Liquid Canuck

We're Moving!

2009-10-22T08:17:00.001-05:00

to a WordPress platform. Please check out the new blog design and re-subscribe to www.liquidcanuck.com.

I've migrated all the content from this blog to the new site.

Thanks everyone!

A Must See

2009-10-21T09:14:00.001-05:00

Yet another fantastic TED talk. Tip of the hat to Gene Wrights blog....

World of Mouth

2009-08-10T13:28:00.004-05:00

Thanks to Shannon for sending this along....

To Be Honest....

2009-07-25T08:14:00.002-05:00

I do a lot of writing at work - email, memos, general communication.

The other day my boss was reviewing something I'd written before we published it.

He was stopped dead in his tracks over the phrase "to be honest".

"Aren't we always honest?" he asked.

I had used it as a throwaway phrase without thinking much about it. I was sharing the fact that a change in company policy benefited both our employees and (to be honest) our company.

Perhaps I should have said "to be clear" or perhaps I should have discarded the phrase entirely.

To be honest (wink) I wrote it without thinking.

When writing, brevity and clarity matter.

Presentation to MSOE MBAs

2009-07-21T14:55:00.001-05:00

As requested, here's a copy of the presentation I gave last night at MSOE. Enjoy.

20 Ideas In 20 Minutes Rev5

View more presentations from guest5678bdcc.

Inertia is Expensive

2009-07-12T07:52:00.003-05:00

It's interesting how we take business services for granted. You hire a company to provide a service. They do a good job for you and the next year, raise their rates 3-5%. Year after year this practice continues.

Everyone is happy. Your payroll service or cleaning service or web conferencing service meets your needs. Where's the problem?

In business, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. We're pre-programmed to solve problems, to fix things, to make people, processes and products better. With this mindset, why would anyone take the time to look at non-problems?

Even if you see an opportunity to save some cash on these services, we usually do a mental accounting of the effort it would take to change suppliers and quickly decide in favor of the status quo.

After all, change is difficult and how would your company react to a change from a good (but expensive) vendor, if the change had some hiccups? Most of us would argue that the potential savings aren't worth the personal or business risk.

Your current vendors count on that. They provide good service and in return, take their incremental increases year after year.

The wild card in this arrangement is technology. New web based services change the game. They put more traditional businesses at risk, if their customers take the time to look. I'm not advocating that you should change out good vendors - just keep them honest.

Recently our company made a couple of calls to competing vendors only to find that we could be saving as much as 50% on some business services. During these challenging economic times, these savings can easily add up to real savings!

You don't have to change vendors - just keep them honest. If you discover huge potential savings, let your current supplier know that YOU are aware of the opportunity. You may be able to negotiate savings without changing suppliers.

Until you actually look, you'll never learn the lesson.

Inertia is expensive.

How to Get Customers - Simply

2009-06-06T09:40:00.001-05:00

After recently describing how to lose a customer in 3 easy steps, here's a refreshing post from the guys at 37signals, about how simple attracting customers can be.

How To Lose a Customer in 3 Easy Steps

2009-05-30T09:04:00.004-05:00

In the past 48 hours, a long time service provider to our company, lost our business. You too can easily shed customers if you follow their example.

1. Make it difficult for your customers to interact with you. Last week I spent 15 minutes navigating voicemail, automated attendants and then a "generic call center person" who wouldn't even give me the name of the salesperson I needed to speak to. Their response? "A salesperson will get back to you within the next 2 business days." Not good enough. Not in these economic times. Force customers to do business the way YOU want to, at your own peril.

2. Take your customers for granted. This whole saga began, because we happened to notice the amount of money we were spending to rent some equipment (a time clock). The payroll service had been in place for a decade (and was working acceptably) and so no one bothered to determine whether the service was still price competitive. Like many service providers, the pricing inched up year over year - not by a big enough margin to raise any flags, but over a decade, the pricing became significant. Because I could not get an answer to a very simple question about the pricing for the time clock (see #1 above) we began examining the pricing of the payroll service itself.

3. Ignore your competition. No one at our office can remember the last time anyone from the payroll service provider has ever contacted us. Their business model is geared toward a successful initial setup, then milking the processing fees until the customer wakes up and leaves. They count on the fact that their customers will be lulled into a state of apathy....until they aren't.

My call to a competitive payroll service was returned within 20 minutes. I had a quote on my desk within 90 minutes. Potential annual savings for the identical range of services was 5 figures.

A 10 year customer gone... in 90 minutes.

You too can achieve these amazing results by following these three easy steps!

Building Customer Communities

2009-05-05T06:00:00.002-05:00

Last week, I attended a three hour presentation on SharePoint functionality. it was sponsored by a local I.T. consulting company.

SharePoint, for those of you who don't know, is a Microsoft application platform that enables companies to easily communicate, collaborate, share documents and can act as a portal for basic information workflow. SharePoint, used well, helps companies share knowledge and execute better.

For several weeks prior to the seminar, the sales team were beating the bushes, trying to attract local companies to sign up - to invest a morning listening to their internal expert share knowledge about how SharePoint works.

For the most part, I enjoyed the presentation, but afterwards sent a note to my rep with some suggestions because it seemed ironic that a company purporting to be SharePoint experts weren't using their platform to share knowledge and build a community of potential customers!

The approach might have been - now that you have SharePoint, let us show you how to get your company to use it well and how to build a collaborative culture within your company. Instead, they invited a room full of geeks to show them features and functionality of the software, in the hopes that somewhere down the road, we might need some development help.

Why not help the geeks sell the idea of collaboration within their own companies and then drive consulting from the dozens of business people who want to collaborate more effectively or work more efficiently?

Why not build a community of people who want to collaborate by developing and hostin an attractive and useful SharePoint Community site to foster enthusiasm, share stories, share knowledge and attract potential customers from the millions of people who were not at the seminar?

My advice to our hosts? Stop the local lecturing and start building a global community! Find ways to help the geeks evangelize. Make it easy for their end users to quickly gather confidence in using the tools. Once end user creativity is unleashed, the development consulting opportunities will abound.

User Voice

2009-04-26T11:01:00.002-05:00

I've long been a fan of "voice of the customer" technology. I've blogged several time about Dell's IdeaStorm project, where customers get to suggest improvements to Dell's products and services and the customer community gets to "vote up or vote down" ideas submitted by the community.

I'm really excited by a brand new web service called User Voice. This web service easily allows any company to start up their own customer conversation. The service comes in several different "flavors". The feedback tab you now see on the left hand side of my blog, is an example of the free version.

I'll leave this tab here for several weeks and encourage any readers to post blog topic ideas of their own and vote on those ideas submitted by others.

The application is very easy to set and use.

The toughest part of the entire process will be for User Voice customers to summon up the courage to actually begin an honest conversation with their customers!

Interesting Googlism

2009-04-25T06:00:00.001-05:00

A talk with our Web stats provider revealed that now more than 50% of Google searches are unique and contain 4 to 6 words in the search string.

What this means is that not only does the "Long Tail" exist, it's thriving.

Recently we were trying to determine why our site visits were increasing, while our keyword rankings were staying relatively stable.

To test the theory, we tried a bunch of long tail searches for our products and found that our websites were always ranking at or near the top of the results pages.

We're blessed to have VOLUMES of well tagged information on our websites and blogs, but this little gem came as quite a surprise.

What did we learn?

Provide loads of valuable content (especially in blog form) and you'll be found on the web.

Buy the ink and we'll throw in the printer for (almost) Free

2009-04-24T06:00:00.002-05:00

My Dad doesn't know it yet but he's about to be a guest blogger. Here's an email I received from him yesterday...

Hi Guys,

Thought that I'd bring you up to date with my latest bargain.
My little HP printer ran out of black ink so I went to Zellers to get another black cartridge. It would have cost $30 but I went for the bargain -- both colour and black for $69. It doesn't sound like a bargain but they came with a Lexmark 5495 which will handle photos, scan, make copies and fax with its own built phone. It even has auto feed for copies etc.and slots for all the photo media sticks. It is amazing the extras they give away with their ink!

Dad

Bright, Bold and Ambitious

2009-04-16T08:27:00.004-05:00

I have always been a fan of big ideas and bold initiatives. I discovered Shai Agassi thanks to Garr Reynolds' blog Presentation Zen. Shai Agassi was incumbent CEO at SAP software (we won't hold that against him) when he discovered his new calling - ridding the world of it's dependence of oil for our transportation needs.

This is the kind of out of the box thinking that is bold, ambitious, and after listening to this TED presentation, entirely achievable.

I love great new ideas, clearly and passionately expressed. Shai Agassi doesn't disappoint.

Mixed Message

2009-04-10T08:24:00.002-05:00

I just received a webinar invite from Ziff Davis entitled "Can You Be Safe Without Vista?"

It's designed to promote the additional security features that the Vista operating system provides, but I'm not certain that's the message they are sending.

The problem is that the webinar is co-sponsored by Microsoft.

So, let me get this straight.

The very people who wrote the operating system you're likely still running (XP, for most of us) are telling their customers that our legacy operating systems, also written by Microsoft, aren't secure.

Imagine if GM sold you a crappy car, then invited you to an open house where they spoke about why you needed to purchase the newer model because the old one was so unsafe?

You wouldn't expect GM to close many sales.

Microsoft shouldn't either.

Sending and Receiving

2009-04-05T08:41:00.006-05:00

Back when I was Director of Marketing for a B2B catalog company, I constantly battled our Product Managers over the catalog content and layout. Let's call it having a "creative difference".

The product managers would always want to load up the copy with every conceivable benefit and feature. They were looking to make the presentation as comprehensive as possible - to cram their entire story on a quarter page.

Now don't get me wrong - attention to detail is a good thing. As long as all the work you're putting into sending the message is being received by the customer. If we were lucky, a customer might spend as much as two seconds looking at a product page. What really mattered in getting readers to linger, was great page layout design, a compelling headline and a fantastic photo.

Think about how you leaf through all the advertising that comes in the Sunday paper. Is it the compelling copy that gets your attention? Probably not.

Taking a day to tweak copy for a product that gets a fleeting glance may not be the best use of your time. Understanding that just because you send the message, doesn't mean it's being received as you'd like it to be.

Don't believe me? Take a look at this designer who radically improved newspaper circulation by dramatically improving it's design. Same columnists, editors, just a different design.

