There is the old advice: work with people who are smarter than you. But here is another one: you are going to be influenced by the people you work with, choose them wisely.  Choose optimistic people.

Mirror neurons cause us to act similarly to the others we are with. We reflect their body posture, their expressions, and even their attitudes. It is conducive to bonding. And therefore our survival. And if you are hanging around the misery team, it can be a bummer.

Negativity can subtly spread, and unless you are aware of it, it can impact your choices in subtle ways and blind you to opportunities that may exist that you have just given up looking for. However optimism is more than thinking positively or being foolishly unrealistic. Optimism defines how you think and react to set backs. Optimism assumes you have personal power in overcoming a set back.

The good thing is: optimism is a learned trait.

Here is one reason why I prefer to surround myself with optimistic people. Research indicates that hopeful people tend to be more creative. We’re more likely to be independent thinkers. Uh, oh – is that good or bad?  Well, hopeful people are “out of the box” thinkers that propose creative ideas for solving problems. We tend to be more open to different kinds of information and look at problems and opportunities from different angles. We look for alternative pathways when the old ones are blocked, and used positive self-talk such as “I can do this” and “this is interesting”.  Optimistic people are tend to be more intrinsically motivated.  Optimistic people are less likely to assume that a failure is a result of a permanent trait they have and are more likely to put it down to a temporary specific circumstance.  Which makes failure seem far less scary.

Hopeful people are more likely to reach for goals that might seems unattainable for others and are less likely to lose patience or get frustrated when facing difficulties. And finally research shows that optimistic people tend to be more successful and more healthy.

My score was “very optimistic”. How about you? Take the quiz on Stanford University site.

In the age of dial up, we started to become a voice among many, our big-fish-small-pond selves moved to the big city where our worlds opened up.  Pockets of subgroups, with interests, hobbies and fetishes you never even heard of formed, and like sought like.  You could do and say anything anonymously and probably find someone who agreed with you.

And then the pendulum swung back.  People needed to feel more than a voice in the wind.  They needed to be where they feel they mattered, where everyone knew their name.  And with that, social media evolved to the point where what you did on your day off while “sick” would be discovered by your boss because you got a little too comfortable with Facebook.   In the flip of a switch we went from our big city living to small town where everyone knows your business.

And not unlike a small town, news travels fast.

#Amazonfail started to grow in leaps and bounds over the weekend.  The very tag “#amazonfail” not only captured our interest, but conveyed everything that would generate a value attribution.  We all understood the context of any words that followed “fail”. For the first short while it was all emotional response.

While we talk about the wisdom of crowds, we also need to consider the power of mob think.  People will make an initial value judgment that can be very hard to change, especially after they have committed to it (let’s say, by tweeting about it to all they know).  Human inclination is to stick with your opinions.  Right or wrong.

Unfortunately for Amazon, time was not on their side.  Social media runs with rapid speed, as individuals operate independently. Larger businesses simply can’t move that fast.   They can’t afford to. A function of bureaucratic hurdles is to specifically to manage and minimize risk.  There will always be individuals looking to destabilize perceived power and larger companies have a lot more to lose.

But in the meantime social media was feeding on itself.  Every unaddressed hour was an example of how Amazon was trying to exercise control over the people. At best they did not care, at worse there was a sinister agenda.  Every hour that went by was fuel for the fire.

And, unfortunately for Amazon, they failed to understand another component of human nature: if we were all screenwriters, we would instinctively know that the audience needs a payoff.  No longer can we write our endings with “they woke up and it was all a dream”.  Once the crowd gets worked up over injustice they require atonement.  It’s human nature and the movies know all about this.  The crowd will not be satisfied with “glitch” as an explanation at this point.  The resulting #glitchmyass is good example of that.

The public wants an apology.   Something sincere.  And corporate speak is not cutting it.

The bottom line here is authenticity. When we receive a pat response, we know it is a pat response. It leads people to think there is a lie involved.  But at one time, and some even suggest that even just a month ago, Amazon corporate speak was smoothing ruffled feathers when dealing with a few powerless individuals.  Today for Amazon that has changed. The power has shifted.

To what degree this will affect Amazon’s business is hard to say.  Their stock took a dip today, but not a significant one.  All the same, some people are communicating that they will not support Amazon now.  And even if it does not significantly affect Amazon now, it is one more tiny seed of mistrust that has been planted in general. It could be forgotten about. Or it could lie dormant until another time.

The gap between organizations and individuals is closing on many levels. If brands hope to enter into the social media Conversation as so many hope to do, they will need to understand that risks come with it.