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“Social Networking”

There. I said it.

It seems a vast number of people are busy doing it, talking about it, and studying it (a Google search of the phrase yields over 32 million hits – must be a slow day) and the folks over at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania are no exception. A recently published article, “Connecting the Corporate Dots: Social Networks Reveal How Employees and Companies Operate” lends even more evidence that this could really be the Next Big Thing.

Of course, the term “Social Networking” is really just a catch phrase for a whole range of activities, of which blogging may be the most widely-practiced. But the thing that gets me is, maybe it really IS a new paradigm? Well, maybe not new, just new in the sense of really beginning to have real impact. The writers point out that research and study are finally beginning to reveal several ramifications of this phenomenon as it relates to the corporation.

For instance, it helps explain how companies operate, revealing where the real work flows are. This would be useful to help streamline work processes when they don’t flow where you thought they did. It also helps reveal how employees and board members interact. Board members tend to form network “clusters”, which is useful in disseminating critical knowledge quickly across widely separated boards.

Another value is in revealing key employees (the writers call them “cosmopolitans”) who are most valuable to the flow of information. When things get bogged down, there may arise hidden channels of communication among these employees that actually bypass cumbersome or outdated processes.

It also helps reveal how relationships can be better understood to improve productivity and the dissemination of ideas. For example, most companies, while active in knowledge capture, still have yet to understand the value of providing an easy and widely-accessible method of knowledge sharing. The thing is, most of these are actually based on a sense of community, somthing social networking is especially great at.

All of these are certainly good things to know, but that last one catches my eye, and echoes something I’ve been researching lately: corporate blogging. Improving productivity and disseminating ideas among co-workers are certainly things that most corporations should sit up and take notice of.

Hardly a day goes by when I see more and more value in having a corporate blog.

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

An article by Mark Goulston titled “What’s on Your Customer’s Mind”, found in FAST COMPANY’s resource center under “leadership”, forced me to think today about marketing (Augh! MY BRAIN! MY BRAIN!)

Mark says “It’s easier to persuade people to buy what they want than what you want them to want”, and suggests seven questions all buyers ask themselves subconsciously before they buy. OK, this makes sense to me, but isn’t this rather basic? Read the article for details, of course, but here are the seven questions:

1. What can YOU do for me?
2. Why is that IMPORTANT to me?
3. Is that MORE than I’m getting now?
4. Is that BETTER than I’m getting now?
5. Is that SOONER than I’m getting now?
6. Does it COST LESS than I’m paying now?
7. Is that LESS RISKY than what I’m doing now?

Mark finishes with this statement: “Your customers are not fools. If you don’t take your customer’s expectations into consideration, you’re only fooling yourself.”

Because we deal with the Real World here in the Zone, I had to wonder: How hard is it out there to just get the basics right? Sure, practicing innovative, cutting edge behavior is crucial in gaining and keeping market share, but how often do we concentrate on them such that we end up forgetting the basics?

Since I’m no marketing expert (I’m an engineer, thank you very much!), I sent the article to someone who is, along with the following questions (thanks again, Dennis):

1. Isn’t this kind of obvious?
2. Would you consider this to be universal to marketing success?
3. How difficult is it to apply in the real world?

For your edification, here are his responses:

1. Yes
2. Ditto
3. You would be truly amazed at how many companies develop products or fall in love with their ideas without ever asking any of these seven questions. Whenever I hear phrases like “We know they will like it…” or “This is just what they need…” the hairs on the back of my marketing neck begin to quiver and dance about – A true sign that you are entering a “no win” marketing mine field. Many times, even if they ask these questions, they don’t like the answers they get back and begin a process to pervert the answers into some kind of mumbo-jumbo jargon that seems to support their view. In such environments a whack to the back of the head and a cold dousing of reality usually only gets you escorted to the door and labeled “not a team player” (the no win).

To which I might add, heaven help you if you are treating your customers like fools, even unintentionally! Customer perception in the marketplace can be far more powerful than reality, and in the end, the market is what eventually determines who survives.

To quote Tom Peters: “Perception is all there is. Period.”

