The 18 Hole Interview

Today, Seth Godin writes about Google's "memory" and the affect it has on personal branding. Long story short, don't do anything on the web that might come back to haunt you later. Google can be an effective applicant screening tool.

Nowadays, recruiters and hiring managers use it all the time.

Images, blogs, tweets, recommendations, business, personal and social connections all provide insights into the type of person you are (versus the type of person you claim to be, in your resume).

I'm currently enjoying a couple of days golfing in southern Florida. I love golf. (In my case it is an unrequited love.)

Somewhere on the back nine, it struck me that a round of golf might be another great filter. Imagine taking three equally qualified finalists golfing, to help determine who to hire.

How people play the game provides valuable insights into a person's character.

1. Are they risk takers or do they play it safe?
2. How well to they manage the course? Adjusting for pin placement, wind, undulations of the green..
3. Do they take the opportunity to "improve their lie" - change the rules of the game to accommodate their situation?
4. Are they honest? Do they count all their strokes and assess the correct penalties?
5. Are they easily frustrated?
6. How well to they socialize with the other players (after a good shot, after a bad shot?)
7. How do they handle adversity?
8. How do they perform under pressure?
9. Do they listen to (or ask for ) advice from other players or their caddy?
10. Did they have fun? Were they relaxed?
11. Would you want to golf with them again?

My advice: Once you've used Google to cull down candidates for that important senior position, and conducted the interviews, book a tee time before making an offer.

Image credit: www.pro.corbis.com

The Death of Facebook

I'm starting to see signs that Facebook is not long for this world.

My suspicions began the day my wife signed up for an account. It wasn't long before she had friended many of our kids friends. And then neighborhood parents began to join. The 40+ crowd had come late to the Facebook party but they're planning to stay.

Now neighbors poke each other, write on friends' walls, upload photos. The competitive ones treat it like a popularity contest and race to friend the most people.

What was once the domain of the teenagers and the twenty something crowd is quickly being seeded with "old fogeys". And so it's my prediction that Facebook will eventually die off - or at least fundamentally change. Like a hip new nightclub whose patrons change allegiances to the newest club in town, the younger Facebook users will seek a new spot to hang out, leaving Facebook to us.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to tweet.

Webcrumbs

One of my favorite blogs is Seth Godin's. He's a permission marketing evangelist and long time blogger.

At 3,000 posts, he's the Hank Aaron of blogging.

And I'm sure he's not on performance enhancing steroids.

Think of the number of webcrumbs his posting legacy has created. 3,000 thoughts, ideas, inspirations, all search engine indexed, all leading back to Seth.

Makes one wonder why businesses have been so slow to take it up. Discipline? Effort? No immediate payback? Or worse yet... nothing to say?

Solving Tomorrow's Problems

In the I.T. world, we're all about customer service. Our goal is to solve problems quickly. Wade through those helpdesk tickets. Get people back on track and productive again.

Sometimes we lose sight of the real goal - avoiding the situations that cause the problems in the first place.

The Toyota Production System, teaches getting to the source of a problem by asking "Why?" five times. The thought is, that by following this chain of logic (how did we ever get to this point?) backwards, one can identify the source of the problem and remedy it.

For too long, some I.T. departments have been the "whipping boy" of their organizations - bearing the brunt of crappy Microsoft applications, victims of their own programming shortcomings and slaves to short term infrastructure decisions.

Truth is, for the most part, I.T. departments are playing defense. They act like the little boy who plugged the dyke with his fingers.

I think that realization hit some of my guys yesterday as we discussed a framework for administering reporting security. It became evident that in the course of quickly trying to
appease the security needs of individuals, we were undermining our ability to manage security "as a whole".

We were unnecessarily complicating our daily processes to serve the needs of a few.

And so, we tried a different tact.

Let's play offense.

Why don't we educate our management team on how we manage security and why it makes sense to do it that way. Let's involve our customers up front, in a decision making effort to develop a framework in which we can balance the need for information security with the level of effort to administer it.

Some I.T. folks undermine their own effectiveness by not even trying to engage their customers. "They'll never go for that!" or "There's always an exception to the rule." And so the status quo perpetuates the "cycle of doom".

