Curiouser and Curiouser! on business

Be careful what you optimize

Thu, 27 Jun 2002 18:55:38 +0100

If you make quarter-on-quarter revenue growth the key measure of corporate success, so important that you run the risk of losing your job if you don't deliver, is it any suprise that executives will attempt to optimize this at any cost?

Budgeting is good for the soul

Fri, 12 Jul 2002 13:19:57 +0100

Budgeting is good for the soul..

Budgeting is good for the soul.

Bad VC market a good time to start a company:. "...while capital is scarce and returns on venture investments have never been poorer, the track record from previous downturns suggests that conditions for building a solid start-up may be the best they have been in years." [evhead]

Hey Mike, maybe doing the company thing isn't so stupid after all. You learn how to run a company on a tight budget! :) [Brett Morgan's Insanity Weblog]

True enough mate, true enough.

[rebelutionary]

» Well this is better news!

My company will be like this

Sun, 14 Jul 2002 22:03:43 +0100

Be Creative Or Die. I particularly like the explanation of the three T's that drive the growth of 'creative communities' such as those found in San Francisco and Boston. See:

My theory uses the three T's: technology, talent and tolerance. You need to have a strong technology base, such as a research university and investment in technology. That alone is a necessary but not in itself sufficient condition. Second, you need to be a place that attracts and retains talent, that has the lifestyle options, the excitement, the energy, the stimulation, that talented, creative people need. And thirdly, you need to be tolerant of diversity so you can attract all sorts of people -- foreign-born people, immigrants, woman as well as men, gays as well as straights, people who look different and have different appearances.

I think I am going to have to buy this book ... [Gurteen Knowledge-Log]

» As someone thinking about growing a business (okay actually I'm thinking about how to pay rent but at some point it's gotta grow yes?) this is interesting.
It describes some key factors in creating an ideal workplace:

strong technology base

excitement, energy, stimulation

tolerance & diversity

Of course it's a monumentally wierd idea to me now to be considering the kind of workplace I want to create for my future staff...

Email vs. k-logging

Mon, 15 Jul 2002 22:23:33 +0100

Email Email Everywhere.

E-Mail Storage Issues Facing North American Companies

According to a recently-released whitepaper from Osterman Research, 31% of North American companies say the average size of an e-mail mailbox in their message system is between 26 and 50 megabytes (Mb). Additionally, 46% of these companies say that e-mail users in their system send up to 50 messages per day....

There has to be a way for k-logging to help with this for at least a percentage of these people. Luckily, we don't have quotas in place at SLS or else my external email would be a real problem. Here I am with my own blog, I'm trying to move into k-logging, and I really haven't integrated email into that equation yet. How on earth am I going to get my staff to do this?

Are there any guidelines out there yet for how to integrate various information sources (web, email, chat, etc.) into a k-log, or is the format still too young?

[The Shifted Librarian]

» Too many good questions here I'm afraid.

My experience of KM leads me to expect that k-logging will not provide a turn-key answer to managing email. What it will do is, in all practical terms, to kill email. That's the solution.

Many of the business contexts for e-mail could be replaced by publish & subscribe RSS feeds and Wiki leaving e-mail purely for private correspondance. If we could solve this spam thing too then you might see mailboxs drop back to pre-1996 levels again.

I'd be interesting to hear what other people think on this topic.

How not to succeed at Consulting

Tue, 16 Jul 2002 22:59:55 +0100

How to Succeed at Consulting. Nice take on how consultants can really help your company. [Blunt Force Trauma]

» Tom DeMarco describes the effects of a "rank & yank" culture very well in his book Slack. It creates a culture of fear where no-one is prepared to help anyone else for fear of falling down and being one of the "yanks."

In his book The E-Myth revisited Michael Gerber talks about a totally different hiring policy. Based around the idea of a turn-key operation with fully documented processes he recommends hiring not A-graders but people who have the skills to do the job and are willing to play the game you have created for them.

It's certainly a different way of thinking.

Making a living selling Open Source software

Tue, 20 Aug 2002 13:03:26 +0100

Okay I'm reading stuff about how to make a living "selling" open source software (free software as GNU would have it). It seems that the model held up by most people is Red Hat who sell Linux. A brief look at their web page indicates that professional services is a big part of their business.

Does anyone have a view on this model? How about "selling" a much smaller, less commoditized product, in the KM marketplace? I'm not sure...

Regulation vs. BIG/GAS

Tue, 20 Aug 2002 14:48:54 +0100

Bob Lewis nails it again. On the current round of accounting scandals and the regulation backlash to come...

As we sit in the rubble of Enron, ImClone, WorldCom, Tyco, AOL, and other, as-yet-undiscovered or unpublicized corporate implosions, it's worthwhile to wonder which is the egg: the lack of accountability resulting from more than two decades of business deregulation, or the corrupt perspective of the corporate elite who acquired the resulting additional power.
Lord Acton notwithstanding, I think the corruption came first.
Without regulation, those businesses that resort to any tactic to win have the advantage over those that restrict their behavior to conventional codes of ethics.
Consequently, ethical CEOs should welcome government regulation, not fight it.
The goal of an ethical CEO would be efficient regulation, not deregulation.
For more than two decades we've been subjected to unrelenting propaganda from the BIG/GAS (Business Is Great/Government and Academics are Stupid) contingent decrying any and all regulation as a fundamentally bad idea.
Regulation, we've been assured, prevents American businesses from being competitive in world markets, harms productivity, and hampers profitability.
The business community no longer has the credibility to be part of the process.
Their goal will be minimizing any chance of new abuses, unfettered by considerations of how hard or easy it will be to comply.
Every new regulation will result in reporting requirements, every reporting requirement will require new information technology, and nobody is going to care how hard it is to build.

