Graham Stewart

Writing to discover what I think and believe in increasingly fractured times

Book Review

An Equation With Little Impact

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I’m putting down some thoughts on the books I was reading in the run up to this Christmas past. So far, I’ve covered The Lean Startup by Eric Ries and Made To Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. In this post, I’m looking at The Impact Equation by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.

I’ve been a reader of Chris Brogan’s blog and a subscriber to his email newsletters for some years and bought and read – and enjoyed – his book Trust Agents (co-authored, as is The Impact Equation, with Julien Smith) when it came out in 2009.

The new book, unfortunately, is a disappointment. This could be a matter of my own unreasonable expectations and I would be more than foolish if I expected every book from authors I respect to live up to my idea of what they should be.

But in this case, The Impact Equation feels manufactured from start to finish. By that, I mean from idea to execution. In fact, on reading it, I felt like Brogan and Smith had come up with a good name for a book – The Impact Equation – and then set about finding some content that would justify the title.

That meant, of course, finding an equation. With impact, I suppose. And they found one. This is it:

Impact = C x (R+E+A+T+E)

You can see that the way they gave it impact was to include the word ‘impact’ in the equation. My maths is not great but I think I would prefer my impact to be more along the lines of C + (RxExAxTxE). But you can fiddle with operators without getting any real sense of how it really fits into an equation.

So let’s just accept that this is a bit of fun and delve a little deeper into the substance behind those operands themselves. Here’s what each big bold letter stands for:

  • C – contrast
  • R – reach
  • E – exposure
  • A – articulation
  • T – trust
  • E – echo

Now, one look at that list tells you that those are words that didn’t just spring to mind. I bet there was quite a bit of thesaurus stroking before they came up with articulation. What they started with was probably clarity but realised that another C meant all sorts of hellish contortions. And although articulation fits in nicely at number four in the acronym, it is actually the second topic covered in the book. This makes sense because clarity is fairly fundamental but it does underscore how artificial the acronym is. Surely one of the benefits of a useful acronym is that it also reminds you of the order of things.

The other thing I expect of an acronym is that the words that back up the letters in the acronym itself will be memorable and obviously meaningful. Here we have ‘echo’. Mmm. And ‘reach’, which I might confuse with exposure but ‘exposure’ is also there.

If you look back to the acronym that forms the spine of the ideas running through Made To Stick, they are clear, memorable, and unambiguous, each and every one. Here, we have words that betray how they have been beaten and twisted to give the semblance of a coherent idea.

None of this would matter, I suppose, if the book’s content was both entertaining and uniquely informative. Unfortunately, even here, things don’t quite gel. There are some good case studies and business stories (I especially enjoyed learning about Dollar Shave Club) but this is very much par for the course in such books. It’s part of building up credibility (or is that ‘trust’?) in the thesis, after all.

However, the stories also seem to have been distributed almost at random and could be used to higlight many if not all of our CREATE theme. This gives the book a problem in that it never seems to be building to a climax. It feels more like a buffet of individual tapas portions rather than a menu for a full-scale dinner.

I’m being hard on the book because I think Chris Brogan is better than this. I can prove it: read his blog. And if you read his blog and subscribe to his newsletter, you’ll get much more valuable information – regularly – and be stimulated to think better thoughts and ask better questions of your marketing than you’ll get from this book.

Next time, I’m talking about Writing That Works by Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson.

Stick It To Them

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The second book on my recent reading list is Made To Stick by Chip & Dan Heath.

I had read their book Switch earlier in the year and enjoyed it, so grabbing hold of their previous book made sense. To me, anyway.

Where Switch deals with what change is hard and what to do about overcoming the obstacles – both external and internal – in the way of change, Made To Stick looks at the apparently simple notion of why “some ideas take hold and others come unstuck”.

Of course, it’s not a simple notion and the Heath brothers take close to 300 pages to examine it.

Conveying ideas and getting them to make an impact – the longer the better, in most cases – is a vital component in the writer’s skill set. I approached this book, therefore, as a writer with a novel nearing completion as much as someone looking to launch a new business. The book rewards both approaches.

Like Switch, this book is written in a style that is engaging and easy to read. It is peppered, too, with great stories that are a treat to read and which easily convey the concepts discussed in a particular chapter.

The basic thesis of Made To Stick is carried in six chapters that follow the pleasing acronym of SUCCES(s). These break down ‘stickiness’ like this:

  • S for Simple: find the core message to be conveyed
  • U for Unexpected: grab and hold attention with surprise and interest
  • C for Concrete: make abstract ideas concrete with a real and telling example
  • C for Credible: help people believe through using authority or details they understand from experience
  • E for Emotional: make people care
  • S for Stories: people act on the back of inspirational stories

This just touches the surface of what the book covers. But if you want to know what makes an idea (including a business idea) stick or have a chance of longevity – and how to give your ideas the best chance to acquire such stickiness – this is a greatly rewarding read.

Many of the techniques described by Heath & Heath would be covered in a top rate creative writing course and I was fascinated to see the parallels between building a narrative (whether fiction or journalism) and developing a way to ensure that information is retained in the minds of an audience of potential customers or when we want to influence behaviour.

