All posts by Mary Yolanda Trigiani

Experience: professional services, boards, strategy, accounting, consulting, investment management, banking, technology. Ethic: urgency, efficiency, candor, humor, spirit.
Uncategorized

Dis-intermediated, dis-rupted, de-served

Leave a comment

We've all heard about how Internet applications and networks are disruptive.  They're rewiring the longstanding patterns of business and commerce, often removing whole channels of players content in established value and supply chains.

This is naturally making a lot of people nervous, especially those with equally-longstanding power bases to protect.

But the rest of us are seeing the possibilities and embracing change — even when it's unclear what that change will actually mean. 

We've got one political candidate who is disrupting the political process of his party, and on Tuesday evening, we witnessed the resistance to his call to action.  There are voters with dependencies they don't want to break.  They went with the old-power candidate.

Candidates can run on platforms promising jobs in outmoded industries and more-than-temporary government aid.  But they can't hide.  We've already seen that.  And any victory, even a big one in November, would just be the last
grunt of a dying beast — not a wholesale resuscitation of Business As
Usual.

The same is true in industries slow to recognize what digital access means to their performance.  Here are just three examples of many that point to the end of a tired era.

  1. Book publishing.  Last week we had yet another story of a newly-published memoir, heralded by reviewers, rewarded with a large printing run, that was exposed by the author's sister as a complete fraud.
  2. The mortgage crisis.  We are not only seeing the housing market rocked by really stupid loan decisions, those accountable for such decisions are probably going to get away scot-free.  With platinum parachutes.  Who picks up the tab?  Look in the mirror, you folks who live within your means.
  3. The irrelevance of marketing.  Most people in marketing still don't see it, much less get it:  online interaction is changing every possible act of branding, positioning, competition and selling.  And who's paying for the ignorance?  The companies that think marketing is a done-deal, necessary-evil overhead function with no capacity to change.

The obstinate will tell you that these are random events which have nothing to do with digital democracy.  They think of the Internet as a toy best left to young people with time on their hands.  It's good for email and research and stalking old beaus and buying books or old china, but real commerce and communication?  No way.

I submit that the citizenry, in this country and around the world, is waking up to the fact that the old order is just not working very well. 

We're in a moment:  the integration of human need and human capability — an integration that happens at random moments in history around new inventions and innovations.  Using my three examples:

  • Publishing toolmakers such as blurb.com will enable anyone with a few dollars and a manuscript to publish — hard or soft cover.  Instead of a market flooded with dreck, which is what the publishers and agents and writing "consultants" want you to believe will happen, we'll have cream rising to the top, via market demand fueled by word of mouth voiced on the Internet.  Impact:  Who gets published will no longer be in the hands of a tight circle whose center rests in New York and whose pockets get lined just for making an introduction or starting a manuscript bidding war.  Further, we won't have to deal with the outcome of editors who refuse to spend any time checking their authors.  [I mean, come on.  Didn't we learn something from the James Frey episode?  What more do you editors need to see before you'll start doing some elementary fact checking?]
  • Micro loans and person-to-person investment will enable people to invest in other people.  Bankers who reap ridiculous "returns" based on manipulating the deposits of investors, making lousy loans that make them rich but rob the rest of us over the long term, will lose a large part of their franchise.  The new Internet banks that directly connect people who need money with those who have it will change the way decisions are made.  We'll see caution and appropriate risk because people will be using their own money — not playing with someone else's — and earn a reasonable rate of return, not one on par with loan sharks.
  • Marketing will become a function that requires an investment in energetic, strong, quick thinkers — not infrastructures of useless overhead, print waste and advertising campaigns.  Instead of people who spend most of their time networking for the next CMO position, we'll have professionals who actually know how to perform marketing tasks and use real skill to engage markets not preach to them, connecting their brands and brand promises to buyers.  CEOs, CFOs and COOs will be able to measure marketing performance.  Finally.

I've chosen three examples that are personal hot-button issues.  Just as we are seeing landmark change in the American political process, there are many more changes in other realms now and down the road.  Honest, creative, productive — and democratic.

Uncategorized

Girl geeks in THE NEW YORK TIMES

Leave a comment

Read this excellent post by Mary Hodder.  She raises a pertinent question:  why does the paper put its coverage of girl geeks in the Fashion section?

Uncategorized

What is going on at THE NEW YORK TIMES?

Leave a comment

Whether or not the McCain story the paper ran today has any truth to it — and I’m talking about the lobbyist and influence-peddling — the article’s publication is plainly irresponsible.  If most of the people in my age group had turned in a college paper so poorly researched and cross-checked, we would have flunked.

Wait.  Make that high school.  My English teachers were by the book.

This is the platinum standard in journalism?  You’d think that after all the paper’s missteps in the past decade, it would have learned something.

Well, at least maybe we will. 

Journalists, writers and bloggers should take a moment to pause and consider the responsibility that accompanies the pen or the keyboard. 

Readers should work ever harder to analyze what’s being put in front of them.

Companies should approach media relations with their eyes wide open — know the journalist and his or her mindset.  It’s unfortunate, but understand that while there are still journalists who value objectivity, their relevance in today’s world is lost on the publishing powers that be. 

We all need to realize that having a tool like this little blog is not just technology democratizing the bully pulpit, it’s a wakeup call to lazy, agenda-driven so-called professionals and their bosses.  You want to know why newspapers are losing advertising?  It’s because they’re losing credibility.  Antics like that article this morning irritate reasonable people — the ones who want their news delivered in an unbiased, thorough manner.  Reasonable people are on to your game, so they’re going elsewhere for news.  And your advertisers know that.

