Perfect!

This morning I was remembering a section of Malcomb Gladwell’s The Tipping Point about group dynamics. Honestly, I am not sufficiently motivated to look it up, so I am going from memory here. But I remember that the number seven was very significant.

He talked about the fact that phone numbers were seven digits. Seems that people can memorize up to seven digits (or seven of anything else) without grouping or using mnemonics. Beyond seven, they have to have acronymns, mnemonic devices, visualization tricks, or groupings of sets containing seven or fewer. Seems to be a hardwired thing in our brains. It’s almost universal.

Seems that families with more than five children (plus two parents) tend to break into multiples. For example, a family with nine children will typically have primary group relationships among the eldest five and the two parents, and among the younger four, the parents, and one of the older children (often remembered as a “second mom”). Sets of seven.

Quaker meetings (or was it shaker…or was it mennonite?…or was it Amish?) are permitted to grow to fifty people (seven times seven, plus one), before splitting and forming two meetings. Very organic! Works like this…seven primary groups…the “leaders” of each forming a group of seven…with one extra (they probably don’t really like the extra that much, but who wants to be legalistic?).

Gore Corporation (the people who brought us Goretex, and a bunch of other cool stuff) was famous for dividing itself into autonomous, entrepreneurial groups of fifty or less. Each group had access to all of the technology the company owned (including new technologies the company was developing). Each group was responsible for using that technology to develop products and create strategies for those products. Each group was expected to “live” on the proceeds from the products it developed.

We have seven days in a week. Always have as far as I know. This is ancient, and consistent across cultures. The first six, God worked. The seventh He rested. It’s the number of perfection.

Way back in my waiter days, I discovered a wonderful, single-question test of character.

Do you treat the people who work for you the same as you treat the people you work for?

Try it out. It always works.

I first noticed it when I was a waiter. Business people would bring clients, customers, or prospects to our restaurant to entertain them. The really good, honest, hard-working, intelligent ones (the ones with long-term solid reputations) were very polite to their guests; but surprisingly, they were equally polite to their waiter…and their bus boy! But the ones who were known around town to be sort of shady would be overly polite, downright solicitous to their guests, be totally patronizing and sarcastic to the waiter, and totally dismissive (and sometimes cruel) to the bus boy.

Or, Mr. BMOC would bring a date into the restaurant. He would be all sucking up to the date, while being a jerk to the servers…as if he were trying to establish a pecking order or something. But other guys, guys who had confidence and balance, would be courteous to the date (as interested in her good time as in his)…and would be professional and polite to the wait staff as well.

Or you’d get two couples out together. A boss and spouse, and an employee and spouse. The employee would be all smoochy on the boss and his wife…while treating his own wife like something the cat dragged in. And don’t even ask about how he treated the wait staff.

Then you’d get the two couples who really seemed to enjoy being together. The ladies had rapport. The guys had rapport. Ladies participated with the guys in a four-way conversation. Everyone talked to the wait staff…asked questions…ordered things…made comments…asked for reccos…. And here’s the coolest part: sometimes you couldn’t tell which one was the boss and which was the employee. You really couldn’t tell.

Try the test in your neighborhood…office…relationships. It always works. Very informative.

P.S. Here’s some free advice. When you’re out on a date, be nice to the server. He/She has the power to ruin your date…or to make it really wonderful. Did you think the rolls were hard by accident? Just sayin’.

I don’t know why this story came to mind. Maybe it’s to remind me that tough people have feelings too.

Back when I was in college, one of my roommates was from Cincinnati. His little brother was a tackle for Cincinnati Princeton (or one of those elite Cincinnati football high schools you always read about in Sports Illustrated). Big Du was like 6’5” and 250, mostly muscle, as a 17-year-old. He was massive!

There was also this girl who hung out at our apartment. Can’t remember her name…we called her “Rabbit.” She was about 4’10” and skinny. So she couldn’t have weighed more than like 85 pounds.

Anyhow, Rabbit got it into her mind that Big Du was so big and strong that he couldn’t be hurt. So, whenever she saw him, she would run up to him and punch him in the arm as hard as she could. He would protest, “ouch, that hurts; stop it!” And she would cackle. And do it again.

Eventually, he would get so frustrated he would tear up…bless his heart…and look over at his older brother for direction. What could he do? If he lifted even a finger to defend himself, he knew that he would look like a bully who pushed girls around (Du could have squashed the Rabbit with one finger). But…it hurt. Really.

Nobody took it all that seriously, until Du came over to the apartment one day in a muscle shirt. His entire left upper arm was one big bruise.

His brother said, “What happened to your arm?”

Du, exasperated, replied with one word, “Rabbit!”

