TNNW TWITTER AND CASTLE COMMENTARY

TNNW TWITTER AND CASTLE COMMENTARY

Following, ladies and gentlemen, are three of the blurbs which I blurted on Twitter today in my spare moments. Read them aloud please:

1) ~tagged.com -- A "Social Network" that behaves more like a virus - warning! http://twitlik.com/LINKS4LIFE #TNNW

2) THE NATIONAL NETWORKER (TNNW). Interactive business community. Join http://www.thenationalnetworker.com/. Free Newsletter. Member services.

3) Networking is more than broadcasting and name collecting. It is a route to relationships. Join us: http://www.thenationalnetworker.com/.

Thank you. Brilliant job. Appreciate it.

Inevitable Commentary:

I have always been a long-winded sort of fellow. Coming from the Ancient School of Management Consulting (founded by R. Fenwick Stanton III during the latter part of the Bronze Age), I was told at the beginning of my career that a good consultant takes off his clients watch and tells the client what time it is…and then bills him for it. I was also told that there was a true advantage to being excruciatingly verbose (with a large side order of redundancy): When selling fresh manure, you were paid by the steaming pound – unless, of course, you were a major distributor, in which case you were paid by the steaming metric ton (or by the tonne, as we Anglophiles tend to favour); as a consultant, you were paid by the word or by the page. That was what I was taught.

Now I know better. People are neither as patient nor as polite as they used to be. They actually look at their watches, send text messages or hail cabs when I speak. They frequently start tapping their feet and gesticulating with broad, waving arm gestures when I am in mid-sentence. In today’s Contemporary School of Consultancy (which many prefer to call “coaching”), less is more. The key is to limit your word usage to the absolute minimum number of characters needed to convey the thought. It is more about efficiency than about eloquence. Douglas Castle (a name that I am currently using to disguise my true identity, in the event that I discover it) is a scribe with a chisel in a world gone to Skype. I sit home at night and inventory my lava lamps, beanbag chairs, and leisure suits. On rare occasion, I will even eat red meat in an out-of-town restaurant where no one will recognize me. One of those places where the waitress calls me “Hon”.

Now that you’re getting ready to leave for an evening of speed-dating, I’ll say what I had originally wanted to say before I sidetracked myself.

LESS IS SOMETIMES LESS. Quicker, briefer, smaller is (are?) not necessarily better. In our pursuit of brevity, we are leaving out nuances, expressions, tangents (those great stories that are so interesting that we forget what we were talking about in the first place – but the ones that tell people a little about who we truly are) and helpful repetition. We are broadcasting in short bursts…but we are no longer truly connecting.

Human Nature is largely unchanged. We still prefer to give our business to the people we know and like. We still go through some trial and error to learn new things. We sometimes need to have a question repeated. We crave relationships, despite our stated desire to be independent and uncommitted.

Social media is not an inherently evil concept. Brevity is not necessarily impolite, especially if you are trying to evacuate a burning building, telling another hiker that he is being followed by a bear or about to step into a nest of yellow jackets, or when your car is being surrounded by a horde of drooling, grunting cannibalistic mutants from the future who are banging on your windshield with halberds and clubs (this last example is, admittedly extreme). Speed is sometimes necessary for the sake of survival, or to get designer clothing on sale immediately after a holiday.

But (and one should never begin a sentence with “but”) social media is not (are not?) a substitute for quality time invested in developing a rapport. Some processes (like making a fine wine) simply require more time. In our networking activities, if we fail to invest the time to gain understanding, to earn respect, to facilitate genuine bonding, to feel the extra element of warmth that can only comes from familiarity.

I will continue to tweet on Twitter.

But I am not out to advertise my professional services as a strategic planner or organizational engineer (which are described in some detail at http://aboutdouglascastle.blogspot.com/), or to say positive things about The National Networker – incidentally, you can get a free subscription to their terrific newsletter and see some past issues at http://www.thenationalnetworker.com/ - I am out to get to know you, and to have you get to know me.

And if we should come to respect each other, to enjoy each other and to trust each other…we can have a relationship. Hopefully, it will be a mutually productive and profitable one – but I will insist, unconditionally, that it be a friendly one. An investment in friendship can yield tremendously profitable returns. But be advised that an investment in friendship requires time, and often more than 140 characters’ worth of conversation. It also requires some listening, as well as broadcasting.

Always,

Douglas Castle

p.s. Adam J. Kovitz enjoys seeing his name in print. Here it is, Adam.