Monthly Archives: December 2010

Book Review: Open Leadership

Posted by on December 29, 2010 No comments

In her previous book Groundswell, written with Josh Bernoff, the authors introduced the why of openly engaging your customers. In this context engaging, being defined as encouraging and accepting two way conversations, rather than the old push method of one-way marketing messages. After extensive interviews and consulting research, In this new book, Open Leadership; How Social Technology Can Transform The Way You Lead (ISBN 978-0-470-59726-2)Ms. Li dives into some ideas on the how organizations can become more transparent and open.


Right from the introduction, and within each of the case studies, the text makes quite clear that  Ms. Li defends the thesis that control of your message is a thing of the past, and that the way communications that lead to customer engagement with your brand is the way of the future. Ms. Li is equally clear that while engagement does require loosening control, this loosening  is not throwing open the doors to chaos, or chanting mantra’s and kumbaya’s.

Loosening control requires strategy, execution and measurement, along with the appropriate procedures, policies, and guidelines. Marketing executives will understand the authors context of defining how open do you need to be will depend on where your customers and stakeholders are. In other words, know thy customer, and understand the lifetime value and Net Promoter Scores of your customers.

The author presents a compelling argument that giving up control is inevitable, and presents the following points which she then builds upon to begin a framework that can assist your business in loosening the apron strings while maintaining brand and message consistency through what I would call covenants rather than direct control;

1 Respect that your customers and employees have power

2 Share constantly to build trust

3 Nurture curiosity and humility

4 Hold openness accountable

5 Forgive failure

While the author mentions  our currently available two way communicating social technologies such as blogs, twitter and FaceBook, it is important to understand that the while the  technologies we use may shift and change, (and change happens quickly) this concept of engagement supersedes whatever the tool of the day may be.

In a chapter describing  the business benefits of being engaged and open with customers,  Ms. Li provides good, hard samples of the calculations that executives may need to demonstrate ROI and benefit. The chapter covers the context of supporting products or services, marketing engagement and reputation protection, and expertly presents the difficulty I have written about previously on the difficulty in measuring innovation.

All businesses are different and will not have the same strategic goals,  this book, while prescriptive, provides a descriptive framework that can be modified to suit your own requirements and strategies;

Define your objectives

Identify the most important Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

Identify Open activities that support your KPI’s

Establish a baseline for your objectives and KPI’s

Optimize and adjust against KPI’s and priorities.

I find that this prescriptive text to be the first that I have personally read that goes beyond the Why to delve into the detail of the How.

Book Review: UnMarketing

Posted by on December 21, 2010 No comments

I recently read UnMarketing, Stop Marketing. Start Engaging By Scott Stratten. The book is easy to read and the tone is very close to having a live conversation with the author. Which makes sense as he writes that he dictated the book using speech to text software!

Marketing is not a task

Marketing is not a department

Marketing is not a job

Marketing happens every time you engage (or not) with your past, present, and potential customers.

The above is quoted right from the introduction. I think it gives you a great feel of what Mr. Stratten is writing about.

In this book Scott Stratten clearly outlines why the old school spray and pray method of one way communications from your business to your customers or prospects is dead.

Historically, we have always been predisposed to purchase products or services either from people we directly trust, or secondly on the recommendation of someone else that we already know and trust. This is what  we commonly call word of mouth.

Throughout the text, Mr. Stratten argues that with the  introduction and rise of the tools we loosely call social media, which includes channels such as  Facebook,  blogs and Twitter, we are in fact expanding the circle of these relationships of people we know and trust, and by inference this expands the circle of relationships that we can leverage when choosing brands. This concept is echoed by other research (i.e. Edelman, Harvard Business Review December 2010) that demonstrates loyalty to a brand is more likely built on advocacy and bonding, rather than the traditionally depicted sales funnel touch points.

In the authors words, there is a trust gap that as businesses we must close between our prospects and ourselves. And closing this gap is the key, in the authors words;

if you believe business is built on relationships, make building them your business.

