Do you know where all of your staff are, right this minute? Could you contact them on mass if there was an emergency? Ae you looking after them, body and soul? Are you prepared to go to court because your travel policy for duty of care didn't tick the right boxes? Questions like these come up every day as employees travel, become more mobile and need to go to more than just capital cities to do business. The recent Australia, New Zealand GBTA conference was awash with duty of care, mobile connectivity and the consequences of not having either well set up.
In 2008 the UK passed a duty of care act to protect employees making corporations responsible for their safety and their working environment. The big question in all of this, concerns the work environment which no longer means the corner office, with technology giving companies freedom to move and work from anywhere, anytime. You know a government is serious when they don't sugar coat the name and in fact throw down the gauntlet calling it "The Corporate Manslaughter Act", making it sound much more menacing and confronting.
For many it was seen as a vicarious liability because of the difficulty in managing remote staff and the past lack of technology being a hurdle to rounding out a duty of care policy with the employee at top of mind. The act highlights that responsibility sits with the employer and states where a corporation's activities cause a person's death and the failure was because of a breach that falls far below what can reasonably be expected of the organisation, then the company will be prosecuted.
How long it takes for a similar act to be made law in Australia is uncertain but the concerns around employee safety are probably justified considering the nature of corporate travel today. A recent discussion with a resource company highlighted the fact that what they took out of the ground was running out in the so called "safe" countries and the ice fields of the northern continents and the jungles of Africa and South America beckoned. From finding trustworthy transport to safety in camps it behoves such companies to have failsafe policies backed by technology that spans the medias in regards to communication along with safe guards for the wellbeing of the employee.
OH&S policies used to round out to the person responsible for the medical kit stacked with band aids but it now claims company directors as responsible for their employees whenever they are doing company work and as we all know that work line is no longer blurred but invisible as we stay connected and work 24/7. Will there be a time when home offices, cafes, transport facilities and hotel rooms need to pass OH&S working standards?
Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings was the first organisation convicted and sentenced under the Manslaughter Act and fined $750,000 for the death of one of its employees.
The police said CGH had a “cavalier attitude” to health and safety and that it used “out-dated working methods”. The final straw being a small company, CGH is likely to go into liquidation.
Do you know where your staff are, right now? Do you know what they are doing? Are they safe?
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Giving it all away.
I remember my first charitable donation as a child, to the local football team, the Warilla Gorillas for their raffle. It wasn't much, after all how much disposable income can you have from a dollar a week pocket money. Still it felt good to help, even a little, and I got to go to a game free of charge for my largess. When it came round to doing it again a friend, much more grown up, added his piece of wisdom and told me when I start earning real money I can write that donation off my tax.
Something to look forward to, I thought, but then I didn't have a clue what a tax deduction was anyway. Yet the good feeling of helping, no matter how small, stayed with me even when I eventually figured out the labyrinth of tax deductions. If you think about it, why does a government need to incentivise people to give to charities, why aren't people giving anyway?
Sometimes they just have to be shown how it's done. Forbes has released its list of the biggest givers globally and the names of Gates and Buffet and Turner and Bloomberg shine brightly with donations exceeding one billion dollars each. It is not an easy list to make and requires donations exceeding 1 billion dollars to be from private wealth, not company shares or family trusts. So 19 givers of over a billion dollars are led by Bill Gates, who gets the monicker of "the most generous man on the planet", having donated 28 billion of his own money and giving us all a reason to feel good about buying that next piece of Microsoft software.
As interesting as it is, to take a peak into the lifestyles of the uber rich and their philanthropy, the act if giving cannot be left up to them. Australia as a whole is a country that gives beyond its capacity, as every natural disaster testifies. Yet the recent government initiative to bench mark charities, showing how much money is eaten up in administration fees, will give many pause to think, how best to donate their hard earned dollars and to whom.
Still there are alternatives to giving the dollar as the only option. It seems we are often inundated from street side stalls to railway spruikers, to splashy ad campaigns and black tie dinners showing the charity arena touches everyone all the time. It seems less time between charity Fridays than Christmas toys and Easters eggs at the local supermarket. I know the feeling when walking past another giving opportunity, wishing I had more dollars to make a difference. Yet it's not always about the dollars and often you can make more of a difference, especially to those around you, with the most precious thing you have, time.
