Young Professional Series : Office politics

Office politics could cause you to shake your head in resignation – it stops you getting things done, new ideas implemented, customers signed….or does it?

Office politics can be counter-productive, but only if you don’t know the rules. Taking the time to understand the workings of the office learning to navigate the politics can make you extremely effective.

Get a reputation for being effective by understanding your office. Learn who makes the sales, who signs the cheques, who makes the hiring decisions, who can get you time in the CEO’s diary and so on.

There is an underbelly of office politics - the gossip, backstabbing, non-transparent decision making and so on. I am not suggesting you get off the bench to play this part of the game but rather learn the rules at your office and which playbook everyone is reading from.

Young professional series : Do you have a social media strategy?

What is a personal social media strategy?


1. Which social media applications do you choose to use?

2. Of those applications, who do you choose to connect with?

3. How regularly do you interact with people through those applications?

4. How do you portray your brand in each of those applications?

I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all to social media, but I do think that it is essential that you consider your strategy.

My strategy (which you are free to steal or give constructive feedback on) is as follows :

I choose to interact on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and this blog. In my opinion, these are the leaders in the social media arena and best serve my objectives of staying connected and building a personal brand.

On Facebook, I connect with friends, family and colleagues with whom I have a personal relationship. On every connection I consider the risk of the information that these connections will have access to and manage my privacy settings. The updates are usually personal : My daughter is taking her first steps, my son has learnt the letters ‘R’, ‘Z’ and ‘C’ etc… I also use it to share photo’s with friends and family. I never post anything that would damage my personal brand.

On LinkedIn I connect with all colleagues I have had a conversation with, any prospective or current clients that I have met through work, networking functions or social interaction. On occasion I will connect with people I have not met personally – but that is the exception rather than the norm. I also connect with friends that are on LinkedIn as I believe that friends are an important part of my professional network. I am NOT a LinkedIn open networker (or LION). I don’t think this adds any value to my LinkedIn network and actually exposes my connections to 2nd and 3rd degree connections of the open networkers (which could be the same as introducing my competitors to my client base). I regularly post links and news articles that I think may be interesting to my network. This is extremely simple as I have linked Google Reader to LinkedIn – whenever I “share” an item in Google Reader, it updates my LinkedIn status.

I have not really decided how I am using Twitter, I simply decided it would be good to get on the bandwagon! All my LinkedIn status updates automatically post to Twitter, so my Twitter posts are more business related than anything else. I have branded my Twitter page to match the blog to differentiate it from a standard Twitter page. I accept all connections in Twitter and automatically follow back all connections. Hopefully my Twitter tribe will keep growing steadily until I actually determine the best way to interact with them and leverage this social media asset.

My blog was created to provide an outlet for random business related thoughts. It is intended to supplement my on-line presence and form part of my personal brand. My Twitter posts appear on a widget on the blog as well as any articles I find time to write.

All of these interactions with the Social Media universe are managed in such a way that they form a constant brand message. I have the same picture on each site and try to update them all regularly.

That’s me. Like I said, I can’t prescribe a strategy for you – but I do recommend that you get one.

If a gun has a safety, why not the stock exchange?

News story

Apparently, a typo caused world stock exchanges to crash. In the space of 20 minutes, America’s top 30 firms lost billions in market value – more than they did after September 11. The pen (or PC) truly is mightier than the sword.

I find this scary, and quite frankly, unacceptable. Financial firms spend millions on virus security and firewalls, protecting against hackers and cyber terrorists.

How simple and cheap would it be to have a data validation assess each trade entry? You punch in 15 billion instead of 15 million and the system retorts “Warning : Your entered trade is 1,000 times greater than the maximum trade of this stock over the last five years. Please re-enter the amount to continue.” The warning and override should then be recorded in a log.

Please will the powers-that-be sort this out before it happens again by “accident” and someone makes a fortune out of the market reaction.

Get your base right

Youtube Clip - The Axis of Awesome

Here is a brilliant segment by the comedy band, the “Axis of Awesome” (caution – a few swear words). These guys show us that a number of hit songs have the exact same chord progression. This isn’t a new discovery, anyone learning to play the guitar could probably have told you that quite a few songs have a similar chord sequence.

I think there is a very interesting learning to be extracted from this and it is not a lecture on the perils of plagiarism.

All of these songs have a distinctive melody and lyrics which is overlayed onto the foundation of the chord progression and “sits” well there. The melody and lyrics have added a subtle difference which makes the final song unique and enjoyable to a particular group of people.

