He put his *** in her ***.

He put his backpack in her car? He put his dog in her living room? He put his hotdog in her bun? OK, you fill in the blanks.

Be careful, though. You could use words that offend people. Maybe, the mere suggestion of such words in the headline above offends you. I wonder.

I also wondered how Carnegie Mellon University faculty and staff felt about a pornographic movie being shown on CMU's campus. An XXX-rated movie, “The New Devil in Miss Jones,” was shown last Sunday night, April 26th by students at CMU for a student audience, but I was curious to know what CMU faculty and staff thought. So, as co-editor of the CMU publication, "Focus," I asked them. I stopped people randomly on campus and asked, “How do you feel about pornography being shown on campus and do you think it affects our reputation?”

Most of my interviewees were very forthcoming. Most said what they thought. One ran off, and one refused attribution. The first said, with much enthusiasm, “I think it’s great! But I won’t comment.” (That was a man, by the way…so to speak.) And one, a faculty member, gave me a reasoned quote and later chickened out, asking that her name not be used.

For the record, Dick Tucker, interim dean of student affairs, cited the official university position in an e-mail that was quoted in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Dick (no pun intended) said, “While university policy supports freedom of expression, the university strongly objects to showing such films. We regret the offense or discomfort that the showing of such a film may create for members of the campus community."

He also said a staff adviser "…has been engaged in ongoing conversations with the group, as in past years, strongly encouraging (the students) to reconsider the appropriateness of showing such a film."

OK, that was the official position. But, as I said, I wanted to know how the CMU faculty and staff felt about a subject that obviously makes people very nervous; so, I took a walk around campus, stopped people at random, and asked, “How do you feel about porn being shown on campus and what do you think it does to the reputation of the school?”

Bob Taylor, of Heinz College, said, “I’d have to know how you define ‘porn.’ Some of the violence that we routinely watch could be called ‘porn.’ If it’s sexual, I’d have to say ‘no’ to it on the basis that it doesn’t add anything of value. In any event, it’s a personal decision.”

Brian Staszel, Multimedia Designer/Manger, echoed that thought. Brian asked, “What does X-rated mean? I’m a huge supporter of free speech. In fact, I teach at Pittsburgh Filmmakers and we have had students try to make porn. But, we want to know, ‘What point are you trying to make.’ I find that students are doing it for shock value.”

Suzette Mongell, a young executive assistant to Takeo Kanade, felt “pretty neutral” to the showing of porn on campus. “If people want to see it, they can,” she said. “We’re all adults, old enough to make our own choices.”

But, what about the reputation of the university, I asked? Rose Krakovsky, a receptionist in Statistics, said, “I visited a friend of mine in the hospital before the movie was shown and he asked me about the movie; he thought it presented a bad impression.” When asked how she felt about showing the movie, Rose said, “I’m against it. It demeans women, and doesn’t help the guys a lot, either.”

Bonnie John, a professor in Human Computer Interaction, said, “I believe in free speech, but I’d suggest they check ID’s at the gate. The movie should be for consenting adults. And, attendance at the movie cannot be required for a grade.”

Most faculty and staff mentioned the complications of free speech and the maturity needed to accompany it. An associate professor in Philosophy whom we interviewed, and who later wished not to be identified, said, "Both pornography and free speech are difficult and complicated issues. If they are to be discussed, they should be discussed thoughtfully and carefully and in an informed manner; knee-jerk responses must be avoided. Moreover, it should be remembered that, although both of these are involved in the question at hand, they are distinct. A discussion of one should not be conflated with a discussion of the other. That said, I don't think that the showing of one adult movie on campus is something to get too worked up about."

Ironic isn’t it? This person who doesn’t think porn’s a big deal, who treasures free speech, won‘t allow attribution in a campus publication. Hmm. Tenure issues?

Jackie DeFazio, business manager in Philosophy, and willing to go on the record, responded to our question in this way, “I’m not for it,” she said. “My son is coming here next year and I don’t think he needs to see porn. It’s not really needed on campus.”

