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I’ve never had a formal mentor arrangement with anyone. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but perhaps I’ve always associated with folks who weren’t closers. And when feeling closed upon by my “mentors,” I backed away. Perhaps that is the way these things are supposed to work; a support system of bumper rails without risk of co-dependency.

Looking back, when asked to be someone’s mentor, my first question was always, “What do you want?” It was almost always met with indecision. “I just want some help. My career seems to be stalled, I’m feeling frustrated and taken for granted. I want to be more like you” was a common reply. Little did any of these poor, hapless, rudderless folks know that I was just as lost. I guess I just hid it better.

But without a direction, without knowing what they wanted, I could not help. But I tried anyway, helping perhaps to define the direction, the needs and wants and winding the charge own the path. But because the direction did not come from the fire in the gut, it usually burned quickly, smoldered and finally died. Most drifted off, afraid somehow to tell me they no longer wanted to be mentored.

For myself, I’ve always wanted a mentor and have attracted a few. But what started out as a mentor relationship slowly evolved into someone older guiding me into a career they wished they had, not what I wanted. We usually parted without a goodbye.

And now blogging has replaced the need to mentor for me. If any of my ramblings are helpful in any way, take them, use them and make them your own. But don’t ask me for more than I am willing to give here; both of us will be disappointed and part strangers.

This mentor round-table challenge was thrown out by Holly Hoffman of WorkLoveLife.com

It started this morning with a simple tweet from Shannon Paul:

Airports really aren’t as fun as they could be :-/

More accurately, I tweeted back, that airports aren’t as much fun as they USED to be. And then it hit me that they aren’t fun anymore because we have made travel all about the destination rather than the journey. In our quest for über-efficiency and profit, we have stripped out everything fun about what happens between point A and point B. It’s not a bad thing; it is just who we are.

But the human being needs fun. It needs a place to experience and enjoy the journey, the process.

And right then and there, the whole purpose of social media became clear to me. In the absence of a journey between the handshake and the close, human beings have created this thing called social media where we have permission to enjoy the journey. The rules are clear; be kind, be friendly, help others, don’t self-promote, don’t hard-sell. In a culture that seeks to carve away all the human inefficiencies of getting from point A to point B, nature has found a way to adapt.

And what frustrates the closers and the efficiency experts is that the journey takes too long. It wanders from the path too often and doesn’t close a sale with deft. They demand an ROI.

But, sadly, like airports, social media way stations will eventually become an efficient place to transact stuff. I wonder where else we will find a place to hang out, enjoy the journey.

Shannon Paul can be found hanging out online, enjoying the journey at her blog, Very Official Blog. Pull up a chair; her door is always open.

It’s been a couple of months now since the life coaches and go-getters pushed out their brand of RAH RAH RAH and GO! GO! GO! for 2010. We’ve seen folks choose keywords for their life, new resolution for the year, non-resolution for the year, themes instead of resolutions and all sorts of various predictions and start-up dreams, etc.

And very little living. Only doing.

When I worked at a newspaper a long time ago* I spent about 70% of my time wandering around with my cup of coffee, talking with other people in the building; Gary in accounting, Ted, John and MB in editorial art, Jeff in photo and all the print shop and pre-print guys. Before that, when I worked at SPAR Marketing, most of my day was spent wandering around talking to people with my coffee cup. And before that, I did the same thing at Huffy.

And I got a lot done as a result.

But every year during my performance appraisal, my boss of the moment would take the opportunity to chastise and berate me on how much time I wasted walking around, talking to people instead of spending that time at my desk “producing.” And yet, each boss was amazed at my ability to produce a ton of work. No doubt they reasoned that if I could produce this much work walking around socializing, think about how much they could get out of me if I didn’t walk around.**

Here was the secret. What they saw as me wasting time, I saw as gathering stories about what mattered to people. I saw impromptu conversations over a cup of coffee as inspiration for change. I took away their frustrations and ranting as opportunities to solve organizational problems, to remove barriers. I saw my wanderings as keeping in touch with what mattered to people most, what worried them, what gave them fear. When I did “work at my desk” I worked on proposals that solved real problems and helped the organization become more efficient. I presented budget proposals that produced much more than busy work or boondoggles for management. I produced writing that talked to real issues that real people were feeling. The work seemed more real because it connected with real people, not just caricatures or stereotypes.

And that I think is the real value of all this time-wasting social media. To many, it looks like foolin’-around-time. But to those of us who know better, it is the inspiration and fuel of innovation and productivity..

*A long time ago = When the year started with 19
**About half as much, maybe less.

I ran out of coffee filters the other day. Not a big deal, I’ll just hike to Kroger and get some more. When I got there, I saw the empty peghook that once held my filters. Moreover, there was a red tag on the hook informing me that this product would be discontinued.

