KareAnderson  

Winners discount information about lucky breaks and chalk uptheir right calls to superior judgment, whereas losers tend to emphasize therole of bad luck -- rather than bad judgment -- when their predictions gowrong.”

 That’s what Cornell University psychologist, ThomasGilovich, discovered from his experiment with NCAA fans. See more in thisarticle by Shankar Vedantam of the Washington Post.

 Learn how you can become more lucky by making smarterchoices. Read a favorite book of mine, co-authored by one of my mentors, HowardRaiffa.

 Most of us fool ourselves sometimes when making decisions.Here are some of the most common ways and what you can do to make smarterchoices.

 Think back on a crucial decision you’ve made in your work orwith a loved one that haunts you still. Now, consider some smaller decisionswhere you realize in retrospect that, if you’d made another choice, you’d havesaved a situation, time, “face”, a relationship, money or another resource, orsimply avoided aggravation.

 What if you found out that your mind played tricks on you?

 You could havethought things out better, and made a wiser choice? Perhaps you were relying onyour “gut instincts”, yet, in fact, were fooled by unconscious making traps weall fall into when trying to figure out what we should do.

 According to renowned negotiation and games theory expert,Howard Raiffa, we are destined to repeat the same faulty decision-makingprocess and face more grief from the poor results if we don’t gain insightsinto some of these traps.

Raiffa has found that the fault often lies not in thedecision-making process but rather in the mind of the decision maker. The waythe human brain works can sabotage our decisions.

Here are some insights into the most well-documented trapswe set for ourselves in making decisions. Perhaps they can help you make betterdecisions in the future.

How We Often Distort Our Decision Making

 We useunconscious routines, called heuristics, to cope with the complexity inherentin decision-making. They serve us well in most situations. For example, injudging distances, we equate clarity with proximity. The clearer an objectappears, the closer we judge it to be. The fuzzier, the farther we think it is.Like most heuristics, it is not foolproof. On days that are hazier than that towhich we are accustomed, our eyes will tend to trick our minds into thinkingthat things are more distant than they actually are.

 For airplane pilots this distortion could be catastrophic ifthey weren’t trained to use other truly objective measures and instruments.While this decision-making flaw is based on sensory perception others are basedon biases, still others on irrational anomalies in our thinking. They arepotentially dangerous because they are invisible to us. They are hardwired intoour thinking so we fail to even recognize we are using them.

Here are some of the most common decision-making traps - and what youcan do to overcome them.

Anchoring

 How would you answer these two questions?

 1. Is thepopulation of Turkey greater than 35 million?

 2. What’s your best estimate of Turkey’s population?

 If you are like most people, the figure of 35 million(researchers chose arbitrarily) influenced your answer to the second question.When behavioral scientists ask variations of these questions to groups ofpeople many times over the past decade. In half the cases, 35 million was usedin the first question, in the other half, 100 million.

 Without fail, the answers to the second question increase bymillions when the larger figure is used (as an anchor). When considering adecision, the mind gives disproportionate weight to the first information itreceives. Initial impressions, estimates, or other data anchor subsequentthoughts and judgments. The implications to influence another’s perceptions aremind-boggling and can take many guises. A colleague can offer a comment, or astatistic can appear in the morning newspaper that will influence yoursubsequent decision making on that topic.

In business, one of the most frequent “anchors” is a pastevent or trend. A marketer in attempting to project sales of a product for thecoming year often begins by looking at the sales volumes for past years. Thisapproach tends to put too much weight on past history and not enough weight onother factors.

 Because anchors can establish the terms on which a decisionwill be made, they can be used to influence how someone feels about a politicalissue or as a bargaining tactic by savvy negotiators.

 Reduce the impact of the effects of anchoring in these ways:

 1. Be open-minded. Seek information and opinions from avariety of people to widen your frame of reference, without dwellingdisproportionately on what you heard first.

 2. In seeking advice from others, offer information -- justthe facts without your opinion -- so that you don’t inadvertently anchor themwith your thoughts. Then you can benefit from hearing diverse views on thesituation without their views being colored or anchored by yours.

