Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Everything is Just in Time (JIT), well almost everything

Just in Time Key
Have you ever been working at home, or the office, when you get a phone call from a sales person who is just dying to send you their latest white paper?

Ever hang up directly, if you even took the call? I normally talk to the people and try to understand the logic of what they are doing. Obviously this is their job, however, if they could open the mind of the company they work for, they might get further in their efforts.

Usually I point out to them that calling me, when I certainly did not ask them to do so, is not likely to be helpful to their cause. That aside, I then ask, if you were going to email it to me anyway, why not just email it to start and not waste your time calling? Either way, my spam solution will probably block it because it should know by now, I do not like emails with the words found that include "free white paper".

Decades ago when I was in college and hating my economics classes, JIT was discussed and technology has truly brought us to a world where everything is JIT. Outside of customization for something, or having a baby, everything else could be done JIT. Education could be, but that is a whole other post. We all want that Matrix like power to just know how to do something we never did before.

A friend of mine had questioned about the benefits of a newsletter or even blogging in general over some other formats. My feeling is the former is like blogging and I do believe in blogging. Do I expect you to read this blog post or any other when it is posted? Some of you will, but next week or month or year more people will find it. Maybe for a report, maybe for a presentation, or just because I tagged it with something that brought you here. You will find it when you need it. My technical posts are written for long term searching so everyone can benefit from the things I found earlier on in my career. One of my most hit posts is about the iNotes Redirector and is from 2009 which gets viewed daily. That is Just in Time help.

I am not a white paper person. Like many others, I trust my friends recommendations, not some paid for document produced by a company selling something. If I need your white paper for a client, I would hope they already found it but if not I will certainly use Google to find it.

One thing you can not do JIT is create an audience. Got a new app? How will you push out to the world? Have something to say to the world, how will they hear you? Building your audience takes time and then once you reach a critical mass stage, it then becomes a JIT plan. Apple now has millions of devices sold JIT on day one for whatever device is newly available. We all want to be like that, but think about this, it took Apple just under 25 years to get to this level. How long do you have?
Timeline of Apple Milestones Infographic

JIT tools or data can only be found once someone else has put in the time and effort to create it or create something to provide what you seek. We all need a little JIT but how often do we create information for the next person in line? Collaboration, social business or just plain communication only comes from someone else who went first to clear a path for the rest of us.

My posts are for the JIT person, searchable and helpful when you need it.

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