So can earn you another dollar? Of course you can, but you can't get back the last 10 minutes, so spend them wisely and give them generously. While the boys are giving all their dollars away, you can do the same with your most expensive gift, time. Be the most generous you can and Bill Gates won't hold a candle to you.
Something to look forward to, I thought, but then I didn't have a clue what a tax deduction was anyway. Yet the good feeling of helping, no matter how small, stayed with me even when I eventually figured out the labyrinth of tax deductions. If you think about it, why does a government need to incentivise people to give to charities, why aren't people giving anyway?
Sometimes they just have to be shown how it's done. Forbes has released its list of the biggest givers globally and the names of Gates and Buffet and Turner and Bloomberg shine brightly with donations exceeding one billion dollars each. It is not an easy list to make and requires donations exceeding 1 billion dollars to be from private wealth, not company shares or family trusts. So 19 givers of over a billion dollars are led by Bill Gates, who gets the monicker of "the most generous man on the planet", having donated 28 billion of his own money and giving us all a reason to feel good about buying that next piece of Microsoft software.
As interesting as it is, to take a peak into the lifestyles of the uber rich and their philanthropy, the act if giving cannot be left up to them. Australia as a whole is a country that gives beyond its capacity, as every natural disaster testifies. Yet the recent government initiative to bench mark charities, showing how much money is eaten up in administration fees, will give many pause to think, how best to donate their hard earned dollars and to whom.
Still there are alternatives to giving the dollar as the only option. It seems we are often inundated from street side stalls to railway spruikers, to splashy ad campaigns and black tie dinners showing the charity arena touches everyone all the time. It seems less time between charity Fridays than Christmas toys and Easters eggs at the local supermarket. I know the feeling when walking past another giving opportunity, wishing I had more dollars to make a difference. Yet it's not always about the dollars and often you can make more of a difference, especially to those around you, with the most precious thing you have, time.
So can earn you another dollar? Of course you can, but you can't get back the last 10 minutes, so spend them wisely and give them generously. While the boys are giving all their dollars away, you can do the same with your most expensive gift, time. Be the most generous you can and Bill Gates won't hold a candle to you.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
My Favourite Things.
"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens". As Maria sang, "these are a few of my favourite things" in the world's most loved musical, it got me thinking, not a about my favourite musicals but my favourite apps. I know, gotta get a few more action movies into my library.
The iPad purchase I made last year came with a flurry of app downloads across the breadth and width of my imagination. From goofy games about fruit eating ninja bats, to every conceivable social networking tool imaginable, through to so many productivity tools downloaded, that I needed productivity tools just to manage the productivity tools. Pages of apps to show my friends how cool I was, never noticing the accumulation affect it had on my time.
Like every love affair, the ardour cools and sensibility takes over and practicality rules the short timeframe you have, to love each and every app the same. So when it came time to choose why I bought the iPad in the first place, the sad farewells given the fruit bats along with their crazy cousins, the angry birds, made way for a more intense love affair with apps that really counted and improved my work life balance, along with providing what I needed most, time. Time to really use the technology smarter and get more out of the labyrinth of information available at my finger tips.
So here goes, my favourite apps at the moment. If you love some the same already, great, and if you find some new ones to love then it was worth taking the 5 minutes to read my blog today.
From a space perspective I have embraced the cloud. Even though I have not approached the end of the available iPad space I can see the future where there will be no need to carry technology with hard drive capabilities. My two favourite clouds are "Dropbox" and "Box", both of which provide me with my own private cloud come postbox to file and retrieve countless documents and anything I think will be relevant for later use on any PC loaded with the app. "Box" even went so far as providing 50GB free until recently, to any new members. That's a lot of mail posted to your cloud.
As an avid reader of newspaper articles I am always looking for the aggregators. Why buy 50 newspapers to read a couple of articles in each when "Zite" can give you a personalised paper, filled with only those articles of interest to you, where the more you read and like, the more the app gives you, on a personalised view? If you have media sites you read but don't want to open 20 different magazines and websites, why not let "Flipboard" and "Pulse" put them together in one place for you. If none of those suggestions turns you on and you still persist in reading online pages but don't have the time, consider "Instapaper", which can save any online pages to be read at a later date offline, while you are plane bound or out of wifi range. From a thought leadership angle, consider "TED" where the world's brightest and most creative people discuss topics by invitation only. Eighteen minutes to get your point across to an audience of mental giants makes for great video watching.
