From L.T.’s Chair

My favorite room in our house is the office upstairs. It’s a small, square, 8-by-8 room that was the fainting room back in Victorian times.

Every wall is covered with books. And in a way, they tell a story about us: my business books above my desk, Hilary’s collection of children’s books, our joint collection of tattered college lit titles marked with yellow “used” stickers. I have my Vonnegut section, she has works on Tudor England. There’s a shelf of heavy law books, a pile of Starfish and Spider copies, and some e e cummings on a high shelf.

Books, like few other possessions, radiate a certain warmth. Over these last few years thinking about decentralization, what’s amazed me is that books have managed to survive.

Just as any self-respecting city has a man on a street corner warning that the end is near, post-dot-com America has had a steady stream of prophets predicting the end of books.

Books, they argue, are basically depositories of information. Lots of information is becoming unconstrained by physicality—think of music, encyclopedia entries, etc.—and as it becomes electronic, it also becomes that much easier to pirate. Goodbye record label profits.

But this argument falls short when it comes to books. You can’t cozy up to a CD in bed, but you can enjoy a good book. The experience is visceral, it’s not just about getting information. Every year brings new gadgets for reading electronic books. But will people give up how they feel when they turn the pages of a good novel?

I might be romanticizing book reading, but while you can make lots of things virtual, you can’t replace the emotional connection that people have with a rainy day, a hot cup of coffee, and good book in their hands.

Noah Brier and his friend Tad were over at my house yesterday. Noah was showing us his new phone, the Blackberry Pearl. No surprise: like everyone else on the planet, he loves it.

The thing is, he didn’t just love his phone, he started showing us all its cool features, and without even trying to, he sold me on it. I’m off to T-Mobile in a bit to buy one.

This started us talking about how Blackberry couldn’t buy this kind of marketing if it tried. People have talked about “finding your product’s evangelist.” But just as you don’t pay your friends to do you favors or say nice things about you, companies can’t pay customers to promote their products. It’s too artificial.

But companies can tap into research about social markets. What if Blackberry’s makers, Research In Motion, called up Noah and genuinely made him feel special? Maybe they’d send him a product sample. Or give him the inside scoop on a new launch.

The more genuinely warm the relationship between Noah and Research In Motion, the more likely he’d be to tell friends like me that he loves their products. The trick, of course, is to do this in a way that’s authentic. In other words, Research In Motion would really have to consider Noah a friend.

This got us on an interesting discussion about viewing your customers as friends. It changes your thinking about everything from customer service to marketing to long-term relationships.

I’ve meaning to do this for, well, about five months. Huge thanks to everyone who’s been blogging about The Starfish and the Spider. Watching it spread has been an incredibly interesting and humbling experience.
So, in no particular order, a partial list of the bloggers I owe a huge thank you to:

Shannon Clark; Jack & Kate & all the other folks at CEORead; Ted Rheingold (and for featuring our cat Mickey as the cat of the day); John Lilly; Austin Hill; Sherbeam Wright; Jeremiah Owyang, Steve Addison, David Wolfe; Chris Messina and of course, Tara Hunt; Jim Estill; Scott “Motorsports” (who thought the S&S would be applicable to the world of racecars); Curtis Gale; John Moore; DigitalNow; Brad Hightower; Siona van Dijk; Auren Hoffman (who, I think, was the first to blog about the book, and is also one of the stars of the book); Lance Ford; Noah Kagan (who has also hooked me up with countless folks); Jeff Petry; Russel Knight; Aaron Overton; Bruce Reyes; Frank Cohen; Guy Muse; Arik Johnson; Jaeson Ma; PalePhoenix; Elijah Fan; Alan Hirsch (who was one of the first to introduce the book to the house church movement); Adam Nash; Caterina Fake; Pastor Jerry; Cynthia Brumfield; Ramit Sethi (organizer of the first-ever starfish book give-away); Renee Blodgett; Helen Losch; Eric; Steve Liebowitz; Zuki; Ben Casnocha (check out his new book); George Bullard; Mike; Chris Brogan (of Podcamp fame); Chris Yeh; Leslie Ann; Mike of blip.tv fame; Mark Howell; Frank Huber; Usha Sekar; Gail Taylor; Shane Deike; Sara Olsen (without whom I never would have gone to Burning Man); Pip Coburn; Bengt Wendell (all the way from Sweden); JWG; Kareem Mayan (who’s doing some really interesting work on organizational democracy); Ann Oliveri; Vivek Sodera; Justin Majeau; Bob; Devin Reams (one of the early bloggers as well); Andrew & Jen; Stephani; Abe; Alex; Ben Cheek; Rob Bergman; Neil Cole (host of the CMA conference); Andrew Feldstein; Bill Regehr.