3. Whoever most vividly characterizes the situation usuallyanchors the other’s perception of it. That’s an immensely powerful ability.Others literally see and discuss the situation while anchored from that mostmemorably stated perspective. The most vivid communicator in the situationoften has the most power as she can literally created the playing field onwhich the game will be played.

 Be especially wary of anchors in negotiations. Think throughyour position before any negotiation begins in order to avoid being anchored bysomeone else’s proposal or position.

The Status-Quo Trap

We instinctively stay with what seems familiar. Thus we lookfor decisions that involve the least change.

For example, when radically new products are introduced theyare made to look like an existing and familiar product. The first cars lookedlike horseless carriages. The first online newspapers and magazines had formatsmuch like their print counterparts.

To protect our egos from damage we avoid acting to changethe status quo, even in the face of early warnings that demonstrate that changewill be safer. We look for reasons to do nothing.

For example, in one experiment, a group of people wererandomly given one of two gifts of approximately the same value, half receiveda mug, the other half got a large, Swiss chocolate bar. They were told thatthey could easily exchange the gift they received for the other gift. While youmight expect that about half would have wanted to make the exchange, only onein ten actually did. The power of status quo kicked in within minutes ofreceiving an object.

 Other experiments have shown that the more choices you aregiven, the more pull the status quo has. Why? Because more choices involve moreeffort while selecting the status quo avoids the stress of making a choice

In business, the sins of commission (doing something) tendto be punished much more severely than sins of omission (doing nothing). In allparts of life, people want to avoid rocking the boat.

What can you do? Think of your goals first, when preparingto make a decision, then review how they are served by the status quo ascompared by a change. Look at each possible change, one at a time, so as to notoverwhelm yourself and then instinctively want to “stay safe” and unchanged.

Never think of the status quo as your only alternative. Askyourself whether you would choose the status quo, if, in fact, it weren’t thestatus quo

Avoid the natural tendency of exaggerating the effort orcost or emotional reaction of others or for yourself if you change from thestatus quo.

Remember that the desirability of the status quo may changeover time. When considering a change, look at possible future situations. Ifyou have several alternatives that are superior to the status quo, avoid thenatural tendency to fall back upon the status quo because you are having a hardtime choosing between the other alternatives.

The Justify- Past-Actions Trap

The more actions you have taken on behalf of a friendship,choice or belief, the more difficult you find it to change direction oracknowledge that you now feel differently. Whenever you invest time, money, orother resources, or your personal reputation is at stake, you will find it moredifficult to change your decision or course of action.

Suppose, after walking around a store, a low-key clerk asksyou to describe your favorite feature of the store. You answer. She asks you toelaborate or show her. Each time you move, speak and demonstrate what you mean,you deepen your belief, get more articulate about it and are more likely totell others your view after you leave the store.

Suppose you pour a great deal of time and effort into anissue. Because you have already used resources to prepare to put the process inplace, you will find it difficult to withdraw, even when others are notenthusiastic about your idea. If you have a once-close childhood friend who hasnot been supportive to you for years, you’ll be reluctant to acknowledge thatchange and are likely to act as if you are still close. Banks used to continueto lend to businesses that had fallen back on payments, thus throwing goodmoney after bad.

 For all decisions with a history, make a conscious effort toset aside your past actions, investments of emotion, money or other resources,as you consider whether to change direction. Seek out and listen to people whowere uninvolved with the earlier decisions. Examine why admitting to an earliermistake distresses you. If the problem lies in your wounded ego, deal with itstraightaway.

As the well-known investor, Warren Buffet once said, “Whenyou find yourself in a hole, the best thing you can do is stop digging.”

Don’t cultivate a failure-fearing culture in the peoplearound you at home or at work so that others perpetuate mistakes rather thanadmitting them to you and changing course. Set an example of admitting mistakesin your choices and self-correcting so that others believe they can do likewisewithout penalties from you.

Winners discount information about lucky breaks and chalk uptheir right calls to superior judgment, whereas losers tend to emphasize therole of bad luck -- rather than bad judgment -- when their predictions gowrong.”

 That’s what Cornell University psychologist, ThomasGilovich, discovered from his experiment with NCAA fans. See more in thisarticle by Shankar Vedantam of the Washington Post.

 Learn how you can become more lucky by making smarterchoices. Read a favorite book of mine, co-authored by one of my mentors, HowardRaiffa.