Blair tells Bush, 'back off UK plc'

Wed, 21 Aug 2002 13:30:22 +0100

This is about a piece in the Observer news paper at the weekend that reported how Blair was trying to get Bush to give UK companies an exemption to the Sarbanes-Oxley bill. This is the new regulation of federal securities bill that has everyone hopping up and down. I'm hoping Bush says 'get lost' because I'm not a believer that we are any better off here, fraud wise.

What caught my eye in the article was the posturing about the effect the new regulations would have on non-executive directors. Quoting from the Business & Media from Page from the Observer, Sunday 11th August 2002:

"A number of leading City organisations are worried that the law raises the prospect of criminal proceedings being taken against innocent directors who fail to detect frauds perpetrated by their colleagues."

and

"At a time when we want the best-quality people to be non-executive directors, the threat of still penal and legal consequences is a major deterrent to the very people we're trying to attract. They'll just say it's not worth the risk." -- Peter Wyman, President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants

To me this is just proof, from the horses mouth, that the whole idea of non-execs regulating companies doesn't work. If the good ones are afraid they can't spot fraud what's the point in having them there?

Networking is the key

Wed, 04 Sep 2002 12:07:10 +0100

As so many people have told me: networking is the key to starting a successful business. To this end I have joined both Ryze and E-cademy which are online networking sites where you can build a profile and hopefully connect up with people who have similar or complementary interests.

KM must be about achieving strategic business objectives

Tue, 10 Sep 2002 08:57:35 +0100

CKO mistakes. Udai Shekawat writes about Five Mistakes CKOs Must Avoid, which explores why many KM initiatives fail, from a Chief Knowledge... [Column Two]

» Really good thoughtful article. Some highlights:

Solution: CKOs must execute their strategies in the context of the business problem, define the criteria for an ideal solution and then identify the closest technological match.

After all, what good is a KM solution if employees do not use it?

While the 20% of the organizational know-how that is represented in documents is indeed important, the remaining 80% of know-how walks out the door every evening.

There is a natural tendency in large organizations to assess what knowledge resources already exist in the company and then select a KM solution that can best enable the employees to utilize those resources.

It is the responsibility of every person in the organization to create, share, refine knowledge.

So, coaching is a key -- you cannot take people out of the equation, and capturing the "context" or the story or the situation around the answer is just as important as capturing the answer or solution itself.

Especially interesting was the view that a CKO must take a strategic, demand-driven approach rooted in solving business problems. Not KM for KM's sake. This gels with the comments at Knowledge Cafe that it was hard to justify KM. I'm not suggesting that the person who said that was not taking a strategic approach, simply that it is not necessarily widely understood.

Has pagerank run it's course?

Tue, 17 Sep 2002 07:23:11 +0100

Daniel Brandt: Google's Original Sin. [Scripting News]

» A good piece. The main thrust is that Google's reliance on pagerank, far from being democratic, is uniquely autocratic. Because sites with a high pagerank matter most, they have more power and it is harder for site with a low pagerank to get noticed regardless of the relevance of their onpage content.

"In a democracy, every person has one vote. In PageRank, rich people get more votes than poor people, or, in web terms, pages with higher PageRank have their votes weighted more than the votes from lower pages. As Google explains, "Votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important.'" In other words, the rich get richer, and the poor hardly count at all. This is not "uniquely democratic," but rather it's uniquely tyrannical. It's corporate America's dream machine, a search engine where big business can crush the little guy."

The remedy?

"We feel that PageRank has run its course. Google doesn't have to abandon it entirely, but they should de-emphasize it. The first step is to stop reporting PageRank on the toolbar. This would mute the awareness of PageRank among optimizers and webmasters, and remove some of the bizarre effects that such awareness has engendered. The next step would be to replace all mention of PageRank in their own public relations documentation, in favor of general phrases about how link popularity is one factor among many in their ranking algorithms. And Google should adjust the balance between their various algorithms so that excellent on-page characteristics are not completely cancelled by low link popularity. "

Even if I agree, and I not certain that I do, it's hard to see Google give up what they see as a key differentiator. It's quite possible that they see an advantage for themselves in the tyranny of pageranks and the power of corporate America to wield them!

One for PingBack

Wed, 25 Sep 2002 16:29:02 +0100

I agree with Ray. I don't want pingback, trackback, or refererback. I get enough feedback with comments, spam free e-mail, and links to IM. If I wanted to host a discussion group, that is what I would have instead of a weblog. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

» Quite frankly I do more than scan my referrer lists "once in a while" as Ray puts it. I am always scanning them, looking for the breadcrumbs of someone or something interesting that has passed by. Always on the lookout for that connection that could have value for me or my business. I get as much spam as anyone, but I'll put up with a future of pingbots right now if it means I make the connections that helps my business to succeed. Just like I put up with spam to use email today. I can't afford to pull up the draw bridge.

PingBack may not be good for John, Ray, and others on the path well trodden. But I think there are lots of people like myself who see things differently. I want to know when someone is talking about what I am talking about and especially when they are talking about something I've written.

I don't know all the answers to the path I'm on, it's only through shared dialogue and the connections that I am making that I have a hope of moving forward. I see PingBack as a valuable way of making those extra connections that I need, of closing the loops, and getting the feedback. If Ray & John don't want to come to that party that's fine, but I hope that, their not turning up, doesn't mean that there isn't a party at all.

To put it another way my blog isn't the government emergency broadcast system, it's The Frasier Crane show.

So go ahead and ping me.

I'm listening.

Filling the pipeline

Sun, 13 Oct 2002 13:27:59 +0100

I haven't posted much about business lately. I've realised that I have fallen into the trap that lies in wait for so many people who go it alone. The business of business is quite daunting - it's very easy to focus on what you're best at and hope the rest takes care of itself. (Note to self: It won't!)

