MindValley Blog

Here we go again.

Working with a new partner. Launching the next milliondollar brand. Driving adoption of a new web app (like Bunch Out).

This happens very often in MindValley and I always find myself dancing around the same question… What can we do to make this spread like wildfire? (That’s me in the picture, in deep thought)

And this is the most fun part of my work. Memetics, marketing, and how to present your idea in very infectious way.

While I’m not the world renowned experts on this (yet), just wanted to share a quote, and few links you might find useful if you’re thinking about such questions too.

“Language is the dress of thought”
~18th century lexicographer Samuel Johnson

Links related to memetics, viral marketing etc.

• How does a bestseller happen? Case study in hitting #1 on the NY Times Bestseller.
• Essential reading! “For every viral meme or scheme, we should identify the emotional response. We can then ask ourselves, “Why does this cause me to feel this way?”
• Want to create change? Tell a story. “Successful marketers don’t talk about features or benefits, they just tell great stories.”
• What makes an idea viral? By Seth Godin
• More case studies. “In the online world, memes are the currency of word-of-mouth marketing.”

If you have related links or ideas, please share :)

I just finished reading the book “Presence” and I can already tell that it will have a profound and lasting impact on the way I think.

The book is very profound and it will take months, possibly years to fully digest but it is one of the single most important books that I have read in a long time because it addresses some of the biggest challenges facing all of us and it really expanded my understanding of what we are up against and what is required to change the world for the better. 

Some key learnings that I took away:

1) The world and science is too fragmented and we must learn to think of the entire systems and “the whole.” 
2) We must focus on the fundamental problems and stop “shifting the burden” and stop applying quick fixes.
3) Creative breakthroughs and deeper understandings can easier emerge when we learn to quiet the mind (meditate) and lead from the heart
4) We must continue to develop our awareness of the problems that we face and make the right choices as individuals

The last point also reminds me of a conversation that I had with a friend over lunch last week.  Why do so many ’smart’ and educated people continue to fail to make the right decisions that would be in the best interest?

Examples:
* How many educated people don’t recycle?
* How many educated people continue eating junk food even though they would never fill up their car with junk fuel?
* How many educated people keep driving SUVs even while global warming is a real problem facing all of us?

It is not for a lack of awareness that educated people continue to do all of the above…

Things which are too good to be true most certainly are.

If you run into a friend and he is telling you that he was so good off, feeling fantastic… so yippee-yeah, things could not be better - you are suspicious.

I know what I am talking about… trust me. By nature I am getting overly excited about ANYTHING in the span of a second. Therefor I am used to people taking me not seriously and dealing with me like I had a few screws loose (which, of course, I don’t!!!).

As likely as the majority out there rather uses to give a positive feedback and beat around the bush with the things that no one really likes to hear, let me keep Mindvalley in perspective for a second.

After working at Mindvalley for three months now (and mostly living experiences to the max - good ones as well as challenging ones) I had a conversation with myself. The honeymoon phase is supposed to be over by now.

Since we are not holding hands each day dancing around in circles, always loving each other, no one’s blowing sugar into our a** or swamping the office air with serotonin:

• What makes me overcome a challenging experience or a rough workday?
• Why do I still keep on fighting for every idea to become reality although I had to give up on some already?
• What defines my lust for greeting the day with immediate thoughts about the projects I am assigned to, although at the same time I had been close to jumping out of the 12th floor office window because of it?

Comparing Mindvalley to former employers I used to work for (e.g. a worldwide recognized financial service company ) I pointed out some things they have in common.

Both of them care for their employees. Both of them are striving for happy, healthy and satisfied staff. Both identified the priceless and super productive value of working with people who are potentially deeper in line with themselves.

So… what makes the difference than at Mindvalley?

Speed: At Mindvalley ideas quickly turn into reality because there are no crusted operational procedures at work, no installment of supervisors, supervisors for the supervisors, area-, regional-, subregional Manager. Getting-things-done counts more than a five-step accreditation plan.

Personal Responsibility: At Mindvalley the words “It’s up to you” are given a totally new meaning. This is where I can see myself drowning like a lead sinker and rising like a star at the same time. Here I am allowed to fail first and encouraged to straighten it out afterwards.

Help: Asking for help and advise from the assigned specialists working over here is not embarrassing - it is highly recommended. Of course, not everything is working perfectly. Not every word and every thought is garnished with a sugared cherry. It can become stressful, messy and sometimes ugly.

What I want to say here: The whole life does not equal a wish-list. You need to feel passion and personal commitment for the thing you spend most of your daytime with, don’t you? So…

…if it was not fun anymore, why would I still be playing?

Who doesn’t love a ‘Happy Hour’? When Cocktails are available for half of their price or girls get free entrance into a club.

On Friday we had another form of ‘Happy Hour’ - a ‘Happy Office Hour’.