 Most of us fool ourselves sometimes when making decisions.Here are some of the most common ways and what you can do to make smarterchoices.

 Think back on a crucial decision you’ve made in your work orwith a loved one that haunts you still. Now, consider some smaller decisionswhere you realize in retrospect that, if you’d made another choice, you’d havesaved a situation, time, “face”, a relationship, money or another resource, orsimply avoided aggravation.

 What if you found out that your mind played tricks on you?

 You could havethought things out better, and made a wiser choice? Perhaps you were relying onyour “gut instincts”, yet, in fact, were fooled by unconscious making traps weall fall into when trying to figure out what we should do.

 According to renowned negotiation and games theory expert,Howard Raiffa, we are destined to repeat the same faulty decision-makingprocess and face more grief from the poor results if we don’t gain insightsinto some of these traps.

Raiffa has found that the fault often lies not in thedecision-making process but rather in the mind of the decision maker. The waythe human brain works can sabotage our decisions.

Here are some insights into the most well-documented trapswe set for ourselves in making decisions. Perhaps they can help you make betterdecisions in the future.

How We Often Distort Our Decision Making

 We useunconscious routines, called heuristics, to cope with the complexity inherentin decision-making. They serve us well in most situations. For example, injudging distances, we equate clarity with proximity. The clearer an objectappears, the closer we judge it to be. The fuzzier, the farther we think it is.Like most heuristics, it is not foolproof. On days that are hazier than that towhich we are accustomed, our eyes will tend to trick our minds into thinkingthat things are more distant than they actually are.

 For airplane pilots this distortion could be catastrophic ifthey weren’t trained to use other truly objective measures and instruments.While this decision-making flaw is based on sensory perception others are basedon biases, still others on irrational anomalies in our thinking. They arepotentially dangerous because they are invisible to us. They are hardwired intoour thinking so we fail to even recognize we are using them.

Here are some of the most common decision-making traps - and what youcan do to overcome them.

Anchoring

 How would you answer these two questions?

 1. Is thepopulation of Turkey greater than 35 million?

 2. What’s your best estimate of Turkey’s population?

 If you are like most people, the figure of 35 million(researchers chose arbitrarily) influenced your answer to the second question.When behavioral scientists ask variations of these questions to groups ofpeople many times over the past decade. In half the cases, 35 million was usedin the first question, in the other half, 100 million.

 Without fail, the answers to the second question increase bymillions when the larger figure is used (as an anchor). When considering adecision, the mind gives disproportionate weight to the first information itreceives. Initial impressions, estimates, or other data anchor subsequentthoughts and judgments. The implications to influence another’s perceptions aremind-boggling and can take many guises. A colleague can offer a comment, or astatistic can appear in the morning newspaper that will influence yoursubsequent decision making on that topic.

In business, one of the most frequent “anchors” is a pastevent or trend. A marketer in attempting to project sales of a product for thecoming year often begins by looking at the sales volumes for past years. Thisapproach tends to put too much weight on past history and not enough weight onother factors.

 Because anchors can establish the terms on which a decisionwill be made, they can be used to influence how someone feels about a politicalissue or as a bargaining tactic by savvy negotiators.

 Reduce the impact of the effects of anchoring in these ways:

 1. Be open-minded. Seek information and opinions from avariety of people to widen your frame of reference, without dwellingdisproportionately on what you heard first.

 2. In seeking advice from others, offer information -- justthe facts without your opinion -- so that you don’t inadvertently anchor themwith your thoughts. Then you can benefit from hearing diverse views on thesituation without their views being colored or anchored by yours.

3. Whoever most vividly characterizes the situation usuallyanchors the other’s perception of it. That’s an immensely powerful ability.Others literally see and discuss the situation while anchored from that mostmemorably stated perspective. The most vivid communicator in the situationoften has the most power as she can literally created the playing field onwhich the game will be played.

 Be especially wary of anchors in negotiations. Think throughyour position before any negotiation begins in order to avoid being anchored bysomeone else’s proposal or position.

The Status-Quo Trap

We instinctively stay with what seems familiar. Thus we lookfor decisions that involve the least change.