From a work view I have a couple of favourites that make the list. After some serious kidding from friends reading one of my articles about going paperless, I decided to bite the bullet and use the iPad as my everyday workbook and along those lines grabbed "Mental Note" to enable me to take notes, save them, collate them and send them straight from the meetings. I also had to have the obvious office apps such as "Pages" and "Keynotes" for presentations. Having said that, the world still insists on PowerPoint and if you absolutely have to show them, then use "Slideshark" to have them emblazoned across your iPad in all their numbing glory. Never forget to load the new "Adobe" reader as the Apple, Adobe war of words calms down, PDFs and their like are now more viewable on the pad.
As a traveller there are just too many apps to consider but some of my favourites include, "Flight Tracker Pro", which can give you every updated airport board, for departures and arrivals, while telling you if your flights are on time or delayed. From a mapping view I use several including "Wundermap" and "Map Draw" which let's me draw on my maps to calculate distances and highlight destinations. Locally I use a couple of apps designed to get me around the city and home on time. "Trip View" for public transport and "Go Catch" for that elusive cab at eleven o'clock at night, always help out.
Okay so the ninja fruit bats have bitten the dust but if anything, the iPad lends itself to distraction from an entertainment angle and that would require a few articles to name all of my favourites. So till that time I hope you get one or two ideas out of the above.
The iPad purchase I made last year came with a flurry of app downloads across the breadth and width of my imagination. From goofy games about fruit eating ninja bats, to every conceivable social networking tool imaginable, through to so many productivity tools downloaded, that I needed productivity tools just to manage the productivity tools. Pages of apps to show my friends how cool I was, never noticing the accumulation affect it had on my time.
Like every love affair, the ardour cools and sensibility takes over and practicality rules the short timeframe you have, to love each and every app the same. So when it came time to choose why I bought the iPad in the first place, the sad farewells given the fruit bats along with their crazy cousins, the angry birds, made way for a more intense love affair with apps that really counted and improved my work life balance, along with providing what I needed most, time. Time to really use the technology smarter and get more out of the labyrinth of information available at my finger tips.
So here goes, my favourite apps at the moment. If you love some the same already, great, and if you find some new ones to love then it was worth taking the 5 minutes to read my blog today.
From a space perspective I have embraced the cloud. Even though I have not approached the end of the available iPad space I can see the future where there will be no need to carry technology with hard drive capabilities. My two favourite clouds are "Dropbox" and "Box", both of which provide me with my own private cloud come postbox to file and retrieve countless documents and anything I think will be relevant for later use on any PC loaded with the app. "Box" even went so far as providing 50GB free until recently, to any new members. That's a lot of mail posted to your cloud.
As an avid reader of newspaper articles I am always looking for the aggregators. Why buy 50 newspapers to read a couple of articles in each when "Zite" can give you a personalised paper, filled with only those articles of interest to you, where the more you read and like, the more the app gives you, on a personalised view? If you have media sites you read but don't want to open 20 different magazines and websites, why not let "Flipboard" and "Pulse" put them together in one place for you. If none of those suggestions turns you on and you still persist in reading online pages but don't have the time, consider "Instapaper", which can save any online pages to be read at a later date offline, while you are plane bound or out of wifi range. From a thought leadership angle, consider "TED" where the world's brightest and most creative people discuss topics by invitation only. Eighteen minutes to get your point across to an audience of mental giants makes for great video watching.
From a work view I have a couple of favourites that make the list. After some serious kidding from friends reading one of my articles about going paperless, I decided to bite the bullet and use the iPad as my everyday workbook and along those lines grabbed "Mental Note" to enable me to take notes, save them, collate them and send them straight from the meetings. I also had to have the obvious office apps such as "Pages" and "Keynotes" for presentations. Having said that, the world still insists on PowerPoint and if you absolutely have to show them, then use "Slideshark" to have them emblazoned across your iPad in all their numbing glory. Never forget to load the new "Adobe" reader as the Apple, Adobe war of words calms down, PDFs and their like are now more viewable on the pad.
As a traveller there are just too many apps to consider but some of my favourites include, "Flight Tracker Pro", which can give you every updated airport board, for departures and arrivals, while telling you if your flights are on time or delayed. From a mapping view I use several including "Wundermap" and "Map Draw" which let's me draw on my maps to calculate distances and highlight destinations. Locally I use a couple of apps designed to get me around the city and home on time. "Trip View" for public transport and "Go Catch" for that elusive cab at eleven o'clock at night, always help out.
