Let's talk.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has some advice for companies worried about their online reputation, "make stuff that doesn't suck". Seems blindingly obvious and sounds easy enough but few companies are talked about consistently when discussing brand integrity and product worthiness and making stuff that doesn't suck. If you take all the things you use in your daily life and list the ones that work all the time, to your level of satisfaction, it's likely a small list.

Wales' latest venture, Wikia is all about Wikipedia-without-limits from a social perspective using polls, lists and achievement badges and receives roughly 36 million monthly visitors who like to talk. Visitors that talk about a lot of things that suck because people enjoy digging at products that really should be better before they are offered up for use.

So what are companies to do if they get caught in this or any other online forum, "make stuff that doesn't suck". Like travel sites such as Trip Advisor, the power has been ceded to the public and unlike sites such as Facebook where products can have control with their own pages, Wikia respondents have the final say.

Once again the blindingly obvious answer has Wales at the centre of making sure that his new product works and that any talk remains positive. He cites Steve Jobs having the same mindset when he told Nike CEO Mark Parker to "get rid of the crappy stuff." It's often tempting for companies to make something for everyone but the dilution of creativity and product brilliance is easily spotted and talked about.

The number of products that Apple makes can fit on a small table, smaller all the time really but their mantra of concentrating on their core and saying no to even good ideas has shown how a company can make a product that doesn't suck in any way. The pages devoted to Apple products and touted by their zealous evangelists far outweigh the negative side of online debates.

The focus on making quality products give companies an advantage in that they don't need to spend time and money on brand management. Their online fans will do that for them. If companies can continue to supply their fans with great products then fans will take care of brand management.

Has anyone talked about your product lately?

Tis the Season....

To be jolly, to be inebriated, to photocopy your naked butt and to find a new job. Yes it's that time of the year again as a little too much of everything, especially egg nog loosens lips, hips and instills in people the confidence to turn into their worst nightmare. Hey Boss about that decision to put me on the sub committee to look after the photocopy recycling!

Published this week Adecco's survey of more than a thousand American adults found that 40% of workers say they've either embarrassed themselves or know someone who has, at a work holiday party. And a shocking 23%, 1 in 4 have been reprimanded for their actions. Pink slips are almost as frequent as red faces.

Ho Ho Ho, the Christmas party where everyone gets to let their hair down, loosen their ties and drink at the company's expense and maybe look forward to some office gossip the next day. For some it's the hang over that needs to be nursed the next day while trying to work out what they said to the receptionist that keeps her bringing you the aspirin. For others it's dealing with how that mermaid tattoo with the name Lola got on their backside. The problem arises when the lines are crossed and there you are telling the boss what you really think of him or worse waking up next to him. One in ten respondents to the survey said they knew someone who had been fired for inappropriate behaviour to their colleagues or their boss.

They make movies about the office parties because it's fertile ground for ideas that come easy for people allowed to celebrate infrequently. When it's only once a year and it is for a lot of companies, then it's likely that chances are taken with feelings and emotions that have been bottled up too long. Companies need to celebrate as many milestones as they can afford, not just at Christmas.

So have a great time at the Christmas party, not too much egg nog, don't sleep with your colleagues unless you're married to them, try not to ruin any reputations, never ever put on the beer goggles and most of all try not to get fired. So go ahead spread some cheer this Christmas, you know you deserve it.

Merry Christmas.

Do you Yahoo?

That used to be a great tag line in the early years of the net until Yahoo took their eye off the ball and before they knew it, people were Googling instead of Yahooing. With a great story behind it about two young guys from college figuring out search algorithms
( I know I should have listened more in maths class) and eventually turning the company into a global behemoth, Google quickly became the front page for most net users.

How long will that last, now that Facebook is asking its members to tag it as their homepage? Okay so I'll know what my cousin is doing in Laos but how will that help me in business, searching for information and keeping up to date with global trends?

Will it be a battle between social search versus data search?

With over 550 million members worldwide, Facebook is looking to turn itself into an OS (operating system) where everything is interconnected via those 550 million (and counting) threads along with over 1 million websites already integrated. With 60% of the top 100 US websites and 50% of the top 100 global websites integrated, the workings of "likes", "shares" and ancillary Facebook interactions give this site enormous clout to share information and do business on a different platform to Google and phone technology. Interestingly Mark Zuckerberg recently released Facebook's latest attack on Google's Gmail with "Facemail" (sorry I just made that up, they still call it email).