First, you need to capture attention. THEN, your message has a chance to be received.

New Rule

2009-04-04T07:13:00.002-05:00

In hommage to one of my favorite comedians, here's my New Rule:

New Rule: If you plaster my email inbox with advertising I have NOT asked for, you must stop it immediately if I opt out.

Kohl's has recently been sending me a ton of email advertising. I have opted out of this advertising several times. The note they display during the unsubscribe process is that it can take up to two weeks to actually take effect.

That's fine...

As long as Kohl's is okay with me shopping at your stores and leaving without paying, as long as I promise to come back in a couple of weeks or so to settle up.

Expectations

2009-04-01T07:42:00.003-05:00

Setting an expectation is a double edged sword.

On Saturday morning, if the paper isn't delivered, it can ruin the start of your day. We like predictible. Same is good.

A visit to your favorite restaurant, when the chef has an "off night" can wreck your evening.

Recently Seth Godin celebrated his 3000th blog post, IN A ROW. Daily, for almost a decade, he's been sharing his thoughts each morning.

For anyone, this is a Herculean feat.

Delivering fresh throughts on a daily basis, without missing a day is unheard of.

This morning, when I logged on and checked my RSS Feed reader, there was nothing from Seth.

He didn't meet my expectations. I was disappointed.

Now Seth didn't promise me that he would post every day. He never committed to posting before 7 am. In fact he made no representations whatsoever. But based upon his record of daily insightful posts, he set an expectation.

Or rather I "assumed" an expectation.

Today's post may arrive in my RSS Reader as I'm writing this, but it's already too late. I'm already feeling a little let down.

That's the trouble with fans. We're fanatical.

A Lesson in Change Management

2009-03-28T08:39:00.002-05:00

1. Don't berate those who think differently.
2. Don't criticize.
3. Show them a better way.

Liquidity

2009-03-27T06:38:00.001-05:00

Vocabulary Word of the Day:

LIQUIDITY

Definition: Liquidity is when you look at your retirement funds and wet your pants.

Messages to the Banks - Make Lemonade

2009-03-24T06:00:00.003-05:00

The U.S. Banking industry is missing a HUGE opportunity. At the moment they've circled the wagons, admitting no wrongdoing, protecting executive bonuses. For them it's business as usual - except for the fact that they're receiving HUGE bailout money (mine and yours).

America has turned sour on all things Financial. To us it represents greed, betrayal, recklessness and dysfunction.

It is a huge opportunity for the industry.

Imagine how well an entirely new strategy would work if just one banking CEO changed direction.

Here's how his press release might read:

America,

We at (insert Bank name here) would like to apologize for our part in the economic crisis in which America finds herself. Over the past decade our Bank has undertaken unacceptable risks in our mission to drive profits for our shareholders. Our compensation plans provided bonuses for those most successful at driving the very behavior that helped our nation into the crisis we now face.

We accept responsibility for our actions and from this day forward pledge a new beginning.

We are working hard to repair our balance sheets to balance our assets with our liabilities. We are movong away from a 35:1 debt/asset ratio and are working to achieve a very conservative 5:1 ratio. Our progress towards this goal will be monitored by independent 3rd party accounting firms in conjuction with the SEC and Fed. Today we are announcing a new policy of transparency, and will show each and every account holder how we intend to keep these promises.

We are announcing today that 30% of all future profits will be returned to the taxpayer until such time as the TARP money we have received is paid back. This may well take decades, but it is our commitment to every American, that we consider this money a loan.

Finally, we are addressing compensation. Our bonuses, if any, will be based upon both our profitability and our journey towards a conservatively structured, sustained balance sheet. Every customer of this Bank must be assured that their assets are safe and that all creditworthy customers have access to the capital they need to run their businesses and their lives.

If your current bank is NOT pledging similar response to this crisis, may we suggest that you open an account with us.

Together we'll forge a healthy and sustainable economic future for America.

Signed,

Joe Moneybags,
CEO
insert Bank name here.

America has a huge capacity for forgiveness. It's time that the Banks stepped up and admitted their mistakes and told America what THEY are going to do to fix things. I think for a "first mover", the rewards could be substantial.

Think About Corporate Newsletters This Way

2009-03-20T07:16:00.005-05:00

One of my favorite newsletters is McKinsey. Loads of great information. McKinsey offers free information to subscribers as well as a premium information to its members. For about $150 per year, I can become a premium member.

To those of us who haven't become premium members yet, McKinsey offers tantalizing articles to induce us to make the leap. They deliver relevant, compelling headlines with a teaser opening paragraph or two, as incentive to make the transition to membership. (I'm almost there.)

It got me thinking.

What if Marketing departments created Corporate Newsletters, that they actually had to sell? How would the content be changed? How might the headlines be written? How would they create more value for the customer?

Instead of an "I'm glad we published another one on time", perhaps we'd change our focus to "we got another 50 subscribers!"

After all, isn't that what we're shooting for?

Time=Money

2009-03-16T06:00:00.002-05:00

I've recently come to the realization that I spend the better part of each workday trying to accelerate things.

Working with people to:

Develop faster
Execute faster
Create faster
Innovate faster
Imagine faster
Decide faster

Perhaps, it's all based in the belief that time equals money. Perhaps it's because I'm an impatient guy.

If a team believes it will take a year to accomplish a goal, it will.

My job is to question those beliefs. And if I'm successful, my team will begin to question those beliefs as well.

And that's when things begin to happen faster.

S.W.A.T. Marketing

2009-03-14T06:00:00.005-05:00

Now I know what you're thinking. He must mean SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Marketing....

Not so fast.

I'm talking about SWAT Marketing.

The kind of Marketing that enables a company to go from marketing concept to reality in minutes and hours, instead of days and months.

Armed with ideas, a computer, a simple repeatable process,an easy to use web framework, and a video camera, yesterday our beloved marketing team put together a new website in under an hour.

Now it wasn't completely finished (from a content perspective). They never are. But it was available, crawlable, accessible, searchable in under 60 minutes. It wasn't PERFECT, but it WAS.

What used to take many meetings and many days discussion, lots of design (and re-design) to make perfect, our team now focuses on simply MAKING. Perfect can come with the additional content and refinements that will surely follow.

And by that time, our website will already have begun generating leads.

Just like the last one did.

Happy 20th Birthday WWW!

2009-03-13T09:32:00.001-05:00

The guy who invented the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, tells you what's next.

Cleaning Up Shopping Carts

2009-03-13T07:21:00.001-05:00

photo
Originally uploaded by dbw53022

Yesterday I heard a great story from our Sales Manager. He recently visited an Apple store, looking to purchase an iMac. Now they didn't have the keyboard that he wanted so it was recommended that he order online.

While at the store, he placed his order into an online shopping cart, but before actually purchasing the computer, decided to wait a few days to make the decision.

And so he abandoned his shopping cart. We've all done it.

And usually that's the end of the story.

But not in this case.

Withn 24 hours someone from Apple, whose job it is to "collect the carts" called him and asked how they might help complete the transaction. After a brief discussion, the Apple rep identified a marketing discount program that my colleague qualified for.

Within the span of a ten minute conversation, the transaction was completed. What began as an unfulfilled shopping expedition, ended as a transaction.

Now the moral of the story isn't to suggest you go online shopping and intentionally abandon your shopping cart. It's to point out that
with a little extra effort, you can capture "lost" business.

Cleaning up those shopping carts, is just ONE way.

We are all Rube Goldbergs Now.

2009-03-09T06:00:00.009-05:00

This site is dedicated to the spirit of Rube Goldberg - the inventor of complicated, whimsical machines designed to do simple tasks.

The spirit of these inventions are to join together simple machine interactions in an interesting way, to achieve the desired result.

Nowadays, software services enable us all to become Rube Goldberg.

Using off the shelf capabilities, I recently used my iPhone to take a picture, upload it to Flickr, then blog about it on one of my Blogger accounts.

All in minutes. All for free.

The recipe ingredients are:
1. Download the (free) FlickIt application to your iPhone.
2. Link your FlickR account to your blog (takes just seconds).
3. Take a picture with your iPhone.
4. Upload to FlickR.
5. Use "Blog This" functionality on FlickR to post a blog entry on Blogger.

Voila!

The point of all this is that every day, new software services and capabilities are being created by talented developers. It is up to each of us to put together the pieces and work (or play) more efficiently.

This is an exciting time. Stay on the lookout for new, cool capabilities and make Rube proud!

A Plug for Loft 8

2009-03-08T06:00:00.001-05:00

I just completed a short vacation to Florida with my brother and nephew. As frequent readers already know, my bro runs an Accounting firm in Ontario.

Whenever we get together, he usually brings along a little "swag" for the trip.

Typically he comes bearing logo golf balls, emblazoned with the name of his firm and with the instructions - Dave, when you lose these, it had better be logo side up, in the short ruff.

This year he came bearing a golf shirt, from Loft 8, emblazoned with his company logo.

Now I have a closet full of shirts bearing the logos of companies I've conducted business with. They never get worn. They sit at the back of the closet, never seeing the light of day. As a marketing vehicle, they fall short, in that the sponsor's name is never displayed in public.

My Loft 8 shirt will be the exception. Swag is meant to be seen. And in the case of logo clothing, if it isn't worn, it isn't working.

It is the most comfortable golf shirt I own.

In these tough economic times, every Marketing investment should have a payback. If you purchase golf shirts to hand out to business associates, consider Loft 8.

They'll be worn.

They'll be seen.

End of endorsement.

Crappy Pretzels. Cheap Airline.

2009-03-07T09:21:00.002-06:00

Pretzels
Originally uploaded by dbw53022

Every once in a while I notice a tidbit of Marketing genius. For some reason, on my return flight from Florida, the crappy little snacks they hand out on the airlines caught my attention.

The label on the bag was brilliant.

"How to Eat Gourmet Pretzels on a Low Fare Airline."

Instead of reminding each passenger of the crappy snacks that they receive on each flight, the labelling served to enforce the fact that our fares were likely lower than the cost to drive the trip.

They took the tongue in cheek approach, reminding people how inexpensive their trip really was.

So instead of a complaint. They got a smile. (At least from me.).

