What better place, I figured, to write a bit more about personal branding. Because what Erika does can be called Personal Branding, but it might be something more.

You can check out my post here. And by all means: add Readhead Writing to your RSS feed. Rants writing and musings that will make your day better. And maybe make you re-think about what authenticity really means. I know she did for me.

The post is a reflection of my ongoing interest in bridging the left and right-directed minds. I try to use the trumpet and improvisation as a way to illustrate how even in creative pursuits, we all deal with context and in fact it can create greatness. This is something the creative mind understands very deeply. But sometimes when context is presented in a business setting, creatives find the constraints instead of the inspiration. Or least mine did for long time.

Thanks for checking it out. Consider adding Sundayed to your RSS feed: a good site to feed the brain.

Thanks, Erik.

AT school with the Marcus Roberts Trio*.

This is a long post. But if you’re in the mood for talking a little music and getting some groove and swing up in in your approach to branding, then I appreciate you settling in.

The Marcus Roberts trio has been together for some fifteen years. They occupy a place in American music that combines the maintenance of tradition and honoring the past with a highly innovative interplay of harmony, space, and rhythm.

And they’re heavy pros. Serious technique. If you haven’t heard Marcus walk a bass line with his left hand while improvising with his right you’re missing out on some joy in your life. I’ve shared a playlist on iTunes with a sample. Check it out.

But technique is just the start. They’re professionals with a steadfast dedication to the gig at hand regardless of their mood, the audience size, or a parent refusing to remove a fussy child from the auditorium. (Which happened recently. I witnessed it with hair raised. They played on, and blew us all away.)

And the gig at hand is larger than entertainment for them. It’s even larger than themselves. They have lessons to spread. Lessons in collaboration, flexibility, alignment, and dialog.

The trio was in Denver a few weekends back performing Rhapsody in Blue with the Denver Young Artists Orchestra. They do this around the world with symphonies and orchestras of all kinds. Here’s the opening movement during one of their performances with the Boston Symphony:

The trio was very generous in giving their time while in Denver. To students, to the community, and to the non-profit organization with whom they performed. They gave a Master Class the day before the performance, explaining what they’re after with these gigs that bring together jazz and classical music traditions. Gulfs that most have seen as un-traversable. Strict silos of art that don’t communicate.

Marcus and his trio use words like collaboration, integration, dialog, and relationships to explain their purpose. Phrases like bringing traditions together to find intersections while honoring the traditions of both. Not a fusing, rather a finding of alignment. The creative mind has has long lived in places like this. Places that the world of business is still trying to understand.

www.rolandguerin.com

Alignment is a particular sticky point with business. I had a conversation with the bass player Roland Guerin about creating collaborative art in an economic structure that rewards intellectual property and protectionism. It’s tough work. And it’s a difficult thing to change in a business context: Honoring the unique voices in an enterprise to inspire a shared vision or brand is something business just isn’t hard-wired to understand.

Back at the master class I asked the trio about how they approached dealing with swing in a more classical setting. How do you bring swing into a hall filled with artists trained in the European tradition? Do you lead by example, or do you have to take the time to explain it? Teach a bit?

www.jasonmarsalis.com

The drummer, Jason Marsalis, offered a thoughtful response. In a way, he said, all the differences between all musics can be explained by how they deal with eighth notes. Talk about getting to simple side of complexity. A lovely insight.

You don’t have to understand music from a theoretic standpoint to get this. Here’s a simple way to think about it:

Music moves along like a clock: pulse, pulse, pulse, pulse. There are infinite possibilities in terms of the speed and rigidity at which a piece of music pulses along, but they all pulse along just the same.

And just like we organize and subdivide infinite time into centuries, decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, and so on, music organizes and subdivides its pulses to better understand where the music is as it moves along.

Western music often does this by organizing its pulses into groups of four. In the U.S., our music almost always accents the second and fourth pulse creating what’s called a backbeat: pulse, PULSE, pulse, PULSE. You hear it so much that it’s truly a part of your DNA. When you hear it otherwise it sounds different even if you don’t know why.