A long time ago I owned an Elvis album with the king on the cover in a gold lame suit with the album title " A million fans can't be wrong". That was when a million seemed a big number but when compared to the Facebook traffic of 700 billion minutes spent by members per month on the site, Elvis must be shaking his head while packing groceries down at Safeway. Before you get your calculator out, 700 billion minutes equates to 1.3 million years spent on Facebook by members every month.

Everyone talks about SEO but they'll need to consider SMO (social media optimisation) as our net relationship changes and E commerce phases into F commerce for the social consumer. Facebook will integrate platforms to challenge Google Docs, Google Voice and anything else that Google throws into the fray because Facebook is convinced we want to interact with each other and not just with an algorithm.

The above gives the feeling that Facebook is doing all the right things against Google but Google made one big mistake and that was not getting Sergey and Larry a movie deal. Mark Zuckerberg, portrayed by Hollywood's favorite geek Jesse Eisenberg now has the upper hand in celebrity and social commerce and has Google in his rearview mirror or the other way around if you listen to Google.

What's Yahoo doing while the big two fight it out? Maybe there's room for one more maybe not, you get to decide.

Rent.

I used to rent, in fact I come from a long line of European heritage who rented all their lives. My grandmother still lives and rents the same apartment she has lived in for 80 years. I bring this up not from a real estate angle of houses getting so expensive no one born after 1990 will ever own one but from the view we are heading into a rental cycle for all things useful and some not so.

Consider renting as the new ideology for our future to lighten our economic load and save the planet by shrinking our carbon footprint. Aside from real estate rental, we could expand our thinking to our everyday lives and start unbundling our acquisition and collection mentality. We certainly wouldn't need the storage space we need now and the majority of what we needed to rent can be found on the net so our free time, the most precious commodity, could be increased. Live with less is the new cry for freedom from the next generation.

One of the latest battle for minds and wallets concerns e-tablets and often rages around the publishing world and who has the best E reader. A recent visit to a Borders bookstore informed me that their "Nook" reader will have the latest of everything available to buy and read. So along with the Kindle, iPad, Sony reader and countless other devices we will be marketed at, until we choose our new direction in literary indulgence. I like books and I like to occasionally recommend and lend them to friends, something difficult to do with new technology because I don't want to hand over my iPad to someone for a week while they read the latest thriller I've downloaded. So my first suggestion to the Amazons of this e-commerce rental world is why not set up a library instead and I'll rent the books online, hopefully for significantly less than the buying rate. Why have a tablet with 100s of books stored on it, especially if you aren't going to lend them or your tablet out?

We already have other areas of entertainment like DVDs where we are comfortable renting but can't we free ourselves from the trip to the store? I can't remember the last time I visited a video store (why do we still call them that, when we have been watching DVDs for years) because I rent all my movies through the mail and eventually we'll rent the latest releases via broadband (hope someone from the government is listening).

Living and working in the city we find less and less reasons to own a car except for the visits to Grandma's house. GoGet car share gives you the flexibility to have a car when you want it, even if it's for only a couple of hours to visit Grandma. Why own when you can walk around the block to a specified parking spot and swipe your way into a new car and return it to the same spot when you are finished.

There are sites in the US like Zilok and Snapgoods where people rent out everything from lawnmowers, where do you store them in your apartment, to home appliances, cameras for your holiday along with works of art to healthcare. It is a system built on trust, much like social media and asks why you should own everything when someone else can do it for you and you only need rent it for the amount of time you require it? All of sudden you have a culture of abundance because there is nothing you cannot have, at least for a period of time.

Sure there will always be items I want to own, who's going to rent out underwear but why not have the best of everything else when you need it on a rental basis? Sure cars and entertainment seem the obvious choices but the more we learn to live without, the more we have access to everything. Along with the global outsourcing trend, renting everything could be the next e-commerce wave to wash over us.

I have one more suggestion and that is to look at renting jobs. There are jobs that look interesting to me, like Donald Trump's real estate job but I don't want to spend decades getting to that position, so why not rent some Donald time and see if you like it. Wonder what his rental rates would be?

For the final word, Kevin Kelly from Wired magazine, "access is better than ownership".

Why do they still call it a phone?

There is a sentiment, an e commerce held belief that the last CD will be sold somewhere around 2015. As technology evolves we now believe that some of our "old" stuff will eventually disappear, although CDs are only 30 years old they won't be able to compete with online download technology that is taking everything we have and converting it to bytes. So when the last CD has been manufactured and sold will we care at all or will we have moved onto the next phase of communication technology without looking back?

