Apr 10, 2012 | Management, Personal Rant, Uncategorized
I kept a diary of how I spent my time recently, and noted a number of things I suspected, but did not have the “data” such as it was.
- Being “connected” had reduced my productivity significantly. My concentration was broken when emails came in, seemingly demanding just a look, people ringing, texting, just wanting an immediate response/decision irrespective of my current load, and capacity to appropriately consider the response.
- The discipline of the “to do” list had been destroyed. As a young bloke, I did a list for the next day, last thing every night. That list offered a priority guide, time allocation, a memory prompt, and a record of activity each day. Whilst like most plans it was a point from which to depart, it still gave structure to my day, week, and priorities. That discipline has effectively gone in the welter of competing tasks surfaced by connectivity.
- My “head-time” had been destroyed. In the dim, dark, unconnected past, I had time to consider options, seek considered input, and just allow a situation to stew in my brain over a period, which often led to options not consciously in the mix at the outset. This happened as I walked at lunch-time, sat in traffic, over the weekend, and just having a casual chat with colleagues whose council may have added a perspective. All that valuable head-time is gone, driven away by the access and immediacy of the devices in my pocket, and the expectation of others that an immediate response is mandatory.
Years ago, a mentor urged me to distinguish between the urgent but not important, and the important but not urgent, and act accordingly. Being connected has given the urgent a huge increase in leverage at the expense of the important, and it is taking a real effort to redress the imbalance.
I have reverted to a to do list that structures my day, turn off all devices in the middle of the day and take a hobble around the block and talk to myself or a colleague, and set out to do the most important thing on my list first thing in the day. This added discipline is proving to be much harder than I thought, but useful. My personal productivity seems to have lifted, as has my satisfaction with the tasks completed every day.
Apr 5, 2012 | Marketing
Like Theodore Levitt’s old adage of marketing that people don’t buy a drill, they buy a hole, so it is with Social Media.
Social media is the tool, it can be used badly, effectively, creatively, and efficiently, like any tool, but it is the impact of the tool, the outcomes it delivers, that really matter.
The social media experience is the tool, the benefit is delivered by the effective use of the tool in the right circumstances.
The building of a SM presence that encourages people to order and pay on line, or signal preference, or interact in some other way, one to one, that delivers something both parties value is the benefit SM has the potential to deliver, but it is not easy, in fact, it is really hard to do well.
Having a 1000 friends on facebook is pretty pointless, the benefit comes when those “friends” act like real friends, and give you something you value, just because they can.
Apr 4, 2012 | Marketing, Social Media
I find myself continually attempting to argue the case for investment in Social Media at the expense of more traditional broadcast and print media. Almost everyone I interact with from my large clients to the local tennis club fail to instinctively understand the full potential power of SM.
There is plenty around on the net shouting the advantages of SM, much of it with the objective of selling something, so it was great to come Across this report from Bain & Co “putting Social media to work” courtesy of Steve Goldner on his blog.
Then this morning, Mike Stelzner’s Social Media Examiner blog, a wonderful source of links, ideas, and tips published their 4th Annual Social Media Marketing report, which offers insights into the way marketers are using social media.
It is pretty clear that Marketing has been democratised by the web, Social Media Marketing is now mainstream marketing. It consumes huge resources, delivering huge benefits to marketers and their markets, despite the hubris, misunderstanding and snake oil salesmen that inhabit the marketing ecosystems.
Apr 3, 2012 | Leadership, Management, Small business, Strategy
A small manufacturing business I work with, operating in a domain now dominated by a few huge retailers, and cheap imported products, is facing a dilemma.
Three key people are leaving at pretty much the same time, for different reasons, just with difficult co-incident timing. This is a small business, there is no “bench” of executives who have been mentored, trained, and nurtured so that they can step in at short notice, no such luxury in an SME to whom every dollar of cashflow is critical to survival .
The purpose for this business to exist is to showcase the great products coming from Australia’s food basket, the Riverina, this is what makes them different, and gives all stakeholders, customers, suppliers, employees, and those who fund the business, a reason to keep on supporting it through the current challenges.
It seems that the opportunity presented by this sudden and unwelcome personnel churn is to start again, almost from scratch, to rebuild the processes, and renew the sense of shared purpose amongst the employees. That task however, is a bit like getting to the top of a sand-hill in a desert, and seeing just another sand-hill rather than the expected oasis.
The key distinction between leaders and managers is that leaders find the grit to climb this extra sand-hill, ways to bridge the gaps between peoples differing experience, expertise, and expectations, so that there is a shared purpose that is larger than an individual. Leaders are not leaders because they are always right, but because they listen, learn, and enable others to do the same. That is the opportunity facing my small client, to be a leader, and to remain one of the very few Australian owned food manufacturing businesses left.
