crystallize!

Everyone knows that offering incentives to employees yields better results, the same way we know that dangling a carrot in front of a horse will motivate him to walk toward it. The only problem is, it turns out that we’re wrong.

In a recent TED Talk, Dan Pink explains the mismatch between how the business world handles motivation, and what science shows about what really works instead. Carrots worked well for 20th century tasks involving mechanical manipulation, but once you shift over into 21st century tasks that are more about cognition, introducing an extrinsic motivator not only doesn’t help results, it harms them.

Fortunately, science also knows what does work instead: intrinsic motivators. You’ve seen the famous cases like Wikipedia and google labs. Watch this TED Talk for more insight into the way you think about rewards.

Learned from a recent NYT article about this interesting new start-up in Brooklyn. Kickstarter calls itself “a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers…,” and is quick to say that it’s not about lending or charity. Instead, it says it provides “a sustainable marketplace where people exchange goods for services or some other benefit and receive some value.”

Which reminds that I’ve been wanting to post also about Kiva, which has had an enormous impact in its several years of “loans that change lives.” Entrepreneurs from all over the world (Lebanon, Nicaragua, Uganda) submit their project proposals and photos, along with how much money they need to raise ($230, $375, $1200). For just $25 (or more), you select an entrepreneur whose project and profile appeal to you. Kiva takes care of updating you on the project’s progress, and maintaining public records about how much of the loan has been repaid. When your money is repaid (current repayment rate is over 98% — see lots of interesting stats), you can withdraw it or reinvest in another project.

When I was in library school, we had a dean who could be counted on to draw at least one Venn diagram on the whiteboard any time he addressed an audience. It made for a great running joke, as the rest of us found excuses to join him in diagramming just about any subject matter into the same neat format. Perhaps that accounts for some of my fondness for the medium.

Today’s favorite new diagram: How to be happy in business, from whatconsumesme.com. (He’s now offering high-res poster-sized copies of this image.) A nice visual reminder of what to hold in focus, especially if you need to keep monetizing in the mix.

If you prefer your elegant diagrams with more twist of the unexpected, perhaps you’ll also enjoy one of my favorite daily blogs, Indexed, whose creator Jessica Hagy has been turning out witty graphs for nearly three years now. She juxtaposes things you probably hadn’t thought of in the same sentence before.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been on a whirlwind adventure around expanding the ways I use and think about social media tools. I’ve been hanging out on Facebook for well over a year now, and continue to think of it primarily as a venue for friends from social rather than business contexts. Heck, I’ve had a (skeletal) profile on LinkedIn for years. But suddenly, since about January, I’m being inundated with advice about how to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and their ilk for business building, marketing, and all-around networking for the contemporary business. Everyone, from coaches to tech geeks, seems to be putting together new workshops on the subject. (If you’re completely unfamiliar with this whole scene, google can find you tons more info. Here’s a basic intro called Facebook? LinkedIn? Twitter? Huh? that’ll give you the general idea pretty efficiently.)

Some of my recent discoveries:

• The notion of personal branding has evolved hugely in the past few years, beyond the corporate arena and the realm of job-seekers. In 2006, we heard things like, “To have a personal brand, you must do something remarkable.” Now I’m seeing more arguments that “all successful professionals and executives need a personal brand.”
• Although millions of people (myself among them) have long thought of LinkedIn as the predominant social networking tool for business, in the altered landscape some people even prefer Facebook to LinkedIn as a business tool.
• In the past week, I’ve heard two colleagues indicate that they are considering dropping email altogether in favor of Twitter, and numerous others decide that they are giving Twitter a(nother) chance.

Although I hate to think of myself as jumping on any kind of bandwagon, I’ve become intrigued by the upsurge of enthusiasm about Twitter. Thus I’ve decided to leap past my previous reticence and give Twitter the 30-day trial period I’m told I’ll need to get a real sense of its potential. I’ve even checked out a couple of the desktop apps that help you manage your Twitter traffic (verdict so far: Twhirl wins out over TweetDeck).

If you’d like to join me in my experiment, come look me up! I’m lydia413 on Twitter.

Resources I’ve found useful:

• 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know — including how to set up friend groups with different privacy profiles
• It’s not stalking, it’s a darn handshake — in answer to, “I’ve created these social networking accounts, now what?”
• The Top 5 Personal Branding Myths — including the myth “Personal branding is all about you” (instead, “Personal branding is about serving others”)
• From Here to Tweeternity: A Practical Guide to Getting Started on Twitter — 10 steps to take “if you’re looking to promote a business, build a brand, or keep up with your customers’ problems using Twitter”
• 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners
• The 10 Users You’ll Meet on Twitter — succinct description of who uses Twitter

…It turns out I could happily keep adding to this list, so I’d better call a halt.