It is what it is

I was trying to make a decision that I thought would have been easy. However, a wrinkle—a constraint—appeared, making me angry, disappointed, helpless and less confident. The new constraint also caused me to question the direction I wanted to go.

Two colleagues whom I depended on for consultation and advice said independently to me. “Well, it is what it is.” Both times when I heard this, I thought “Good grief! That statement is not very helpful!”

They were saying accept the situation as it is—it is not going to change. They were and are right.

After I accepted the constraint—the disappointing situation—as it was, I began to gain confidence in seeing new possibilities. I had to accept the disappointing news as it was. With the acceptance and gained confidence, I finally got to a point that I could aggressively think about the future opportunities.

It seems several friends and colleagues are going through their own life issues. Some of these situations are nuisances, others are health or economic changes that shock our daily living and makes us question our priorities.

Not until we accept these situations as what they are, can we free ourselves of frustrations, anger, and disappointment and positively solve problems and make a difference.

Without acceptance, we scream “Why can’t I do this?” or “Why can’t I have it my way?”. We feel anger, disappointment and blame toward the people we think caused the situation. Until we accept bad (or even good) news as what it is, we cannot shape our own future. The acceptance frees us from the exhausting emotional distress, and gives way to a path of proactive decisions and possibilities of growth.

Life’s bumps, nuisances, and heartbreaking news give us reasons to be disappointed, depressed, mad, grumpy, and mean. Acceptance of “it is what it is” gives us of the ability to tackle our negative emotions and turn them into positive actions that make a difference.

We all can identify someone in our lives who positively approaches bad news. Their behavior and actions inspire us, give us joy and shape us—causing us to think about our own priorities.

I am thankful for my two colleagues who had the courage and the honesty to tell me to accept the constraint as it is. It was their clarity that freed me of frustration and opened a new outlook to my future. 

PHOTO: Originally uploaded by BeInspiredDesigns   It Is What It Is on Red Scrabble Tile

del.icio.us Tags: Leadership

Cooperative Extension and Social Media

Chris Raines, a meat scientist who uses @ITweetMeat as his Twitter handle, explained the importance of social media use in Extension.

He makes several points about Extension and our online work. Below, I am continuing the conversation.

• Cooperative Extension’s 100 year history and purpose is to help improve lives through education.
• Cooperative Extension is about changing for benefitting individuals and communities.
• Cooperative Extension bases its education on research. Research, sometimes, can appear to conflict with other research. An example where research can lead to confusing recommendations is with sun exposure. Low Vitamin D can lead to fatigue, increase cancer and cardiovascular disease risks. Researchers recommend 20 minutes in the sun without sunscreen. However, other researchers suggest that sun exposure increases skin cancer risks. We see similar conflicting research around topics like environment, food production, and health. Cooperative Extension’s strength is to make sense of research, particularly research that conflicts, and understand and communicate research in context. “Content without context is just noise.” (from @rands).
• Cooperative Extension will continue to keep its local community ties, but has and will continue to grow an online presence. Cooperative Extension’s online presence is not a  replacement for our local, face-to-face contacts, but rather a way to build, maintain, and strengthen these relationships. Early in my use of social media, the best—and first recognized—benefit was the ability to maintain and build understanding with people I already knew.This understanding, credibility, and trust gained were and are immeasurable. Many people who don’t interact online don’t realize that relationships can be built successfully online and they often discount the value of these relationships. Those who fail to see the benefit of building relationships online are failing their organizations.
• Just as in our personal lives, online we have different levels of relationships. Building and developing relationships online occur when we take the time to listen and interact with others—just like we expect Cooperative Extension professionals to develop local relationships—they should do this online.
• Cooperative Extension is no longer bound by county, state, and national boundaries.
• The game changer (Chris Raines uses the term) for Cooperative Extension is that we can now research, build content, and build knowledge with anyone in physical, online, and “expert” communities. Building knowledge activities are not constrained to land-grant faculty, but can and should be encouraged with others who share the passion and knowledge. We are no longer limited to those who are close geographically, those who we have personally met, or those communities we already familiar with.
• Online environments give Cooperative Extension new ways to do basic Cooperative Extension work. Seaman Knapp and George Washington Carver embedded themselves in communities, by working with individuals to develop experiments and create on-site and personally learning environments.
• Cooperative Extension’s online presence is imperative, not only to disseminate information (if we think this is all there is in social media we are doomed), but to also embed ourselves in communities, working with individuals to help with research and develop educational content.

