The Impact Equation

by Chris Brogan

  Sprinkle in a bit of their language, however, and people will know that you’re at least familiar with their world.

  Echo in the Workplace

  If you speak from the perspective of a frontline employee, why would the leadership ever see you as anything else? If you present your requests, thoughts, and ideas from the mind-set of an outside consultant, why would a company go back to you repeatedly for more help, when others have cultivated their relationships so that they are trusted advisers?

  For many years, no matter what his official title, Chris also held the role of “guy who can explain something to the senior team and the technology team so that both get it.” After years of working in wireless telecommunications, he was well versed in the world of data centers and large-scale enterprise computing, but through extensive reading and following of the larger business world, Chris also knew how to explain to the chief financial officer why a project was going to cost more due to business continuity planning or what the difference between “having backups” and “disaster recovery” meant from an operations standpoint.

  The opposite is also useful. If you’re someone who works in the nontechnical side of the house, it’s very helpful to be able to communicate in appropriate terms to those you need to interact with to get your ideas across. For instance, if you’re talking to the Web-development team about a project, and you don’t know the difference between a domain registrar and a hosting company, you’re bound to cause some friction. “I bought a Web site from GoDaddy, but nothing’s happening when I put in the WWW” doesn’t go very far these days.

  Echo to the Marketplace

  How often have you read in a news article that a leader has “lost touch with the times”? A few months back, Yahoo announced that Jerry Yang finally was completely resigning from the company he founded. A few things that might occur to you when you think about that story:

  1. Yahoo still exists?

  2. How can a failing company recover without its founder?

  3. What will it mean or not mean for business overall?

  In the United States at least, the stock market “speaks” in a different language. If a company is making deeper long-term investments, the stock market grumbles. (Jeff Bezos got that for years and years, but he now can point to how that mind-set benefited Amazon’s growth plan.) If a company makes a profit but not enough of a profit, stocks go down. Some of the best-loved companies in the world go out of business due to crazy marketplace problems that have little to do with what the company itself can control.

  What can you do? Sometimes it’s not a matter of just communicating but of speaking in a language they understand. There are many cases of companies turning their marketplace stories around after aligning their ideas with the “language” of shifting marketplace trends. Amazon is actually a good example of this. In recent years (now that people have finally caught up to how Jeff Bezos sees things), it built a strong digital-distribution strategy with its Instant Video, MP3 music, and Kindle book service at a time when shelf space and other overhead costs were crushing its competitors.

  Speak Their Language

  The Impact Equation has a funny little quirk to it. One element is Contrast (stand out from everything else) and another is Echo (resonate with what someone feels). Don’t those two conflict?

  Not at all. Do you know how comedians succeed? They create little situations that stand out enough not to be mundane but that resonate with us because we’ve been there ourselves.

  Chris talks about the fact that we all keep our phones really close to our heads when we go to bed, as if we might get a very important call in the middle of the night. It’s as if we were surgeons or superheroes, which clearly we are not. This often raises a nervous and resonating giggle. He then strokes his phone as if he’s Gollum from The Lord of the Rings and says, “My preciousssssss,” as people bark out laughter, because they know the feeling.

  That, in a nutshell, is how comedy works. Say something that contrasts enough so listeners haven’t really heard it said that way before but that still connects with them on some level.

  To build Echo into your Impact Equation, it’s important to learn how to speak your audience’s language and to convey new ideas in a way that almost feels like they were there all along waiting to be discovered. It’s a bit of a magic trick, but the rewards are quite lovely, if we do say so ourselves.

  About Critics

  One thing we should talk about right now is critics. Part of the journey to refining an idea so it has Contrast, building a platform so that you have Reach, and learning about this human-element stuff so that you can Echo the sentiments of your community is dealing with and understanding critics. They come with the territory. They are to be expected and anticipated.

  To be clear, these aren’t the critics of yore. These aren’t people creating a weighed and measured response to your creative efforts. These people often aren’t professionals in the field of offering constructive feedback. They are just people who can type and press send. But it’s still important to understand their place in the ecosystem.

  There’s a saying: “Everyone’s a critic.” It’s used quite often in sitcoms and movies, actually, shortly after someone offhandedly puts down the main character’s efforts at something like making crème brûlée. But it’s truer now than ever before. Now that everyone is a publisher, they all have the opportunity, the ability, and the lack of barrier to voice harsh and unconsidered critiques at the drop of a hat, and they are more than willing to do so around your ideas and your platform.

  Eminem and Critics

  In a 2011 interview, famous hip-hop artist Eminem was asked whether he managed his own Twitter account. He said that he couldn’t really stand to look at Twitter, because he felt that all the critics and haters would get him down. He didn’t want to have to answer every negative question or defend himself in every little argument. It’s understandable. On that level of platform, with the controversial nature of his ideas, it would be several people’s full-time jobs to respond to critics.