Okay so the ninja fruit bats have bitten the dust but if anything, the iPad lends itself to distraction from an entertainment angle and that would require a few articles to name all of my favourites. So till that time I hope you get one or two ideas out of the above.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Attention Span.
A baby cries, a small child tugs at its mother's sleeve, a teenager gets some inappropriate piercings and an airline union goes on strike. Not much in common with any of the above but as we have all learnt throughout our lives, there are certain ways to get attention, some better than others. Sometimes it's just acknowledgment you are after and a quick smile from Mum will send you back to the swings. Sometimes it's about getting your way no matter what and that takes being cantankerous, obstreperous and just downright 'ornery with consequences to match.
Such seems to be the way of the unions, causing passenger grief and disruption at our airports as they wrangle with the national carrier over dollars appropriate to the current working conditions. A long time ago the carrier was owned by the government and union troubles were never encountered. Although I suspect government policies, dealing with the aviation industry, were closer to stand over tactics in the halcyon days of exotic and romanticised travel, and unions either took what they were given or looked for jobs elsewhere. There was only one sheriff in town, in the old days.
Today we operate in an open range filled with gunslingers willing to shoot their mouths off at the slightest mention of strike and give forth vindictive comments that only shoot the innocent, the passengers. If it was an Arnie movie, they would call it "collateral damage". Seems the people caught in the crossfire have no where to run but they do have a choice of shelter and today that choice ends up being the competition airlines.
The strikes will eventually be resolved through a series of ugly meetings with finger pointing, crass comments about the other side and a compromise that both sides will call a win, with one loser, the passengers.
How long the travellers are willing to put up with the inconvenience, disruptions and service downfall will depend on loyalty programs and the airline's ability to spin the end result into a win for all. For many this will not be enough and if they have chosen an alternative carrier in these times of chaos, it may be harder to get them back than the national carrier realises. The recent initiative by the competition to match loyalty status was a stroke of timing genius as corporates willing to give the other guy a go may find they are welcomed as a king and queen and not as a pawn in a game for position and dollars.
Passenger's loyalty attention span, has shortened significantly differences between full service and low cost carriers becomes less about seat pitch, buying a pillow, free drinks and more about getting to your destination. So unions intent on making a point with their employer at the expense of the travelling public, need to be careful what they wish for. The strike initiative may be considered a success if caving in the employer is the desired result but at what cost? The loss of passengers who may never come back to the airline? The loss of brand equity and credibility? The loss of faith from the corporate market to deliver a product worthy of the reputation so long in the making?
Not much use for unions if the airline doesn't have any customers and that could be the end game, if passengers give up on the airline?
PS. Just caught the the competition to Melbourne, and arrived on time. Hmmmm.
Such seems to be the way of the unions, causing passenger grief and disruption at our airports as they wrangle with the national carrier over dollars appropriate to the current working conditions. A long time ago the carrier was owned by the government and union troubles were never encountered. Although I suspect government policies, dealing with the aviation industry, were closer to stand over tactics in the halcyon days of exotic and romanticised travel, and unions either took what they were given or looked for jobs elsewhere. There was only one sheriff in town, in the old days.
Today we operate in an open range filled with gunslingers willing to shoot their mouths off at the slightest mention of strike and give forth vindictive comments that only shoot the innocent, the passengers. If it was an Arnie movie, they would call it "collateral damage". Seems the people caught in the crossfire have no where to run but they do have a choice of shelter and today that choice ends up being the competition airlines.
The strikes will eventually be resolved through a series of ugly meetings with finger pointing, crass comments about the other side and a compromise that both sides will call a win, with one loser, the passengers.
How long the travellers are willing to put up with the inconvenience, disruptions and service downfall will depend on loyalty programs and the airline's ability to spin the end result into a win for all. For many this will not be enough and if they have chosen an alternative carrier in these times of chaos, it may be harder to get them back than the national carrier realises. The recent initiative by the competition to match loyalty status was a stroke of timing genius as corporates willing to give the other guy a go may find they are welcomed as a king and queen and not as a pawn in a game for position and dollars.