The 18 Hole Interview

2009-02-28T06:34:00.005-06:00

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

2009-02-27T07:17:00.003-06:00

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

2009-02-26T06:06:00.002-06:00

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

2009-02-25T06:00:00.003-06:00

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

2009-02-24T06:00:00.000-06:00

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

2009-02-23T06:03:00.004-06:00

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

2009-02-22T08:20:00.001-06:00

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

Enjoy.

The Generic Curse

2009-02-22T05:40:00.000-06:00

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.

2009-02-21T06:00:00.002-06:00

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

2009-02-20T05:21:00.001-06:00

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

2009-02-19T05:03:00.004-06:00

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

2009-02-18T06:00:00.001-06:00

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

2009-02-17T06:00:00.002-06:00

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

2009-02-16T06:00:00.000-06:00

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

2009-02-15T07:55:00.005-06:00

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

2009-02-14T06:00:00.000-06:00

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?

2009-02-13T05:47:00.000-06:00

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

2009-02-12T05:23:00.000-06:00

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?

2009-02-11T06:00:00.000-06:00

There were twenty ways to improve laptop battery life?

Anybody have any other suggestions?

My Stimulus Plan - Part 2

2009-02-10T06:00:00.001-06:00

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

2009-02-09T06:00:00.001-06:00

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

2009-02-08T10:08:00.002-06:00

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

2009-02-08T06:00:00.001-06:00

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

2009-02-07T07:33:00.004-06:00

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;

If the content isn't compelling, educational or of interest to your reader, don't bother with EITHER format.
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

2009-02-06T06:00:00.003-06:00

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

2009-02-05T06:00:00.004-06:00

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.

2009-02-04T06:00:00.001-06:00

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

2009-02-03T06:00:00.001-06:00

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

2009-02-02T06:00:00.003-06:00

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

2009-02-01T06:00:00.003-06:00

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?

Amanda's Posse

2009-01-31T07:44:00.015-06:00

Meet Amanda (not her real name).

Daddy's little girl isn't just helping out with the chores. She's an archetype. On the surface, she's mimicking her parent's behavior helping to keep her home neat and clean.

Thirty years ago, the weight of the family vacuum cleaner would have prohibited her from doing it at all.

And sixty years ago, she'd be using a broom and dustpan (probably with unsatisfactory results).

But technology advancements are allowing her to accomplish tasks that once could only be done well) by those with far more practical experience.

Imagine how she'll change the way work gets done, once she hits the workforce. This interesting article at readwriteweb details how the generations are using the Web and related technologies.

Extrapolate some of the findings of this article to our little girl as she enters the workforce. On day 1, when most of us would be figuring out where the washrooms are, she'll arrive at work with

5,000 Facebook friends
A mobile phone with 1,000 contacts, 750 Productivity apps (and one click access to call all her Facebook friends)
A high degree of comfort with advanced web search techniques.
A practiced ability to multitask that's beyond our current comprehension, honed by more than a decade of handling many different text conversations at once.

She'll be able to research any problem quickly, find out how others have handled it, get opinions from experts and colleagues alike and do it without really having to think about it.

You won't just be hiring Amanda, you'll be hiring her posse.

Image credit: www.theblogfathers.com

Do you have a Hovercraft?

2009-01-25T06:53:00.003-06:00

I enjoy the recent Orbitz (the travel company, not the gum) commercial, where an average guy watering his yard is interrupted by a landing of the Orbitz Hovercraft.

The pilot emerges to hand the guy a refund check, because after he booked his flight, the prices dropped and he was entitled to a refund for the difference.

"Why didn't you just mail it?" the confused homeowner asks.

"Because we have a Hovercraft!" is the reply.

And so it got me thinking. How many work processes exist because they can?

Painfree Computing

2009-01-24T07:32:00.005-06:00

Next week, I'm starting an internal I.T. program called Painfree Computing.

It's designed to eliminate some of the causes of end user frustration. This is going to be a long journey, but in the end I know it'll be worth it.

Our eventual goal is standardization, standardization, standardization. And to accomplish that, we're going to have a LOT of conversations with our user community before we reach the promised land.

But our team needs a mindset change as well. We don't always make things as easy as we could for our users. Too often, processes which should be improved, are ignored and evolve into a "us vs. them" or "they should have known better" discussion. Unfortunately that doesn't prevent the problem from re-occurring.

Out team spends a good portion of our day looking at other business processes like quoting, order entry, field service, testing etc and while that's all good, we sometimes fail to see that we have operational improvement opportunity in our OWN backyard.

Over time, we'll take a look at the entire computing process from the time our users show up in the morning and hit the on button, to logoff at night. We're going to look for ways that boot time can be reduced, all custom applications will automatically be updated to the latest version, software suites will all be patched to the same (current) level, systems will be backed up automatically to the network, remote access will look, act and feel the same as if our users were in the office.

I.T. processes, like Bug fixes will contain workflow to automatically notify us when new bugs are reported by our user community and auto notify our users when they are fixed.

Stuff will just work.

At least that's the plan!

New Year's Resolution

2008-12-30T10:00:00.005-06:00

It's that time of year again...

Instead of vowing to lose weight, or exercise more, I've decided to take on a real challenge - to adopt the same attitude Randy Pausch had for the last year of his life.

He's an inspiration.

And if you haven't see Randy's last lecture...

Until We Meet Again....

2008-11-23T07:42:00.003-06:00

This week our company may have to bid farewell to a good customer of 25 years.

We don't want to. He's making us.

We believe we make some of the best products in our industry. (We're number 1, by long shot in all our markets). For one of our products, the "industry life expectancy" is about 15 years. No one services their product beyond that timeframe (except us, if we can still obtain original parts).

Our customer has been using our product for a decade longer than that.

Fact is, that it's time to replace, not to repair. The original replacement parts for the device were discontinued by our vendor almost ten years ago. There are no original replacement parts in existance.

In these trying economic times, our intrepid customer has found a third party supplier who will manufacture replacement parts (but for some strange reason won't install them). Instead he suggests that WE install 3rd party parts in OUR equipment.

For many reasons, this isn't a good idea.

1. We don't want to assume ANY liability for untested parts made by someone else.
2. We know the 3rd party vendor's quality on other parts (and they are inferior to ours).
3. They could potentially cause a cascade failure of other components.
4. We don't want to put our good reputation at risk.
5. Probably the best reason of all - we don't think the 3rd party parts will work and the customer could be throwing good money away.

It's like a patient arriving at the hospital with an artificial heart he purchased somewhere and asking YOU (the surgeon) to install it, so he can save some money.

Not very likely.

No logical argument will work. Our customer feels that he is being let down or worse yet, "forced" into making a replacement purchase - all because a third party competitor, unrealistically got his hopes up.

And so, it is with heavy heart that we say goodbye to our good customer - at least for now.

After he learns his lesson with our competition, I'm pretty sure, he'll be back.

Business Lessons from an old Sea Captain

2008-10-11T07:07:00.004-05:00

It's now time to develop next year's business plan. For many of us whose fiscal year coincides with the calendar year, the planning process begins in October and takes many weeks of negotiation before finally being agreed to.

This year is especially challenging. With the U.S. and World Economy in the tank, you can already hear the excuses from around the company.

"Next year, we'll be lucky to match this year's sales". And, if the naysayers win the argument, it will be a self fulfilling prophecy.

Because you'll be playing defense. You'll try not to lose orders to the competition, instead of winning orders. The "poor economy" excuse will be your emotional safety net. Your team will start rationalizing results against even poorer performers. We may suck - but not as badly as (insert competitor's name here).

In trying times, business leaders need to take a lesson from Sea Captains. In rough weather, experienced Mariners turn their ships into the waves. They take adversity head on. To do otherwise could result in being broadsided by a wave and risk capsizing the vessel.

This year we aren't making plans to protect this year's sales, we're making plans to grow them.

Our captain is steering the ship into the waves.

We're focusing on our opportunities around the world. We're adding to our sales team. We're improving our sales processes. We're mining for gold within our tremendous customer database. We're finding ways to improve and cement our relationships with key customers and partners.

We have all hands on deck.

And we'll survive the storm.

Light a Fire

2008-08-24T07:03:00.004-05:00

A friend of mine recently blogged about John Kotter's new book in which he discusses urgency in business. How do you get people to act with a sense of urgency?

I've also heard it described as "lighting a fire under someone".

That's a pretty apt description.

There are three conditions that must be present to start a fire. You need a combustible material, a source of ignition and oxygen.

In business, the combustible material is the talented employee who isn't listened to (or who doesn't speak up). The employee who knows what is wrong and knows what to do to fix the situation - but doesn't feel that they have a voice. They are frustrated that their efforts are being compromised by poor process or ineffective execution of the current process. They clearly see an opportunity to improve, but feel powerless to affect change. They are a tinderbox of great ideas.

The "spark" (ignition source) is the observant manager who identifies the employee and the opportunity - who listens to the idea and puts the wheels in motion to help bring the opportunity to life. Provide the tools to help effect change and empower the employee to get it done. The "spark" could be a small capital investment in equipment, tools or additional manpower. Give a motivated employee the tools to help effect change they believe in and watch what happens. Allow them to own the idea and to make it a success.

The final ingredient is oxygen. Think of this as providing "breathing space" to your employee to work their idea. Allow them to make some mistakes, adapt and succeed. Resist the temptation to jump in and "be a manager". Coach, mentor, encourage, suggest, but don't do. Allow your employee to succeed on their own terms.

Once your fire is lit, watch how brightly it burns.

And start looking for your next tinderbox.

Getting Things Done

2008-08-10T09:08:00.004-05:00

Thanks to Gene Wright who led me to this Robert Scoble and David Allen interview on Getting Things Done.

We've recently had some measure of success implementing a SharePoint intranet and I recognize that without planning it, we've managed to implement several of the steps that Dave Allen espouses to Getting Things Done.

Enjoy.

Hunters and Salesmen

2008-08-10T08:03:00.005-05:00

Fall is approaching and here in Wisconsin, that means deer hunting season isn't too far away.

I am not a hunter, so this may not make any sense to those of you who are. But to the untrained eye, it appears there are two different approaches to hunting. Some set up tree stands in (hopefully) great locations and wait for the deer to wander by.

Others trek off into the woods in search of deer - looking for signs of activity, (mating, feeding, tracks) until they find their prey.

Both approaches still require similar skill sets to be successful - a good eye, a steady hand on the trigger, in order to hit the target.