Some Cooperative Extension educators are interacting online. The challenge is we need more Extension professionals, like Chris Raines, to participate—by listening and engaging—in online communities for the purpose of building knowledge and learning.

del.icio.us Tags: Cooperative Extension,agchat,agriculture,agsmext

Military Blogging Conference

I attended the Military Blogging conference to

• learn about military, retired military, and military support groups who use of social media
• meet people who represent groups that help military families.

A summary of my observations are:

• Military bloggers are passionate, as you would expect.
• Military bloggers who began blogging in 2002 and 2003 were leaders and drove a grass roots movement that led to identifying military bloggers in a loosely structured group, but tightly connected and networked individuals. The blog sites are aggregated on the Military Blogging web site.
• Thousands of non-profit organizations serve military, soldiers, veterans, and families.
• Throughout this community of military bloggers, they all have a sense of responsibility toward families.
• As military families engage, the expression and sharing of small frustrations is often what ties military spouses together, regardless of their location.
• Social media has enabled a community of individuals who are passionate about the military to form tight bonds of respect, admiration, trust, expectations, and influence among this community.
• Over time, these bloggers have become influential not only among their own online communities, but also in making a difference in perceptions, policy, and legislation.
• One reason for their influence is that blogging has moved to, and is encouraged, by soldiers and others to tell real stories. 
• Though some of the early bloggers, started blogging anonymous, now it seems that there is not a concern of separating personal life and professional life online. In fact, telling own personal stories are encouraged.
• @pricefloyd, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, says that military needs more conversations on topics about the military. Does not mean that mistakes will not be made and that mistakes that have been made are not more harmful than other mistakes.
• Military leaders at this conference understand how two-way and multi-way engagement becomes powerful.
• Social media is not only used to disseminate but also to engage to learn, and possibly change, leaders’ approacha and behavior.
• @pricefloyd says that having dissenting comments and points of view that do not have approval gives more credibility to the engagement.
• Military uses 3rd party sites so the world can read and interact and tell stories first hand reports from the troops.
• The approach is to encourage people throughout the military to “go out and tell their stories”. Military leaders know that those online are professionals and “will do the right thing”.
• Army leaders encourage individuals to blog on their own sites and link and cross link to the army blog site. They don’t care about negative articles or positive article, but they care that bloggers tell accurate stories.
• The military has to use both traditional and new media.
• The leaders see that criticisms are good because it means others are reading the blogs and gives something for them to learn. Negative criticisms will stay blogs unless it is overly obscene.

This conference has been one that is somewhat out of my element. It is refreshing to hear from leaders of the military who “get social media”, understand how

• conflicting opinions are ways to learn and adjust.
• personal accounts can be powerful ways to tell the military story.
• engagement leads to learning and improving
• trusting people throughout the military to do the right thing without posting strict rules is a good way to capitalize personalized stories.
• grass-roots connections build credibility and trust.

All day, I keep thinking that if the military can trust their people to do the right thing and find value in dissenting comments, why aren’t more educational institutions in-tuned to the value of learning and improving based on the freedom of engagement.

Photo is embedded from http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/1360677126/

del.icio.us Tags: military bloggers,milblogging,engagement

Transparency and Authenticity

Jaume Plensa Transparency
Originally uploaded by Arenamontanus

Some firms and organizations insist they are have an unprecedented brand name and reputation—one they can maintain without social media. The new caution today, though, is that transparency of organizations is no longer totally up to the organizations, and the brand can be easily tarnished.

There is a greater push, demand, and expectation that individuals' and organizations' actions must be true to their values and their communications. Organizations must do their homework, know facts, and know how communications, associations, and actions affect their reputations. Because if they don't, someone else will bring forced transparency to the organization.

Online environments, rapid fire and viral communications, will make it harder to keep brand images, if organizations are not true in their actions. Everyone throughout organizations, including customer services, operations, sales, marketing, public relations, decision-makers, and research and development, must understand and portray the same image that is marketed and is perceived.  Flip that thought on its head: what is marketed must portray the values and operations of the organization. 