I have been struggling for some time to work out what it is that I am trying to offer, as a business, to whom and how. So far I've been doing it in an ad hoc fashion. Chip a little here, nibble at bit there. But like a pitcher who can't quite find the strike zone I've been feeling increasingly uncomfortable with my game.

I keep thinking that, by now, I really ought to be certain what the hell I'm doing and be out doing it. Instead I'm still circling the problem, unable to focus. As it always has been with me: lots of ideas, still need to execute.

So my coach "!coach" has introduced me to the Get Clients Now! approach (from the book by C.J.Hayden). Get Clients Now! is a repeatable 28-day marketing program which focuses on finding where you are blocked, suggesting strategies for going forward and then providing a 28-day program to further those strategies. The idea is that you configure each 28-day program to fit your current needs and execute on it. At the end of the program you evaluate, adjust (or totally change) and go round again.

It's a very simple system. The beginning is to work out your overall goals and where you are stuck in achieving them. I'm at still at stage#1 (sigh) or filling the pipeline. As someone coming in to this game without the 12-months solid preparation that it needs I lack the network of contacts or visibility required to be in business.

(Aside: although I've met a lot of interesting people over the last couple of months. Although I've done a huge amount of thinking and really feel I've achieved something personally, for me. Despite all that I haven't come up with a sustainable business model.)

When filling the pipeline the recommended strategies are:

Direct contact and follow-up
Networking and referral building

So those are what I am going to focus on in the next 28-days.

When "filling the pipeline" using these two strategies there are a number of techniques (ingredients as Hayden calls them) that can be practiced. It is strongly recommended that you choose no more than 3 for any iteration of the program. I've chosen:

Description of Services
Target Market Definition
10 Second Introduction

(Note: If you 'complete' your program early you can do more, but Hayden advises choosing no more than 3 ingredients up front)

And now, having reached this point I can see clearly why "!coach" got me to look at this program. Here, in a nutshell, is the focus I have lacked. When I have these three things I shall, at last, know:

What I am doing

&

Who I am doing it for

Then I can actually go out and start doing it.

It's going to be an interesting 28 days!

Anybody got a wrench?

Sun, 13 Oct 2002 19:30:49 +0100

So, a description of services, I should be able to whip that up in a couple of minutes shouldn't I? Turns out its a bit of a chase your own tail problem for me.

Services I can offer fall under three broad categories:

Consulting
Implementation
Product

Way back, when the madness first gripped me, it was on my mind to be a consultant. I'd done product and implementation and really wanted to move to where the decisions are made. Unfortunately I didn't heed the warnings. Consulting is about 80% network and 80% reputation. You could probably survive with either and thrive with both. But neither...? Right.

Now implementation skills I have. No problems there. I can hook & eye systems together with the best of 'em. I also have a budding application in "!livetopics". If I could just choose between them I should be okay right? Turns out there's a problem though.

Because there are no klogging consultants in the UK, there are no pilot programs already in place. Nobody needs implementation services if they aren't implementing things. Rats. Well then how about product?

"!liveTopics" is a knowledge-logging application built on "!radio". But that makes it an application without a market (at least in the UK). If there is no existing market and no consultants out there fostering a market that leaves a big hole where the customers should be. Anyway we all now how difficult it is to be a software company post-1999.

And last but not least: Where's the leaky pipe?

I've referred a few times to Geoffrey Moore's leaky pipes metaphor. That, in todays market, company's will only spend money to fix their pressing problems (their leaky pipes) and then only if it looks like the leak will get worse soon, and then only if the fix can pay for itself. I'll also note in passing that Moore says that business by referral becomes even more important in a down market. Nobody wants to trust a software company anymore.

Hence my recent interest in framing klogging as the solution to a leaky pipe kind of problem. I believe that if this is possible then many of the other pieces might fit into place. But so far I haven't found the a compelling pipe for which klogging will be the wrench. It still all too "a better tomorrow."

So, that's the problems. The challenge is in 28-days or less to turn this around and create a compelling statement of services.

All suggestions warmly welcomed!

Can you see the light?

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 23:05:17 +0100

I don't know where to start, so I'm just going to start.

Keys problem in my efforts to define services for klogging have been:

Blue Sky - Klogging is a better tomorrow, golden path, etc...
Scattershot - Ooh it does this, and this, and this, and...
Where do I fit in? "He doesn't look like a real consultant. Quick! Don't let him get away!"

Well I've seen the light ladies and gentlemen. In the time left to me, before the great job in the sky beckons, my approach shall be:

Klogging as an applied business tool. How much money will this save you today, tomorrow, this week, next week
1 problem at a time
I am providing consultancy, implementation and product. I may not look like a consultant but I know how many beans make 5. Also this is a non-existant market, there's nobody else doing this stuff to make me look bad.

Only when I've got some success from this approach will I broaden it out, leveraging case studies and satisfied customers. Sound sensible?

I'm open to suggestions about what people think is the most fertile ground to start on but my own preference right now is visbility. I choose this because it is:

a recognised problem, I don't think anyone claims that visibility within companies isn't an issue for them anymore (or do they? I don't want to kid myself again)
affects all companies large and small, in all markets and sectors, i.e. universally applicable
klogging provides a unique and, hopefully, compelling solution

I'm going to try and flesh this out into a proper paper/article/story in the next couple of days but here is the main gist.

Organisations have difficulty knowing what is going on both internally within their own systems and at their edges (in interaction with customers, partners, suppliers and so forth). The tools most commonly used to address this are (in no particular order):

e-mails
mailing lists
bulletins
magazines
news letters
web pages
meetings
telephone calls

Each of these can under the right circumstance be an appropriate tool for improving visibility, but they are not a general solution and as organisations have discovered they have many shortcomings and pitfalls. In short they don't address the real problem.