I think that salespeople have similar traits. Some set up shop (network heavily) and wait for the order referral or the new customer to call. Then, armed with great product knowledge and selling skills, they close the order.

Others "hunt" for sales. They work Trade Shows. They call leads. They cold call potential customers. They follow up on every quote. They beat the bushes for business until they find an opportunity, then they move in for the sale.

When the deer population is exploding, tree stands will be as productive a strategy as trekking through the woods in search of prey. But when the deer population starts to thin out, tree stands don't offer the same opportunities as one might get by honing our tracking skills.

In a slow economy, your salespeople better learn how to track prey, or risk going hungry.

Are you Essential?

2008-07-27T08:34:00.002-05:00

This is a question worth asking yourself periodically.

From time to time we're all guilty of getting into a rut at work - slogging through paperwork, handling routine requests. In most companies, what we do is necessary, but are we essential?

Essential implies belonging to the very nature of a thing and therefore being incapable of removal without destroying the thing itself or its character

What are you bringing to your job that no one else could? Attitude? Efficiency? Ideas? Execution? How vital are you to your company?

Would your fellow employees vote you to the company All Star team?

Better to ask (and answer) this question for yourself, than have someone ask it for you.

The Benefits of a Smaller Company

2008-07-27T06:39:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Seth Godin for posting a link to this video, which illustrates the problems of "group think" in larger companies. Not unlike Dilbert cartoons, this video parody struck a little too close to home.

It's what happens when the journey becomes the destination - when work activity trumps results.

Enjoy.

Waste

2008-07-04T06:31:00.003-05:00

I've been spending more and more of my time recently looking at reducing process waste.

Once you begin looking for waste, you begin to see it everywhere.

It's like buying a new car. You only notice how many other people are driving YOUR model after you've taken delivery!

In my search for waste (process improvement) I'm involved in departmental projects throughout the company. And I've discovered that my I.T. department is not immune.

If I could magically undo some of our previous practices, I'd start by reducing the I.T. peripheral "clutter".

No more dual monitors.
No more personal printers.
No more PC speakers.
Fewer docking stations.
No more projectors.

We've all heard the arguments FOR all this stuff. I need dual monitors for productivity enhancement. Really? How many more sales will you be delivering if I get you that second monitor? Will you be completing projects faster? How much faster? Will you communicate better? How will we measure this?

Once the first dual monitor shows up, its not productivity that spawns the next one and the next one. It's generally a status issue.

The same holds for personal printers. While everyone knows that printers are idle 99% of the time, it seems like everyone has to have one sitting on their desk. God forbid we should have to walk 30 feet to a high speed network printer!

Consider the walk a printing deterrent. Consider it part of the company health plan.

Sometimes the argument is that we need a personal printer for "sensitive" documents.

Print sensitive documents? As soon as a document is printed, you've virtually given up all security control, unless you immediately shred it or lock it away somewhere. Printing is about the LEAST secure activity you can do. Better to leave the document hidden or password protected on the network than to print it! And think of the waste!

1. Unique printer cartridges require you to keep a wide variety in stock or risk continually ordering unique replacements.
2. It means having to "learn" the quirks of several dozen printer types.
3. It means supplying paper. Filing paper. Shredding paper. Discarding paper. Waste. Waste. Waste.
4. Filing storage (cabinets, floor space, key control, archiving process, off site storage, archival rotation and destruction).

And don't get me started on PC speakers.

There are few things more annoying than listening to a cubemate's latest YouTube selection. These days we can all purchase headphones for less money and greater privacy!

Docking stations do serve a useful purpose - if the laptop travels frequently. But in many cases, docking stations are installed in case a person has to travel. A quick walk around our facility at the end of a workday will demonstrate the point. Laptops sitting in docking stations. Or docking stations allocated to people who seldom travel. And in our company if you have a personal PC at home, you don't need to take your laptop from work to get secure access to your business files.

I'm not immune to wasteful practices. We recently had a projector bulb fail. If you've ever had to replace one, you know they can be expensive - around $350. And they never seem to last as long as the manufacturer says they should. One of my guys asked me to consider a large flat screen TV/monitor. I prefer the resolution better. They install neatly on a wall and they have a longer life than projectors seem to. Larger up front investment (maybe) but better value over the life of the device.

I used to work for a manager who could tell how efficiently a company was run by the cleanliness and organisation of the warehouse. A neat and quiet warehouse indicated to him, that operations were well organized and efficient.

I take the same measure by walking around the office area and counting PC and network peripherals.

(Full disclosure: I may be a freak of nature. My desk is completely empty except for one small pile of papers (mostly handwritten notes to myself) and my laptop.

No docking station. No additional monitor. No personal printer. No in/out box).

It wasn't always that way for me. In previous positions I was comforted by the piles of paper, the unread industry magazines, the overflowing in box. It wasn't necessary. it was just a habit.

It's amazing how execution can improve when you strip away the "peripheral creature comforts".

And you'll enjoy the cost savings too.

Leadership Presentation

2008-06-25T13:09:00.001-05:00

I had the priviledge of speaking to a friend's MBA class recently. Here's the presentation I gave.

Capturing Tribal Knowledge

2008-06-23T07:58:00.004-05:00

Ancient civilizations passed along tribal knowledge in a variety of ways - through storytelling, apprenticeships, rites of passage.

Some documented their history and beliefs in hieroglyphs or cave drawings or in sculpture.

Rituals were extremely important.

In ancient times, sharing knowledge was essential for survival.

In modern times, it seems we've lost the habit of sharing. Perhaps we don't see it as essential to our survival anymore.

After all, if we want food, we go to the grocery store. Want it prepared? Go to the Drive Thru at McDonalds. If we need shelter, we rent an apartment or buy a house. Need transportation? There are a dozen car dealerships within 10 miles.

The price we pay for convenience, is that we've lost our skills at capturing tribal knowledge. Skills learned within business tend to stay in our heads. We aren't taught on the job anymore, we learn on the job. The wisdom of the skilled craftsman isn't shared like it once was.

And we're all the worse for it. As our population ages, many businesses are facing the growing threat of losing their "tribal knowledge". The most experienced employees, who have long contributed to the company's success through their individual contributions, have never bothered to share their knowledge with others. In some companies, sharing meant losing power, leverage or stature and so it was actually discouraged.

So how do we go about capturing our tribal knowledge?

Start by starting. Recognize the need. Conceptualize the business benefits. Make it a priority. Implement a sharing tool and develop a sharing culture. Position sharing as a win/win strategy rather than a zero sum game.

Corporate intranets have tried to serve this purpose, but many fall short. Intranets are used like the Yellow Pages. They're there if you need them. But many times they're like a one way street - a reference tool. True collaboration requires that everyone contribute to communal knowledge. Effective intranets facilitate a two way dialogue. Ideas are gleaned from every corner of the company and are surfaced for discussion and evaluation by all.

For some, this is a painful endeavor. Documenting ideas, participating in discussion boards, blogging are all time consuming efforts. It is so much easier to pick up the phone and tell someone your opinion. But the problem with this is the fact that you're telling someONE. This process is inefficient and in larger organizations, one to one communication is never captured in the collective conscience.

Here are a few suggestions to try to engage your team in capturing tribal knowledge.

Provide an intranet where everyone can contribute. Co-locate access to business applications, reporting tools, news and discussion.

Position your intranet as the "Town Square" - the intersection of all your company's activities - work, play, recognition (parades), initiatives and news.

Encourage people to visit. Where you used to communicate via mass email, instead, write a blog post and email the link. Instead of printing and distributing reports. Create a framework where project participants update tasks and projects in real time. Then make it easy for anyone in the company to be easily informed (custom email alerts, RSS feeds etc).

Develop rich, plentiful, interesting and essential content.

Avoid, where possible, content approval management routines. This places publishing burden on some individuals and discourages the capturing of spontaneous ideas.

Nurture, coax, encourage. You're trying to create a new corporate habit. It will take some time.

But the journey will be worth it!

Starters vs. Closers

2008-06-08T06:24:00.002-05:00

Are you a Starter or a Closer?

Starters

1. Arrive at work with no set goals for the day. You would like to get something done, but don't have a plan.
2. Spend most days adjusting to the time demands of others. Your agenda is set for you, not by you.
3. Typically have many tasks in progress at any one time. And they're ALL important.
4. Prefer to do things yourself, rather than delegate them, because others wouldn't do as good a job as you would (if you had the time).
5. Intentions are noble, but deadlines are frequently missed.
6. Always find the time to begin a new task, but can't find the time to complete an existing one.
7. Have difficulty saying "No" to others' demands.
8. Are more of a "go with the flow" person than someone who "makes waves".
9. Hold the belief that if you're putting in 40 (or more) hours of work, you're doing your job.
10. Tend to do more "gathering of information and reporting" than "doing".
11. Count meetings as "work" - even if they don't accomplish anything.
12. Spend a portion of every day explaining to others why something isn't done yet.
13. Tend to be an individual problem solver and tend to "reinvent the wheel".
14. Starters try to eat the whole elephant in one sitting. You see large projects as daunting, difficult and have difficulty breaking a project into smaller manageable tasks.

Closers

1. Arrive at work knowing exactly what needs to get done.
2. Are in control of their daily schedule - will refuse (or counter-propose) meetings if they jeopardize a deadline.
3. Are focused on a few important tasks and have the discipline to defer less important tasks.
4. Can effectively delegate tasks and get things accomplished with their team. They understand that even if the task might not be (initially) done to their standards, that providing a learning opportunity to a junior member of the team will both advance the completion of the task and better prepare your team for the next one.
5. Deadlines are personal. Making and meeting a commitment is very important to you. Your reputation is on the line.
6. Are comfortable with prioritizing and helping others understand the difference between important projects and urgent projects.
7. Can gracefully say No to a request (or Yes, but not until Task A,B and C are completed).
8. You measure your job performance in terms of tasks and projects completed, rather than time spent.
9. You understand that by focusing on completing Project tasks on time, that the overall Project deadlines (milestones) manage themselves.
10. You are selfish with your time. If you're invited to a meeting that doesn't have a specific objective you ask the organizer for the meeting objective or don't attend. Not all meetings are bad. Just the ones that don't accomplish anything.
11. You're focused on the future but working in the present. (How do I get this task finished to get on with the next one?)
12. You want to get to the answer quickly. Don't have a problem in asking for expert advice if it moves the project forward. It's the answer that's important, not who provides it.
13. You view projects as the sum of their tasks.