But, is it needed? Narelle Sissons, assistant professor of design at the School of Drama, said, “We should have freedom to watch what we want to watch. And, if it provokes a useful discussion, so much the better. Porn exists; we can’t deny that. And, I can imagine the curiosity of the students. I wouldn’t go, but if we can use a showing as a teaching tool, if we can have a debate, if we discuss porn’s value, or lack thereof, to society, then it can be useful.”

Charline Tomer, a teacher at the Pre-school, said simply, “I’d rather not have it on campus.”

With a South American point of view, Uruguayan artist-lecturer at CFA and well known classical pianist, Enrique Graf, said, “The students are all 18; they can choose to go or not. It’s an individual decision and the internet is full of porn, anyway.”

Laurie Weingart, professor of organizational behavior at Tepper School, said, “These are young adults interested in sexuality. These movies are part of the sexual landscape. Perhaps we offer them a safer environment here to discuss this. As for CMU’s reputation, this is an isolated incident not likely to cause us harm.”

Marc Siskin, manager of the modern language resource center in the Department of Modern Languages said, “No one was forced to see the movie. It wasn’t part of any curriculum. I have no problem with it as long as it’s legal. But, it’s a slippery slope. Who knows who might be offended? I found “Apocalypto” (by Mel Gibson) very offensive but I don’t want to prevent others from seeing it.” His colleague, Sue Connelly agreed, saying, “We can’t infringe on free speech. If we limit that, where will we turn next, foreign films?”

Andrew Narshall, reserves assistant in Hunt Library, said, “I’m not a huge proponent of porn but the free speech issue trumps everything.”

Yes, I see. Free speech trumps all. But why does porn make so many people so nervous? Why do some faculty run, he actually ran from me, and others beg off from attribution? Why did the University of Maryland cancel the viewing of “Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge,” the most expensive porn film ever made ($10 million). Why so much worry at the University of Michigan and UC Davis who both made the news for planning to show it?

Maybe speech isn’t so free. What do you think?

The blogger blogs on cliches.

I was just thinking about this blogging business and thinking about the commitment it takes, and with my full plate, 24/7, I wonder if I have the bandwidth. The stakeholders in my life have been pushing my envelope and I’m feeling like I’m outside the box. In fact it looks like I can't get my arms around my full plate. I guess I’ve been unable to get strategically focused on my go-forward plan, even though I realize this isn’t rocket science or brain surgery.

Speaking of blogging, when you drill down to the granular level, this is just basic blocking and tackling, isn’t it? However, at the end of the day, I want to be about robust, world-class language solutions. Net-net, my value proposition is based on maximizing synergies so that I'm in the blog market with a leveraged, value-added deliverable. That’s the big picture here, isn’t it? I know you can resonate with that.

So, if after reading this note you have any issues, plug them in or let's take them offline. I don’t think you’ll have issues, but many people have a result-driven mind-set that isn’t a strategic fit with my game plan. I want to be a mover and shaker; so, let’s take this blog and run with it. We’ll make it our big, hairy, audacious goal! We’re here to empower each other!

If nothing else, let’s touch base, ASAP. Write or ping me the next chance you have. We WILL connect. Meanwhile, never forget this: Bottom line, your call is very important to me!

You gotta read this!

This weekend the NY Times published an interview with Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Airline. The interviewer, Adam Bryant, asked Mr. Anderson a series of questions about leadership, career, meeting management and the qualities he is looking for in recruits. The Times article, headlined, "He Wants Subjects, Verbs and Objects," quickly rose to the top of the Times "Most Popular-E-Mailed" list.

I have pasted the link to the article here so that you can see why the article became viral:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/business/26corner.html?em

You will find, among other things, that Anderson stresses communication skills as keys to success. About interviewing, he says, "...what you’re trying to find out about are the intangibles of leadership, communication style and the ability to, today, really adapt to change."

