Say it Better

No Room for Parody?

The New York Times may not strike back when spoofed but, when parodied by jokers, DeBeers sure did. That ensures much more media coverage of the diamond-edged ad copy – even if the Joker site is gone. For good and for bad, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle and control your image anymore – even if you are a global firm.

The fake De Beers ad reads: "Your purchase of a diamond will enable us to donate a prosthetic for an African whose hand was lost in diamond conflicts." The backstory? A revolutionary group in Sierra Leone, known for carrying out civilian amputations, funded itself by selling diamonds.

Diamonds are forever – and so, now is unfettered media.

Find Happiness or Detect Lies

The life of the foremost expert on faces, lying and emotion looks like a densely-plotted adventure movie. There’s his work thwarting terrorism, his book with the Dalai Lama, his speaking on happiness - and new TV show, Lie to Me. The TV series is based on his research on deception. His role is played by Tim Roth, in a sometimes cranky and more idiosyncratic slant than Paul Ekman displays.

So to hone your ability to read faces or detect lies you can read his book or take his course or simply watch this show where the “science …. is genuine.” Let’s see.

By the way happiness is one of the seven universally-expressed emotions, Ekman discovered. The others are sadness, anger, fear, surprise, contempt and disgust.

“Death by a thousand cuts”

That was one the headlines for last month’s market collapse. In describing the hedge funds’ role and investors’ reluctance to get back in, James Surowiecki concluded with this, the money quote of the month so far: “It’s hard enough to catch a falling knife. But it’s nearly impossible when hedge funds are hurling it.”

Charlie Munger could have been providing color commentary on the players in the run-up to the collapse (but he wasn’t) when he warned of a bias that causes entrepreneurs to stumble.

He dubs it the Incentive Caused Bias.

“A man has an acculturated nature making him a pretty decent fellow, and yet, driven both consciously and subconsciously by incentives, he drifts into immoral behavior in order to get what he wants, a result he facilitates by rationalizing his bad behavior [like a salesperson who harms her customers by selling them the wrong product because she gets paid more for selling it, versus the right product -- see, e.g., the mutual fund industry].

...Another generalized consequence of incentive caused bias is that man tends to "game" all human systems, often displaying great ingenuity in wrongly serving himself at the expense of others. Anti-gaming features, therefore, constitute a huge and necessary part of almost all system design.”

How to Hook Them In

When asked the secret to writing suspenseful books, Stephen King cited Elmore Leonard, “he just left out the boring parts.” Whether you are writing or talking - pull people in with a hook.

Example: Experience orchestrator, Steve Neiderhauser, recounts this advice from James Bonnet, “’Look at story through the eyes of the problem.’” In Jaws, the movie doesn’t spend ten minutes showing the shark swimming alone the Maine coastline chasing sea lions or splashing about. No, the movie gets to the problem - a shark chomping on humans.”

For your hook, think of a…
• Startling detail
• Problem that affects them
• Opportunity that they could capture
• Contrasting options such as an impending worst case/best case scenario
• Question that enables them to feel good (helpful, smart, appreciated, understood…)

Also create your captivating opening “hook” or scene if you manage a store, event or other consumer-serving experience. In fact, storyboard their time, from the first sight to the last smell as they leave. That way you can reduce the boring or irritating moments and multiply the positive – especially those where they gain bragging rights and leap at the chance to tell others.

In tough times our survival instinct kicks in

Bragging, exaggerating even lying becomes tempting. Yet, like this ex-con, one can win people over by touting one’s failures. Via Hodu, I found Barry Maher’s story and book.

"If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance."
—George Bernard Shaw

This Year’s Most Obnoxious Phrases

For the ten most irritating phrases we turn to Oxford University’s massive language database that tracks useage, with Damp Squid author, Jeremy Butterfield as our guide. In “the great hierarchy of verbal fatigue” they are:
1. At the end of the day

2. Fairly unique

3. I personally
4. At this moment in time

5. With all due respect

6. Absolutely

7. It's a nightmare
8. Shouldn't of
9. 24/7

10. It's not rocket science

Butterfield notes, “We use language in chunks of words--as one linguist put it, ‘we know words by the company that they keep.’"

Now, the word of the year according to Countdown’s Susie Dent is credit crunch. I guess the English can turn a frequently-used phrase into a word. In her Words of the Year, Susie Dent also discusses newer words including boytox, moofer, ninja loans, funt, jingle mail, rickrolling, nomophobia and the inevitable googleability.

Can you make up a word that will appear in Dent's book next year?

Ever get cornered by

an oxygen thief or a chutiya or a neddy? Were any of them chato? Tried to tert them? Then you might have wanted to go home with a bra and rest, perhaps ask dog fetch your baffies. Would worldly you like to discover more slang to drop into conversation? Then visit here. Also see the fun Urban Dictionary.

Stand by Me

This song has flown into my life at many turning points so it is no surprise that, on this historic day, via conflict zen and 37 days it has returned. Take a moment to bring a friend over and click on this "our" anthem to hear it together. In the room in Chicago where 60 or so of us are gathered we clicked on it on our computers, turned up the volume and danced. Here's to the world smiling tonight - and to Playing for Change.