Travis Robertson

I’ve decided to start a new feature on this blog inspired by John Jantsch of Ducttape Marketing fame. I do a lot of reading on the weekends and during the week. Each week, I’ll compile some of the best articles into a post like this.

Oh…YouTube…and Digg…and Facebook…and anything else that lets me vote. Thank you for teaching us a valuable lesson about Millennials and how to understand my generation.

If you manage or work with Millennials, take a second to look at all of the sites where Millennials spend so much of their time and ask yourself one thing: “Why do they all have some sort of voting or ‘like’ feature?”

Coming off my last week of looking at Millennials in the workplace, I want to tackle the idea of “working for” vs. “working with.” Understanding this concept will be critical to attracting and retaining Millennials.

Today is shaping up to be an incredibly busy day for me. I thought I’d share some articles with you that I’ve found incredibly valuable this week. Read them, then share any that you’ve found valuable in the comments section below so we can all learn and grow.

We’ve all heard the axiom “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll never go hungry.”

What happens if the man you’re trying to teach to fish doesn’t want to learn to fish? Instead, he wants you to catch him a fish each day. What do you do?

Almost every day, I speak with people who work with ideas. They are responsible for communicating those ideas to clients, customers or coworkers. Maybe it’s the plan for a new department. Maybe it’s how a software product can fix a decade-old problem in a local government. No matter what it is, they are responsible for clearly communicating something so that people can act appropriately on that information.

How are you likely to respond if I ask you the question “Who are you”?

“My name is Stephanie.” That’s your name. Who are you?

“I’m a project manager at Acme Design.” That’s what you do. Who are you?

I think too many companies focus on training people. When you train people you focus on the “how” of something. Here’s how to use the software. Here’s how to follow the procedures. Here’s how to use this system. It’s not that people don’t need some of that. It’s just that most of those things change.

Late last week, we received an email from one of our corporate partners expressing frustration about an article they found while searching for some information on Ethos3. The first result was a blog post published on one of Ethos3′s other web properties that’s in the process of being consolidated under the main blog. Was this a problem or an opportunity?

What kills me are people who lack a sense of urgency in a constantly evolving and quickly shifting marketplace. There is a delusion that a lot of people operate under that has them making excuses for inaction while wrapping it up in a nice little ribbon. Here are two of the more common myths.