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

Lest we get too full of ourselves here at the Middle Zone, I hereby declare today to be “OOB Day” (That’s “Out Of the Box”, for those of you who are acronym-challenged. But why, you ask, is it not called “OOTB”? Because saying “OOB” is more fun than saying “OOTB”, of course! Just let it go.) Here’s our chance to throw out a few odds and ends that don’t necessarily have anything to do with anything.

But then again, they might. You never know…

Diamonds From the Dust

(Thanks to Dennis McMullin for tipping us off to some good information.)

Ever wonder how to tell when a good idea is really worth your time and effort? Bob Sutton, a professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford Engineering School has written a “manifesto” I would consider worth reading with the wonderfully self-explanatory title of “Management Advice: Which 90% is Crap?” His theme is that many of today’s business ideas being presented as “new” or “breakthrough”, are in fact simply old ideas repackaged.

In the discussion of one of his five guidelines, “Be Suspicious of Breakthrough Ideas and Studies” (a reference to the Harvard Business Review’s annual ‘Breakthrough Ideas’ list), Bob relates the following anecdote about a breakthrough idea credited to him on the HBR 2004 list:

Reach Out and Touch Someone

If you’re one of those people who just HAVE to have the last word, you’re going to love this one! It seems someone has developed a genuine, bona fide way for the – ahem – deceased to speak from beyond the grave: a talking tombstone! Check out the story here.

Imagine the possibilities…

Incredible Images

One of my favorite time-wasters is visiting Worth1000, a website dedicated to photoshop users. Along with some serious stuff (but who cares about that?) there are about a bazillion photos retouched using Photoshop, all prompted by theme contests set up by the site. For instance, a few of the most recent contests were: Mission Impossible 7, Vacation Bloopers 6, or Super Stunts 8. (Warning: a few contests contain material that is not suitable for all ages, although to their credit they warn you ahead of time). Lots of fun and truly amazing stuff!

Still Got It!

Of course, it’s nice to know some things don’t change. According to Scotsman.com news under the category of Weird, odd, and quirky stories (now why would they file this story there, I wonder?), they reassure us all that David Hasselhoff’s still got it! I can sleep better for sure.

The Last Word

And finally, from a sign spotted on a co-worker’s cubicle wall: “I’m on a 30-day diet. So far I’ve lost 15 days!”

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

Today I’d like to follow up on my earlier posting about “Deliberate Mistakes”, and think about one specific example in which you could deliberately make a mistake in order to possibly reap a benefit, and that is hiring decisions.

In a market where there are fewer applicants than jobs, the pressure is on department managers to fill jobs with “lesser qualified” resources. (Note: this does not necessarily imply lesser capabilities.) What are the risks/rewards for hiring those that don’t quite fit the profile? Is the reward substantial if they turn out to be a good hire? Is it enough to offset the cost of a mistake?

It seems to me, at least on the surface, the potential rewards seem to outweigh the potential risks. And, there could be other benefits as well (such as bringing in fresh viewpoints).

I’ll cite an example from my own industry. At the moment, there is a shortage of Project Management resources in the industrial facility engineering field. At the same time, there is a surplus of IT personnel. Some of those IT resources have considerable project management experience, albiet in a different field. Granted, IT and industrial engineering are vastly different fields, but surely it’s obvious that project management across industries is relatively similar in knowledge, skills, and application. Why not take the risk and hire a willing IT PM to fill the need?

Think about it - if the worth of an employee is generally considered to be 3x annual salary (I read that somewhere), then a $90K/yr employee’s worth is $270,000 in billings. How much does it cost to hire an employee - perhaps $20,000? Add the cost of hiring, salary and benefits and see where you end up.

Worth = $270K

Salary = -90K

Hiring = -20K

Benefits = -90K

——————

Profit = $ 70K

Now, suppose the new PM doesn’t work out. If you have to let him or her go, what did it cost? Don’t forget, good or bad, they are still worth 3x annual salary in billings the entire time they are employed. If the hiring decision is for just one or a few employees, your risk may be too high. But what if you have to hire 30-50 PM’s?