Later, he says, "You’re looking for a really strong set of values. You’re looking for a really good work ethic. Really good communication skills. More and more, the ability to speak well and write is important. You know, writing is not something that is taught as strongly as it should be in the educational curriculum. So you’re looking for communication skills."

And, again, he adds, "It’s not just enough to be able to just do a nice PowerPoint presentation. You’ve got to have the ability to pick people. You’ve got to have the ability to communicate. When you find really capable people, it’s amazing how they proliferate capable people all through your organization. So that’s what you’re hunting for."

The title of the interview is taken from this passage, "I think this communication point is getting more and more important. People really have to be able to handle the written and spoken word. And when I say written word, I don’t mean PowerPoints. I don’t think PowerPoints help people think as clearly as they should because you don’t have to put a complete thought in place. You can just put a phrase with a bullet in front of it. And it doesn’t have a subject, a verb and an object, so you aren’t expressing complete thoughts.

And a lot of what we do in communication, when you write e-mail, you need to express yourself very clearly so people understand whether we’re going to L.A. today or we’re going to Boston today."

Finally, when asked about business school curricula, Anderson says, "When you’re managing as much change as corporations globally must deal with today, the ability to communicate and communicate effectively is so important that it ought to be a core capability in a business school curriculum. We measure, study, quantify, analyze every single piece of our business. Business schools in the United States have done a phenomenal job of creating that capability. But then you’ve got to be able to take all that data and information and transform it into change in the organization and improvement in the organization and the formulation of the business strategy."

I don't know about you, but I could kiss him for this interview. It will give me justification and encouragement for the next ten years! Thanks, Richard Anderson and the NY Times!

Answer these three questions before you blog for business.

Businesses can benefit from blogging, both internal and external blogging. But, before any employee begins to blog, he or she needs to answer some important questions.

1.) What policies and/or tools does your company have in place to guide you if you decide to start blogging?

Some enlightened companies have policies and tools available, particularly for internal blogging. They provide sites for employees to blog. Some even have a blogging champion. The really enlightened companies have clearly articulated policies that regard information that may not be revealed or disclosed, in blogs or other public forums. If your company has such guidance and policies and you decide you want to blog, you need to answer the next question:

2.) What is my objective for blogging?

Do you want to blog to become notorious? (bad idea) Do you want to blog to make lots of money? (unrealistic idea) Do you want to blog because you have nothing else to do? (better have a trust fund). If, however, you decide that you want to blog because you want to build deeper relationships with your clients, because you want to hear what’s troubling them, because you have something worthwhile to say, you have identified good objectives. Many other positive things will come from blogging, but decide right up front that you’re not blogging to rant but to listen. Then, give some very serious thought to the next question:

3.) Am I ready to make the commitment to blogging?

If you aren’t prepared to spent 10-15 hours each week in planning, writing, editing and responding to your blog, get out now. Blogging takes that much time. Most successful bloggers post every week day, and some on the weekends. These people spend time thinking of subject matter that will fit their purpose and connect with the interests of their targeted audience. Then the bloggers attach their backside to a chair and begin writing. Anyone who writes knows that writing takes lots energy and focus…and time. Then, if you're lucky enough to hit on a hot topic and dozens of people respond to your post, you have an obligation to respond to them, as well, within a reasonable time. After all, when it is done well, blogging creates a conversation.

Techorati has identified over 110 million blogs. The vast majority of those blogs are not read. They come and go, or they come and stay on a server in blog limbo. If you decide to create and write a blog for business, you have made a wise and important business decision. But, you must do it correctly. You must clearly understand your objective and your audience and you must commit the time and energy that will be required. Then you can blog for your business. But make sure you know what you're doing. Your company reputation and brand may depend on it.

Four ways to put variety in your writing.

This will take you back to 8th grade English class. Are you ready?

You can put variety in your writing by mixing the four types of sentences. What are those four types of sentences?

1. Simple
2. Compound
3. Complex
4. Compound-Complex

What do those terms mean? A simple sentence contains one independent clause (a group of words with a subject and predicate that can stand alone). For example, "The woman drove to the store and bought some groceries." This is a simple sentence even though it has two verbs (drove and bought).

