The Dark Side – The reprimands will continue until motivation improves.

First, I would like to worn all of you doing research to NEVER EVER read Dilbert before going over research material. It can really twist your interpretation on the material you are reading. Case in point I was researching a subject and came across some training material that some company had produces several years ago. The material talked about the developmental levels that people go through as they gain experience at their jobs. It showed that motivation tends to drop to its lowest point after a person learns enough to be able to effectively to their job. After that point motivation tends to increase as people continue to develop and contribute to their company.

Now here is where the Dilbert part comes in. The material I have is likely incomplete because it then jumps into praising and reprimanding people. If you have just read Dilbert you can read this, as people should be reprimanded if they have the necessary skill but temporarily lack motivation. Now we all know that there is many reasons people lack motivation. Many of them are factors that are really outside the control of the employee, such as being challenged in their current assignment. But because I was reading Dilbert I could not be the line “The beatings will continue until moral improves” out of my mind.

 

The other Dilbert factor was the material telling when someone should be praised or reprimanded was missing. My Dilbert warped mind led me to think that these poor people using this training material were being given enough information to be dangerous. That they were to become like the manager Dilbert has. Well anyone familiar with “DEMING’S RED BEAD EXPERIMENT” knows that there are factors that affect the performance that an employee may have no control over. (For those of you who do not know this experiment Google it, and shame on you for not knowing) They may be above average one period and be below average the next and still be within the acceptable constraints that the processes they are forced to use allowed. Being above or below average due to variable beyond their control does not warrant praise or reprimand. Management in the 50’s understood this. Again, I blame Dilbert for twisting my view of the material I was reading.

 So heed my warning, NEVER EVER read Dilbert before trying to do meaningful research.

In the world of Web 2.0 beware the not-so-silent minority!

Retail wire has a interesting discussion “Prediction Markets Foretell Online Trends”

David Biernbaum is a consumer packaged goods specialist in the field of marketing, retail sales, and business development. Points out something the everyone should be really understand because one can apply it to most of Web 2.0 

“Online prediction surveys get a more passionate and committed response than the traditional telephone survey, however, I think we should take with a grain of salt any supposed reliable results because passionate opinions might also be the not-so-silent minority, and it might not truly reflect the right predictable numbers where consumers and retail are concerned.”

Always remember that there are many times two groups in Web 2.0.
A) Those who are active participants.The ones who create content and make their voices heard.
B) Those who are passive participants. Many times the majority, who consume the content of the active participants.

More on Retail is not a zero sum game – IT

Eweek has identified five disruptive factors that Gartner analysis claims could force enterprises to change the way they attack their prospective markets. If these claims are true then retailers may want to develop strategies to respond to the changes these technologies will create in their business environment. The real question is do you respond or can you leverage these technologies to change your business environment.

Understanding these technologies can allow one to see how these technologies could allow business processes to be modified or allow the creation of new processes.

 As one slide states: “Web 2.0 communities have paved the way for new startups offering alternatives to technology incumbents, such as Microsoft and IBM. Traditional businesses must embrace these new models or risk losing market share.”  Are you asking yourself how an alternative to Microsoft and IBM could benefit you?  Are you looking to see what these new technologies would allow you to do that you cannot do now? Questions like these are the difference between responding and changing ones environment.

Believe it or not it takes a village to raise an idea into an innovation.

Ann All wrote a nice article called “Why Some Ideas Clique and Others Don’t”. The article points out two KEY concepts that many people miss about innovation.

[Two key concepts are clustering and reach. Clustering is a characteristic of most cliques, with members enjoying strong ties to each other. Reach helps define how quickly and easily — or not — it is for members of cliques to connect with members of other cliques. It’s the idea laid out by John Guare in his book “Six Degrees of Separation.”]

I have personally seen many great ideas die because of the people having them not being in the right clique or not being able to reach outside their clique. The image of a person coming up with a great idea and making millions by themselves is definitely not the rule. The true model is a person with a winning idea finding the right clique to advance the idea and having the reach to go beyond the limits of their current clique when they limit the growth of the idea. Believe it or not it takes a village to raise an idea into an innovation.

Retail is not a zero sum game – online/pick up in-store.

I seem to be getting alot of view of articles titled ”Retail is not a zero sum game”. So here is another example. 

Retail wire is running a BrainTrust Query: How important is buy online/pick up in-store as a strategy for retail growth? From the comments the conclusion seems to be that this will change the business environment. With major players like Wal-Mart involved in this companies will need to develop a plan to respond to this. In fact most of the comments seemed to focus on should we respond and how should we respond. But there was one comment made by Nikki Baird, Managing Partner of Retail Systems Research, which was not a zero sum game response.

