Share Your Starfish Story
The Constellation for AIDS Competence
Gaston Schmitz shared the following story on how this starfish model is saving lives.
AIDS Competence is the "state" in which individuals, families and communities are able to deal effectively with the threats and challenges of the HIV epidemic. The Constellation for AIDS Competence (www.aidscompetence.org) stimulates and connects local responses to AIDS. We see a world where AIDS competence spreads faster than the virus. We are registered in Belgium as a non-profit, non-governmental organization. Our office is based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. In more than 20 countries, coaches stimulate local responses to AIDS through the appreciation of local strengths and the accompaniment of local action. Results are impressive and UNAIDS, WHO and UNICEF have produced two very positive evaluations since our foundation in 2004.
When faced with growing global demand for our services, we decided against building headquarters. Structure would flow from function and never precede it. We gradually realized that our global support team of five people fulfils the same functions as a district team in East-Congo or a community team in India. They just have a different scope. We naturally evolved into a fractal organization. Imagine our amazement at the reading of The Starfish and the Spider! We were developing as a Starfish without knowing it! Indeed, this book helped us further shape our organization in Africa, Asia and Europe.
Now the Starfish model helps to save lives when applied to the pandemic of AIDS in Northern Thailand, where people made the most progress in response to HIV/AIDS.
[This story was submitted by a Starfish reader. We have no personal experience in studying this non-profit organization.]
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Book Review Follow-Up
Malcolm Gladwell, the greatest American thinker
In response to Rod’s book review in the June 2009 issue of this newsletter (Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell), Philip Greenspun (philip.greenspun.com) wrote the following:
“I read this too. U.S. major airlines typically hire regional airline captains to be their first officers. I.e., a copilot at Delta would have been captain on a 50-seat jet for at least two years even in the busiest times. The regional airlines, except when pilots are very scarce, hire first officers who have been flight instructors for 1,000-1,500 hours. So the copilot of a 50-seat jet in the U.S. was pilot-in-command of a 4-seat Cessna, making all of the go/no-go decisions and whether or not to abort a landing.
Most foreign airlines, by contrast, have their own ab initio (from the beginning) training program. At Japan Airlines, for example, a student goes to Napa, Calif. to fly in a Bonanza with an instructor for 200 hours (including maybe the minimum 10-20 hours of solo flight required by the FAA). After that, the kid goes into a simulator and then into the right seat of an airliner.
Lufthansa has the same deal in Arizona (one of their crews almost wrecked an Airbus choosing to land in a heavy crosswind a couple of years ago; the crew could easily have chosen another runway oriented into the wind). Some countries even have arrangements in which the beginners don't do any solo flights and do most of their training in a simulator. They have perhaps 50 hours in a real aircraft before getting into an airliner as copilot.
Gladwell is, I guess, too clever to apply Occam's Razor: an airline crew in which both pilots have had previous experience as pilot-in-command is safer than one in which one pilot has only 10 or 20 hours of experience as pilot-in-command of any aircraft.
You can make an argument that given a grossly deficient (by American standards) crew, you can add some safety with cultural mumbo-jumbo. But it is probably simpler to do it the JetBlue way (hire basically competent pilots and screen for them having a reasonably relaxed personality). I don't think that they've ever wrecked an airplane.
[Note that the captain who crashed the regional turboprop in Buffalo in February was hired during the boom. He had never been an instructor prior to being hired by the airline and had only the bare minimum training. The first officer had experience as an instructor but she was tired and perhaps sick and apparently wasn't able to save the airplane.]”
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Maria Sipka's Column
How does a brand even start its thinking re: creating conversations that make cents?
Two guys are standing at the water cooler on a Monday morning. Jack needs new training shoes. His Nike trainers are well over their 6 months changeover date. Next to Jack stands Pete, an avid runner, and he’s commenting on how great his third pair of ASICS Kayanos are. He wouldn’t change them for all the Power Bars in New York. Suddenly Stu (a marketer from downstairs) runs into the conversation yelling something about 15% off all BBQs at Wal-Mart for this week only. Stu blinks at them and then stares blankly. He then repeats the 15% offer. Continued silence from Jack and Pete. Jack and Pete keep talking for a while and then leave Stu, who still hasn’t caught on that they are not interested.
Sadly, this is how brands have behaved since the invention of the newspaper, television and radio. With the emergence of social media this scenario is slowly changing, the communication structure is flattening and "engagement" is becoming the new metric to ROI.
Conversations which make cents look at the world of conversational marketing online and ask the question, “How does a brand spark relevant conversations online authentically, where the conversations are already happening?” Being a part of conversations that are relevant to a brand increases engagement and interaction with that brand and is the new marketing nirvana that can lead to increased sales. But how do brands achieve this beyond the banner (widget or video exchange software) and enter into the online conversation in a relevant way?
We first need to start with a simple three-step process in which brands 1) listen, 2) engage, and 3) monitor.