Here’s another shared playlist on iTunes. The first tune (Brass in Pocket) quite visibly demonstrates four pulses with a backbeat. There’s a main pulse chugging along like seconds in a minute, hours in a day. Listen especially to the drums: a deep sound hits the first and third pulse, and a higher sound accents the second and fourth. That’s the backbeat.

Listen to that tune again, this time focusing on the bass guitar — that deep, regular thumping. Those are the eighth notes: the bass player is thumping eight notes for every four ticks. You can count them (and pretty soon you’ll hear how he’s also aligning accents to the backbeat).

I’ll throw in the vocals and how they line up since most of us orient ourselves around lyrics in rock songs:

Brass demonstrates a straight groove: eight notes that are subdividing the main four pulses very strictly. It’s a rock and roll groove, and if you remove the backbeat, one common way the European classical tradition approaches rhythm as well.

I hear Jason Marsalis suggesting that we all have the same main pulse in our lives, perspectives, and worldviews. It’s the subtleties, the nuances between the main pulses, that give us diversity. Diversity that we can embrace and find collaboration around, instead of viewing as differences and points of contention.

With that in mind, check out the second track, The Rubberband Man. It’s the same basic structure as Brass.

Listen closely and you might be able to hear a little more distance in between the eight notes. And some playfulness around how strict they’re sticking to it. It’s a bit playful, isn’t it? A bit (dare I say) elastic?

The bass player is thumping along like the bass player in Brass. But there’s just a bit more breathing room. A bit more space. Do you hear the difference?

Another dimension to think about is in the third track, End of the Road. Listen carefully to the swishing, brushy sound in the background. Those eighth notes aren’t pulses, not at all precise points in time. They’re more like moments in time. Areas around the pulse. Hear what I mean?

Combine those two dimensions and you start moving toward what a swing groove is: the crux of my question to the trio. Check out the fourth track, Rainy Day Blues with Jason’s brother Wynton laying down some serious blues with Willie Nelson.

Hopefully you can hear a very similar alignment between the bass and drums. But there’s all kinds of space in between the eighth notes**. It’s as if the musicians don’t want the time to pass, like they’re enjoying a great conversation at a dinner table over wine with friends. They find ways to swish and brush the pulses so that they can savor every moment before it passes. It doesn’t move any more slowly, but they’re taking in each beat a little more deeply.

Jason went on to tell me that working with a symphony and their inherent differences in how they approach eighth notes isn’t about leading by example, or teaching anyone to come to a different place. It’s about listening to the approach of the artists, understanding their relationships with eight notes.

And, he said, being flexible.

It was a humbling moment for me. These giants of jazz who swing as hard as anyone on the road putting the prime purpose of collaboration ahead of any kind of agenda. It isn’t about how to swing. It’s about how we’re all going to swing in a given context. Together.

The last tune on my iTunes playlist illustrates why Jason is so superbly qualified to make these connections for us. In New Orleans Blues, Jason plays a groove that’s a kind of combination between what we hear in the other tracks. He’s swinging with very precise articulation of eight notes. Sometime it’s more straight, sometimes it swings more. He puts a New Orleans sensibility up in it (New Orleans: the epitome of culture mash-ups) that comes through brightly, lighting the way of collaboration for us.

We can get as bombastic about this as we want. Big-picture: As living spirits we need to understand our common pulses, listen to and respect each others relationships with the nuances that are our eighth notes, and collaborate. The banal: Business is slow to realize the social web because they operate in a structure that rewards protectionism and competitiveness over collaboration and dialog (in other words, business needs to listen to more swing).

Certainly effective strategic planning and branding require flexibility. Entering an engagement with a dogmatic model sets you up to uncover conflicts. Success in strategic and brand planning starts with combining a few creative minds to empathize and see the big picture with a few left brain-led minds to understand the strategic and economic contexts.

Uncover (don’t tell, teach, or propose) the intersections. Grow wise by a humble process, and you’ll find that the seemingly disparate approaches to the eighth note actually groove stronger when brought together.