The numbers above are guesses, but I will try to validate them over the next few weeks. Nevertheless, if they turn out to be fairly close, then as a hiring manager, can you afford NOT to consider “making a mistake”?

Tell me what you think!

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There’s a blog today at Fast Company called The Half Life of Ideas, that refers to an essay by Phred Dvorak at today’s Wall Street Journal. The essay concerns why management trends tend to fade away. (Alas - since I don’t subscribe to the WSJ I can’t read the article.)

Four possible reasons:

• Consultants offer services in which they lack expertise
• New ideas come and go faster and faster
• People try to apply the same idea to too many dissimilar problems
• New practices and processes don’t work for every organization

Hmm… it seems like every one of the above reasons would apply to differing degrees. (Remember the Reengineering fiasco?) But how do you distinguish between a fad and the real Next Big Thing?

Take blogging, for instance. It’s literally everywhere! There are marketing blogs, personal blogs, technical blogs, blogs on blogging, etc., etc., ad nauseum. I have to admit, there are certainly great uses for blogs out there. In fact, I plan to start one or two at my workplace.

So is blogging the Next Big Thing? Is it here to stay? Why or why not? What do you think?

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

An article in the June 2006 Harvard Business review, “The Wisdom of Deliberate Mistakes” by Paul J. H. Schoemaker and Robert E. Gunther, makes an interesting case for going against conventional wisdom when it comes to making business decisions, although it’s easy to be put off by the title. The term “deliberate mistakes” is intentional by the authors, it seems, to provoke the thinking process. They present the idea that by being willing to experiment a bit, some decisions can return potentially huge payoffs.

They say, “Although organizations need to make mistakes in order to improve, they go to great lengths to avoid anything resembling an error… Consequently, companies may be moving in the wrong direction, retreating from error making even though mistakes - done right - are a powerful way to accelerate learning and increase competitiveness.”

The difference between experimentation and mistake-making seems to be in its intention. Many times experiments are designed to merely confirm present assumptions. The value of making a deliberate mistake is when it pays off. The authors point out, “But if such a mistake unexpectedly succeeds, then it has undermined at least one current assumption (and often, more). That is what creates opportunities for profitable learning.”

The authors identify five situations in which you should consider making deliberate mistakes:

• The potential gain greatly outweighs the cost of the mistake
• The same types of decisions are made repeatedly
• The environment has dramatically changed
• The problem is complex and solutions are numerous
• Your organization’s experience with a problem is limited

How do you distinguish smart mistakes from dumb ones? The authors outline a plan they used internally for determining which mistakes to make:

• Identify assumptions
• Select specific assumptions for testing
• Rank the assumptions
• Create strategies for making mistakes
• Execute the mistake
• Learn from the process

“Every company needs people who have made mistakes - and then made the most of them.” - Bill Gates, on hiring Craig Mundie, founder of a supercomputer company that ultimately failed.

The authors wrap up by saying, “Leaders who understand this will foster an organizational culture that encourages intelligent, deliberate mistake making. As IBM’s Thomas J. Watson, Sr., noted, ‘If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.’ “

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

In Debbie Weil’s blog from yesterday, Robert Scoble has an interesting comment about writing a book that caught my eye, namely “blog the book”. (Actually, Shel Israel was quoting Robert’s statement.)

Having reading James Suroweiki’s book, “The Wisdom of Crowds”, I think I can understand and agree with the sentiment. In this day and age, it is quite easy to say pretty much anything you want, and publish it as broadly as you like. However, with the blogosphere being what it is, and directly related to how public your statements are, there’s every likelihood that if you say something that is factually incorrect, you’ll probably be quickly corrected, and publicly! Just think back to the last presidential election and the truths, half-truths, and outright untruths flying around…

I can’t think of a more powerful, better technique to collect, test, and verify stories, facts, and other information prior to publishing. The fact is, given the right conditions (see James’ book), the blogosphere has at least the potential to be the smartest organism ever! (And yes, he does cover why this doesn’t always happen.)

Pretty powerful stuff! Now the question is, “How can I utilize that resource?”

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!