My cameo appearance on Google
I always figured it would happen someday…I was captured by a Google streetview car. One thing I can say, is that these vehicles are not discreet; I realized what it was immediately as soon as it pulled in front of me, and despite my best efforts to make funny faces and otherwise act like an idiot in view of the streetview camera, the only decent photo doesn’t even show my face.
Always be Learning
People tend to either be listening or taking at at any given time. Something that I have noticed recently is that one of the most common traits in people with true leadership skills is that they are always in learning mode. It seems especially prevalent these days that everyone is racing to call themselves an expert on a range of topics (with “social media” being the worst offender, but there are plenty of others), but I fail to see a rush of people looking to pay for this expertise.
(sidenote: if you actually hired a “social media expert”, please let me know; I have yet to even see an ad that reads “Looking for social media expert. Must twitter constantly, have lots of followers, have unhealthy relationship with iPhone. HASHTAG ABUSERS NEED NOT APPLY”)
One common thread that runs through many successful members of the business community is that they never stop learning. Before you accuse me of having an inappropriate sample set, I assure you that I am not just speaking about observations of my MBA class, but many people that I have met in my personal and professional life as well. Those that are the best leaders are the ones that are always listening and analyzing and if there is one trait that has been developed over the past few years of grad school it has been my ability to slow down, listen and most importantly, ask questions. Jim Collins, the Auther of “Good to Great” recently said that leaders are not the ones that have the answers, they are the ones that ask the right questions.
The simple irony is, once you call yourself an expert you now have incentive to stop learning; the best leaders however, have the opposite trait. It seems that the best leaders are open to learning all the time, living the phrase “you learn something new every day”.
My Interview with Bub.blicio.us
While at the Web 2.0 Expo I took some time to give Bubblicious Reporter Jolie O’Dell a brief overview of our newest release, MindTouch 2009.
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Breathe!
“I’m too busy getting things done to get things organized!”
For anyone that has worked or is working at a startup, you are sure to hear this all the time; things are hectic, crazy, disorganized, and everyone is so focused on bringing in revenue or designing the next killer product that they never take the time to step back and analyze what they are doing to determine if that is what they should be doing.
I have been very lucky in my career to have had some absolutely great mentors to guide my way over the years; more often than not, these mentors have been people that I worked for, often after convincing them that they should hire me and help guide my career path to the next level. Did I mention that I’m in sales? I recently read a great blog post by one of my fellow Brazen Careerist bloggers, Sydney Owen, on how to find a mentor. The basic premise is you need to identify the right person and be assertive with them, offer them something, and listen to what they have to say. Seems obvious, and Sydney does a much better job of highlighting how to go about the care and feeding of your mentor.
One of my first mentors was Kenneth Burrow, a division GM at Circuit City. He taught me the value taking time to be introspective in the workplace. His lessons to me have stayed with me through my entire career. One of the most valuable of these was to instill in me the importance of taking a moment to step back and look at a situation, large or small, as just one part of the puzzle. There were many times when I would let some tasks slide at the expense of others, but yet I had not taken the time to analyze which of those tasks should be priorities and which should not; to act without being analytical is a recipe for disaster. Kenny was a great mentor in that he let me learn my lessons my way, by trying and changing until I found my groove.
Although I was working for a fortune 500 company at the time, these lessons in “taking a step back” were extremely valuable in later years working for several startups. In many of these companies, everyone is so busy moving forward that they often forget that we have to steer as well; being able to take a step back, looking at how I am allocating my personal resources, seems so obvious, yet it takes a lot of effort to execute.
So next time you feel overwhelmed by everything that needs to get done, STOP! take a moment, step back, breathe, and analyze the situation more objectivly. The time spent taking the time to organize your project or analyzing how you are spending your time will pay back tenfold. There are only so many hours in the day, the best thing that we can do is make sure that we are spending them well.
GoodBye Washington, Hello San Fran!