Ready, Set. Learn!

2008-05-31T15:34:00.005-05:00

Perhaps the most painful thing you can ask anyone to do is to document - a program, a process, training materials.

And we'll find any excuse NOT to do it.

Well, we're piloting a program at work these days which seems to be working pretty well. We've stopped writing training documentation in many cases.

And we've started creating instructional videos.

With a free downloaded program called Jing, creating short instructional videos is quick, easy and fun. Jing captures video from any portion of your computer screen, and along with audio narration, you create flash videos in real time. Once completed, the videos can be stored on your PC or server or (for free) at Jing's site.

We accumulate, meta tag and store all our training videos on our SharePoint intranet.

We're building up quite a library. And avoiding that painful exercise of creating volumes of documentation that no one ever reads.

The second thing we're doing is certifying our users on computer functions, before granting permanent rights. Recently we put some staff through certification on the customer and contact merge function on Goldmine CRM software. Only after each of our users had successfully performed data cleanup (on some of their own accounts), were additional rights granted.

And of course, we documented the process with Jing.

Forget Leadership. Give me Gumption!

2008-05-25T08:43:00.005-05:00

There's a great old fashioned word that sums up what many managers look for in their employees.

This noun is rarely (if ever) mentioned in the halls of Business Schools. It never appears in best selling business books. It doesn't appear in the pages of Forbes or on any of the financial news networks.

The word is so old, that arguably it is out of style. And that word is: gumption.

For those of you not old enough to know what it means;

n. Informal.
1. Boldness of enterprise; initiative or aggressiveness.
2. Guts; spunk.
3. Common sense.

Perhaps it's time to reintroduce the word into our business lexicon. I want to work with people who have gumption. I like initiative, courage, common sense - that sense of individual vitality that for the most part is missing from many organizations.

And yet, aren't the people who are most valued withn your company those that have gumption?

But we don't talk about it much. We chose words like leadership (evoking images of George Washington in the bow of a boat crossing the Delaware River) or of Braveheart leading his followers into battle. For most, leadership seems daunting, unattainable - too lofty an ambition. And so, many of our employees don't aspire to be leaders.

Perhaps our organizational development efforts would have better results if we stopped trying to create leaders and started to encourage gumption.

Because gumption is within anyone's grasp.

Photo credit

Secret Weapons

2008-05-17T06:22:00.004-05:00

I am working with several business teams at the moment.

I am not a subject matter expert. In fact I know very little about the topics at hand. And part of my job is to help these teams function more effectively. Even though I don't know much about the subject matter, I do have two very powerful weapons on my side.

Ignorance and enthusiasm.

I'm not pushing any agenda. I'm not encumbered by "why the way things are" (or aren't). I hold no bias against any of the individuals on the team. I simply want to know more about the topic and how we're trying to get better.

And so I ask questions. LOTS of questions. And I listen to the answers. And I observe how the team interacts. And generally, I'm impressed. In fact, most times I discover a talented group of people who can be performing at a higher level. They just don't realize how good they can be, nor do they know how to get there.

But I see it.

And that feeds my second secret weapon.

Enthusiasm.

I'm typically a "glass 3/4 full" guy. I look at why we will be successful - not come up with the reasons we won't be. The reason is simple survial. If you think you'll fail, you will. Don't even begin. Will there be challenges? roadblocks? bumps in the road? Sure there will. But we'll work through them.

We will make mistakes? YES.

But we'll learn from them.

My favorite phrases (and they almost ALWAYS come up during initial team meetings) is; "The company doesn't do that." "Or the company won't allow us to try that".

To which I reply; "WE ARE THE COMPANY!"

The only thing holding us back is US.

As long as we view "the company" as an invisible deterrent, we feel powerless. Once we realize that WE are empowered to address issues, it can unleash pent up creativity, energy, encourage change and achieve some amazing results.

4 Powerful Words

2008-05-11T08:59:00.003-05:00

I was out for dinner with friends last night. Sid spent some time talking about his former boss who had just moved on to another company. His work experience over the past two years has been frustrating. Sid has well over twenty years experience in HR - mostly within the Organizational Development space.

He was hired for his experience.

He was hired for his expertise.

And in two years, his boss never once asked the question: "What do you think?"

I'm sure the irony was lost on his boss. Organizational Development is designed to improve the performance of individuals across the organization. Much of the time it means finding a way to allow everyone to contribute at a higher level. It means nurturing individuals' commitment to people, projects, strategies, operations, customers...

And all that starts by asking the question: "What do you think?".

Because until you're willing to ask the question (and listen to the answer), you're not going to organizationally develop anything.

Engagement begins with engaging.

Until you're ready to give people resonsibilities instead of defining jobs, you're not ready for Organization Development. Don't even start.

Because giving people responsibilities, means giving them a say. It means allowing them the freedom to achieve, to excel (and to fail and to learn and to grow).

Marketing vs. Leadership

2008-05-04T07:47:00.005-05:00

Seth Godin's blog today is about Marketing. No big surprise, that's what he does. Today he talks about "the four words". Here's an excerpt.

Four words:
Make big promises; overdeliver.
If you can define great marketing in fewer words than that, you win.
"Big promises": treating people with respect, improving self-esteem, delivering results, contacting as often as you say you will but not more, including side effects in your planning, delivering joy, meeting spec, being on time, connecting people to one another, delivering consistency, offering value and on and on. Caring.

As I read this, I wondered aloud whether there was any difference in this approach to Marketing and a thoughtful approach to Leadership.

Better Together

2008-04-27T07:44:00.005-05:00

In the last couple of weeks I've had a chance to reacquaint myself with a couple of great local I.T. vendors. They're helping us craft a Disaster Recovery strategy.

For larger companies this is relatively easy. Just throw gobs of money, time and resources at the problem and away you go. It's actually easier to justify DR in a larger business environment than in a smaller one - even though the predictable outcome of NOT having a recovery plan is the same. (I've had to do both.)

For privately held firms or smaller public firms, "DR on a budget" is a lofty challenge. Duplicating a server rack at another site is expensive. Having all your applications hosted at a 3rd party data center is expensive. There has to be a better alternative.

This week, a couple of local vendors are really stepping up. Our shop is thinking about virtualizing our servers - both for the daily benefit of leveraging unused processing power and because we can take a "snapshot" of the virtualized servers to shorten recovery time in the event of a disaster.

Virtualizing servers effectively separates applications from hardware, allowing the applications to be easily transported and recovered into another virtualized environment very quickly.

Think of it this way.

Circa 1950, every office Manager had their own secretary to do typing. One Manager. One secretary. Sometimes the secretary was overwhelmed with work and sometimes there was no work to do. Then someone came up with a different idea.

By introducing "typing pools", a group of secretaries were organized to handle the typing needs of a group of Managers. In this way, no single secretary got overwhelmed with work.

Server virtualization works the same way. Most servers are responsible for one main application or service. By pooling processing power across applications, we can make better use of our servers.

Well, once we get our servers virtualized, we benefit on a daily basis. But, in the event of a disaster, where can we recover? We're all set to go. We have snapshot tape backups of our virtual servers in hand.

Now what?

Well, it turns out that there are NOT a whole lot of great options for small business. If we want to recover our data at a hosted site, we need to rent the site as if we were using it every day. This option is way too expensive (or we'd already be doing it).

So the way I see it, we've just uncovered a business opportunity for our vendors. And to our vendors' credit, they see it too. So now, they're trying to figure out how they might host DR services for small business. The idea would be to setup a series of virtual servers in their data center, then contract to several companies for the same recovery space to cover their equipment costs. And voila! An affordable DR solution for smaller businesses.

Companies like SunGuard and IBM have been doing this for years for big companies. Now it's time that someone offered the same protection for smaller business - at prices that smaller businesses can afford.

The lesson here, is that some customers simply invite their vendors into the office to be beaten up on price. Smarter customers take a look for opportunities where both customer and vendor can be better together.

There are almost always win/win outcomes, if everyone is willing to look for them.

The "Magic" of Getting Things Done

2008-04-19T06:37:00.004-05:00

I am continually amazed at how often people fail to demonstrate the ability to "get stuff done".

Some call it a failure of leadership. Some say it's due to a lack of organization. Or maybe it's simply poor implementation skills. Or a lack of a coherent strategic vision.

Truth is, it could be any (or all) of these things.

I am not an expert, but I have learned a few things over the years.

The first, is. If you have ten #1 priorities, you don't have any priorities at all. You simply have a list. And the problem with an unprioritized big list, is that it allows those responsible for the list to "touch" each task, without ever moving any single one forward significantly. The "overhead" it takes to juggle ten initiatives soaks up valuable time you could be spending on completing a task.

So, prioritize. If necessary, trim the list to a few key items. The rest can wait. Truth is, you're not making much progress on them anyway, so where's the harm?

The second rule is to assign ownership to each task. If a "team" is responsible for the completion of a task, no ONE person owns the outcome. And so each team member gains comfort in the thought that a lack of progress is probably someone else's fault.

Thirdly, ask yourself, "Have I engaged the right resources?" For example, if you're undertaking a revamp of your Job Costing processes, do you include shop floor supervisors who collect and assign labor costs? Is purchasing involved? Receiving? Accounting? Do you need someone from payroll to verify that labor hours assigned to jobs balance to payroll hours? Identifying all the process "touch points" and securing the involvement of expertise from all areas, is a basic requirement to move forward in any substantive way.

Fourth, "paint the picture". Help your team understand why this initiative is a priority. Paint the picture of what the future process might look like - what the business benefits of improvement are. Establish buy-in from the team. Remember that these people already have full time jobs. Just because they're on your team doesn't mean you have their support or buy-in. At the end of the day, each participant should be able to understand "what's in it for me?"

Fifth, parse the project. Large change initiatives are scary and daunting. If you can break up your project into manageable and easily understood milestones, you improve team understanding of each task and can easily measure progress. I always think of the old joke: How do you eat an elephant? (Answer: One bite at a time.)

Sixth. Spend your time executing the tasks, not managing the project. Use tools that allow for simple collaboration and project updating (SharePoint, Basecamp, Google Docs) - whatever works for you. This will allow you less time in meeting updates and more time to address issues and make decisions.

