Jan 26, 2013 | Governance
Today is Australia Day, January 26, 2013.
As I watch what is going on around me, I see a lot of frenetic stuff, the hype at the cricket, crowds of people carrying “Australia” bags, hats and eskies, Pollies offering platitudes for a sound-bite, and many group BBQ’s at the local park.
All good stuff, but should there be more?
The Australia now is a vastly changed place to just a generation ago, and my grandfather, a digger who spent a vacation in France in 1917 simply would not recognise it, although he bled for it. We are a polyglot nation, remarkably able to absorb and celebrate difference, now removed from our European roots and finding a way in Asia, wealthy in many ways, but twitchy and suspicious of those we do not know, and authority, and nervous about the future.
We are like a kid who realises he is now alone in the world, and has to stand up for himself, but is not too sure how to do it.
So what will we look like in another generation, by 2050?
I suspect the things that seem to occupy our minds now will mostly be seen as trivial excursions by then, and we will be paying a high price for ignoring the things that are important but not urgent, at least in the minds of those supposed to think about these things for longer than an election cycle. The education of our kids, and their kids, real education, to think, question, and be prepared to defend a conclusion, our research capability, both public and private, and the capacity to commercialise that knowledge, the selling off of our national estate, and the determination to dig up everything, flog it at commodity prices, and import the manufactured product as our own manufacturing capability withers on the vine.
As Australian day 2013 closes with another display of fireworks and platitudes, we Austalians should stop and think, project ourselves forward 50 years, and ask, “what do we want the place to look like?’. Then, for a change, lets demand that those visions become part of the public debate, not sidelined by today’s celebrity nonsense.
Jan 25, 2013 | Governance, Management
If I hear the sporting team metaphor once more this week, I think I will spew, although I have often used it myself over the years.
I’ve been contributing to a sales conference this week, listening to some intelligent, well thought out stuff from some surprising corners of the business, some crap from a few who should know better, and endless sporting analogies.
Lets examine the sport team metaphor realistically, looking for the shortcomings that are rarely mentioned:
• Sporting teams have a set number of players, and your ability to maintain a “bench” is limited. In contact sports, there is usually a few all-rounders who can be used as substitutes, but in most, what you start with is all you have. What would happen in a business if you could not adjust capabilities and numbers on the fly to respond to unforeseen circumstances?
• Sporting teams conduct the contest within a well known and understood set of rules by which each side complies. Try telling your competition to play be a set of rules agreed beforehand.
• A sporting contest takes place at a set time, in a set place, and has a set duration, and if you do not turn up, you lose. Fundamental to the commercial contest is the “faking” of the opposition to get them to expend resources doing something that can deliver them no benefit, and if you can do that and not even have to turn up, so much the better.
• Sporting teams know who their opponent will be next week, and the week after, have a pretty good idea of their capabilities, so therefore can train specifically to address the challenges as they arise in a predictable manner. Not so in commercial life, and just because you beat a competitor last week, does not mean they will not come back at you in an unexpected way tomorrow, not even waiting for Saturday! Sneaks.
The list goes on, but the point is that metaphors are great, they illustrate a point, but they do not provide a template, just a lesson.
Jan 24, 2013 | Branding, Marketing
“Graph Search” may offer the potential of a financial bonus to the beleagured facebook shareholders sucked in by the IPO hype, I suspect it is, but what were they thinking when they dreamt up the name?
A brand is supposed to convey a promise, be a memorable badge for the product, and in the case of a sub brand, add to the whole. Writing this post, and the one a few days ago, I had to return to the facebook page several times to remember what the silly thing is called.
Graphs?
Greater?
Giraffe?
“Grape search” (cab sav anyone)
I know that to insiders, a “graph” is a metaphor for the map of a persons networks, a diagram that represent all the friends, comments, reviews, updates, and connections, but not everybody is an insider.
Perhaps they shoul have snuck down the road and thrown some money at the branding boys at Apple, they seem to know what they are doing.
Jan 21, 2013 | Change, Governance, Lean, Operations
The maths are simple, do more with less, and you have more left over at the end.
Productivity is not just something you aim for in the factory, the opportunities to do more with less are everywhere, in every activity undertaken.
The catch in all this is, when you identify the opportunities, free up the capacity by doing more with less, and figure out how to make the necessary changes “stick”, you have a choice to make:
- You remove the now redundant resources, and pocket the difference, or,
- You sell the added capacity that is already “paid for”, so you get the added revenue at an enhanced margin.
Sounds seductively easy, but in fact it is a tough road, littered with challenges, and nasty potholes for the unprepared.
Jan 17, 2013 | Branding, Communication, Social Media
The value of Facebook has tanked since the IPO last year, largely because after the hype, people wondered how the returns would be delivered when the obvious source, advertising, does not really work on Facebook.
However, Facebook is in the throes of launching an extensively re-engineered search facility, “Graph Search“. This facility will enable placement of extremely focused advertising in situations where the search being conducted is for things other than friendly e-conversation. This change potentially removes the barrier to successful adverting on Facebook, the disinterest in anything commercial when interacting with friends.
This Wired article on Graph Search offers detail, but essentially, the new search facility reflects peoples networks as a graph, or network chart, and the search capability can interrogate the network, and answer questions, with extensive auto-complete suggestions based on your previous activity.
Google cannot get at the data held by Facebook, that is a huge resource of people, networks, preferences, links, and reviews that can now be leveraged in searches conducted from within the Facebook community.
Similarly, the power of Linkedin is the connections between people and their work. Want to see who is connected to someone at a competitor, supplier, potential customer, and so on? now Facebook will be able to do it, perhaps better than Linkedin, particularly for the under 35’s.
An underutilised aspect of Twitter is the search capability, when used well, it is an enormously valuable addition to a Google search, and contains links that enable a deeper dive from any starting point in a topic. Other services like Pinterest also now chase the available advertising dollars, making media choices a complex nightmare.
Graph Search makes the battle for on line advertising even more interesting, and will add some extra lead into the saddlebags of newspapers as they try to monetarise their offerings. News Corp is in the middle of splitting their operations, separating newspaper film and television assets globally, restructuring to enhance revenue generation options, already having paywalls in place for their newspapers. Fairfax is expected to introduce some level of paywall sometime in the next few months in an effort to stem the bleeding.
As the search capabilities improve, and paywalls emerge, the attraction of free sources of information will increase, with the minor irritation of the presence of advertising. Facebook now appears to not only to be in a position to cash in on their huge network, but to potentially extensively disrupt the current web and remaining legacy media advertising options.
