Musings from the Middle

John Y’s Musings from the Middle: A LinkedIn Delusion

By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jan 31, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET

My delusion of getting LinkedIn attention and an apology.

I like using LinkedIn. It’s a useful and efficient business networking social media tool, in my opinion.

And so I was amused at first, then overjoyed, and ultimately circumspect a few weeks ago when it began raining LinkedIn “acceptances” in my email box.

I knew over the years I had requested a number of LinkedIn connections that had gone un-responded to. And I wondered why this or that person may not have “confirmed” me.

Was it something I said? Did I remind them of someone they dislike? Or am I the person they disliked–and kept others who reminded them of me from being “confirmed” on

LinkedIn?

I just didn’t know.

It started with a trickle. First two, then four, then nine, then 14 LinkedIn confirmations –all in the space of a few hours one day.

“Well, what do you know?” I thought to myself. “I feel I hit the social media jackpot. I guess all those people who never responded are all finally coming around. And at nearly the same time.” Which seemed odd….but the thought was replaced quickly with the self-serving, “Well, it’s about time.”

And then I began wondering “Why now?” Was it the ad in the airport just breaking through. Was there some effort at LinkedIn to end the moratorium on people who had requested to be linked but were in the “questionable” category?

But before I could think through that remote possibility here came 10 more confirmations. And then another five and another seven.

“What the heck?” I thought to myself.

By the end of the day I had lost count. I had at least 300 new LinkedIn connections. All in one afternoon. The likelihood they were all coincidentally people I had requested but hadn’t yet decided until today seemed not only unlikely —but downright delusional.

And then I got an inkling. A few friends who are more colleagues and acquaintances began asking “Did you mean to ‘Link’ to me the other day on LinkedIn?”

I checked my LinkedIn account. By the end of day two I had about 600 new LinkedIn connections. If this trend kept up, I would soon be closing in on Richard Branson of Virgin airlines as the most linked to member of the social media site. I began to wonder if Mr Branson (well, “Richard” now to me) had experienced a similar dramatic surge like mine.

And I realized, at last, it wasn’t a sudden burst in my popularity or people coincidentally seeing the value of linking to me on a social media site. No, something far less impressive and a great deal more humiliating. I had inadvertantly “blast requested” LinkedIn connections from every single person whose email address I had in my Outlook account that could be found on LinkedIn (that wasn’t already connected to me).

Of course, this last and more plausible explanation is a little unsettling and embarrassing. I would like to apologize to everyone I contacted and also thank those that are now “linked” to me.

I think.

I actually want to hold off on a formal apology (and thank you) until I can be sure.
I’d like to hold on ….for just one more night….the convoluted idea that finally, at last, all the people who had gone silent to my LinkedIn requests saw the error of their ways and rose up to link to me. Simultaneously. All in a matter of just a few hours.

I may be able to stretch it out for two more days and nights with this pleasant delusion.

So please be patient waiting for me to get back with that formal apology.

Oops. Gotta go. Just got 12 more new “confirms” on LinkedIn.

“It’s about time!”

John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Love is…

By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jan 30, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET

Love is…

When your spouse knows you have a number of quirky habits and addictions, and doesn’t comment critically when she realizes you are frittering away time with one of the more harmless ones–because she knows it could be worse.

And even says something encouraging.

Like when a patient at a mental hospital finishes making a wallet and shows it off with pride and receives praise from the hospital staffer on duty.

John Y’s Musings from the Middle: A Growth Mindset

By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jan 29, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET

Want to have a brighter future?

Here’s how.

Have a “Growth Mindset” –as opposed to a “Fixed Mindset.”Mindset is a simple idea discovered by Stanford professor, Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., in decades of research on motivation, achievement, and success.

Mindsets are beliefs individuals hold about their most basic qualities and abilities.In a Growth Mindset, people believe they can develop their brain, abilities, and talent.

This view creates a love for learning, a drive for growth and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishments.

On the contrary, people with a Fixed Mindset believe their basic qualities, such as intelligence and abilities are fixed, and can’t be developed.

They also believe that talent alone creates success, and see effort as a sign of weakness rather than as a positive element of life needed to reach one’s full potential.

The diagram above shows how people with different views of intelligence behave in different situations.

(Thanks to Lee H. Baucom for teaching me about this theory and doing it in such a memorable and meaningful way).

John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Facebook and Dopamine

By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jan 28, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET

Facebook and the levels of dopamine hits.

It’s a good feeling when a friend request on Facebook gets “accepted.” Of course, we are adults and perhaps shouldn’t acknowledge the affirmation rush we feel, but it happens and is pleasing.

But what about the “delayed acceptance” of a friend request?

This gets complicated. The “dopamine factor” (we’ll call it) is reduced the more time that passes before we are notified of the big “accept.”

