Kathy Sierra, over at Creating Passionate Users has a thread of articles on the topic of “Inspiring your user-evangelists“. In a recent post, Kathy writes …

If you have to PAY people to evangelize your product or service, you probably don’t have a product or service worth evangelizing.

She goes on to say …

How to Create Evangelists The Authentic Way

1. You have a product or service or cause that helps users learn and grow and kick ass at something.
2. You give users tools to help them evangelize.
3. You do not ever, ever, ever pay users for doing this.

Not everyone is cut out to be an evangelist. Further, I think there are different evangelists for different audiences. Example - Ed Brill is a very different evangelist from Adam Gothenberg. They have different “street creds”.

My passion for my work has ebbed and flowed over the 20 years I’ve been in the software business. Two high points were (1) working at ViewLogic when I first got out of school, and then in the mid 90’s when I worked for a subsidiary of Lotus called Edge Research. Both experiences had a lot in common. Both companies were lead by a group of individuals with infections enthusiasm. These people were “leaders” in many senses of the word - they were very smart; could articulate an idea, worked hard while at the same time worked side by side with the rest of the team (not above them); and didn’t expect other to follow merely for being told to. Both jobs had something else in common - we created products that real customers really used.

In both of these jobs, I grew to have a deep understanding of the products we created and of the people who used them. I wanted to make both better (the products and the users) so I became and evangelist. For me, it was equal parts of helping customers better use the products and listening to the customers to make better products.

Call me cynical but if the evangelist does not live in this “feedback loop” then they fall into Kathy’s category of “being a paid evangelist”. <ugh>

It’s time to become an evangelist again. Call it mid-life crisis, or just a survival instinct but if I don’t have passion in my job, the job is not for me. Perhaps, looking back at Edge Research and ViewLogic will shed some light on what motivates passion for the work.

What motivates people is as individual as the people themselves. At the same time, there are some common behaviors and environments that make a big difference. While books like “Treat People Like Dogs” from Robert Norton imply you can take a person, send them to a training course and - Presto ! - you have a passionate leader, I think companies are wasting money and, worse yet, loosing ground with this “cure all” plan.

You can grow and nurture a passionate leader. But just as easily, as with a gardening, you can easily poison and kill everything you touch if you do it the wrong way. Companies need to identify the right “stock” and nurture it’s capabilities.

A short list of people I respect for their passion of work, honest evangelism, and infections spirit - Roy Goodwin (the “human” gardener), Rocky Oliver (”grow a user to gain a customer”), Carl Tyler (”give to get”), Tamar Krichevsky (”If you’re going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance”), Kelly Armstrong (”being an adult doesn’t mean losing one’s curiosity”), and Bernard Shaw (”being famous doesn’t mean I want to be treated that way”). There are others and I surly hope to encounter more.

Related tangests ...   You get what you pay for   Logo's a goin'   Getting to know you heritage

Posted in Business, Creativity, Education, Entrepreneur, Evangelists, Passion, Public Speaking, Work/Life |

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