Although I am glad to not be traveling as much as I once was, one that I do miss is flying; not necessarily because I like small seats and bad food, but because I can get so much more done when I am forced to sit in one place, face straight ahead and focus on a single task at a time. It’s been over a month since my last personal blog post and at least a few weeks since I’ve posted anything to the MindTouch blog; I’ve finished the MindTouch post, and now I’m onto this post for my personal blog. Maybe I should fly more often.
The past Friday, I had the opportunity to participate in the Government 2.0 conference together with our CEO Aaron Fulkerson. This was my second government-and-technology conference, and I can’t even begin to express the new vibe that is in the air in Washington, and how energizing it is to be in the middle of what is, really, a revolution. It’s as if we had all been waiting in the wings with these new social applications for government, and the new mandates for transparency handed down by the Obama administration just opened the floodgates. The energy in the room is contagious, to say the least.
I am currently gearing up for Web 2.0 Expo this week, if you are going to be in attendance be sure to stop by the MindTouch booth, I’ll be working the floor Wednesday and Thursday.
You’re Missing the Point
In the 16th Century, Niccolo Machiavelli famously wrote his discourse on the challenges faced by innovators:
“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order…”
This weekend I will be attending Transparency Camp in Washington DC, and as I prepare for my presentations, I can’t help but notice that a lot of the talk of “Government 2.0” misses the point when speaking about the value of the tools being used. I’ve read hour long presentations on why twitter is awesome for government (it is awesome, I get it, but that is beside the point) and I’ve seen far-too-long powerpoints on how to broadcast using these new tools. STOP!
You’re missing the point!
The value of these new tools is that these new tools step out of the way, cut the static and let us get to the data; that is, the data is fast becoming disintermediated from the source. For years, data has been available in silos from many government organizations; data, in these silos, has very little value. The true value of data comes not from collecting it, but analyzing it to create intelligence. The true value of these new tools, like twitter, is that you do not need to use twitter.com to access twitter’s data; twitter, through their API, gives anyone access to anything said by any one of their members.
There is value in being the hub at the center of millions of conversations
If you watch all of the data go by, you can grab the bits that you care about to create the whole picture; mash twitter feeds together with the oscars or american idol and you start to get a good picture of who is paying attention and what they are thinking. The value of these tools is that now we can create that same type of intelligence around government applications. Government data has always been (for the most part) a matter of public record. The emergence of APIs connected to this data means that now we can mash up congressional voting records together with lobbyist donations. What will we see? How will this change things? It has been said that the barrier to entry for true participatory democracy is an inability for the populous to possess adequate knowledge necessary to make informed decisions. Watch closely; the sun is setting on that world.
People of the world, prepare to be educated!
The intelligence created out of these easy to access data sources is going to be the catalyst for the next great shift in governance. Many government agencies are going to resist, and the most frustrating factor that they are going to find is that the people are able to go on whether government agencies are involved or not. API’s and data access have created a reformer that is billions of people strong. Those in the ivory towers can resist, but clearly, they are outnumbered.
So what is the point? What is the value of these tools? The point is, these new tools, APIs for every data set, are going to put knowledge in the hands of the many. And at the end of the day, the many have the power of the vote, they decide your fate. If everyone in America watches your voting record flex in tandem with your lobbyist donations, well, I would wager a bet that you won’t last long in this new order of things.
Being Prepared for The Unknown
I was originally going to title this post “so you’ve been laid off” but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to bring up a few things that everyone should do before yahoo calls the big monday morning meeting.
I’ve been laid off twice now, which makes me a little unique among my Gen-Y peers, not just because I have bad faildar, but for many of you, this will be the first time that you will be laid off (“made redundant”, for those of you that speak the Queen’s English). The morning of a layoff is decidedly not the time that you should dig out the resume and start thinking about your career; even if you do not leave your present employer or get laid off, you will likely benefit from a little reflection on your career path. Below are just a few things that I feel are valuable steps to take as insurance should you be hit with a layoff.
