How Many I’s on Your Team?

Involve

Last week, I was meeting with a client and we got into exchanging business clichés. When she used the “There’s no “I” in team”, I corrected her. I relayed a post I had written here a couple of years ago and it reminded me that most people don’t sift through the archives. This was originally published in January 2009.

Imagine

We travel in packs, so it’s safe to say you more often work in a team environment. A group of people all wandering in different directions can be extremely dangerous. When we can share ideas with each other, magic can happen.

Inspire

One of the coolest television shows ever was Long Way Down featuring actor Ewan McGregor along with his best mate and fellow actor Charley Boorman. This was the follow-up to their original trip entitled Long Way Around which began in April 2004. The goal was to take the long way around the earth - on motorcycles.

Instigate

Charley, Ewan and their crew left from London, crossed over to mainland Europe then rode to France, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Siberia, Alaska, Canada, into the U.S. and finally arrived in NYC. You don’t just wake up one more morning and try this. It takes a lot of preparation and a lot of people.

Integrate

In January 2004 the boys began intense physical training which included weights, boxing, and cardio. In between workouts, they joined the rest of the team for intense road planning research. They also had to educate themselves on issues such as possible bear attacks, language barriers, passports, every possible weather condition, medicine, proper supplies and just for fun there was a television crew filming everything from day one.

Improve

They also had to be trained to deal with survival issues, possible hostile environments and of course first-aid. Nutritionists, GPS experts and seasoned outdoor travelers were consulted. All this to prepare for their mammoth trip.

Implement

Three years later, they wanted to do another trip. This time, Scotland to South Africa. The same detail had to go in to this trip as with the last. They ran in to some passport issues and Ewan broke his leg which delayed things. But when you see them riding their bikes around the Great Pyramid of Giza or stopping to bungee jump over Victoria Falls, it's proof the prep was well worth it. Long Way Around was 115 days covering 15,000 miles. Long Way Down covered more than 20,000 miles in 85 days.

Initiate

You may not have the desire to spend twelve months of your life training and riding motorcycles but the elements are the same. Working in a team environment takes many moving parts and many talented people who can take thoughts and turn them into actions and results.

You have to imagine the idea, inspire the rest of the team to get moving, integrate everyone involved and implement the plan.

Give some thought to the I's on your team.

Kneale Mann

image credit: visualphotos

Imagine | 30 Years Later

At approximately 10:50pm on December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon in the entrance of the Dakota apartment in New York City.

Thirty years to the day, Lennon’s message is louder than ever and he is missed as much as the day he died.

John Winston Ono Lennon was a human being with flaws like everyone else. He was angry at times, extremely creative at times, he fought hard for freedom and peace and wrote a good song or a few hundred.

Lennon didn't act like a rock star beyond reproach. He was outspoken and refused to be politically correct. He stood up for his beliefs and that resonated with millions.

Lennon’s music is played at every moment of every day somewhere in the world and some predict that may never change.

In his own words…

If everyone demanded peace, instead of another television set, there’d be peace.

The more real you get, the more unreal everything else is.

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

I don’t believe in killing, whatever the reason.

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

You’re all beautiful and you’re all geniuses.

knealemann | email


image credit: Lennon archives

9/11: Where Were You?

August 27, 2001: I confirm my flight time for an upcoming trip to NYC on the 11th, booked on the 8am flight.

August 31-September 2, 2001: I enjoy a weekend with friends at a cottage and inform them of my upcoming trip. My buddy Mike suggests the two of us should do the trip some time and enjoy some Yankees’ games and bad food.

September 5, 2001: After a pretty busy summer of travel, I decide to cancel the NYC trip. The decision is to reschedule in a few weeks.

September 11, 2001

8:13: American Airlines Flight 11 bound for Los Angeles has its last routine communication with the FAA's air traffic control center in Boston.

8:14: Flight 11 fails to heed instructions to climb to 35,000 feet.

8:14: United Airlines Flight 175 departs from Boston Logan airport, also bound for LA.

8:21 Flight 11's transponder signal is turned off but plane remains on radar screens as a blip without additional information.

8:25: Boston Center flight controllers alert other flight control centers regarding Flight 11.

8:30: Management meeting begins on time as usual. Anyone late has to buy coffee and donuts for the dozen or so in the room. There’s a lot to cover as all three of our radio stations have just entered big ratings periods. We will need to review some budget items as well.

8:46: Flight 11 crashes into the north face of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

8:51: Hijacking begins on Flight 77.

