marginally subversive

"what is the meaning of life?"

I am not entirely in a working mode just yet.  (Boss - if you're reading this, I just finished two 1pagers last night till 11pm. :D)  So I decided to ask WolframAlpha.Com what the meaning of life is.

And here is the answer:

The answer is:

 

42

 

Microthoughts | On Social Media Planning

> Social media planning - as a part of a company's marketing campaign - stems from a simple principle that should be accepted company-wide: that the whole company, from the CEO to the frontline soldiers, are a ***marketing communications medium*** for the company.

> Social media planning is also not about getting other people to talk about you, your brand, your services, your greatness - real or perceived. It is about creating platforms and reasons for them to speak to you and to others.

> Social media planning is not about facebook, twitter, Ning, blog seeding (which I abhor!!!). It is about connecting people who have a similar passion towards a brand and/or a belief and facilitating their conversations amongst themselves and participating.

foresight is never 20/20 - but you gotta move on

I have always been fascinated with statistical models that try to project the future.  Regression-based modeling, econometrics, scenario-planning, and simulations (including techniques from the finance field) are some of the techniques that I found to be helpful in coming up with projections. 

In my previous life, we even came up with a "vision-statement" that encapsulated this view: "Empowering Foresight".

However, at the back of my mind is "foresight is never 20/20" and that "past events are never a guarantee of future events".

A constant reminder that in spite of all the due diligence, the rigor, the studies, the equations, and the scenarios that have been done, there is no guarantee that things are going to be as predicted.

Foresight is never 20/20 - hindsight is.

Seth Godin writes about this in his entry, It's (Always) Too Soon To Know For Sure.  He notes:

If you're racing, you better figure out what to do about the times that you don't know for sure...because more and more of your inputs are going to be tenuous, speculative and possibly wrong. Day traders have always understood this--all they do is trade on uncertainty. But you, too, if you're racing, are going to have to make decisions on less than perfect information.

Indeed, perfect information is hard to come by in spite of the deluge of data and the now-very-cheap methods of gathering information. 

But these days, one has to make decisions on the fly.

So what does one do?

My view is simple:

Do the due diligence, go through the rigor with the current information that you have, make a decision - but don't cast it in stone. 

Be flexible enough to change and respond to changes. 

And adapt.

That sounds like a cliche because it is.

But it is not always practiced.

It is true the doing everything that you can is not going to be a guarantee that things are going to be right. But it certainly doesn't mean you shouldn't even bother doing what you can to control the things that you can.

It will not be perfect - it can NEVER be perfect.

But that should never be a reason to skip the due diligence and the rigor:  one has to uncover as many potential opportunities and threats as possible, and come up with scenarios to respond to them. 

One will never encapsulate everything whilst planning, say, a campaign or a marketing program - that's why it's called the future.

The only recourse that we have is to plan to adapt and to learn and to respond.

 

 

Rereading Socrates: Pretensions, Slander, and Insecurities

I have been rereading Socrates' Apologia - a required reading back when I was in the university.  The Apologia (or the Apology) is written by Plato in behalf of Socrates.  It covers Socrates' defense of himself before he was sentenced to death by drinking hemlock, a kind of poison.

From Wikipedia:

The Apology of Socrates is Plato's version of the speech given by Socrates as he defends himself against the charges of "corrupting the young, and by not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other daimonia that are novel" (24b). "Apology" here has its earlier meaning (now usually expressed by the word "apologia") of speaking in defense of a cause or of one's beliefs or actions (from the Greek απολογία).

Rereading it with new perspectives - older, perhaps a little (just a wee bit) wiser from that 17year-old me - has given me new thoughts:  The reason why Socrates was sentenced to death is because others around him could not accept the fact that they are not as wise as they thought themselves to be.

They were a pretentious lot who have stopped asking questions.  They believe that they have all the answers - and that everything that needed to be learned, they knew.

This belief - call it self-confidence, "kabibohan", self-belief - was the ultimate in their lives: it is the pillar on which their whole concept of their own self is built. 

And Socrates came and debunked the very pillar of their lives.

And he came with proof: through questions and answers, he uncovered the very weakness of the people's assumptions about themselves on how wise, good, intelligent they are.

He didn't necessarily show them they were useless - he just showed them that what they have is not everything there is to have.

But I guess, that too simply was too deep and profound for his accusers.

=========

Once in a while, someone comes into our lives to tell us that the things we know are not enough.  That there is more to learn.  And that there is more to consider than just the formulaic, textbook considerations of the past.

It is disruptive.  It truly is.

But it also opens up opportunities to improve.

That is, if one accepts it and does not rebel against the realization that there is more.

