Michael Katz's E-Newsletter On E-Newsletters
November 4, 2005
Issue #139
What's Your PENGUINscore?
It's been over 12 years since I first witnessed
the
birth of a baby. I've been present at two more
births
since then, but I have to say that the first is the one
that really sticks with me.
The hours of pacing up and down the hallways with
my wife Linda; the sudden rush of activity and
people as the moment grew near; the first thought
that entered my mind as I watched my son Evan
being born (which as I recall was something to the
effect of, "If this approach to getting a baby out of
a woman's body is the one that was finally chosen, I
hate to think what other options were tossed out
as 'unworkable.'").
I also remember the nurse calculating Evan's
APGAR
score. APGAR is a standard applied around the
world, and it uses five critical variables —
Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity and Respiration
(each one corresponding to a letter in the last name
of Virginia Apgar, the doctor who invented the
concept) — to assess the general physical
condition
of a newborn baby.
Interestingly, and as pointed out in Seth Godin's new
book, The Big
Moo, although the APGAR test is
credited with having saved thousands of lives in the
50+ years since its inception, it's low cost, risk free
and simple to administer.
And so I thought to myself, now that we've made a
significant dent in infant mortality, what other world
problems could be solved with an equally elegant
solution? The answer hit me like a Power Point
slide
to the back of the head: Boring Business
Communications.
Boring newsletters, boring presentations,
mundane,
run-of-the-mill, boring e-mails — all the stuff
we've
come to tolerate and expect from business
messages. Somewhere along the line it seems,
somebody convinced us that this is the way it's
supposed to be, and we've bought into it ever since.
We don't sit still for this in our personal lives, but
hang a tie around our necks and stick a briefcase in
our hands and we accept the "fact" that professional
must equal dull.
But here's the problem. If you can't hold
people's
attention, if you can't deliver your message —
whether spoken or written — in a way that's
interesting and memorable, it's going to come
crashing to a halt right there. Nobody's going to
remember it or
think about it or share it with others, all of which
adds up to your phone not ringing.
Which is why I came up with the
PENGUINscore™.
Seven letters (P-E-N-G-U-I-N) that do for business
communications what APGAR does for newborn
babies (and with a lot less pushing).
Each letter stands for a critical variable that
needs
to be present in everything you say or write if you
want your audience to hear it, understand it and
share it with others.
It's so important in fact, that I gave it its own web
site (www.PENGUIN
score.com). Follow this
link to
read about it and to begin scoring your business
communications right now. Your colleagues, clients
and customers will thank you.
So, what's your PENGUINscore?
Extra Credit
I'm looking for the 5 best ideas for promoting
PENGUINscore to the business world and I'm inviting
you to help.
Send me your suggestions (click here) any time between now and the
next time you have a baby. I'll choose the five best
by the end of this month.
Winners will receive an official "LEAP, and the net
will appear!" Blue Penguin Development T-shirt (details here).
Thanks, and remember: "Say `No' to mundane
communication."
Enough About You, Let's Talk About Us
Congratulations to Blue Penguin Development client
The Center for
Strategy Research, on the launch of
its newsletter, "Research With a Twist: A
monthly
guide for senior executives on understanding what
people really think."
This is a great newsletter, and a terrific example of
how to take a topic (i.e. market research) that runs
the risk of being both misunderstood and boring
(think first year statistics class), and turn it into
something that non-technical human beings would
want to read. Bravo CSR-ians, you've done that and
more!
Follow this link to see for
yourself (and sign up if you
like).
About Blue Penguin Development, Inc.
Blue Penguin Development helps professional service firms get clients,
by showing them how to strengthen relationships with the people they already know.
I specialize in the development of electronic newsletters.
Click here for an overview of my services.
|