I don’t remember any more of the story. I do recall that Rabbit stopped hitting Du. So somebody must have said something.

I’ve been thinking about the special challenge of being tough. People think they can say and do whatever they want. Like it will just bounce off. We need tough people…to do hard things…to tell us what we don’t want to hear…to look at the numbers and come up with the right answer…to make things happen. We should remember that they have feelings too.

Historically, the idea of branding was contrary to the bank culture. The idea being that to brand something was to impose some artifice onto it, as opposed to the low-profile, three-button, wing-tipped, dry, trustworthy image that professional bankers enjoyed projecting. In fact, there was a time when marketing of all types was seen as unethical. Then came deregulation, and competition from both bank and non-bank competitors. Suddenly there were other places to put your money. Other places to get your loan. Suddenly, banks needed to be known…and to be differentiated.

While everyone seems to agree, at this point, that branding is necessary for a bank. It’s still tricky. Because a bank’s brand still has to be an authentic representation of the bank itself—it has to be the bank’s personality, with the bank’s vocabulary, and the bank’s own clothes (trade dress). A bank still has to be calm, low-profile, trustworthy, dependable. It just has to be branded so that those qualities SCREAM! Kidding.

A bank brand has to take into account the community it lives in. The people it serves. The history and vision of the bank. And, especially in times like these, a bank needs to be seen as humble, hard working, sound…anything but flashy. Probably, a bank brand needs to take into account the times when a bank should be invisible.

In the past two decades, we’ve seen some bank branding that has backfired in the past few months. Nobody really wants a fun bank these days. Or an opulent bank. Or a high-flying bank. People want banks that WON’T WASTE MY MONEY.

We’re excited about the opportunities for banks as the economy starts to lift a bit. I predict we’ll be seeing the role of community banks become much more important across the country. As people start to get back to business, will they want to be in business with Wall Street…or Bank of America? Or will they want to do business with Andy, John, Cindy, Dean, Shields, Diana, Mays, George…you know…people who are from here.

It’ll be fun to see what happens. Well, maybe fun is a little too strong a word. It will certainly be interesting.

Friday was a half-day, and we made the most of it. We ran some errands and then we popped over to the Delellos to borrow Anne of Green Gables (the quintessential Canadian chick flick/arty-right-brained epic). We took a break in the late afternoon, and we ran into our neighbor who told us (in a calm, but serious tone) that there was a tornado warning and that we should get inside. Sky was a little green. We headed home.

About the time we were back in the house, ensconced in the den with Anne Shirley and her adopted family, wind started whipping, buckets of rain started falling, lights flickered, and the power backup started clicking. It was pretty nasty for about 15-20 minutes and then calmed down. We wrapped up our marathon around 11:00. Didn’t think much more about it.

Saturday, I went on a walk over toward Faris Road, about a half mile from the house. There, I saw the tops of trees that had been twisted off about twenty feet up the trunk. A swath of downed trees about fifty feet wide and several hundred feet long. Full-grown evergreens uprooted. A merge sign lifted out of the ground and laid flat where it had stood. Miraculously, I did not see a single building damaged by a tree.

In the midst of all this, I found a stick—a bruised reed. It was about an inch thick and about 30 inches long. It had been snapped out of the middle of a larger branch, evidenced by the clean breaks at both ends. It had apparently been struck by lightning, loosening the bark, and then stripped cleanly of its bark from top to bottom (leaving just a little bit of bark on a twig that forked off). I found it laying in green-green grass, among the rubble.

There was no report of a tornado, by the way. Zufall, our resident weather geek says it was probably a microburst—sort of down-firing wind thing. I don’t know. But what an amazing picture of condensed, sovereign, creatorial power—in reverse!

That was the last time the Volatility Index closed this low. Today, it closed at 38.85! ’Scuse me while I do the little learned optimist dance.

I’m thinking Facebook might have a couple of problems they hadn’t counted upon.

First, the site/ap/service was created during times that were (for most people) pretty solid economically. Making the rent wasn’t a worry. Buying groceries certainly wasn’t. We were, as a culture, all up in the “self actualization” zone. So, connecting with old friends, making new friends, and hi-by drive-bys were the order of the day. But things are a little different. Not that long ago, clients started canceling projects that were not “directly revenue generating.” So, we’re back to transactions. And so is everyone else. It’s all about getting done what needs to get done to put food on the table. Does this leave time for chit-chat? If not, does this render a brand entirely built on chit-chat a little less relevant? Just a thought.