Careful observers of these rules will have, by now, understood the "magic" of getting things done. Design your project by providing answers to the questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How?

The Power of Tempo

2008-04-13T06:31:00.004-05:00

I've always struggled to restrain my internal "sense of urgency". In business, my personal bias has always been toward action. And lots of it.

Some may argue that my approach resembled; "Ready, Fire, Aim!".

I think that's a typical response to someone who really wants to see things happen quickly. The reaction is "Not so fast!" or "We're being too reckless!" The danger in eliciting these responses is that it creates the opposite effect.

Instead of increasing the pace of work, people "dig their heels in" and resist, rather than getting on board and fast tracking a solution.

The business challenge works just like a Chinese finger puzzle. When you insert your fingers in each end of the tiny tube and then try to pull your fingers free, the puzzle grips your fingers more tightly. What seems like an obvious solution to the puzzle is the wrong one.

I've learned a more effective approach is to gently increase the tempo of work. Think of it like a metronome. By gradually increasing the tempo over time, your team will work at an improved pace - something they might have resisted, had you attempted the increase in one big jump.

Try breaking the habit of weekly progress meetings. It's very easy to fall into the trap of meeting on a regularly scheduled basis. Sure, meeting every Friday at 9am is easy to remember, but it imposes a certain pace on the project.

So break the habit.

Try meeting on Mondays and Thursdays. Set the unconscious expectation that the same work will happen before each meeting. What was once a ten week project, becomes a five week project. Simply meeting more frequently to report on progress, sets the expectation that progress should be made.

You begin to break that old college habit of starting the term paper the night before it's due. With weekly business meetings, the work usually gets done the night (or hour!) before the meeting.

Increasing the meeting frequency also allows you more frequent opportunities to reset expectations.

"Guys, it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to BE!"

Let's get our prototype up and running, set the right expectations with our internal customers (let them know it's a prototype), allow people to use it. Then improve it.

Our goal is to make version 2 bug free. Let's not try to architect perfection. Let's built it based on user/customer experience.

The longer term benefit of increasing the pace and NOT trying for perfection, is that you begin to develop a learning organization. Expect some mistakes and begin to see them as improvement opportunities. "Blame" is expunged from your team vocabulary. And as the rapid prototype mindset takes hold, you begin to see other incremental improvement opportunities in every process you use.

By looking at each opportunity as a challenge to improve through "tweaks" and multiple iterations, you slowly empower your team to identify opportunities on their own. Not all changes have to come as a result of a big project. Teams can make a big impact my making incremental progress on lots of smaller projects too.

Finally, remember that Teams Win and Coaches fail. If the result of one of your accelerated projects is less than expected. Take the heat for your team. If you're asking them to take a risk by developing 90% solutions, you had better provide "cover" for them. And when the team has success, give them ALL the credit.

I think you'll be pleased with the results.

Here are the Cliff notes:

1. Gently increase the tempo.

2. Aim for a 90% solution.

3. Pilot and improve.

4. Migrate to a learning organization.

5. Take the heat, when necessary.

Your Call is Being Monitored for Quality Assurance Purposes...

2008-04-03T07:23:00.004-05:00

How often have you called a large service organization, only to be greeted by an automated system, which declares that your call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes, before connecting you to a real live human being?

I think it happens all the time.

I have a question.

If my call is being monitored for quality assurance, how come the service is so crappy?

I think that this recording must be a standard feature on big call center phone switches. You can turn it on and try to make believe you're serious about providing a great customer service experience.

Or you can actually provide the great customer service experience.

Your customers know the difference. Do you?

Because if you are really monitoring the calls, and reps aren't able to answer customer questions, you may be inadvertently saying "We're monitoring our customer service. And this is the best we can do".

So try turning off the feature. Sit beside your reps and coach them. Spend time with your new call center reps and demonstrate your company's service standards.

Set the bar high.

Sometimes using less technology yields better results.

The Paper Herd

2008-03-24T06:52:00.005-05:00

It was only recently that I've come to notice the herding instincts of paper.

Almost as soon as it comes through the network or desktop printer, it seems to search out others of it's kind.

Printing on paper, is just usually the first step in a long process of non value adding activities that seem to attach themselves to that innocent, first piece of printed paper.

Once it's printed, then

it is collected from the printer
it's fastened, sorted, stapled, folded
it is physically transported around the office
it waits in in-boxes for work to be done to it,
in a serial process (only one person can work on the piece of paper at a time), then
it is wrapped in a file folder
which is stored in a file cabinet
which is contained within a file room, where
it's retention must be managed, after which,
it is stored in an offsite facility, where
it is utimately shredded, discarded or recycled.

So much non value adding activity surrounds EACH piece of printed paper, that one wonders why we haven't tried harder to achieve the "paperless office".

Are our customers really willing to pay for all of this? I don't think so.

I think the reason is, I.T. guys like myself, push paperless technology, rather than making a case that printing paper launches a series of non-value adding activities that are really expensive in aggregate.

What we failed to do, was make the cost benefits case.

Businesses understand costs pretty well. And if they are to change behaviors (like printing), there had better be a good reason for it.

Want to go paperless? Try demonstrating the herding nature of paper to your company.

The Journey to Lean and Agile

2008-03-21T07:57:00.006-05:00

When you search Google for images using the keyword "Agility", Google returns tons of pictures like the one at the left.

Lots of dogs running through obstacle courses. The other general image is of athletes running a tire drill.

What the search doesn't return are pictures of businesses or processes.

Perhaps it's difficult to convey the concept of an agile process or an agile business in an image.

Or perhaps, examples are difficult to find.

I'm currently doing some work for a family owned manufacturing company who want to investigate lean manufacturing. Like every business that has contemplated change, the potential rewards (less waste, faster processes, less process cost) will be challenged by past success (always been profitable) and a stable long term workforce, who have always done things the same way.

It's a classic struggle - one that EVERY company goes through.

Judging by the fully booked schedules of the Lean Process consulting companies, our company is not alone in the desire to be lean.

(Aside: If you're a consulting company who claims to be an expert in Lean Processes and can't find a way to return a customer call, perhaps your processes need improving?)

The journey will be exciting, scary and hopefully beneficial. Over the course of the next few months I'll document our progress, challenges and successes and perhaps we can share learning experiences along the way.

Culture = CASH

2008-03-15T10:00:00.002-05:00

Can you imagine working at a company, where one of the products you sell, is a book written by employees about what their customer service culture means to them?

Sounds outlandish!

Sounds like online shoe retailer, Zappos.

Tip of the hat to 37signals blog for including a link to a summary of Zappo's presentation at the SXSW conference. And if you want to see the accompanying slideshow, click here.

Great lessons in E-Commerce, outlandish Customer Service, the importance of hiring into and ingraining company culture and treating customer service like an investment instead of an expense.

Nicholas Negroponte was Right (Most of the time)

2008-03-12T11:16:00.005-05:00

I tripped across a Nicholas Negroponte's 1984 presentation at TED.com. For the time, (24 years ago!) it's amazing how well he's predicted the future. (image from Wikipedia).

Using laserdiscs and color slides (no Powerpoint back then) he forshadows technologies that we take for granted today, including touch screens, contextual search, and video-conferencing.

To put things into perspective, in 1984 the music scene was dominated by bands like Culture Club, Wham! and a guy by the name of Bruce Springsteen, who had just released "Born in the USA".

It was also the birth year of the Apple MAC.

The 22 minute video is a fascinating historical "glimpse forward to today". His accuracy is uncanny.

Of particular interest to me was his quote;

Good education has got to be good entertainment

At the end of his talk he cites an example of a small child, considered developmentally disabled, who taught himself to read - solely because there was personal value in it for him. (Watch the video, you'll understand).

Something to think about the next time you ask someone to write a user manual.

The Connection Culture

2008-03-07T16:32:00.005-06:00

Michael Lee Stallard has written a great manifesto entitled: The Connection Culture - A New Source of Competitive Advantage. available on the ChangeThis website.

Read it this weekend.

I'm not kidding.

He talks about three core values that are essential to the human connection; Vision, Value, Voice.

I've seen teams come together in amazing ways when these values are present. Hopefully Stallard's observations will ring true for you too.

The Myth of Management Innovation

2008-03-06T06:50:00.005-06:00

Jim Heskitt has a post on HBR's Working Knowledge entitled "Where Will Management Innovation Take Us?" It discusses some of the concepts in Gary Hamel's new book entitled; The Future of Management.

He argues that Management Innovation, to date, has been an oxymoron (my words not his), but that its time has come.

He argues for the transition from a command and control model, to a nimble, team based, single purpose focused model where innovation is in everyone's job description.

I think innovation starts and ends with the org chart.

Modern businesses are comprised of jobs, feeding heirarchical reporting structures. Very neat. Very organized. Well documented job descriptions, complete with lists of required tasks to be performed. Easy to measure individual performance (against a pre-defined task list). The focus is on task management. We measure people in the same way we monitor a manufacturing process - throughput.

There's no place for innovation within this structure.

BUT, give a person a role (with responsibilities) instead of a job (with a set of tasks to be performed, wrapped in pre-defined boundaries) and watch what happens.

No longer does the company have to spend countless hours "supervising" the tasks of subordinates. They need only measure employee impact. Is the role being performed or not? The position tasks become the domain of the individual within the role. (S)he is the master (or mistress) of their domain. They are set free to innovate, to try new things, to experiment, to fail, to learn, to adapt, to grow in their role.

As a manager in this new age setting, you set direction, maintain singleness of purpose, encourage innovation and coach the team (without providing the answers).

You "set free" unprecedented innovation within the ranks.

All this comes at a cost, of course. Working in an environment of responsibilities vs tasks involves a huge leap of faith and comfort with change. But after all, isn't that at the core of innovation?

The major roadblock to Management Innovation is embodied in a phrase I once heard from a leader in a multi-billion dollar organization. He said: "I don't mind change, as long as we don't have to do anything differently."

That says it all.

My Google Suggestion

2008-03-04T08:04:00.004-06:00

After spending some time with Google Sites, here's a suggestion for Google. Start a premium YouTube channel.

Why not allow private YouTube channels using the same privacy logic as you do for Google sites - based upon a common email domain or by specific invitation?

