I see what you did there

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jan 7, 2011 in Awakening, Ninjutsu, On ko chi shin | 0 comments

I see what you did there is one of my favorite expressions. I’m not sure where it came from or how it got into my vocabulary (I suspect Chris Brogan), but it encapsulates nearly everything I believe in as a student of marketing, martial arts, and life. You see, most of the lessons I’ve had to learn or teach myself over the years were not explicit lessons. Sure, a whole bunch during childhood came on handy worksheets and structured exams. They had right answers and wrong answers. You knew when the lesson was done because the worksheet was at an end. Once I left school, however, the worksheets, term papers, and grades stopped. The lessons didn’t.

My teacher’s teacher, Stephen K. Hayes, often says that he is never NOT teaching. Everything is a lesson, from how you’re supposed to set up a dojo kamiza (point of focus) to how you’re supposed to walk, both literally and figuratively. Not everything will be handed to us or spoon-fed as students; in fact, some of the most important lessons are not even hinted at.

Life is full of lessons. Life is always teaching, whether or not we’re paying attention.

I see what you did there is an explicit acknowledgement and compliment I give to someone when I see a lesson that has been presented to me, whether they meant to give it or not. I see what you did there is a mental trick I use on myself as a way of reminding myself to constantly look for lessons. When someone pulls a nice social media marketing trick, I love to say I see what you did there – and I add it to my mental catalog of lessons. When someone repositions a mob as an off tank in a Warcraft raid, I love to say I see what you did there – and I add it to my mental catalog of lessons.

There are two lessons here for you. First, look for similar acknowledgements from other people. Everyone has a different way of subtly pointing out something especially clever. Learn the language of the people you respect and when you see their version of I see what you did there, you know you’re looking at something especially powerful that you need to copy, learn, or adapt. One of my teachers is fond of grinning and saying, “Noticed that, did you?” and when I hear that, I know I’ve found something worth investigating more. Another jokes and kids when he says, “Isn’t that lovely, June?” and most people laugh it off. I’m scribbling notes madly. What do your teachers say, and do you pay enough attention to catch it?

Second, look for opportunities in your own life to say I see what you did there to people. In doing so, you’ll train your mind to look for all of the lessons and all of the teachers that life presents, not just the ones you’ve hired or followed. Look for a chance to say I see what you did there every day, and you’ll find more opportunities to learn than you could ever pay for.

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Three words for 2011

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jan 1, 2011 in Awakening, Ninjutsu, Productivity | 3 comments

Every year, Chris Brogan has introduced a theme summed up in three words. I enjoy playing along with the theme as it usually does a good job of crystallizing what the year will be about. They’re not goals so much as lenses, ways to focus and make decisions about whether something is worth doing or worth investigating. 2011′s three words for me are:

System. Shatterpoint. Leverage.

• System. As an avid World of Warcraft player, there are thousands of systems within the game that make it relatively easy to succeed, from designing armor sets with reforging for tanking to manipulating the Auction House. I’ve learned many, many lessons about controlling systems from the game and this year, I want to see how many of those systems and models can be brought to life in the non-virtual world. Some of them may port directly, while others will need to adapt to life’s greater complexities and randomness.
• Shatterpoint. In the Star Wars universe, a shatterpoint is a juncture in the Force where things are especially vulnerable, where one little change can make or break not just a person or a campaign, but have galactic consequences. In any given framework, there are critical points where a relatively simple change can make a company run smoothly or stop business completely. There are key players who can be bolstered or neutralized and the company will flourish or wither. This year, I’ll spend time looking at all of the frameworks that I use and determining where the shatterpoints are and how to neutralize them in my own stuff while looking for them in competitors.
• Leverage. As a companion or corollary to shatterpoints, there are multipliers that can take a little change and amplify it far out of proportion to the original inputs. These might be marketing methods that provide unforeseen synergies with existing efforts, interactions which are not obvious but which are tremendously powerful. These might be fitness techniques or strategies that accomplish far more than they appear to on the surface. This year, I’ll spend time looking at the amplifiers that I already know about, to see if they can be used in new and different ways, as well as looking for new amplifiers, methods, and tools to bolster what I already have.