I have the benefit of perspective. I don't have Helpdesk tickets assigned to me. I'm not neck deep solving time critical problems. So it's incumbent upon me to lead the charge with our user community to shed some light on how we do things and why and to invite them to participate in future policy and infrastructure framework decisions.

I call it solving tomorrow's problems.

If we spend one meeting per week talking and thinking strategically, we'll have a very successful department.

Generic Curse - Part 2

Earlier I wrote about the Generic Curse - a condition where industry competitors copy each other's strategy to the point where all that results is poorly executed sameness within an industry. Bland, and boring

And it continues to happen.

Witness the latest announcement by Microsoft, to open retail stores (Apple anyone?).

This of course, won't work. But it will be interesting to watch it fail. eWeek has a humorous look at what a Microsoft Store might look like.

I think Microsoft's time might be better spent building products people want to buy, rather than expanding channels to buy them.

Meeting Deja Vu

I participated in a meeting this past week.

I exited the meeting with a feeling that we hadn't accomplished much. Certainly the challenges were laid out and a couple of suggestions were raised. Some attendees decided that additional information was required.

What was missing?

For starters, we made the cardinal sin of declaring the meeting over before we assigned specific "to dos" and deadlines. There were no specific action plans to advance a solution.

Afterwards, I mentioned this to a colleague who had also attended. His response surprised me.

"I've worked here for ten years and have attended that meeting at least ten times before".

Very telling.

Has this ever happened to you? Ask yourself the following questions.

1. Are you taking comfort in activity vs. accomplishments? i.e. If we're meeting, we're doing something about it. Even if we aren't.

2. Are you executing well? Setting tasks, assigning responsibilities, establishing deadlines?

3. Is the meeting topic important, but not urgent? Perhaps the topic is important enough to draw ten people into a meeting, but doesn't make it to our individual top three tasks once we return to our desks.

4. Who is in charge? Who owns the initiative? We assembled a group of independent people (each responsible for a different product line or sales channel) but we weren't working within a common strategic plan under the guidance of a VP of Sales.

If you answered Yes to any of the above questions, you're suffering from Meeting Deja Vu.

Now that you recognize the disease, how are you going to treat it? Here's a suggestion.

Reality Check

I ran across this brief video of Guy Kawasaki talking about his new book, called Reality Check.

Enjoy.

The Generic Curse

A colleague and I were at lunch yesterday. We went to a local chain restaurant. The waiter greeted us using the same phrase they do at EVERY chain.

"Hi my name is "Shane" and I'll be serving you today. Can I get you some drinks while you look over the menu?" as he writes down his name on a napkin, in case we can't remember.

As drinks arrive, I notice that this menu looks a lot like every other menu from every competing chain restaurant. Honestly, if the restaurant's name hadn't been on the first page, the place could have been an Uno's, Chili's or Applebees.

Same banter, same service, same prices, same atmosphere, same food.

The only reason we ended up at this restaurant was that the place we really wanted to go to was jammed. So we settled for easier parking and "no surprises". Makes a Brand Manager proud.

Sameness deserves to be relegated to second place.

How do you stand out from your competition?

Effort is underrated.

In June of last year, I wrote a blog post on Starters vs. Closers which generated some buzz around the office.

If the descriptions of the two types of people didn't motivate you to "raise your game" to get tasks accomplished, consider another great reason.

Your reputation.

We all know people who work hard, but never seem to get their tasks completed. Over my lifetime I've seen quite a few. From a manager's perspective, they present a real challenge - not because they aren't willing to work hard - but because people are judged by their accomplishments.

And accomplishments are completed tasks/projects.

Effort is underrated.

And sometimes not rated at all. Especially when it comes to merit review time.

Moving a task forward from 50% complete to 55% complete is not an accomplishment. Moving 20 tasks forward by a percent or two is not an accomplishment. Have the largest "to do" list may give you a sense of being needed, but it works against you at merit review or bonus time.

Because no one has the desire (or the attention span) to listen to stories about how projects inch forward.

Make it easy for your Manager to recommend merit increases based on your track record of accomplishments, instead of based on your effort. (Note: trying something bold and failing is an accomplishment, because you've learned a lesson in what doesn't work. To fail, you must have completed the project - it's the outcome that didn't meet expectations - not your execution.)