Passenger's loyalty attention span, has shortened significantly differences between full service and low cost carriers becomes less about seat pitch, buying a pillow, free drinks and more about getting to your destination. So unions intent on making a point with their employer at the expense of the travelling public, need to be careful what they wish for. The strike initiative may be considered a success if caving in the employer is the desired result but at what cost? The loss of passengers who may never come back to the airline? The loss of brand equity and credibility? The loss of faith from the corporate market to deliver a product worthy of the reputation so long in the making?
Not much use for unions if the airline doesn't have any customers and that could be the end game, if passengers give up on the airline?
PS. Just caught the the competition to Melbourne, and arrived on time. Hmmmm.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Spy vs Spy.
Used to be a time, when companies and countries employed "James Bond" style espionage agents to get the dirt on their competitors and find out when the latest nuclear device would be sold to the bad guys or when the latest high tech product would roll of the production line. They would carry concealed cameras in their cigarette lighters along with tape recorders hidden in the lapels of their custom made dinner suits. All to get the smallest amount of information about "the other guys" and what they were really up to. Not ethical but for some it seemed the only way to stay in front of the competition.
Nowadays, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook etc etc will get you 90% of the information you need and the rest is available when executives and politicians open their mouths without turning on their brains via Twitter, email or text messages.
Seems there is an epidemic of "foot in mouth" disease in the corporate world and it looks like escalating as executives fall over each other to deliver the latest gossip, latest share news and latest boardroom chatter, all to show who is in the know and who has the ear of the information hungry public. It used to be the occasional staff memo that leaked about the directors decision not to pay for the Christmas Party, but today that has taken a back seat to Tweets coming from within a board meeting all the way to LinkedIn faux pas by people like HP VP Scott McClellan tipping off the competition about the company's new cloud computing strategy.
Seems executives have found new ways to shoot themselves in the foot via the plethora of social media channels and at the same time put a whole raft of spies out of business. A Forrester Research survey showing 82 percent of 150 companies that monitor social media are primarily searching for competitive intelligence giving you a good idea why so many spies are now working in pizza parlours.
Everyone loves to be first with a story, it's human nature to want to impress your friends with a secret. Whereas it used to take days and weeks for stories to leak out, today a tweet can travel around the world in seconds and that makes it even more imperative for companies trading in sensitive information to have relevant social media strategies. Strategies that are aligned with the company culture so that everyone understands why there is a need to keep information safe and the consequences of leaks.
Steve Jobs had the culture right at Apple, for no matter how hard people tried, no one ever got the salient information for the latest technology releases until Steve hit the launch button. Sure there was speculation and gossip but Apple used that as marketing fodder and used its code of secrecy to build up expectations that delivered sales records such as the 1 million first day pre orders for the iPhone 4s.
We don't all operate in sensitive areas in our work environment but it behoves us to have some forethought before hitting the button on the latest bit of information tease or office gossip to consider what the consequences are and how they affect you and your brand. It's not about spy vs spy, it's about knowing your job and doing the right thing.
Nowadays, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook etc etc will get you 90% of the information you need and the rest is available when executives and politicians open their mouths without turning on their brains via Twitter, email or text messages.
Seems there is an epidemic of "foot in mouth" disease in the corporate world and it looks like escalating as executives fall over each other to deliver the latest gossip, latest share news and latest boardroom chatter, all to show who is in the know and who has the ear of the information hungry public. It used to be the occasional staff memo that leaked about the directors decision not to pay for the Christmas Party, but today that has taken a back seat to Tweets coming from within a board meeting all the way to LinkedIn faux pas by people like HP VP Scott McClellan tipping off the competition about the company's new cloud computing strategy.
Seems executives have found new ways to shoot themselves in the foot via the plethora of social media channels and at the same time put a whole raft of spies out of business. A Forrester Research survey showing 82 percent of 150 companies that monitor social media are primarily searching for competitive intelligence giving you a good idea why so many spies are now working in pizza parlours.
Everyone loves to be first with a story, it's human nature to want to impress your friends with a secret. Whereas it used to take days and weeks for stories to leak out, today a tweet can travel around the world in seconds and that makes it even more imperative for companies trading in sensitive information to have relevant social media strategies. Strategies that are aligned with the company culture so that everyone understands why there is a need to keep information safe and the consequences of leaks.
