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Digital mentors improve performance

It’s never been easier to surround yourself with thought leaders, experts, and virtual mentors to help you navigate a world you didn’t know exists

Front-loaded education creates a knowledge gap that widens over time as technology, exponential growth, and capabilities across different fields converge. In 1994 I conducted a survey that proves this point – a search for well-known consumer product companies including FORD dot com returned an error message. Their site didn’t exist. People preferred the Minnesota Gopher Network, data was still shared on paper, and pagers outnumbered mobile phones 10:1, and pay-phones were still ubiquitous.

In the mid-90’s devices were built for one purpose and many services we depend on today did not exist. Communicate, record, photograph, send, catalog, play music, and so on, all single function devices. As those machines merged, apps have exploded; review the catalog of software and services launched in the last decade: Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, Zoom, Dropbox, Uber, Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, Siri, Airbnb, Tic Toc, Instagram, YouTube, and countless social media apps.

This has created an impossible situation. People don’t have the bandwidth to sift through the data explosion around them. We all need teachers, guides, virtual mentors, actually “Digital Mentors” who can help us make sense out of the massive information cloud and explain it to us in simple terms. We need people who can teach us how to use it.

Experts have good instincts about what to keep and what to ignore in their domains. It’s easy to find opinions, but it’s difficult to uncover insights, since noise is increasing faster in our omni-connected world. This is a challenge.

Experts flag actionable insights, deliver them in a consumable way, and provide a framework to help us remember what they just taught us

How many devices have smart phones replaced? Pagers, address books, cameras, CD players; and all the physical devices and furniture they rendered obsolete – film, phone books, compact discs, the jewel cases that housed them, countless CD albums to hold discs, albums to hold photographs, and bookshelves to hold the albums. Smart phones vaporized entire industries. Here’s my digital mentor, Robert Tercek, explaining how everything that can be vaporized, will be. His trend-spotting work has enormous implications for companies that ignore innovation and the employees that choose to work for them.

Tercek

Consider the CEO’s of major corporations. They are supported by executives who lead armies of people and systems committed to solving enormous problems. The leader has predictable data streams flowing to them and people to focus attention on specific signals. They also have a Board of Directors – a team to coach the CEO and executives who manage the financial markets, strategic risk, innovation, talent, and new products and services.

Individuals advisers too – experts in different domains who provide new ideas, new methods, and new fundamentals to keep a CEO relevant. Digital mentorship democratizes knowledge since ambitious young leaders no longer need to invite an executive or thought leader to lunch to collect wisdom and hope senior leaders can coach them from the minors to the big leagues. Insights are accessible to anyone. Technology changed the world – and a little planning can help you uncover the contemporary experts all around you. Google’s and LinkedIn’s algorithms offer a great starting point.

The recipe:

Create a knowledge framework that bins insights among a few domains. Broadly speaking consider: People, Process, and Technology. Then add a few layers – including a “future” component – combine trends, and convergence, and call it Innovation. Then sprinkle in thought leaders in your industry and your profession to end up with about ten categories.

Your list provides a solid starting point. Begin to identify a few people in each category through google searches for each domain you selected. Capture their names from keynote speeches, Ted Talks, interviews, books, and other sources; then examine their work, follow their blogs, their LinkedIn articles and their Twitter feeds. You’ll uncover excellent work – papers, talks, books, and posts. As you learn more from your digital mentors you’ll become their digital protégés.

Here’s a simple vetting process:

  1. Is your prospective digital mentor an expert?
  2. Do they provide sufficient evidence to support their beliefs and insights?
  3. Do they share knowledge freely?
  4. Are their ideas original?
  5. Do they curate content from many sources?
  6. Are they good story tellers?
  7. Can their observations and ideas be applied to your situation?
  8. Is their material helpful and actionable for other people?

Life is short and the world is big – if you can’t answer “Yes” to every question keep looking – the rewards are great once you do, and every leader in the list below passes my test.