But sometimes, that person is seen too much of a distraction, a divisive factor, a gadfly, a subversive, a hard-headed arse who needs to be eliminated by all costs...

All because that person simply showed - and proved - that what one knows now is not enough and that there is more to learn if only one would listen.

How we react to that person who shows us our inadequacies is a measure of our own openness to learning more, of wanting to be more.

=========

What I found in my 15 years of working is that the people who are most unwilling to admit their inadequacies and be open to new things are the ones who are most insecure.

They are the ones who would slander other people and defame them to get what they want, create an "aura" and "facade" of supposed kindness, and feign innocence. 

They sow seeds of distrust within a team, create a "reputation" that they are the glue that holds the team together, and name others as "divisive" and "unprofessional".

One could only pity them.

In the same way that Socrates may have felt pity towards his accusers.

=========

The jury will vote. 
Someone will drink the hemlock.
Someone will take the blame.
Someone will walk away with the labels "divisive", "subversive", "hardheaded", "inconsiderate", and "ineffective" attached to his name. 
All because the jury had been fooled by facades and pretensions of one accuser who believes herself to be "enough", "mature enough", "wise enough", and "good enough".

What a pitiful state for a human being.
Not for the accused - but for the accuser.

One could only hope that she be given a long, interesting life.

=========

when you choose to play the clutter game…

… you end up feeding the same cycle that you intend to escape from.

By playing “who shouts louder”, you end up with a sore throat and a hoarse voice – and annoyed, disengaged audiences who tune out because they see you 5, 10, 20 times in one day.

The logic seems sound: if your competition shouts loud, you should be louder – because if you don’t, you get drowned by your competition.

And your audiences don’t hear you.

But is that true?

You don’t want your audiences to just “hear” you – you want them to listen to you.

And sometimes, to get them to listen, you don’t have to shout: sometimes, a whisper will do.

A whisper – perhaps one that is romantic enough to get them to think how a night would not be without you.

A soft lullaby – perhaps one that is beautiful enough that they would want to listen to you again and again and again.

A personal conversation – perhaps one that is interesting enough for them to actually stay and listen to your story.

Shouting only increases the din of noise that there already was before you started shouting.

My advice: get closer to them.  Be by their side.  Be on their side.

And engage them.

Truly, deeply engage them.

In a story.

In a conversation.

In something that is relevant to their lives.

No amount of noise can make or break a deal – it’s only when you get closer to them that they will trust, like, and love you.

regrets

there are some regrets that one has to let go of - and accept.  and some that one should keep at the back of one's head - and accept.

almost everybody i know has regrets of some form or another; so do i - that i am beginning to think that perhaps, everyone is bound to have some form of regret over some choice made.

should've-could've-would've.

had-i-known-that...

if-only-i-had-the-same-vantage-point-as-i-do-now...

well, hindsight is always 20/20 - and foresight is, well, at best a blur.

in spite of this - life goes on. 

and one moves on.

or not.

learning how to fall

Why is it that we are so enamored by 'learning how to fall'?

At least that's the impression I got from some of the things that I have been observing.

When one learns surfing, the first thing they teach is "how to fall off the board safely".

In judo, it's also the same thing: how to fall and break it so you won't break a bone.

In whitewater rafting, the first lesson is: how to get back onto the boat when it turns over.

In volleyball: how to fall on that special mat, roll, and get out of the other players' way.

Then this thing on "golden parachutes" that CEOs get before they take on the role.

It's as if we're so obsessed with failing - that we have to prepare for it from day one. 

Why not teach "the beauty of the waves - and being underneath them"?

Or the beauty of using another's anger and force to one's own advantage?

Or the beauty of jumping high, doing a spike, or blocking an opponent's deadly smash?

Or the beauty of leading a team of people - who are not bound by blood but (hopefully) by vision - to create the best organizations.

Surely, these are far better motivators than failure.

Or are they?

I have never learned how to fall.

Though I wouldn't call myself risk-averse, I also wouldn't call myself riskophilic.

I just never had learned how to fall.

And that is why sometimes, when I fall, I fall hard.

Is it because I see the beauty of the possibilities that tend to overshadow the possibilities of failure?

Is it because I see the "good" in people more than the possibility of them being "bad"?

I have had my shares of failures.  And of 'bad' people.

And still.  I have never learned how to fall.

And right now, I am not sure if I want to learn that.

of fear and of irrational decisions

Seth Godin writes in one of his blogs that it is fear that needs to be addressed because fear is at the root cause of bad behavior and of irrational decisions.

He writes:

Bad behavior and irrational decisions are almost always caused by fear. If you want to change the behavior, address the fear.