1. Polish up your resume – The last time you had to write a resume, you may have had to describe that job you had where you dressed as a chicken at el pollo loco as “Product sample marketing manager” to help land that first job out of school. Now you have more experience under your belt, and it’s time to add those valuable tid-bits to your resume. Think about what position you would like to have in your next career move, and shape your experience to help you move toward that position. As in any company, your job evolves around you and your unique skill set, and often your position becomes remarkably different from your job description. You may have been hired as a “Project Manager” but your job evolved into “Account Executive”, so it would be better to seek jobs as an account executive, not a project manager. Ask friends for their input, or scour the web for ideas on how to improve your resume. Shameless plug, I along with several friends all received helpful feedback from theladders.com resume service. Sure, they mostly try to upsell you to their resume writing service, but really even the free feedback made my resume much better.
2. Network, Network, Network – This really could have been it’s own blog post, but I’m going to try to keep it high level. A few very important things to do:
First, if don’t already have a profile on LinkedIn, now is the time to start building that network. Once you have your resume to the point where you feel it is polished, you should add all of that information to your profile. Guy Kawasaki has a great set of tips for using LinkedIn . LinkedIn also recently released “groups” functionality to help broaden the reach of your network.
Second, you likely have made a lot of connections on a strictly business basis. If the only place where you have their contact information is in your office email, phone, and/or blackberry, you need to get all of this contact information into your personal address book. You will likely not be able to do this following a layoff, as there is likely to be an HR representative in your cube with you to help “recover corporate assets” Depending upon what systems you use, and how secure your office is about USB drives and the like, there is almost always a way to get your contacts exported into a universal format like .CSV. I know it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, while taking contact information is fair game, taking any proprietary information from your employer most certainly not. Microsoft has an easy export function to get your contacts out of outlook; Lotus notes is trickier, google is your friend to find the export specific to your version of notes. Once you have all of your contacts in .xls or .csv format, you can use the import function on Gmail (or whatever client your use, but really aren’t we all on Gmail now?) Be forewarned, the limit for importing .csv files is 3000 contacts, so you’ll have to spilt the file past line 3000 and run import again; oh, and who out there has that many contacts? If all else fails, you can always just print all of your contacts on paper.
Third, now is the time to start networking with your peers. I am personally a huge fan of meetup.com, but depending upon your occupation there are likely other organizations which will have regular meetings of like minded people. You don’t have to be in journalism, PR or technology to find organizations which meet on a regular basis, and you will likely benefit from connecting with peers even if you don’t use those connections to find your next career move.
3. Take charge of your finances – All puns aside, now is the time to take a good look at your complete financial picture. Study your bank accounts and take a good look at the discretionary items which you are purchasing. Do you really need 2 XM radio subscriptions? Are you still paying for that “free” AOL account you signed up for 4 years ago? Trim the fat now before you’re crunched for cash. If you’re not already using financial management software, you need to start. There are lots of free versions online, such as Quicken Online (totally free) or my personal favorite, Mint. These programs will download all of your banking info online, so it is relatively pain free to set up, and will help you decide whether you really should go out to eat for the 3rd time this week or stay home to save some money (here’s a hint: It’s the latter). Whatever you use, your goal should be to look at your “hard expenses”, like rent and car payments, etc; your “soft expenses” like groceries and restaurants and your “tertiary expenses” like hobby spending and nights out on the town. You can’t do anything about rent and car payments (not in the short term), but you can reduce or eliminate from the other two categories. don’t just look at a forward budget; spend some time looking at your history. It’s all well and good to say “oh, well we put aside $300.oo per month for food, but if you’re spending $500.00 per month, it’s not going to work out. Be realistic, look at your history and make the changes you feel you can stick with.
All in all, I hope that the layoffs skip you and these steps help further your career.
Do You Hate Sleeping Too?
As some of you already know, for the past year I have being working on my MBA mostly nights and weekends, which basically means that I’ve traded all semblance of a social life in exchange for a degree.
But it is so much more than that. Last night I finished this semester’s coursework and now I have a month off to reflect (and land a job!) before we start back up again.
It’s been an amazing experience so far; I can not even begin to describe how much I’ve learned in the past year. I often find myself reflecting on situations and decisions which I made in the past, and how I would have approached them differently given what I know now.