Steve Jobs had the culture right at Apple, for no matter how hard people tried, no one ever got the salient information for the latest technology releases until Steve hit the launch button. Sure there was speculation and gossip but Apple used that as marketing fodder and used its code of secrecy to build up expectations that delivered sales records such as the 1 million first day pre orders for the iPhone 4s.
We don't all operate in sensitive areas in our work environment but it behoves us to have some forethought before hitting the button on the latest bit of information tease or office gossip to consider what the consequences are and how they affect you and your brand. It's not about spy vs spy, it's about knowing your job and doing the right thing.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Inspiration.
It's been a week since the passing of Steve Jobs and the accolades and tributes continue in all the media and mediums he influenced. From historical pieces to innovation surprises through to legacies left, his mark was indelible. No doubt like many artists before him, his works including his soon to be released biography will gain even more importance and historical significance with his passing. For many he was an inspiration from a business viewpoint in resurrecting Apple from the scrap heap, for others for showing the world different ways to communicate and rejoice in entertainment they thought they had left behind.
The best analogy from all articles read over the week gave me Steve Jobs as Walt Disney for the current generations and like Walt giving our imagination room to fly. Like Walt, Jobs and his ilk, including the Richard Branson's and the Bill Gate's of the world were looked to for inspiration and their books and every utterances were captured via all manner of media. Globally their reach was unimpeachable but it wasn't like you could give Steve a call and ask his advice.
Every day people look for inspiration in their business life, their family life and their community life but more often they overlook what is directly in front of them. You would be surprised what some of your work colleagues have accomplished, what family members have achieved and what you can gain from your community. All things you can use as inspirational fodder to spur you on to the next level of success.
An 80th Birthday party for my father in-law gave me such an insight within the family environment and gave rise to some inspirational speeches, especially for the grand kids. From being chased out of Burma and the Indian Sub Continent by the invading Japanese as a child, to successful careers with Qantas and as a teacher, to now writing down the memories of eight decades, a life well lived with a legacy built up of family values should be more than enough inspiration for any of the children following on.
So the trick is not to continually look into the distance and overseas for what you are looking for, but dig down closer to home and closer to work to find stories of inspiration and people looking to lead tribes of self minded colleagues and friends. That will give you reasons to stay creative, innovate, experiment and follow your own drum.
Everyone has a story to tell and most often it is about overcoming adversities and figuring out better ways to get through the day, so why not listen closer to home, you might be surprised what you find. You may also be surprised how much influence you have and how many people look to you for inspiration. Think about it for a moment and think about what an inspiration to your kids you are? One day they'll say my Dad did this and this and isn't that amazing.
Steve Jobs was a man for his generation and he left too soon and the unwritten potential he left behind, is the greatest tragedy of his passing. Don't let that be your legacy, go inspire someone today, you know you can do it.
The best analogy from all articles read over the week gave me Steve Jobs as Walt Disney for the current generations and like Walt giving our imagination room to fly. Like Walt, Jobs and his ilk, including the Richard Branson's and the Bill Gate's of the world were looked to for inspiration and their books and every utterances were captured via all manner of media. Globally their reach was unimpeachable but it wasn't like you could give Steve a call and ask his advice.
Every day people look for inspiration in their business life, their family life and their community life but more often they overlook what is directly in front of them. You would be surprised what some of your work colleagues have accomplished, what family members have achieved and what you can gain from your community. All things you can use as inspirational fodder to spur you on to the next level of success.
An 80th Birthday party for my father in-law gave me such an insight within the family environment and gave rise to some inspirational speeches, especially for the grand kids. From being chased out of Burma and the Indian Sub Continent by the invading Japanese as a child, to successful careers with Qantas and as a teacher, to now writing down the memories of eight decades, a life well lived with a legacy built up of family values should be more than enough inspiration for any of the children following on.
So the trick is not to continually look into the distance and overseas for what you are looking for, but dig down closer to home and closer to work to find stories of inspiration and people looking to lead tribes of self minded colleagues and friends. That will give you reasons to stay creative, innovate, experiment and follow your own drum.
Everyone has a story to tell and most often it is about overcoming adversities and figuring out better ways to get through the day, so why not listen closer to home, you might be surprised what you find. You may also be surprised how much influence you have and how many people look to you for inspiration. Think about it for a moment and think about what an inspiration to your kids you are? One day they'll say my Dad did this and this and isn't that amazing.