For example, when radically new products are introduced theyare made to look like an existing and familiar product. The first cars lookedlike horseless carriages. The first online newspapers and magazines had formatsmuch like their print counterparts.

To protect our egos from damage we avoid acting to changethe status quo, even in the face of early warnings that demonstrate that changewill be safer. We look for reasons to do nothing.

For example, in one experiment, a group of people wererandomly given one of two gifts of approximately the same value, half receiveda mug, the other half got a large, Swiss chocolate bar. They were told thatthey could easily exchange the gift they received for the other gift. While youmight expect that about half would have wanted to make the exchange, only onein ten actually did. The power of status quo kicked in within minutes ofreceiving an object.

 Other experiments have shown that the more choices you aregiven, the more pull the status quo has. Why? Because more choices involve moreeffort while selecting the status quo avoids the stress of making a choice

In business, the sins of commission (doing something) tendto be punished much more severely than sins of omission (doing nothing). In allparts of life, people want to avoid rocking the boat.

What can you do? Think of your goals first, when preparingto make a decision, then review how they are served by the status quo ascompared by a change. Look at each possible change, one at a time, so as to notoverwhelm yourself and then instinctively want to “stay safe” and unchanged.

Never think of the status quo as your only alternative. Askyourself whether you would choose the status quo, if, in fact, it weren’t thestatus quo

Avoid the natural tendency of exaggerating the effort orcost or emotional reaction of others or for yourself if you change from thestatus quo.

Remember that the desirability of the status quo may changeover time. When considering a change, look at possible future situations. Ifyou have several alternatives that are superior to the status quo, avoid thenatural tendency to fall back upon the status quo because you are having a hardtime choosing between the other alternatives.

The Justify- Past-Actions Trap

The more actions you have taken on behalf of a friendship,choice or belief, the more difficult you find it to change direction oracknowledge that you now feel differently. Whenever you invest time, money, orother resources, or your personal reputation is at stake, you will find it moredifficult to change your decision or course of action.

Suppose, after walking around a store, a low-key clerk asksyou to describe your favorite feature of the store. You answer. She asks you toelaborate or show her. Each time you move, speak and demonstrate what you mean,you deepen your belief, get more articulate about it and are more likely totell others your view after you leave the store.

Suppose you pour a great deal of time and effort into anissue. Because you have already used resources to prepare to put the process inplace, you will find it difficult to withdraw, even when others are notenthusiastic about your idea. If you have a once-close childhood friend who hasnot been supportive to you for years, you’ll be reluctant to acknowledge thatchange and are likely to act as if you are still close. Banks used to continueto lend to businesses that had fallen back on payments, thus throwing goodmoney after bad.

 For all decisions with a history, make a conscious effort toset aside your past actions, investments of emotion, money or other resources,as you consider whether to change direction. Seek out and listen to people whowere uninvolved with the earlier decisions. Examine why admitting to an earliermistake distresses you. If the problem lies in your wounded ego, deal with itstraightaway.

As the well-known investor, Warren Buffet once said, “Whenyou find yourself in a hole, the best thing you can do is stop digging.”

Don’t cultivate a failure-fearing culture in the peoplearound you at home or at work so that others perpetuate mistakes rather thanadmitting them to you and changing course. Set an example of admitting mistakesin your choices and self-correcting so that others believe they can do likewisewithout penalties from you.

Want to become the unexpected top-of-mind choice? Take a page from how politics is played now. “If the typical Gore (presidential campaign fundraising) event was 20 people in a living room writing six-figure checks, and the Kerry event was 2,000 people in a hotel ballroom writing four-figure checks, this year for Obama we have rallies of 20,000 people who pay absolutely nothing, and then go home and contribute a few dollars online,” venture capitalist, Mark Gorenberg told Joshua Green. 

In those big crowds, Obama asks people, “to hold up their cell phone and punch in afive-digit number to text their contact information to the campaign to win their commitment right there on the spot.” While not understood at first, the seismic switch to social network-based fundraising started early. (Thanks Ted Hopton for this update.)

One secret to Obama’s fundraising success is the “subscription model.” Here’s how. Just as SalesForce.com replaced their formidable, upfront price with a much smaller monthly charge to “subscribers”, Obama’s campaign invites people to MyBarackObama.com to give a small amount at a time, signing up for monthly giving. 