In your business, do you have a clearly identifiable foundation that underpins everything you do for all customers? This is part of your business that you have to get right. This is your core value proposition.

On top of that foundation, you are able to differentiate your customer base to offer your customers targeted, tailor-made solutions which enhance the value provided by your foundation.

Get the foundation right first, then sort out your bells and whistles.

I think it would be more appropriate if the box bore a large red label : "Warning lark's vomit"

If you don't recognise the line above, it comes from a Monty Python skit - a chocolate maker is being investigated for including peculiar ingredients in the chocolates. When asked why customers are not made more aware of these offensive ingredients, the answer is clear : "Our sales would plummet"


Have you ever looked at the ingredients list on the back of products you get from the supermarket? I think you should and I think you should know what you are looking for.


Most consumers are quite capable of discerning high fat, salt or sugar content. What I would like to draw your attention to is those innocuous looking numbers - E160b, E214 or E507 for example. This is where a little more education would go a long way to help consumers understand whether they are eating (or feeding their children) something which is regularly an allergen, causes hyperactivity in children or is something completely harmless.


Please do yourself and your family a favour :

1. Watch Jamie Oliver's TED Talk on Food Education
2. Read this article about how improved eating led to improved educational results
3. Do some research on E-Numbers, find out what you are eating
4. Download an application to your mobile phone so you can check in the shop before you buy (like this)
5. Don't eat things that are not food (like E-numbers and lark's vomit).

Be smart. Be healthy. Be smart.

Mild mannered reporter by day...

We have all seen the standard superhero movie with the recycled plot line. A normal guy living a normal life suddenly discovers he has extraordinary abilities. Continuing his day job, in his spare time he does amazing things to help people he has never met – because he has the ability to act and he knows that it is the right thing to do.

But people like this exist outside of the Hollywood scripts, changing the world one life at a time. Superheroes like James Harrison, who at age 74 has saved an estimated 2 million lives – Batman would have to pull a lot of overtime to match that.

James learnt that he had very special blood, the plasma prevented babies dying from Rhesus disease. He has given blood every few weeks since he was 18 and will reach 1,000 donations in September this year.

So choose to give blood, volunteer, mentor, teach, inspire, sponsor a child, give to good causes, be selfless, spread joy. My challenge to you is to be a hero – you don’t even have to save a life, just try to change one.

Young professional series : Cleaning up your on-line image

If I did a Google search on you, do you know what I would find?

As the world gets more connected, the chances of you being found online increases. Everything you post on Twitter, Facebook and other social media remains long after the controversial conversation concludes or compromising photo was taken. People may not have been watching at the time but the Internet never sleeps and has a long memory.

Take charge of your on-line presence by making sure your content on all these sites reflect a positive image of you. Check your sharing securities on Facebook, think before you post online on blogs, comment on news stories or pass comments on Twitter.

Once you have cleaned up, stay clean using Google Alerts. If you are a registered Google user, you can use the Google Alert function to trawl the internet for your full name or just your surname (mine is pretty unique so that works for me). When anything gets posted on the Internet and Google finds it using your search terms, you get an e-mail with a link to the site.

That way you can check whether the new information on the web that relates to you adds or detracts from your on-line image and you can try to change it.

People are getting fired and not being hired due to Facebook activity and what Google searches turn up. Don’t go making the same mistake.

Young professional series

I am hardly still a young professional, but I am still learning an immense amount about being in the business of consulting every day. And it excites me and scares me all at the same time.

The cause for these mixed emotions is the same thing. No matter how much you know, there still is so much to learn. The learning curve is steep, especially if you have recently transitioned into advisory from a commercial background.

Intermittently, I will be writing down interesting things that I pick up from reading or from experience - as much for myself as for anyone else.

History always repeats itself, probably because mankind doesn't listen well

I woke up early on Sunday morning and followed the usual morning routine of a bit of reading, catching up on the news and e-mails – to be confronted by a tsunami warning. A devastating earthquake in Chile was sending a wave across the Pacific towards Australia. I followed up on the story during the day and fortunately, no killer tidal wave made it to our shores.

What was shocking was the images on news.com.au of people in Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii swimming in the sea after the alarm had been raised but before the threat had been downgraded. Do humans suffer from long-term memory loss when it comes to tragedy?