The issues I have identified are:

Asynchronous / Synchronous
Passive / Interruptive
Self-archiving / Self-destructing
Lateral / Hierarchical
Deep / Opaque
Public / Secret
Connected / Disconnected
Matrix / Linear

There may be more formal, well known terms for each of these, and I will explain more later to allow people to guide me. It may also be that there is considerable overlap here. But what I've tried to do is think about the various attributes of the problem and solutions and come up with axes that describe them and allow judgements to be made.

In my opinion, for improved visibility, the left hand choices are important and the right hand choices lead to solutions that, whilst they may be effective in specific cases, are generally sub-optimal.

It is also my opinion (although this may be self-fulfilling prophecy at work) that k-logging fulfills all of the left hand choices.

Hopefully I will get enough down tomorrow for you to judge for yourselves.

Anthracite Software

Fri, 25 Oct 2002 12:27:35 +0100

My Response to Larry Lessig.

Documents about Chandler talks about various "killer features". Killer features are intended to kill something. If Chandler kills Outlook, we'll have Chandler where we used to have Outlook. Nothing really changed except now no one is making a dime instead of the Bully making all the money. The consumers will love it of course and learn to take free software as the norm. How dare you charge money for what should be free? The service sector will eventually get nothing in return because consumer software will be so easy to use and customize that they won't need any help. The book industry will live a little longer. No wonder Tim O'Reilly is so strongly pushing open source and free software. How about free books too Tim?

[Don Park's Blog]

» This argument seems to boil down to:

Does the software industry have a right to survive?

I would argue that it does not, and that it should survive only so long as it serves a purpose.

Now, obviously, as someone with a background (albeit not such a long one as Don) in software development this is a sore point for me. I too would like to make money from the things I create. Would I relish the idea of a group of open source developers blowing my business model by undercutting me? No, of course not. Will it happen? Yes, eventually I believe it will. I just have to be ready for that.

I think that what we are seeing is the beginning of the end of software as a production business. Any attempts we make to shore up the traditional software industry will be no more than protectionism and about as effective as government attempts to shore up coal and steel when it was undercut by cheap foreign imports.

In the future those who develop software will do so because of a love of the craft (and true craftsmen may still be able to sell what they product in niche markets) or because they can sell services on top of that software.

That's what I think right now.

P2P companies or 'loosly coupled business'

Thu, 31 Oct 2002 14:16:57 +0000

Loosely Coupled Business Practices Remember my ramblings about p2p companies? Well, when I wrote that piece I wanted to use the "loosely coupled" metaphor, but then for some reason I didn't. This article gives a some very interesting perspectives on the idea. You should also read the white paper. [Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog]

» I'll be reading this article later on. John Seely-Brown is one of it's authors so I have high hopes.

For now here is a 250 word summary:

Collaboration can only generate economic value when it is firmly anchored in specific business processes that span across enterprises.

Three core business processes meet this requirement: supply chain management, customer relationship management, and product innovation and commercialization.

Li & Fung provides a powerful example of a new kind of sophisticated orchestrator coordinating a very broad process network.

More fully developed process networks typically represent an expanding group of companies organized by an orchestrator to execute tailored business processes extending across multiple stages of activity.

For ts and to motivate every orchestrator, then, there will be a growing number of companies known as service providers.

Another aspect of Cisco's operations receives relatively little attention -- its development of an innovative process network to enhance the performance of its customer relationship management process.

The differences between tightly coupled and loosely coupled business processes explain fundamental differences in the economic value creation potential of each type of business process.

The early examples of loosely coupled business processes have all emerged within existing generations of information technology.

Web services are the technology analog to loosely coupled business processes.

Another key challenge in this stage is to build the appropriate information feedback loops to accelerate the ability of s improve their performance in supporting the process networks.

Few companies will evolve to the third stage where they shed their traditional core business and become pure process network orchestrators.

Success requires migrating towards a much more flexible business architecture supported ultimately by a more flexible technology architecture.

Seeing the real Google

Fri, 01 Nov 2002 14:59:45 +0000

News.Com: The Google Gods. [Scripting News]

» Interesting.

"But Google is examining its system, well aware that growing criticism could damage its credibility with the public at large."

Too late in my case.

I wrote a little while ago I wrote about how I felt warm and fuzzy about Google. Well this article and a another recent article about Google delisting sites without explanation has brought me to my senses. Google is a business, not a public servant.

liveTopics 1.1 close to release

Fri, 15 Nov 2002 00:18:21 +0000

It looks like I might finally have squashed the remaining bugs in liveTopics 1.1, what started as your run of the mill complex update spiralled into an endless cycle of fiddly little bugs. But it's starting to look good now. I'm hoping to roll out to testers very soon.

Between this and trying to come up with a decent pitch for business blogging I haven't been posting much. I've been reading a lot though and making lots of new friends via Ryze.

A solution to big media

Tue, 26 Nov 2002 11:45:12 +0000

What happens when you blog a Fox executive? Blox

Jonathan Peterson deconstructs the comments of Fox CEO Peter Chernin in a Comdex keynote. Great stuff. Thanks for the link to David Weinberger, who adds his own astute comments.

It all comes down to the notion that programming is scarce or, at least, needs to retain the appearance of scarcity to sustain its value. In fact, if you make connections and let value flow, the investment in programming made today can be much more profitable than it is in the broadcast model.

[RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing]

» Folks the solution is simple:

Stop watching TV.

Stop going to the Movies.

Don't buy Music, Videos, Games, Books or Magazines.

Don't by a Tivo, DVD player, stereo, WEGA tv, PlayStation

In a couple of years all the media-related companies (and their dependents) will be bankrupt. It might teach these guys that they need to treat us with a little respect if they want to survive.

We won't do it of course...