Steve Jobs was a man for his generation and he left too soon and the unwritten potential he left behind, is the greatest tragedy of his passing. Don't let that be your legacy, go inspire someone today, you know you can do it.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Trust.
"Do No Evil". What a great tag line. Sounds like it could belong to a previous article on Get Smart. A naive line from the 60s, encompassing wanting to do everything right and really really not wanting to do evil because there was already so much of it in the world. When you are a small company fighting the injustices created by the global players, everyone believes in you and of you. Such was the way of Google against the tyrants of Yahoo, AOL and the king of the kingdom, Microsoft.
Like so many popular movements before it, Google became a champion of the people, who were looking for their own way of tackling this new monster called the web. A new way to look at the world, from above and on the ground, a new way to search for things you didn't know you knew or even wanted to know. All the while doing the right thing and giving it away for free. Sure there were Ad Words but they were for the people that wanted to do business. We all agreed that 90% free was a good deal and surely the 10% business that Google wanted wouldn't make any difference to us.
Then Google became Gloobal and the world was different. Google was now so big that even 10% was bigger than most multi national companies and people started looking for a new champion. The bigger the company the more likely there is mistrust from the general public, especially if they don't understand the technological intricacies of how they really make their money. Google is looking to take on all competitors in it's field and more with the recent foray into social media with Google+ and the daily deals with Google Offers.
Yet it's the recent updates on services such as CNN, declaring "Bon voyage travel agents - Google's taking over travel" that have many in the travel industry feeling they trusted the wrong site for too long. Seems the travel industry was happy for Google to provide information and maps free of charge to them along with destinational information and put up with the information it provided OTAs but draw the line when the giant oversteps the mark and joins the already despised OTAs.
From Hotel Finder, through Google Flights to the most recent acquisition, Zagat's food site, Google is finding it hard to hide behind, we are doing this for the greater good of information being available to all. It all looks like a recipe for travel heaven to those living online and an attack to those still providing relevant travel services face to face. Google is already the most sophisticated search engine there is and it doesn't take a leap to see them challenging the big OTAs and going for everyone's business, including the high street travel agents, once they aggregate all of the search tools with a "book it" button.
With online hotel revenue already past $120 Billion in the US alone and slated to pass $150 Billion very soon, it seems odd that a company so advanced and in tune with online business today, hasn't decided it wants a slice of the action. Still we may all be wrong and it could be for the greater good of travelers without any repercussions to the travel industry.
Still I'd stay close to my clients and work on the angle that Google will never be able to replace, you.
Like so many popular movements before it, Google became a champion of the people, who were looking for their own way of tackling this new monster called the web. A new way to look at the world, from above and on the ground, a new way to search for things you didn't know you knew or even wanted to know. All the while doing the right thing and giving it away for free. Sure there were Ad Words but they were for the people that wanted to do business. We all agreed that 90% free was a good deal and surely the 10% business that Google wanted wouldn't make any difference to us.
Then Google became Gloobal and the world was different. Google was now so big that even 10% was bigger than most multi national companies and people started looking for a new champion. The bigger the company the more likely there is mistrust from the general public, especially if they don't understand the technological intricacies of how they really make their money. Google is looking to take on all competitors in it's field and more with the recent foray into social media with Google+ and the daily deals with Google Offers.
Yet it's the recent updates on services such as CNN, declaring "Bon voyage travel agents - Google's taking over travel" that have many in the travel industry feeling they trusted the wrong site for too long. Seems the travel industry was happy for Google to provide information and maps free of charge to them along with destinational information and put up with the information it provided OTAs but draw the line when the giant oversteps the mark and joins the already despised OTAs.
From Hotel Finder, through Google Flights to the most recent acquisition, Zagat's food site, Google is finding it hard to hide behind, we are doing this for the greater good of information being available to all. It all looks like a recipe for travel heaven to those living online and an attack to those still providing relevant travel services face to face. Google is already the most sophisticated search engine there is and it doesn't take a leap to see them challenging the big OTAs and going for everyone's business, including the high street travel agents, once they aggregate all of the search tools with a "book it" button.
With online hotel revenue already past $120 Billion in the US alone and slated to pass $150 Billion very soon, it seems odd that a company so advanced and in tune with online business today, hasn't decided it wants a slice of the action. Still we may all be wrong and it could be for the greater good of travelers without any repercussions to the travel industry.