Like many technical professionals, I started my career on the technical side. I landed a job with a Fortune 500 firm right out of university, and only then did I begin my exposure to the business side of the world. Far too often technical people get caught in the trap of being technical for the sake of the technology, instead of using technology as needed to solve genuine business issues. I learned fairly quickly the need to have a business case for innovation, and much to my surprise I was able to play the game pretty well in the political environment that exists in any firm of significant size.
In 2003 I (along with 4,000 others) was “downsized” and ended up at a small startup. Now for those of you who have worked in a corporation of any significant size, you know that a corporate environment often has clear lines of demarcation; there are processes and proceedures for just about anything and departments to go to for travel, expenses, and HR. In a startup environment, it is the exact opposite. At the startup office, we had poster on the wall with the favorite phrase of our founder “Just Get It Done, Mate!” I was, for a long time, the sole US-based employee (it was an overseas startup). Somehow, calling it trial by fire doesn’t even do it justice. In the 4 years I spent there, I learned more about business than I had learned in 4 years of undergrad (ok, ok, 5 years of undergrad) and 3 years of corporate life.
I discovered two things during my 4 years in that startup environement; First, I discovered that I can, in fact, work 12 hours a day, every day. Secondly, I found that as much as I was learning, I needed more formal business education to become a truely well rounded professional. Someone once told me that I had great business instincts, but I needed more credentials to back up the decisions that I was making.
So, after scaling back my hours at work to only 8 hour days, I dedicated a solid 4 hours per night, on most nights, to pursuing my MBA. It has not been easy, but I can say, beyond a doubt, that it has been the best educational experience I have undergone thus far. It’s not for everyone, but for me it is the missing piece that I needed. The irony is, during undergrad, I did not take school nearly as seriously as I do now. All I ever wanted to do was be social and travel; the actual education part was never that high on the list. Now, suddenly, I am in an environment with people just like myself and I find myself competing to be better, actually caring about my grades and further, actually wanting to learn even more than the material being taught in class.
So if you can work another 4 hours after you’re done with a standard work day, if you find yourself wanting to know more about the area of business you find yourself in, and if, like many professionals, you find that you work better when the pressure is on, well, you might want to look at getting your MBA too.
I wish I could find the original source of the photo above, but it came to me in an email. If this is your photo, shoot me a message and I’ll give you credit.
Circuit City
By now just about every news outlet and blogger has penned an article debunking the press release from Circuit City citing “decreased consumer spending” and “unfavorable economy”. After all, it is hard to believe that the economy pummeled Circuit City while sparing Best Buy.
Over the course of the past few days, I’ve read a multitude of articles citing poor real estate selection, exit from the appliance business, placing too much importance on flat panel TV margins, and the like as the “true reasons” for their demise. I think it is far more simple, and far more sinister. Circuit City lost the game because they failed to tap their most powerful resource: their people. They didn’t listen. They didn’t engage their employees or their customers. Circuit city has tens of thousands of employees in their stores and many of these employees are within the lucrative target demographics and value propositions which Circuit City was chasing. Yet time and again, Circuit City failed to engage these associates to help them drive innovation from the store level upward. Decisions were all made “at corporate”, giving employees very little ownership of the company. This type of quasi-military structure worked half a century ago when Circuit City started, but it has no place in the modern workplace.
There was an important lesson that should have been taken away from the DIVX experiment which Circuit City undertook in the late 90s, and that lesson is, now that people can communicate easily over the Internet, the backlash from a determined community of users can affect your business very negatively. Here, the most powerful consumer electronics company in the world (at the time) lost over 100 Million dollars, mostly attributable to the vigilance of a few Internet home theater forums. The lesson here is, no matter how much money you spend, or how you try to spin the story, it is your customers that will define you. Your only choice now is whether you want to be a part of the conversation or not.