Though I am very grateful to always expect the unexpected, this was the kind of unexpected joy that hit the mark.

Early in the morning people acted a bit irritated when opening the fridge and found it stocked up with all kinds of cans of beer (Ginger beer, root beer, vanilla beer or real beer…)

Later that day smooth tunes emerged from the couch corner of our office. The already halfway through the weekend brains were ordered back into space and time. All sorts of cans hissed open and we had our hassle free sit back, relax and talk about announcements, braking the records, or differences between cheap Ferrero Rocher imitation and the original indulgence.

Once the party started all the good news put us just into the right mood to extend our little ‘Happy Office Hour’ and turned it into a ‘Happy Office Night’. So a whole crowd followed our master of words and music DJ John and his band B4C into their Hall of Fame’s victory gig…

There you could see even the supposed-to-sit-stiff-in-the-back-of-the-office programmers moving their hips ;-)

Talking about movement:

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”
~ Henry Ford

WorldBlu is a wonderful organization with a fantastic mission.

Their goal is to help make organizations more democratic.  The instant I learned about this organization I was deeply moved by their vision.

I was also determined to have MindValley enter the contest for the world’s most democratic work place.

They have a scorecard to measure what this really means.

Just going through the process is already helping me learn and grow as a leader and fortunately we have already come pretty far. 

Here are the WorldBlu Principles of Organizational Democracy:

1) Purpose and Vision

Score: Great!

MindValley has come A LONG way in the past couple of years and I am happy and excited to say that we have never had a clearer vision of who we aspire to be and where we aspire to go.  I will write a separate post on this in the future with more detail but our sense of purpose has never been stronger!  Will keep reinforcing and overcommunicating our vision going forward.

2) Transparency

Score: Very Good!

We like to run MindValley like an open book.  Our wiki makes all goals and processes at the company very transparent and we love to share the financial results that we are achieving across all of our projects!  As soon as I get caught up on accounting, we will also continue with the monthly updates where we share all of the nitty gritty details of our overall financial health.

3) Dialogue & Listening

Score: World-class

All of you should know me by now well enough that I always do everything I can to create an open work environment where everyones opinion counts.  We take extreme care in listening to feedback and treat everyone as equal thought partners in the projects and tasks that you are working on.  Can we do better?  You bet!  I have to say this because I believe in continuous improvement and we have just gotten started.  :-)

4) Fairness & Dignity

Score: Great!

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to me to treat everyone with respect, to be fair, open and honest.  As a leader, everyone will have to make tough and at some points painful and unpopular decisions.  However, I will always be fair and treat everyone how I would like to be treated if I were in your shoes.   That much I can promise. 

5) Accountability

Score: Solid (huge improvement over the past 3 months)

I must admit that this was one of our weaknesses until recently but with lots of process improvements (scrumming away) we have made huge progress.  At times things are still not “world-class” but for an organization that has doubled in size since July, I think we have come a long way and I am very proud of the accomplishments of the team.  Having clear lines of accountability seems to be liberating to the entire organization.  At least that’s how I feel.

6) Individual & Collective

Score: Admirable

I must say I was overjoyed when I saw our project leaders, Meike and Katalina, reach out to the entire team and thank every person that has helped them to accomplish so much over the past month!  It is great that we can celebrate both individuals and team effort!

7) Choice

Score: Very good

We do our utmost to give people choice!  So much in fact that the entire organization is shaping and taking on new projects that have been pushed and promoted from the bottom up because these were projects that some of our employees felt strongly enough that we had to pursue. 

8) Integrity

Score: Solid

Integrity has no shades of gray.  Either you follow strict ethics and morals or you don’t!  While I love joking and kidding around, at the end of the day integrity is probably the single most important value to me that I made part of my life during years of martial arts training.  I love to empower everyone on our team and hand over great responsibility but everyone has to understand that freedom requires discipline, and strict morals and ethics.

9) Decentralization

Score: Too much!  :-)

Hehe… these days it is hard to keep up with all the projects that everyone is independently pushing and pursuing.  Loving it! 

10) Reflection & Evaluation

Score: Getting better and better

Wow, for the first time in a long time I feel that I will be able to slow down to speed up.  A lot of it is thanks to Nicole, our latest all start task master that just joined MindValley.  Nicole is our new jack of all trades and has taken over accounting, HR, payroll, financial reporting, office admin and lots of other tasks that used to tie me up.  What a liberating experience! 

Hmm… reflecting on this post some more… I should really ask everyone on our team to evaluate us along the above dimensions.  Hopefully the results won’t be that different but it will surely help shed some additional light on where we need to keep focusing to further continue improving our organization.

The above list comes directly from the WorldBlu site at:
http://worldblu.com/orgdemo/principles.php

Just seven days ago we launched our first internal wiki!

