Grok - a word Robert Heinlein gifted to our lexicon in his book, Stranger in a Strange Land. It is such a great word - it expresses something we simply didn’t have a word for until he penned it. It means understanding something so very completely that it is absorbed into oneself.
Millions and millions and millions of people grok living online. It is simply a part of them; how they think, live, work, play, socialize, satisfy their curiosity, plan, buy. “Google” is an everyday concept. Step back for a moment and look your at own online, and otherwise connected, life habits.
We, as professional communicators and/or executives, who so grok “demographics,” “consumer behavior,” “audiences,” or “shareholder value” are truly facing the biggest shift in our culture since the Industrial Revolution began - and this one is happening a whole lot faster than that one did.
If you can just take a second and let that fact seep into your skin, you'll agree, yes, that we really do need to go through this exercise of learning new tools. We have to truly grok this “web thing.” It is where our opportunities lie. It is where our business lies. It is where literacy lies.
You want to be effective. You want your organization to thrive. You want to be literate. So, how do you start really “getting it”?
Blog.
Oh, yes. I can see that look in your [rolling] eyes - just hang in with me.
You can’t know ice cream until you eat ice cream. It isn’t more or less like chicken.
It’s impossible to understand a culture until you understand the words it uses, because its words express the concepts that a culture knows.
If you blog, you will understand the culture you are living in right now. You will “get” Web 2.0 - beyond the “web site.” You’ll understand social networking. In a very short time, you will grok what all the hype and buzz is, and what your colleagues (or I) can’t just tell you. You’ll get where your opportunities are.
Blog about anything. Blog about something that interests you - flying, cooking, kids - or blog little nothing thoughts you have - or even your ToDo list. Audio blog if you hate typing. Video blog if you love your video camera or, if words fail, create a photoblog (upload photos instead of writing words). There aren’t any rules.
Just blog something. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck simply learning the mechanics of all these new tools. You won’t get what makes people tick online, and you can’t be effective if you don’t “get” them. You know that - you wouldn’t be spending time on figuring out “target audiences” if you didn’t.
After that, you can practice with all those new tools you are hearing about -they’ll make absolute, perfect sense. But until you “get it,” learning a new set of skills will be the awful, hollow chore you probably think it is now.
Robert Heinlein, when asked about the meaning of his book, Stranger in a Strange Land, replied that he wasn’t “handing out neatly packaged answers to lazy minds. [...] anyone who takes that book as answers is cheating himself. It is an invitation to think - not to believe.”
Don’t cheat yourself. Blog. Just for a little while.
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