  Marketing legend Seth Godin says something similar when explaining why he chooses not to enable comments on his blog. He is concerned that he’d spend more time in the comments section arguing little points with people who disagreed than he would spend creating new ideas.

  We understand the sentiments of these creators. We have our share of both critics and haters, and it has been quite a journey to learn how best to address them. We have thoughts on that, but first, a question.

  Everyone Has a Microphone

  One huge difference between the old days of critics and the modern days of critics is this: Everyone has a very visible microphone. Meaning, if someone doesn’t like what you say, it can be heard loud and clear. And sometimes, depending on the venue (in this case we mean the online space, but this is also true in the physical realm), critics have access to the same level of platform and volume as the creator sharing the original idea.

  Let’s say you write a blog post about your best ideas for building business value. Someone can leave a very negative comment with very little effort. This comment is loud, and it’s in the “audience” of your post. This person can also write a Facebook message about how wrong you are, a tweet about it, and more. All of these messages are easy for you to see and read. They are hard to ignore, should you want to ignore them.

  Now imagine you are onstage, and behind you is a computer screen showing off the Twitter responses to your speech from the audience. Now imagine you see negative commentary streaming by, saying that you’re wrong, that you don’t know what you’re talking about, that you’re arrogant, or whatever.

  This is new. These feelings are new. Dealing with these kinds of emotions when you might not be used to direct feedback and criticism can be jarring. Think about it. Most employees get direct feedback as rarely as once a year (annual reviews, anyone?). Sometimes you get little dribs and drabs of feedback, depending on your job. But in the idea economy, not only do you get a lo
t more feedback, but you get a blend of positive and negative.

  A Little Advice About Criticism and Comments

  Our best piece of advice is the simplest: Accept all criticism and praise equally as the thoughts and opinions of others and nothing more. This is important on two fronts. First, you can never know the motivations of those providing feedback. Second, both praise and criticism aren’t completely helpful, because people will never fully understand your intentions.

  There’s something else. If you received a hundred comments on something you created, ninety-eight positive and two negative, we know with every ounce of our being that you’ll focus on the two negative. Again, none of the comments, good or bad, should weigh very heavily. They should be read, absorbed, and then filed in the “people are giving me feedback” box and given a little less weight than the other ways you evaluate your efforts.

  But let’s repeat that first point of advice. It would be best if you accept all positive and negative feedback as just the words of others and not take it to heart, but it’s important to know that people are voicing their own perspectives on your work.

  What to Do with Critics and Comments

  No matter what someone says, positive or negative, the most important response you should give to anyone who takes the time to comment (in whatever medium) is to thank them. If you just stop there, that’s fine.

  This isn’t easy. We have failed at this often in situations where the critic ends up getting under our skin. If we get into it, if we get snarky or angry back, we’ve already lost, because then we’re playing the critic’s game instead of sticking to our own. The best response is to say thank you and leave it at that.

  But what about in a larger business sense? What about when it’s more than your ego at stake? Well, there are some professional thoughts about that too.

  In a corporate setting, if you have a blog or a forum and someone leaves a negative comment, it’s important to have a policy in place that defines your course of action. In our opinion, that policy should be brief and simple, and it should be shared up front with your community, so that they know the rules. You want a quick policy?

  1. We prefer words you’d be willing to say in front of children. (You can be angry, but please refrain from cursing.)

  2. We welcome on-topic comments. If you seek to protest some choice or action of our company, please see our protest posts. (This would be brilliant to have, wouldn’t it?)

  3. If you have a negative opinion of us or our company, we’d love to learn from you. Please feel free to leave a negative comment, but also please connect with us via our contact page so we can follow up and try to resolve your issues or concerns.

  4. We welcome your suggestions. We can’t always please everyone, but our goal is to do our best.

  See how fast that can be?

  Internally, the rules of engagement are this:

  1. If there are curse words, it is preferable to edit those specific words but leave the content of the comment, as long as it’s simply a passionate negative opinion.

  2. Let’s define “on topic” loosely. If they’re talking about our company or our products or our competitors, that’s on topic. (Never delete praise of a competitor’s product, even if it stings to read it.)

  3. Do your best to follow up with anyone who has a complaint, even if they’re “in the wrong” from your perspective. This is a must.

  4. Pass on any recommendations to as many people as possible. (Add an appropriate contact list.)

  To us, handling criticisms and comments is a powerful part of growing the human element of the Impact Equation. Your mission, and you have no choice but to accept it, is to grow a thicker skin, to learn how to be grateful for any reactions, positive or negative, and to forward comments to the best recipients to encourage response.

