Destroying A Business From Within

The other night we went out with 30 of our friends to a new restaurant and bar in our neighborhood for my birthday.

My wife and I ate there a few days earlier and agreed it would work well for our crowd.

Who knew one can make so many friends in two and half years of moving here but we did! 

While we don't always get together regularly, we do get together for drinks or late night food between 2 and 4 times a month in smaller groups and maybe once a month in a bigger way for a party or birthday.

Why do I tell you this? 

Because this blog post is a lesson that any business can live or die by its management and staff. Along the way see how sales, social media, personalities, business expectations, training, psychology, and in my case, ignorance all come into play.

As we all arrived at the restaurant, we had made a reservation for 18, then changed it to 25 and the restaurant had made space in their back room for us which we proceeded to fill. 

The locals and friends from neighboring cities proceeded to order drinks and food or desserts.

The people at our table ordered first and most of us got our food and drinks in a reasonable time. But, a specific dish with 4 of us had ordered, seemed to not be coming. While I did not mind, some of the more hungry guests were not amused and asked when we would get our food. 

We learned that there was only one appliance to use to make this particular meal and it would take some time as now there were 8 total orders of the same item. It did not help that the other waitresses grabbed whatever was ready and delivered it to their tables without realizing or noticing the early ones should have gone to us. 

Again, not the biggest deal to me.

It seems at some point some people had words with the hostess who explained that the restaurant was not prepared for such a large group. For a place that has existed for a few years and has an ample seating space outside and inside to accommodate at least 100-125 people, this was an unexpected answer. I did not find this out until later that night or the next day.

All our food arrived but not before two people left to go get burgers down the road after letting the waitress know they were not waiting any longer. I also didn't know this at the time but found out later.

Thus about 2 hours later as the party was ending and people started to pay their bills, I went to go pay for ours as well.

And the fun began.

I let the waitress know what my wife and I ordered and paid the bill and thinking we were the last ones we should head home.

Not so fast.

There was an amount due. 

Okay, I figured some people drank shots or maybe didn't realize their spouses did, so I figured, my party, I can cover it, right? It turns out we were short about 600 shekels or roughly $150!

Now I know my friends here and trust them to be both honest and full of integrity, even when drinking, so I asked to see the full bill receipt. I then sat down to go over everything listed and asked them to verify the payments received.

It was at this moment that I must claim ignorance. I was not involved in the other conversation that started between my wife, or the few friends still lingering and the hostess/waitress.

It seems that the choice of words, this is all in Hebrew, was accusatory and rather indignant that our friends skipped off without paying. No, it could not be the restaurant's error, everything is on the computer and what were we trying to pull.

Reminding any of you of client meetings over billing hours yet?

I eventually found out that the meal, I and 7 others ordered, had been entered into the computer as 18, not 8, orders! 

Simple math 10 x 60 = 600. The actual numbers came out and showed that my drinks were paid for by my friends, which is usually how we all do it for birthdays so I, in essence, received a small amount of money in a refund. Thanks everyone!

The management, hostess, and waitress provided no explanation nor any apology.

Culturally I understand this and it didn't bother me at the time, again, because all I knew was I found the error, they fixed it and all was good.

My friends, a mixed group of Americans and Israelis were not very happy with the entire situation. They wanted to post bad Yelp reviews, wanted to tell our whole community about the way we were treated, and do what people do most with social media, gripe. Before you say, "but you are doing just that", my hope is that the owner will see this, but also to parallel it with our own business situations.

Our bill which was about 3,000 shekels or about $750 got me thinking about the business side of this situation and what everyone can learn from it. 

Yes some of it is obvious, but as a case study in hospitality management, here we go.

My friends go out quite a bit as I said, many of us either run our own business or, at our age, are high-level sales people or managers. We have money to spend when we want to go out. 

Some of us have small invitation events for artists or non profit benefits during the year that we need a nice, and new, place to invite people. And as a business lunch option, this could work too. 