I only ask the question, as in that short space of 30 odd years, some of us still called a CD an album because vinyl had been with us for much longer and eventually made a small resurgence among vinylophyls. So will the CD make a comeback in 20 years because we get nostalgic for the plastic cases and the round plastic discs now used as coasters?

What about the phone, will it make a comeback in 20 years when we once again want to hear people's voices or will it forever be assigned a footnote in technology history as the slow way of communicating that hung around for a long time?

I didn't know the phone call or the phone was dead but it seems that what we carry around in our pockets today are computers for digital communication not voice communication. Two years ago in 2008, text messaging topped mobile phone calling and thanks to continued access to new applications like Twitter the phone call, like the CD, will have an expiry date. No one really cared when the iPhone 4 came out with the reception issues tagged as the "grip of death" because no one was really using the smart phone to make phone calls because it was all about the "apps" and what the future looked like when it came out of your pocket.

We won't stop communicating, we just won't do it by holding an implement up to our ear anymore. Like the obsolete hand written message, the phone call will fade out unless you are over 55 and still remember vinyl. According to Neilsen data, voice usage has been in decline in every age group for the last few years, except over 55. Video conferencing, Google voicing and Skyping on the phone (we'll have to come up with a new name soon) along with texting, browsing and working "apps" will be the choice of 20 somethings who have the say when it comes to sustaining interest in technology advancements.

You know it's happening as you answer and return less phone calls and substitute a quick text to get to the heart of the matter without small talk and frivolous chit chat. The only thing we haven't decided on is a date when we'll stop talking.

I'm not there yet, so call me, I'm in the book. Book, what book?

OMG R U 4 Reel?

I pride myself on the fact that I don't have spell check on my email and that my mother could read them, if I let her. Depending on the email required, my emails sometimes run long but they never run grammatically suicidal. They don't look or read like my nieces' text messages for the next beer run or who they were tagged with on Facebook. Am I being obsessive, do I have a problem keeping up with the new language and what was wrong with the old one?

Smiley faces, emoticons, purple fonts and parenthesis used for happy or glum were bad enough when it came to business emails but the decoding required for many of today's emails send me into a dictionary spin. When did "LOL" turn into "laugh out loud"? I just thought people were being very caring when signing off on normal emails that I thought were pretty funny. The speed required by conversational email has turned the phone text into common language and intrusively pushed its way into business. You'll be pleased to know that OMG is in some US dictionaries already and it's not likely to be the last acronym to be included as Shakespeare rolls in his grave.

Efficiency is sometimes used as a blame card for bad spelling and grammatical laziness but most of that can be taken care of with software that checks your writing and sends it out correctly. What doesn't make sense is the hard work required to acronym your business emails either by coming up with new ones or smart arse bamboozling the receiver with letters that they can't decode, hence making the message worthless.

Sure we thought ourselves smart with the occasional FYI, ASAP or even FAQ but they were so infrequent that we all got used to them over time and whenever a new one come to being you wanted to be the first on the block to use it, remember BYOG and how pleased you were at the end of the week, TGIF?

WTF, IMO i2 am fighting a losing battle against the tide of alphabet soup EMs, so I'll talk 2 U L8R about how to tackle the the YAA EM syndrome. My best thinking at the moment revolves around hiring nieces and nephews with double jointed thumbs to write my messages while I dictate. 2EZ "Take a letter Maria".

NE chance that U will R8 this BLOG OK or will I have 2 W8 2 C W@ U think L8R or is this 2MI. Either way WYSIWYG

I need a fix.

I don't know what I was thinking. It's been four days now and the symptoms are getting worse. The slight tremor in my thumb and forefinger I noticed two days ago has spread and the rest of my fingers are all shaking to the extent I've had to cover up by continually giving the Hawaiian "Hang Loose" sign so no one will notice. Like a bad case of caffeine withdrawal or worse no new episodes of Keeping up with the Kardashians I'm having to put up with the worst cold turkey treatment you could expect in today's speed obsessed society, no mobile phone.

Admittedly I'm on holidays and the decision to try and go "Robinson Crusoe" on the mobile technology seemed easy in the beginning but like all decisions made under the influence of alcohol the sobering facts are not what I expected. Who knew after all these years of hanging around the "Apple" corner waiting for my next fix of technology "Apps" that the plan all along, was to get me addicted so badly that the smallest separation from my mobile friend would cause inexorable pain.

Apple has become the worst of all dealers and enablers and I'm now casting a furtive eye around the pool in case somone has left their iPhone lying unattended. I know what you're thinking, get a grip and go attend an IA (information anonymous) meeting but they don't start till tomorrow and I'm not sure I can last another day.

