Why was Readers Digest bound to fail?

This blog by Seth Godin is worth reading in it's entirety. What is your Readers digest idea?

Heartfelt criticism of your idea or your art is usually right (except when it isn't...)

Check out this letter from the publisher of a magazine you've never heard of to the founder of a little magazine called Readers Digest:

But, personally, I don't see how you will be able to get enough subscribers to support it. It is expensive for its size. It isn't illustrated... I have my doubts about the undertaking as a publishing venture.

Of course, he was right--given his assumptions. And that's the except part.

Criticism of your idea is usually based on assumptions about the world as it is. Jackson Pollock could never have made it as an painter in the world as it was. And Harry Potter was rejected by just about everyone because for it to succeed the way kids read would have to change.

The useful element of this sort of criticism isn't that the fact that people in the status quo don't like your idea. Of course they don't. The interesting question is: what about the world as it is would have to change for your idea to be important?

In the case of Readers Digest, the key thing that changed was the makeup of who was reading magazines. Most of the people (and it was a lot of people) who subscribed to the Digest didn't read other magazines. And so comparing to other magazines made no sense, except to say, "this is so different from other magazines, the only way you're going to succeed is by selling it to millions of people who don't read those magazines." And Starbucks had no chance if they were going to focus on the sort of person who bought coffee at Dunkin Donuts or a diner, and the iPad couldn't possibly succeed if people were content to use computers the way they were already using them.

Keep that in mind the next time a gatekeeper or successful tastemaker explains why you're going to fail.

Seth's Blog: Interpreting criticism

Twitter is set to grow it's income

Twitter is making some good progress. Much of this is coming from the mobile ad world.

The Wilson Nonprofit Report for March 28, 2013

Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong: This is a “must see” video. Activist and fundraiser Dan Pallotta calls out the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities. Too many nonprofits, he says, are rewarded for how little they spend — not for what they get done. Instead of equating frugality with morality, he asks us to start rewarding charities for their big goals and big accomplishments (even if that comes with big expenses). In this bold talk, he says: Let’s change the way we think about changing the world.

Everything the donating public has been taught about giving is dysfunctional, says AIDS Ride founder Dan Pallotta. He aims to transform the way society thinks about charity and giving and change. More …

New Study: Online giving is up; Email response is down: M+R Strategic Services & NTEN just released their annual online benchmark study for nonprofits, and they found online fundraising continues to grow - as does the social network reach of nonprofits.  (The study is based on analysis of 55 large nonprofits, including the American Red Cross, Sierra Club, American Lung Association, AARP and Human Rights Campaign.)  That’s the good news.

The bad news is that email response rates are declining. More …

What Does Community, Network and Crowd Really Mean Anyhow? Why is it important to know the difference between your nonprofits community, network, and crowd? These are terms that we seem to throw around frequently but haven’t yet clearly defined. John Haydon recently had the opportunity to hangout with Amy Sample Ward and Allyson Kapin who wrote Social Change Anytime Everywhere to define and discuss community, network, and crowd. In this video they talked about how organizations use the network to engage the crowd. They also talk about the strengths and weaknesses of Facebook and Twitter. More …

RIP Google Reader: Don’t Scream Who Moved My Cheese, Pivot Your Reading: Recently Google announced that it would close Google Reader on July 1st.   This prompted a lot of angst for many who had grown dependent on this free software.   More than 125,000 people signed this online petition at Change.Org and lists of alternatives to Google Reader started popping up like this one from Lifehacker and list.ly.   In online discussions with nonprofit techies, Megan Keane pointed to the loss of an anti-censorship tool in places like Iran, and Nancy Schwartz noted in an online discussion, “this is a kick  to independent content publishing, not just convenience on the readers side.  It’s more corporate content control, but that’s what we get from relying on free (but privately held) tools.”

But is it really a big deal? When I thought about it, while I use RSS feeds daily, I myself had quit using Google Reader a while back. More …

Are You Listening and Paying Attention to Your Constituents? If one of your constituents were standing right in front of you talking would you talk to them? If they were complaining about something you did or a service you provided them not working, would you listen?

What if they wrote you a letter? What if they called you on the phone? What if they sent you a fax? What if they sent you an email? What if they wrote a review online? What if they put something on your Facebook wall? What if they tweeted you the message?

The first few are obvious hopefully. Of course you would, should be the expected answer. What about the last ones? Are you listening to those channels for feedback in your nonprofit? More …

Connected devices in 2014

Interesting take on where the mobile world is heading. Seems pretty clear.

Can you eliminate the need for email?

With some careful application of social media tools, could you actually eliminate the need for email?

Luis Suarez, who works for IBM, ditched email. He still has an email account, but since 2008 he’s tried to wean himself off email.

Suarez documents the decreasing amounts of email he receives with blog posts tagged “A World Without Email“. When he started, Suarez received more than 30 emails per day; by 2011 he received 16 emails per week. (I always imagine the phrase being read with the deep voice of movie trailer narrators, “In a world without email, one man stands alone…”)

Headlines highlight Suarez’s lack of email as an oddity. In 2012, Wired ran a story titled “IBM Gives Birth to Amazing E-mail-less Man“. The idea that a tech professional could do actual work without email boggles! Bah. Nearly impossible!

Headlines about Suarez should read “Man Chooses to Work in Public”. Suarez replaced email with a mix of internal and external social networking tools. He posts to his Wordpress-powered blog at elsua.net several times a month. He uses Twitter and Tumblr to share what he’s doing. He even uses Google+ now and then.

Suarez’s choice to share his work came as a result of thinking and practice. He worked for years in the field of Knowledge Management. And he’s highly proficient at learning new tools and ways of working: he started blogging back in 2005.