Customer driven innovation is the embodiment of this stream of thought; the way to be successful with your customers is to listen to them and let their demands mold who you become as a company. Just as a determined group of internet users can harm you, a group of customer evangelists can build your brand from the outside in. Some retailers have caught on; they let store associates and managers make decisions to help their stores address local market demand; they drive change in the reverse of their supply chain, from the bottom up; even Walmart does this to a certain degree. The dawn of the social media era has been embraced by these same retailers. These days, it is not uncommon for customers to exchange Twitter messages with C-level executives, or interact with them on their blogs. Circuit City’s blog and twitter account amounted to little more than thinly veiled marketing efforts.
On March 28th 2007, Circuit City famously sacked their 3,400 most experienced, most passionate, and most highly paid workers. Both outside and inside the company the message was clear: “we do not value our associates very highly”. Internally, another subtle vibe was likely felt, which was “don’t rise to high, or be paid too well, or you’ll get the ax as well”. Neither one is conducive to employees working hard or trying to get ahead; any undergrad business major can tell you, the way to motivate your employees is to give them the impression (real or otherwise) that their hard work will be rewarded with higher pay and promotions. So if we break for a quick logic lesson:
If [Work Hard] implies [Higher Salary]
And
If [Higher Salary] implies [You Will Be Fired]
Then
[Work Hard] implies [You Will Be Fired]
And that, dear friends, is why most Circuit City employees were paid $8.00 per hour to play solitaire.
The DIVX lesson really should have come up as the board considered the plan to sack these workers. Someone should have stood up and said, “but the people will lash out at us for this, and you all remember what happened last time, with that DIVX thing, right gentlemen?” But nobody stood up; everyone believed, naively so, that customers and employees would just stand there and take it. Wrong. In true freakanomics style, Circuit City misjudged the environment they were in, and once again, made a strategic misstep which saved 3.5 million dollars in the short term in exchange for bankrupting the company in the long term.
So what does this all boil down to? The same thing my father gets in trouble for all the time: Not listening. Circuit City failed to listen to their associates, they failed to listen to their customers and they ignored their critics. They failed to embrace change. Even before social media was “cool”, Circuit City failed to listen to their employees, they failed to engage their customers in meaningful dialog. They led from the top, while ignoring the bottom. They neglected to engagee their customers in dialog. They foolishly thought that just because they were once a case study in “Good to Great”, they were imune to failure. When business textbook authors write their chapter on the danger of organizational silos, I think Circuit City would make a great case study.
Idea vs Strategy
I had a conversation recently that I have had a number of times before, and so I wanted to discuss it here: there is a great divide between having a great idea and having a successful product. As Apple, Microsoft, and many others have proved, success is often less about what you have and more about how you sell it. DOS, windows and the iPod all share the common trait that they were not the first to market in their respective categories; they were however executed better than all of their predecessors.
The most common trap that I have seen in the marketplace has been companies that create “solutions looking for a problem” or simply technology for technology’s sake. If you have not identified the target market for your product during the development, you will be facing an uphill battle once that product is ready. A good way to increase your chances for success is to identify a group of potential users whose needs have not been addressed with current solutions. Real solutions address a legitimate need, in a way that is simpler or better than what is currently on the market. This brings us to our most important point; the key to successful innovation and product development is a resonating focus on the needs of the customer. It is not enough to add value; you have to add value to the customer. Ask them questions. Listen to them. And most important of all, allow them to drive your innovations.
The Project Pre-Mortem
Last year, The Harvard Business Review featured an article which discussed the technique of performing a “pre-mortem” on your project. I won’t spoil what is quite a good read (click here for full text, registration required), but the basic premise is, to test your project’s likelihood of success, turn the tables; pretend for a moment that the project has already failed. Get the team into a room and discuss the hows and whys of the failure. Identify key things that might have been missed, or steps which could have been taken to reduce the probability of failure. The article brings a number of issues to the forefront, the first is, most projects fail; the second is, most team members probably saw it coming, even if you didn’t. The pre-mortem is a great way to free unpleasant from the shackles of organizational hierarchy that would otherwise prevent feedback from reaching the people who need to hear it. At the very least, it can help you reduce your losses by cutting off projects desitined to fail, and at best, hopefully, it will help to design projects which have a higher probability of success.
Michael Diliberto 