As the year progresses, I’m sure I’ll be sharing some of the outputs from the research. Some stuff will remain hidden by necessity (or contractual requirement) while other stuff will appear on the blog here or in the other channels I participate in. Stay tuned in and what I can share, I will.

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Why you must be a liar online

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Dec 28, 2010 in Awakening, Ninjutsu | 41 comments

You should be a liar online.

No, scratch that, you MUST be a liar online if you have more than 232.86 friends/followers/fans in social media.

I lie all the time online. Flat out lies, deception, incorrect information, omission – you name it, I do it. I lie about where I live, about my birthday, about my family or lack thereof, about all of the things that would be useful for someone to cause me significant harm.

Why? Simple. There are bad people out there. What you probably don’t know is how numerous they are. Based on the FBI Uniform Crime Report, here are some interesting statistics. I make a couple of assumptions here. I assume that the FBI doesn’t double-count, which means that if someone is raped and murdered, it’s filed only under murder. Second, I make the assumption that law enforcement is working as intended and each crime is perpetrated by a unique individual within a calendar year. Yes, there are definitely multiple offenders, but I’d hope that if someone commits murder, they’re not out of jail and doing it again within the same calendar year.

So, with that disclaimer, here’s why you should be lying online:

• If you have more than 20,143 friends/fans, one of them is statistically likely to be a murderer.
• If you have more than 3,485 friends/fans, one of them is statistically likely to be a violent rapist.
• If you have more than 752 friends/fans, one of them is statistically likely to be a robber. (remember PleaseRobMe.com?)
• If you have more than 381 friends/fans, one of them is statistically likely to be a violent criminal.

Now, these statistics (derived from the FBI data of crimes per 100,000 population members) aren’t uniform, of course. The crime rate per 100,000 people will be different if you physically live in Fargo, ND than if you live in midtown Manhattan. That said, it’s still worth thinking about, still worth realizing that in the social world we live in, there are plenty of bad people mixed in with the good. We think nothing of having 100, 500, or 1,000 people in our social media circles that we’ve never met and never had a chance to get a gut feeling for. You’d better bet that at that scale of people, there are some bad apples in the bunch.

This is why you should be lying. All 3,000 or 5,000 or 20,000 friends/fans/followers don’t need to be criminals in order to make your life miserable and/or cause you harm. Only 1 of them that takes advantage of information you post online carelessly is needed to do the job. I’m not saying you need to live under a rock and hide away from everyone online, either. I’m just saying that you need to be careful with the information you share and be thoughtful about how truthful you actually need to be online. Do you need to check in everywhere? Do you need to share photos of your kids? Do you need to announce that you’re not at home?

Transparency and stupidity don’t have to be synonymous.

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Committing to the cut

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Nov 11, 2010 in Awakening, Ninjutsu, On ko chi shin | 4 comments

Every year at New England Warrior Camp, we have the opportunity to do tameshigiri, or live blade cutting. A bamboo mat is soaked in water, rolled up, and put on a pedestal. Martial practitioners then take a sharp sword and attempt to cut it in half.

Learning how to perform a cut with a sword is only part of the picture. Once you learn the mechanics of making a cut and how to operate a sword, the next hardest part is making the commitment to cut. Many people are hesitant to put their full weight, momentum, and force behind their sword cut, and as a result they get through half the mat at best. Some nearly bounce off of it, making only a surface scratch.

Tameshigiri illustrates this lack of commitment in a very visceral, obvious way. If you don’t commit to the cut, you get an exceptionally poor result. If the tameshigiri target were an actual attacker, you’d be ineffective at best.