Also, the Obama campaign encourages supporters to set up their own web page and affinity group, share it most anywhere, then invite their colleagues and friends to donate and see their online personal “thermometer” rise as network kicks in.In short, they lowered the barrier to participate and offered more bragging rights to those who did.

The results? In February, Green reports, “94 percent of their donations came in increments of $200 or less, versus 26 percent for Clinton and 13 for McCain….” Just that month they raised $25 million – “nearly $2 million a day.” Thus Obama’s huge base of networked individual supporters operate with but not under the professional campaign staff – a power shift in politics. The even bigger power shift? Away from a few big special interests and the usual, rich individual donors and toward the interests of “the many.”

Trying to live up to that high expectation won’t be easy either, but it does change the game of governing.Yes, power and money are flowing towards the groups that go out of their way to involve us “small guys.” Read more on “The Amazing Money Machine” in The Atlantic.

That’s a wake-up call for those who are used to being in charge. Cultivating a community amongst those you seek to serve helps you leapfrog over competing ideas and organizations - even if they have more resources than you.What’s speeding this seismic shift from me to we?

Perhaps three things:

1. Desire for connectedness in an increasingly isolating culture.

2. Preference for greater involvement in decisions that affect our lives.

3. Rapid emergence of free and low-cost social media tools to make “constituency power” the winning option. (Here’s to the power of user-generated networks, done well.)

David Brooks cover another example of this shift. The Conservatives, the British political party that used to be like the U.S. Republican party is winning elections. That’s because, “These conservatives are not trying to improve the souls of citizens. They’re trying to use government to foster dense social bonds.” Brooks adds, “As Oliver Letwin, one of the leading Tory strategists put it: ‘Politics, once econo-centric, must now become socio-centric.’”

Now what if the Conservatives took Obama’s social media step to expand their power? What if they launched a site where citizens could create user-generated networks around the issue that most mattered to them? In this case, citizens (not just politicians) could blog about their hot issues and vote online on options that anyone proposes, with the most popular ideas and advocates gaining the most visibility.

Of course this wide-open approach to participatory democracy is fraught with potential problems. Yet whoever sets up the most efficient and popular online places for citizens to organize around their issues will, inevitably pull power towards them. And the organizations that offer us the most efficient, cost-effective way to create value for each other will over-shadow those that are less “us-centered”. That’s what newspapers discovered as the “people first” Craiglist sucks so much of “their” advertising business to the site that offered a better option for us.

Now Craigslist’s foundation is becoming the go-to place for many activist philanthropists and volunteers who want to be engaged in their cause. “Working on the principle originally espoused by Bill Clinton of ‘Seek first to collaborate and then lead’, (foundation director, Darian Rodriguez Heyman), has almost single- handedly assembled more than 150 partner organizations for what will be a Yellow Pages for the social sector and he is just about to head into Beta phase.”

And a national political party has the same goal in providing social media tools to citizens as the CraigsList Foundation does in designing its beta-stage online community. That is to attempt to be, “hyper-local and global at the same time.”

CraigsList Foundation is like the Obama campaign in that it lowers the barriers for participation - thus attracting more people than its competitors. Each organization benefits by become the go-to place that enables like-minded people to find each other, collaborate to become higher-performing together - for the cause that brought them together.

Again, the Me2We approach beats the old-style, top-down rule of management. Perhaps the Conservative Party could get advice from the Craigslist Foundation on how to establish and facilitate user-generated networks? After all, as Laurance Allen noted over at Value News Network, the foundation has “the secret sauce behind Craigslist.org that has made it the bane of the newspaper industry” that, “gives him the ability to scale ‘better, cheaper, faster’ as the Silicon Valley VC’s like to say.”

In light of this shift toward the power of many – and the groups that bring them together, consider these social media options for your organization:

• How can you reach more people with your compelling message, product, service or other offering – offering something they want before asking for something?

• If your organization charges a hefty price, membership fee or other cost upfront, consider offering, instead, a much lower monthly, pay-as-you-go or “subscription model.”

• Would your cause, company or membership-based group benefit from a move towards user-generated networks?

