Jun 6, 2010 | Communication, Leadership, Social Media
As we grapple in this country with the notion of Canberra putting filters on the net, as has happened in China, and the various businesses and groups having their say, perhaps the most useful being Google, who have had the guts to take a stand that compromises their short to medium term position in China based on their corporate values, what we lack is a philosophical framework that describes the “why” and acknowledges the downsides.
All we are getting is the “we must protect our children” arguments, few would disagree, but it leaves us with a shallow virtually non existent populist “debate” without any real foundation.
A short time ago the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton put forward such a framework, agree, or disagree, at least there is a sensible framework to debate. One of the best commentators on the net, and what is happening, and why is Clay Shirky, and I have linked to his edited version of Clintons speech to make life easier rather than reading the full transcript, but the full text is available on the US department of State website.
Jun 3, 2010 | Communication, Management
So many meetings fail to deliver an outcome simply because they do not ask for one.
Here’s an tactic I saw at work a while ago in a meeting chaired by someone I know well with an extensive record of getting things done.
At the end of the agenda, he went around the table, and asked people what they would do as a result of the discussions in the meeting.
By observation, it achieved three outcomes:
- It offered an opportunity to ensure the resulting workload is both fairly spread, and in the right place,
- It committed people to an outcome, as once they publicly said what they would do, it become a very strong psychological commitment to follow through,
- It would have exposed any who were in the meeting simply as a means of filling in time, in this case, there were none, as this was standard practice, and the bludgers had already been burnt, and moved elsewhere.
Try it, I guarantee it will energise and shorten any meeting.
May 17, 2010 | Communication, Leadership, Management, Personal Rant
I watched Q&A last night, in the ultimately vain hope of getting some intelligent debate on the Federal budget, and its foundation proposal to change the manner in which the mining industry is taxed.
Should have known better.
What passed for debate was really just a moderated annunciation of political hyperbole and PR crafted phrases intended to play to the emotions, there was little presentation of the facts. How are we to form intelligent positions on issues where all we see is the spin? Are we the electorate, expected to be so compliant and thoughtless that we just accept the nonsense from whichever side of the political divide best suits our generic position.
There are strong arguments on both sides, lets hear them in a way that enables us to make a decision on how we feel, rather than being told how we should feel on the basis of spin.
Increasingly businesses I see are making real efforts to remove the verbiage, and present facts without the gloss and polish as a means to make sensible decisions, and engage the stakeholders in the process to the extent that even if they do not agree with the outcome, they are satisfied that there was due process, and therefore they can live with the outcome.
If our two “debaters” last night were sitting around the board table of anything more significant than the local tennis club, and expecting to get support for their respective positions, the chairman would be well within his rights to send them to the corner to share the pointed cap.
May 16, 2010 | Communication, Innovation, Leadership
A while ago facilitating a two day innovation session, I became involved in two very different, but very similar conversations during various coffee breaks.
The first was with a smart young technical bloke, who expressed the view that all the nice encouraging words expressed at the session were great, but that the business was too risk averse to actually do anything daring.
The second was with the marketing director, someone with a track record of achievement, skills, and a preparedness to have a shot, to push resource allocation and strategic boundaries. He felt that those he relied on to develop the means to execute the technical end of some of the ideas were too interested in science for the sake of it, and disinterested in the commercial and market issues he had to address.
In effect, they are both seeking the same outcome, but the language of management, the functional cultural preconceptions and perceptions have got in the way of unambiguous communication.
This is not an uncommon challenge, every innovation effort must work hard to overcome the cultural and semantic barriers to be successful.
The more attention is focused on innovation, and the higher up the tree that focus emanates from, the better to turn the words into action.
May 9, 2010 | Communication, Innovation, Social Media
I suspect neither Coke or Mentos planned for the tsunami of videos on Utube and others demonstrating the effect of a Mentos in a bottle of coke. Nevertheless, it happens, and it remains to be seen if the popularity of coke-bombs impacts the brands in any way.
Blend-it has made a business by demonstrating the blending power of their appliances by blending all sorts of things, latest is an Ipad, but this by contrast is a deliberate marketing strategy that has delivered a huge brand position for little cost.
The point is that the power of the web can be harnessed, and used to your benefit, but it is a demanding, unpredictable mistress, and just as prone to turn around and bite your bum, as it is to do you a favour.
Believing you can manage the web content that impacts on your products is the first mistake, best you can do is participate, contribute, comment, and if you do it well, as Blendtec has, you can leverage the power, never control it.
May 6, 2010 | Change, Communication, Leadership, Strategy
For years there have been libraries written on the value of business purpose, vision, mission, and values, consultants have made a good living out of running workshops and managing implementation projects. Now, at a TED event, all the complication has been stripped away by Simon Sinek in a terrific presentation about “why” .
As managers, and in my case, a consultant and advisor, we talk about all this stuff, but never have I seen it put so simply, and so compellingly.