Still I'd stay close to my clients and work on the angle that Google will never be able to replace, you.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Next Business.
E business is common today and we all subscribe in one way or another. After all who hasn't bought something on the net and who hasn't been touched by an inbox filled with daily deals. Yet in 1997 this concept was but a twinkle in the eyes of IBM and their creative development team as they forged a vision of what could be our future. No one believed it could be, as we struggled with our Commodore 64's and carried around house bricks disguised as phones.
Now the esteemed, well they got the e business thing right, bods at IBM are talking up "social business" and what it means for our future. It's not social media mixed with some sales thrown in, it's not Harvey Norman being social and it's not business done at the pub.
It is in fact all about people doing business in the new digital age, that's been around for a while but has been overwhelmed by chatter, the inane and the Facebooking of daily minutiae. Ethan McCarty, of Digital and Social Strategy at IBM has clear views on what the future looks like for them as a company and also for businesses so far not engaged in social business.
Business is the biggest "thing" going on globally. I say "thing" because it encompasses everything everyone does on a daily basis. Without business, there is no us, no we, no planet. So what happens when that all encompassing "thing" takes hold of the social media side of the equation? McCarty says it will dwarf social media as we know it. Social business is people interacting via their digital experiences in everything business related with people. Even IBM which has more to do with services and brand than consumer products now looks to its "IBMers" experts to do their business digitally and not via legacy sales thinking.
They have figured out their employees need to be turned on all the time, via the digital world, and carry on business conversations that have value and relevance to their organisation and the services they offer. To do this McCarty has indicated that some media like email, may be on the outer as they look to more collaborative platforms to do business. He looks at email as a silo affecting tool and not geographically enabled to carry on multiple conversations about a product. The opportunity to talk with many at the same time, about a product relevant to many, on many levels is the nirvana.
Imagine being at the local electronics store discussing the purchase of a new flat screen TV with the resident expert and having your friends along for support and then going next door and getting the rival electronic expert to join in and then adding the manufacturer along with an external expert and anyone else you trust or want an opinion from. What about that important meeting where you really want all your support staff involved, along with experts you trust, along with the finance department and the boss for the final sign off.
Having everything and everyone at your finger tips and having them involved on a social platform would make decisions quicker, more relevant and cut out the back and forth communication that often sinks decisions over long periods of discussion.
After all business is about people and the more of them you can get involved and engaged, the more likely you are to come to the right outcome.
Now the esteemed, well they got the e business thing right, bods at IBM are talking up "social business" and what it means for our future. It's not social media mixed with some sales thrown in, it's not Harvey Norman being social and it's not business done at the pub.
It is in fact all about people doing business in the new digital age, that's been around for a while but has been overwhelmed by chatter, the inane and the Facebooking of daily minutiae. Ethan McCarty, of Digital and Social Strategy at IBM has clear views on what the future looks like for them as a company and also for businesses so far not engaged in social business.
Business is the biggest "thing" going on globally. I say "thing" because it encompasses everything everyone does on a daily basis. Without business, there is no us, no we, no planet. So what happens when that all encompassing "thing" takes hold of the social media side of the equation? McCarty says it will dwarf social media as we know it. Social business is people interacting via their digital experiences in everything business related with people. Even IBM which has more to do with services and brand than consumer products now looks to its "IBMers" experts to do their business digitally and not via legacy sales thinking.
They have figured out their employees need to be turned on all the time, via the digital world, and carry on business conversations that have value and relevance to their organisation and the services they offer. To do this McCarty has indicated that some media like email, may be on the outer as they look to more collaborative platforms to do business. He looks at email as a silo affecting tool and not geographically enabled to carry on multiple conversations about a product. The opportunity to talk with many at the same time, about a product relevant to many, on many levels is the nirvana.
Imagine being at the local electronics store discussing the purchase of a new flat screen TV with the resident expert and having your friends along for support and then going next door and getting the rival electronic expert to join in and then adding the manufacturer along with an external expert and anyone else you trust or want an opinion from. What about that important meeting where you really want all your support staff involved, along with experts you trust, along with the finance department and the boss for the final sign off.
Having everything and everyone at your finger tips and having them involved on a social platform would make decisions quicker, more relevant and cut out the back and forth communication that often sinks decisions over long periods of discussion.
After all business is about people and the more of them you can get involved and engaged, the more likely you are to come to the right outcome.
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