So, can you eliminate email? Yes, with the careful use of social media and the willingness to "work in public", it can be done. What is the value? Knowledge is shared. Work is collaborative.

Is your contact center loyalty focused?

Is your contact center loyalty focused? One of the trends I am seeing is that as companies more fully understand the link between customer experience and loyalty, especially with customer service, they are increasingly viewing contact centers as value-creators and not just cost centers.

Some of the effects we are seeing is less focus on average-handle-time and other productivity metrics, more focus on customer feedback and quality metrics, more on-shoring of previously off-shored interactions, and more investment in agent training and coaching.

Tidbit: Consumers that are satisfied with customer service interactions are more than 4 times as likely to repurchase than those who are dissatisfied.

Are you shaping the digital world with agility?

Digital leaders shape digital enterprise with agility. They are all about doing things better and faster; with elasticity: scale up and down seamlessly and resilience.

A digital organization is empowered by digital tools and relying on a winning combination of face-to-face and virtual initiatives. It involves the creation of an interactive multi-channel communication and sharing process to generate awareness about new digital tools and processes to help accelerate and secure workforce buy-in.

Are you leading in this area regardless of your role?

Author - The Digital Nonprofit: A Manifesto

Michael Wilson is the author of the soon to be released book "The Digital Nonprofit: A Manifesto". Here are some excerpts for your enjoyment.

• The Manifesto: Are we enabling a unified experience for the constituent?
  
  
  
  • Are our constituent experiences intentional?
  
  
  • Our constituents are empowered and we can't control that
  
  
  • Are we creating heartfelt experiences?
  
  
  • Why should I invest in improving the constituent experience at my nonprofit?
  
  
  
  


• Sorry, your mission isn't relevant anymore
  
  
  
  • Will you survive?
  
  
  • Is the reason for change about technology or more engagement for your mission?
  
  
  
  


• Are you ready for the journey?
  
  
  
  • Your passion for your mission and your constituents can turn you into a hero
  
  
  • Do you know you are a global nonprofit?
  
  
  
  


• Are you ready for a new generation of constituents?


• Is constituent experience an art or science?


• In the age of communities, how important is your nonprofit brand?


• Do you have a talented user experience team?


• Innovate for mission relevance and financial growth


• Do you have an innovators heart for your nonprofit mission?


• Your journey to change and transformation


• Constituent Experience 101 - The Basics
  
  
  
  • Defining the need
    
    
    
    • There is a reality called silos. How should we deal with it in the best interest of our constituents?
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

• Driving Culture Change
  
  
  
  • Do you touch a cord with your constituents?
  
  
  
  

Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong

Activist and fundraiser Dan Pallotta calls out the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities. Too many nonprofits, he says, are rewarded for how little they spend -- not for what they get done. Instead of equating frugality with morality, he asks us to start rewarding charities for their big goals and big accomplishments (even if that comes with big expenses). In this bold talk, he says: Let's change the way we think about changing the world.

Everything the donating public has been taught about giving is dysfunctional, says AIDS Ride founder Dan Pallotta. He aims to transform the way society thinks about charity and giving and change.

[ted id=1688]

How to get ahead.I disagree.

This is a very disturbing article from Harvard Business Review. Here is one tidbit.

First, remember "A-B-D" — always be disagreeable:

People who are disagreeable earn more than people who are agreeable, and the gap is biggest among men, according to an analysis of four surveys spanning almost 20 years. Men who are significantly less agreeable than average earn 18.31% more than men who are significantly more agreeable than average, while the comparable figure for women is 5.47%, says the study, led by Beth A. Livingston of Cornell. Men's disagreeable behavior "conforms to expectations of 'masculine' behavior," the authors say.

via Ouch: A Year's Worth of Occasionally Disturbing Research on How to Get Ahead - Andrew O’Connell - Harvard Business Review.

From there, a long list of pretty disagreeable items continue. I kept looking for something redeeming. Nothing. Hmmm. If this is the list of what to do, I object.

Advisor Services

Advisor services are either short term or  longer term engagements to focus on a specific area of specialty. They are provided one on one to executives. They can be by phone, video or on site.

Areas to consider:

• Career planning


• Navigating the Social Media world


• Business Technology


• Strategic planning


• Talent development


• Succession planning

All advisor engagements are custom designed to meet your challenges and create the action you want to take. Services can also include follow up and change management components to ensure success.

If you are not 100% satisfied with the advisory services, you pay nothing.

Other services include:

• Speaking engagements


• Conferences and seminars


• Consulting Services


• Professional Services

What is architecture and governance?

I love simplicity. Sometimes we just make things too difficult to understand.

This quote simply explains architecture (and why it is important) and governance.

Architecture is a belief system. And then governance is having the discipline to put that belief system into action.

— Ralph Loura, CIO, Clorox

Speaking Engagements

Speaking engagements are usually short conversations with small to large groups. With over 35 years of speaking experience, Michael Wilson will, simply and with impact, engage your audience to take action. Some recent topics have been:

• Constituent engagement metrics and how to move the needle


• Social media and how to catapult engagement to reach your mission


• What is an effective mobile strategy and why does it make a difference?


• What does Consumerization of IT mean to the nonprofit C-Suite?


• Organization wide alignment around the constituent experience


• Why more nonprofits are getting bigger, faster and what you need to know about ROI


• Are you ready to be a digital nonprofit?


• Do you need a Chief Constituent Officer? Will it make a difference in our new digital world?


• And many more ….

All speaking engagements are custom designed to meet your challenges and create the action you want the audience to take.

If you are not 100% satisfied with the conversation, you pay nothing.

Other services include:

• Advisor Services


• Speaking engagements


• Conferences and seminars


• Consulting Services


• Professional Services