Ali Bytes: Bullet-sized strategies for modern living

Despite the sporadic evidence, I love blogging. The analytical and expressive exercise allows me to synthesize thoughts while creating some (maybe minuscule) incremental value. However, there are two things that paralyze the blogger in me: people talking into an echo chamber and human tragedy. So with the SXSW conference this month and a good friend in DC in the hospital, I’ve been out of commission. I can’t justify indulgent reflection when time and mental energy are better spent on someone else.

And then some time passes, something fires me up and I come back to it. This week I had a couple of long conversations with nonprofit organizations - both in India and the U.S. - that have highlighted assumptions that, in my opinion, are flawed and need to be questioned. I’d love to know what you think.

1. Employees need to commit to the cause: I’ve worked for nonprofits in nearly every capacity - as a full time employee, consultant, board member and volunteer - and one of the biggest weaknesses I’ve consistently seen is this idea that people need to live and breath the issue they are working for. Rather than look for someone capable of solving difficult challenges with a willingness to bootstrap or for a specific skill set, it often seems that a demonstration of one’s allegiance to the cause is more important. As a social change generalist, I think nonprofits need to start looking first for the right abilities and then let enthusiasm for the issue be icing on the cake.
2. Voting is a good idea: When online voting became popular about five years ago and significant buzz around crowdsourcing began, voting was different and an innovative way to get mass amounts of people to participate in an effort requiring very little information. However, now that these efforts seems to be launched around everything - two recent ones being the Pepsi Refresh Project and the Unreasonable Marketplace - voting has become a (mostly) irresponsible use of time and energy.  If I email my entire network and encourage people through social sites to vote for my personal idea, then that’s my prerogative.  But when nonprofits have to bring paid employees together to develop a strategy to drive their supporters to vote for them to win something, I wonder if anyone has calculated the value creation. How much time, energy and money is spent trying to get something that isn’t worth even a quarter of that time, energy or money?
3. Consumers are either cause-driven or quality-driven:  There’s a belief that people either buy from their head or from their heart and that the latter is not sustainable. In other words, a quality product will sell in any climate but a product that is branded with a cause will only sell as long as the cause marketing is strong.  This actually may be true in emerging markets, but certainly in the U.S. I think this has changed.  Consumers are not so polar; people can buy for cause impact and because they want the product - like Paul Newman products or Dove’s Real Beauty effort.  I think the notion that products can be both practically and emotionally useful will only continue to expand.
4. Volunteers can’t be counted on: There’s a belief that volunteers, or “most Americans” as one person said to me, are looking for easy answers. They want to come in, do a small amount of work only to wash their hands and walk away feeling better but never thinking again about the organization. In short, volunteering is a short-term, selfish pursuit and therefore volunteers are an unreliable, uncommitted group. On the one hand, this seems to be supported by the existence of these one day clean ups, community improvement projects - or even Race for the Cure and cause-related exercise events - where volunteers just show up and are handed paint brushes. On the contrary, however, I think many nonprofits don’t effectively use volunteers because they are missing a basic point: volunteers are human and want to feel they have made a difference. When visible day to day change isn’t realistic - which it’s not in many cases - it’s up to the organization to help show why they are doing what they are doing. If nonprofits could help individuals see that they are needed and making a difference in the big picture, I know they would find a more committed and helpful free workforce.

There is some rule of thumb in marketing that an angry customer tells 10 times as many people as a happy customer does. (Incidentally, there’s a book with a variation of this rule as the title). As a happy customer, I feel a duty to help out the brands that go out of their way. These are four stand out examples. I encourage you to patronize these stores (that is visit them regularly not be condescending towards them).

1. Vat19.com: A recent discovery (along with these others), Vat19.com is an online retailer that really impressed me with a short, simple hand written thank you postcard after a purchase. While there’s good reason to lament the impersonal nature of emails, text messages and Facebook wall posts, the up side is that they have increased the impact of the tried-and-true snail mail.
2. Revolution Cycles (in DC): Out of this bike shop in the DC area comes this remarkable example of personalized service, though it’s second hand so I hope I don’t botch it. A friend’s bike got stolen, which in this area is unfortunately not that uncommon. A few weeks later, a worker at Revolution Cycles saw a suspicious (likely helmet-less) character riding a bike and asked where he got it. The bike-rider answered that he got it at a local bike shop to which the employee replied, “No you didn’t. They don’t sell that brand there. How about this? You give the bike to me or I’ll call the cops.” He got the bike, looked up the owner (who bought it there) and called her up to return it. This employee deserves employee of the month.
3. Neiman Marcus: To most it’s probably a given that a store that charges $100 for a basic t-shirt would provide high quality customer service, but I was still surprised since I shop there once every 6 years.  Similar to Vat19’s approach, the employee that helped me sent me a hand written thank you note with her card in case I needed her help on anything else. 
4. Chipotle: My brother recently ordered a burrito online and was surprised that it suggests you call to ensure they received your order. He obliged so you can imagine was even more peeved that when he showed up to pick it up, they had forgotten to make it.  He got home and sent a frustrated note from their website.  To his delight, they followed up with an email apology, followed by a call from the store’s manager, followed by a coupon for two free burritos and, icing on the cake, an invitation to come to the store for a burrito meal for himself and friends.  I was lucky to be one of the friends and got the guacamole just because I didn’t have to pay extra.  Excellent job Chipotle. 