Secondly, Facebook’s demo has been inching older. When we first got into it, we were exceptional—40 somethings (at the time)—in a medium overwhelmingly dominated by 20 somethings. Well, guess what. When times are good, the baby boom will not be left out. So, Facebook has become what prime time tv used to be—25-54! Well, now that the fat demo for Facebook is the same folks who were sunami-smacked by the stock market collapse…what must this be doing to Facebook’s advertising model?

Now, the problem with being forward thinking is that you think you see stuff on the horizon that is really a piece of lint on your glasses. In other words, I’m probably wrong on this whole Facebook thing. I hope so, because — other than lame chat — I got nothin’ but love for Facebook. I don’t know. What do you think?

I mean, it sure enough is more relevant than twitter. But so are tin cans with strings. Just sayin’.

When it comes to evaluating social networking apps, I cannot be trusted. So, as I’ve been thinking that Twitter was much ado about nothing, I’ve also been thinking, “but how would I know?” But yesterday, I got testimony from an expert witness, a 14-year-old girl who texts instead of speaking!

So, I’m sitting at The Peace Center, the world’s greatest performing arts venue, at intermission of a pretty good performance of To Kill a Mocking Bird, when I look over at the kid next to me, and notice that she is texting at about the speed I type. Never one to pass up a learning opportunity, I ask her, “So, how many texts do you sent in a week?”

“Well, I send about 75 a day, so 75 times 7 is, well, I guess a lot.”

“I’m an old guy, so I probably don’t send 75 a year.”

“Yeah, I guess not.”

“So, do you send all these texts to a lot of people, or do you sent a lot of texts to a few people.”

“Mostly, like, five to seven people. Sometimes others.” I need to note that she said seven, without my prompting. I think that’s significant. But that’s another post for another time.

“So, like you and your seven friends just text each other all the time.”

“Yeah.”

“So, do you change your Facebook status by phone?”

“No, I have a Blackberry.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah.”

“But I have friends who change their Facebook status, like, every minute. I’m like, ‘you need to live your life.’ Like, how do they find time to do anything but change their Facebook status?”

“Yeah, really. So, do you Twitter?”

Wrinkles cute little teeny-bopper nose. “No. I don’t get Twitter. What’s the big deal?”

So, I rest my case.

Twitter. Schmitter.

I was just smitten by Pamela Jo Klinger, when I was in first grade. For a six-year-old romantic, she was the perfect woman. Curley auburn hair. Freckles. Saddle oxfords. She could climb the monkey bars in a lady-like way. And, she was good at math. What’s not to like?

Problem is, Pamela Jo Klinger didn’t reciprocate my feelings. Unrequited love at six is every bit as painful as unrequited love at … later. So I did what you would expect. I cried.

Cried to my teacher. Cried to my friends. Cried to my mother… “Pamela Jo Klinger doesn’t like me.”

My mother was cool, but wise. “Jimmy, if she doesn’t like you, she doesn’t like you. Maybe she doesn’t know you the way I do (and everyone who does like you). Or maybe she just likes different kinds of people than you. But you can’t make her like you.”

Last week we worked really hard on a proposal for a project that seemed to be tailor made for us. It included branding…web design…a little bit of video. We had lots of references the client should have known and been impressed by. We sent them a pdf proposal, chalk full of links. It had some cool web sites. It had some awesome branding case studies. It had bios of our team and our technical partners. We thought it should have been a slam dunk.

Today, we learned that we didn’t get the gig. So, we looked at ourselves. Our freckles. Our grace on the monkey bars. Our math aptitude. How pretty we sing. How well we draw with our crayons. And we cried. It hurt our feelings.

But one thing’s for sure. You can only do what you can do. You can only be what you are. And at the end of the day…

you can’t make Pamela Jo Klinger like you.

I think my favorite stock index is the volatility index (VIX), which is not exactly a stock index at all. Actually, it is an index of how fast certain types of transactions happen—or something like that. But what it does is measure how freaked out the market is. You know, like when the liquidity crisis happened, back in September, the market was really freaked out. VIX jumped to, like, 80. That’s like having blood pressure of 200 over 130. Or having a resting heart rate of 125. It’s crazy stressful.

Normal (kinda the 120/80 of volatility) is 40. Back during the bubble, some people were nervous about volatility index being high 30s, low 40s, as the market went up…and up…and up. And then, as the market came down (over several months) from 14,000… to 12,500…to 12,000… to 11,000… the index stayed in the high 30s - low 40s. People just didn’t see the connection between the rise and fall of the market and the rise and fall of … wealth. Until they did.

Well, today, VIX was between 39-41± just about all day. Closed at 40.06. It looked for a while like it might actually close below 40. This is good. People are catching their breath. Gathering their wits about them.

Take a deep breath now. Ready. One. Two. Three. Climb.