  ECHO: HOW TO RATE YOURSELF

  The name of the game with Echo is to make sure that people feel you’re connecting and resonating with them and that your ideas make sense to them. Here are a few questions to consider when gauging your idea’s ability to feel so right that people connect to it as if it were their very own.

  Do you share the common vernacular of the people you intend to reach? Do you understand their background? Do you communicate in ways that are inclusive of your desired audience? All these things matter and more.

  The real dilemma with Echo, however, is that you can’t really measure it yourself. Whether you’re an individual or a company, you can’t measure the touchy-feely aspects of impact from the inside as well as you can from without.

  The simplest way to resolve this is to find someone you’ve known for a long time and someone else you just met, and to ask them similar questions. Here are some examples that will help you gain some understanding.

  Do I make people feel comfortable?

  Can I look people in the eyes?

  Do I talk about myself or about others?

  Am I relatable?

  Do I let myself be vulnerable around others?

  Do I seem relaxed or tense?

  These are the measures by which you might judge your success in the land of Echo. Like Trust, Echo isn’t something you find overnight. It takes a lot of relationship building to get it just so, lots of experience and error to see what you’re doing wrong and right. When done correctly, however, it ends up being among the most powerful parts of Impact.

  Conclusion

  One big problem when working on creating impact is the trap of the social mirror. We tend to look to others for a perspective on how we appear instead of seeking feedback from within. We get tangled up in other people’s perspectives, thoughts, and opinions, and this becomes an issue quickly.

  Consider the word “disappointment” or “disappointed.” When someone says they are disappointed in us, our first reaction is to feel bad and to suddenly take stock of what we’ve done to determine just how flawed and bad we are. But have you ever considered the fact that people’s disappointment is often their own, and that when they say that, they are really saying, “I’m frustrated that my own internal image of you didn’t match with reality”? Has that ever crossed your mind?

  Throw into this mix the terms “obligation” and “expectation”; all of these things quite often come from external sources. They cause us to get tangled in other people’s issues. For instance, if someone sends you a holiday card, are you obligated to send one back? You might feel like you are, but think about it for a moment. This person has chosen to send you a greeting of some kind. You can opt to appreciate the greeting and take no action. You might also choose to send a greeting back. Make it your choice and not an obligation.

  We get tangled up at work too. We think long and hard about pleasing the boss, and sometimes we stop making good decisions because we get too hung up on it. Other times we get tangled up at work by creating rivalry among colleagues. We get tunnel vision over competing for the same raise or for some scrap of praise. But if we step back, we can see that all these kinds of feedback come from outside of us.

  When we are tangled up in other people’s perceptions, we worry that too much Contrast will make us stand out when we’re trying to fit in. (Think back to high school: This was approximately 70 percent of your angst, right?) When we worry about the little things, we chew up a lot of time instead of working to improve our Reach.

  It’s also harder to be articulate if you’re trying to consider the thoughts and social mirror of others around you. You’re prone to try to describe things in a way that covers your bases. This obviously also hurts Trust, because if you’re trying to be all things to all people, then your ideas get watered down, and that rarely evokes strong Trust. Where you might gain ground positively is in Echo, but that’s because you’re responding to the sentiments you’ve seen in the social mirror.

  Ways to Untangle

  In our conversation about critics, we recommended that you acknowledge all positive and negative external feedback but that you do very little with it. We feel the same
here, though it will take even more work. It’s a lot easier to distance yourself from the words of strangers and acquaintances. In this case, we’re talking about learning how to untangle your feelings and your sense of worth and value from your loved ones, your employers, and anyone else currently wielding power over you.

  The goal is to serve the people who matter to you, but only from your own sense of value and worth. Your loved ones, your employer, your customers, and some of your colleagues matter to you. It’s great to acknowledge this. Work and live in a way that honors them, and don’t worry a lick about the mass of external feedback you receive from everyone, friend and foe alike.

  Have you been thinking about specific people? Are you remembering times when someone said something to you and it really hurt? Imagine if that person were somehow instantly in front of you and asked you for some honest feedback about something they were doing. How easy would it be for you to shake off the negative feeling you were just experiencing? How would you judge their effort without bringing in the past?

  See how messy this is?

  A Quick Reminder: Each of Us Is the Hero of Our Own Story

  We all consider ourselves the hero of our own story. Today, when you stopped what you were doing to read this part of the book, you viewed everything that came before this moment as things that happened to you. But go back. Did you have a funny moment with the barista who poured your latte? Did you trade angry e-mails with a competitor? How do you think those people are reflecting on their day? How much of their day are you responsible for affecting?