Creation Companies: Business in the Fast Lane

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 10:32:49 +0000

Wednesday: Burning Platform or Compelling Opportunity?. From Whoosh: Business in the Fast Lane ,Tom McGehee on what makes a company suck or rock : Compliance Companies ... [istori/log]

» An interesting comparison of the attributes of various types of company labelled broadly as "compliance companies" and "creation companies". What might be more interesting still would be to try and take some of the attributes that imply a spectrum and start plotting well known (and maybe less well known) companies and see what patterns emerge.

I'd also like a list of creation companies if anyone has one to hand!

In case you'd forgotten...

Fri, 29 Nov 2002 07:47:50 +0000

about domestic issues what with your upcoming war and it being thanksgiving 'an all...

(posted with the kind permission of Tom Tomorrow)

If you like Tom's work browse the archives or support the Salon.

Making ends meet

Sun, 01 Dec 2002 19:52:55 +0000

This is a difficult post to write.

The last 5 months have been some of the most interesting and exciting of my life. When I started blogging I couldn't have imagined what a dramatic impact it would have on me. I've been thinking more during this time than at any other time in my life and, having found a voice, sharing more. It's been very liberating. It also seems to me that the path I am on now may define my course for years to come.

Starting a business was something I really wanted to do. But I wasn't ready for the challenge, economy or no economy. I've learned so many things, like the supreme importance of your network and, by extension, your brand relative to things like products and services. But it's hard to run a business when every little thing is a lesson. Despite good advice I've made mistake and after mistake and they keep coming. On one hand I'm constantly learning and that's fun, but on the other hand it doesn't necessarily make for good business.

I want to continue, I hope to continue. I believe (dangerous as that is) that k-logging has an important future, my inability to come up with the right message or pilot site not withstanding, and is going to be a good business to be in. I also want to continue because I'm talking to and sharing ideas with some great people and that's always cool. But the hard reality is that I haven't made it work yet and I'm almost at the end of my rope.

I've started looking for a job, posting my resume to various recruitment sites. So heres where we come to the difficult bit:

Please, if you or someone you know could use my skills (CV will be up when Word agrees with me about what HTML is):

Java application development
Technical consultancy
Web development (Servlets/JSP, Perl, Cold Fusion)
Knowledge Management (+quite a lot of experience with Livelink) implementation or consultancy
Systems Management (Quite a bit of Solaris & WinNT/2K + a smattering of linux)
Tech support / Client support

please do get in touch, I could really use some help at the moment.

Paying for RSS

Fri, 06 Dec 2002 13:14:51 +0000

How many feeds would you pay for? I have just subscribed to technorati.com to get my Link Cosmos as an RSS feed. Interesting service, but I still have to understand if it's worth $10 per year. Anyway, I think that the real news here is that for the very first time I'm paying to get an RSS feed into my aggregator. Here's an interesting excercise: go trough the feeds you are currently subscribed to, how many would you pay for? [Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog]

Yeah this is my feeling too. I suggest to them that I would be unlikely to pay $5/yr when we were talking about e-mail. Not because I think that it is too much individually, but that if I like it I don't want to be paying $275/yr when I hit 75 feeds. I think something $25/yr for unlimited feeds would be more the mark.

Paolo makes a good point though. He's ponying up some dough for an RSS feed. This is a milestone.

Does size matter?

Thu, 12 Dec 2002 20:28:33 +0000

Size Matters. Matt Mower asks good questions on why company size should matter in intranet development, but I believe there are several other factors to consider. [b.cognosco]

Okay Terry raises some good points. Lets take 'em one-by-one.

Many small companies don't provide their workers with computers, so intranet access is moot.

Agreed. Although I would want to be certain that the reason for not providing computers was legit. Example: Is there a need, but no expertise? This isn't an argument not to have some kind of intranet.

Intranets are designed to supplement human communication and learning, not replace it. If everyone is sitting within talking distance it makes little sense to put another layer of machines between them.

Well now I don't think that's always true, even in the situation of 5 guys in an office (and I'll let you assume that they are always all there, 5 days a week. weekends?) So:

Terry what did we do on the firefly account last august? (Hope you've got a good memory).
How many support calls did we get last week? What was the hottest issue? (Want a debate? Or do we have that data?)
We need to order & configure a new server same as the last one. What do we do?

Now I grant you that you don't need an intranet for any of this stuff. I just think you are more effective if have one. And what if things aren't so simple? What happens when times aren't so good and you have to let Larry & Curly go. Oops, all the knowledge about the Firefly account and how to build your servers just walked out the door. Or when Moe's brother joins the 'ol firm. How does he figure out how things happen around here? Sure, he can hang around and watch you guys but why not let him see it.

Peter Drucker says "all work is knowledge work," but if workers aren't already spending the majority of their work day in front of a computer (the case in many small service companies) intranets make little sense.

I'm with Peter on this one. Give 'em hand-held's, give 'em tablets, give 'em something. And for service folks that goes double. For small companies life is often about quality of service. Serve the customer better than the big NoNameCo and you stay in business (and the old guy whose been at this 40 years... he should be writing lots of content - he won't be around forever).

I guess for me the central point is "what is the intranet for?"

If it's part of the solution then why wouldn't you want your people to have it?

We're lying to you, but at least we're honest about it!

Fri, 03 Jan 2003 15:52:51 +0000

Corporations claim the 'right to lie'. From Common Dreams:

"While Nike was conducting a huge and expensive PR blitz to tell people that it had cleaned up its subcontractors' sweatshop labor practices, an alert consumer advocate and activist in California named Marc Kasky caught them in what he alleges are a number of specific deceptions. Citing a California law that forbids corporations from intentionally deceiving people in their commercial statements, Kasky sued the multi-billion-dollar corporation. Instead of refuting Kasky's charge by proving in court that they didn't lie, however, Nike instead chose to argue that corporations should enjoy the same 'free speech' right to deceive that individual human citizens have in their personal lives. If people have the constitutionally protected right to say, 'The check is in the mail,' or, 'That looks great on you,' then, Nike's reasoning goes, a corporation should have the same right to say whatever they want in their corporate PR campaigns."