  1. People & Leadership: James Citrin, Amy Cuddy, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Matthew Syed, and Bob Sutton
  2. Process: Alan Weiss, Charles Duhigg, Jason Womack, Keith Ferrazzi, and Larry Keeley
  3. Technology & Innovation: Peter Diamandis, Robert Tercek, and Brian Krebs
  4. Sales & Marketing: Tony J. Hughes, Craig Elias, David Meerman Scott, Bryan Eisenberg, Jim Stengel, Robert Cialdini
  5. Economics: Kyle Bass, James Rickards, and Nassim Taleb

Check them out and let me know who you’ve picked to be your Digital Mentors.

 

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Optimize your linkedin profile

So it’s time to refresh your profile… where to begin?  Said another way, where do you get the most bang for the buck on your profile? The answer depends on your goals, but generally, it’s useful to acknowledge that your linkedin profile is “content”, while Linkedin is a content “host” and “data-aggregator” that powers search results with a proprietary algorithm hidden from the user’s view. So how do we measure something that’s invisible? Easy, identify the search terms you expect people to use to locate your profile.

Here’s how you do it. Open the “Advanced” search window in Linkedin. Put four or five of your keywords or phrases in the “Keywords” field (separated by commas). Then move down to the “Postal Code” field and type in your code; next, select a distance in the “Within” field. Then hit “Search” to see the results sorted by relevance. Record your position and note the page your profile shows up on. Then expand the distance by changing the “Within” field and repeat until your profile doesn’t appear in the results. Now hit “reset”, a link next to the “Search” button. Re-type your keyword list to perform a worldwide search.

At this point you should examine profiles that appear at the top of the search results on the first page, since these profiles have the highest relevance score in Linkedin’s algorithm. Pay close attention to variations of your keywords that appear in multiple high-scoring profiles. Once you’ve created a list of phrases and keywords the top performers used edit your profile to include two of the new keywords or phrases in several relevant places throughout your profile to test their effect on your ranking. Rerun the search with the distance filter to measure your profile’s performance against peers near you compared to your starting point.

Your keyword strategy starts with description words about your job-level, functional area, and industry: Hotel Sales Manager, Software Developer, Hospital Administrator, Author, Speaker, Product Strategy Manager, Inbound Marketing Director. You know what they are, but what you don’t know is which words and phrases are favored by the recruiters, customers, and partners who might be looking for your profile. Fortunately there’s a multi-million dollar tool freely available to you to uncover insights about how most people search for the terms you think best describe you. Google trends.

Go to google.com/trends and type your first keyword in the search box. When the results appear they will include “Related Searches” below the fold. Scroll down to look for similar keywords that might outscore the one’s you’ve selected. Compare the new keywords and phrases to the list you captured from high scoring profiles? Use google.com/trends to evaluate the new phrases too – and update your list powered by this new information.

On to your profile – great profiles have a lot in common. They include high quality profile photos – and no photo is complete without enhancements in photoshop. It’s a photo…a representation of you…it’s not you… so you should have perfect hair, and gleaming white teeth… and you should not have a beer in your hand, an arm around your shoulder, red-eye, or any variety of crazy accessories. Don’t use any picture that could be included in a “caption contest.”

Do ensure that your profile is 100% complete – Linkedin leads you through steps required to get there.

Do put your contact details at the top of your profile, and in the section marked “contact details.”  Make it incredibly easy for people to reach you.

Do put schools, organizations, affiliations, and hobbies in your profile.

Do join at least ten groups in your industry, and another ten groups in your functional area, and five or more groups for your level. Along with alumni associations, athletics, and religious organizations above, groups will increase the number of items you have in common with other people. It will humanize and personalize your profile. These touches will increase your likability, accessibility, and approachability, all characteristics that will enhance the probability that others will reach out to you proactively.

All of this can be achieved without more than a sentence or two about each position or job. Leave the detailed scope and accomplishments light and focus on keywords and your profile completion score, then fill-in the remaining areas when you have more time.

In his book, Bounce, Matthew Syed pointed out that expertise requires “Meaningful Practice” – I agree, and this article should help you get there with Linkedin.

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