A week delay is probably only about a 20% reduction in the dopamine delivery. It’s possible this were really busy or is just now checking Facebook for new friend requests. But the chances are they saw the request from you 5 days ago and weren’t excited enough about it to immediately accept but knew they would eventually accept when “other” friend requests came in and they could kill 5 birds with one round of accepts, so to speak.

A month delay, is concerning and delivers only about 40% of the dopamine an immediate accept produces. In this case, it’s likely the person decided not to accept you but then in the intervening weeks realized they needed to ask you for a favor or remembered you know someone important to them and don’t want you saying bad things about them for not accepting you on Facebook. Hence, the month delayed “accept.” The reason this is 40% and not lower is we know going in these people aren’t crazy about us and getting an accept in the first place is a bigger surprise, increasing the dopamine punch.

6 months or longer. It delivers about 20% of the maximum dopamine surge. Sure it’s offensive to know it took 6 months for someone to finally think of something redeeming enough about you to “accept” but the “relief factor” of knowing they eventually did come up with some reason to accept is worth a 20% hit. In fact, we are so relieved we don’t even need to know what the redeeming factor about us is. Just that there is one at all (for these individuals) is good enough.

1 year and 9 months? This is a tough one to explain. And is what got me thinking about this topic in the first place tonight. I haven’t figured it out yet. I’ll say a 25% dopamine burst. These are people you had written you off as undeserving of a friend accept. And about 639 days passed before they changed their mind…..and you have come back from the social dead to them, figuratively speaking. And coming back from death from anything is worth at least 25% of the maximum dopamine burst. I’m low-balling this one. ; )

John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Baby Steps

By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Jan 25, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET

Clean living. Baby steps.

I have several hundred songs downloaded on my iTouch.

All of them legally downloaded. And I’m feeling kind of smug about that.

And yet my inner rebel refuses to put on my seat belt until I am leaving my neighborhood—several hundred feet from my driveway.

I can’t explain why I feel the need to flout the law and live on the edge like that?

jyb_musings Who can say? It’s who I am.

Like a Hell’s Angel of suburbia (but driving a Honda Accord instead of a Harley.)

But at least the version of Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” I listen to before buckling up wasn’t illegally downloaded.

And today was followed on my iTouch by George Michael’s “You Gotta Have Faith.”
Baby Steps

John Y’s Musings from the Middle: The McRib Code

By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jan 24, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET

The McRib Code

The McRib sandwich is back at McDonalds . But there is far more to it than the simple reintroduction of failed fast food sandwich for about the 19th time in approximately 31 years.

I have combined the DaVinci Code formulas and validated them through Nostradamus’ projections that reference a similar irregular phenomenon.

And it is not pretty.

jyb_musings How bad?

Almost enough to make you want to go Mayan.

After you’ve eaten a 2 for 1 McRib. Just know there more at stake. ; )

John Y’s Musings from the Middle: The Art of Problem-Solving

By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jan 23, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET

Remember, the the “art of negotiation” is really the “art of problem solving.”

To get what you want in negotiating, however, you have to first be able to give the other side what they want, too.

Negotiation isn’t about who can yell loudest what they want until the other side capitulates. It’s a process of understanding until the wisest —and often most creative—resolution of the problem is discovered and properly disclosed and proffered. And you can’t do that unless you know fully what the other side “really” wants–both what they say they want and what they actually want (the two aren’t always the same….not because the other side is concealing something but because they may not have fully thought through the process themselves and can answer clearly and candidly.)

A great example I’ll never forget from my MBA program went something like this. Two companies in different industries were negotiating for a rare orange available in scarce supply from South America. They went to war in negotiations for the orange, escalating the price and trying to undermine the others need and use for the orange. Each needed more than “half” the supply and were willing to pay premium pricing for it. The two sides exhausted the different ways of dividing up ownership of the oranges between the two but none were satisfactory. And then, at the end of this disastrous and destructive and costly negotiation, it is discovered that Company A needs only the rind of the orange and Company B the pulp. But neither side took the time to find that out about the other before it was too late and both companies paid exorbitant prices and didn’t get what they wanted.

Why?

jyb_musings Ignorance of the situation.

Or more pointedly, self-absorption and an unwilling to try to “solve a problem” rather than merely “getting mine.”

This is a great life lesson and business lesson to understand what each side is really needing and seeking. Knowledge is power. And smart. And ignorance is so very costly and wasteful. And ultimately humiliating and does a disservice to all involved. It’s never enough to know only what you want. The key, ironically, to the most successful negotiators (problem solvers) is that they also know what the other side wants –and how to deliver it to them.

If you enter a negotiation without a strong sense of that understanding, you aren’t really negotiating or problem solving. You are just making petulant, uninformed demands.

John Y’s Musings from the Middle: What If?

By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jan 22, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET

Sometimes what seems to be a confident answer turns into a cause for worry.

Last week I was asked by a client, “Is there any way in the world –anything that could possibly happen—that means this deal won’t go through?