If I could offer a few pieces of advice, they would be:

1. Trim your to do list to 3 or 4 of the most critical tasks.
2. Only add to the critical task list, when you knock one off.
3. Seek to "turn" your projects frequently.
4. Focus on accomplishments. Your reputation (and probably compensation) is counting on it.

My wife learned this lesson when creating her "honey do" list. Keep it brief and achievable. Then make up a new list for next weekend.

She's smart enough to know that a "honey do" list of more than 3 items, would probably never get started, let alone accomplished.

She's a smart woman.

Order of Magnitude Metrics

My brother Bob runs an accounting firm back in Canada. He's a sharp business person and has a real gift for speed-of-light billing and more importantly, collecting.

Bob classifies his receivables in a 30/60/90 report.

To most accountants, that means 30 days, 60 days and 90 days outstanding receivables.

Except Bob measures his receivables in minutes.

What changes would occur at your workplace if you changed the order of magnitude of your business metrics?

Consequences

Too often as we look at our business processes, one comes across the situation where whole new activities spring up and become ingrained in "what we do" simply because someone isn't doing their job right in the first place.

I once worked for a large printing company that couldn't invoice jobs until they'd received all the invoices from their suppliers, because they didn't trust their purchasing processes. They waited two additional weeks while they checked and double checked their margins on each job. Millions of dollars of invoicing delayed every time.

How about the case where someone else is assigned the task to follow up on pre-qualified leads that the sales team should be calling?

Or the late (or non-existent trip report) after an outside sales person makes a call. Somehow the expense report gets submitted.

Let's face it. Would you always drive the speed limit if there were no traffic cops?

I didn't think so.

Consequences help get things done right the first time and can help kill off the temptation to create an additional process to fix a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Siftables

Want to see how people will be creating music, editing video and teaching the next generation?

Look no further than David Merrill's brief TED talk on Siftables.

Fascinating stuff.

Prairie Dogging Innovation

It seems to me that the speed of innovation is accelerating and I'm not sure businesses are prepared to leverage that fact.

It was a scant two years ago, for example, that the iPhone was introduced. Two years later, there are over 20,000 apps available for it.

But who has the time to understand what they all do? Fact is that more apps are introduced each day than we can keep track of. Some would write off many applications as flashlight apps (basically screensavers), some will use a selection of productivity applications.

But others might uncover opportunities to innovate at the speed of light.

Let me cite a personal example. Our sales manager wanted to create a contest to engage everyday shoppers around the world to help our company spot marketing opportunities. Basically the goal of this contest is lead generation.

It is a radically different idea than we've ever tried before.

Unfortunately, we were struggling with the technology to achieve it. We didn't want to spend too much money or time to put it all together. So we put the idea on the back burner.

Yesterday I was reading one of my favourite tech blogs, where they profiled a new iPhone application, so I thought I'd check it out. Turns out this application provides us with about 90% of the functionality we need to execute our new lead generation idea.

So, about 30 minutes after the technical article had been published, I was able to download, test and evaluate the application, then write it's author to setup a meeting for next week. Probably with a few hours coding, we could have exactly what we need.

All of this activity happened between 7 am and 8 am on a Saturday morning.

The point of all this, is that it can't happen unless your organization has "Prairie Dogs", who pop their heads up from time to time to stay alert to new innovations, technologies and possibilities.

Secondly, they need to be "turned on" (engaged), with what your company is trying to achieve.

If you have these two ingredients, plus some freedom to execute, there's no telling how quickly your company will be able to innovate.

Executing vs. Innovating

If you were starting up a competing business to the one you're in today, how would you do it?

Unless you were well capitalized, resources (people, time and money) would be scarce.

So what would you do?

Chances are, it's not what you're doing today.

Trade Shows would not likely make the list, since they're very expensive to display at and in this economy, who's going to spend the money to attend?

Expensive and gimmicky corporate websites probably won't make the list either, since they take some time and considerable expense to develop.

Perhaps a printed customer or industry focused Newsletter? Not likely, because you can't measure whether they got delivered or even if they're read.

As a former Marketer myself, I completely understand and respect that "momentum" has a significant impact on a Marketing schedule.

