Jun 23, 2011 | Communication, Marketing, Social Media
Operational benchmarking was one of the “flavours of the month” for a long time in the nineties, until people realised that finding out what the best in class were doing, then expending resources to copy them, just ensured you never caught up, and at best, were one of a number who were doing OK.
Search Engine Optimisation strikes me a bit the same way.
Making sure you put often used terms into your posts, sites, and tweets is supposed to get you noticed, come up the top of the Google page, but at best, you will share the spot with all the others slavishly following the boring mantra of spicing up all communications with what rapidly become ‘net clichés.
The marketing challenge in the e-world is the same as in the physical one, to be noticed, you must be doing something that is sufficiently different so that at least some of the potential audience is drawn to the spot, then you have a chance to impress with the quality of your thinking, writing, photographs, product, or whatever else it is you are there to do.
Be different, daring, creative, and stand out from the crowd.
Jun 22, 2011 | Change, Management, Social Media
It seems that technical changes are facilitating behavior changes that were previously constrained by the practical and cost barriers that existed.
However, the really important changes occurring are not the technical ones, but the manner in which consumers use them, and enterprises deploy them to do things differently, and improve their collective lot.
As attitudes follow behaviour, we are in for massive further changes in attitude towards the net, and all its tools both current and coming, and as the behavoural changes of the last decade cement into place, further enormous opportunities for innovation will emerge.
Jun 21, 2011 | Alliance management, Collaboration, Communication, Customers, Personal Rant
Negotiation is a process of finding a solution to a question that is acceptable to all parties. It should go without saying that the first step is to actually communicate, setting out to find areas of compromise, and places of potential value not immediately obvious that occur in many disputes.
The alternative is standing back and throwing rocks, which can only be a winning strategy when you hold all the cards, but then it is not a negotiation, but a statement. However, when the power in a dispute is spread around, declining a seat at the table almost inevitably means you end up on the menu.
The unilateral banning of the live cattle trade to Indonesia was such a rock throwing exercise. Thank heavens the dills in Canberra appear to have woken up in time, and are at least communicating with stakeholders, hopefully with the intention of finding a solution, rather than just doing a post cock-up arse cover.
Jun 20, 2011 | Communication, Marketing, Operations
Experience is hard won, experienced people have an intuition built up over time that is not always obvious, and is certainly not a “by the list” analysis of all the factors, weighing up the relative importance of each, and reaching a conclusion. Somehow it is a cognitive process that happens really quickly.
Some years ago my daughter had an accident in a gym, and very badly broke her arm, to the point of being almost severed. Whilst it was treated as an emergency, and substantial resources immediately swung into action, 24 hours later it was an experienced nursing sister, someone with many years orthopedic trauma experience who noticed a couple of very minor inconsistencies, and demanded a specialist review. That saved my daughters arm from gangrene setting is as a result of Carriage Syndrome. When I asked her how she recognised it, when nobody else had, all she could say was that she “just did”. Experience. She knew enough through experience, had seen enough cases in the past with all the nuances that occur, to recognise cognitively what was going on, rather than just knowing what to do to apparently address the all the apparent problems of a severe compound fracture.
Psychologist Gary Klein has made a lifetime study of decision making, describing the impact of experience on decision making, and how it works in situations of stress, ambiguity, and time critical situations.
Considering the value of this experience should shake some of the corporations around who hire 30 year olds rather than 50 year olds, (and 60 year olds) because of a perceived “vim and vigor” benefit, but what about the instinct and intuition built of long experience? Experience covers all aspects of life, the positive impact of experience influenced decision making is just more obvious in some situations than others. Experience enables those who have it to instinctively see what is going on, rather than just responding to the more obvious what to do.
Jun 19, 2011 | Innovation
These two terms are often used interchangeably, but have a different meaning that I have mumbled about from time to time. This post on the PARC blog in response to Malcolm Gladwells article in the New Yorker is terrific articulation of the difference.
“Simply put: “invention” is the manifestation of an idea or creation of something new. It doesn’t become an “innovation” until it’s applied successfully in practice”
Gladwells article examines the often told story of Steve Jobs visit to PARC where he saw the work being done by PARC scientists on user interface and early mouse, and raced back to the Apple garage, changed the direction of the development programs, and brought the first Macintosh to the market.
