Livestrong CEO Doug Ulman - the LiveFromStubbs Podcast

This article was originally posted as "Social Innovation in Healthcare – LiveFromStubbs with Doug Ulman, CEO of Livestrong" on WCG's Common Sense blog.

The 3rd edition of the  LiveFromStubbs podcast was a special one for me for more than one reason.  First, it was my first on-camera episode – and I’m always happy to share a stage with regular hosts Aaron Strout and  Kyle Flaherty.  But more importantly, the subject of our interview was Doug Ulman, the CEO of the Livestrong Foundation.  This is a big deal for me not only because of who Doug is – the CEO of one of America’s most remarkable and forward-thinking non-profits, and the man Fast Company has called “The Most Savvy Health Care Leader in Social Media” – but also because of how we came to be where he is.

A 3-time cancer survivor, Doug was forced to a difficult realization at a young age:

“[After being diagnosed with  cancer,] All I wanted to do was connect with other individuals who’d been down the same path … I could not find them.  I thought I was the only one.  I felt all alone.  I knew all the statistics but I could not easily access other people.”

- Doug Ulman, CEO of the Livestrong Foundation at Social Health 2010 (SxSH.org)

Livestrong has dedicated itself to improving the lives of people affected by cancer worldwide.  And a big part of their strategy involves connecting cancer patients and their families with the resources they need … which often means helping to connect them to people like themselves – people who “have been down that road before,” as Doug puts it.  Over the last two years, Facebook and twitter have become the largest source of referrals of survivors to Livestrong.

One of the really unique ways that Livestrong helps people who approach them is to offer the services of a “Navigator” – a person who can help point them directly to the resources they need (and 90% of whom use twitter to interact with participants).  Increasingly, those resources either leverage the principles of social media (the groundswell vs. top-down, corporate hierarchy) or are literally built on social media platforms.  LiveStrong has positioned itself not as a be-all, end-all source for information or a lone behemoth, but as a “catalyst and convener” of all those who share an interest in living with (and ultimately beating) cancer.  Just a few weeks before our interview, Doug and his team hosted an event in Austin called the LiveStrong Young Adult Alliance – more than 200 organizations focused on helping young adults dealing with cancer.  That kind of crowdsourcing is a natural way to ensure that the best ideas bubble to the top, and that the right people are in the right place to make those ideas real.  And it’s use of Facebook has been particularly remarkable – operating separate communities that focus not only on different geographic regions, but also different types of cancer … whatever can deliver the most value to the audience it’s there to serve.

With that kind of thinking, it’s easy to see why Livestrong has made the transition from being a cause into a movement. Enjoy the video,  follow Doug on Twitter, and be sure to check out the great work that Livestrong continues to do.  For more LiveFromStubbs podcasts, click hereand subscribe!

A new video podcast for Social Media, Music and Barbecue - @LiveFromStubbs

I'm really excited to announce that the Live From Stubbs video podcast is live!  This show is the brainchild of my friends Aaron Strout and Kyle Flaherty - and is the follow-up to their highly successful Quick and Dirty Social Media Podcast.

The Quick and Dirty podcast, originally created by Aaron along with the lovely and talented Jennifer Leggio, was a tremendous success.  100 episodes in, the Q&D show was heard by about 5,000 people every week.  I've been really pleased to be associated with both shows ... as an early guest and semi-regular-backup-guest host on the QnD, and as the cameraman on this first episode of Live from Stubbs.

There are some notable format changes in the new version.  One is fairly obvious - the show has moved from pure audio on BlogTalkRadio to a video format on YouTube.  Eventually, the goal is to have the show taped in front of a live studio audience at the legendary Stubbs Bar-B-Q restaurant. [Note: Stubbs is a client of WCG, my employer]  The second major format change is that rather than a thirty minute show, each show is now a YouTube-friendly 10 minutes or less.  The third change is that, rather than a pure digital/social media focus, every other show will be focused on music and barbecue ... reflecting the show's home base in Austin.  Look for some terrific guests coming up as we branch out into those new worlds.

I encourage you to take a look at this first episode.  Aside from my ham-handed camera work (I have subsequently been replaced behind the lens), I think it's great.  The first guest, Andy Sernovitz, was brilliant as usual.  Andy is the CEO of SocialMedia.org and the founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA).  I'd love to get your feedback on the show, the new format, and anything that you'd like to see featured on upcoming episodes.  In the meantime, if you like the program, be sure to subscribe to the LiveFromStubbs YouTube Channel - and tell all your friends!!

