The Karate Discipline

I’m sure we all remember the movie The Karate Kid, an all-time classic. I watched a rerun a few months ago, and realised that each wisdom from Mr Miyagi is worth exploring – in a blog post or video. Karate means “empty hand” – and is a defense strategy. I did a bit of karate at school (many moons ago), and I got to yellow belt. Karate and martial arts teach us discipline. In business we also require discipline, and I think that as entrepreneurs we can learn a lot from these art forms.

Mr Miyagi says in the movie: “First learn stand, then learn fly. Nature rule, Daniel-san, not mine.” This is very important. In business (and in life, even) we sometimes put the horse before the cart. We don’t adhere to due process principles. We’re too impatient. Mr Miyagi’s anecdote is similar to Covey‘s “Law of the harvest.” You reap what you sow.

Chet Holmes has worked with over 60 of the Fortune 500 companies as America’s top marketing executive, trainer, strategic consultant and motivation expert. He’s done work for Charlie Munger (one of Warren Buffet‘s partners), and has recently also started to do projects with Anthony Robbins. He has also studied and taught karate for 23 years.

Chet says:

The lessons we’ve learned about consistency have taught us that it is the only way to really improve anything. The secret to great accomplishment in karate is not in learning 4, 000 different moves. There’s aren’t 4, 000 different moves in karate. There are 12 moves. Becoming a master is not about doing 4, 000 different moves; it’s about doing 12 moves, 4, 000 times each. The same is true for all areas of accomplishment. Golf, tennis, sales, customer services, ALL areas of competency require repetition of fundamentals.

We need to apply this discipline to our businesses when it comes to Social Media. There are just too many tools and applications out there. And we cannot use all of them. Everyday we see people on Facebook and Twitter saying “try this new tool, this that new tool” – and for the average entrepreneur this is just as a liability on time. For most businesses, Social Media is a tool, it’s not their business. Social Media is our business – and more than just a tool – but I’m talking about those outside of this industry.

One Social Media tool is not enough though. Facebook alone is not enough. Twitter alone is not enough. LinkedIn alone is not enough. There must be a decent mix of online tools – a mix that’s right for your business. Not every business is the same. Once you’re identified the mix that suits your business, you have to be consistent in using those tools. Using a tool once every two weeks won’t result in any true value. Once per week is also too minimal. A few times per week is required, and with tools like Twitter, daily activity is required. This all might sound very time consuming, but it does not have to be. There are tools that can help you manage your online activity.

For example, here is how I use TweetDeck and HootSuite.

TweedDeck is essentially a Twitter tool, but I use it for more than that. I use it…

1. To track the people I’m following on Twitter and respond to them
2. To conduct multiple concurrent Twitter searches (for research and tracking purposes)
3. To track and respond to Facebook status updates
4. To track and respond to LinkedIn status updates

HootSuite can be used for a number of purposes, but I simply use it to schedule updates. I can spend around 10 minutes and schedule updates that will be broadcasted over one or two days. This is quite fun because even if I’m sleeping or in a meeting, my messages are going out to the world.

So I don’t even need to be on the actual websites of Facebook and Twitter, and I can still be managing my activity there.

It’s not about working hard so much. Sure we have to work hard, but we can be smart as well. And all of this can be fun, while still getting to business results that we want. But we have to remain disciplined.

Photo credit: andrew_mc_d

The Amazing Race, Facebook, and Twitter

I’m a student of the world. Everywhere I go, I try to learn, and I try to think about what is really happening. Psychology is a subject that fascinates me, and I’m very fortunate that many of the successes and principles behind Web 2.0 and Social Media are grounded upon human behaviour patterns.

I’ve watched The Amazing Race a few times, and one of the reasons I like that show is because it exposes you to cities across the world. I think this is what is referred to as armchair traveling. As you know, the teams always comprise of varied relationships – best friends, married couples, engaged couples, parent and sibling, siblings, and so on. I think this is a smart move by the producers because it brings an interesting dynamic. The last show I watched (which was a few months ago, and I’ve had this post lurking in my brain since then) made me aware of something. I thought about the fact that certain teams, especially when they were behind in the race or in difficult circumstances, started to argue and be really nasty. They had a camera right in front of them, would that not deter them from showing their “true colours” and behaving just slightly more civil? Surely they knew that this was going to be aired to millions of viewers, including their own close friends and family.