In short, there is quite a bit of revenue that the restaurant loses out because they:

• did not train their staff properly
• did not have any buy-in from the staff to benefit the business or themselves
• did not recognize that the issue was on their side and although they backed their own people initially, should have admitted the mistake
• will not see any more birthday parties and with 30 people, even if only half went there, that is over 40,000 shekels a year they are losing 
• and the waitresses miss out on a guaranteed $75 in tips or more which knowing what they get paid, they really need
• have now also cut themselves off from a very social media and referral network of people that could have sent them dozens and dozens of people
• lost out on our weekly get together which while only 2-6 of us might show up, still would be a recurring revenue stream they were lacking

Doing some back of a napkin math, with the number of restaurants extrapolated and annual sales defined from here and here says the average restaurant makes 700,000 shekels a year. 

I don't think it is a stretch to say that if we all liked it and told other friends our combined spend reaches 75-100,000 shekels a year. 10% of their revenue to me sounds like a big deal based on what I read. 

Similarly we have no idea who is at a table or in an audience, on the train or randomly walking by us when we are unhappy about a situation at work or with a client. It may cost us our jobs or our bonuses or future jobs at the time. 

This is a tough thing to overcome because trust once lost is very hard to regain, especially in this case where we would have no other interaction with the establishment.

The restaurant could have filled a void for us that we need in our community, a kosher bar and restaurant, and had high hopes for it but it seems they do not share our hopes or have any interest in filling our needs.

By not engaging with the clients in a reasonable fashion and laying blame on them, you can see how service contracts go bad in businesses so easily when vendors take a one sided view. 

This one sided view is "taught" to the staff because they will naturally be influenced and then follow their leader.

My friends, like you reading this out there, have various expectations about dining out.

Some want value for their money, others want high end cuisine, some expect the staff to be as professional as business people (hard to ask from teenagers or even college age people), others are okay with waiting if they have were warned about delays or like me not bothered about it all.

The Snickers commercials in the US hit the spot on this one from both sides of this discussion because maybe it was all just late at night and everyone was hungry.

When your focus is on the wrong information, attitude or goals, your business can not survive because you send your staff down rabbit holes that have no way out. 

It may also help to deliver the goods or services on time and feed your staff and customers within reasonable times.

A Rabbi Walks into a Social Media Stream

Sure there is a joke here, leaving that to some of my funnier fiends. This is about a different view of being social, so hang on while I explain. This post is somewhat different than the original one posted over here a few days ago.

What happens when you disagree with your Rabbi?
 No, you don't go to hell or get banned from synagogue, but in some places this is implausible. One should never go against their Rabbi's rulings! (For the record I never asked about the internet but the view is comparable to that of watching TV or a movie)

This is not about the side that wants to ban the internet or believes it is all bad. No, I am talking about a specific aspect of the internet which over the last few years has grown to take over our lives in a way only Fahrenheit 451 knew all too well with the parlor walls.

People like to gossip, social media is like a drug for the gossip monger crowd. The Torah reminds us to not speak poorly about anyone, not to tell tales, not to slander people. It is all about watching out for other people's feelings, which in turn watches out for your own.

How does it do this?

There is a, how do I say this, a superstition to some or perhaps a string thread of life, that there is an evil eye that watches you when you commit this gossip and slandering and returns it back to you. Boomerang effect. What goes around comes around and other metaphors.

On a personal level, I agree with the Rabbi. Posting about your trips, your new car, your kids winning the cross country bobsled race leads others to acts of depression, anger and baseless hatred against you or your family.

Recently I presented on this subject in Boston at the Social Connections 8 event, this does not encourage people to be better or think, "I should do that" nor does it reinforce the effort required to reach that lofty goal. How many months or years did you practice the bobsledding after all?

If we recall how social media started, an Israeli company created a product called ICQ (before many of you had a clue what the internet was or even a Blackbery) which was eventually bought by AOL and led to more interpersonal discussions than the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) ever could imagine. 20 years later or so and we have become Facebook drones.

There is a great part of social media which works really well and that is for family, and friends, to keep up with each other. The fact that at some point I decided to friend coworkers, employers, business associates is where the problem starts to begin with my digression from my Rabbi's opinion.

My view is from a professional level, people want to see, hear, read, listen to you to know if they should hire you, book you as a speaker or trust your opinion. In order to do that, it takes a bit of over the top extroversion which for many is hard. In the capitalistic society there is a ledger, just like the one God writes in on Yom Kippur. The difference is one is about our spiritual side, one is about our physical lives. Which one is more important to you?