It's time to prep for the next catalog.
The quarterly newsletter is due next week.
We need to put together the booth for the next Trade Show.
Where is the Marketing collateral for our new whatchamacallit?
The web stats need to be reported.
Time to get those leads entered into the CRM system.

Really, there's no time to try something new....unless you stop something old. We get caught up in the cycle of executing, rather than spending time innovating.

More Survey Advice

Earlier this week, I wrote a blog which described shortcomings in an emailed McKinsey Survey I received.

Today, Seth Godin adds his two cents on customer surveys.

Bottom line. Your customers' attention is too precious to squander.





Photo credit: www.jeffcohealth.org/

An Economy Without Consequences

If your expectations are that we'll all suffer through this economic downturn over the next year or two (or maybe longer) before "things return to normal", think again.

I fear that our expectations are to return to cheap money, no money down mortgages, 0% financing on new cars etc.

I don't think so.

In order to make sure this doesn't happen again, rules will be put into place that force creditworthy lending to take place.

When I went for my very first pre-approved mortgage, my banker asked whether I had my 20% down payment ready, then proceeded to verify my employment and income, then told me how much money I would quality for. The amount I qualified for was based upon industry wide standards (a ratio of my income), which prevented over zealous borrowers to get in over their heads.

And if I was dissatisfied with the number, I could always go to another bank, where the very same criteria would be applied to my mortgage application. This tight regulation "forced" a model of borrowing responsibility and prevented the chaos that we've seen over the past couple of years.

It was a built in hedge against economic downturns, because people still had some wiggle room in their budgets to meet mortgage payments, if they suffered a temporary income problem.

Sometimes I get the feeling that our expectations are that when this crisis is over, that things will return to "normal" - with normal being a state of unrestrained consumption and unrestrained borrowing.

That will not be the case.

Our long term economic survival will depend upon MUCH larger saving rates, less personal borrowing, and more "living within our means". I think that we'll be forced into an age of "taking personal responsibility" for ourselves.

We won't be able to count on social security, universal health care, medicaid because the country can't afford it (if we waste Trillions on bailouts).

Let's face it, our economy has to go through a contraction. Some car companies must die. Some major banks must die. It's absolutely necessary for the economic "cycle of life" to continue. There must be consequences to gross mismanagement. Banks must pay the price for taking on too much risk. Investors must pay the price for blindly putting faith in investments with unrealistic returns (Madoff anyone?).

Lessons must be learned, or we're bound to repeat the same mistakes.

We'll have learned this lesson when "debt-free" becomes "cool".

Would You Take this Survey?

This morning I received the following McKinsey email.

Dear McKinsey on Strategy subscriber:

Please help us in our continuous efforts to make the McKinsey Quarterly a publication that meets your expectation by taking a few minutes to complete a brief survey about the articles in the McKinsey on Strategy Newsletter that you recently received.

To have your views included, please complete the survey by Tuesday, February 17th.

Note that you need not complete the survey in one sitting as long as you finish it by Tuesday February 17th. You can stop at any time and close the window. Click on the link in this email to return later and complete the survey.

To thank you for participating.................

Now, I enjoy the articles. McKinsey have a lot of very smart people working for them. But if you're trying to intice me to complete a survey, one of the things you should NOT do, is to assure me that I don't have to complete it "in one sitting".

I may be willing to give you five minutes of my time, but unless I'm on the payroll, it is not likely I'll be giving you more than that.

Take note the next time your company sends out a survey.

My Day with Microsoft

Last Saturday, when the weather outside was a balmy (for this time of year) 52 degrees, I spent my day with Microsoft.

Not out in Redmond. Not chatting with Bill or Steve.

Simply trying (mostly in vain) to apply a security patch to my Windows XP o/s.

To be fair, this PC lives in our upstairs loft. Primarily, it's used by my better half, for email and web browsing. Recently it was running very slowly and she asked me to take a look at it.

First thing I noticed was that the security updates were lagging and so I upgraded Silverlight and visited the Security download site. So far so good. Began downloading service pack 3 (fine), then the install began. After taking inventory and backing up files and checking registry keys, the install proceeded along for about 20 minutes and then suddenly aborted with the error message "Access Denied".