[Ming's Metalogue]

The idea of corporations being able to enjoy the rights of 'free speech' strikes me as utterly revolting. Indeed, upon what basis does a corporation enjoy any rights at all?

No more "Stock Talk"

Mon, 20 Jan 2003 22:52:51 +0000

Goodbye CNET Radio

The end of January is the end of CNET Radio as the company shifts to a paid service, CNET Radio Direct, a twice-a-day program.

[RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing]

That's a shame. I've enjoyed listening to Rob Black's "Stock Talk" on CNET every time I've visited the US. I found precious little else worth listening to.

sssipping cocktails on your government-subsidized yachts

Thu, 23 Jan 2003 09:47:18 +0000

The Snake is Back

Disclaimer: I, Pesky the Rat, hereby register my absolute disgust at my agent Susan the Human's insistance that I allow Janet the Snake space on my weblog for "balance". This ungrateful, slithering future fashion accessory has dirtied my page far too much in the past, and I am horrified she is to be allowed back for another go. I simply ask that you think no less of me for this transgression.

Janet the Snake,
SuperSexy Reptile Pundit,
defends tax cuts for the rich

Hello there my dear little readersss, Janet the Snake here, at your ssservice, ready to dish it out faster than that puny little rat can take it. Ssso today's topic is: why are those little rodents so upset about tax cuts for the rich? What on earth isss their problem?

I've got two words for all you whiny little lemmings out there: Food Chain.

Rich people, of which I am one, thanks to my bessstselling book, "Slander: Rodent Lies about Animals that Eat Rodents", are rich because we deserve to be. Because we have worked hard for what we have, unlike the unwashed minor mammilian massssssses who sspend their days thinking about poetry and eating granola barss. We are at the top of the food chain because we have big, shiny fangs and we aren't afraid to use them.

I mean, let's look at my dear friend, Georgie, out there in the White Houssse. Georgie's family has basically gotten themselves where they are today through a long series of deliciously sneaky business deals, not all of them entirely legal. That's the sort of initiative that gets you ahead in thisss world, let me tell you. If the rest of you weren't smart enough to track down the right loopholes, why should I have to pay for it? After all, I'm going to eat you in the end, anyway, ssso why does it really matter?

96% of the taxesss in this country are paid by the richest half of Americans. The ressst of you, clearly, no longer have any incentive to work. You prefer to lounge about in the lap of luxury, taking home hundreds of dollarsss--hundreds! a month in unemployment or welfare, sssipping cocktails on your government-subsidized yachts while the rest of us toil away, counting our dividend checks, dutifully sorting through our trust-fund money, looking for ways to enrich thisss great country of ourss.

You have forgotten your place, rodentsss. You have forgotten that asss ssoon as you are born into this world, your purpossse is to feed usss. If you are allowed a week on this glorious planet, it is a gift from ussss. We give more generously to some than others, but make no missstake, the clock belongs to usss.

[Pesky the Rat]

Bad NTL! Bad!

Tue, 11 Feb 2003 22:42:20 +0000

Users call for anti-NTL protest. Valentine's Day massacre [The Register]

BlueYonder execs take note.

A different kind of B2C

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 11:12:43 +0000

That's business 2 community...

Something I have never done before but am interested in persuing now is getting involved with voluntary projects. I would like to help out with one or more charities who need Knowledge Management (KM) or Information Technology (IT) skills.

Do you know someone who might need me?

Specifically I would like to become involved with one or two projects where there is a shortage of Knowledge Management or Information Technology skills. Obviously given my bias I would prefer to help out with a KM project (maybe a charity interested in persuing weblogs?) but I will happily volunteer IT strategy skills and IT implementation skills (from advice & recommendations, through implementation and support - including software development). I haven't thought too hard about how much time I can, or would like, to commit -- I guess I'll worry about that when I need to.

I have come across the Business Community Connections site, which aims to help businesses get involved with community projects, however they have a lot of charities on their books and I'm not sure how easy it is going to be to match up my skills with any of them. I'd rather short-circuit the process by personal contact if I can.

I'd love to hear from you.

Contexts for Business Journalling

Fri, 28 Feb 2003 12:32:54 +0000

David Buchan has prompted me to think a bit harder about the contextual problems faced by business journalling.

I think that there are at least two problems which we must solve for business journalling to be a widespread success. I'd be interested in hearing about other problems people have specifically identified.

The first problem is what I would describe as: knowledge as a separate activity and the second as lacking a voice. I think that the solution to both of these problems lies in finding contexts that enable people to journal more easily.

Knowledge as a separate activity

Some of my underlying assumptions about people at work are:

most people do not love their job in the way that I (and other seeming KM enthusiasts) do
most people do not see themselves as knowledge workers (especially those who are not desk bound and do not deal primarily with electronic info and, or, paper)
most people have a view that learning is a discrete activity (we learn in a class-room during specified period, then go out and get on with the rest of our lives)

I think there is an "awakening" process that must happen before you begin to see how knowledge & learning are intertwined into everything you do. Until then, I think that they are considered to be separate activities practiced in specific contexts (e.g. I am going on a training course).

For the unawakened I think that a business journal is a big blank page that is quite scary and you need to be pretty bold to venture off without a map. In these times of "Axes in the corridor" boldness isn't the first thing on everyone's mind.

I think the answer lies in finding contexts which are less threatening and lead people to consider knowledge more often in their day and think about how knowledge affects everything they do. I hope to tie business journalling to these contexts in the hope that I will have more success with my clients that way.

Lacking a voice

I think most people are conditioned to not say anything they don't have to.