Organizations, large and small, must understand how loyalty can be lost when their own actions do not portray their marketed images or do not serve customers’ needs.

All organizations—non-for-profit, advocacy, educational, corporate, and entrepreneurs—have to be really good at what they do. They have to serve their organizations’ purposes and customers’ and communities’ changing needs.

Additionally, organizations must be able to:

• know they have no control of what other people say and understand the power—negative and positive—of others.
• match actions and operations with image, mottos, slogans, advertisements, and social media efforts.
• know facts about their own organizations, competitive organizations, and respective industries.
• accept that conflicts will happen, but demonstrate understanding and adjust, if necessary, but staying true to the values of the organization.
• admit mistakes.
• be responsive.
• adjust and realign processes and operations for needed changes.
• communicate processes and operations that change based on demands.

As customers, potential customers, and competitors observe behaviors and experience services that are contrary to the organizations’ images, through online communications—with viral potential—they share their experiences and observations. This means that organizations can no longer hide their weaknesses. Transparency, or lack of, is no longer up to organizations to decide.

Transparency and authenticity should not only be discussed in online environments, but also considered in the way organizations conduct business. There is no hiding.

 

del.icio.us Tags: online transparency,authentic,open

Twitter Chat

In some online communities, Twitter is used for chatting on a particular topic at a designated time. These chats use a specific hashtag to aggregate the tweets during the online discussion.

Twubs and Tweetchat are two common applications used to facilitate Twitter chats. Though Tweetdeck can be used too, Twubs and Tweetchat work better because the chat tweets tend to appear in rapid fire. 

As you enter a tweet in the application (Twubs or Tweetchat), the application will automatically insert the hashtag at the end of the tweet.

The application (Twubs or Tweetchat) captures all tweets with the hashtag and displays them on the web page.

One disadvantage of participating in a Twitter chat is that all of your followers see all of your tweets for the chat. Depending on your community, this excessive tweeting can be annoying. Thus, some Twitter chat participants warn their followers prior to the chat.

Each Twitter chat is organized to fit its needs, goals, and community. For instance, for some chats, a designated guest “speaker” participates and answers questions from the members of the chat. The members keep the conversation going by firing off more questions, retweeting answers and participants’ comments, and questioning and conversing with others in the chat.

Some chats, like #Agchat, have designated questions that are asked by the moderator of the chat. The chat members answer the questions by indicating the question number.

For instance, in the AgChat session on Farm Equipment Question 2 and one of the answers to Question 2 are shown below. 

@agchat: Q2: What new planting/seeding specific technologies do you feel have made biggest impact on your #farm? #agchat

@FarmerHaley: Q2 Strip till and no till has planting has made tremendous improvements for our farm as well #agchat

Most Twitter chats will ask you to identify yourself, and possibly, give you a chance to plug your area of interest, web page, event, etc.

Some regularly scheduled chats are posted on a Google spreadsheet.

 

Steps to participating in a Twitter chat using Twubs (Tweetchat is similar).

1. Using your browser, sign into to Twitter. Then go to the www.twubs.com or www.tweetchat.com.
2. At Twubs’ page (or Tweetchat page), select the Sign in button. Then select “Twitter Sign In”.
3. 
   Twubs Sign In
   Originally uploaded by aafromaa
4. If you have already signed into Twitter, then you will be given the choice to “Allow” Twubs to use Twitter sign in.
   
   Twubs Allow Twitter button
   Originally uploaded by aafromaa
   
5. Once you are in Twubs or Tweetchat, enter the hashtag you are following.
   
   Twubs hashtag
   Originally uploaded by aafromaa
   
6. The tweets will start appearing below the entry space for your tweets.

 

del.icio.us Tags: Twitter,Twitter chat,Agchat

Social media is more than public relations and marketing efforts

When companies are considering adopting social media, they often turn toward their Public Relations and Marketing departments to investigate, develop a social media strategy, and implement social media within their companies.