* Around the horn from back-left to right: Bassist Roland Guerin, Colorado Symphony Associate Conductor Scott O’Neil, Marcus Roberts, drummer Jason Marsalis, and AT.

** So much, in fact, that you can subdivide the main pulses into three. This is really what swing is: instead of eight over four, you have twelve over four. This is probably another post: swing is the perfect rhythm, in my opinion. A uniquely American art form that endures because of the space it gives for multitudinous expression.

The post is funny enough, but I remain flummoxed at the unending willingness of agencies to publically air what should be in-shop rants. And the lack of participation by agencies in trolling sites and mitigate it. It hurts their industry brand in a time when they can ill afford it.

So instead of getting serious about it again, allow me pull out my broad brush and take a crack at this kind of thing from the other side.

Herewith: an e-mail to a web designer, if a web designer was an architect.

_________________

Dear Web Architect,

Great news! Your plan for our new website was just green-lighted by management. They were so excited to begin the project that they’ve allotted a 20% cushion to the budget and have green lighted it all. Even the “nice to haves.”

We took a chance with a larger investment in the planning stage, but it paid off. Looking back, I think it went so well because you created a relationship of trust with us, adding value at just about every step of the way. For instance, you taught us about the complexities of web technologies in ways that our organization has never been able to understand. Web design is a very sophisticated set of moving parts that can make businesses nervous, but you explained everything in simple terms and without condescension. I don’t know if they require you to demonstrate this ability for your architecture certification, but well done.

We also trusted you because you demonstrated a deep knowledge of business and its disciplines, our industry, and our organization. It was very impressive. I think you have a better grasp of our revenue model than many of our financial analysts do! And your ability to align our various stakeholder values further demonstrated your acumen. I suppose what is obvious to an architect is so rarely the case with outside agencies we’ve worked with before: When demonstrating that our needs come first you have to actually know what our needs are.

You met with us in person, looked us the eye, were clear and professional about the fee structure, communicated regularly (even when you missed a deadline)… everything was above board. When new possibilities arose, you were flexible. When our audacious ideas ran into technology challenges, you said “how” instead of “no.” Again: building trust with us by adding value, one touchpoint at a time.

Thanks again for such great work and congratulations. I look forward to referring you whenever I can.

Best,

Client

P.S. For what it’s worth, your offices, website, and even personal appearance reflect simplicity and professionalism, and doubtless contributed to building confidence. We love your brand!

Heather Florence was behind one of the tables. Her company is places2network.com, and I asked what I could do for her (from a network perspective, as in, who can I introduce you to). She said “you could bring me a fan.”

Which I did. A big one. One of those industrial beasts, six feet tall if it was an inch.

I found a bartender to help me move it. People were watching, people I knew asked if I was officially a part of the event and when I said no, exchanged looks. The fan put a nice grease stain on my shirt (my wife was happy about that).

I didn’t care. I was adding value. At all costs. My ego started inflating, I imagined conversations – what a helpful guy. He’s adding value at all costs.

The row of exhibitors literally applauded when I brought the fan over. I was Caesar returning to Rome.

One problem. I couldn’t find an outlet at the new location. I found an extension cord, but no outlet. As I searched it became stuffier downstairs. And stuffier. And stuffier.

Then I lost the bartender. So I couldn’t move the fan back. People turned on me, started complaining. (Et tu, Brute?) I slinked away.

So a public apology to everyone downstairs at the Summer Toast event of 2009. Lesson learned: make doubly sure you can add value before you begin the execution process.

And thanks to everyone for a fun event last night, and to the sponsors like Heather and places2network.com.

I promise to not touch anything next year.

There’s a book called How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. I haven’t read all of it. And I think it’s excellent. So excellent, in fact, that I can take its principles and apply it to a blog post.

I think the author would be proud of me. Pierre Bayard is a smarty-pants professor of French literature at the University of Paris VIII and a psychoanalyst. Not exactly a slacker.

The main theme of the book is that there isn’t any possible way to read (defined as complete, beginning to end, comprehended reading) all the books civilized people are expected to read. Especially since there are thousands of new books published every day. It’s an exponential problem. So we’ve created “an oppressive system of obligations” that has generated “widespread hypocrisy.”

