CEOs

Nov 01 2010

One Company’s Twitter and Facebook is Another Company’s Time Suck

Shared a story on Thursday’s Webinar that we’ll share again here. 10 years old, but gives you a sense of the continuum.

Do you “Get It?” Really, not the lower case “get it,” but are you in the process of that deep knowledge that can only come if you truly “Get It?”

10 years ago, Dave from Area 224 worked for a company in the HR Consulting space. And one of the projects seems trite at the time – an online portal for companies to use to give their employees access to benefits information.

But, back then, 2000, there was a ton of discussion about this type of thing. Companies were dealing with old “legacy” systems, and didn’t know what information needed to be online, and were afraid that online would replace paper, and they wanted to be in compliance with legal requirements.

One of the offices for my company had some sales and back-office employees who were asked to help with the project – sharing information with their contacts through emails, showing a demo to existing clients of this new technology.

Problem? The boss, the guy who ran the office, refused to give access to the World Wide Web to any of his employees.

The reason? “The web is a time suck.”

Productivity would drop, it reasoned, because employees who could access this demo website for the new technology could also access things like other websites.

Okay, then. Sounds really crazy now, but this mindset existed 10 years ago toward the Internet.

And now it possibly exists some places – maybe your company? – toward Twitter or Facebook.

Which brings us back to the webinar. We’re doing another one this week, you can link to the signup stuff here, and we’re hearing that, well, it’s not that the bosses “Don’t Get It,” it’s that “It” needs to be explained in the right strategic context.

IF we spend time on Twitter having conversations, we might learn what the marketplace really thinks of us.

IF we are on Facebook making friends, they might be quicker to tap us on the shoulder when they need our help.

If you missed last week’s webinar, we hope to see you Thursday, November 4, at 1 pm ET/12 Central/11 am MT and 10 am PT.

Oct 26 2010

The Strategic Imperative: Using Strategy to Avoid Actual Work

While this could make sense as part of our “Buzzword Watch” series, we’re thinking “strategy” is in a class by itself. Follow along.

Sports analogies – “sport analogies” for the British in the crowd – are an awesome way to make sure you understand some of the business nuances. Such as “strategy.”

Objective: Win the game.

This brings us back to the title of this here blog post. And to an age-old question: why do you do what you do.

Not just in business, but in life.

A couple months ago, we did a four part series on the Marketing Martini Glass. It’s a series that turned Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs on Its Ear. And it reminded us of some business discussions we’ve had over the past (gasp) 20 years – discussions with really smart people in really good organizations.

There’s a maxim, going back those 20 years, that rings true, still:

The higher you are in an organization, the more you can throw around the word “strategy” and use it to avoid doing actual work.

Think strategically. Let’s be strategic. It’s important to think about the strategic reasons for doing this. We need a strategy session.

Uh, no.

What you need are actual business objectives.

The actual business objectives – the why you do what it is you do as a business – are not only imperative to develop BEFORE your strategy session, they can be pretty darn liberating.

Back to the sport(s) analogies so you can see what it is we’re talking about.

Even the different disciplines within, say, a football coaching staff can have their own objectives. Objective, still, is to win the game. The Offensive Strategy might well be to “keep the opposition’s defense on the field by effectively running the football.” Tactics? Those are the plays the Offensive Coordinator calls: “off-tackle fullback dive,” or some such.

Quoting Sun Tzu: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

So how do the really savvy avoid work?

They throw around the word “strategy.” AND they keep it in the nebulous cloud between “objective” – which there may not be for whatever it is they’re doing – and “tactics” – which they may not fully understand, or have a grasp of, or be able to execute on.

The title of this blog post is tongue in cheek. There aren’t folks who are deliberately using strategy to avoid actual work.

But it can be pretty easy to do – having a Strategic Imperative without proper direction from above, or help from the trenches.

Great way to get out of doing actual work.

Oct 20 2010

The Cubs Hire a New Manager – 4 Things CEOs Can Learn

How to take two seemingly unrelated topics – the hiring of a guy named Mike Quade as Cubs Manager, and your own management challenges – and blend them together? Leave it to Area 224.

We’re headquartered in Chicago’s North Shore, Evanston, IL, to be exact – where a guy named Mike Quade was born. Same guy who took over the Chicago Cubs as their Interim Manager earlier this season – and the same guy who got the job for keeps yesterday. What can CEOs learn from all this?

1. Be Thorough, But Not Deliberate. The Cubs interviewed a few people, did their due diligence, made sure they had talked to everybody. BUT, if they didn’t act now, they’d have to wait until early November – after the World Series and its moratorium on major announcements. If they were deliberate, they’d miss the opportunity to get their guy – and, if Quade was their guy all along, they’d make it seem like he wasn’t.

2. Be Prepared to Lose the Runners-Up. When Jack Welch hired Jeffrey Immelt to be his replacement at GE, it was expected that the other two candidates – both GE folks – would leave. They did.

The Cubs may have missed out on Ryne Sandberg – Hall of Famer, guy who toiled in the Cubs organization riding buses and tutoring minor-leaguers for the past five years – ever becoming their manager. Whether Sandberg ends up managing the Milwaukee Brewers (just miles up the road, in the same division) or someone else, the Cubs will have to live with that fact.

3. Be Decisive. The Ricketts family – who bought the Cubs earlier this year – and their deputy, Jim Hendry, the GM, stand behind their guy 100%. Sandberg would have been the easy choice, given the fact that he’s popular and has a retired jersey. Even a guy like Joe Girardi would have been worth pursuing, since he grew up saying he wanted to manage the Cubs.

But an October 19 announcement while the post-season is in mid-swing, that is decisive. And the full support – “this is our guy” – keeps people from wondering if there’s a trick up the Cubs’ sleeve. There isn’t.

4. Trust Your Gut. Never in my 20+ years in business – sportscaster, junior PR guy, VP of Global PR, startup CEO, guy behind digital agency – has my gut failed me. When I walked away from crappy business relationships, I slept better at night. When I didn’t – even though my gut was telling me there was something flat out bad about what was going on – I regretted it later.

There’s a gut feeling about this guy that just says “winner.” Maybe moreso than any Cubs manager since Frank Chance?

This could have been a long, drawn-out, painful process. But it wasn’t.

Next time you’re looking to make that key hire, make that key business move, make something happen, consider taking a page from the Cubs playbook. At least the off-the field playbook.