me to seek out the people below them who would help implement it, and their mindset was to figure out how we could start small...  with, let's say, a "networking night" to test it out.  I had a bad reaction to that and pushed harder to go for broke and try a whole program.  We did both.

The results?

The networking night didn't quite work out so well... not enough students showed up.  There was little follow up. 

The mentoring program, on the other hand, quickly grew in interest from 25 pairs, to 35 pairs, to 52 in our first year.  With the career office and the alumni office's help, it was a huge success.  Now its part of the career office's regular offering. 

But how is that possible?  The smaller, "toe in the water" thing didn't work, but the larger "shoot for the sky" thing did.  Isn't that counterintuitive, and, doesn't that pose a real problem for a manager?  If a "test" effort isn't predictive, then how in the world are people supposed to figure out where to take risks?

I think it has to do with building an atmosphere of committment.  You want all of the people on the ground to act as if they, and their company, are committed to executing all the small tasks and making them as big a success as they can possibily be.  If they act like they just don't want to make a lot of waves inside the company or that they don't carry the weight and support of the company behind them, their projects will be doomed to failure.  Your customers take something more seriously when they see you're more serious about it--no matter how small this one thing is in the grand scheme of the big vision.  They know when you're just repackaging versus just redesigning and they'll pay their attention accordingly.  Otherwise, its all just blowing smoke. 

Sometimes, that's going to mean that you might break a few eggs... that your company will put its weight behind something that has so-so results.  Fine, but at least you know that you're giving every one of your efforts a full opportunity to be successful, and, moreover to be game changing--to ultimately enable you to leap over your competition.

This is fascinating and I really hope Six Apart publishes their findings.

They just sent a note to Typepad users asking them to select what type of discount they would like to receive based on the service issues they've been having over the last month.  What's amazing is that they're basically asking people how much of a discount they should get... and depending on the honor system.

I only noticed an issue once or twice, so I'm going to stick with the default.   

Here's the note:

By default, you will receive a credit for 15 free days of TypePad service. To get this credit you don't have to do anything; we will just credit your account.

That said, we recognize that customers have had different experiences with the service, so we want to give you the opportunity to choose more, or even less compensation. If you click the link below, you'll get a screen that offers you the following choices:

•                    

  While the performance issues caused me some inconvenience ; I mainly found the service acceptable last month.
  Give ; me 15 free days of TypePad.

                     
•                    

  The performance issues made it very difficult for me to use the service on multiple occasions during the month.
  Give me 30 free days of TypePad.

                     
•                    

  The performance issues affected me greatly, making my experience unacceptable for most of the month.
  Give me 45 free days of TypePad.

                     
•                    

  I really wasn't affected and feel I got the great service I paid for last month.
  Thank you for the offer, but please don't credit my account.

Apparently, they don't sell Newsday on the Upper East Side.  I may have to trek to Penn Station to get it.  If anyone knows a place on the UES that has copies, please let me know.   My mom said that I'm like the whole front page of the money and career section, but I haven't seen it yet.  So frustrating! 

  Misery 
  Originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Temporary art installment on the Upper East Side...until the garbagemen come.

Sunset over Brooklyn.

I just posted an article at Success Blogging on Adwords and why individuals and institutions should be paying a bit more attention to them.  Don't forget I'll be teaching a class on blogging as a career tool at the Learning Annex on March 16th.   Please feel free to recommend it to anyone in NYC job searching or looking to get a little more serious about developing their career who might not know too much about the medium.

Link: An Endorsement for Mayor - New York Times.

Mr. Bloomberg has not been nearly as exciting, or entertaining, as Edward I. Koch or Rudolph W. Giuliani. But he has been better at running the city. If he continues his record of accomplishment over the next four years, he may be remembered as one of the greatest mayors in New York history.

I'll just repeat for emphasis, "...one of the greatest mayors in New York history."

The bashed him for his outlandish campaign spending, but I don't really care about that.  He's a self made man and has all this money because he built something that works.

I look forward to the next four years.

Perhaps we should rethink the term limits on NYC Mayor.

What's next?  Senator Bloomberg?

Bloomberg for President?

Ouch... ankle swollen., originally uploaded by ceonyc.

We play hard on my Zog Sports softball team.

We take a lot of extra bases and lately, we hurt ourselves a lot.

Not only did Sandy have to go to the hospital last night, but I didn't fare too well either.