I think this would open your service up to companies, who simply don't have the resources to setup their own video servers, nor want the muss and fuss of managing, cataloging and publishing the content.

You folks have a user friendly framework already setup. You have a huge base of users who are comfortable with the technology. It's time to help spread this creativity to the workplace. Imagine a private company site with playlists entitled:

Employee Life at XYX Company: with an introductory video welcoming new employees to the company, providing a virtual tour, outlining the HR Policies and any Safety rules.

XYX Training Playlist: Where you could go for training on systems, processes or professional development.

Product (or Service) Overview: Where your products or services are explained.

News: Short videos of what is happening at your company, including financial reporting, major project updates or milestones.

And get this. Companies might even PAY for it!

Just an idea.

More (FREE) Advice

2008-03-04T07:00:00.000-06:00

John Quelch of Harvard Business School, has recently written a brief entitled, Marketing Your Way Through a Recession. You can find it here.

Add his suggestions to the 20 tactics I previously wrote about and let me know if we've missed any obvious ones.

My Google Sites Test

2008-03-03T07:17:00.007-06:00

I spent some time this past weekend, with Google Sites, the new FREE service from Google that enables Team sharing and collaboration. I've long been a huge supporter of tools that enable teams to collaborate and so I had to give Sites a try.

Now I'm not highly technical. I don't code with HTML. And I had no trouble creating a sample company intranet site and also a Customer Site for a service business.

I was easily able to embed and use all the other Google tools (Docs, Calendars, Email, Picassa slideshow, Presentations, iGoogle gadgets) as well as the Sites tools (Filing Cabinet, Announcements, Dashboard and Lists.)

Here's a screenshot of the sample customer service site I created.

Now I've only spent a couple of days with the application but I can see that it will begin to level the playing field for small to mid-sized businesses who simply don't have access to the I.T. resources that their larger competitors do.

With Sites, companies with 10-300 employees could really support improved communication and collaboration.

And they could also use the tool to get closer to their customers.

Sites offer you the opportunity to create a variety of sites under a single account. So I created a sample company intranet and then created a sample customer service site, where my fictitious company could track and communicate issues resolution, share documents, push announcements and even IM with customer contacts.

All in all, my time was well spent.

If you're involved in a small business, or work within a team setting, you'd be doing yourself a favor if you checked this out.

Entering Grand Central

2008-02-28T12:32:00.005-06:00

I've begun to play with Grand Central - a new telephone contact service and recent Google acquisition. They are being promoted through Blogger.

In case you haven't heard of it, Grand Central is a web service that allows you to utilize a "storefront" phone number, with which to communicate with friends, family, colleagues and customers.

The service is FREE.

Once you sign up, you are assigned a Grand Central telephone number. It's THIS number that you advertise to the general public. Calls made to your Grand Central number can automatically be forwarded to any of your personal phone numbers (cell, home, business) or can be forwarded directly into voicemail.

None of your private numbers is ever revealed to potential callers.

And best of all, your voicemails are automatically captured at Grand Central for you. When voicemails are received, you can be alerted via email or SMS. Or you can pick them up via phone.

Voicemails can be saved or forwarded via email. You can even record calls on the fly and save the content as you would a voicemail.

One of the features I'm testing is the WebCall button. It's a piece of HTML code that you can embed on your website, that allows internet users to place a call to your Grand Central number. It's a great way to encourage website visitors to make direct contact.

By simply clicking on the button, the visitor is prompted to enter their phone number and Grand Central does the rest - connecting the call to whichever personal number to specified or by allowing a prospect or customer to leave a voicemail (your choice).

If you conduct business via a blog style website, you can easily solicit verbal feedback to posts and post the voicemails (as you would comments) on your website.

You can easily import existing Outlook or vCard contacts into Grand Central to automatically label messages from known contacts as they are saved in your voicemail box. Once your contacts have been setup, you can configure Grand Central to handle each contact differently. You can choose to have important customers automatically forwarded to your cell phone. Friends and family could be directed to your home phone.

Unknown callers could be immediately directed into voicemail to be called back later, added to a spam folder or permanently blocked. You can even have Grand Central play a "this number has been disconnected" message, under circumstances you configure!

So far, the service has been very intuitive to setup and use. I'm certain that over the next few days, I'll discover great new ways to use the service.

As I do, I'll let you know.

The Battle of O.D. vs. A.D.D.

2008-02-24T07:47:00.006-06:00

Many would argue that the I.T. function became more effective after the development of Steering Teams - regular participation by company leaders discussing and debating technology policies and systems development.

The more involved senior leaders are with an initiative, department or function the more commitment, understanding and the sharper the strategic focus. It's all about alignment, expectations and buy-in. And regular exposure to the I.T. function helps foster that.

So why don't we do the same thing with Organizational Development? For many HR departments, the O.D. team is comprised of hybrid "skunkworks" HR people who don't administer policy, explain benefits or manage compensation..

They're out there in the lines of business, working as missionaries, trying to develop momentum behind the principles of succession planning, employee development and nurturing great employee performance.

But these plans seem to be developed within the bowels of HR - then sold to various constituencies within the organization. They act (and are treated) as service providers rather than partners.

Unfortunately for us all, OD efforts are often times seen as the "project of the week" instead of an ongoing (and critical) business process.

It's a battle of O.D. vs. corporate A.D.D. (attention deficit disorder).

From an I.T. perspective, I think we could benefit from a much higher degree of collaboration between I.T. and the O.D. folks. After all, achieving the benefits of systems deployment is almost entirely dependent on how well our employees understand our processes and use the systems. The O.D. team can make a big difference in system acceptance, change management, training and individual performance improvement.

But we aren't at the table.

Because there IS no table.

I'd rather dovetail I.T. user training and performance improvement within a corporate framework/strategy rather than do it independently. We aren't great communicators. We aren't great trainers. We could use your help to improve our performance.

Perhaps we could begin with an O.D. steering team?

Until then, let's have lunch.

Admiring the Problem.

2008-02-23T07:56:00.010-06:00

A friend of mine, Jim, who helps companies navigate around major systems implementation roadblocks, has a favorite phrase;

"They're just sitting around, admiring the problem".

You've seen this behavior in everyday life - when the guy with no mechanical aptitude whatsoever, raises the hood on a disabled car and stares vacantly into the maze of metal and wires hoping that the car will magically start.

We've all seen (or done) this before.

Raising the hood makes us feel like we're addressing the problem - after all, that's the first thing a mechanic would do.

The major difference being, that a mechanic would then go though a mental checklist of possible causes, eliminating each one until (s)he found the source of the problem and fixed it. They would take action to solve the problem.

The rest of us might wiggle some wires and try to restart the car. And fail.

To those of us without mechanical aptitude, the act of "opening the hood" gives us a sense that we're moving closer to a solution, even though we really know that's not the case.

And that's what Jim means by "Admiring the Problem".

In the business world, the equivalent of "opening the hood", is conducting a meeting. We gather around and the chairperson describes the problem. Everyone nods in agreement - yes, we have a problem. You then decide that more people need to be included as part of the solution and so the outcome of the meeting is to plan and hold a second, larger meeting.

You just "opened the hood".

The second meeting is held (a couple of weeks later) and major progress is made - you decide that you need more information. And so sub-teams are formed, tasked with digging up additional facts to be debated by the larger group.

You just "wiggled some wires."

A month later, the sub-teams report back to the original body - confirming what everyone knew all along. Yes we have a problem. But at least now we know... it's a BIG problem.

You tried to restart the car. The engine didn't make a sound....

Six weeks have passed and you're no closer to a solution.

This ritual is repeated in conference rooms and board rooms across the country, everyday. And it's the reason why my friend, Jim, is such a valuable resource.

It's his job to help his clients realize the difference between actitivty and progress.

Because when you're implementing major business systems, not knowing the difference can cost you millions.

CSI: Your Company

2008-02-22T05:58:00.005-06:00

The unreadable image above is a snapshot of the Computing Scene Investigation we undertook at one company. Company and site names (which appeared down the left hand side of the spreadsheet) have been removed to protect the innocent.

We actually printed out the spreadsheet on a very large scale color plotter and it covered an entire wall of my office.

What you're looking at is an Application Map. The sites (were) listed down the left side and all the business processes are listed across the top of the spreadsheet. Each cell within the spreadsheet identified the application that supported each business process at a specific site.

Different applications are identified by different colors. The "application color legend" appears at the bottom of the chart.

At first glance, it looks as if someone threw confetti at a wall. And this version shows the application landscape AFTER a substantial ERP implementation (the light blue color).

Think about this for a second.. 34 different applications requiring, maintenance, support, training, interoperability, data mining, security, backup and recovery planning over a mix of centralized and distributed computing platforms.

Now let me give you one more piece of information. Each plant performed essentially the same function.

If you were to do some psychological forensics by staring at this diagram for a while, what would you determine?

1. Clearly, each site's I.T. solutions were historically chosen and managed locally.
2. The variety of applications - even within the same function might lead you to believe that the sites didn't talk to one another.
3. You might expect that business processes, system security and segregation of duties would be varied and difficult to enforce, both within a site and across the enterprise.
4. Reporting to Head office would be done with a myriad of different reports, which would need to be collated and re-summarized at the Corporate offices.
5. The reporting processes would be cumbersome, slow and likely not entirely accurate (apples to apples).
6. The entire infrastructure would be expensive to maintain and slow to change.
7. No shared services.
8. The company would not likely be positioned to compete in the 21st Century.
9. Sarbanes-Oxley compliance would be a challenge.
10. Autonomy and site performance trumps overall corporate performance.
11. Very little information (customer, vendor, business processes) shared across sites.

Since I was new to the company, I had asked for an application map. None existed. It took us several weeks to put the pieces of the puzzle together. No one had ever looked at the business process support systems in this way before.

But when you do, it can tell you an awful lot about the company.

Just for fun, why not ask your I.T. folks if thay have an application map of your business processes. If they don't, you may not be able to easily understand I.T. consolidation opportunities and achieve potential cost reductions, flexibility and the ability to improve the speed of change.

If they have one, take a look at it and perform your own CSI forensics.

It'll tell you a lot about how your company operates and where your big I.T. opportunities are.

What Business Wants I.T. to Know

2008-02-21T08:02:00.003-06:00

As promised, here's Part 2 from yesterday's post.