I’m sure I’m missing some names, so I’ll edit this post when it isn’t 2:30 am…

It’s not often that I simultaneously think of songs by the Smiths, Britney Spears, and Pete Seeger. But Viacom’s lawsuit against YouTube has me humming a few tunes.

It starts with Morrissey’s plea: “Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before…”

Let’s go back to 2001 and the record companies taking on Napster. Napster, of course, was enabling the illegal downloading of copyrighted songs.

The music industry gets upset, sues Napster, wins, and then… Kazaa pops up. Unlike Napster, Kazaa lacks a central server. The record labels are equally upset, sue Kazaa, and drive it out of business. But, then, up pops eMule, which has neither a central server nor corporate offices. Who are you gonna sue?

By going after Napster, the record companies unleashed a sequence of events that made the song swapping more starfishlike (decentralized) and thus much more difficult to control.

Which brings us to Ms. Spears: “Oops, [they] did it again.”

Viacom has a good chance of prevailing against YouTube. And, as Viacom’s lawyers are happy to know, being owned by Google, YouTube has a corporate entity plenty big enough to sue.

But what will happen when and if Viacom wins its lawsuit? People aren’t likely to just give up on watching unlicensed video. They are likely, however, to turn to more starfish services which might not make a lot of money but will be much more difficult to pursue. In other words, Viacom is opening up a huge Pandora’s box.

As Pete Seeger ponders, “When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?”

It’s not that Viacom is stupid; far from it. They’re protecting their intellectual property. But at the same time, applying top-down thinking to an industry that is becoming increasingly distributed leads companies to repeat the mistakes of the not-so-distant past.

I think of a story I once heard about the Ohlone tribe of Northern California. Back in the day, if a tribe wanted to get together with other tribes, they’d send out a clover leaf. Each time the moon was full, the receiver of the leaf would cut off a section of the clover, until there were no sections left, which meant it was time to head out to the meeting. When everyone would get together, it was a multi-day affair. First, the younger crowd would speak, then different groups, with the elders having the last word. Imagining what it would be like in those meetings, I think of time slooowing down.

As I sit here typing on my laptop, Blackberry at my side, enjoying all the wonders of technology, I wonder whether we’ve traded something away for these conveniences. Specifically, I’ve been thinking lately about how, while it’s become so much easier for people to connect, it’s also become so much more difficult.
Here’s what I mean: it’s really easy to reach out to the virtual world and make any variety of connections. Yeah, yeah, never before in the history of man has it been possible for a kid in Brazil to instantly connect to a friend in India and exchange a text message or swap the hottest tune.

But at the same time, is it becoming more difficult to create more meaningful and deep connections? Back in the Ohlones’ day, you could really spend time getting to know someone. Sitting there, together, you got a good sense of the person.

Psychologists have found that proximity engenders empathy. That is, the closer we physically are to another person, the more empathy we’ll have towards them.

Is empathy being reduced by virtual connections?

The nature of human interactions is rapidly shifting. I’m starting to feel old-school in picking up the phone rather than texting, or in going to lunch with someone rather than emailing, and I wonder how we’ll create meaningful relations in this new world.

I’m a big fan of virtual communities—from selling my old couch on craigslist to checking out an article on Wikipedia. But it’s important to remember the underlying psychology of human relationships. We crave closeness and warmth. Actually, we require them. As we become more and more virtual, we also need to keep in mind the core building blocks that make people tick.

My wife, Hilary, came to yoga class with me last week.  I’ve been going for the past four years, and for the past three years I’ve tried to get her to come along.

This was her second class, and I think she might already be better than me, but that’s a different story.

This last time, Buddy, the yoga guy, played a new CD.  Usually, the music in yoga is, well, yoga music.  You know what I mean if you’ve ever been to a class.  But this time, Buddy played stuff with a much heartier beat—the kind of music you’d hear at a good club.

