May 2, 2011 | Collaboration, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
There may be no charge to post stuff onto social media platforms, but if you are running a business, and people are using the time and resources you have paid for, by definition, there is a cost, even if it is an opportunity cost.
Many businesses I have seen just react to social media use by employees by banning it, usually with a spectacular lack of success, others just ignore it, accepting the time spent as a hidden cost in their overheads, only a few have seen the hidden value.
Surely it would be better to set out to harness the resources that are going to be consumed anyway in such a way that they deliver some value.
Here is a list of ideas, feel free to add to them:
- Set up a social media intranet to:
- harvest new product and improvement ideas,
- customer service success stories,
- problem/solution discussion threads for company centric problems,
- a virtual “water cooler” discussion forum on just about anything on employees minds,
- Encourage consumer/customer contact with individuals in the business
- Offer product usage tips, recipes ideas, to consumers, allowing them to respond and build a community
- Report on company activities outside normal trading, and seek stakeholders feedback on how they went
- Ditto for activities of employees away from work
- Add personal stories about being an employee, supplier, customer or shareholder, personalise the place.
Add your own to the list, I suspect it could go on for pages.
May 1, 2011 | Collaboration, Lean, Management, Operations
Process improvement is all about slow adoption of the tiny opportunities that arrive, by any number of means, that together enable adaption of the system to the environment around it to improve performance.
My favorite metaphors usually come from the natural environment, where natural selection enables minute differences over time to become different species.
In organisations we do not have the time, so the process needs to be encouraged, speeded up a bit. Experience suggests there are a few pre-conditions for success:
- There is a willingness to make change, and that willingness is shared through all levels of an organization.
- There is a willingness, indeed pleasure in embracing mistakes, as it is by making mistakes and understanding why the mistake occurred, that we learn.
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There is a coherent plan, strategy, budget, whatever you choose to call it, that provides a framework for decision making, performance measurement, and allocation of responsibilities in a transparent, ordered and consistent manner.
Apr 28, 2011 | Lean, OE, Operations
“Gemba” is a Japanese term, literally “the real place” and is a term used extensively in lean management, meaning, in effect, go to where it happens and look to understand. This originally meant the manufacturing floor, but just as easily translates to anywhere real work happens.
So often I see people doing dumb things, not because they want to, but because that is the way the process was designed, usually by someone who had not done a “gemba walk” but who had relied on a model that seemed sensible for some reason, but bore little relationship to the way things worked in real life.
Most things I see that lead to problems are caused by self indulgence, ego, and isolation, not incompetence or lack of care, so next time, stop yourself, and do a “gemba walk” to see how the users will interact with and use whatever it is you are designing.
Apr 26, 2011 | Strategy
“We will reduce the carbon going into the atmosphere, but it will not cost anyone (who votes) anything”. Sound familiar?
How about “The budget calls for increased sales and margins, which means we will have to do more with less people and put prices up “.
Never have I seen anything achieved without some sort of choice being made, even in the school yard, if you wanted to be friends with Bill, you could not be friends with Sam. Problem is, we all want it all, are unwilling to make the choices that enables stuff to get done, someone else can make the sacrifice, but not me Jack!
In 2009 Frit-O-Lay relaunched “Sun Chips” a brand of potato crisp in bio-degradable packaging, something consumers, advocates, and uncle Tom Cobbley had been calling for long and loudly, but the trade-off was the bags were noisy! so noisy sales dropped, there was a facebook page set up to whinge, and U-Tube videos collected thousands of hits. The packaging was changed back to the old, environmentally destructive poly film.
Achieving anything requires that the objective be pursued, choices, sometimes tough ones, be made, compromises be struck, but nothing is achieved by pleasing everyone all the time.
Apr 26, 2011 | Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
The line between advertising to build brands and entertainment continues to blurr, and a whole new arena for creativity has emerged in our marketing mix, unheralded amongst many of those who run the corporations that create most of our old fashioned mass marketing.
Last week in the UK, just talking to some kids on fancy bikes in the high street of Chichester, it was clear they were a band of brand apostles for Red Bull, but it wasn’t the exploits of Sebatian Vettel and Mark Webber in the F1 cars, but a bloke I had never heard of, Danny MacAskill, and his exploits on a push bike captured on u-tube that hooked them.
Red Bull, a brand that has been rapidly built on extreme, aspirational, sports performance, does not make an appearance until the credits on this clip, a 7 minute “bike trip” but the impact on these kids was powerful. Advertainment, not advertising, created the powerful connection between the kids and the brand.