Plus, we lost.

But, we both scored on the plays we got hurt.

Note to self: Turf doesn't give when you slide on it.

Link: Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog.

Brian just started a blog about Slidell, Louisiana and the hurricane damage.  He'll be posting as much info as he can gather, which, at the moment, is pretty limited.

Its time for the All Star game--to figure out who's really the best of the best.  But, be careful, because if you're the best, a mysterious woman in black might come and shoot you with a silver bullet.  Vlad, do you hear that?  Derrick Lee are you paying attention? 

The Natural is not only one of, if not the best baseball movie of all time, but it definitely has the single greatest baseball moment of all time--Robert Redford's home run into the lights that sends glass and sparks shining down onto the field. 

The Natural is a fantasy... a dream.  Its the story of reclaiming lost youth and taking one last shot at winning something.  Its about wanting so hard to be the best at something, even if its only for a moment. 

Sometimes, I walk down the street and I feel like if I picked up a baseball, I could through it 100 miles an hour.  Seriously.  Unfortunately, I've never felt like that with a baseball in my hand.  I did have one great casual sports moment, though...  and it was a walkoff shot, too.  Playing intramural softball at Fordham in my Senior year.  We were down by two runs going into the bottom of the last inning.  Our team was half my roommates and half of the varsity basketball team.  Two guys got on and I parked an opposite field 3 run home run over the fence...   I knew it was gone as soon as I hit it, and I'm the last guy in the world that you'd expect to hit a home run, because I'm really just a contact hitter.  It was so cool to trot around the bases, and have all the guys from the basketball team like Jason Harris and TJ lineup between third and home waiting to give you a high five.  There was no broken glass, no sparks, but that was my casual sports moment.

I don't need to talk about the movie anymore.  Its a great baseball movie... what more is there to say?  No, instead, why don't you comment on this post and tell us your greatest casual sports moment.  No college or SEMI pro sports... its got to be beer league softball, little league, street football, or something equally unprofessional. 

Link: University identifies peer, aspirant institutions in Stragetic Plan - Fordham Observer - News.

"Intellectual hub":

-Fordham will be a "hub" for intellectual exchange and discussion in the metropolitan area

hmm...   Sounds like blogging to me.

This is a really good article, and more proof that the newspaper of Fordham's Lincoln Center campus is eating the lunch of the University's oldest paper, the Ram, up at Rose Hill.  I think they clearly recognize that the future of the school hinges on what gets built at Fordham's Manhattan campus over the next 20 years, and given that, they're already establishing a platform to handle that shift in focus.  They've got a really clean looking, functional website and good articles.  The Ram, on the other hand, isn't even available on line.  (If they are, I can't find it.... what year is this??)

I like that the University is being so transparent about its goals, even identifying the schools it wants to be like....  very college 2.0.  However, the one thing they could use a little work on is the peer production aspect of College 2.0.  They need to find ways to get wider participation of the alumni and create an outward message that is promoted by more of the students.  Ideally, I'd love to see a school blog with posts from the University President all the way down to a freshman on his first day... athletes, coaches, etc.   A blogging alum can dream...

By the way, I was flipping through the channels last night and caught a few minutes of the Lakers game...   they had a nice interview with Laker fan and Fordham Grad Denzel Washington, who was excited about the emergence of Fordham's own Smush Parker, who is playing for LA.  Go FU!

In New York City, I don't find too many people oppossing the idea that priests should get married.  Its not too often that someone takes the other side and is willing to tell me that we shouldn't allow any combination of two human beings in love to get married either.   

So, as someone who picks and chooses from both sides politically, I find myself arguing most often against liberals...  just because that's who is around me.  I'm quite sure that if I lived in a red state, I'd be on the other side of a lot of typically conservative arguments and get called a liberal.   Instead, I appear more conservative than I really am.

What I am is against politics.  I don't like the idea that all find into one side or the other.  Plus, I don't understand how some of this stuff fits together anyway.  What exactly is the reasoning behind feeling a certain way about capital punishment versus leaning a certain way on expanding social programs?  So, how's it supposed to go again?  Less welfare, more lethal injection, or did I get it wrong?   If I'm anti-war, remind me again how I'm supposed to feel about the privitization of social security. 

I ask a lot of these types of questions because I like to poke holes at things that don't make sense.  I'm an analyst.  I'm a cynic.