If organizations think of social media as another outlet for the company and involve only those who market the company, then these companies are missing out on many benefits of social online environments, such as:

• Integration of functions.
• Elimination of organization silos.
• Personal and organizational learning from outside the organization and from within the organization.
• Driving innovations through internal and external collaborations.
• Educating clients, potential clients, and communities about products, processes, services, and technical knowledge.
• Having staff (not in PR and Marketing) who are passionate about what they do and what they love about the organization tell their story.
• Utilizing small circles of influence to spread knowledge of the organization, its products, its services, its goodwill, its values, and its purpose.
• Learning of problems that the organization may have solutions for.
• Learning of problems that the organization may develop solutions for.
• Connecting problem solvers with those people in and out of the organization who are having problems relating to the organization’s services, products, and processes.
• Connecting with potential clients who are unaware that the organization may have solutions for their problems.
• Maintaining and building credibility and understanding among staff who don’t see each other often, but work in similar work areas or serve in different places in the work flow. 
• Building a collective organizational reputation based on the online professional reputation of employees throughout the organization.
• Maximizing the benefits of workstreamining and freeranging.
• Having fun within the routine of daily work.

del.icio.us Tags: social media,marketing,public relations,silos,integration

What are those @ signs and websites in your Facebook page?

A friend from college asked the following question in Facebook email.

“Hi Anne, It's good to see you on Facebook. I am somewhat new to this. I look forward to checking out your profile. I must admit your status updates are interesting- although I cannot figure them out. Is is some kind of work code or just lots of acronyms. Why all the @ signs and websites? Hope all is well!”

My answer is:

I have been using Twitter, Facebook, etc. and been blogging since early 2007. Though there is some obvious separation, I find that intermingling my work and personal life works well for me.

My Twitter messages are automatically sent to Facebook.

The @ signs indicate that I am replying or referring to other messages in Twitter.

RT stands for Retweet. Someone in Twitter sent a message. I retweet it which means I am forwarding to my friends on Twitter because I think it might be of interest to them.

The web links are usually small urls (I use bit.ly) because web site addresses are often much too long to include in the Twitter 140- character limit. The small urls are very helpful, not only in Twitter, but also in email messages.

I have to admit that I struggle with the decision to limit Twitter messages that I send to Facebook because I know it is overwhelming to friends, like you. My kids, and some friends, tell me that they often don’t understand most of my messages. Part of the reason is that they do not use Twitter or they are not part of my work communities: higher education, research, Cooperative Extension, distance education, agriculture, family living education, open source, or social media. I am trying to decide to limit the Twitter messages to Facebook. 

My land-grant university colleagues are just as likely to read and use Twitter messages in Facebook as they are in Twitter.

In Facebook, you will also see my bookmarked websites (delicious.com), my presentations (slideshare.net) and photos (Flickr.com).

Not all my Twitter messages are strictly work related. For instance, occasionally, I will share Auburn University good news, kids’ stuff, or something fun.

I hope this explains some of my Facebook news feeds. If you find them overwhelming, you can hide my newsfeeds in Facebook, but still keep me as your friend. But, of course, I would rather you did not.

del.icio.us Tags: Facebook,Twitter,newsfeeds

Social media policies: not developed, yet

Today, lots of people are tweeting that only 29% of businesses have social media policy, according to a report from employment services firm Manpower. Here are my thoughts on the report.

• I am not surprised about the percentage. In fact, I think it is a little high.
• Before companies should develop a social media policy, they should know what their goals are in using social media. How can a company create new policies using new media when the company does not understand the media and the implications using these new technologies.
• Some companies are struggling with using social media because the use of social media conflicts with their existing policies (i.e. only the public relations department is the only ones who can make announcements and speak publically for the company). These companies should examine existing policies before considering new social media policies.
• Companies should decide if a policy is needed.
• Companies may want to look at how much faith they have in their own employees and consider the Five reasons they don’t need a policy.
• From the same Michael Hyatt article, are there any companies brave enough to create their policy like this one? If so, those companies have complete faith in their employees to do the right thing. Of course, the smaller companies may be able to use this policy more so than larger companies.

“Use whatever social media you want. Feel free to use it on company time. Just use common sense and remember that if you publicly identify yourself with the company’s brand then act in a manner consistent with that brand. It’s in all of our best interests to do so.”

Now, is the time, though, to consider:

• goals of using social media.
• how social media fits and can be used to convey the company’s values.
• how the company will use social media.
• how social media fits into the company’s core businesses.
• existing policies and practices that conflict with social media.
• developing any new policies to address social media use.

del.icio.us Tags: social media,policies,guidelines