8:54: Flight 77 deviates from its assigned course turning south over Ohio.

8:56: Our news director gets a call and quickly leaves the room. Our General Manager wonders why he's interupting but keeps the meeting moving along.

8:58: Flight 175 takes a heading toward New York City.

9:03: Flight 175 crashes in to the south face of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

9:10: Our news director returns to inform us that the aircraft that hit the World Trade Center which was originally thought to be a twin-engine plane was actually a commercial jet. Meeting over. We race to the nearest television and watch as if we are viewing a horror film.

9:13: We suddenly grasp the gravity of the situation and move in to action. Three radio stations, three studios and ours half a block away on the street level.

9:15: Bush leaves the classroom and enters another one commandeered by the Secret Service.

9:28: Hijackers storm the cockpit on Flight 93 and take over the flight. The entry of the hijackers is overheard by flight controllers at Cleveland.

9:29: President Bush makes his first public statements about the attacks in front of an audience of about 200 teachers and students at the elementary school.

9:32: Our morning show producer dials up news feeds while five of us each grab a computer and start to dig for information.

9:35: Flight 93 reverses direction over Ohio and starts flying eastwards.

9:36: Based on a report that Flight 77 had turned again and was circling back toward the District of Columbia.

9:43: The White House and the Capitol are evacuated and closed.

9:45: United States airspace is shut down.

9:48: Our studio is full of people trying to gather as much information as possible. It’s numbing to be in the media while the world is panicking. The usually busy Yonge Street in downtown Toronto is virtually abandoned.

9:53: CNN confirms a plane crash at the Pentagon.

9:57: Passenger revolt begins on Flight 93.

9:59: The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.

10:01: A brief silence – which felt like an hour – fell over the studio. Our morning team held it together but thoughts of leaving to find loved ones overwhelmed us all. Something made us all stay and do what we could.

10:03: United Airlines Flight 93 is crashed by its hijackers southeast of Pittsburgh.

10:10: Part of the west side of the Pentagon collapses.

10:15: We turn our radio station over to the CNN feed and let the experts take over. Our morning team makes sporatic local announcements over the next hour.

10:28: The North Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.

10:50: Five stories of part of the Pentagon collapse due to the fire.

11:30: Our morning team goes on the air with fresh information from a local perspective. There are concerns that many of the Toronto landmarks would be targets – including the world’s tallest free standing structure – The CN Tower.

11:55: The border between the U.S. and Mexico is on highest alert.

4:28: I return to my office and notice my voice mail light is flashing. The electronic voice says “You have 52 new messages”. Among them were concerned listeners, all of my cottage buddies who hadn’t heard I cancelled my NYC trip, my entire immediate family and two friends I hadn’t seen in years. The office was eerily quiet. I was numb. The world was numb.

4:51: I realize that if I had taken that 8am flight to NYC, I would have landed at LaGuardia at around 9am and watched it all unfold in the airport or perhaps worst, in the back of a cab on the bridge into Manhattan.

Lost friends reunited, the important things became important again and the next month was a blur for everyone. Eight years later, the topic of September 11th, 2001 still comes up almost on a weekly basis.

What have we learned?
What has improved?
What has changed?

@knealemann
Let's create experiences, not campaigns

Twitter 5am: Anybody Out There?

You Awake?

I am an excellent sleeper. I am one of those people who falls asleep quickly and sleeps through the night. My internal alarm clock usually goes off between 5:30 and 6am.

Not This Morning.

You’ve been there. Dreams integrate with real life and it takes a second to decipher which is which when you wake up. I was doing just that at 3:41am today.



Twenty years ago, someone would go make coffee and read something or listen to music or open some mail or do some work or exercise.

World At Our Fingertips

With the Internet in most homes, we can now also search the world at 3:41am. And with social media, there are other humans up at that hour doing the same who may be looking to share and converse with us. It's almost 9am in London.

I signed on to Twitter just before 5am (with fresh coffee). My journey took me to New York City, Miami, Victoria BC, Helsinki, Montreal, London, Brooklyn, Ottawa and Perth Australia.

We discussed travelling, computers, music, business and marketing.

What does Twitter do for you?

@knealemann
Let’s create experiences, not campaigns.

image credit: twitter.com/knealemann

There Are Many I’s In Team

Everyone must be on the same page. Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success. Many hands make light work. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Pick your cliché, any will do when you talk about teamwork.