I dug the music—and I even felt myself move to the beat while in downward dog—but at the same time it had a surreal quality to it.  In yoga you expect Yanni.

This got me thinking about incongruity.  We’re always surprised when something is incongruent, be it a sentimental trucker or a cussing librarian.  Incongruity is therefore the basis for a lot of  jokes.

What’s even more interesting about incongruity, is that when we happen upon something incongruent, we mold the facts to fit our perception of the world.  For example, if we catch our favorite employee napping on the job, rather than face the incongruity (“I thought this guy was amazing, but here he is slacking off”) we’re likely to invent a story: “He must be working SO hard that he just fell asleep from exhaustion….”

That’s the thing about the world, we see what we want to see.  And when the evidence flies in the face of our perception—well, we just bend it to fit how we see the world.

“Dance music in yoga?  Cool.  I’m glad this is such a happenin’ class.”

Abe Lincoln, Mark Twain, or another smart guy once said something along the lines of, “It is better to keep quiet and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

Lately, I’ve been hanging out with lots of introverts. I’ve learned a couple of things from them. The first is the simple observation that in conversation we all know what we’re about to say, but we don’t know what the other person is thinking. To learn, it’s best to keep our mouths shut and listen. I nodded as I heard this, and reflected that it’s a variation of what every elementary school teacher says at least five million times a day.

The second introvert observation was much more surprising. When I think about the stereotypical leader, I think about someone who’s charismatic, who’s well-spoken, who, well, leads. The way you lead is by getting others to follow you.

But there’s another type of leadership. Rather than “leading,” there are folks who “pace.” Pacing basically means listening attentively and trying to match the person you’re having a conversation with. If they’re excited and loud, you incorporate that into how you respond. If they’re reflective and quiet, you match that, etc.

Interestingly, people who pace are able to achieve higher levels of rapport. When someone “paces” us, we tend to feel more understood and accepted. When we feel this way, we become much more willing to follow a leader.

When researchers tried to assess what made for the best psychologist, they hit upon some unexpected results. You’d think that the best psychologists were the ones who were most experienced or best-educated or who followed a specific therapeutic philosophy. But the psychologists with the best results were the ones who had the warmest relationships with their clients. In other words, the best psychologists were the ones who were able to “pace” their clients.

I’ve been looking at different leaders and analyzing how much they practice “leading” and “pacing.” So far, it’s been surprising just how powerful “pacing” is. More on that soon!

My friend Leor told me this story:

There was this dog.  He was a nice enough dog.  But one winter, his human owner kicked him out.  There just wasn’t enough food for the dog.  

Times were different back then, and the dog couldn’t show up at the SPCA.  So, the dog went into the forest and tried to make it on his own.  The going was tough, until the dog met a bear.  This was one old bear, and it didn’t take a doctor to see that the bear wasn’t long for this world.  The bear was lonely, and when he saw the dog he shouted over to him.  He got right to the point:  “Come keep me company.   I don’t have a long time to live.  I can see you’re cold, so when I die, you can have my skin and keep yourself warm.”

The dog figured this wasn’t a bad bargain, so he agreed, and for the next couple of days the bear and the dog sat around shooting the breeze.  When the bear passed away, the dog donned his coat.  

Much warmer, the dog was able to survive the winter.  In the spring, the dog met a fox, who was stuck in a trap.  “If you help free me,” said the fox, “I’ll give you my tail.”  The dog agreed and now was wearing a bear’s coat and a hat fashioned out of fox’s tail.  

Wouldn’t you guess, right about then the dog meets a bird with a problem.  They make a deal that the bird give the dog feathers with which to decorate his hat.

Now, pretty soon people start talking about sightings of this mystical creature in the woods.  It has the coat of a bear, the head of a fox, the beauty of a bird… The mayor of the town is intrigued and calls for the creature to be brought to him.  

After a couple of days, the dog appears before the mayor.  “What kind of creature are you?” asks the mayor.

“Well,” says the dog, “My mother was a great bear!”

“Yeah, but what kind of creature are you?”  

“My father,” says the dog without missing a beat, “is a wise fox.”  

“Yeah, but what are you?”

“My cousin is a beautiful bird.”

“Yes, but what creature are you???”    

“Me, well, I’m a dog.”  

