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"Perhaps what we're experiencing isn't an exception to the experiences of past generations, but rather another opportunity to do things we human beings have always done... only faster, more broadly, etc. Certainly our technology is also contributing novel changes to how we live, but I wonder if those instances are circumstantial to the more fundamental behaviors that prompt them.
Applying these lessons of history to today's social media planning might yield better (or at least different) insights, and ignoring this knowledge leaves business leaders bereft of an extensive track record of what works, what doesn't work, and why.
In fact, history provides antecedents for every behavioral, cultural, and commercial quality we ascribe to our latest social media technologies ... "
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"What if we lived in a world where all companies took care of their existing customers with as much effort as they pursued new customers, where companies were trusted and liked, where doing business with a company was a good experience, where companies and their employees cared about their customers and each other?
What kind of world would that be?
I believe that it is a world that is worth striving for."
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"In the mid-cretaceous period—sometime around 120 million years ago—a concept emerged that changed the world as we know it. And although the science to prove the significance of this concept has rested under our noses, under our feet, and even sometimes crawling onto our toes, as humans most of us are dumb-founded by it.
'It' is the concept of teamwork. It has been perfected by possibly one of the smallest insects seen by the human eye—the ant—and yet it is an elusive concept to master in business."
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"The single greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy is a positive and engaged workforce. That is not conjecture. That is now a confirmed scientific fact.
[...] In my research and consulting in 42 different countries during the worst economic downturn in recent history, I have discovered that most companies and schools around the world follow the same implicit formula: If you work hard, you will become successful, and once you become successful, then you'll be happy. This pattern of belief explains what most often motivates us in life. We think: If I just get that raise, or hit that next sales target, I'll be happy. If I can just get that next good grade, I'll be happy. If I lose that five pounds, I'll be happy. And so on. Success first, happiness second.
The only problem is that this formula is scientifically backwards."
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"Frank Zappa once said: 'The most important thing in art is the frame. For paint, literally. For other arts, figuratively—because, without this humble appliance, you can't know where the art stops and the real world begins.'
What he's saying is that how we frame something, like an idea or a problem, for example, has everything to do with how well it turns out. He's saying that there is an art to framing. That framing is an art.
Frank Zappa had it right. And the reason I believe that is because how I view the world changed completely a few years ago, during an eight year long engagement with a very large and very successful Japanese company, the focus of which was essentially to help unite two distinctly different cultures, Eastern and Western, together in a common approach. This meant I had to straddle two different ways of looking at the world. Two completely different ways of looking at the same thing."
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