If I have one complaint about the book, is that Mr. Stratten uses himself as an example for many of the ideas he writes about, and if you read Scott’s blog, or follow him on twitter, you know that Scott is a passionate, unique and talented individual in this new world of social marketing. I know that I am not Scott Stratten, and I know that most likely you are not either. So our mileage may vary.

For the smaller business, this book is an excellent example of how you can improve the bond and advocacy between your brand and your customers. It is engaging, humorous, and uses great storytelling to demonstrate a concept that many business owners and entrepreneurs may be uncertain about.

35,000 Hours And ITIL

Posted by on December 20, 2010 1 comment

I just came across one page of a document that I was given several months ago and forgot about. Because it is only one page, I have no clue where to point a reference, and I did not want to just throw it out as the  number below  is just too staggering to ignore.

If you recognize this, please let me know so I can do a proper attribution. To quote one paragraph;

… the IT help desk was spending 35,000 hours a month closing trouble tickets. A closer look revealed that the same set of incidents was reported month after month because the cause of the incidents had not been investigated. An analysis found that the vast majority of the calls related to 10 user issues.

Think about that. Ten, TEN!  user issues relate to vast majority of 35,000 hours closing calls.

What does that look like? I don’t know what exact percentage vast majority equals, but lets back of a napkin check out some random numbers.

(for the below, I will assume a commonly quoted number of USD $10.oo per first level incident support call, the above quote is also measured in hours, I have no idea how many calls can be closed per hour, but I assume more than one, so lets just use the 35,000 figure)

At only 10% of 35,000 calls, that is $35,000 per month, or $420,000 per year.

At 25% of 35,000 calls? $87,500 per month, or $1,050,000 per year.

At 50% of 35,000 calls? $175,00 per month, $2,100,000 per year.

As it states vast majority, lets ratchet right up to 75%, $262,500 per month, $3,150,000 per year.

The whole concept of ITIL is that issues like this get identified, and the root cause resolved.

There is absolutely zero excuse for an IT team to be spending from a low of $420 grand to over three million per year on the same ten issues.

Why Customer Service Needs To Change

Posted by on December 16, 2010 1 comment

Bad Customer Service?

As an executive or owner of a business, do you use search engines to look for information about products or services you are considering purchasing?

Most of us do, I am willing to believe that you are no different.

Next, do you think that people will be doing the same thing, searching for information  about your product or service?

Yes, most of them will. You can count on that. In fact in the US alone it is reported that that there were 10 billion Google searches in March 2010 alone.

Now what if your customers experience with your business is shown front and center every time customers or prospects  look for you on-line?

A Case In Point

When people shop for a car, the Edmunds.com web site is well known as a site that can assist consumers in finding the best car for their needs and budget.

Now, according to a November 29th Automotive News article (Subscription Required) along with their existing automobile information, the Edmunds.com site will now include car dealership reviews and ratings.

This element comes out shortly after Google published that its search algorithm will also start to punish business with bad customer service.

Think about that for a minute!

If you have crappy customer service, Google will deliberately put your competition that has great customer service ranked higher than your business.

If you are in the car business, you are up for a double whammy now that Edmunds.com is adding those reviews of your business as well. This won’t be limited to the automotive industry, how soon until the go-to web site for your industry follows suit?

And the result can be insidious.

You may not immediately notice that like water dripping out of a barrel, drip, drip, drip. Your business is slowly drying up. Drying up because when prospects search for your product or service, you either don’t show up in the search results, or you show up covered in warning flags about poor customer service.

A question for you:

If I asked you, right now, what people are saying about your business right here and right now, could you answer?

The SMB Takeaway

If you cannot answer that question, maybe that needs to be added to your New Years resolutions

Photo Credit Oldmaison via flickr

You Don’t Want Software

Posted by on December 13, 2010 No comments

Really, you don’t.

What does software do for you? The term itself is strange; software. It was originally coined because programming code was not a physical thing that you could touch in the way you could touch computer hardware that code would be running on.

So, if you don’t want software, what do you want?

