New Guy/Gal Syndrome

I started a new job about three months ago. And in my first few months at the job, I have heard several comments alluding to the following central theme:

"Ha, you are still new. Let's see if you still feel this way in a few months"
"I felt the same way when I started ... hope that you are able to do more w/ it than I did"
"It's good to see you pushing for some of this stuff - but you are still fairly new"
"Dude, you still got the 'new guy syndrome'!"

Implying that:

The desire to push for positive and wanted shifts in an organization is inversely proportion to the length of time you have worked in that organization. Or that as you get more comfortable and acquire a longer tenure at the organization - your desire to change things goes down, primarily driven from a lack of success (I assume).

And the funny thing is most everyone around you assumes that will be the likely scenario.

What a shame!

My response:

"If having the 'new guy/gal syndrome' is what drives an individual to objectively look at organizational processes and strive to drive more effectiveness and efficiency, than as a leader I hope that this syndrome is contagious and that I can infect everyone else around me with it!"

There. Now you have it. Go, spread it. Go :)

Enterprise 2.0: Changing the way we work

Good video from MIT's Andrew McAfee on the topic of Enterprise 2.0. I don't think there is a template answer to how this would work for any given organization. You have to adapt your approach based on the culture of the enterprise in question. However, in my experience what is tougher is not identifying or rolling out the platform, but changing people's behavior to do meaningful work using these new tools.



I have found that people who are avid users of 2.0 tools in their personal lives are (as you would expect) early adopters of similar tools in an enterprise environment. This is partly due to familiarity, but also because these individuals are more likely to spot how work that is done in a traditional manner in an organization can be done using the E2.0 toolset in a more effective and efficient manner.

I also agree w/ Andrew that you can not force people to behave in a certain manner (well, you can ... but it may not lead to long term adoption). Instead my hypothesis is, you let the early adopters build some small success stories that they get excited about, and let them pull others via their passion. In reality, a hybrid approach of structured/top-down and organic/bottoms-up seems to offer the best chances for success. The balance will be organization dependent.

What have you tried? What worked? What didn't?

Reason # 3429 why I love marketing: American girl doll made in china for US$115. Hmm.

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Reason # 4389: Why I love marketing :)

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Lego store - going the route of apple?

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More Favorite Videos

Much delayed, but here are some more videos that I have shared this year with my organization at our annual summit and during our monthly town halls.

1) Stefan Sagmeister: The power of time off
We started off our annual summit by reminding ourselves that turning off allows us to be more creative when we turn back on. I really like Stefan's idea of taking 5 of our post-retirement years and dispersing them throughout our career. As my dean from business school (Dr. Court Huber) says: "You can't lead, if you can't leave!"



2) Parag Khanna maps the future of countries
Our focus this year was to understand that the audience that we are trying to serve as marketers is a global audience (in fact more outside US than in the US) and thus this video does a nice job of creating a global context.



3) Jonathan Zittrain: The Web as random acts of kindness
Funny and inspiring to think that the world economy is now built on top of an infrastructure that no one entity owns! It is owned and managed by the collective "us" and it's scary to see that there are still companies that don't get the "social" in social marketing.



4) Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man
With the shifts in media mixes - I find this a funny look at the changing world of advertising.



5) Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation
Another humorous examination of what motivates people. No surprise, it's often not money!



6) Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight
And to end it all, this beautiful talk from Jill Taylor as she talks about her experience of having a stroke. It's one of my all time favorite TED talks - as Jill (a brain scientist) makes a persuasive case for the spiritual nature of our world.



I feel like I may still be missing a few. I will add them as I remember. At a separate session we watched the following talks from the web 2.0 summit:

1) Web 2.0 Summit 09: Marissa Mayer



2) Web 2.0 Summit 09: Sean Parker, "High Order Bit: The Rise of the Network Company"



3) Web 2.0 Summit 09: Mary Meeker, "High Order Bit: The State of the Capital Markets, Version Six"



4) Web 2.0 Summit 09: Mike Schroepfer, "High Order Bit: The Infrastructure of Facebook"



I hope you enjoy these as much as I did. You can find all the Web 2.0 Summit talks on Youtube.

Bud brings you miller?

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Who's heard of "business traveler" magazine? :) endorsing sony as best noise cancellation headphones.

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Dan Ariely @ Google/TED

I just finished reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. One more in the emerging and fascinating "behavioral economics" field. Economics aside, what fascinates me are the implications to marketing. This will be the topic at my town hall meeting tomorrow. I will be back to share what ideas popped.