So when I get in a really good debate with someone, I love it.  It makes me think.  The tough part is that I think I come off as difficult or dismissive when in reality, I'm challenged and inspired.  Its two in the morning now and I just got off the phone with someone who brings a truly unique perspective to the table and a sincere and respectable conviction to the table on what she believes.  Instead of focusing on our differences, I left the call feeling lucky... lucky that I know such an intelligent and thoughtful person...  someone tenacious enough to come back at me.

Debates make me think.  They make me question.  People don't do that enough when they encounter something different then themselves.  They immediately try and change it or erase it rather than learn from it.  I love learning from other people.  Its an important part of my education and I need to be challenged to sure up my own beliefs.

The best part about the conversation, though, was that we could put it down at the end... that it wasn't personal and that we appreciated each other for our differences.  That means a lot to me as well.  I'm never going to have all the answers, but if I can get someone thinking differently about something, I've done my job.  I also expect that someone will challence me enough to get me thinking differently, and I'll always credit them for that going forward.    I just hope that tonight's debating partner felt as enriched as I did and not just tired and frustrated.

Admittedly, I'm getting a little bored of my "50 Favorite Movies" posts. 

I might still contribute once in a while, but I've got 28 of them up now and I'm kind of running out of gas.  (Not running out of movies, though... )

And maybe this says something about intential content production vs. production as a byproduct of consumption.

If I could publish my viewing habits via a link to my DVD player, I would.  That would be a lot easier... and then perhaps a preconfigured post could be waiting for me to just give a review when I watch a movie.

What I'm not getting as much is a conversation about movies, which would be much more valuable.  So, I'm going to try something different. 

Instead of posting what I like, I'm going to post question to the audience about movies to get a little conversation going.

So, this week's movie question is:

"What movie are you most embarrassed to admit that you shed a tear to?"   Guy answers particularly interesting...

My answer?

Blow.

That movie is pretty intense and, at the end, when he just wants to do one last deal so he can make enough money to have a life for his daughter... and then he gets busted... they show him in the prison yard and they just pull the rug out from under you in that scene...   I wasn't really prepared for that.  Admittedly, there was some leakage there.  I think I brushed it off as having something in my eye, but, I admit it, Blow made me cry.

On Thursday, we had an open softball practice for our Fordham team and conveniently enough, it was the 3rd Thursday of the month, so we followed it up with a Young Alumni Happy Hour as well.  (If you haven't been to one yet, its a lot of fun.  Make sure you go to the Fordham website to update your contact info if you haven't already done so to get on the mailing list.  We're working on an RSS feed for event news, but that's down the line.)   We practiced with some people from the GM team and played an exhibition team.  The all-Fordham team won 9-6 versus a mix of GM and Fordham players.  Kevin and Larry both went yard.  Antoinette grounded out, which is major progress! There are lots more pictures online at my Flickr site.  Here are pics from Third Thursday and here is the growing collection of Fordham Softball '05 pics.  If you're using Flickr and you have softball or Third Thursday pictures, tag them "FUSoftball05" and "ThirdThursday" respectively. 

I just added a nifty piece of code to each of my blog posts.  It makes it easy for readers to send blog posts to their friends.

Here's what it looks like in Typepad or Moveable type:

| <a href="mailto:?subject=Check out this blog post from Charlie&body=<$MTEntryPermalink$>">E-mail this post to a friend</a>

I found the "mailto" commands here. 

Everyone wants "viral."  Its all the rage now.  What is viral?  Well, its a lot of people choosing to see something and passing it on to their friends.  Viral is the Star Wars kid and the George Bush Bloody Sunday Song.

Sometimes, you get someone at an agency who has such a pulse on the human condition that you can create viral.  But most times, viral bubbles up.  Viral isn't intended to be viral necessarily... and the best viral comes when it is created by the audience. 

Its not because there aren't agency folks who can do this... its just that individuals are so fickle that its incredibly hard to figure out what will strike them.  So,  viral becomes a statistics game...   one agency creating one video...   tough to get right..maybe impossible.   A million users creating a million videos...  one of them will go viral.  Its just stats and dumb luck sometimes.

So when Agency.com set out to create a viral video for a client, and they decided to make the viral video about making a viral video, they had a very difficult task ahead of them. 