Yeah!  I am very excited because this is truly the next step in the evolution of the company.  The wiki is going to be a lot of fun and will become a huge asset for MindValley.  We have BIG plans to “wikify” all of our processes and to dramatically increase knowledge sharing inside MindValley.  In other words, MindValley now has a big shared  brain.

The other interesting thing about the wiki is that it was initially proposed and pushed forward from the bottom up just like Business Week had predicted:

“Wikis, blogs, and other tools will arrive in the workplace whether companies are ready or not, as younger employees tend to develop their own self-organized networks (learn more)

Well, I guess Business Week got that story right! 

Overall, I am very excited about the wiki because it will greatly help in making the organization run much smoother.  What I also love about the wiki model is that it is so organic.  Everyone is a contributor and if anyone has any ideas to make things better they don’t need to ask, they can directly take action and implement them. 

Maybe it was one of these flash of genius, which come into your mind while sitting on the toilet or having a shower (we all have these moments, right?).

Eventually it all happened out of an adrenaline flush of excitement (that sometimes happens in the office for different reasons). Or one day Nika, our designated Video Editor, was sick of always putting other people into the right light.

Suddenly she decided to step out of the shadow… Watch

“I am an AIESECer” starring MindValley’s Nika (>> she is one of US <<)

Got the message? Now don’t panic if you did not understand everything - it is in Polish! Even we at MindValley needed an extra round of watching it - though we manage to get Nika’s message everyday:

This video is for all of you out there somewhere, who are willing to rock the world. This message goes to everybody interested in extraordinary experiences across borders. This video encourages you to take action.

Obviously this video’s intention spread pretty fast: just a few days after its launch it had been rated among YouTube’s top-watched videos.

I can appease you - so far Nika is still the lovely and unboastful girl next door :-) Despite her broadcast success no appearance of star allures…

Socialrank has launched! Hallo - everybody in the office:

has OFFICIALLY launched!!!

Of course, people working at MindValley are aware of this BIG THING called Socialrank. It has been secretly happening for quite a while now inside magnificent brains behind our locked office doors.

It is just that everybody at MindValley is sooo involved in one of the many big things happening everyday at MindValley that sometimes we need to wave with a fence post (as we call it in Germany) to make everyone aware of really REALLY outstanding things you want them to celebrate with you.

Here you go - our fence post:

October 1st was supposed to be a remarkable day in Socialrank history. At the end of an exhausting day I mobilized my last energy reserve and cheered at Caroline. She turned to me, looking exhausted and relaxed at the same time like I picture a mother holding her child after being in labor for quite a while (just still inspired by my last blog post - sorry Caroline…).

Since a selected group of bloggers, next to the (of course likewise selected) MindValley staff, have been invited two weeks ago for an early preview on 30 Socialrank Websites all of us already embosomed our favorite socialrank niche pages.

Me personally - I can’t remember what I did first thing in the morning when I woke up and simultaneously went online. Nowadays I check the hottest post on productivityzen.com that could help me making my day (with a 93,7% chance).

So from now on Jiangti will do less nightly excursions to the office, I hope. At three AM in the morning after Mike & Michelle’s wedding party I caught him on his way to the office solving freaking socialrank coding problems.

Wow… this is passion - people!!! It brings me back to the mother in labor picture, but let’s blank this out for a second.

I asked Jiangti recently about his sleeping habits: “Just like a baby.” he replied. (I guess I will save my comment on that :-o)

I have read countless business books and articles on getting things done over the years and once in a while I come agross a new gem, a new insight that just hits me like a rock. 

As I was listening to some lessons from Bill Bartmann, one of the most successful serial entrepreneurs I have ever met, I had one of these moments.  What Bill had to say might be common sense but the insights are so profound they have changed the way I work and think about work ever since. 

Here is what Bill had to share:

To achieve extraordinary results, you must stop doing ordinary things.  

Why do I like this quote so much?

Because I have noticed that it is very easy to just “get busy.”  I can think of many occassions where I just “got busy.”  However, instead of making a list of tasks to do and asking myself which tasks are “extraordinary” I would be “too busy” to ask myself these hard questions and just plow ahead.  Well, it turns out that one never runs out of work.  Anyone can always find more things that have to get done.  So, the key truly is to focus on the stuff that matters, the extraordinary things that can help one to become extraordinarily successful. 

How do you know if what you are working on the right tasks?  Just ask yourself:

“Will doing this help me achieve extraordinary results?” OR

“If I keep doing this day in and day out will it help me achieve extraordinary results?”

If the answer is no, then find the items that will truly help you get to the vision that you have set out to achieve.  Now, this does not mean that one no longer has to do the little grunt work.  However, everday it is worth identifying 3-4 items that can really help move the business or project forward and making enough time to work on those. 

JibJab.com, the hit comedy site, launched a new service that allows you to upload your friends and family into their comedy paradies. We experimented by uploading members of the MindValley Team.

We present to you:

Math Camp Massacre!

and

Unnecessary Force