Bread and Circuses

Will games become the new social divide?

TIME reports this week that 70 percent of big companies will embrace gamification in 2013.

While most will use gamification to attract customers, many companies—40 percent, according to new research from Gartner—will embrace it as an employee-retention tool.

Endorsing the latter, 20-something gamifier Katherine Heisler recently urged readers of Forbes to gamify the jobs of next-gen workers.

Citing a new workplace survey by MTV, Heisler argues that "Millenials overwhelmingly agree that their jobs should reflect their lifestyle."

The workplace, in short, should be "social and fun."

"Some people think of my generation as lazy, good-for-nothing slackers, feeling entitled to everything and entirely lacking a work ethic," Heisler writes. 

"But that’s wrong: Millennials have an incredible work ethic. We want to work, we want to succeed and want to reshape the world in our image. We are simply motivated in non-traditional ways."

When I was young and struggling alongside my fellow Boomers for a handhold on the slippery corporate ladder, money was a pretty good motivator.

But—excluding those at the very top of the ladder—money's in short supply today.

Will employers compensate for today's measly paychecks with "social and fun?"

Will circuses take the place of bread?

Lincoln Would Have Loved Twitter

FCC chair and part-time historian Tom Wheeler wrote a cool book a few years ago titled Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War.

It attributes the North's victory over the South to Lincoln's embrace of the telegraph, the "killer app" of the 1860s.

Lincoln, as history shows, was a super-skilled telegraph user, while his Rebel foes were, well, late adopters. (They were also late adopters of civil rights, but that's another story.) 

Lincoln, Wheeler contends, took advantage of the real-time nature of the telegraph to direct the Yankees on the battlefield, enabling them to run circles around the Johnnies.

When Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails first hit the shelves, Twitter was only three months old, with hardly any users. But, had he foreseen its surge in popularity, I'm sure Wheeler would have agreed: Lincoln would have loved Twitter.

Of course, Lincoln couldn't have Tweeted top secret orders to his generals. But he could have used Twitter to rouse the troops who followed them.

It's easy to imagine some of the momentous microbursts that might have come from our most articulate president:

During the massive Union rout at First Bull Run. "Stop running! The Marine Corps Marathon is next week, you morons."  

After the Union triumph at Gettysburg. "Rebs in full retreat. Stay tuned. Speech to follow."

After Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox. "Mission accomplished. Ulysses, you're doing a heck of a job!"

It's All Copy

Nora Ephron once told Vanity Fair that on her deathbed Ephron's writer-mother said, "'No matter what happens, it's all copy."

When troubles beset you, are you able to say the same thing?

Historians Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni recently told readers of Forbes the world is ready for a return to Stoicism, the philosophy practiced by ancient Romans.

"Stoicism tells us that no happiness can be secure if it's rooted in changeable, destructible things," the historians wrote.

"Our bank accounts can grow or shrink, our careers can prosper or falter, even our loved ones can be taken from us. There is only one place the world can't touch: our inner selves."

While the world might rob us of everything, the Stoic calmly says, "It's all copy."

"Stoicism teaches us that, before we try to control events, we have to control ourselves first. Our attempts to exert influence on the world are subject to chance, disappointment, and failure—but control of the self is the only kind that can succeed 100 percent of the time."

Got Stoicism?

It's. All. Copy.

The Skipping Point

Malcolm Gladwell made intelligible the "social epidemic" in his best-seller The Tipping Point.

He explained why word-of-mouth advertising could elevate a product like Hush Puppies to international stardom overnight.

A lot of marketers, hoping for a Tipping Point, rely instead on a Skipping Point.

No one's talking about their products. But they believe they can convince you otherwise by using hackneyed attributes such as "industry leading" and "best of breed."

No matter how hard you try, you can't skip to the head of the class.

Perfect B2B Posts

Inc. offers these tips for publishing perfect B2B posts:

On LinkedIn, you should:

• Use 16-25 words
• End posts with exclamation marks
• Avoid ending posts with question marks
• Post between 9 am and 1 pm
• Post at the top and bottom of the hour 
• Post on Sundays

On Twitter, you should:

• Use 11-15 words
• Use numbers and numerals
• Use hashtags
• Avoid ending posts with exclamation marks (unlike LinkedIn!)
• Avoid ending posts with question marks
• Tweet between 10 am and noon
• Tweet at the top and bottom of the hour
• Tweet on Wednesdays