Here’s why this is a big deal. A few years ago, the 53rd automatic drip coffee maker I have ever purchased in my life, died. Just quit. Arrgghh, there has to be a better way. And there was. Melitta makes this carafe and cone set that only requires hot water and gravity to make coffee. The only wrinkle is that it also requires a size 6 cone filter. But, since Kroger carried it, not a big deal. I adopted my new system. And it was great because it was so simple. It only really required gravity to work. And gravity was free.

Then someone at Kroger decided they were not selling enough #6 filters. And, without asking me, they just quit carrying them.

Amazon.com still sells the #6 and I just bought approximately 2.6 years worth of filters. Until my filters arrive, I am using paper towels to line the cone. In the event Melitta decides to quit selling the #6 cone filter altogether, I know I have 2.6 years to come up with an alternate solution to a perfectly good system. But, what I foolishly adopted outside of the normal 10-cup basket filter automatic drip coffee maker is now showing signs of that death-march to obsolescence. An inferior technology persists because it is ubiquitous.

We get change and new stuff. Really, we do. It excites us. It gets us out of bed every day. But we also have a library of 8mm reels our childhood is on that we can’t watch, a library of 8 track and cassettes our music is on that we can’t hear, a library of VHS tapes our children’s lives are on that we can’t relive and a mountain of Zip Drive cartridges our careers are on that we can’t share or pass on. We’ve seen the result of a system being brought to its knees when a tiny bit of the supply chain becomes obsolete right after we dedicate a large chunk of our lives to it.

We grew up in large families (which is why there are so many of us now clogging the ladder rungs to the top) where everything from dinner to clothes to mom’s attention was a competition with the people you lived with. Most of our families had one car and one income and choices were made based on the supply of resources. We got jobs that promised us work, retirement accounts and free benefits that seemed too good to be true. We took them and squirreled them away, believing that one day they would be gone (turns out we were right.) We’ve lived through and survived at least three recessions and a very large oil embargo. We’ve seen an explosive increase in the divorce rate. In short, we’ve been conditioned to know that free is never unlimited free. Free will run out. Free has a catch. The good times do not last. Commitments are broken every day without apology, remorse or obligation.

And now Twitter and Foursquare want to be the operations in our supply chains, somewhere between service delivery and invoicing. I can see the possibilities for several industries we do work for and it is very, very exciting. But Twitter is free, it has really no reason to be there tomorrow, no obligations, no contract with me.

As I reach for the coffee filters that are no longer there, between boiling the water and lining the cone with carefully folded paper towels, I pause and think, “What if Evan Williams decided to just quit doing Twitter?”

After thinking a bit about what sort of New Year’s Resolutions I needed to make a few days ago, I decided that I would put a list of five things together that I will NOT do for 2010.

Here goes, in reverse order of importance (IMHO):

5. I will not use free software or services
I have come to the conclusion that there are two things true about “free” software/services. 1) Business that uses them only have the advantage until they break, cease operations or go off-line unexpectedly and 2) “Experts” who advocate that you use them are only trying to force you into reason #1 to keep themselves at a competitive advantage.

4. I will not create any more Google Alerts
Google Alerts used to be useful, but now I get so many of them so fast and so many of them lead to a false positive that they are just clogging up the inbox, wasting my time reading them and causing undue anxiety.

3. I will not sign up to receive any more newsletters
Eventually, the really cool stuff that I needed to know that you were publishing turns into a spam email every day/week/month and a really lame Holiday greeting card at the end of the year. If I need to know something, I’ll Google it. If you are doing your job well, I will find you there.

2. I will not create any more user accounts
If you require that I create an account to read your stuff, use your “free” online tool or order from your online store, I’m just going to shrug and move on. I already have accounts with the major online retailers like Amazon, B&N and MacZone. The chances that I won’t be able to find what I need from them is not very high, even if the price is a little bit more.

1. I will not read any more blog posts about using Social Media.
Everything that needs to be said about social media has already been said. I already know how to use Twitter and how not to use Twitter.

That’s my list and I’m sticking to it. What about you?

I received a call from someone who pulled my phone number from the Whois record of a client. He was having trouble signing up for some services on a Web page because he didn’t know where to go next. In his mind, the page simply ended without any direction.

When I went to the page in question, it was clear in my mind that the “Complete your profile now” was an obvious link and that he should click it to go to the profile page. But he didn’t see it. I wonder how many others didn’t see it and didn’t bother calling me.

So, I added “Click here to complete your profile now.” Yes, I know that is so Web 2000, but I don’t care. Users expect to see “Click here” as a call to action and regardless of how dorky it looks to Web designers, we’re going to use it. A lot.

Click here is alive and well. And works.

Just for fun and visual cognition, I made a Wordle Cloud from my résumé.

I think a lot of hiring managers would benefit a lot by running résumé through a word cloud so see the major words and concepts show up quickly. Maybe some already do.

What does your résumé word cloud say about you? Would it get you hired?

Image above generated by http://www.wordle.net/ Click through to make your own.