Here's 18 things your business wants I.T. to know. I hope both posts become a conversation starter if your I.T. and business relationships are falling short of expectations.

1. Sometimes dealing with you folks is like trying to communicate in a foreign language. Please get rid of the acronyms and speak in terms we can understand.

2. When we request a new application or enhancement, you're always too busy. If we had a better idea of what was on your plate and when the projects were going to be completed, we could do a better job of helping prioritize.

3. We need to work together to better train our employees on our applications. User manuals are NOT getting the job done.

4. We need you involved until we achieve original business benefits expectations from our projects. Simply delivering the enhancement or system isn't enough.

5. We don't have confidence in our systems. Sometimes they go down, then come back up, without explanation. We don't know why it happened, nor what you're doing to make sure it doesn't happen again.

6. You don't measure your performance in ways that are meaningful to US.

7. If we're short with you at Helpdesk, please understand that we're frustrated that some technical issue is preventing us from getting our jobs done and serving our customers. And there's nothing more important than serving our customers.

8. If the same problems occur over and over again, you can understand our lack of confidence in your abilities.

9. It would be helpful if you could let us know well in advance when systems will be down and why.

10. When you've fixed a Helpdesk problem, will you please let us know? Sometimes we're waiting for a solution that has already been delivered without our knowledge!

11. Can we please agree on a common process to evaluate and prioritize I.T. projects? What we have in place at the moment isn't working.

12. Why did we do that last system upgrade? It seems like we had to retrain all our people without any real benefits! We need to discuss this before you simply proceed with it.

13. People are suspicious of what they don't understand. The better you can explain what you do (and why) the more comfortable we will be.

14. We're willing to do whatever it takes to perform better. If you have some ideas, speak up!

15. Please don't close Helpdesk tickets until WE say the problem has been resolved!

16. Why do you always blame convoluded I.T. processes on Sarbanes-Oxley? What is Sarbanes-Oxley and why should we care?

17. Our business spends a lot of time refining business processes, trying to make them lean. Do you do that? If not, why not?

18. if you want to understand how to better serve internal customers, just ask! Provide Helpdesk surveys, Training surveys and Post-Project Forensic surveys and report back what you're doing to improve results the next time. Demonstrate your continuous improvement process.

What would you add to the list?

14 Things Your I.T. Department Wants To Tell You

2008-02-20T07:18:00.005-06:00

In many companies, the relationship between the I.T. department and the rest of the business isn't as productive as it should be. In the spirit of reconcilliation, let me offer up 14 things your I.T. department wants you to know.

1. Our company is more focused on efficient exception handling than we are on process improvements to eliminate the exceptions.

2. Our company doesn’t really understand our business processes as well as we should.

3. We don’t share information (about customers, opportunities, accomplishments, strategy) like we could.

4. Our information security and transaction approvals process reflects a lack of employee trust and adds time and complexity to all transactions without adding value.

5. Every system we have could be utilized 50% better than currently.

6. We don’t collaborate like we should or could.

7. Our corporate information moves too slowly and is stored in too many places.

8. Despite all our automation, we still spend too much time preparing reports and not enough time acting upon them.

9. We have too much data and not enough information.

10. We could accomplish 100% of what we do now, with half of our current systems, if we retired the redundant ones.

11. The business doesn’t understand how important it is to have technology projects business led, to achieve business results. I.T. delivers systems. The business implements them.

12. You treat I.T. as a service provider, not a business partner. Our mutual relationship could be far more productive than it is now.

13. About 2% of the people in our organization account for 80% of our helpdesk calls. Why are they still here?

14. We're all on the same team. We want business success just like you do!

Tomorrow: Things business wants their I.T. departments to know.

[photo credit: escapefromcubiclenation.com]

Inspired by Alltop

2008-02-19T08:24:00.005-06:00

I've just taken a look at Guy Kawasaki's new project, called Alltop, which is an elegantly designed pre-formatted RSS Reader.

While anyone can accomplish the same for themselves with any free RSS Reader, the fact is that many people either don't have the time or the inclination to do it for themselves.

The benefit to the blogs that he's selected for inclusion in the Alltop framework is simple - more eyeballs. By aggregating the best blogs around selected topics, each will benefit from proximity to excellence within it's category.

The idea was inspired by PopURLs, and it's very clean design was executed by Electric Pulp.

I expect that this site, like Guy's previous project Trumors, will be a success. He's removing the barriers to readership, by building the reading lists for the readers. You don't need to understand RSS or how to use a Reader. No need to organize blogs within topic. No need to spend the time to discover the most popular blogs. Users just need to know how to click on an article.

Chances are, as people discover Alltop, they'll become addicted to the various blogs featured within.

This is an idea worth adapting for Corporate use.

In my experience, the value of RSS is not being leveraged effectively within most businesses. We still rely on printed reports, or emailed presentations and time consuming update/status meetings and conference calls. Getting information is still a challenge, requiring time and effort.

Imagine a world where your company intranet was a simple interface like Alltop. Imagine headings like;

Strategy - featuring internal blog feeds on market development, sales and marketing efforts, geographic expansion or acquisitions

Talent - fed by Job opening blog (or application) and your Corporate YouTube training channel

Execution - fed by your Lean Processes Blog, 5S efforts, Process Improvement project blogs or RSS capable Project Management applications etc

Ideas & Innovation - an assembly of thought leaders blogs (hint: check out Alltop's EGOs section).

Competition - fed by pre-defined Google Alerts for your industry and direct competition as well as RSS feeds from industry related publications.

Our Priorities - internal blogs which detail progress on the most important tasks your company is undertaking.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Create several blogs within your organization's network. Find a couple of early adopters. Get them started publishing and show them how their efforts are seamlessly published to the company via your new Alltop style intranet.

Guy - if you could donate an open source version of Alltop for internal Corporate use, you'd likely make America a far more efficient place to work. Until that happens, I.T. people, get started on your own version!

20 Tactics to Survive the Coming Recession

2008-02-18T14:16:00.003-06:00

With a looming recession on the horizon, what can your business do differently to survive the economic slowdown?

Here are twenty things you could try. All of these suggestions could work very well during good times, it's just that we seem a little more motivated as the threat increases to our bottom line.

Obviously this isn't a complete list and applicability and circumstances differ in every company.

Here they are (in no particular order.)

1. Re-evaluate employee performance. When times are booming, average and yes, sometimes below average performance is overlooked. When times get tight, you really need to get more done with fewer people.

2. Re-organize activities. Is your company filled with under utilized specialists? Could some positions be combined or tasks be reallocated so that the work previously done by 4 people could be done by three or two? Do your processes require many approvals to complete? Are they all really necessary? Do approvals add control or get in the way?

3. Prioritize. Does your company have a dozen different projects underway? If so, at least half of them will be "pet projects" - whose benefits, if ever realized will end up under the "nice to haves" column. Focus resources and your attention on the "must have" projects and get them done faster.

4. Play offense not defense. You can't "hide in your shell" and wish your way through a recession. What are some things you could be working on now, that will put you in a strategic advantage when the economy improves? Take advantage of your competition, if they've decided to "wilt". A compelling mission can keep everyone focused during dark economic days.

5. If business gets slow, perhaps now is the time to think about re-investing in your employees. Think about professional development courses or certifications (if you can afford it). Better to improve the calibre of your players when they aren't 100% distracted with daily business activities.

6. Make a list of things you should stop doing, and kill initiatives which are delivering questionable (or unmeasurable) value.

7. Improve a process. Pick a poor process and use lean principles to elinimate waste (inventory, time, rework, QA, approvals, transit/travel time, defects). What you should be left with are activities that your customers are willing to pay for! Focus on customer facing processes first (order taking, quotes, returns, service calls).

8. Cross-train. The more flexible your workforce, the better you're able to cope with surges in activities.

9. 5S your workplace.

10. Conduct an inventory cycle count when business is slow.

11. Bring the auditors in "off-cycle" when you can afford to spend time with them, making the audit process less of a burden.

12. Brainstorm how your company will be remarkable. (So different from your competition, that people will be talking about you!)

13. Think about deploying technology strategies that allow people to spend less time in meetings and more time doing projects, tasks. Building an intranet organized by department or line of business fed by RSS feeds, will eliminte those communication meetings that suck up so much time. Try cheap, intuitive, web-based 3rd party project management tools (like Basecamp) to enable groups to communicate better, manage group task lists and auto-communicate progress.

14. Find faster, more effective ways to train employees, customers, suppliers, by learning to use video, instead of replicating one on one meetings, classroom training or worse yet, writing another user manual that no one will read.

15. Visit key customers and suppliers. During tough economic times they may be more receptive to different ways of doing business, new products or services or partnering to reduce friction within your supply chain.

16. Think about that major system upgrade. Your vendors will likely have higher caliber resources available during tough economic times and pricing will never be better. Also, the internal resources needed to really embrace the new system, may be more available now than during booming economic times. You may be able to negotiate deferred payments or beneficial financing during downturns. Better to work out the process and transaction kinks during a slower business cycle.

17. If you're unfamiliar with Web2.0 marketing concepts, buy a Seth Godin book and start a company blog. Show off your company passion for what you do. Demonstrate how you'll make your customers better (or happier or whatever). Provide free value adding information. Begin to establish or reinforce a bond with your customers. Be authentic. (Or if you can't do that, just Don't be Fake!)

18. Find a way to stand out from the crowd. EST yourself. BiggEST, fastEST, coolEST, bEST, cheapEST, hottEST, spicyEST, easiEST, fatEST, thinEST, brightEST, sharpEST or most expensive (costliEST?) in the world. If you have a product or service that stands out, chances are people will start talking. And when people start talking, the word spreads and when the word spreads you begin to draw crowds. And within those crowds, the most passionate people will open their wallets.

19. Experiment like never before. Try lots of new things. Fail often and learn from your mistakes.

20. Find a way to empower your workforce. Ask them for ideas. Listen to them. Tobasco sold more hot sauce when a factory worker suggested making the bottle opening a little bigger! Great ideas are everywhere, waiting to be discovered and developed.

Have I missed some obvious ones? Feel free to add to the list!

Discussing leadership

2008-02-17T06:51:00.006-06:00

Charlie Rose (PBS) spends 30 minutes with John Whitehead and Bill George discussing leadership.

Listen for the comments on the value of authenticity, empowerment, values and listening.

Well worth the investment.