What is the best and worst-case scenario of enabling those you seek to serve to post opinions, comment on and rate the ideas of others, let the most popular ideas and people gain more visibility – and be assured that there’s a transparent process for the group’s best ideas to be implemented?

Consider starting with a free online social network builder such as Ning.

• How could you collaborate with complementary organizations to share expertise (content, creation of social media tools, co-sponsor events or services, co-create something, etc.) - or set up online support for your “customers” to collaborate?

For stay-at-home entrepreneurs, here’s a proven, three-step plan to make money, as Liz Ryan has proven. The key is sticking to the plan. Here it is:

Step One

Craft a niche expertise and a niche market. Choosing both, you get “Double Niche Leverage“:

1. Subject matter + 2. Kind of people you seek to serve.

Reward: you’ll create coveted niche content and find and attract more people faster. You are better able to become one-of-a-kind and top of mind in your market, a huge leg-up to profitability.

For example, I have a client, Jorge. His wife convinced him to focus on serving the kind of people he best understood and with whom he could establish immediate credibility. Jorge, a family man who’d worked in emergency preparedness for towns, chose Hispanic families. In short, he secured a “Double Niche.”Jorge ….

A. (Niche Expertise):

… became an expert on family safety (how to be safer in your home and car and set up procedures throughout your life to have the peace of mind that you are making your family more safe) ….

B. (Niche Market):

… to families with at least one child under five years old. Why? Because that’s, the time when parents are most motivated to adopt safety procedures to keep their family safe. Narrowing his niche by child’s age also enabled Jorge to more easily find partners that served the same niche. Partners included parent publications, pediatricians and makers and retailers of products for the five and under set (food, clothing and toys, etc.).

Step Two

Select your information delivery system(s) and profit center(s). Delivery systems may include a goggle or Yahoo! group, online social network, forum, web site, newsletter, wiki, mobile newsletter delivery, teleclasses, ebooks, blog and audio or video podcasts. For profit centers, who will be eager to pay for what and why?

In most cases you have two kinds of income sources:

1. Customers/community members.

2. Sponsors / advertisers.

Give customers/members enough content for them to recognize the value of it, want more and want to be a part of what you offer (yours and others’ expertise)

Step Three

Dedicate yourself to becoming ever more valuable to those in your niche market.The two most efficient ways to do this, I’ve found are to:

1. Continue to provide additional delivery systems and content (ideas and online products) that you create and that other reputable experts who want access to your niche market create for you to offer.

2. Build in rewards for member participation in the community you create in your niche market. Rewards can be positive visibility in the community, prizes as voted by the community, ability to attract clients or make friends. Your business and profits will grow exponentially:

• As you attract more members and they become more active, you become more attractive to sponsor/advertisers who will spend more with you.

• More experts will want to contribute articles and prizes, be interviewed and otherwise be seen in your community, creating more reasons for new pople to join and current members to stay active. Jorge, for example, now has a circle of 50 experts who submit content and respond to questions in his community. The experts benefit from exposure to his large membership and thus help make it ever larger.

He is now growing special interest groups within his community. Thus members find more reasons and ways to stay active. So far, groups include Single Parents, Apartment Living, Geographically Close MeetUps and Expectant Parents.

Each sub-group gets customized content plus ways they can ask questions, trade ideas, vote for best tips (that Jorge turns into a book which, in turn, attracts more people to his community.) This tight-knit community now has valuable places for a few big sponsors to provide special offers and contest prizes.

In this podcast interview you’ll hear how (a mother if five!) Liz Ryan has grown a business with her version of this approach. her Yahoo! group numbers over 25,000 active members. Perhaps you’ll adapt it to design the work and life you want to live. Liz has:

1. a Niche Expertise (workplace and networking issues, especially job search), and

2. a Niche Market (women at work).

This “Double Header” is a natural next step from her experience as a Fortune 500 recruiter and founder and former ceo of WorldWIT, the world’s largest online community for professional women. Hint: choose the niche that enables you to build on your expertise and connections.

She is an early adopter of distribution systems that her kind of community member enjoys using. So far, they include a popular listserve at Yahoo, two blogs, online social network, branded workshop (get them early), widget and web site. These mutually-reinforcing activities burnish her personal brand, enabling her to be quoted and get paid speaking gigs. 