Imagine

We travel in packs, so it’s safe to say you more often work in a team environment. A group of people all wandering in different directions can be extremely dangerous. But when we can share ideas with each other to help the common good, magic can happen.

Inspire

One of the coolest television shows last year was Long Way Down featuring actor Ewan McGregor along with his best mate and fellow actor Charley Boorman.

This was the follow-up to their original trip entitled Long Way Around which began in April 2004. The goal of that trip was to literally take the long way around the earth - on motorcycles.

Charley, Ewan and their crew left from London, crossed over to mainland Europe then rode to France, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Siberia, Alaska, Canada, into the U.S. and finally arrived in NYC.















You don’t just wake up one more morning and try this. It takes a lot of preparation and a lot of people.

Integrate

In January 2004 the boys began intense physical training which included weights, boxing, and cardio. In between workouts, they joined the rest of the team for intense road planning research. They also had to educate themselves on issues such as possible bear attacks, language barriers, passports, every possible weather condition, medicine, proper supplies and just for fun there was a television crew filming everything from day one.

They also had to be trained to deal with survival issues, possible hostile environments and of course first-aid. Nutritionists, GPS experts and seasoned outdoor travelers were consulted. All this to prepare for their mammoth trip.

Implement

They made it. A trip of several lifetimes done. No need to push any more envelopes.




















Three years later, they wanted to do another trip. This time, Scotland to South Africa. The same detail had to go in to this trip as with the last. They ran in to some passport issues and Ewan broke his leg which delayed things. But when you see them riding their bikes around the Great Pyramid of Giza or stopping to bungee jump over Victoria Falls, it's proof the prep was well worth it.

Long Way Around was 115 days covering 15,000 miles. Long Way Down covered more than 20,000 miles in 85 days.

Initiate

You may not have the desire to spend twelve months of your life training and riding motorcycles but the elements are the same. You have to imagine the idea , inspire the rest of the team to get moving, integrate everyone involved and implement the plan.

How many I's on your team?

km

Long Live Visuals

The topic of music videos has come up lately as the recent job cuts at MuchMusic, MuchMoreMusic and MTV in Canada continues to be long and painful.

Years ago, I was at a convention and on the panel was someone from MTV in NYC. During the Q&A session, someone asked the person from MTV – what the “M” stood for which was followed by an uproar of laughter. By that time, the focus away from music programming at the network had begun.

In the 80s and 90s, video flow was huge. In our cross-media, cross-platform, gadget laden world it's ridiculous to expect anyone today to sit in front of a television and watch music videos. That notion is about as ridiculous as to claim Paris Hilton is popular because of talent.

YouTube is the #3 website on earth. This is not because we are watching Jim smack Bill in the face with a baseball bat, or watching Sally's wedding video. Bright forward-thinking companies are realizing that online visuals are a way to tell more of their story. Have a look at the Doghouse Video.

YouTube may be the most popular, but it's obviously not the only outlet. We can produce material that goes to cellphones, emails, microsites, the ideas are only limited by our imagination.

The best advice I can give in our economic times is to seek out potential customers and go to them. Few will survive on the hopes their phone will ring on its own.

Coldplay is the biggest band on the planet right now. "Viva La Vida" has sold more copies – online and in stores – than any other collection in 2008. Their world tour broke records. But at the core is good bloaks making great music and fun visual stories linked to their songs.

km

Seven Years Later

Much will be written and said today about this anniversary. The events on September 11th, 2001 were obviously horrific. We can cover the numerous inconsistencies another time.

On September 9th, 2001, I cancelled a trip to NYC which was scheduled to land at 8:24am on the 11th. I had done a lot of road trips and needed a break. We decided to reschedule a few weeks later in Toronto. Less than 48 hours later, the world changed.

It was eerie to try and call friends in New York hours after the attacks. I just kept trying numbers madly until I got through to someone who still had her Atlanta cell phone. For some strange reason her cell worked in Manhattan. It was strange to call numbers and hear nothing – no click, no static, nothing.

I've been in the media for more than half my life and we had to snap into action. It was clearly the most surreal day of my career.

Friends invited me to a film festival event that night but after what had happened, the event was cancelled. We still felt compelled to get together. We are all numb. Most people were numb. All we did was talk. Do you remember? We all stopped the racket and talked and shared.

The phone calls started up again last week as the anniversary again grew close. Some people felt it was time for us to move on, others were in tears. No doubt, today I'll reflect on the fragility of life.

Peace my friend.

km