I flippantly joked, “Yes. If the Mayans were off three weeks in their prediction of the end of the world.”

We both laughed.

jyb_musings But since then I keep worrying, “What “IF” the Mayans really were off three weeks?! And the world does end. And this deal doesn’t go through. I am totally sc***d. I will have lost my credibility with this firm and probably not get renewed for this year.

Gosh, I sure hope the Mayans didn’t have a tendency to be off 3 weeks in their predictions.

I mean, the Mayan culture seems like the kind of culture that if they were going to get something wrong, they would at least get it wrong on the right date. They seemed to be sticklers like that.

John Y’s Musings from the Middle: I’m Easy

By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jan 21, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET

I’m easy, cheap, and proud of it.

On Facebook anyway.

Is that a bad thing?

I just found out about “deactivated” accounts of people who are Facebook friends and that you should probably delete or “unfriend” them since they are no longer active on Facebook.

That made sense until I got my real lesson from the process. Some of the “friends” I discovered with deactivated accounts included names like:

Jon Doe

A Fish Sandwich

Carissa Carmos Wayfm Shinefm (totally made up name)

John Doe (with an ‘h’)

And more…

jyb_musings It’s not my fault that my friendship with a fish sandwich or an imaginary person didn’t work out. At least I tried. If they were having fun at my expense, heck, well….it’s their loss.

And besides, I can comfort myself by knowing I was probably the best friend that fish sandwich had in its entire imaginary life. At least the longest. We were apparently friends for several years.

John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Just Another Sunday Afternoon

By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Jan 18, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET

It was just another Sunday afternoon.

The Kansas City Chiefs were playing the Green Bay Packers on TV. I remember that.

And my father was playing cards with some friends, probably gin rummy. My mom was hosting and I was just kind of hanging around….I remember getting one of the men there to play basketball with me earlier in the day. We had a basketball goal in the driveway but not much room toplay. So we just shot around instead of playing HORSE or one-on-one. In the back we had a kidney shaped pool and area for grilling out. It was on the beach and I loved staying there because at nighttime you could hear the ocean waves crash rhythmically against the beach sand until I fell asleep.

But this was a Sunday afternoon and I was bored amidst all the activity. Not much for an 8 year old kid to do. Mostly adult fun. And so I walked out back and looked onto the beach. An older lady in a bathing suit wrapped in a towel seemed anxious and waved to me. She had long gray hair large sun glasses and asked if I’d seen a young child wandering on the beach. She described the child but I was only half-listening. She told me that she had fallen asleep on the beach watching her grandchild and just woke up. A man from the party, I didn’t recognize him, walked up to us and listened as she explained again what had happened. Suddenly, I had something to do. Like a game almost. My job was to find this wandering baby before anyone else did. I walked up the beach a bit and down and didn’t see any young children. The older man from my parent’s party acted like he was looking hard but really wasn’t. He stood by the grill area and craned his neck a little and used his hand to block the sun from his eyes so he could get a better view. But he saw no children either.

jyb_musings I felt bad for the grandmother but was also getting a little annoyed that she wanted me and not an adult to help her out. I was bored and had nothing to do but didn’t want to spend the next half hour looking for a child I didn’t even know. But I tried. Or at least pretended to, like the man from the party. I walked around to the front of the house and saw nothing. It was getting windy and a little chilly and I wondered back to where I had seen the grandmother and she wasn’t there. I figured she left. And I stepped toward the pool and walked alongside the curve where the pool was shaped like turned-in side of a kidney. My job every morning was to take a long pole and skim the pool of any debris that had collected from the day before. And I was imagining doing that as I walked toward the deep end and saw a child-like blur languishing at the pool bottom. I dashed inside and screamed to my father that a baby was in the bottom of the pool. My dad leapt out of his chair where he was playing cards, knocking it over as he ran outside and in seemingly one motion dashed outside and dove straight into the deep end and pulled out the baby. He had been a competitive swimmer growing up and got to the baby faster than anyone else there could have.

My mother called 911 and it seemed the paramedics were there instantaneously. My mother seemed calmer than she was as tears welled in her eyes and she led the paramedics to the baby. I was kept on the other side of the pool away from all the activity. I remember hearing that they turned the baby upside down and water apparently came flushing out of its tiny body. But it was too late. The baby had been underwater far too long and had drowned and could not be resuscitated.

I don’t remember much after that. It was a horrifying shock that wasn’t supposed to happen on a Sunday afternoon when parents are socializing with friends and kids are bored and it’s too chilly to be on the beach in Hallandale, Florida. And the Chiefs and Jets are playing a football game that everyone seems interested in. And a baby wanders off from a sleeping grandmother on the beach outside your house and falls into your pool and drowns…. and the whole world turns upside down and your life is changed forever. On just another Sunday afternoon.

And the waves at night never sound quite the same as they crash rhythmically against the beach sand while I try to fall asleep.