Twenty minutes later, the install had reversed itself and I had to restart the computer. This was a routine I would become very familiar with as the day wore on.

Found Microsoft help, tested to make sure I had admin rights. Tried again. Access Denied.
Disabled anti-virus. Tried again. Access Denied.
Ran utilities to clean registry, scan and remove adware and viruses. Tried again. Access Denied.
Found a registry hack on Google. Tried again. Started looking at Mac ads. Access Denied.
Finally found a more comprehensive blog. Copied down a command, created a reset.cmd file and executed that. It basically swept all memory. making sure all locks were removed.
Tried again. Success!

Well, THAT only took 8 hours.

And I have 5 more updates to go.

Ran outside quickly to experience the warm weather seconds before the sun set. I bet it was a glorious day.

Who Knew?

There were twenty ways to improve laptop battery life?

Anybody have any other suggestions?

My Stimulus Plan - Part 2

If you've read my last post on how I would stimulate the economy, you've probably come to realize by now, that I'm no economist.

However, undaunted, here's Part 2.

Some stuff I wouldn't do to stimulate the economy.

I wouldn't offer tax breaks to small business or the middle class. GASP! Not that I'm a mean guy. I think both these people deserve all the breaks they can get. Heck I work in a small business. I just don't think that during this economic climate, the mindset of either middle class or small business would be to invest in job creation or spending.

I'm probably wrong, but if you put $1,000 buck in the hands of everyone, I'm guessing that after food and rent, we might actually pay a charge card bill. It's not likely you'd find us in a new car showroom.

Small businesses would likely hoard any additional capital to make sure they could meet short term obligations, like payroll (which I suppose you could argue is really job retention, not job creation). I'm okay with a temporary payroll tax cut for small business to sustain employment.

At any rate, in a climate where people are uncertain about their future, it is against human nature to run out and spend, spend, spend. No spending, no economic stimulus. That's why the government has to do it.

Perhaps we can help people in a different way. How about government backed loans at 5% for home owners, who are about to lose their house due to inflating ARM interest rates. Doesn't apply to 2nd homes, rental property - just primary residences. These loans would be 100% backed by the government and managed by your local bank. Unfair you say? Yes it is. But it's also unfair for those of us lucky enough to be able to pay our mortgages to have to live in neighborhoods where houses are becoming abandoned, deteriorating our home values and the quality of our neighborhoods.

I like the idea of subsidizing car purchases with tax rebates, but I'd do it for cars that offer 30 mpg or better or hybrid technology. No sense in creating demand for our old, bad, gas guzzling habits.

I also like the idea of subsidization for weatherizing homes and business and subsidizing green power projects.

How about a 2yr 100% interest tax credit on capital investments over $100,000 (excluding buildings). If manufacturers wanted to upgrade equipment, they could do so with zero finance effect for two years.

Oh, and lets complete the levies, and rebuild the hospitals, police and firehouses around New Orleans. And lets make sure they're built to 500 year flood standards.

Just a few ideas. Members of Congress, feel free to make these your own.

My Stimulus Plan

I find it very unsettling watching how the government is working to put together a stimulus package to help us out of our economic rut.

While I think that everyone wants the result to be a kick-start to our economy, I can't find two people who agree on how it should be done.

My little brain thinks that having the government spend money is a good way. I think this for a couple of reasons.

First, the money gets spent. It flows into the hands of companies who will rebuild our infrastructure, provide for some number of new construction jobs and we'll be left with tangible output - better roads and bridges. We can all argue whether the roads and bridges are in bad enough shape to spend money on repairs, but given last year's infrastructure bell weather in Minneapolis, I say go ahead.

I think rebuilding schools isn't a bad use of the money either. After living through many local referendums on school repairs, expansion etc, this is a perennial area where local residents never agree on investing the money. Now might be a great time to shore up our crumbling educational infrastructure - how about wi-fi in every school classroom (after we fix the roof)?

I know nothing about Smart Grid technology. Sounds like a good idea (based upon its name alone). If computers can route energy across the country in a manner that uses it more efficiently, that sounds like a good idea to me. Give me one of those.

