My friend is a damn good designer. He has worked for the biggest furniture manufacturer’s and other luminary positions that an industrial designer can achieve including his own lab. Anything from unique desk systems, to an incredible invention that helps the Athens Hilton fold their tables more efficiently or a sea kayak. But what exactly is he?
You could call it a mid life crisis. Too vague and emotionally laden for me. In corporate terms he is in danger of becoming a jack of all trades. In his own mind. He needs to focus on less to achieve more. I have seen companies do this at fancy retreats, with or without gurus like me to assist them. They run around an assault course, dive backwards into the teams arms, raft down the river, party like maniacs and somehow reinvigorate their common idea of what the enterprise is all about.
Blogging is like all that only better. OK, I am a blogging junky. It is not so much that I have a compulsive need to blog all the time so much. It is more that I see blogging as the solution to more and more corporate ails. I threw www.benakis.info at my friend with some sample content. Like most companies, he wasn’t sure what to do with it. Then, some time later, the phone calls started: “How can I change that?”, “do you think we should add this?” and “how would Twitter fit into all of it?”
I haven’t yet seen his first post. That, to me, is the “bingo” moment of triumph. Because it means that he has found his public voice. He has imagined an audience and spoken to it. For anyone that is an expert in their own field, the content is easy once you achieve this first step. An excellent example is www.yalosbranding.com which I am proud to say I didn’t write a single word of. OK, they are branding specialists, it is their job to know what to project. But I simply enabled the technology for them to transfer this know-how to a new medium. I was just watching and applauding, reassuring as much as possible when necessary. Through this process they are rediscovering their relevance to an international market.
Google, customers and everything else will fall into place.