In school we are taught to be silent and only speak when questioned directly by an authority figure. This process of conditioning is continued right the way through education and into work. Hierarchies support this type of behaviour.

Business journalling turns this don't speak until your spoken to ideology on it's head. Now you're given a blank page and told to say whatever you think you should say (within limits). I think that the evidence so far supports the conclusion that people are not comfortable with that.

Drawing on my own experience I found beginning to blog was a challenge, i found myself afraid - not knowing what to say next. I persevered, I think, because I have always wanted a voice: I dislike authority and am opinionated. I don't necessarily think everyone else has the same drivers. I'm also cognizant that, when I started, there was no axe that could fall. I wasn't worried about saying the wrong thing, or having my words used against me. I think these are common worries for anyone speaking up (regardless of the medium).

Once again I think the answer is to look for contexts where people already think it's alright to voice their opinions and to leverage these contexts for business journalling success.

Contexts

As I mentioned in a recent post I think that two likely candidates are After Action Reviews and Communities of Practice.

The After Action Review (AAR) is a technique that compares actual results of a task or project with the expected results. The aim being to identify strengths and weaknesses and help teams to bond together and improve performance.

Don Clark gives an excellent summary of the process and some of it's benefits. From that I have highlighted some of the questions & talking points a good AAR should raise:

Ask why certain actions were taken
Ask how they reacted to certain situations
Ask when actions were initiated
Ask leading and thought provoking questions
Exchange "war stories" (lessons learned)
Ask employees what happened in their own point of view
Relate events to subsequent results
Explore alternative courses of actions that might have been more effective
Complaints are handled positively
When the discussion turns to errors made, emphasize the positive and point out the difficulties of making tough decisions.

These sound to me like fantastic material for building a business journal.

The second context that I think could be very useful is the Community of Practice. I don't want to write too much about these here because they're a big topic and I'm not an expert. However one of the definitions given on the page I cite above is groups that learn. In my mind, groups that learn by doing - not as a separate activity.

Within a CoP people have a context in which they can ask questions, share knowledge, raise awareness and it may be that a business journal will seem a more natural place in which to do that. Hopefully also within a CoP members can develop the levels of trust and respect that are required for any collaborative effort to be successful.

Conclusion

For me, all this leads towards a concrete realisation that business journalling cannot stand in isolation. That it is not a solution, but, part of a solution that has to involve contexts which complement it's strengths. It may be that After Action Review's and Communities of Practice may be good choices, time will tell.

However this also means that, in order to bring business journalling into an organisation requires that they have either already established programs such as AAR, or you have to introduce those at the same time. This sounds like a daunting prospect. Any AAR experts out there?

A few points to bear in mind:

I've highlighted business journalling throughout the text to emphasize my use of the term where I might normalling say k-logging. I'm open to better terms but I'm going to try and use this until someone comes up with one.
I'm making a lot of assumptions. Please challenge them. I'm trying to keep to the philosophy of "strong opinions, weakly held" and avoid becoming dogmatic about something so new and unproven.
I don't think I'm identifying anything new here. I think this is these are formulations of the same problems people have been wrestling with since KM acknowledged that it wasn't a purely technical issue. What is new is that I'm beginning to understand these issues better - your milage may vary ;-)

I'm also looking forward to hearing other peoples ideas for contexts for business journalling.

Leading change

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 08:11:41 +0000

Creating change.

From Dave Pollard's excellent new blog, How to Save the World, comes a piece of advice that could be helpful for people who want to effect change in just about any sphere of activity. It also hints at the challenge inherent in such an agenda.

[...] Change Management is all about getting people to do different things, or things differently. In business, the guru of the moment on this subject is John Kotter. In his book Leading Change he describes the eight steps to getting people to do different things or things differently, and they are irrefutable:

Establish a sense of urgency
Form a powerful guiding coalition
Create a vision
Communicate the vision
Empower others to act on the vision
Plan for and create short-term wins
Consolidate improvements
Institutionalize the change
The underlying principle here is that, in business as in real life, you don't bring about sustained, meaningful change by edict. You need to persuade, enthuse, and engage people in sufficient numbers to change behaviours, laws or processes. If you want to do this in your business, buy Kotter's book, since that's what it's focused on. But the same preconditions apply to political, economic, artistic, scientific, spiritual or moral change. Whether the change agent is a preacher or a politician or a philosopher or a post-modernist, the process is the same. [...]

[Seb's Open Research]

Kotter's to do: list is remarkably succinct. This could be a manifesto for anybody at work (which reminds me of Gary Hamel's assertion, I think in Leading the Revolution, that we can all be leaders, whatever our station).

Powerful listening

Mon, 31 Mar 2003 09:50:47 +0100

THE LISTENING LEADER

"Lifting Listening Leadership Awareness and Action Worldwide"

03/31/03

--------------------------------------------------------------------

LISTENING-BASED INNOVATION

Continuing success comes from value-creating innovation stimulated by disciplined listening. Occasional surveys are insufficient. Organizations need to build listening systems that capture, summarize, and disseminate the unmet dreams and unfulfilled wants of multiple customer groups, including existing, prospective, and internal customers (employees).

Listening systems uncover fresh marketplace intelligence, help guide decision making, and nurture creative thinking. Effective listening systems involve both formal and informal methods, conversations with customers, the use of trend data to reveal changing patterns, the distribution of relevant information to all employees, and active discussion and application of findings in work groups.

Listening leads to learning, which sets the stage for innovation. Innovation is more likely when employees are well informed about the customer, unafraid to try something new, and committed to the organization's success.

Charles Schwab uses multiple methods to listen for customers' dreams that often start with the phrase, "I know it's not possible, but I wish....." Schwab's top management travels extensively to interact with customers in informal settings. Branches host monthly customer receptions, and at least once a week in different cities. Schwab holds town meetings to hear employees' ideas, suggestions, and concerns.