I just bought a new computer. It’s a tough thing to admit in these hard economic times, but I’ve been wanting a machine to try some video editing for some time now and having spent five days in Austin, TX last week at SXSW Interactive with some pretty amazing people, I was inspired to take the plunge (like the people in yesterday’s Washington Post article). As a first step to setting myself up, I looked for new Firefox add-ons to make my life easier and was reminded how many solutions are out there - web companies, iPhone applications, Firefox add-ons, people I know - to problems I didn’t even know I had.

But it also reminded me how many “solutions” are out there like strangers with candy trying to lure me into new problems. For example Twitter. It might seem like blasphemy to return from SXSW and bash the tool that essentially was birthed there (or at least reached adolescence) but let me explain why I’m not going to use Twitter even if I do see how it could be useful for others.

1. Twitter doesn’t solve a problem for me. As Lev Grossman put it so well in a TIME article two years ago, The Hyperconnected, “Like any good pusher, services like Twitter don’t answer existing needs; they create new ones and then fill them.” While I like my friends, both real and virtual, enough to occasionally page through Facebook status updates to see what’s going on, I simply don’t want any more information to process on a daily basis. To put this in perspective, if I follow just 25% of the approximate number of people I am connected to from my other social networks and each of these people tweets just once per day, that is more than 90,000 more pieces of mostly useless information per year that I’d be compelled to research, react or respond to.
2. Interesting things should be heard and not seen. Clearly I’m not a purist since I’m writing a blog post about something I hope at least someone will find interesting, but I do think most interesting comments should be made aloud and ignite a live dialogue. It seems that too often conversations never make it to traditional discourse, staying instead short-hand in an email chain, on a Facebook wall or back and forth on Twitter. I wonder what this is doing to the quality and growth of our thoughts. Plus for every interesting comment, there are likely ten other really, really boring comments. As Brian Unger reported on NPR, “Most people are surprised to learn that friends don’t care when you are showering, gardening or working out. There’s a good reason these activities are hidden. Because they’re boring and no one cares.”
3. I don’t want to follow or have followers. Twitter language reminds me of the now infamous 14 year-old Volkswagen ad campaign: “On the road of life, there are passengers and there are drivers. Drivers wanted.” I don’t want to “conform, comply, copy or come after” anyone else and I don’t really want other people to do that to me either. As a huge proponent of collaboration, I’d rather search for ways to construct commentary and ideas with other people. To quote Brian Unger again, “It’s like stalking someone but without the inconvenience of sitting in a car outside their house on cold rainy night with a loaded gun in your lap.”
4. I like my real friends and my life too much. After finishing part-time school which ate up most of my evenings for 2.5 years, I found myself working most nights until 8:30 or even after. Now, three months later (also inspired by SXSW), I’m on a quest for balance and to relearn to “be present,” or live for the people and experiences of the moment. The idea of thinking of everything in terms of what to post to Twitter for a group of people I’m not currently in front of, or worse to get a fix about someone else’s experiences (like Lev talked about in his latest TIME article Desperately Trying to Quit Twitter) seems short sighted to me, though I am totally guilty of this every once in a while with FB. Unlike John Mayer, I’d rather, and am trying hard to, experience life as it was before their were all these “solutions,” a time when people got by just fine without cell phones or email. I’ll see how it works. This paradox is captured in this short post by Shane Gibson, “Rapport Building it’s about being totally present…You can also follow me on Twitter…”

In case participating in our democracy isn’t reason enough, here are a host of free things you can get with an “I voted” sticker on election day, November 4th. I’d like to vote Babeland the winner for the best tagline. Check your favorite local stores and restaurants for more and go vote!

1. Donuts: Some 85 Krispy Kreme’s in the U.S. (a little less than half their stores) are offering to give away an estimated 200,000 free star-shaped, red-white-and-blue sprinkled 99 cent donuts “while supplies last” (read: until probably 8am so vote early!).
2. Sex toys: If you live in New York City of Seattle, get your “Maverick” or “Silver Bullet,” apparently valued over $15, at Babeland because “voting feels good.”
3. Starbucks Coffee: “If you care enough to vote, we care enough to give you a free cup of coffee,” says Starbucks. Free 12-ounce drip coffee for anyone who votes, or actually anyone who asks whether or not you voted.
4. Ben and Jerry’s Ice cream: Though most of us will be wearing wool coats and scarves to wait in line to vote tomorrow, Ben and Jerry’s is committed to giving away free single-scoop cones until 8pm. “What better way to encourage people to be politically active than to give away free ice cream?” asks spokeswoman Liz Brenna. Hopefully caring about your future is incentive enough but hey, free ice cream helps even if I have to hold it with mittens on.
5. Chicken sandwiches: Though I couldn’t confirm it on the Chick-fil-A website, supposedly hundreds of the 1,400 Chick-fil-A stores across the country will offer free $2.70 chicken sandwiches to people who can prove they voted.