What you are really after is some type of value that the software can deliver. It may by to  increase your sales, or perhaps to gain operational efficiencies.

It is absolutely identical to that old adage; you don’t want to buy a drill – you want to buy a hole.

But there is one thing many business in the SME forget, sure you want a hole. But what type of hole?

The SMB Takeaway

Before considering software for any purpose, understand what you are building. Understand what success is going to look like, and understand the outcome you are looking for.

Photo credit: tanakawho via flickr

Road (Theme) Work Ahead

Posted by on December 8, 2010 No comments

Men Working

I thought I had the WordPress theme I wanted before I moved this blog from WordPress.com.

I was wrong,  I guess if there is one small complaint with this host I am using it would be that there is no way to ‘Sandbox’ the testing and work on getting a new theme running.

Unfortunately that means you will be seeing some work in progress.

Sorry about that!

Best regards and greetings in this 2010 holiday season

Photo Credit Sean MacEntee vis flickr

Employees Value a Flexibility IT Isn’t Providing

Posted by on December 6, 2010 No comments

A report from ChannelBuzz on Cisco’s second Connected World Report.

The report contains statistics on the number of organizations that still block, or deter social media use. And of course statistics of how many employees just work around those blocks.

But take a look at a statistic hidden in among all these out of touch blocking stats; (emphasis added)

….for Cisco, social media campaigns have become its number two driver of registrations for Web-based training and other events, up from the fifth or sixth driver in the not-so-distant past, and lagging only behind the direct marketing e-mail blast in terms of converting visitors.

I think we are past the time we should be arguing and debating if we should be allowing the modern communication tools loosely defined as social media. We need to be arguing how to allow these tools to become our own number two driver.

The SMB Takeaway.

We may sell products, services or experience. The question to ask ourselves is how to improve our engagement utilizing these tools. Not how many of them we can block.

You Can’t Learn Via The Rear View Mirror

Posted by on December 1, 2010 No comments

I have found that too many technology staff get overly comfortable with the tried and true. Comfortable with the same thing, or performed the same way that  they have done a gazillion times in the past.

And from my own experience, I can tell you that doing that is a mistake.

I am going to borrow a term from the Human Resouces and Organizational Behaviour fields here; Variability.

Simply put, while events or situations  may be similar, no two are necesarily alike. For one thing, for two situations or events to be identical, they would have to happen at the same time, that is not happening.

Within the HR and OB fields, the term variability is just one metric that separates skilled from non-skilled trades. A skilled trade (eg. electrician) utilizes learned skills, and adapts them to the job at hand. for example,  with an electrician,  no two houses are the same, there are different designs, electrical panels and wiring. The key being the adaptation or synthesis of learned material to different situations.

Yet in the technology field, we often get out of sync with this concept of variability. Call it learning, call it adapting, call it synthesizing. Too often because we did it successfully in the past, it has to the best idea now.

And that is the rear view mirror.Look Forward

The past is behind you. If you want to drive, look forward, look through the windshield. Look at the  horizon, one thing we know for sure is that the environment around us changes fast. And trying to do what worked before, may not be the best way to do the same thing  now.

True Example?

Think of the software tools you use daily,  it may be your  business basics of word processing or spreadsheets, it may be graphics, but each  and every one of them  have evolved with time. They get new features and new abilities. (some new frustrations here and there too!)

This same evolution  happens with the lower level core software hidden in the IT part of our businesses. These hidden pieces can include the databases or servers that are the plumbing of the IT world.

These tools change just as often as the software tools that you use,  and yet I know of software developers that learned their craft on version 1 of a product, and even though it is now version 10, they refuse to adapt, so they force that new version  to act like old version 1. Why? Bbecause that is what they are familiar and comfortable with.

The SMB takeaway

Sure expertise in a particular technology is needed, but so is learning. The focus has to go beyond current expertise to what is not yet known. So always question prospective hires about the windshield, about the future.

Because if all they can talk  about is the rear view mirror. Move on.

Photo Credit Mike Licht via Flickr

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