So here's the result:

What do you think?   So, first off, I have to congratulate them for thinking outside of the box.  They obviously get that consumers don't like to be sold to, and posting this to YouTube was a sign that they understand that if you want to reach consumers, you have to come into our neighborhood.

So, no question, A for effort.  Maybe A+.

The numbers so far... 40,000 plays.  That's enough to get it in the Top 100 most viewed for the week on YouTube.   Not sure what their goal was.

And rather than tell you what I thought...  I'll link to the community's comments.  Kind of a mixed bag to put it lightly.

But, here's the thing about doing innovative advertising and branding.  There were already a bunch of videos that the community had created about Subway.  Many of them were unquestionably good.

Like this guy doing his own 4 part harmony.  (Its the same guy, right?)

Or this girl who probably loves working at Subway more than anyone else loves working at their job.

Or this cute little champion... (A shameless ploy to get her on real commercials, but that's ok... )

Hey Jarrod, we need more water.

This one is just random and disturbing...

This is so gross... and so funny.. all at the same time...   the mustard part was the best.

These two are just goofing off....

Ok, so the quality is really trailing off a bit now....

Anyway... the point is, I wonder if coming up with any content or copy for a consumer facing message is worth it anymore.   Users want to hear themselves, not the company.  They want to hear from each other why a brand or product is worth spending money on.  Is this the moment that ad copy "jumps the virus" in the workds of one YouTube commenter? 

I think everyone in the ad community should wave the white flag and just say,

"The hell with it.  We give up.  You tell us what you think of the brands, and we'll just give you some cool ways to say it, and promote you. We're out of the business of coming up with messaging or content.  Its just too hard... and then when we try to reach out to you in on your own terms, you make a Brokeback parody of us."   

That's what Firefox did.

Robert Young explains this the best:

"...follow the audience into the development of this new market by re-focusing core assets that have the capability to deepen the level, and heighten the production value, of self-expression.

Think of this way… what if “American Idol” had been produced solely by the capabilities of the contestants themselves, without the expertise and talent of the show’s producers, directors, writers, etc. As talented and entertaining as the contestants are, the resulting production quality, the level of emotional engagement, viewership/ratings and monetization potential of the full package would likely be far inferior to what we all see on the air today. Well, social networks should be seen in a similar way… people want to express themselves and the platforms that allow them to do so with the most creativity and production value, are the ones that people will flock to."

In short, don't make a commercial with monkeys.  Give monkeys to the people.  (Full disclosure, my company, Oddcast, built the Careerbuilder Monk-e-mail.)

Leaving on a jet plane..., originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Going to a very exciting business development meeting... Our first flight got cancelled... Lets see what the trip home is like. United: You stink. Plus, me and my bag, empty save for my laptop and biz cards, got searched.

If Billy Wagner doesn't start shutting hitters down 1-2-3, they're going to start playing "Johnny B. Goode" instead of Metallica.

So it looks like Pelfrey is the odd man out of the rotation for now...  He was impressive, but still pretty young.  We'll probably see him again in a few weeks.

Oh, and instead of losing Nady, wouldn't it have just been easier to resign Roberto Hernandez last season?  What we gave up to get what we have in all these trades hasn't impressed me at all.  I hope Chad Bradford emerges as the #1 righty out of the pen, just because I have a soft spot for submarine pitchers.  Combining him with Hernandez reminds me of the '91 Mets combo of Innis and "Senior Smoke" Alejandro Pena.

Cha-ra

1.    Noun. Means ‘shit’.
2.    Use in sentence: “Man, I feel like chara because I didn’t give Charlie a big good morning hello. I will try not to act like such a little chara in the future.”

Obviously, I called someone out on walking around the office with work blinders on...   :)

UPDATE: Before you embarrass yourself, I just found out that the "ch" sound in this is not like the "ch" in Charlie or cheer... its the flemy gurglely noise that you make when you want to hock something out.  I'm sure that's not a politically correct way of explaining that, but if you can come up with a better way to type out that noise, I'm all ears.

UPDATE: “The eight letter of the Hebrew alphabet is called “chet” (rhymes with mate) and has the (light scraping) sound ‘ch” as in “Bach”.   "Light scraping"...  ok, I guess that's a nicer way of putting it.   (From Hebrew4christians.com)

“The eight letter of the Hebrew alphabet is called “chet” (rhymes with mate) and has the (light scraping) sound ‘ch” as in “Bach”