A compound version of that sentence might read, "The woman drove to the store and bought some groceries, and her daughter waited in the car." Compound sentences consist of two or more independent clauses that are typically joined by a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, so, while, yet). Lost yet? I hope not.

A complex sentence contains one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses (groups of words with subjects and verbs that can not stand alone). The complex sentence looks like this, "The woman drove to the store and bought some groceries while her daughter waited in the car." What group of words cannot stand on its own? "...while her daughter waited in the car" That's the dependent clause.

A compound-complex sentence combines the two types of sentences I have just discussed. A sample might look like this: "The husband stayed at home, and the woman drove to the store and bought some groceries while her daughter waited in the car."

What's the point of this time warp back to 8th grade? I will show you. I will show you that when you mix these four types of sentences you create variety in your writing. That variety leads to freshness, and that freshness keeps your readers interested while your writing avoids becoming stale.

For instance, read the following paragraph and notice how I mixed the four types of sentences. Also, note how the use of simple sentences in the first 13 sentences makes the writing boring.

"I told you. Vary your sentences. Use short sentences. Use long sentences. Write one word. Write ten words. Write fifty words. Or, bore me. Just like this. With short sentences. One after another. Three word sentences. One following another.

The reader has other choices, you know. He or she can pick up a magazine, a newspaper, a CD liner, a product label, anything that has words on it, and read it, instead of your memo.

If you lose the reader, you will not communicate. You will just make noise – blah, blah, blah. If you want to keep the reader, if you want to connect, if you want to cause action, vary your sentences. Write a complex sentence that begins with three subordinate clauses (just like the previous sentence). Or, on the other hand, begin your simple sentence with a conjunction and a prepositional phrase – just like this sentence. Simple, compound, complex, compound-complex – it’s your choice.

Whatever you chose, take the reader on a journey. Stop. On a dime. Take a leisurely walk; over the hills and down the valleys of your writing. Or, run, skip, hop, jump. Then, stop for a deserved rest. Yes, here. Wait. Just for a moment to catch your breath.

Now, get your second wind. Hurry along with the words gathering behind you before they cascade over your shoulder. (Yes, throw in an image that the reader can see.) Then, slow down again. Stop. Write again. Use three words. Write four word sentences. Keep the reader guessing; keep the reader interested.

Get along now; time to go home. Pick up some speed; go for the Big One; use a semicolon and join three independent clauses (a compound sentence). Don’t worry. Your readers will follow you, especially when you have used the right tools, such as action verbs, active voice, and characters as subjects in logical prose that uses well chosen words placed within well crafted sentences that create coherent and seamless paragraphs."

Well, now that you have re-visited 8th grade, don't you wish you could do it over again?! (If I only knew then what I know now!)

Keep subject and verb together.

If you look at a lot of bad writing (especially business and academic writing), you'll find the same mistakes in each sentence. Typically the bad sentences use nominals and passive voice, and typically the subject and verb are 15-20 words away from each other (if not further). These bad sentences look like this one:

"The implementation of the project specifications for which we've been waiting at least six months, an implementation that should have been completed by now and was, in fact, begun well before the present team came on board to pick up the slack from the previous team, is critical to the project's success and the maintenance of the account."

Pretty bad, huh? Pretty typical, too! Let's look at it.

What's the subject of the main clause of the sentence? What's the verb of that subject? I'm not going to tell you for a minute. But, I am going to tell you that readers like to find the subject and verb quickly. This tells them what the sentence is about. And, readers like the subject to be a "character" who takes some kind of action. That means we need an action verb, especially in business writing where we usually write for action.

Well, if you guessed correctly, you said that "implementation" is the subject of the main clause of my bad sentence and "is" is the verb. Besides functioning as a being verb in the sentence, the word "is" doesn't sit anywhere near its subject, "implementation." Forty-six words separate "implementation," the subject, from "is, "the verb. And, to make matters worse, the word "implementation" isn't what you'd call a character as a subject. It's a nominal (a verb turned into a noun).