The guy next to me has just pulled his phone out of his beach bag and is casually chatting and texting with his friends. I wonder if I buy him an umbrella drink, will he let me hold it for a while. It's only a Nokia but it could help. The smallest touch brings back the rush and excitement of being in contact with the world. Yet the surge of power causing through my brain cells as I my fingers caress the "iglass" and slide back and forth looking for the "App" that's going to get me through the morning is an incredible feeling and one the Nokia guy will never know.

There, right there, an unattended iPhone by the pool bar. Could I be so bold, can I have sunk so low, yes I need it now as the need for a quick text overcomes my moral compass, I casually head for the bar. Too late some pimply teenager has picked it up and is maniacally texting his girlfriend or "Apple" dealer for a new plan or "App".

Will I survive two weeks in the Maui sun, will the Hula dancers be enough of a distraction or will my life spiral into a deep well of technology hell? Steve Jobs I curse the day you were born all the while knowing you are the enabler of choice for my future.

Aloha.

You never know.

I have been in the Travel industry since the early 80s and I have developed friendships and worked with many of the same colleagues for decades. These people make it worthwhile on a daily basis to come to work in the challenging landscape that travel has become. They are people of integrity who rate their credibility as one of the most important assets they posses. They judge people by their deeds and actions, not on where they work or who they work for and this is the defining benchmark that keeps relationships on a trusted level.

I am proud to know these long term friends and colleagues, who have run the gamut of different jobs, sometimes at opposition companies, all the while able to disassociate themselves from those jobs and remain true to their individual character. In the end you were not tagged by where or who you worked for but how you acted outside that sphere.

Why the rant about relationships? Because sometimes you don’t know people as well as you think and disappointment is not far behind. This disappointment was one I recently encountered as colleagues who obviously had no faith in my integrity or credibility to operate a program designed for the benefit of the Travel Industry with no other agenda asked me to leave.

It seems my moving to a new company agitated these colleagues who I thought knew me but had issues with the company I was moving to. I have to ask myself the same question, do I know everyone as well as I should? Seems you never know what people really think of you until you change work, relationships or even social networks, which bring to bear emotions not based on your thinking, but theirs.

Robin Dunbar, eminent anthropologist and evolutionary who came up with the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships being 150" seemed to have it right. Maybe we know too many people but none of them well enough.

So maybe you shouldn’t be disappointment with what people think of you if you really don’t know them. You can’t layer your thinking about yourself and your self worth onto them and expect them to understand where you are coming from.

If anything you learn to adjust your levels of trust for the outer circle and close ranks so that you always have a safety net from true friends and colleagues prepared to catch you when you fall or are pushed.

Catch me now.

Medicine Cabinet.

Venture capitalists have a saying, "sell aspirin rather than vitamins". While vitamins are healthy and we need them, aspirin make the pain go away and as such becomes a must have rather than a nice to have.

Aspirin can be seen as the panacea for many ills and good examples are found everyday from "The biggest loser" to the iPod. I didn't know I needed to carry around my entire music collection until iPod pointed that out in the most amazing way. While radio and CDs were vitamins the iPod was the aspirin as it made the pain of being individual and not being able to listen to my special music when I wanted to, possible.

So the question is, do the products you use give you everything or do you need to find an aspirin to take away the pain?

Do airlines give you everything you want and need?

If the answer is NO, as it will be, then they have an opportunity to take the pill and take some of your pain away and stand out in a commodotised industry. For many people, cheap and reliable just doesn't do it but they have been the generic multi vitamins that pander to the lowest denominator and bring airlines together in a homogenised group where no one stands out.

So what are some of the pains that airlines need to provide aspirins for? For me one would be service. With the cutbacks and the speed of transactions required for airlines to make money, I find myself Becoming a commodity within their financial cycle. My pain is not being seen as individual and commercially important within the airline thinking. Treat me with respect and empathy, find out my likes and dislikes and you'll have me for life.

Being a commodity also means we must all be the same shape and size, otherwise why would all airlines have the same style seats squeezed into the same economy fuselage? Seats with new entertainment technology are just vitamins if it is too uncomfortable to view the entertainment. No airline can truthfully say they have the most space and the most comfortable seats in economy class. One or two centimetres is not extra space just a yield manager's solution to fitting in even more passengers. Provide me with an aspirin for space. Take out some rows to provide true space and you'll have customers for life, not just this flight because it was the cheapest alternative.

While the airlines dole out vitamins in the shape of new aircraft, self checking technology and online booking sites, they all seem reluctant to swallow the pill and provde the answer to our pain. What's your pain when it comes to the airline?