* * *

I’ve participated in Stanford’s Interpersonal Dynamics (otherwise known as “touchy-feely”) course.  In the course, twelve MBA students gather in a circle.  There’s no set agenda.  There’s a facilitator, but really no one’s in charge.  People initially want to talk about their job history, or about their ambitions.  But the norms in the circle are that you talk about your genuine feeling and observations.  You’d think that MBAs, of all people, would run away from this type of interaction.  But the class is actually the most popular offering in the school.  

I think the reason is that when you can’t talk about your accomplishments, or your ancestry, or whatever, you’re forced to talk about yourself.  There’s just something more honest in that.  With the honesty comes a level of community and trust.  And that’s what a lot of people crave.  

Sitting in meetings, I sometimes think of Leor’s story.  I hear myself talk about where I went to school, what projects I worked on, or upcoming engagements.  It strikes me that these kinds of conversations serve some purpose, but they don’t reveal much about ourselves.  More importantly, they don’t build trust.

Trust is fundamentally an emotion.  It’s derived from feeling comfortable with someone.   It’s this level of trust—of people being themselves—that makes us want to join communities like www.couchsurfing.com, or contribute to our local church, or add a Wikipedia entry.  

More and more, trust is becoming a key factor of business.  Makes me want to talk less about my father the fox.

I’ve been reflecting lately about the creative process.

My brother, Rom, and I have an incredibly productive relationship that looks completely intense from an outside perspective. My wife describes it best. Rom and I sit upstairs in the office, and for an hour all she hears is arguing in Hebrew. She does her impersonation: “Yachshat mazal. Nu Kvar!!! Lo. Tch. Tov. Tov. Beseder.” It continues, she says, until there’s silence. And then rapid typing. The process repeats itself. And repeats itself again. I don’t think she’s that far off.

What’s not so obvious, though, is that this process is all about finding the “muse.” I find that it’s tempting to write what you think people want to hear. This is supposed to be business writin’, I tell myself. But then again, the reason business books can be, um, dull is because we assume that business = proper, which makes business text = boring.

In any case, I recently read a manuscript by Keith Sawyer called “Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration.” Keith’s book is a great read. My favorite part is his analysis of decision-making within improv troupes. There’s a certain magic that happens, a jazz, that I always thought was impossible to capture.

But after reading Keith’s book and reflecting on it, I’m playing with the hypothesis that open systems rely much more on the muse, while hierarchical systems are more dependent on just grinding through.

I know which one works for me…

Speaking of Catster, a few weeks ago, I visited Ted Rheingold, Top Dog (i.e. founder and CEO) of Dogster and Catster (think MySpace for pets). The San Francisco office is this large open space, and just like you’d expect, the moment I walked in, a friendly lab ran up to greet me, wagging his tail.

Ted is a cool combination of artistic and friendly. He was doing freelance web coding when the idea for Dogster came to him. Ted still seemed surprised by just how big the community has grown. He told me a story about how a few of members who were previously strangers came together to rescue a group of dogs that were becoming homeless. One member spent hours driving the dogs to another member’s house who was going to foster them while another member was going to look for a permanent home for them, etc.

“People just want to help,” Ted said. Familiar words that got me thinking about the power of community.

Take a company like Google. While their stock has shot through the roof, Google’s community doesn’t yet extend far beyond the googleplex in Mountain View. Google, despite its amazing success, can still learn from the pet enthusiasts at Dogster and Caster. Like many other companies, its big challenge is to build a community, which is no easy feat.

How can companies build these types of communities? I see three pillars:

1. Shared Values: Ted’s community loves pets, MySpace members value music and free expression.

2. An Ability to Contribute: The more people are able to contribute to the community, the tighter the bond they’ll develop with it. Think craigslist, Wikipedia, and spiritual communities.

3. The Network Effect: This is the really sticky part. The network effect means that every new member adds value to the community. That is, one phone isn’t very useful, but a thousand people with phones are. EBay has the network effect, but Yahoo has never been able to achieve it.

My head is still going on communities. In the meantime, my friend Noah Kagan (who rocks in so many ways) is putting on a conference called Community Next. It’s going to be amazing. He has speakers like Guy Kawasaki, Ted from Dogster/Catster, and one of my favorite thinkers on community, Tara Hunt. I can’t wait.