Final note: Terrific job by Brad Mays, the show's executive producer, and Naimul Huq, whose editing was brilliant.

Co_Health Recap: The Social Wellness Episode 2011

UPDATE:
Bob Merberg (@wellwork; the Employee Wellness Network) was kind enough to create and share a MindMap of the last #co_health chat ... If you're a visual learner, you'll want to check it out.  Thanks, Bob!!
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It was a freewheeling time on last week's #co_health chat.  After a pretty solid series of "special guests," Fran and I decided to return to our usual format - focusing on the "social" aspects of wellness in the workplace.  As an overall summary, I'd go out on a limb and say that making wellness social is still high on the priority list of our members, but that we're still in the very early stages of true innovation in this space.

Fran was driving the @co_health account this month, and kicked things off with the first question:

T1: How are you making wellness social?

@jmcnichol led us off by noting that her organization has begun to use facebook as the center-point for sharing wellness info with their employees and their families.  This is pretty significant, as it's one of the rare corporate wellness initiatives I'm aware of that has recognized the importance of their employees' families in carrying wellness through to all aspects of their lives.  She also encourages employees to guest-post on her blog about their wellness experiences - which allowed them to share their experiences with family and friends inside and outside the organization.

Fran indicated that her clients were using, at various times and measures, offline social challenges, blogs, podcasts and twitter on behalf of their wellness programs ... 

@michellewjames noted that within her workplace (Intel), employees were using an internal social networking tool focused on wellness ... but reminded us that the wellness+social equation doesn't necessarily revolve around technology - and that one of the most popular social wellness initiatives were employee walking groups - delightfully low-tech!

@MarkFrisk also noted that, no matter how you're approaching wellness, it's more important to focus efforts on improvement rather than just participation.

We then moved on to

T2: For those using social media tools, which are you using?  And how did you decide which one(s) to lead with?

Fran noted that most of her clients tended to look at where employees were already congregating and interacting - often facebook or twitter - and start from there.  Not surprisingly, the group's consensus here was around the fact that social wellness is a new enough topic that we're in the "low-hanging fruit" stage ... that our initiatives were focused on the places where we can get the most impact for the least investment and risk.

T3: How have leaders supported your efforts? Have they embraced them or been skeptical (or worse)? 

@FitnessFleet noted that in his/her experience, leaders had been extremely supportive, and focused on working in partnership with others to bring wellness solutions into the workplace.  There seemed to be a pretty big variety of experiences here, though, with leadership ranging from active engagement (executives visibly joining walking groups and funding special wellness initiatives) to generally ignoring wellness ... thereby allowing it to "fly under the radar."

The conversation then evolved into one about metrics ... which at this point seem to be almost exclusively based either a) # of participants and/or b) number of reads/listens of wellness materials.  Most agreed that these are necessary baseline metrics, but expressed desire to become more sophisticated over time to actually measure changed behavior and improved health in addition.

T5 (Fran skipped T4): Have you segmented your audience, using different tools and approaches for different groups?

Much of the "segmentation" that's been employed to date seems to revolve around special program offerings for people with specific chronic conditions (e.g., diabetes) or lifestyle choices (e.g. smoking cessation).  And there was interest in using a Prochaska-esque model of readiness for change to use different messaging and programs - but I don't think that any of our members were doing so at this point.

There was also a divergent conversation thread that emerged and is worth noting related to the linkage (or not) between open enrollment and wellness programs.  A number of our members have begun to use social media and collaborative tools around open enrollment and benefits choices, and fran suggested that OE might make a good gateway to start using social tools and methods for wellness also.  As @jmcnichol astutely noted, though, open enrollment is a once-a-year thing ... and wellness is 24/7.  The implication being that the messaging around them is just different.

We closed with T6: What roadblocks to Social efforts are you experiencing?

The biggies that I called out were that, in many cases, employees were pretty sensitive about any health data being shared on open channels, and perhaps more damaging, that corporate digital security practices caused most social channels to be blocked.  Fran noted that many employers were battling with the "where do we begin" question as well as a concern about how much of a time commitment would be involved.  And @jmcnichol noted that her biggest challenge was just in getting people's attention - they're subject to a veritable firehose of data every day.