Investments in technologies to get us off gas and oil also seem smart for both environmental and security reasons. I would love to be alive on the day we no longer import any oil from foreign countries.

Heck, I'd also invest in re-supplying the military. By that I mean creating better up-armoured vehicles and equipment that works, just in case we actually have to go to war. Unlike Rumsfeld who says that you go to war with the army you've got, I'd actually like to see us become battle ready before we send our kids into harm's way. And while we're at it, let's build some more drones to keep pilots out of harms way. Maybe we could have these patrol our southern borders as well instead of posting border agents every 10 miles or so.

I'd also love to see us build/expand a national rail grid, so we can move goods more fuel efficiently across the country. As some recent rail ads point out, one can move an 18 wheeler's worth of goods 425 miles on one gallon of fuel, when done by rail. Along with improved rail, we'd need improved distribution centers - operated like Asian ports. Instead of box cars, most rail cars would be flatbeds with stacked containers, easily picked and placed on local trucks for transportation to their final destination.

Spending money to migrate our health care system to computer based records and spending money on migrating all of government as well, could save us tons of costs in the future.

I'd also invest in upgrading radar and ground traffic control at every major airport in the country. Much of this infrastructure is well past it's end of life and frankly, many of us are living on borrowed time, when we hope that plane to warmer climates. Perhaps we can create a few jobs by having people scare away the birds from the end of our runways, while we're at it!

How about developing a foolproof voting system, that provides for electronic vote counting and two printed receipts - one which can be placed in a ballot box (in case of electronic failure) and one which the voter can take home as proof of who they voted for. Then perhaps the greatest democracy on earth wouldn't be held hostage to poor printing practices (butterfly ballots), sloppy handwriting, hanging chads or poor mail delivery for absentee ballots. Then force every state to use the same process (at least for federal elections).

Develop a foolproof, tamper evident identity card that would reference a database, that would contain your photo, name, birth date, blood type, DNA, fingerprint and retina scan information. People could voluntarily sign up for this card and optionally tie it's use to credit card or debit card usage. So, when someone steals your credit card, when scanned, the user might be forced to validate the transaction with a fingerprint, or be denied. It's not perfect, but it could help with fraud and identify theft. Oh - and perhaps it could be tied to a trusted traveller program, that would allow vetted people carrying this card, to bypass security at airports.

I'd also fund or subsidize converting taxi's, buses and short haul delivery vehicles to more eco-friendly fuels or perhaps electric.

While it's definitely not a short term investment, build a nuclear power plant or two. Migrate away from coal powered plants. In Europe, they've found ways to recycle spent fuel rods and we should look towards any energy generation that doesn't put crap into the air. By the way, regardless of what those folks in Kentucky tell you, there's no such thing as Clean Coal. What doesn't get spewed into the air generates coal ash, which as we've recently witnessed, is pretty nasty stuff. Nothing like having heavy metals in your drinking water.

Tomorrow. Stimulus I wouldn't do.

Stop Reinventing the Wheel

I read with some interest today that Wisconsin lawmakers are thinking about legislation to help curb our Drinking and Driving epidemic.

As usual, our representatives are trying to reinvent the wheel.

If anyone is serious about reducing this problem, it simply requires stiff penalties and strict enforcement.

Want to see how it's done north of the border?

Clever Mashup

Occasionally, I watch morning news shows, a part of which involves the hosts holding up the front pages of the New York and Washington newspapers and calling out the headlines.

Here's a far better method of determining what's going on.

It's called newseum.

A clever mashup of newspaper headlines and google maps showing the hometowns of the newspapers.


Photo credit: www.artsjournal.com/bookdaddy/2008/07/

Our Newsletter Debate

We had a brief debate last week on the value of printed newsletters. We've done them forever and in fact also do "scaled down" (best of) electronic versions as well.

Being the stubborn minded person I am, my "inner-geek" was arguing for the demise of our printed Newsletter.

This morning, over a cup of coffee I decided to list the reasons why printed newsletters should die out.

Here they are:

1. Printed Newsletters are not "green". Even when printed on recycled paper, they still require lots of energy to print and distribute and end up having to be recycled by the recipient or worse yet, end up in a landfill.

