QotD for 11/5/09

“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” ~ James Baldwin

Quote Of The Day For Oct. 21, 2009

In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships.
The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions. ~ Margaret Wheatly

67% of Employees Looking to Jump Ship

An article earlier this week in @Risk talks about the fact that over half of the working population are unhappy with their current employment situation, are will consider changing when the economy and job market improve.  “As companies have cut their staffs by 10-20%, many candidates feel they have been pushed to their limits; they’re being asked to put in more hours and take cuts in pay and benefits without any recognition for their efforts,” explains Jason Breault, who works at TopGrading Solutions and specializes in recruiting Supply Chain Planning and Procurement professionals within Consumer Goods companies.

The productivity losses from top talent looking toward the door may prevent your firm from returning to prerecession levels of growth. Strong talent management is crucial going into the recovery, and companies cannot afford to treat employees as if they should be thankful they have a job.

Folks, this is the wake-up call.  If you or anyone on your management team has ever spoken the word “Be thankful you have a job” to one of your employees, its time for an attitude adjustment.  Maybe they should be thankful, but that doesn’t mean you should take advantage of your employees.  If you’ve made cuts in pay or benefits to keep the business afloat, that’s fine, but make sure people understand that it is TEMPORARY and that you will restore those levels once things pick-up.  Too many companies “realize” that they can get more for less from their employees because of this economic situation and think that they can continue this trend, but the fact is that people will not continue to accept work conditions like that in the future.

Make sure you’re treating your employees with respect and they will reward you with their efforts and stick around.

Before You Buy An eReader This Holiday Season…

Yahoo Tech has an interesting story out that talks about how eReaders are going to be a major holiday item this year. “Electronic readers could be the hottest gift this holiday season as a new crop of portable media devices begins to join iPods and other music players as must-have tech accessories.”  For those of you who are not familiar with eReaders, they are the thin, book-sized devices that use e-ink to display text and graphics on a screen.  Amazon’s Kindle is probably the most famous one.

But before you rush out to your favorite retailer to purchase one of these for yourself or a loved one, make sure you do your homework.  The fact is that not all eReaders are the same and there are tradeoffs with every one.  Of special importance is the library and format of material available for each reader.  Many of the new books are adopting the ePub format, but there are many units that do not yet support that format.  Or they do, but only for public domain titles.  More recent books are typically protected with Digital Rights Management (DRM) and the DRM restricts how or where you use the material.  Books purchased on Amazon’s site for the Kindle won’t work on Sony’s eReader, for example.  Barnes and Noble is coming out with their unit next year and you can use your cell phone now to read their titles, but you can’t use it on many eReaders, including the Kindle.

Our Take: Make sure you do your homework and understand that a decision about one unit over another may just lock you in to one source of material.  This is not dissimilar to the early days of digital music players like the iPod.  If you decide to upgrade your eReader in the future and decide to change brands, you may not be able to use previously purchased material, so think ahead before you buy.

Business Users No Longer Drive Smartphone Adoption

InfoWorld has an interesting article about how business users are no longer the driving force in smartphone adoption.  This ties in with our previous posting “Will Your Next Phone Be A Smartphone?” It stands to reason that while the business world drove the initial adoption of the smartphone, as the technology becomes more accepted, it pushes down into more mainstream usage.  This is no different from the DayTimer and FiloFax adoption of the 80’s.  First business users all had those calendars/binders and before too long, soccer moms were planning play dates with smaller versions that fit in the purses.  The popularity of the iPhone and its “There’s An App For That” campaign has gone a long way towards making the smartphone more mainstream. Now RIM (Blackberry), Palm (with the Pre) and Microsoft all are fighting for developers to fill up their own app stores.

Our Take: Smartphones will continue to be a “higher-level” device and won’t propagate down into true mainstream until such time as the data plans become more affordable.  An EXTRA $40-$60 per month is a lot for many people to stomach and needs to come down to the $15-$25 per month level to see a true shift from a regular phone to a smartphone in every pocket.

Stay Lean Throughout the Upturn

Fortune Magazine features an article from earlier this week about the importance of staying lean and mean even after the recession.  It is important for businesses to continue to evaluate how their business processes are performed and understand where it is possible to further streamline how business is done.  During the recovery, companies should continue to fiercely manage their capital and rigorously evaluate staff to ensure an A-list roster for the next downturn. While many managers think that streamlining processes is resource-intensive, that is not the case unless that process is done poorly. When done right, Lean can lead to significant financial and productivity gains!
Need help in understanding where processes can be streamlined? Better U coaches and consultants can work with your managers to identify potential target areas for improvement and work with your company to develop projects to make your company more profitable.  Contact us today at www.betterucoaching.com

Large Repercussions for Small Mistakes

An article in Entrepreneur Magazine last week (http://bit.ly/ZYSi8) talks about how it doesn’t matter how big the mistake is, it’s the time and expense required to identify it, fix it and prevent it from reoccurring.  In life and in business, small mistakes can have large consequences; take for example the 2000 US presidential election where a small ballot mistake led to a controversial outcome.

According to research, 82% of companies have experienced organizational changes.  Distracted survivors increase the chances of costly mistakes that expose the company to risk. And this doesn’t even take into account the fact tha many organizational changes bring about their own mistakes in how the change was made or even the change itself!  The margin of error is more narrow in the current climate and executives need to identify and communicate mistakes across their organizations as soon as they have a plan for addressing them.  Organizations that focus on prioritization and response to risk enjoy 20% higher revenue growth and as much as 50% higher earnings growth than those that try to detect risk.

Will Your Next Phone Be A Smart Phone?

I have been a user of smart phones for many years.  The reasons for using a smart phone, in my situation were simple. I’ve always carried a cell phone, since my early days in the industry back in 1985 (!).  Having everyone’s phone number in the phone made making a phone call easy.  But when phones started to have calendars too, then they became even MORE useful.  My calendar tends to be in flux frequently.  Being able to view open time and move appointments around on the fly is a godsend.  Throw a web browser in to be able to look up things like movie times, stock quotes, weather forecasts, etc. and you have one heck of a device.

But is a smartphone for everybody?  In a word, no.  But that doesn’t mean a smartphone isn’t for YOU.  As a recent cnet.com article points out, more and more Mom’s are making the jump to smart phones (Modern power moms flock to smartphones). The reasons are pretty straight-forward.  More and more, we’re on the go.  Having the ability to do things you used to only be able to do from a desktop computer in your down-time when mobile is very compelling.  Just yesterday I was at the pool and some people were talking about going to the movies.  In the past this would have meant finding a newspaper and looking up the movie times or finding a computer to look them up.  Now its just a few taps away on your phone.  Want to know how to dress for work or school in the morning?  Just glance down at your phone now.  When is your first appointment of the day.? You guessed it – right on your phone.

If you haven’t given smartphones much thought lately, maybe its time to reconsider.  You’d be suprised at how much more you can do with today’s smartphones.

Quote of the Day for Thursday, Aug 13, 2009

Leadership is action, not position. ~ unknown

Quote of the Day

One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you. ~ Dennis Peer