Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Last Friday afternoon I sent an email to my buddy Tarun looking for some feedback on the video I had created for ImpactOrg.  It was after 5, but Tarun’s a worker so I knew he’d be in the office scouring over the business plan of his next investment target.  Within 2 mins of pressing “send” I got 2 snarky responses back from him (below). A “massively huge” impact – you sure you need both words – how about just a “massive positive impact”… and then a few minutes later, I got another Sure you want a picture of you in a bar? The first was talking about ImpactOrg’s tag line.  The second was referring to the picture of myself I included in my bio page.  The exchange prompted me to think for a moment about how exactly I wanted the public to think about ImpactOrg as a company and me as its founder.  But I didn’t dwell on it for long.  I came back to something that Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37 Signals talked about in their book ReWork (my review here) and that is “Sound like you.” Their comment was referring to the fact that many professionals feel the need to use big words and “professional” language when communicating to the outside world.  In reality, none of this really matters.  Am I to assume that the company that sounds professional is going to do a better job then the company that sounds like a bunch of normal human beings?  I doubt it. Now I’m not saying to use profanity or bad grammar in your business writing, but this idea that you need to sound corporate and stale is just not accurate.  It’s much better to write as if you were speaking, as that is the language you’re most comfortable with, and it’s also the language most people like to read because they “get it” without needing a law degree or an MBA to figure out what you’re talking about. On the topic of the photo, I think our views on content are changing to some extent.  Yes, the picture happened to be taken at a bar, but it’s not as if people are doing keg stands or pounding Jaeger Bombs.  It just happened to be a decent photo of me (I think) and also just happened to be taken at a bar.  Now, there may be people who object that such a picture isn’t professional.  Well, I probably shouldn’t be working with those types of people anyway, because ImpactOrg’s entire business is based on the idea of sharing content and being open.  People who object to such an image clearly don’t “get” that mantra and no amount of my explaining it will change that view. So ImpactOrg’s tag line is “Our mission is to have a massively huge IMPACT on the success of your ORGANIZATION” and we’re sticking with it, and the profile picture on my bio happened to be taken in a bar… and your point is?

Last Friday afternoon I sent an email to my buddy Tarun looking for some feedback on the video I had created for ImpactOrg.  It was after 5, but Tarun’s a worker so I knew he’d be in the office scouring over the business plan of his next investment target.  Within 2 mins of pressing “send” I got 2 snarky responses back from him (below).

A “massively huge” impact – you sure you need both words – how about just a “massive positive impact”…

and then a few minutes later, I got another

Sure you want a picture of you in a bar?

The first was talking about ImpactOrg’s tag line.  The second was referring to the picture of myself I included in my bio page.  The exchange prompted me to think for a moment about how exactly I wanted the public to think about ImpactOrg as a company and me as its founder.  But I didn’t dwell on it for long.  I came back to something that Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37 Signals talked about in their book ReWork (my review here) and that is “Sound like you.”

Their comment was referring to the fact that many professionals feel the need to use big words and “professional” language when communicating to the outside world.  In reality, none of this really matters.  Am I to assume that the company that sounds professional is going to do a better job then the company that sounds like a bunch of normal human beings?  I doubt it.

Now I’m not saying to use profanity or bad grammar in your business writing, but this idea that you need to sound corporate and stale is just not accurate.  It’s much better to write as if you were speaking, as that is the language you’re most comfortable with, and it’s also the language most people like to read because they “get it” without needing a law degree or an MBA to figure out what you’re talking about.

On the topic of the photo, I think our views on content are changing to some extent.  Yes, the picture happened to be taken at a bar, but it’s not as if people are doing keg stands or pounding Jaeger Bombs.  It just happened to be a decent photo of me (I think) and also just happened to be taken at a bar.  Now, there may be people who object that such a picture isn’t professional.  Well, I probably shouldn’t be working with those types of people anyway, because ImpactOrg’s entire business is based on the idea of sharing content and being open.  People who object to such an image clearly don’t “get” that mantra and no amount of my explaining it will change that view.

So ImpactOrg’s tag line is “Our mission is to have a massively huge IMPACT on the success of your ORGANIZATION” and we’re sticking with it, and the profile picture on my bio happened to be taken in a bar… and your point is?

Posted at 8:40am