(Smarty pants.)

What truly matters is that you understand where great works of literature fit in the cannon. How they’ve contributed to the dialog of our collective library.

And we can do this by not reading well.

Nothing could be more apropos and helpful for those of us who insist on trying to wade through today’s grotesque expanse of digital dossiers. Messy and growing exponentially. Futilely trying to generate itself at the same rate of the life and place it’s trying to document, creating an oppressive system indeed.

Thanks to M. Bayard, I’m inspired to do my part in ending the hypocrisy. To come out of the closet and admit that I don’t read a lot of stuff online.

Liberté! Vive le…. not reading!

Mashable tweeted a link to a story about the five companies that are the biggest threat to Twitter. I didn’t even click it.

A few days later a friend asked me over breakfast what I thought the future of Twitter would be. I really have no idea. But I was able to posit, confidently, that apparently there are several companies posing a threat to Twitter and growth always draws you away from your customers and customer conversations is what Twitter is all about and what has made them great in the first place.

A blog about the top 10 secrets to good search engine optimization? Once I determine if the person who wrote it is legit, I’ll bookmark it (along with the other thousand or so permalinks on this very subject). I’ll to refer it later if/when I have a client project to which it applies.

An exposé on Andrew Sullivan in The Economist? Forget it. That gets barely skimmed, then tweeted in case someone else has the patience. But if someone brings up Sullivan at a networking event, I’m ready.

“The Economist recently wrote a lengthy article on him. How he defies stereotypes, and his very interesting background. Gay, Catholic-conservative, from an off-the-beaten-path town in England. Really defies expectations for someone so immensely popular. Maybe that’s why he is so popular: he transcends categories. Do you read his blog?”

M. Bayard has an excellent way of annotating referenced books in an effort to encourage transparency and quality not-reading. I think we could institute something similar on the web. His system follows, only I’ve substituted “Content” for “Book” and the corresponding “C” for “B:”

UC: content unknown to me
SC: content I have skimmed
HC: content I have heard about
FC: content I have forgotten
++: extremely positive opinion
+: positive opinion
-: negative opinion
–: extremely negative opinion

I’d add to his list:

YC: Yet-to-read/skim this content
DC: Desire to read/skim this content
SEC: Someone else please read/skim this content then blog succinctly about it so I’ll know more of what it’s about.

(And of course, in our world, “read/skim” means, “view/fast-forward through” or “listen to/ fast-forward through.”)

Honest and transparent. Think of the tweets alone:

• Mashable blog post on Twitter competitors. tinyurl/etc. SC+
• Long, in-depth Economist expose on Andrew Sullivan. tinyurl/etc. SEC++
• New tips on search engine optimization. tinyurl/etc. DC-
• @followerofyours You should check out Seth Godin. Lots of posts about naming a company. HC

A friend had a great blog post (++) on de-anonymize-ing Twitter accounts based on data from tweets. He’s as smart of a guy as I’ve ever known. He can absorb information faster than a tweet can tell you what someone’s having for breakfast.

I was unsurprised that he admitted not having read the entire article upon which his post was based. He came clean about it with a sentence, but he didn’t need to.

You’re a mortal, my friend. Reference the article, SC+. Done.

Go pick up M. Bayard’s book. It’s a good skim.

There appears to be very few international travel classes like this in higher ed. Amanda Pollock, Daniels executive program staff member and the co-brainchild behind the program, is the person who actually makes it all happen. Sold it to Daniels management. Promotes the program. Helps create the curriculum and on-the-ground integration. Books the buses. Brings the gifts to our hosts.

She’s worked in other Universities coordinating travel abroad programs. And she agrees.

“Most travel abroad programs are tourist courses. They’re ineffective in delivering any kind of sense of culture, and what its like to do business abroad.

“The goal of this class is create value on multiple levels: a more valuable learning experience for students. Valuable deliverables for partnering enterprises. Valuable research to bring back to Daniels faculty. And sustainable development practices that add value to Africans.”

Ever been on a University international travel course? What’s been your experience?