It should not be a surprise that the processes are so similar. After all, stories have long been used to carry history, myth, tenets of faith, and proscriptions of behaviour. The best stories – and their messages – endure in the same way that brand messages and propaganda and urban legends persist.

I would recommend reading both books pictured above (with the obligatory affiliate link to Amazon). The Heath Brothers also maintain a web site, which is well worth a visit. There are all kinds of download goodies available from their site, including great swathes of PDF versions of the material from their books.

A New Year, A New Project

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Happy New Year.

In the last month of 2012 (also known as December, I’m told) I tore through a number of books I had on my reading pile. This dovetailed nicely with an approach from someone I know (an old client) to start up a joint venture.

As I get older, I am less and less surprised by the workings of serendipity. As luck would have it, the books I was reading were perfect for helping me think about what needed to be done to get this new venture up and running. This month I will be setting things in motion and I hope to be able to talk more about the new business soon. I am excited about it.

Here are some of the books in question:

  • The Lean Startup – Eric Ries
  • The Impact Equation – Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
  • Made To Stick – Chip Heath and Dan Heath
  • Writing That Works – Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson

The first of these was a refreshing read for someone that, when an IT staffer (and contractor) chaffed against the corporate software development process. The large scale projects I worked on for a long time were developed according to the ‘waterfall’ process. That meant spending many months gathering requirements from what are politely termed stakeholders. In reality, stakeholders tend to be people with a greater sense of the political benefits of a new IT system than the practical business benefits. (I may be unduly cynical.)

After the requirement were gathered and a long and meaty requirements specification written to prove that we had understood what was being asked for, it was time to write a functional specification, which was meant to show how the requirements would be turned into screens and buttons and database actions and reports and all the usual large IT system guff. The stakeholders would see that some of their requirements were missing. We would explain that if they wanted the system to be live while humans still roamed the planet, there would have to be some compromises.

Then the system was built. In many cases, we were now a year or so down the line from the project start date. Some of the stakeholders may have retired or moved onto new jobs or new companies. We worked on. System testing. Then user testing. A new set of users and stakeholders, on receiving the system, wondered what is was for. We had solved a problem that was two years old. Maybe three years old. Way to go.

What was missing in this process was what Eric Ries calls the build-measure-learn feedback loop. Well, not exactly missing but when the learning comes so far after the start of the project, it’s as good as being useless. There is no way to change the build: the options are to scrap it and the millions invested in the project so far or to force end users to change the way they work to justify the millions invested in the work so far. That might work in a corporate environment for internal systems. It doesn’t work in the world of new products and services aimed at customers, be they retail or business.

The Lean Startup (see above – and that’s an affiliate link, by the way) is an excellent application of lean manufacturing (as practised by Toyota, for instance) combined with agile programming techniques and using the potential of internet technologies for garnering feedback on a minimum viable product (another Ries term that is inherently useful).

Best of all, the approach works equally well with products or services, so whether your startup is a consultancy or is building a physical product for online sale, The Lean Startup is a perfect guide for making sure you have something that your potential customer base might actually want.

There is a web site (and movement) associated with the book at The Lean Startup (surprise, surprise).

And a hat tip to my old business partner Adam Austin of The Better Web Co for aiming me towards the book in the first place.

I’ll give you my take on the other books from my December list over the next few days.

Organizations Don’t Tweet By Euan Semple – A Review (Of Sorts)

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I started out to write a simple review of Euan Semple’s wonderful “Organizations Don’t Tweet, People Do: A Manager’s Guide To The Social Web”. However, I found that I was inspired by so many different aspects of the book that I was in danger of writing a dissertation in response. What follows, therefore, is probably more in the way of a condensed impression of the book rather than a traditional formal review.

If you’ve neither the time nor inclination to read further, here is the abbreviated conclusion: if any part of your working day involves sharing information – or would greatly benefit by sharing information – with colleagues, managers, or customers, then buy this book.

A Wee Disclosure

I’ve met Euan on a couple of occasions and swapped an email with him from time to time. I like him and I like reading what he has to say on his blog. This was the main reason that I bought the book in the first place. I almost felt obliged to buy the book and, as you know, that sort of obligation is never a great basis for getting down to reading something. That the obligation quickly turned to gratitude is quite simply why I am writing this.

Getting Physical

Although I’m a big fan of ebooks, sometimes only the physical book in your hand will do. This is especially true for books that you want to refer to over and over and where you are continually flicking back to reread pages in the light of new information. This book is definitely one where the physical object adds to the reading experience.

For a start, the book looks good. It also handles well (like a sports car built for mountain roads) and, by god, it smells really good. You can’t overestimate the importance of a good smell when it comes to a new book. Crack open Euan’s book and inhale deeply. Talk about trust: that’s an aroma that tells you from the first that what you are about to read in those pages will more than adequately reward the time you invest.

So it is hardly surprising that it also reads so well. Not only is it stylistically excellent – making for a smooth ride through complex arguments – but each carefully crafted chapter is a perfect nugget of focused wisdom.