The tsunami that hit Thailand around Christmas of 2004 killed over 200,000 people and left many more homeless. It was a crisis of epic proportion. And 5 years later, our response to a tsunami warning is either to sit on the beach to watch it come in or get in the sea because the waves should be awesome! I am not exempt from this idiocy, but a South African couple I know were on honeymoon in Thailand when the tsunami hit and were both nearly killed. The story they shared was a miracle. A mix of luck, perseverance and gut wrenching grief. As a result, the word tsunami brings up a very real image of destruction and disaster.

The same will occur in businesses. The lessons learnt from the corporate failures in early 2000 and the very recent global financial crisis will be forgotten – especially by those who escaped unscathed. Or they will simply not be learnt by those too young to be affected. This slow learning curve or the inability to remember tragedy is the reason why large scale financial catastrophes will always return.

Links

Pictures of people watching for the tsunami

Interesting Excel visual of the business cycle clock

Lessons from the pudding guy

True story : In 1999, David Phillips was grocery shopping when he noticed that Healthy Choice Foods was offering frequent-flyer miles to customers who bought its products. A 25-cent pudding would bring 100 miles. Phillips bought 12,150 servings of pudding for $3,140 and then enlisted the Salvation Army to help him peel off the UPC codes, in exchange for donating the pudding.

He mailed his submission to Healthy Choice, and they honoured the terms of the promotion and awarded him 1.25 million frequent-flyer miles, enough for 31 return trips from California to Europe. Phillips also got Advantage Gold status for life with American Airlines, which brings a special reservations number, priority boarding, upgrades, and bonus miles and he got an $815 tax writeoff for donating the pudding!

He is currently earning new miles five times faster than he can spend them, so essentially he has free air travel for life for the net cost of $2,325.

Morals of the story :

1. Always do a full commercial review of any agreement / contract / business decision - check your modelling and assumptions.
2. Make sure that your selling price on a product is greater than the cost to make / buy it.
3. Honour your contractual commitments to increase the value of the trust in your brand.
4. Donate to charity!

Luckily, there are no losers in this story. Phillips bought all his future air travel for $2,325. The airlines sold the miles to Healthy Choice foods so it was a standard arms length transaction and Healthy Choice foods got more publicity from Phillips’ pudding plan than they could ever have hoped to achieve through the promotion alone.

Originally saw this on www.futilitycloset.com

How will the television content get to us tomorrow?

In the previous post I outlined my reasons for thinking that the current television content distribution model is rapidly becoming obsolete.

Networks and studios should adapt to meet the changing market needs.

Here are two examples of how this could work :

1. Studio’s sell direct to the public via the internet. This model may not stop the piracy which is plaguing the industry because the gap between free and cheap is still a big one. The networks are bypassed entirely because they currently add little to no value to the user. The studio’s benefit because they know exactly what the viewer wants and waste very little money producing shows that no-one watches.

2. The other model which may have sustainability is for the networks to add value by becoming content aggregators. They continue to buy from studios and sell to viewers either on a “pay-per-view” arrangement or on an advertising subsidised basis, but more likely in a combination of the two.

The networks get to know their viewers through proper investment in customer relationship management. They use this information to supply advertisers the opportunity to air targeted marketing content to the viewer.

Content is still accessed via the internet, meaning you can watch what you want when want to and the interruption of advertising is limited to products you actually may have an interest in.

Advertisers only pay networks for the advertising sold, minimizing the shotgun approach they currently adopt.

If these ideas sound far-fetched, think again. iTunes is already selling music under this model, you can already pull down movies using your Foxtel remote and there is a new music site call Guvera which is looking to test a similar approach with music sales.

The studios don't want to do this, they may even fight it - but sooner or later something is going to give.

The way television content is distributed won’t last much longer

That’s a pretty bold prediction, but stick with me on this – you may just agree with me. Let’s look at the old TV content value chain :

Studios produce TV shows. TV networks buy this content from studios. Networks air their content and generate revenue through a mix of subscriptions and advertising. The viewer watches the show when it is aired by the network.

This makes a great deal of sense in a situation where the only way to distribute media to a viewer is via broadcast (other than hard copies of course). It also makes sense in a situation where the viewer is disconnected from other viewers and could not collectively purchase the media content. Enter the network acting as the intermediary.

But now with high speed internet facilitating direct distribution and a hyper-connected viewing public as well as viewers who are increasingly protective about the precious resource of spare time – viewer wants and needs are changing :

1. They don’t want to pay for things they don’t want to watch
2. They want to watch what they want to watch when they want to watch it
3. They don’t want to wait for their local network to buy the content and then air it, they want it as soon as it is available
4. If they are getting content for free, they don’t want to be interrupted by marketing for things they don’t want
5. They don’t want to have to leave the house and go search through DVD’s at a store and select one to watch.

