Mark Greenfield

Here’s an interesting article from the L.A. Times titled “Gen Y’s ego trip takes a nasty turn”. My personal experience with employing students is similar. In recent years I have had difficulty finding students who are willing to show up to work on time on time, or put any energy and pride into their work. Entitlement describes their approach perfectly. AS I’ve visited other campuses, most people I talk with share the same concerns.

I’m always interested in what Doc Searls has to say. Cluetrain remains a must read. I recently read his post on Building an relationship Economy. It expands on the idea that “Markets are Conversations” to include the importance of relationships. Markets work at three levels - transactions, conversations and relationships. Relationships are often overlooked in the industrialized world where price gets set by the forces of supply and demand. Given the escalating backlash against poor customer service, I can see a renewed emphasis on relationships in the marketplace and less focus on price.

So how does this fit in with higher education web sites? As part of the strategic planning process, a question I always ask is “why do you have a web site?”. Give me a simple, one sentence reason. As I’ve thought about this over the years, my answer to this question is “to build and sustain relationships”. The idea of building a relationship with our students from application to endowment. And with the arrival of the “social web”, we now have new tools at our disposal to make this a reality.

I’m about halfway through Seth Godin’s fantastic new book. His post called “Fifty States, Flamethrowers, and Sticky Traditions” really hit home. One of my pet peeves on virtually all sites that need my address is why I need to scroll down to New York” in a drop down menu, then add my zip code. If I enter my zip code, wny can’t the state automatically be entered? While entering both the state and zip code this isn’t overly time-consuming, it certainly does follow the principles of “Don’t Make Me Think”.

More on “small is the new big” to follow shortly.