I think that whilst this observation applies to our irrational behaviors towards things that we don’t fully understand and therefore cannot fully accept (like other races, other cultures, people of different “types” from the usual), this applies to marketing decisions as well.

Marketing decision-makers are – after all – humans.

And as such, they are not immune to the irrationality that could be brought on by fear.

Take – for example – the first time the possibility of buying ad-spaces on the internet: the responses were polarized.  One group jumped in and bought the whole lot – lock, stock, and barrel – because “I want to be the first to maximize this opportunity. No. One. Else.”

Another group decided to stay by the sidelines because “we don’t know this new thing; it’s not like TV.  It’s not like advertising.”

Both reasons are possibly valid.

But both come from the vantage point of fear.

The first: fear from being “outrun and outgunned” by competition.

The second: fear from using something “new and unproven”.

 

------

 

I think, to a certain extent, fear – and irrationality – is good.

But too much of it isn’t.

Midnight thoughts: Of Parallel Universes and Quantum Schizophrenia

I really am amused by Philippine politics. Sometimes, I do wonder what could have been my life be if I decided to jump in. The family is not too far from politics. I guess it wouldn't be that hard.

Watching 'The West Wing' and 'Commander-in-Chief' on TV also seemed to suggest that life in politics would be interesting.

Then again...

Nah.

It really is not my calling.

I wanted to be a doctor though. A neurosurgeon, an epidemiologist, a virologist, or an internist.

But I guess, being a doctor wasn't really what I wanted to do.

Instead, I am now in advertising and media and churning numbers and poring over spreadsheets and equations.

As if, if I didn't, the whole world would plunge into a very deep darkness that would further the suffering of children in Africa.

Quantum physicists suggest - at least, I think they do - that there are parallel universes.

I hope - sincerely hope - that in one (or more) of those universes, I was a doctor. A virologist. An epidemiologist. A neurosurgeon. Or simply some doctor saving lives in the middle of the night in the middle of somewhere. Doing good. Doing something real good for someone else.

I also hope that in one of those universes, I were a politician - who is in it not for the cash bit for the power to make changes and create opportunities accessible who want to and can make use of them. Doing good. Doing great work.

And if indeed there was a singularity where all these universes meet, I hope to meet these other me's.

And ask them, "So were you really great in your work in your universe? Did you do real good?"

For now, I - in this universe - have yet to fully answer that question with confidence and certitude.

Perhaps, I should start working on it.

“if it ain’t broke…”

I have gotten into so much trouble with this philosophy: ‘if it ain’t broke, break it’.

I think that we have put so much premium on “experience” and on “what’s working”.  The truth is, there are so many changes in the world these days – particularly in the field of communications, technology, and marketing that the old models no longer simply work.

And if they do work, they do so at a very high premium – either in terms of costs or in terms of risks.

A lot of people still think that it’s business as usual – that it’s all about getting as many revenues as possible, getting as many consumers as possible. 

My take is simple: It’s not business as usual.

And it applies to markets where technology is very well-developed – such as the UK, Australia, and Singapore – and to markets where technology is yet to be seen and felt.

True: these developed countries are at an advantage with regard to net penetration and communications, but emerging countries are not too far behind:  There are, in these emerging markets, a group of people who find a way to get around the limitations that the infrastructures their governments and supposed innovative telecommunications companies impose.

Take the proliferation of internet cafes in Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi, Cantho (in the South) and Danang (in Central) in Vietnam.  A lot of marketeers that these cafes are only for backpackers – people who wanted to get in touch with loved ones back home.  But when one entered these cafes in 2003, you’d see university students reading English articles, writing emails, chatting away, and essentially connecting with the rest of the world.  PC ownership?  Very low.  But internet cafe visits?  An entrenched part of the lives of the youth and young adults.

Or the high incidence of in-office surfing in countries such as the Philippines in the early 2000s.  Because there was low in-home PC ownership, well… use the office internet regardless of how slow it was.  Stay late at night to do one’s email on yahoo.com, mailexcite.com, or hotmail.com.  When IT admins started to ‘crack the code’, they tried to ban certain sites and services.  What did these Filipino “yuppies” do?  Internet cafes in malls.  These days, we’re seeing a resurgence of mobile phone and handheld internet access.

I can’t emphasize it enough:  Things have changed.

And things will continue to change.

The rules of the past may no longer apply.  And should they still apply, they will need to adapt to the current scenarios that we now face – and current environs that we now are in.

The only way, I believe, that we can keep up is if we look at these rules and try to push them to limits – and even break them if necessary.

Sure: It is scary.  No one knows what the future holds.  And that’s what rules are supposed to do.  But sometimes, it is our own fear that stops us from trying, from experimenting.

So go on.  Break the rules.  Or at least, have the balls to test them to their limits.