Should we have accounts just for business and just for personal should be the question. Some people do, I have and gone back and forth over the last 15 years and I decided to maintain all as equal. The reason was it became too difficult to maintain separate lives virtually, in addition to my daily life. Changes in attitudes over the years allowed myself, and many business professionals, to became more open about our religious needs for holidays and early Friday due to shabbat but for some it is near impossible to do so.

My Twitter profile addresses professional and personal by saying in Hebrew that I observe Shabbat so those that know, will understand what I do, and how I do it. When limited on space, this was the easiest way to say it.

If I am at a conference, speaking at an event, or meeting someone in my professional world that is exciting, well to me at least, or for business purposes then I post it, or about it. It helps me because if all of us are responsible for  one another, or if you prefer the 6 degrees of separation theory, someone I know may need that connection or in turn may bring me to someone that needs my professional help.

Do I, and others, post things we should not? Hell yeah! But, no, we really shouldn't.

When you post items at work, how many post personal things? How about personal work things like your promotion? Your new sales deal? You see the problem is we now have multiple mind sets about what, where and when to post things that it becomes harder and harder for people to separate their social accounts.

The problems of what to post where and what should get posted need to be very clear and understood by the employee. What you do on your own time is up to you and maybe you will prefer to keep multiple accounts. Then again, what if this is just a fad and next year we all go back to our little silos and stop sharing in general? Not likely to happen, but are we swinging the pendulum back a little bit? Or is it too late and TMI has become the norm?

Explaining the Mixed Mindset of a Social Organization

If you were not at my session at the Social Connections conference in Boston 2 weeks ago, you can still see and download my slides, but I don't think you will quite get the gist of the message I expressed.

A catch-22 of great magnitude that while your outside persona is free to post,  your "business" head is confused or full of fear.

Let me explain.

Email vs. Status Updates, or Single vs. Blended, is a metaphor for the way your organization works.

Collaboration or as the marketers call it, social business/media comes in many forms. Companies, or rather, executives, are trying to understand how to integrate this into their sales or internal efforts of transforming their companies into something new. Is email the old world or just a part of the new one? Are status updates the new way or just email by a new name?

One one hand you have a handful of people that "get it" and are always sharing, open and looking to help others be it via email or some other methods.

On the other side you have the opposite. The same employees want to help people, and they are Facebook active, but when it comes to work, they are not so forthcoming.

Why? What is the problem? If they share outside the office, why not in the office? Do they send one line emails or explanations regularly? are their status updates more like blog posts or just time stamps for their billing hours?

Setting aside the need to set goals for people (every employee should post once a day or twice a week,...) in order to prove to the executive that you are now a corporate social media titan, let's discuss the people factor.

People naturally share information with friends and family, some more than others, but inside all of us is a need to share, to bring people closer to us, or to help others understand us, and our unique worlds.

Facebook, Twitter, support forums, photography sites and numerous other examples are just some of the ways one can share their experiences. And it is great, usually for fun, but also for sad times as well and you do it from your home or while at a party or dinner.

Then you leave your home and go to work, your commute probably is not short or fun, and you arrive at the office and in some cases are told, by your immediate management, NOT to post anything about your work or the teams, even though the company itself is a strong proponent of social and collaboration.

Maybe this is a bit harsh of me.

Let us say instead, you believe that by posting a bunch of information on your company intranet or ESN (Enterprise Social Network) your manager will think you are not doing your work or billing enough hours. True, you are probably posting great content, or details that are needed, but that is not how some managers see it.

The corollary is the same, if you do not post anything, people think you are not working at all or maybe even left the company. And if we take the target/goals idea  you have not met your quota of posts!

There is also a numbers problem here. The data shows that about 15% of the people are posting over 85% of the content. Take a different view of numbers, direct marketing works on a 1-3% hit rate.

Before your company starts turning everyone into social drones, realize that it will never be an all or nothing effort. Are you prepared for this "failure"? Have you decided to congratulate those that would be social anyway, over the ones that are breaking out of their shells? How will you know the difference? Will there be different expectations? In the age of personalized everything, can you be so granular inside your company? If not, why not? If you need help, contact me to discuss it.