The Politics Of Social

At its core this is a guide to improving the way your business works. What might appear to be a manual for getting to grips with the social web and how it can be used within a business soon assumes the mantle of a manifesto for productive change. Euan is describing a revolution and businesses who don’t participate may very well be the first to go to the wall.

There’s no pussy-footing around at the start of the book: Euan takes you immediately to the heart of the matter when he asserts that the technological changes we’re seeing around the social web are not the cause of any current revolution but are simply the lubricant that is making the social revolution happen faster and more effectively.

(That he follows this by accepting a description of himself as “an organizational anarchist” might make any corporate chiefs determined to keep the book out of the hands of their staff. This is exactly the kind of blinkered view of the new reality that Euan is railing against, of course. It must be said, though, that Euan’s style of railing is as far from rant and thunder as genuine anarchy is from the customary thuggish portrayal we see in the media.)

Structure And Method

The wide array of ideas and themes covered in the book are not dealt with in isolation or from the point of view of someone looking in from the outside. This is not an academic textbook: Euan has experienced the things he describes, firstly in his time introducing tools for the social web into the BBC and, subsequently, working with many large organizations (who, obviously, don’t tweet).

The book is divided into 45 short chapters. This might lead you to believe that the book contains 45 topics. You would be wrong to believe that. Each chapter is actually a mini essay in which an idea is described, tested, expanded, and shown to connect with a host of other themes and ideas. (Hence my comment about the need for a physical version that allows easy flicking backwards and forwards.) Where there is repetition of sorts – because themes and ideas overlap and spark new themes and ideas – it always feels less like duplicate material than reinforcing a message or approaching a valuable point from a different angle.

Just take a look at some of the chapter titles for a taste of the thematic goodness on offer:

  • We All Need To Grow Up
  • Evolution On Steroids
  • Volume Control On Mob Rule
  • Conversations Can Only Take Place Between Equals
  • The Price Of Pomposity
  • The Revolution Is Within

I could go on listing chapter titles. Another 39 times, in fact. (As an aside, I think the chapter titles serve to underline how ill served the book is by its title, which is definitely the weakest part of the whole package. But that’s another discussion.)

And each chapter is suffixed by a box of bullets – ammunition for thinking – that covers the key points to remember from the chapter. You may think that this is overkill when the chapters are, for the most part, only three or four pages long. But as I’ve tried to convey by calling the chapters ‘essays’, the content is not frothy and it is never a mere skim across the surface of an idea. These bullets are welcome – and to be used in anger.

This is a book that makes you want to engage with its ideas on every page. I wanted to leave comments at the end of each chapter as if it were a blog post. Most of all, this is not a book to read once, nod, and replace on your shelf. If you work in or with businesses of almost any size, this book could very well be the difference between transforming your business or seeing it left behind.

Getting Specific

It’s also worth pointing out – emphasising, in fact – that this is not a dry tome examining strategies and tools for building internal policies of online best-practice for employees. This is a book of useful advice, war stories from the front line of social interactions, and bemused head-shaking at some of the dim-wittedness of corporations. It is also laced with humour.

I think one of the most powerful chapters in the book comes early – chapter six. The chapter is called “Writing Ourselves into Existence” and lies squarely at the heart of what I believe Euan sees as the most revolutionary aspect of social tools. Most commentators focus on the interactions afforded by these tools and how these can impact the ways individuals and businesses work. In Organizations Don’t Tweet, however, Euan is always careful to highlight the benefits to the individual when participating in the social web. Here is a quotation from the start of the chapter:

There is something about the process of blogging that makes you more self-aware. You become more thoughtful about yourself and your place in the world. In the reactions of others to your writing you get a different perspective, possibly for the first time, on how others see you. While this can be scary at first it can also be liberating. David Weinberger, one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto – the classic book explaining the Internet and its impact in society – once described blogging as ‘writing ourselves into existence’. This is very much how it feels.

This point is also made in the last of the summary bullets for the previous chapter (Evolution on Steroids):

Even if no one else learns from what you write in social tools, you do – and this may be the greatest reward.

In writing this, I discovered that there was a lot more I wanted to say in response to the ideas raised by Euan. And I don’t think that a review is the place to say it. I said above that this was not a book to read and shelve. What I mean by that is that the ideas presented here are worthy of true engagement. When a book inspires so many reactions and agreements while reading, it would be churlish to ignore the stimulus to respond. And I fully intend to react to that stimulus in the coming weeks and months.

The best books don’t often purport to be the last word on a subject and a book confronting a topic as fluid and dynamic as the relationship between business and the social web runs an obvious risk of soon being outdated or even irrelevant. Euan manages to subvert this risk by simultaneously embracing the notion of a world in flux and by describing the responses needed by businesses and their people to both shape the future and to stay relevant.

The Other Conclusion

The best recommendation I can give the book is that it has encouraged me to think more deeply about the issues Euan addresses and to look to respond in the best way I know – by writing. In the coming weeks on this blog I will use many of Euan’s ideas as starting points for discussions on the things related to writing that can contribute to making business – and places of business – more inclusive, less exploitative, more successful and, dare I say it, a whole lot more fun to be around.