Why do you hesitate with a katana? Why don’t you commit to the cut? Sometimes it’s lack of confidence in your knowledge and ability about how to use a sword. Sometimes it’s outright fear of the sword – understandably so, since most people don’t routinely use a four foot razor blade regularly. But sometimes, it’s a deeper fear of committing and putting your full force behind anything at all in life that holds you back from even something as simple as swinging a sword.

Once you make that personal breakthrough, once you get some knowledge, overcome your fear, and commit to giving it your all, the sword cuts. The target falls, lopped in half, and you walk away amazed at yourself, amazed at what you are capable of. Despite your lack of confidence, despite your fear, your willingness to commit, your will to act, pushes you through to victory and success.

Ask yourself this:

What in your life are you seeing lackluster results in?

What in your life are you seeing lackluster results in because you are hesitating to commit, and how would your life change for the better if you pushed past your fear, pushed past your hesitation, and committed to the cut?

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It takes two to make a bully

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Oct 21, 2010 in Awakening, Education, Ninjutsu, On ko chi shin | 28 comments

I was reading bedtime stories the other night and came across a gem by Richard Scarry in the 365 Bedtime Stories compendium, which I think is incredibly illustrative of the way we dealt with bullies in the past and the way we deal with them now.

In the short story The Rudiments, a boy is bullied in the schoolyard and goes home to his father. His father, knowing how the rules of the schoolyard go, teaches his son the rudiments of boxing. Later on, the bully returns to the boy and gets a bloodied nose for his efforts. They make up afterwards and become schoolyard friends.

How much our culture has changed in the 35 years since Scarry’s book was written. How little personal responsibility we are willing to take, and how little personal responsibility we encourage our children to take for their own safety, welfare, and confidence. I’m reminded of a quote from my teacher’s teacher, Stephen K. Hayes: it takes two to make a bully – the bully and a willing victim. Most bullies are folks who are not looking for a fair fight. They’re looking for someone to use. If it’s obvious you’re not going to roll over and give in, they’ll typically move on to someone easier, someone who is willing to play the role they want them to play.

When I look at the “epidemic” of schoolyard bullying, there is blame to be assigned, unquestionably. It’s not the school’s fault. It’s not the bullies’ fault. It’s not the child’s fault.

The blame squarely falls on the parents of the bullied child.

Now, just to be clear, the bully has as much responsibility for the act of bullying as the victim, but the reality of life is that there will always be bullies, jackasses, profoundly clueless and deeply irresponsible people, and just plain idiots. When they do something stupid, it has an impact, unquestionably, but you have little to no control over them. You have total control over yourself and how you choose to respond, and a bullied child has that same control and responsibility. That’s where parents are falling down hard now – they’re taking away (or never giving) their kids that power.

Every time you intercede on your child’s behalf or appeal to the school system, every time you negotiate for more impotent rules to attempt to govern the behavior of other people’s kids, every time you whisk your child away from an unpleasant situation without encouraging them to solve it for themselves, every time you give away your child’s power to stand up for themselves to a teacher, monitor, lawyer, principal, you make them that much weaker and more vulnerable to bullying, especially when they’re very young. It’s akin to blasting your immune system with antibiotics every time you get a runny nose. The immune system’s ability to fight back is never tested and strengthened, and when some serious illness comes along, your body completely caves in. The same exact principle is at work every time you swoop in to rescue your child.

Stop coddling your child and interceding on their behalf, and teach them how to fight back by whatever means are available. Enroll them in a martial arts class. Teach them how to network and be an incredible friend-maker so that other kids in the schoolyard will ally with your child, even if they’re physically not able to fight back. Teach them most of all how to stand up for themselves against all those who would do them harm, because if you don’t, they will be permanent victims for life.

When I was a kid, I got a healthy dose of bullying in the schoolyard, especially being small, short, and not especially athletic. Instead of just giving into it or crying to my parents about it, I took action, finding friends willing to help me stand up against it and finding my own, very unique ways to fight back against it. Later on, I got involved in the martial arts to strengthen my physical abilities to protect myself and the people I cared about, but most important, my parents (especially my dad) encouraged me to stand up for myself however I could from very early on, and true to form, the bullies went elsewhere, for easier opportunities.

