From this fascinating, January 2008 profile of the Learning Annex business, their founder Bill Zanker looks to the future and how they will become a billion dollar company:
We’ll own online; we’ll own books; we’ll own videos; we’ll own audio; we’ll own the self-help business; we’ll own the management. If you’re an upcoming guy, I want to manage your career. I want to have a television division; I want to own the touring rights for television shows, so that when you have a TV show and you’re famous, I want to tour you. I want to create the next great psychic and then tour that person. I want to own a phone line; I want to own anything to do with changing your life. And feel comfortable that the brand is a little edgy, a little wacko, but cool, solid–stands behind the product. And we’ll be there as you change, or whenever you want to change. Because I think people have transitions all through their lives. So you need to come back and learn more. As you get older, you’re going to be learning in a community. So we’ll either own the community, or there will be a Learning Annex in your community center. It could be in a big building in Florida. In a high-rise condo. As expansive as the self-help business is, it’s just beginning. There’s so much of it out there! It’s just starting!
Huh? You’re cynical about the self-help industry? What?!
The Keeper Test for Managers: Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving in two months for a similar job at a peer company, would I fight hard to keep at Netflix?
Corollary: To avoid surprises, periodically ask your manager, "If I told you I were leaving, how hard would you work to change my mind to stay at Netflix?"
And this quote:
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
College admins who run freshman orientation have the same goal as conference organizers who bring together 300 strangers for a long weekend retreat: facilitate rapid bonding among all the new faces.
The way to do this is not to rely on cheesy ice breakers. Instead, I think you want to cultivate connections by highlighting the common bonds among different sets of people. If two people both happen to be from the same small town in Wisconsin, they should each be made aware and linked up at the conference or in the first week of school.
I've seen three best practices.
First, all attendees or new students should complete a detailed questionnaire before arriving. In it they should list their interests, favorite books, movies, heroes, and what they do on Sunday afternoons when they have nothing to do. Solicit tons of information from each person. Then, on the first day of the conference or school, distribute a print facebook of each person which lists their answers to the questionnaire. (Eventvue does this for conference organizers.)
Second, since group dynamics can distort people's behavior and result in inaccurate first impressions, emphasize one-on-one conversation in those crucial early bonding moments. The best way to do this might be speed dating — five minute conversations with every other person.
Third, make everyone wear nametags the entire conference or first week of school. Enforce this rule. Knowing someone's name is the first step to getting to know the person.
Bottom Line: If you're running a conference or orientation session, don't leave networking and bonding to chance. Cultivate it!
Little attention has been paid to ignorance as a precious resource. Unlike knowledge, which is infinitely reusable, ignorance is a one-shot deal: Once it has been displaced by knowledge, it can be hard to get back. And after it’s gone, we are more apt to follow well-worn paths to find answers than to exert our sense of what we don’t know in order to probe new options. Knowledge can stand in the way of innovation. Solved problems tend to stay solved—sometimes disastrously so.
The author goes on to recommend four ways to cultivate healthy ignorance in your organization.
Ignorance is one reason why young entrepreneurs succeed when they do — they're ignorant about how the world works so they ask dumb questions, challenge inbred assumptions, and dare the thing that age will fear.
In a post I wrote 2.5 years ago entitled How do you fall upwards? I listed three suggestions in this arena, including "cultivate the naive mind" (not as tactically useful as the above-linked article) and "spend time with children."
(hat tip to the book Chief Culture Officer which comes out in November. I will blog more about it at that time.)
The Mexican beer Dos Equis has very popular TV ads running right now called "The Most Interesting Man in the World." Watch the 30 second ad here (viewed 800k times on YouTube!) or see the embed below.
The announcer boasts about the most interesting man in the world:
The police often question him just because they find him interesting.
His beard alone has experienced more than a lesser man's entire body.
His blood smells like cologne.
He once had an awkward moment just to see how it feels.
At the end the old man — the most interesting man — says, "I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis."
Why does this advertisement work so well?
Seth Stevenson, at Slate, has a masterful analysis. He notes the counter-intuitive but spot-on ambivalence the man has toward the advertised product and the quirky, Wes Anderson-inspired imagery at the beginning.
His most interesting insight has to do with why a senior citizen is advertising an alcoholic beverage aimed to 20-somethings who like to go out on the weekends. Normally, beer ads have beautiful busty women circling the lucky 25 year-old clenching a Bud Light and flashing a wicked smile. The atmosphere feels like a frat party. It's obvious, right? Sex sells. The films hip young people go to are Old School, Wedding Crashers, and most recently The Hangover, right?
But this isn't the whole story when it comes to the emotional buttons of young men (and women).
The Dos Equis ad appeals to "dudes' self-conception, placing the focus on older gents who serve as models of masculinity." The Most Interesting Man wears nice clothes throughout; the women who surround him are similarly examples of elegance, no sluts here; the activities shown are not beer pong or football but sports like jai alai which have a certain high-minded eccentricity about them. Even the label "most interesting" is different than "most cool" or "most popular" — in adult-land, interestingness rules.
The ad, then, appeals to the same aspirational quality that's at work when little children play grown-up. Even into our 20's we're still modeling ourselves after elders we admire — their maturity, self-confidence, and relaxed ambition. And we know that Real Men (and women) don't binge drink on the weekends but rather enjoy a fine adult beverage while munching on cashews.
If marketers spent time on glitzy private college campuses they'd learn that drugs, sex, and alcohol are not the only considerations of the privileged young men and women who attend (and buy expensive beer and other products). If the marketers embedded themselves in Private College X they'd hear the word "classy" mentioned a lot as justification for certain activities. Rich kids like to be classy. They like to buy nicer alcohol, go to dinner parties, and dress up in fancy clothes more than you'd think from just watching Old School. Ramen noodles and a beer while watching the basketball game is not as cool as a three course meal with pricey wine to match, in many cases.
It's easy to be cynical about this phenomenon. Is being classy at this age not, at its core, simply a refined display of your parents' wealth? Is there something fucked up about a 19 year-old buying fine alcohol and dining at Beverly Hills' highest profile restaurants in pursuit of classiness, while a great number of students struggle with loans and night jobs? Sure there is.
But in some sense, who cares? A psychological soft spot ("this will help you be classy") has been identified in a lucrative target market: let's follow Dos Equis' lead and go take their money.