Two Words.

As a small child my mother was able to take me through the crystal glasses section of our local DJs because no matter what happened, my arms were mentally glued to my sides. They were glued because the ramifications, a swift hand to the bottom or worse, no TV, were not palatable to me in any way. Interesting how manners were acquired and became ingrained with the raise of an eyebrow or the threat of what was most important at the time, Gilligan’s Island.

I write this because along with the ability to walk through the valley of crystal without breakages, I learnt other skills from my Mother and one of the most powerful concerned the use of two words, “Thank You”. With those two words I became well behaved in the eyes of others (little did they know), I became grown up while still working the cute angle and most of all I built rapport before I knew how to spell it.

The UK has a “thank you week” and the US has a “thank you day” to try and shine a light on manners that used to be a part of everyone’s day before the speed of commerce and technology made it obsolete. The fact they have to have a week or a day to bring attention to this deficit highlights how far we have travelled from the grace of good manners.

So what you say, who cares and what’s to be gained by those two words? Extensive research over 10 years, by leadership experts Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton with 200,000 managers and employees directly correlated “Thank You” to larger profits. As hard as it has become, to say thank you, because of time constraints (huh?) or sheer forgetfulness some companies do it right. Zappos has made thank you a part of their service mantra and have the bottom line to prove it.

It’s not hard really, it just requires you to be a little open and in the moment, so you mean it when you say thank you. Who doesn’t like to be thanked for a job well done, a favour or even a random act of politeness or kindness? The recognition factor of “Thank You” is incredibly important when it comes to business relationships and builds rapport from a trust platform.

Think about the last time your company went out of its way to truly thank someone? How long ago was it? Was it done well? Have opportunities to thank the right people passed without recognition?

You could be the trailblazer, you could lead in the recognition stakes and all it takes is two little words.

Thank you for reading.

Corporate Wellbeing.

Like corporate social responsibility and corporate greening, corporate fitness and wellbeing comes in cycles as companies vacillate over the benefits to their staff and their business of gym membership and running around the block or going for a well deserved beer. Both have their upside and both can lead to work disruption and production loss. Research statistics for presenteeism (showing up at work and not being productive) showing production loss of 20% for back and neck strains and just 4% for alcohol haze giving us some numbers to discuss over a beer as gyms might not be the answer.

For companies to provide fitness facilities or work time to attend gyms and fitness classes can become expensive and I wonder if the Friday drinks aren’t more conducive to staff bonding and building company culture. Are companies using the gym as an out to make their employees feel engaged and motivated by taking the easy road and spending money instead of taking time to be involved. Employee engagement has proven to reach high levels as long as employees feel the company cares about them and management stays involved. Sounds like Friday afternoon drinks to me?

So the discussions continue but maybe they need to take a lead from a much larger statistical base to form definitive conclusions. I give you France and the French population who have decided to snub their collective noses at the fitness culture and lean towards the finer things in life and use their noses to smell the roses and the wine. It seems the French look down on the fitness industry as a niche activity along the lines of boot scooting and parasailing in the Alps. According to the 94.5% of the population, who don’t belong to a gym, sweat and lycra is not a lifestyle decision that will see sitting in cafes drinking coffee and red wine while having a smoke becoming passé anytime soon.

Club Med gym has not opened a new establishment in about a decade and they face an uphill battle to persuade the French on the merits of cardio machines, sweat, strain and jogging while avoiding the pampered pooch poo. Unlike Australia who seem to produce a line of jogging, swimming, cycling politicians, the French were abhorred by pictures of President Sarkozy in running shoes after his last election win.

Olympians and celebrities in Australia hawk the fitness lifestyle from selling swimming pools to vitamin supplements but in France the celebrities are much more in tune with champagne, cheeses and another nob of butter in the cream sauce. They would rather be seen espousing the virtues of creams and potions with guaranteed slimming qualities than be associated with dripping under arms.

So what to make of that for our corporate fitness in Australia? It’s hard to go past a country with a history of great food, wine and lifestyle with not a gym in sight. They must be doing something right as France remains the most visited country on the globe by travellers looking for a great lifestyle and the French seem to live as long as anyone else.

Maybe companies should consider inviting the local French patissier or restaurateur to discuss wellbeing from a corporate standpoint. Do they have an advantage with the satisfaction of a great meal and wine over the endorphin rush of a good work out? Could staff wellbeing be as much about the good meal with management at the same table discussing important issues?

I wonder if the French syndicate that won today’s Melbourne cup are heading to the gym for a quick workout before hitting the town? Now where was that boulangerie?