To generate additional visibility, value and profits - while attracting people to her communities, she is an author, has a local column in Daily Camera and a national column in Business Week, posts articles in many places, partners with bigger firms and is a member of other’s communities including at LinkedIn.

Diane Danielson, Dan McComb and Lara Eve Feltin and Anita Campbell are also growing businesses, using their versions of this profitable business model. Like Liz, they love their community- building work. They are dedicated to making members proud to be a part of their community. Bragging rights abound. They, too, partner in ways that leverage visibility and value of their members and partners.

Seth Godin’s promise to put 1,000 faces on the cover of his next book, Tribe, reminded me of two other crowd pleasers:

• the top-of-heads photo on Clay Shirky’s insightful book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

• the 60-foot high faces of Chicagoans that appear on the Crown Foundation. See startled passersby watch the lips purse on each face, then spurt water like a modern-day gargoyle. 

Steven van Yoder would probably approve of Godin’s offer to make some members of the Godin tribe, “slightly famous.” Here’s some of my favorite quotes, by the way, from Shirky’s thought-provoking book:

• “We are living in the middle of the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race. More people can communicate more things to more people than has ever been possible in the past, and the size and speed of this increase, from under one million participants to over one billion in a generation, makes the change unprecedented….”

• “What we are dealing with now is filter failure.”

• “Group action gives human society it particular character, and anything that changes the way groups get thing done will affect society as a whole.”

• The basic capabilities of tools like Flickr reverse the old order of group activity, transforming “gather, then share” into “share, then gather.”

• Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it. ”Shirky is walking his talk. During an interview on the Colbert Report, Colbert suggested printing “Colbert” stickers to put on Doritos bags in their nearby grocery stores. 

Shirky, evoking the theme of his book, invited audience members to create their own stickers. Thanks Steve Johnson. Shirky recommended Jeff Howe’s forthcoming book, Crowdsourcing.

He was in Bangalore and his co-presenters were in San Jose, yet Cisco’s CEO appeared live - on the same stage. How? By using a breathtaking 3D holographic-like technology. They tout it as, “the world’s first real time virtual presentation. Aptly, it’s called TelePresence.

See Sir Richard Branson – live at a London press conference, while standing at Necker Island, his Caribbean retreat. Or preview “the first space age Olympic swim suit.” On Wednesday a Telstra executive in Melbourne, Australia interacted with an audience in Adelaide.

My friend Rick watched a demo and raved about it. Suddenly, this is a competitive space. And, yes, this is Cisco’s big new business, partnering with Musion, yet it will have to cost less to gain traction. Why am I interested in it, aside from the astounding effect of a holographic human presence?

Because:

• The realistic presence it provides means people around the world can gather for what really feels like an in-person gathering.

• The best actors anywhere for a particular play can assemble to enact it, for more people to see - live and later.

• The top experts on a topic can appear on a panel, taking questions from audiences in many places.

• Crowdsourcing becomes easier.

In short, it enables more realistic “face-to-face” group collaboration. Cisco had an I-Prize contest in which anyone could propose novel ways to use this technology. Already it is in 28 countries, lightening the carbon footprint. Five years ago I spoke on Cisco’s global, in-house on-demand TV station. I still get emails from Cisco employees who clicked on their computer to see my presentation when they thought it might help them with a current need. Holographic-like appearances, however takes that kind of live and on-demand capability to a whole new level.

As useage goes up and cost goes down, the world will flatten for more Me2We opportunities. We’ll be able to get a better feel for each other, no matter where we actually are. I can hardly wait to try it.

Skip travel and lodging costs. Meeting Planners’ Alert:

For PCMA, SGMP, MPI, ASAE, NSA,MeCo, MeetingsNet, MiForum and others in the meeting or communication professions: bring the most relevant speakers and panelists to the same stage - no matter where they are standing in the world. Enable “attendees” to talk with them. Encourage convention centers and conference hotels to provide this capacity, offered by Cisco, HP or other firm. Set the bar higher.

First, Cisco CEO John Chambers is providing it for large conferences, concerts, events, awards ceremonies, multi-site meetings, high level briefings, retail, museums and product launches - even movies and soldier/family conversations. Then Chambers wants to bring it to our homes. (Well, not every room, in the home.) Stay tuned.