Another nail in the coffin, folks.  And you’re doing it to yourselves.

Uncategorized

Just words

Leave a comment

I loved being a speechwriter. 

A lot of it had to do with sitting down with someone and hearing what he or she wanted to say — then working over the course of weeks to help get it just right.  I was fortunate.  I worked with executives who took the time to labor over their speeches.

A speech is a vehicle for delivering a message.  The speaker’s message.  Neither the message nor the speech should be concocted in isolation by a third party.  In fact, I quit my last corporate job when I was asked to work this way.

A third aspect of speechmaking:  every speech must be consistent with those delivered by the speaker before and after it.  Every speech must hold its own on a continuum that reflects the knowledge and values of the speaker.

I never did political speeches because I don’t like writing by committee.  Plus, I suspect that most politicians do not review anything written for them before they actually deliver a speech.  Both the message and the speech are usually in the hands of a handler.  This is risky, because as pressure builds and polls swerve, a politician may lose control of more than the process.  In the hands of others, the messages may swerve as well.

Which is clearly what’s been happening with one of the presidential candidates. 

I remember standing a few feet away from her during a speech in 1992 and thinking, why isn’t she running for president?  She was fresh and earnest.  Unrehearsed yet prepared.  Clearly not handled.  Talking with the audience, not to it, without exaggerating claims to experience and perspective.

So, now there’s this other candidate in her party.  He is clearly in command of his content, but his focus, as delivered in his choice of vocabulary, is on something outside of himself.  As a result, you are hearing his ideas first, which define his persona.  The words are plain, the sentence structure clear — the listener does not have to decode the language and worry about what he really means.  You understand and know whether or not you agree with what he would do in the next four years.

And he’s getting slammed for being good.  By the people who help his opponent with her messages.  Perhaps they have become so jaded by their own behavior, they see oratory in the hands of an accomplished speaker as some sort of red herring.  Maybe they are afraid of putting the real thing on the podium, so they don’t know it when they see it.

There are many reasons this person and his ideas are taking hold, not just the way he speaks.  But the fact that he’s a compelling speaker with a logic flow — able to impress and get a point across in his own way — says volumes about how his mind works and what kind of leader he would be.  You don’t get the sense that the speechwriters or the advisors are steering him or catering to the latest burp in a poll somewhere.  There is consistency from speech to speech and I’ll bet if he wins the nomination, there will be more specificity to the inspiration he values.

If his only slip-up is the snafu with the borrowed phrasing that he didn’t acknowledge in one speech he delivered, we can live with it.  The slip-up was human — not deliberate plagiarism and certainly not covered up.  His message is authentic, because he is.  And his speechwriters and advisors, at this juncture, anyway, seem to know their place. 

And that’s the difference between being a Churchill, a Kennedy, a Reagan or an Obama; being handled; and the instant gratification of words lazily strung together by a charm-meister or desperately grafted onto a power-first, wavering message platform.  It is authenticity unencumbered by ambition, a desire to connect uncompromised by selfish superiority.  It is good speaking and a good speech.

Uncategorized

Understanding clutter

Leave a comment

A couple of posts ago, the topic was clutter and I said more was coming in the next post.  Then NEW YORK magazine did its issue on belt tightening, and I had to share that.  Back to clutter.

Until a little more than ten years ago, my work was in and around professional and financial services.  Helping to execute to brand messages, often helping to create them.

Then I decided to come out west to Silicon Valley.  Which meant a whole new layer of important clutter.  Namely, periodicals and books and newspapers.  I’ve always felt most comfortable walking into a project having done some secondary research and when possible, having had some conversations with people in the field.

Now that I’m in essentially two different fields, the amount of research I must do has exploded.  Since I’ve always been a structure nut, my world has imploded with the expanded reach afforded by the Internet.  While I’ve become expert at printing only when necessary and stuff is not piling up on my desk anymore — there is work material on different websites and in my laptop, scattered in every program.  I now read the newspapers online and live for my RSS feeds, delivered through my growing Netvibes account.  [They’re in beta — I hope I’m not taxing the servers.]

So when I came across the Unclutterer website and found this post on how to retain more of what I read, I jumped on it.  The post has some useful tips.

But I think the biggest change has come through my work with foldier, a startup in which I’m currently the only purely business-tasked person.  Everyone else is a technologist or computer scientist.  Besides liking it that way, foldier has introduced me to what I believe will be THE way for me to de-clutter my work life.

We’re in private beta, but I can tell you this:  foldier is going to be nirvana for three types of people.  [If you’re like me, you have a bit of each type in you.]  And I can say this because I didn’t invent it.

First, foldier makes it possible for me to collect my content from wherever it is on the Web or on my hard drive — simply by tagging it.  This means no more files, no more remembering where I put stuff, no more making multiple copies for multiple files.  I don’t even need a filing system.  If I’m looking for something on data portability, for example, I just search my foldier account under that phrase.  Everything I have on the topic pops up.

Second, foldier makes it possible for me to search my content under any word or phrase — whether or not I tagged it as such.  The technology is intelligent — it does its own tagging in addition to mine.  This means I might be able to find new subject matter in content I already have.

Third, foldier gives me a new way to share information with clients and friends.  Until foldier, the only way I could share important articles or news releases with clients was to send them the link in an email.  When we are in full public beta, I’ll be able to share any kind of file — video, blog post, newspaper, etc — comment on it and hear comments back.  And, foldier automatically adds it to my virtual filing system.  All in a few steps.

There is more — and it’s not just about aggregating, organizing and sharing.  However, that would be enough for me.  Because there is nothing like having command of all the information you think is essential to your work.  Except for maybe cleaning out a closet.