One Less Item on My Bucket List

This weekend, I will get to check off an item on my “Bucket List.” I’m taking my family to a Notre Dame football game! It is no small feat getting five people to a game (with tickets) that is 900 miles away. I’ve been talking about it for years, with a definite ramp-up in frequency in the last year. Now I am really going! It is only happening with the help of my sister, Megan, in Chicago who is cramming us into her condo and with the help of my cousin, Will, in Chicago who bought the tickets through auction on my behalf. Plus some copious fare-watching from my end.

I’m not a Notre Dame fanatic, but a loyal fan with great appreciation for the time I spent and especially the friends I made there. Now it has become a bit of a magical place for me – a balance between disbelief and pride that I went there, wrapped in the warmth from the glow of memories that I am so grateful to have. For me, it is more than a place to see a great football game. It is the place where the person I have become was roughed out. It is where the beams were laid on the foundation my parents gave me. My appreciation for what I had there has definitely grown over the years and I felt I would have missed something great if I didn’t get a chance to take my kids there to experience game day and stroll the campus. This will also serve as a premature college tour for all three of them, since it is unlikely we will be back before the college years overtake us! As long as it doesn’t pour rain, I am hopeful for a lasting, positive impression that won’t matter what they would have talked about with an admissions counselor.
 
If there is one thing I have learned since graduating from Notre Dame, it is that it is never too early to start a list of things I want to do before I kick the bucket. And equally, do not wait to start checking things off of it. 

My bucket list is not very exotic nor is it adventuresome. For instance, I have no interest in jumping from a large helium balloon at 128,000 feet to break the sound barrier. My list is significantly tamer:

• See a shooting star
• Catch a view of the Northern Lights
• Watch wild horses run
• Take a sleigh ride
• Learn to surf on a tropical shore
• Take my family to see the Grand Canyon

So, all I really  need to do is visit northern Montana, book a surfing trip to Costa Rica and stop at the Grand Canyon in between!

I think my dad would have liked my list. Not because he had a bucket list – if he did, and I didn’t know about it, it probably just had one item: Be with Peg. He may have liked my list because he loved the outdoors, loved teaching us about what we saw and because he had such a grab-the-steering-wheel-and-go (or grab-an-oar-and-go!) attitude toward travel. This is his birth month and I think of him often as the leaves change and fall. I followed him to Notre Dame (I even lived in his exact dorm room my freshman year!) and I will be walking with him on campus this weekend. I will light a candle at the Grotto for my uncle, his brother and fellow-alum, for good health. And I hope I can teach my boys a thing or two about Notre Dame and setting goals, on my dad’s behalf.

And if you think Jack McCarthy has nothing to do with the current Irish winning streak, so his grandsons could see an undefeated team, think again!

Fear of Listening

It’s all about the listening. In school; in friendship; in relationships; in parenting; in business. But just because we can easily identify what we need to do, doesn’t mean we do it effortlessly. Far from it. Listening is a ton of work, we might not have the time for it and we might not always like what we hear.

In business, the benefits of virtual communities -- a business' online earpiece -- have been proven repeatedly: examples include Chick-fil-A, Intuit and Starbucks, to name three. Virtually connecting employees with customers can help promote a brand and can harness the customers’ creativity to improve the business’ product line. Utilizing a virtual community, Starbucks developed “My Starbucks Idea” where Starbucks employees introduced themselves with website profiles and visitors were asked to suggest products they would like to see introduced at Starbucks stores.

A big hurdle in developing a virtual community initiative or implementing a basic social media strategy is the fear of negative publicity. We have all witnessed, directly or indirectly, the power of the viral complaint. We know we are not perfect and businesses make mistakes just as people do. So why go out of our way to draw attention to a difficult situation or to give complainers a platform? The answer is: we want to connect with our customers to build a loyal customer base and gain insight into their thinking. Social media gives us the tools we have been wishing for to take some of the guesswork out of buyer behavior. 

Those tools come with planning and effort attached to them. “Most companies don’t have a strategy for what they’re trying to accomplish with their virtual communities,” says Constance Porter, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Notre Dame. “They put up a website and a forum, but don’t plan for what they should do after that. They think consumers’ activity will emerge organically. Sometimes it does, but if the marketer isn’t playing a role, then they’re missing out on value.” The opportunity costs of ignoring the online conversation can be large.

We have to listen. Companies must be carefully monitoring online mentions. To negative mentions, we need quick and proper responses. Quick is easily understood. Proper responses involve using the right, thankful, polite tone, careful word choice and lack of idle promises. Negative mentions, handled properly, can turn into the best PR we never planned – as the virtual community sees and respects how we handle the delicate situations. Ignoring the negative, in hopes that it disappears in time, is taking an unnecessary risk when we have the power to steer the conversation toward a fruitful or at least conciliatory end. 

Two important lessons to keep in mind as we plan how to listen, engage and respond:

• Participating in a conversation changes that conversation. 

• Social media backlashes are not created by the initial trigger event, but are created by how the company responds.

(Many thanks to Mack Collier for his insightful blog post on Social Media Crisis Management)

Now, for that Chai Tea Latte that is on the Starbucks menu purely as a result of the “My Starbucks Idea” initiative.