2. Printed Newsletters have no direct and easy opt-out feature. Most don't contain any information on how to stop them from being sent and if they do, most customers find it easier to simply throw it out every time it comes.

3. With a printed newsletter, it is impossible to tell if your message is being read. If you can't measure the effectiveness of the campaign, why are you continuing it?

4. Printed media does not easily support a dialogue. With an electronic version, you can contain an email reply link. Best you can do with a printed version is supply a phone number or an email address. But if the person reading your message in print form isn't close to a computer at the time, you might lose out on that idea because of immediacy. Electronic versions have the advantage of being read on a computer where a reply is only a click away. (Advocates of the printed form would argue that being able to read it away from a computer is an advantage.)

5. Production cost is much higher with printed media. At our work we take a day or two to generate mailing lists, then coordinate getting the Newsletter printed, addressed and mailed. The entire effort involves three or four internal people, plus two outside vendors. The timeline is measured in days. With email newsletters, your list is already available. Your aren't restricted to a specific number of Newsletters (budget constraints) and once the content is generated, you're good to go. Time, from conception to delivery is measured in hours, not days.

6. Cost of list cleaning is far higher with printed newsletters. You have to pay for return receipt, then manually update your database. The electronic counterpart is a bounce back email address, which can be removed/corrected quickly without the cost of returned postage.

7. Printed Newsletters contain only static content, print and images, whereas their electronic counterparts can contain audio and video as well as dynamic links to other resources and websites.

8. Electronic versions can be short articles, with links to more comprehensive stories. I argue that this offers an advantage to both the reader and the producer. The electronic format isn't limited by page size, whereas a 4 page newsletter is just that. And the electronic content can easily be re-purposed on websites, microsites, blogs and video channels.

So these are my arguments for killing off the printed newsletter. But all marketing departments should be aware that regardless of Newsletter format;

1. If the content isn't compelling, educational or of interest to your reader, don't bother with EITHER format.
2. And if your reader hasn't asked to receive your newsletter, you're creating spam.

Want further proof? Check out Seth Godin's post on permission marketing.

Cloud Computing for Small Business

This recent article at ReadWriteWeb concludes that small businesses are clueless about cloud computing.

I'm not sure that's true.

I work in a small business and know about cloud computing. We don't take advantage of it for a variety of reasons. (Full disclosure, we have an internal I.T. staff.)

We do have some of our services hosted in the cloud. Our website and a company extranet are both externally hosted (at different locations). At one point we even toyed with having Exchange hosted.

When it comes to our proprietary data, our small business has a couple of concerns

1. Privacy of the customer data on a hosted service. For the most part this is simply a concern that once you leave the data under the care of others, how can you be absolutely positively sure that no one else can see it? It's a trust issue.

2. As a small business owner, one always thinks about vendor contracts. What happens if I'm unsatisfied? What if I want my data back? How easy is it to move to another hosting service?

3. Finally, once you've outsourced your I.T. it's difficult to bring it back in house. This is usually a one way decision and for a number of small business owners, one they don't want to be locked into. For very small businesses, the decision is probably much easier.

4. Hosting companies need to make it easier for business owners to commit. They're used to marketing to I.T. types and need to start speaking business people language. Put together bundled packages for the 10 person company, the 100 person company and the 250 person company. Charge a base rate for email, a website, a virtualized application server and 500 Gb of disc space, then charge a per user/month maintenance/support/management fee. Even offer to host/manage their IP phones.

My advice to Rackspace (and others)? Think about marketing your services in a different way.

Getting More LinkedIn

Not a paid advertisement!

As more and more colleagues are looking for new positions, I'm advising them to develop their business networks, since more than likely, their next opportunity will come from someone within their network.

I've been a member at LinkedIn for over a year, and today just discovered that it has become a much more powerful tool with which to market yourself.

Watch:



Like most application users, I typically use about 10% of the features of any application. Until yesterday, I used LinkedIn to post basic profile information only. I added a few contats and requested a few introductions. That was pretty much it.

I plan on adding the blog webpart into my profile and plan on playing with other features as well. I'd encourage anyone who's serious about building an online profile to check these features out.

Let me know what works for you and what doesn't!

How to Stop a Knowledge Leak.

