bobgable’s posterous

Willfully ignorant vs. aggressively skeptical

Challenging the status quo is what I do for a living. Either that or encourage other people to do it.

But there are two ways to do it, and one of them is ineffective, short-sighted and threatens the fabric of the tribe. The other seems to work.

I heard someone screaming about death panels and how the government was not only going to kill his grandmother, but would take out Stephen Hawking himself if it had the chance.

The screaming is a key part, because screaming is often a tool used to balance out the lazy ignorance of someone parroting opposition to an idea that they don't understand. (If you want to write to me about this post, please write to me about the screaming part, not about whether or not you agree with the facts or the science. That's what the post is about, the screaming.)

If you want to challenge the conventional wisdom of health care reform, please do! It'll make the final outcome better. But if you choose to do that, it's essential that you know more about it than everyone else, not less. Certainly not zero. Be skeptical, but be informed (about everything important, not just this issue, of course). Screaming ignorance gets attention, but it distracts us from the work at hand.

It's easy to fit in by yelling out, and far more difficult to actually read and consider the facts. Anytime you hear, "I don't have the time to understand this issue, I'm too busy being upset," you know that something is wrong.

Brands face this as much or more than politicians do. I witnessed a knock-down fight between two teenagers over which operating system was best. There are generations of arguments between Ford and Chevy owners. Motorcycle gangs are often parochial in their choice of bike. And in each case, the less people know, the more they yell.

If you want to change what your boss believes, or the strategy your company is following, the first step is to figure out how to be the best informed person in the room.

Meet the generations

From Joshua Glenn at Hilobrow, an alternate generational periodization scheme:

1844-53: The Prometheans
1854-63: The Plutonians
1864-73: The Anarcho-Symbolists
1874-83: The Psychonauts
1884-93: The Lost Generation The New Kids
1894-1903: The Lost Generation The Hardboiled Generation
1904-13: The Greatest Generation The Partisans
1914-23: The Greatest Generation The New Gods
1924-33: The Silent Generation The Postmoderns
1934-43: The Silent Generation The Anti-Anti-Utopians
1944-53: The Boom Generation
1954-63: The Boom Generation, or Post-Boomers The OGXers (Original Generation X)
1964-73: Generation X The PC Generation
1974-83: Generations X/Y The Net Generation
1984-93: The Millennials
1994-2003: The Millennials TBA

Photo: You Know You Have a Problem When....

You know you have a problem when this is your iPhone on apps. I kid you not, this really is my iPhone - all 10 screens worth! 

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The 6 Degrees of Online Influence

There are so many articles about how to influence your audience. This article will talk about six degrees of how you may be influenced by consuming online content.

Let us look at each one of them below.

1. Ignorant: This is when you lack awareness of the topic of the article. As Jeffrey Pfeffer (Stanford University, author of “Knowing Doing Gap”) put it nicely – “You need to be reasonably competent to know your level of incompetence on a topic.” If you are unaware of what’s happening on the topic or related areas, the article may not make much sense. The effectiveness here is negative as you invested time and energy to read the article creating an opportunity cost.
2. Informed Bystander: You are a news junkie and a curious cat. You love to devour content related to your space but have no plans of using it anywhere. You wait for the right moment to put this into practice or wait to get “all the details” so that you can take the “right” action. The effectiveness is zero as “knowledge without application” is not worth much.
3. Interpreted Right: You are not only informed but you know exactly how this applies to your situation – be it in your personal life or your professional life. You understand the relevance and apply it every now and then. Most often, this learning won’t go to your background – meaning you will apply this learning when it’s fresh in your mind.
   A good example is to watch people who attend motivational seminars. In the first two weeks, they will do a LOT of new things from the “hangover” of the motivational seminar and after those two weeks, they won’t even remember what they learned.
4. Influenced Actor: You take the learning to the next level and make the most of the learning. You are clearly influenced by what you learn and you probably are considered a “sneezer” ( refer: The Idea Virus by Seth Godin for more on sneezers) and voluntarily spread the lessons and the learning.
5. Inspired Actor: You are inspired by the learning that you take on yourself to go and look for more learning on the same topic. You also apply what you learn so well that you are an example of what someone “could become” when they learn and apply. This is probably where you get the maximum effectiveness from your learning.
6. Insanely Obsessed: This is where you go nuts with what you are learning and rather than using what you have already learned, you start focusing on learning and getting others to learn. You are fascinated by the topic, you talk about it and enroll others to get excited but don’t do anything to apply it. You are, basically insanely obsessed with either what you learned or from whom you learned and sort of “lost in learning.”

There are so many good lessons out there in the world. I hope you take your learning seriously and become “inspired actors” to take your game to the next level.

About the Author: Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. Rajesh maintains a blog at Life Beyond Code. You can also find him on Twitter at @UpbeatNow.

When tactics drown out strategy

New media creates a blizzard of tactical opportunities for marketers, and many of them cost nothing but time, which means you don't need as much approval and support to launch them.

As a result, marketers are like kids at Rita's candy shoppe, gazing at all the pretty opportunities.

Most of us are afraid of strategy, because we don't feel confident outlining one unless we're sure it's going to work. And the 'work' part is all tactical, so we focus on that. (Tactics are easy to outline, because we say, "I'm going to post this." If we post it, we succeed. Strategy is scary to outline, because we describe results, not actions, and that means opportunity for failure.)

"Building a permission asset so we can grow our influence with our best customers over time" is a strategy. Using email, twitter or RSS along with newsletters, contests and a human voice are all tactics. In my experience, people get obsessed about tactical detail before they embrace a strategy... and as a result, when a tactic fails, they begin to question the strategy that they never really embraced in the first place.

The next time you find yourself spending 8 hours on tactics and five minutes refining your strategy, you'll understand what's going on.

Park Tool MT-1

I'm sure most roadside bicycle repair multi-tools do their job, but for me the MT-1 is the coolest. Not only does it do the job better than most, its design is so simple, it’s so small and lightweight, so ingenious that it has to qualify as a cool tool.

Park’s MT-1 is made out of nickel-plated investment-cast steel, weighs next to nothing, has no moving parts, and yet has all the functions one needs for most emergency bicycle repairs, from adjusting derailers to tightening crank bolts. Because the shafts are so short and the lever longer, the MT-1 provides superior torque to tools such as the previously reviewed Crank Brothers Multi-19, or a standard folding hex, such as Park's AWS-9. Unlike folding tools such as the Multi-19 or AWS-9, the MT-1 has no retaining bolt that can come loose over time. And because the thin MT-1 has such a low profile, it can fit in tight places, including small saddlebags.

It also offers 8-, 9- and 10mm socket wrenches, which are commonly used on rack and fender hardware, as well as older brake bolts. Overall, the MT-1 is simpler and more usable than the Crank Brothers tool. Though it does have fewer functions, I find the ones the MT-1 does have are all I need for road riding that doesn't involve a long-distance expedition -- and they work better. Perhaps the only thing wrong with it is that it isn’t blaze orange; I forgot mine in the grass the other day after a quick tune-up, which I might not have done if it had been painted an obnoxiously bright hue.

Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Park Tool

A New, Quick, Easy Way to Keep a Non-Journal.