The current model does not meet the new demands of the TV viewer. Something is going to have to change soon…

In my next post, I have some ideas where this may be heading.

Should we benchmark schools on the 3 R's?

The Australian government has launched the MySchool website. This allows anyone who is interested to investigate a school’s vital statistics (number of students, number of staff and some other key metrics). It also compares the school’s NAPLAN results against similar schools and all schools. (NAPLAN tests cover the fundamental skills of reading, writing, spelling, numeracy and grammar). This initiative has been received with mixed reaction.

My thoughts are mixed. I think the tool is extremely useful but it is the application that makes me nervous. In financial effectiveness, the mantra is “What is measured is what is managed” and as a school, producing adults who are capable of all the skills tested by NAPLAN must surely be high, if not number one on the agenda.

Having this focus on the results allows a school to determine their comparative success in achieving this objective. They can also seek out the schools that are outperforming them and collaborate to raise the scores. Everyone wins.

My concern is, what about numbers 2 through 10 on the school agenda. Where are the metrics that measure creativity, innovation, passion, discipline, creation of future leaders and so on. If you have a moment, you must watch Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on how school’s could be killing creativity.

A targeted focus on “reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic” could see Australian schools losing that spark that creates musicians, dancers, leaders, inventors, paradigm breakers, game-changers....

Perhaps, to give a more well-rounded picture of the success of a school, the benchmarking should also include what past students of each school have gone on to achieve once leaving school - that would interest me as a parent and give me a sense of career accomplishment as a teacher.

Links

MySchool website

Sir Ken Robinson's TED Talk

The myth of self-regulation

The concept of self regulation is a simple one. An industry polices itself to make sure that they comply to an agreed code of conduct. There is just a tiny problem to this plan – it’s rubbish. It reminds me of a line from the Pirates of the Caribbean when Barbossa was explaining the Pirate's Code : " The code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules."

Chances are, it would probably be in the best (short term) financial interests of the company to act against its own industry code and, because there is self-regulation, there is no need for management to weigh up the cost of contravening the code with the benefit to be obtained from ignoring it.

There is no leverage to ensure that the individual company adheres to its own code.

This was evident in the case of Hungry Jack’s in Australia contravening the industry code regarding marketing of children’s meals with too high a fat content. They weren’t supposed to, but they did it anyway.

They weighed up their commitment to self-regulation against another contractual obligation and the contractual obligation won. Why? If they didn’t, they would lose money. Unfortunately, impact to the bottom line is often the only language most corporates understand.

But consumers have the ability to influence customer behaviour. Unless we change the way we interact with companies, they will continue to heed the call for more shiny things that cost less as opposed to the call for sustainable business practices.

This is the kind of industry self-regulation that will work. If companies don’t behave in a responsible manner, stop buying from them. Immediately.

The leverage of money, spending it and withholding it, is an incredibly powerful leverage. As consumers we need to start using it.

Interesting reading and viewing :

Hannah’s rules : Rise of the ethical consumer

Building values into business

It's (still) good to be good

Change is inevitable

It has been such a long time since the last post but I have been busy. A new baby in the house makes every day living quite a challenge and what was the norm never will be again. I am also involved in the transformation/creation of the finance function in a very large Australian company.

These two events have one very distinct commonality – change. Most people fear change, it represents the unknown. But change is inevitable, it is going to keep happening and eventually – it’s going to happen to you.

Being caught in change is a bit like swimming in a river (pardon the very extended metaphor). You have some options :

1. Resist the change or swim against the stream. Chances are you may be able to stay exactly where you are, but you are just as likely to tire and be swept away.
2. Let change happen or go with the flow. You won’t get tired but at the same time you will have little control over where the change takes you.
3. Influence the change or ride the wave. By being involved in influencing the change process you immediately herald your intention to be a leader in your organisation (or perhaps even industry). You also get the opportunity to shape the change in your organisation and how it impacts your business, you personally and your tribe (read up on Seth Godin if tribes at work is a foreign concept to you.)

Personally, I am all for option 3. If you swim with the current you tend to swim a lot faster than if you swim against or do nothing at all.

Maybe this comes from a smug sense that my opinion is worth adding to the change discussion, but I strongly believe that if you feel strongly enough about something, that regularly equates to an opinion that should be considered.

Bottom line : get off the sidelines and get in the game.