That sentence contains a 58 words. Any reader begins to lose comprehension of a sentence after it surpasses 20 words. But, that doesn't mean you can't write a 20-word sentence. You can write one even longer; just keep the subject and verb close to each other and keep balance in the sentence.

For example, suppose I write, "The woman fought the villain." The subject and verb sit next to each other in this subject-action verb-object sentence (the best kind). Now I can modify it in many ways, making it longer. I will do this and keep the sentence as a "simple sentence" (remember simple, compound, complex and compound-complex sentences from 8th grade?). A "simple sentence has only one clause. Here goes:

"On the first Monday of the month, on a rainy and windswept evening at 9:00pm, in a little town near Pittsburgh called Scenery Hill, the tall, dark-haired woman fought the evil, sinister and ugly villain valiantly and with the courage of a lioness."

That sentence has 43 words yet it can be easily read and understood because it uses a character as subject, action verb, active voice and because it keeps the subject and verb together. They need not be next to each other. I could have put some modifiers next to the verb. The subject and verb only need to be near each other and, for best results, in the subject-verb-object pattern so familiar to most readers.

When you keep the subject and verb close, you help the reader. Remember, no writing is understood until a reader understands it. Until then, it's only noise.

Even Philip Kotler makes mistakes!

If you know anything about marketing, you know that Philip Kotler is THE MAN! I recommend any book he has ever written on marketing, especially the popular press books. His "Marketing Insights from "A-Z," "Kotler on Marketing" and "According to Kotler" will help anyone, even hardened marketing professionals, understand marketing better. (And, he has a new one coming out: "Chaotics"! I can't wait for it!)

As I say, I own, and have read, the first three, as well as most of Kotler's books; and, I have enjoyed them and learned from them. For that reason I was surprised when I was looking at text books to use in my marketing class and came across this passage in a Kotler text book on non-profit marketing:

"Individual behaviors that a marketer can influence require consumers to decide to act. Decisions about actions vary in two important dimensions: involvement and complexity.

While it is obviously a continuum, consumer behavior theorists make a distinction between low involvement and high involvement exchanges. They believe this difference affects the amount of cognition or problem solving a consumer will undertake during and after the exchange process. As defined by Engel and Blackwell, with respect to products and services,

“Involvement is the activation of extended problem solving behavior when the act of purchase or consumption is seen by the decision maker as having high personal involvement or relevance.”

That is one obtuse piece of writing, isn't it? If you read it a few times, you will hardly understand its meaning. But, if you look at how the sentences are crafted, you will see the errors; you will see why the passage fails: it uses too many nominals (verbs that have been turned into nouns).

So, let's translate. We begin by turning the nominals back into verbs. "Behavior" becomes "behave." "Decisions" becomes "decide." "Actions" becomes "act." "Involvement" becomes "involve." And, if you keep looking, you will find other such nominals that need to be turned back into verbs: exchanges, activation, purchase, consumption, and so forth.

When you begin to simplify the piece, that is, use shorter words and fewer nominals, and when you think about writing the passage conversationally, you start to make sense of it. Someone is behaving in a certain way. Someone is buying something after thinking about it a lot or a little. Marketers understand the ways people behave and the extent to which they become involved when they decide to purchase something. Right!?

Of course! With a little editing (re-crafting) we now know what Kotler was saying. Marketers know that when we buy chewing gum we don't think a lot about it. We don't involve ourselves too much; but, when we buy a new BMW, we think a lot about it. It's a little bit more complex! Smart marketers who know this use it to help us buy their products. Simple!

Why should Kotler and others write with simplicity? Remember: the New York Times said that literacy is falling among college graduates and corporate America can't build a sentence. In other words, not many people out there read well and fewer have the time to try to read a complicated passage. Any person or company that wants to achieve its objectives cannot communicate in a style that makes the same errors that Kotler made in that passage.

But, we forgive you, Phil. The rest of your writing is swell!