To close: It should be noted that we're in the midst of a very interesting opportunity with MeYou health.  As you know, we believe  very strongly in the smarts, passion and commitment of the #co_health gang ... and we'd like to parlay that aggregation of awesomeness into something really special for our members.  We'd like to see this group weighing in on new programs, new services, new technologies and new business models focused on wellness in the workplace.  We've had a number of opportunities in our nearly two years of existence (including a rather successful foray into crowdsourcing innovation led by CoHealth-er @CarolHarnett (BodyShocktheFuture Contest).

We've now found another opportunity that we think is worth our (read: your) time with MeYou health.  As you learned if you tuned into our September episode (Health Games) with Trapper Markelz, there are some potentially paradigm-shifting activities going on that we'd like to be a part of.  MeYou has a health program that they're allowing us to pilot  - LEARN MORE AND SIGN UP HERE NOW! MeYou Health/CoHealth Social Health Pilot 

CrumpleItUp Redux: Dr. StrangeFit || Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love conference calls

As noted last month, I am re-publishing some of the "greatest hits" from CrumpleItUp. This one came to mind as the Healthy Back Store randomly used a quote of mine that I gave to Steelcase in 2008 about their (absolutely brilliant) Walkstation product.
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Dr. StrangeFit || Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love conference calls
from Crumple it up! blogs by Greg Matthews (Originally posted on May 15, 2009)

Meetings - and their cousins, conference calls - are a big part of life in corporate America. Yet I don't know anyone who really likes most meetings. There are some exceptions in my own life: I love our Social Media Chamber of Commerce meetings, for example. And I like the weekly meeting that my peers and I have with our boss. [Note to self: Daily suckup - CHECK.]

And conference calls are even worse . . . they're just not a very human or engaging way to interact. But, like most of the clouds in life, I've found a silver lining in this one. And its name is Walkstation.

Last week my colleague Laura Tabler wrote about her incredible success in fitness and weight loss that's centered around walking during her favorite shows. I was seriously inspired. I mean, losing over 23 pounds in 8 weeks while making minimally invasive life changes is really impressive. So while Laura does her walking as she feeds her passion for reality TV, I am going to do MY walking while I'm on conference calls. In fact, any call that lasts for more than 5 minutes is going to see me aboard the walkstation.

I've got about 15 lbs. that I'd like to lose . . . let's see if Laura's method works as well with me.

What are the little things that you could change to make your normal routine healthier?

[Editor's Note: For those of you to whom this title is pure gibberish, please click here]

Photo by Shane "the Pain" Regala

When was the last time you looked at your facebook settings?

As you're probably aware, facebook has made some subtle but important changes this week to the way that people can share information on its platform ... see this article from Mashable for details.  I generally am a pretty transparent guy, but facebook is, for me, a walled garden.  Only for people I know and am friends with "in real life."  I therefore wanted to make sure that, with the changes to facebook, that I knew exactly how they'd impact me.  I wanted to be sure that my facebook status updates would continue to be for my friends, and ONLY for my friends.

As I was poking around on the site, though, I discovered that over the last 4 years, I have given about 14 million apps access to my data.  This is bad.  The reason it's bad is that many of the companies that made these apps don't even exist anymore, and each one is a potential security risk.  So I'm writing this post to encourage you to prune your facebook apps, and make sure that the only ones with access to your account are the ones you WANT to be there.  Here's how:

In the upper-right corner of your facebook page, select "ACCOUNT" and then "ACCOUNT SETTINGS."  On the left-hand menu bar, you'll see "Applications" as an option.  Select it ... and prepare to be blown away by how many apps have permissions on your facebook account.  Facebook makes it easy for you, and shows you the ones that access your account most often ... so my advice is to scroll to the bottom, and start deleting anything you aren't using anymore.  [Superpoke?  Are you kidding?  I installed that in 2007 and haven't seen it since!]

Lastly, given facebook's new capabilities for sharing status updates:  If you're like me, and only want for your friends to see your status updates, you can change the default settings for all status posts:  In the upper right corner, select "ACCOUNT" and then "PRIVACY SETTINGS."Click the gigantic radio button in the middle of the page called, "FRIENDS" and you're good to go.  I'm going to get in the habit of updating my facebook settings every six months or so ... just to be safe.