Tony K’s got something to say

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

-Mahatma Gandhi

Thanks to CVS for showing me this one, please watch, it is too funny not to

I am a big of Jeremiah Owyang’s blog on Web Strategy. His recent post about Internal stakeholders opinions on design outweighing the end-user needs and experiences is hitting home right as I am trying to find a way to navigate the razor’s edge line that separates happy internal stakeholders and audience growth and usability. The line is tough when dealing with clients and trying to convince top level stakeholders that their site is for the end-user because their end-users are the staff and the organizational structures they work within–it is how their thinking is aligned as it pertains to their daily work–definitely understandable.

In my work and the lessons I have learned over the past few years of dealing with this type of issue I have found that identifying strategic goals that align to the mission can help push for changes that break the cycle of presenting information to the end-users in the shell of organizational structure–while the org structure is always underlying the IA the top level presentation should be intuitive and create pathways that are easy to navigate–users look for keywords, things that are familiar to them and so topic listings and high level data entry points go a long way for guiding your users deeper into your site. Additionally, a metric for guidance is how often users are clicking into you search engine rather than through the navigation–if the search tool is dominant your site is likely defined with too much of an internal focus.

Last thought, a good, high quality Intranet run as an internal site that is refreshed with latest news and info can become the focus of internal users and stakeholders freeing the potential to focus the Internet site on the outside audience.

Anyone else have thoughts or experiences on this topic?

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
– Author Unknown

This is a brilliant talk by Clay Shirky about new media/ social media. Please take the time to watch (thanks to Margaret for sharing on Facebook!).

I find myself as a practitioner, online spelunker and strategist always trying to identify why–for what use and what goals do organizations want to use social media for–what do they hope to achieve? The other block that always comes up is the ability to give up control–although anyone can take your message, mash it up, reformat, blast it around the Internet without your consent–somehow not directly engaging adds a sense of comfort at higher levels of organizational management (or so I have found).  So one of my big take-aways from this clip was his reference to My Barack Obama.com (it’s a bit near the end so FFwd or be sure to watch the whole thing) is it’s about convening people on messages not controlling the messages.

Second take away-also form the end–it’s not a matter of if or how to engage, social media is the media environment we have, it’s about finding the right uses for the tools available

enjoy….

I usually just post one but since it is late in the day here are two from Albert Einstein:
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one

We cannot see our reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

Tao proverb