Jason Rothbart at ReadWriteWeb has an interesting perspective on the effect that workforce reductions have with respect to the body of Corporate knowledge.

And some ideas as to what you can do to prevent corporate knowledge from walking out the door.

The Cost of Getting on the Same Page

It may surprise you to realize that the biggest part of any ERP project budget (in many cases 50% or more, of the total) is devoted to knowledge management - the extraction and migration of information between your implementation team, your consultants and your business community.

In the Planning phase, your team helps the consultants understand the business opportunities and challenges, the current processes, the desired future state and the (potentially new) organizational design.

Next comes the Design phase, where the process overviews are developed to make sure that the new processes meet critical business requirements. The users provide feedback to the consultants and your team to solidify the new design.

The consultants then Build (configure) the system and perform knowledge transfer (showing your team what they're doing and why).

During Testing, your team then uncovers data, security, work flow, reporting and transaction processing bugs within the configuration and communicates these issues to the consultants.

Once the system is stable and reliable, your team devotes several weeks to system documentation, the development of training materials and the delivery of training in preparation for Implementation.

Throughout the effort, Project and business leaders are communicating the need for the new system, the expected benefits and how the new system will affect processes, tasks and the impact on the organization - all the Communication and Change Management tasks.

In some projects I've been involved in, the cost of all these knowledge management and transfer tasks is equivalent of funding four years' college tuition for 300 students! That is a LOT of money.

Networking for Life

I had lunch with a friend and former colleague this week. He's in the midst of a job transition (who isn't these days?) and we talked about the value of maintaining network contacts.

His career has included positions as Controller, General Management, Corporate Change Leader, I.T. Leadership, Global Sourcing and Supply Chain leadership. He's even worked in several countries.

He's a very organized individual and admitted that one of the ways he stayed organized as he rose from position to position, was by doing an audit of his collection of business cards and culling those (for his successor) who no longer were relevant to his latest position.

I admit that I used to do the same.

These days it absolutely, positively, pays to stay connected. In this economy, no one's job is 100% secure and chances are, that if you need to search for another job, you'll land it as a result of your personal or business network. So, if you haven't explored any of the online business networking sites (LinkedIn, Plaxo as examples) it might be wise to do so.

It's easy to connect with past colleagues from previous companies, link to the same people you have in your Rolodex, our Outlook contact list. Begin to make it a habit, that when you meet someone and collect a business card, connect with them online as well.

Search out groups and communities of people in your field. Many of these are available to join right from your preferred networking site. Participate in these groups. Answer a few questions. Show off your expertise. Begin to think about developing your online reputation. Almost all HR professionals I know, now search online as part of their recruiting or candidate evaluation process. No longer are resumes enough.

Finally, don't be afraid to ask a friend or business associate for a recommendation. In most cases, they'll be more than happy to oblige.

These days expecially, it pays to be networking for life.

The Department of Homeland Vetting

I propose the creation of a new Government Department - the Department of Homeland Vetting.

Its sole purpose would be to conduct annual ethics audits of all those in powerful government positions. The department would closely look into

• Outstanding (delinquent) Tax Issues
• Pending or current personal litigation
• Immigration status of any personal staff
• Criminal convictions
• Lobbying ties and and significant business investments
• PAC Donations received
• Previous sexual harassment and/or discrimination claims
  

And if you didn't pass the annual vetting - you're OUT.

Am I the only one who's getting concerned about the very high average of nominees for cabinet positions and senate seats who can't seem to pass these tests? How many unpaid taxes and ethics violations are out there among the legislators who weren't considered?

In the past 2 weeks, Caroline Kennedy, Tim Geitner and now Tom Daschle have been caught up in vetting controversies, unrelated to political ideologies or competency.

And these are the people who are considered worthy of nomination!

Perhaps the DoHV should conduct an annual vetting of Congress, our Executive Branch, State Governors and State Legislators.

At least it might get them to pay their taxes on time!

If I get too many traffic tickets the government won't renew my driver's license. Yet we allow ethics violators and those who have long overdue income tax obligations to run our country.

And of course, it's not just Washington. Look no further than Wall St. for examples of private sector moral and ethical ineptitude.

Is it too much to demand that our leaders have an ethical compass?