[The idea of buy anywhere/get anywhere is the natural evolution, but I think there's an opportunity to really get sophisticated with cross-channel. With price and inventory optimization, retailers have an opportunity to shape demand by making offers to customers based on where they have too much inventory: "You know, if I ship this to your house, rather than you take it home today, I could give you 10% off and free shipping, and then you don't have to lug it home." Or, "We don't have your size? Well, you can have it shipped from our website, or we'll give you 20% off if you pick it up from our other store down the street.”]

 

Her response was to think about how this could be looked at as a means for changing the environment instead of just responding to it. The items she addresses would lead to important changes to business processes. These changes would offer competitive advantages that could differentiate you from your competitors. These are the types of changes that ones competitors will be need have to develop a respond for.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

There are two important customers in social networking.

I would like to give a plug to futurelabs for pointing out what others seem to be missing. In their blog they point out what everyone in retail should know by heart. That is you need to take care of your best customers. In the world of Social Networking this is no different. The 80 / 20 rule still applies. With few people providing the content that is in most demand. The only diffence is that you have two issues.

1)  The customer who creates the valuable content. The few.

2) The customer who attracts the advertising dollars. The many.

These two groups are not the same and are not motivated by the same wants, needs, and denied values. Failure to understand this fact will lead to a failed Web 2.0 effort.

Open-source products accounted for a 13 percent share of the $92.7 billion software market in 2006, but should account for 27 percent of the market in 2011

That is the claim made in this eweek article. If this is true then this is changing the business environment. Such a major change will require companies to decide how they will respond to this change. For the major IT player the question becomes how can I lead this change.

More tales from the Dark Side. Would you sent an employ a E-Mailed Pink Slip?

That is what happened in this article about a survey of 752 workers conducted by Harris Interactive for the Marlin Company, a North Haven, Conn., employee communications company, they found that this was happening.

This is just a case of bad management. They are either afraid to do their job or they just view their employees a commodities. In IT your people are your greatest asset. However, effective management of this human resource is one of the big failures of IT.

If you look at the history of IT you see a clear pattern of this. IT is a stressful and demanding job many times. Much of it is project based, demanding evenings and weekends to make the project work. Many times support is a 24/7 job.

If you look at some of the historic trends in IT you can see that many trends did not favor the employee.

First a IT worker was an hourly employee, then it was decided to make them salary to save all the overtime costs due the weekend and evening time they put in on top of their 40+ hour work week.

Next IT turned people into contractors to save benifits. No more health cost, etc. It also made them easier to replace. Workers came in the door one day as XYZ employees and entered the same door the next day a ABC employees.

Then technology changed and it was found easier to hire new employees with the skill sets in the new technology then retrain existing workers. You were now responsible for keeping yourself marketable. If you did not have the skill set it was your own fault.

Then outsourcing really took off. Jobs left the U.S. for India. The big focus was again to save costs.

Today companies such as Microsoft are complaining about not enough students entering IT. This is like shooting your parents then asking for the judge to go easy on you because you are a orphan. IT companies were responsible for creating this environment. They are also the only ones who can begin to change it.

Outsourcing its all about saving money right? Wrong!!!

Are you really saving money with outsourcing? A recent study seems to indicate no.
From the study
* 68% say outsourcing is overrated as an IT cost-cutting strategy.
* 67% say the total cost of using domestic outsourcing vendors has been as or more expensive than doing the same work in-house.
* About half (48%) of companies below $1 billion say the same thing.

I have been seeing simial studies for years now but it seems to have not impact on this trend. Why do they keep doing this? The diffinition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Do you need a change agent.

In McKinsey article “Building an effective change agent team” the case is made for change leaders who can cross the silos and functional areas that exist within organizations. I would like to give you my take on this. If you have read my past blogs then you realize I believe that one way to define strategy it the responding to changes in ones environment or creating changes to ones environment. This is primarily done by modifying business processes or creating new business processes. Since business processes commonly cross silos and functional area a method must be in place to do this. Change agent teams can be one way of doing this. What did not seem to be stated exactly by McKinsey was that the two main functions required are:

1)      Communication, communication, communication. The Change agents become an important channel of communication that fills in the gaps that may exist between functional units and silos. They act as the facilitators to collaboration.

2)      Shared understanding. Many times you have a blind men and the elephant situation. Each silo or functional area sees the business process from his or her own worldview. The Change agent transcends these views. The functional areas and silos create a common understanding of the whole elephant through the change agent.