I watched this and pondered about it. The camera didn’t matter. The millions of viewers didn’t matter. They wanted to win the million dollar prize – that is all that mattered.

I’ve been researching and monitoring behaviour patterns and trends on Facebook and Twitter for a very long time now. In fact, I capture most of these conversations using a neat application called Evernote. [You'd do yourself a huge favour by checking it out.] I have a few thousand clippings, and I intend to use them in 2 eBooks I’m planning to write. What is very clear to me is that when people are tested, and go through a bad time, they tend to say all sorts of things. They don’t seem to care who is watching or listening. I’m not talking about the moaners (I wrote about them here) – those who complain all the time – that’s a different group of people. I’m talking about people who are seemingly moderate and polite, but change when faced with even the slightest challenge or discomfort.

Stephen Covey refers to these behaviour changes as the Personality Ethic and the Character Ethic. You Personality Ethic is what the world sees at first glance. The Character Ethic is who you really are, but not all people see this – sometimes it’s hidden, but in tough circumstances hiding it becomes close to impossible.

He says:

In most one-shot or short-lived human interactions, you can use the Personality Ethic to get by and to make favorable impressions through charm and skill and pretending to be interested in other people’s hobbies. You can pick up quick, easy techniques that may work in short-term situations. But secondary traits alone have no permanent worth in long-term relationships. Eventually, if there isn’t deep integrity and fundamental character strength, the challenges of life will cause true motives to surface and human relationship failure will replace short-term success.

Furthermore…

Many people with secondary greatness – that is, social recognition for their talents – lack primary greatness or goodness in their character. Sooner or later, you’ll see this is every long term relationship they have, whether it is with a business associate, a spouse, a friend, or a teenage child going through an identity crisis. It is character that communicates most eloquently. As Emerson once put it, “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.”

Of course, if we’re people with true integrity, our Character Ethic will show that in tough circumstances, and this will validate our Personality Ethic. This is why customers now have a choice of who to work with. Customers can now monitor the ethics of an individual or company and then choose whether or not to enter into a business relationship. The same is true for personal relationships. The Internet has exposed us, so to speak.

I think it’s time we need to work on our Character Ethic.

Photo credit: place_light

P/PC Balance in Social Media

It’s impossible to be on Twitter or Facebook for 5 minutes without learning something new. People across the world are talking about all sorts of things, and providing useful links to pretty fantastic websites. This is occurring literally all day and all night, without exception. It’s quite fascinating actually.

General browsing will bring “random value” – value on all sorts of subjects. You can also be specific and dig into topic areas and really get exactly the information you want. Tools like TweetDeck work like a dream when trying to do this. It’s no wonder that Sky News rolled it out to its staff recently.

Executive producer of Sky News Online, Julian March, said this about the TweetDeck rollout:

“The big change for us in 2010 is evolving how social media plays a role in our journalism. We no longer ghettoise it to one person, but are in the process of embedding throughout the whole team.”

With all of this information, it’s extremely easy to get sucked in. It’s easy to spend all day reading, collecting information, bookmarking, and filing. But doing only this will get one nowhere. There has to be a balance between collection data, and using data.

Stephen Covey explains this principle very accurately in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He calls it the P/PC Balance. P is Production, and PC is Production Capability.

You have to keep Production (using data to produce workshops, products, etc) and Production Capability (research, crafting your skills, etc) in balance – otherwise you won’t be effective.

His words:

Effectiveness lies in the balance. Excessive focus on P results in ruined health, worn-out machines, depleted bank accounts, and broken relationships. Too much focus on PC is like a person who runs three or four hours a day, bragging about the extra ten years of life it creates, unaware he’s spending them running. Or a person endlessly going to school, never producing, living on other people’s golden eggs – the eternal student syndrome.

In the Social Media space, it’s very easy to be a victim of the eternal student syndrome. Our industry literally changes daily. New developments at Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc shift the way we do things every so often. Company buy-outs and mergers are pretty common and no longer surprising. It’s easy for us to consume all of this information disproportionally to our actual use of the information.

I have learnt, from Covey’s teachings, to adapt this principle to every area of life. And I would recommend that you consider the same.

Covey:

The P/PC Balance is the very essence of effectiveness. It’s validated in every arena of life. We can work with it, or against it, but it’s there. It’s a lighthouse.

Social Media is very powerful. But a low-information diet will help us keep the P and PC balanced.

Photo credit: johnjoh