Listening & monitoring. It would be hard not to notice the endless hype around Twitter, Facebook and a host of other platforms. With over 2,000 social networks, 160 million groups and 750 million people globally engaging in some kind of conversation, brands are listening to what is being said about their products, services, competitors and future offerings through monitoring tools (see 20 top buzz monitoring tools).
Engaging means brands for the very first time are experimenting with entering into conversations amongst pockets of interested and diverse groups of people. The results are organic and eye-opening for many. Leading brands such as Nestle, Virgin, McDonalds, and even highly controversial tobacco companies have the approach of "test and learn." Traditionally, brands would engage market research firms and spend countless months and extremely high budgets to ask people all sorts of questions. The outcome? Sterile and, in most cases, totally ineffective.
To work through a real example of your brand and see how you would approach a conversation using Social Media, you need to start from a place of knowing who you are: “Who are you? = Brand” + “What do you stand for = Brand pillars” (See diagram).
The next step is to expand out into what type of positive conversation you intend to engage in. Think of the types of positive conversations you have day to day. There are many elements to them, and in general, they have one or all of the following broad elements:
- They make me laugh = Entertain
- They tell me something I didn’t know before = Inform
- They open my eyes that little bit more because of the opportunity/possibility they communicate = Inspire
- They give me an added boost and make me feel good about what I am doing = Encourage and Support
Of course, there are many other elements in conversation. However, these are typically negative and do not create a YES + AND conversational space where people want to contribute and grow.
The BIGGEST and best point to keep in mind is this: Picture you are in a conversation you want, seated at a dinner party with a table of strangers. If you are tasked with engaging the people around the table, how would you normally do this? Before you say "I am going to say it like this or offer them this" think about yourself at the dinner party again and ask "What reaction would I likely receive if I were to do/say that in the real world?" Now multiply that reaction by a million (as this is the online world) and then decide if you still would want to share/converse as you had planned, or if you would try another approach.
See an example of how IKEA could spark conversations amongst interested groups of people:
There are some gems in the 95 Theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto. While I won’t list them all, here are the most relevant to keep in mind as you work through this exercise:
1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.
11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.
14. Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.
20. Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.
21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.
34. To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.
38. Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns.
Maria Sipka is CEO and co-founder of Linqia, the Social Network Marketplace that connects commercial partners to Social Networks through Linqia's online marketplace. Linqia works with leading global brands to drive social media marketing results through an online marketplace by connecting brands deep into the conversations of online groups and social networks.
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Eco Corner
What Are Pollution Markets?
Rod interviewed Dan Dudek, Chief Economist of the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the co-authors of the Kyoto Protocol, and a leading expert on environmental markets and how to shape them, design them, and use them to create workable policies. As far as we know, this is the first time Dan has granted such an interview, so we are very pleased to share the following excerpt:
Rod: Can you explain to us what pollution markets are?
Dan: Well, Rod, when most people think about pollution, they think of it as something bad that we ought to pass a law on, or regulate. They think we ought to just tell people to stop doing it. And in fact, that’s what most governments around the world do. They pass laws, they say "thou shalt not" and of course, they expect business people to just meekly follow along and obey the law.
But business people around the world are caught, especially now, in this intense globalized economy. Ruthless competition, cutting of costs, and demands for increase of profitability put business people under pressure everywhere around the world. So, if you pass a law, but don’t necessarily spend the time to think about how business people are thinking, how they’re processing the environmental problem, you’re not always going to get the result you want.
You may get a result where people say, “Well, you know, I’m just too busy,” or “I don’t have time,” or “The penalties aren’t high enough. I can dodge this for a while.” You'll get a lot of different answers like that. “It’s too hard! It’ll destroy our economy,” is one that we’ve heard a lot lately. Businesses also say, “It may ruin employment in a key, local industry,” or “I just don’t know what to do.” in terms of the technology.
So, when considering that, I think the key insight about these markets is that we turn that system on its head. Instead of creating a lot of cost overhead and difficult problems for people to solve, we create an opportunity in terms of profit, and turn companies, basically, into pollution miners. We can tell them that, “You can beat whatever requirement or limit that the government’s set for you. You can take that credit and you can sell it in the market to someone else."
That someone else might be a speculator, someone who thinks that, “Gee, the government is going to keep controlling these emissions; they’re going to get more scarce, they’ll be more valuable in the future.” That someone else could be another business unit that’s thinking about expanding. They need some credits to fuel their expansion, because after all, we have a total limit on these emissions, now. They’re valuable assets.
So, if you find a way to reduce emissions more cheaply, you can sell them in the marketplace. That gives you a revenue stream, helps cut your cost of pollution, and turns the environmental department from overhead that the board doesn’t want to see, into a profit center. A total transformation of the way people think about environmental problems occurs, so basically, what you do is you make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard.
In future editions of The Beckstrom Starfish Report we'll share Dan’s explanation of how pollution markets work, how the Kyoto Protocol was set up, and why Dan holds hope that we can turn global warming around.
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