Sep 29, 2011 | Collaboration, Leadership, Strategy
Complexity is strangling us, paralysis by analysis has become pretty widespread, and the paradox is that we are all trying to do more with less.
In that context, creating an environment where everyone can contribute to the maximum of their capability seems like a pretty good idea.
To achieve that level of engagement irrespective of the size and complexity of an organisation, all it takes is one simple question”
“What do you think?”
The catch is that the hard part starts after the question, when the cultural environment needs to have evolved sufficiently to encourage people to tell it as they really see it, and then feel they have the power and authority to implement.
Sep 25, 2011 | Collaboration, Strategy
Thinking about they way organisations work, the “industrial” model of hierarchical functional management, expertise and knowledge hoarded, and little transparency of effort and outcomes is way past its use buy date.
We are social animals, who evolved in a village, usually not more than 150 people, where all the individuals made their contributions by way of what they were best at, and the group benefitted.
The age of the net 2.0 is bringing back the notion of the collaborative potential of the village as distinct from the hierarchical structure of the corporation.
This is a different way of organising ourselves. We need to be more adaptive and collaborative, the outcome of the whole system is the objective, not just the benefit that may accrue to an individual.
Sep 12, 2011 | Collaboration, Communication, Social Media
Sharing “content” is the lifeblood of social media, as well as the older disciplines of collaboration, successful negotiation, leadership, even blue collar engagement on the factory floor. With a bit of tweaking the ideas contained in this post from Social Media Examiner work well in all the situations I can think of.
Humans are social animals, that is the way we function, so it should come as no surprise that sharing is an effective strategy to do everything from engaging strangers to become friends, to success in the workplace, and our cutting edge intellectual pursuits.
Sep 7, 2011 | Collaboration, Communication, Customers, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Chatting to a very successful distributor during the week at Sydney’s Fine Food trade show, he said he simply did not “get” facebook and Twitter as marketing tools. “I will wait till my 14 year old daughter gets interested in the business, and does it for me” he said, “but I guess I should be doing something, just too busy to think about it”
Pretty typical in my experience of SME’s and their relationships with social media, just something else to do, and no more time to do it in!
So here are a few thought starters, simple things to do with facebook to turn it from something else to do, to the most important tool ever put in your hands to engage with your customers.
- Change the “face” regularly, the picture on the landing page, the animation, put up some simple recipes of the day, week, or season, just make it interesting. Even Google changes their landing page almost daily, putting up some design that is topical for some reason .
- Have a page where visitors to your site can engage, you just become the facilitator. In the case of food marketers, a place to exchange recipes, cooking techniques, photos of finished dishes, and people enjoying them seems like a sensible idea.
- Make sure you have a spot where other platforms that may be of interest to visitors can be reached, allow them to add their own links to spots they like.
- Have good quality, relevant content, and make sure you keep it fresh.
- Have a range of incentives rolling through, these might be anything from samples and deals, to points type accumulation programs for a prize.
- Make giving easy. If we are talking food products here, and I am, create seasonal hampers and gift to a friend offers, a Xmas hamper delivered to a customers friend with seasons greetings will always go down well.
- Enable Q & A pages, and conversation streams. This may be on the page, or in a linked blog if the topics are a bit more serious. In the Australian food game, SME’s are struggling for survival in a retail oligopoly where housebrands are being pushed by retailers, and imports are growing on the back of the high $A. There is plenty to talk about, some of it commercial and perhaps not engaging for consumers, so keep it linked but separate and do not be afraid to tackle serious stuff, just be a bit careful.
- Be responsive to posts fans put up, engage in the conversations yourself, just don’t try to dominate it.
- Make sure you have a strong call to action, not too overtly commercial, but the point of it is ultimately to get a sale, so find creative ways of asking for the order.
- Ask for visitors ideas, views, and thoughts. Where better to test a new product idea, and do some focussed qualitative mrket research than with those already engaged.
- Watch and learn from what others are doing, the web is a great big learning experience. Social Media Examiner is one site that often puts up very useful information, here is a list of the top 10 SME sites from around the world they have just judged, some good pointers in there.
- And last of all, make it fun, and never let down someone who visits and engages!
This is all pretty easy stuff technically, it just takes time to plan, assemble the content, and make it happen. My distributor friend can probably get his 14 year old daughter to do it for fun, you don’t have to pay someone big bucks, you just need to engage in the conversation as you would over the back fence to your neighbour.
Aug 30, 2011 | Alliance management, Collaboration, Innovation, Strategy
I was amazed to realise that the recent dog fight to buy Nortel, was really driven by the patents they had, rather than the value of the operational parts of the business.
After an opener bid by Google of $900mill, Nortel eventually was sold to a consortium that included Apple, Microsoft, (ironic partnership that) Ericcson and Sony for $4.5 billion, outbidding Google and Intel who had teamed up. The winners will share the patent bank of Nortel, some 30,000 of them covering all sorts of electronic ideas and gizmos. The Nortel sale then prompted the sale of Motorola to Google for 12.5 billion, as it put a value on their patent bank.
A new business has emerged from the development of the last 20 years, “patent troll” someone who buys up patents, and then launches litigation to extract royalties. Given the hazy boundaries of patents in the digital space, the ideas that patent applications address in the first instance often have potential applications in applications never dreamed of in the original form. Enter the patent troll, who chases the royalities, potentially ensuring innovation driven startups may make never get off the ground, as the threat of litigation is enough to smother the commercialisation process.
The giant of Patent Trolls appears to be Intellectual Ventures, started by Nathan Myhrvold, a brilliant bloke whose contribution to Microsoft was a key to their success, and who since has made heaps by effectively greenmailing tech companies with lawsuits and threats suits for patent infringement.
Long intro. This cost of insuring against greenmailing ends up in the cost of the stuff we buy, and virtually all of it is just risk management, avoiding the risk of litigation that adds no value to the innovation process at all. The patent process was developed to protect ideas in a simpler time, and seems to me to have lived beyond its useful life, at least in the digital arena. Ideas scale, they get better with use, and the evolution of patent trolling acts as a disincentive to use, a tax.
Aug 19, 2011 | Collaboration, Innovation, Leadership, Social Media
The astonishing explosion of creativity that occurred in Florence in the 1500’s was precipitated when the Medici family brought together creative people from a range of disciplines, painters, sculptors, writers, philosophers, mathematicians, architects, engineers, and sparked the renaissance by creating and facilitating the connections and cross fertilisation between these creators.
The common denominator amongst all these creative people the Medici’s brought together was curiosity, a willingness to see solutions to their problems, and ideas they can use in the work of others, and a willingness to experiment, question, learn, and collaborate.
To a considerable degree, the Medici effect also impacted the UK midlands after the steam engine was utilised in cotton and woollen mills, and it is happening again now in the manner in which the internet is being used to connect people, and transform just about everything in our daily lives.
Perhaps the only thing not being altered is the same thing that remained unaltered in previous incarnations of the Medici’s impact, the necessity for people to trust, and engage with each other on a personal level, and the role of genuine leadership in determining how resources will be assembled and allocated.