Gary Hoover, who has created three innovative businesses (Bookstop, Hoover's Handbooks, and TravelFest) claims that the customers always get what they want. It is just a matter of who gives it to them when. Companies that sustain success continually search for new ways to create value for customers. They choose to lead rather than follow, to act rather than wait, to heed the customer instead of the competitor.

Source: Leading for the Long Term, Leonard Berry, Leader to Leader

More good stuff from the Listening Leader (one of the few daily e-mail shots that I subscribe to).

For a company that is ready to hear (and encourage) real news from the front-line a network of internal action journals would mae a very powerful listening system. More intelligence (and potential for automated news gathering) could be added to this by using simple topic map techniques (e.g. annotating each post with 1 or 2 topics describing the business area/project, tone of each post, etc...)

A little respect

Thu, 12 May 2005 16:50:39 +0100

Let me be clear about a definition here: disrespect is in the eye of the beholder. It occurs when someone feels slighted, or demeaned, or undervalued or lied to. There is no absolute measurement, and, because it's relative, people will surely disagree about whether or not it has occurred at all.

...

All the other person had to do was use a one or two sentences and the whole thing would have been fine. Almost all the instances of disrespect didn't have to do with the substance of the transaction, it was the style of it. If the person had accepted some responsibility and acknowledged how I might feel, the outcome wasn't really a big deal.

...

People have a hard time with this. If someone feels as though they're treating you technically correctly, they don't want to apologize. They don't want to acknowledge the feelings of the other side. This is awfully short-sighted. These are words that are worth thousands and thousands of dollars in lost sales and word of mouth.

[Seth Godin's Blog]

Control your destiny or somebody else will.

Fri, 13 May 2005 08:26:12 +0100

Scoble nails my view on corporate blogging:

...
So, why are we bringing them here? We're bringing them here to find out what they think and to start an interesting new conversation. One that we can't control.

As I met with Boeing and Target over the past few days that's what I told them too. You can't control this new world. At best you can participate in it. Just like if you hear someone talking about you at a cocktail party. You can't make them stop. You can't make them change their minds about you. At best you can join in the conversation and make sure they have a complete picture of who you are. [Watch out for that Scoble guy, he's just trying to control your mind]

Guess I'll have to buy his book after all ;-)

Enabling conversations with your customers?

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 10:01:58 +0100

I'm here at the Our Social World conference in Cambridge. It was a bit tough having to be up at 5.30 to get here in time but the coffee and the wi-fi are hot which is nice.

They have an interesting set-up where everyone has been assigned to a table. Each table has a speaker, a blogger, a corporate, a media person, a web developer, etc... the idea being that each table becomes a mini-society. Not sure how great an idea this is but we'll see.

We're here because what PAOGA is doing is directly relevant to the idea of online society. Ownership of your identity and control of your personal information and how it is being used.

Ben Hammersley is rapping about the history of blogging as a development of the enlightenment, with the coffee shop revolution and the development of manners.

Well at least he didn't insult me this time

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 14:46:46 +0100

I really enjoyed Lisp guru Paul Grahams OSCON'05 speech about what business has to learn from Open Source. As always he's a bit snooty but I guess if you're clever enough to make a bundle from Yahoo you've earned the right. It would spoil one of the best jokes if I explained what he means by learning. You'll just have to listen along yourself.

There's a 50% handling charge on that item

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 09:17:37 +0000

Another excellent piece by Gary North on Sam Walton and how his heirs are suffering from the routinization of charisma.

A business case for podcasting

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 17:46:56 +0000

Looks like IBM are innovating in the use of podcasts internally:

The group previously scheduled a weekly conference call with all the employees it needed to coordinate with -- a conference that involved as many as 7,000 people. Now, supply-chain executives upload a weekly podcast, which staffers can listen to when they want.

[From the Corporate Blogging Blog]

The Cubicle-Dweller effect

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 23:37:14 +0100

On the train in to London today I got thinking about psychological variables (for example there is Eysencks PEN model) and behaviour. It may be a non-sequiteur but as the train chugged slowly along I looked up at a big glass office building and saw what you might expect to see... lots of people in cubicles including a few who looked like they were asleep. It set me to thinking about why it is that I so like working in small companies (In PAOGA we are around 10 including part-timers) even though I like the social aspects of larger organisations.

The bystander effect is a well known result in psychology from the research of Latane & Darley. Its the reason why you are often better off with just one or two people around if something happens (e.g. you get attacked, there is a fire, you break down,...) than a big crowd. In a big crowd responsibility gets diffused and everyone looks to everyone else (who also isn't doing anything) for cues about what to do next.

PAOGA is a small company and I can quite clearly understand how what I do relates to furthering the goals of the company and delivering value for us. My lines of responsibility are pretty clear and I don't sit there thinking there is anyone around to pick up my slack.

In large organisations I think it is harder to trace your line of responsibility from what you do to the end result where the value lives. Also as the organisation grows the management structures grow (and perhaps not proportionately) and I believe that people fall into attributing disproportionately more value the higher up the tree you are.

In essence I think that in larger companies there is a bystander effect or perhaps we should call it a cubicle-dweller effect. The larger the company the larger the diffusion of responsibility for delivering on the companies promises and consequently the less motivation there is to try and make them happen. As motivation drops people don't work so well on what they're doing and, critically, don't ask

How can I do more?

This suggests to me a rationale for breaking large companies into smaller companies and organizing them into co-operative networks. In those smaller companies people will understand their value better (and not just bull-shit made up departmental goals that nobody really believes) and, with something real on the line, be motivated to do better.

If you look at Microsoft today and then think back to the opportunities they might have had if they had decided to split the company up. Sure it would have been disruptive but that might have been a good thing.

Smaller companies deliver!