Andrew Lark

On Ambition

Tom Peters has some interesting ideas and exercises aimed at harnessing ambition. Here's an example:

Performance
The output. The measurement of the progress towards the ambition, where talented people take pride in executing their personal accountability and continually add value through discipline, hard work and continuous learning.

Goals, targets and rewards focus talent on the performance parameters that will deliver.

To get going…

With a few like-minded people create a list of all the performance measurements you use. Analyse what type of behaviour the measurements reward. Ask yourselves if the rewarded behaviour really helps to achieve your ambition. If it does; do more of it. If it doesn’t; challenge your assumptions of having it as a measurement. Start a discussion on how you could measure the real value added of your business/department.

This is a good idea...

Email free Fridays...

Today about 150 engineers at chipmaker Intel (INTC) will kick off "Zero E-mail Fridays." E-mail isn't forbidden, but everyone is encouraged to phone or meet face-to-face. The goal is more direct, free-flowing communication and better exchange of ideas, Intel principal engineer Nathan Zeldes says in a company blog post.

Go on... take a look at the Daily Lark...

Links & Blinks | May 28

• Three Minds - the Organic blog... which lead me to...
• Findability.org - good read... which lead me to...
• Social Software Building blocks
• Interesting read from Nicholas Carr
• User generated Advertising isn't all its cracked up to be...
• Don McGlashan's Warm Hand via Peter Griffin.. Which includes a song on a bad, bad PR Man...

As the PR man, working late, looks at the photos of the fire's aftermath he managed to keep from the press, he reflects on the nature of his job:

I look at the photographs once more in the Manhattan sunset
The same light falls on the one of my wife and my kids
Then I put them back in the file
Permit myself a smile
Keeping them hidden was the best work I ever did

‘Cause people like us, we do make the world better
And if it's better for us, it's better for everyone
I open the window to the rush hour sirens on West Street
I see the Power and the Glory all over this town
All over this town...

Twitter Cloning

Nice piece in Wired on Twitter cloning which causes tiny blogs to bloom everywhere.

...the cloning of Twitter is largely an international phenomenon. There's Nowa from Japan, Robiz from Poland, TexteIn from Germany and Noumba from France. Mambler, a clone from Germany, even has its own Twitter-style shorthand language.

The Twitter mindset is one that meshes easily with blogging's youth
culture in regions of the world where SMS phone messaging is more
prevalent. Mambler creator Michael Baumann says SMS is widely used by
people under 30 in his native Germany, a main reason for the popularity
of Twitter-style services.

Links & Blinks...

• So, no more fake Rolexs on trips to China then...
• Techdirt - worth a look
• Myspace for PR pros... But why can't we just hang-out in MySpace?
• Bringing Editorial Calendars into the Social Sphere... Nice post form Steve.
• Meebo rooms launches. Meebo is great!

Links & Blinks

• Worth bookmarking... Google command line strings
• This is sure to make the next Shankland & Hurd interview interesting... Journos to sue HP over pretexting...
• Love this campaign by Fon... classic competitive move.
• Go Kiwis Go! Great win over Luna Rosa...

Getting In The Flow

Interesting post on productivity and "getting in the flow".

1. Clear goals.

To enter the flow state, you need to define a short-term goal. If you’re working on a large multi-session project like a web app, decide your purpose for this single creative session. Be careful not to overqualify your purpose; your purpose should be “an arrow, not a container”. (- Steve Pavlina)

2. A high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention.

3. A loss of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.

4. Distorted sense of time.

5. Direct and immediate feedback; behaviour can be adjusted as needed.

6. Balance between ability level and challenge.

7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.

8. Intrinsically rewarding action, so there is an effortlessness of action.

9. Focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself.

Soundbites & Links

• Are blogs headed for a slowdown? "Research by Gartner, according to the magazine, found that the number of blogs will top out at about 100 million this summer. But it also noted that some 200 million blogs are no longer being updated--many of them abandoned by their authors." What a terrible measure of the health of blogging. Lets look at the growth of posts, comments, video content. This is the equivalent of measuring the health of the Internet on the basis of URL registrations. Garbage.
• I've got some Joost beta invites if you'd like one. Still can't get it to work on Vista though.
• Interesting: Scribd. Scribd is a free online library where anyone can upload. Use our embeddable PDF player to publish and view documents right in your web browser.
• Like this from Nick:

"I like to think of the blogosphere as a vast, earth-engirdling digestive track, breaking down the news of the day into ever finer particles of meaning (and ever more concentrated toxins). Another word for "parasitic," in this context, is "critical." Blogging is at its essence a critical form, a means of recycling other writings to ensure that every nutritional molecule, whether real or imagined, is fully consumed. To be called a literary parasite is no insult. It's a compliment."

• Rod Launches Xero (beta) and scores a Kiwi sports star. Brilliant move.

A Snapshot of the Marketing Business

Nice post here by Richard Edelman on an event they staged last week. Some highlights:

• Ideas are paramount. Too much time is spent on where to communicate, not enough on what to talk about. Ideas can be gathered by listening to stakeholders and consumers online. Yes! As much as I love the science of communications and marketing, we shouldn't ever forget that first and foremost we are a creative profession!
• The new sweet spot for video content is a 3-4 minute segment, between long form (movie) and short form (30 second spot). This is the average length of segments on YouTube. Can't wait till all corporate pitches conform to the same format - like Demo!
• There is further proof of Linda Stone’s adage, "The World of Continuous Partial Attention". Thirty eight percent of those watching the Oscars on TV were also on-line. People may be watching TV but are watching TV differently.

Blinks & Links

• Edelman launches a writing blog.
• Michael Arrington's list of Web 2.0 companies in 2007 he can't live without.
• This Cringely article captures the Web 2.0 startup phenomena from the point of view of the VC’s.
• Stowe's Ten Thoughts for 2007
• Fred forecasts continued expansion in social networking in 2007. Stowe agrees with his prognosis for large established sites going social:

Established communities will go social

Ebay. Amazon. Wikipedia. Motley Fool. New York Times. What do these sites all have in common? They are large content sites with enormous communities. As the web goes social, individuals in these communities want to meet, learn about, learn from or even date fellow members of these communities. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense for established communities to introduce social and profile aspects to their communities. First, it is a move that will get tech pundits talking, and the cluetrain folks applauding, as it embraces social and conversational aspects of community. Second, it will increase engagement between customers, therefore increasing the amount of time people will spend on the site. It also increases the amount of social capital individuals invest into their relationship with the content site, ultimately making individuals ambassadors of the brands into which they invest time.