Bullying changes as you get older, but it never stops. The physical acts of violence might diminish, perhaps, but there are just as many bullies in your cubicle farm now as there are on your playground of yesterday. The tormentor who made fun of you being tall, short, black, white, fat, thin, whatever back then is the one who gossips against you now, sending memos to undercut you, makes discriminatory comments behind your back, and is working to sabotage the people around him or her because they can.

If your child never learns how to stand up and punch someone in the face (literally or metaphorically) from very early on, then they will endure it for the rest of their lives, because bullies and asshats are a perpetual constant. Wouldn’t you rather give your child the confidence to escape or stop a bad situation when they’re very young, so that they learn it’s okay to stand up for themselves, that it’s not okay to be a victim, for the rest of their lives?

What if your child became so strong, so confident, so powerful in their own right with your guidance that they not only stood up for themselves, but stood up for others and were able to make their own schoolyard world a little brighter, more cheerful, more safe? Wouldn’t that be amazing? It all starts with your role as a parent to help build that strong personality, that strength of character and confidence, that iron will to act and not waver in the face of wrongness.

Incidentally, those are also the attributes of the people we call heroes.

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The name is the result

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Oct 5, 2010 in Advertising, Awakening, Marketing, Ninjutsu, On ko chi shin | 1 comment

I had the pleasure and privilege to attend New England Warrior Camp again this year (my 11th out of 13) in the woods of Sudbury, Massachusetts this past weekend. Others have done a much better job illuminating the actual goings-on, such as my friend and senior, Jon Merz. One of my huge takeaways from the weekend, however, came from one of the training sessions.

Dennis Mahoney, head instructor at Shinobi Martial Arts, gave us this important lesson in his session:

The name of a technique describes the effect on your attacker, not what you do.

In the martial arts, we get so fixated on what we’re supposed to be doing that we forget completely about what we’re supposed to be achieving. Dennis’ session was a stark reminder that our goal is what matters, not our method. As a martial artist, you can get to omotegyakutedori, the outward wrist twist catch and lock, with your hands, arms, feet, weapons, probably even a used cheeseburger container. As long as you achieve the effects of getting the upper quarter of the body locked up, spine locked, and arm assembly locked, you’ve more or less achieved the technique.

Where most of us go wrong is in rigid insistence that we move exactly a certain way, hold the hand or wrist in exactly the right manner at exactly the right angle – despite the fact that conditions and situations may dictate a completely different set of methods to get to the desired result. Instead of adapting to the situation and working towards a goal, we get bogged down in “the way we’re supposed to do it”, as though attackers use textbook methods to assault us.

So what does this have to do with anything outside the martial arts? Think about how insistent some people can be on any particular marketing method. You MUST be using social media! You MUST be using email marketing! You MUST be doing SEO.

Well, no. What you MUST do is know what outcome you are trying to achieve, and then figure out which of the tools in your toolbox can help you achieve that result. Think about that for a second. What’s the purpose of email marketing? To reach out to people and let them know about stuff that’s going on, right? What else can do that? Email can, certainly. So can Twitter. So can LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.. All of those have mechanisms for outreach, and thus if the desired effect is “let people know stuff is going on”, then the thing we call email marketing isn’t just POP3, SMTP, and IMAP, but a collection of tools to reach people and a way of doing it that makes them glad to hear from us.

Here’s another example: search engine optimization. This means being findable, right? Findable where? Our narrow view of marketing says that we obey the dictates of Google, and while that’s important, being findable also means making sure your podcast is in iTunes, that your business can be located on various location services, that you have social profiles with consistent naming, and so on. Being findable is far more than just inbound link building.

The next time you sit down to evaluate your marketing, look at it from the perspective of what you want to achieve and then examine all of your tools to see if they can be used in that context. You might be surprised to realize that some of the tools in your toolbox have far more uses than what you’ve traditionally used them for.

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