The two dogs here are mine that I walk three times a day. They are each about 1 1/2 years old and grew up together from pups. They hang with me at my office all day and they are rarely apart.

Charlie is a full-bred German Shepherd who weighs about 100 lbs. Sallie is the white mutt we rescued from the local Human Society. She is a bit lab, a bit of something else and more of that. She weighs in about 70 lbs.

And, despite what the photo shows, she is winning this wrestling match (nobody got hurt.)

On the afternoon “thinking/lunch” walk, we go about 1/2 mile to a undeveloped subdivision that the builder abandoned due to the current recession (silver lining!) I then take them off the leash and they run, sniff and stalk each other. And they go at each other with all the sibling love anyone who has grown up with a brother or sister close in age recognizes well.

Charlie is bigger, weighs more and has longer teeth. He can also run faster. If he choose, he could probably crush Sallie’s head. Sallie has shorter legs, is stockier and can turn and roll on a dime. But if you watch them closely, none of these features by themselves is either an advantage or a disadvantage.

When Charlie catches up with Sallie, she either veers quickly right of left or rolls on her back, sending Charlie overshooting her. By the time he turns around, she has darted away a few hundred feet. If Charlie is standing up and Sallie wants to take him out, she body-checks him against his ribs and he goes down like a sack of potatoes. If he is already on the ground, she positions her weight on his chest and he can’t get traction to roll over.

If you were to bet which dog would win in an all out wrestle, you may choose Charlie who is bigger, can run faster and has bigger teeth. But nobody told Sallie her shorter legs and stockier build was a disadvantage nor does she believe it is. So far, each wrestle has ended in a draw.

So, what is your excuse? Do you really have disadvantages in your business or have you just not fully assessed your leverage? If you are small and under-capitalized, you may just be scrappy and creative. In this current economy, do you see limitations or possibilities to embrace change?

Good business people don’t see advantages or disadvantages, only the current climate and an opportunity to leverage their assets.

We can learn a lot by paying attention to dogs. In their minds, they are each at the same time only puppies and the fiercest thing on the block. And, since they can’t understand us when we voice our opinions of them, they are unaffected by what we think is possible. To them, every fight is win-able, but not every win is achieved the same way.

Exactitude in small matters is the very soul of discipline. I didn’t say it, Joseph Conrad did in perhaps his most obscure work, The Secret Sharer. If you haven’t read yet, go ahead; I’ll wait.

I just finished mowing the lawn. I hate how much time I spend beating back nature, but since I live in the City of Englewood and they have all these laws and such, I gotta mow the lawn. Usually, I mow, then trim along the sidewalk, weed the mulch beds, snip back the shrubs a bit. I’m pretty good at taking care of the “small matters” that say discipline. I don’t do these small things because I care what my neighbors think, but because it is part of maintaining a lawn. It disciplines the craft. It disciplines me.

But I’ve been busy lately and it’s been raining, so I fire up the mower, turn it up to the rabbit symbol and run over the lawn as fast as I can. I’ve got deadlines.

I did the same thing this morning and satisfied once more with my domination over nature, I looked back at the freshly mowed, slightly wet lawn and did not get that sense of satisfaction that I usually enjoy after mowing. And then it occurred to me why that was.

The weeds had grown over the mulch and the grass was not crisp at the sidewalk line.

And it occurs to me that the difference between “getting the lawn mowed” and “mowing the lawn” is the details that surround the broad strokes of the mower. And then it dawns on me that the same thing applies to what we all do here.

Exactitude in small matters is what separates the blogger from the writer, the singer from the artist, the desktop publisher from the graphic designer, the shooter from the photographer, the pundit from the journalist.

Choose to be great. Choose exactitude in small matters.

Originally published at DogWalkBlog.com

Eight years ago, I was doing work for the NIE department at the Dayton Daily News. The Web site person had gone home for the day (this is when newspapers only updated their Web sites once a day and everything was done at night, after the print edition was put to bed.) Apparently, I was the only one in the building who could create, post and manage Web site content independently.

The photo editor at that time, Jeff Adams, raced down to my floor and begged my director to “borrow” me for the day, or until they could reach the Web site producer and get her back in to work. From about 9:30am until 4:00pm, I was updating www.DaytonDailyNews.com, pulling off photos and 9/11 stories from the AP wire and posting updates as fast as we could. In 2001, the CNN.com servers were overwhelmed and people were turning to their local newspaper Web sites for updates.

I remember the day going slow and fast all at the same time. I remember how calm and professional the newsroom was, how the entire team become hyper-focused on getting local news coverage, processing photos and assembling the “bulldog” edition of the newspaper. I remember seeing a deluge of news stories on the AP wire still happening everywhere else in the world that nobody anywhere was reporting.

I remember stepping out into downtown Dayton from the Ludlow DDN bank building and how quiet traffic was and how slowly everyone walked.

And then I went home. And went to work the next day. And the next and the next.