Many people will not post, tweet, update, podcast, video message or whatever you ask of them for many reasons and that is okay. Really, it is. It does not mean they will never do it, just they have not been exposed to the right thought process to help them along. Time of course is a big issue and we have so little of it but everyone can forgo something for 2 minutes to post a simple update or comment or to vote or like something posted.

Baby steps.

However, what if you are the only one who has certain information and you are part of a team or organization that should you not be able to work or be missing while traveling, could your team survive without you? Of course, some may say, if you have provided all this information, they could survive without you and fire you all because you were collaborating.

Yes, the corporate world does work this way sometimes, but also has greater need and respect for those that provide the data. Usually. But not every time.

Just like the first time you tell someone you love them. Maybe they love you back, maybe they don't, maybe you are 5 when you say it, maybe 18, maybe 25. The outcome and expectations are different at each age and level. So it is in the corporate world.

In the US where capitalism has reigned for all of our lives, it is very hard to suddenly change that mindset of me, mine and 1+1=1, to yours, ours and get to 1+1=3. A friend of mine suggested collaboration is the ultimate capitalism. I am not so sure, but I am willing to bet that a shared culture will be evolving over the next 10-15 years more so than we have seen in the years since 9/11. Post 9/11 we have seen some drastic changes that enable us to be more global, more open, more reliant on others for information and sharing more information while also becoming more insular at the same time.

This schizophrenia of the Enterprise will continue until the current levels of management evolve or get pushed out. The newer companies maybe better at sharing, while smaller, but the jury is still out if they stay the same or revert to Enterprise ways as they get older and larger.

I believe organizations can be more open and collaborative but we need to hep them realize there will be a mixed bag of engagement from within for a few years to come.

Hey Politicians, There is this thing called the Internet

Where we live there is a newspaper, in print, that is free and is very pro the current government.

I say good for them if they can keep it going on dwindling advertising revenue, or the owner is some wealthy patron who feels the need to lose some money, either way, what is the problem?

The problem is some government officials think this is propaganda with the aim of helping the existing government officials stay in office and should be treated accordingly. They are trying to pass a law that newspapers must charge money. Huh? And the cheapest one can be no less than 70% of the cost of the 2nd largest newspaper. Double huh? One article about it.

Not sure how they expect to also close the thousands of websites or blogs or whatever Twitter accounts that do the exact same thing.

There is nothing more important, education? nope. Military? Nope. Diseases? Nope. Drugs? Nope. A newspaper.

Evidently these government officials all went to the same school, the one from 30+ years ago and have not bothered to come out and see how the world has evolved.

“This creates a difficult precedent. A parliament can never close a media source in a democracy –  only the market can close them. This (law) is playing with fire”

Very sad that in an age of transparency and openness, they lack the vision to see what is in front of them, namely an opportunity, on a grander scale, to work differently, act differently and provide new courses of action.

Social media here, oddly enough, has had little to discuss about this and it makes me wonder if at some point when the government or your boss, has had enough of your blog posts, they will come for you too.

Job Hunting Time

As of a few days ago I am newly available.

A free agent on the scene looking for a company to call home.

Sure I'd love to restore an old corvette or another pinball machine, but not enough money in those hobbies for the average person with a family.

What I can do is restore customer service departments or service delivery organizations to award level status.

Over the last year and a half, I was managing the delivery of services for over 500,000 people, prior to taking on the role of Director of Marketing with the same organization.

While managing the group, we began to document everything, we discussed managing their time and meetings properly, reporting to both the customer, and ourselves, when something was amiss, and have a little time left over for some skunk works projects.

I was empowering my worldwide team to let them police their own work and provide proper documentation across all projects. The real test was if I could complete their task if, God forbid, they were hit by a bus. Luckily, I never had to do this, but many times the details were available when we needed to report on the data.

Once I felt I had completed my efforts, I wanted a harder challenge, marketing was that challenge. Although I laid out quite a plan, had 2 months of blog posts planned, analysts lined up and bloggers ready to go, it was not to be at this juncture.

And so my friends, I am searching for a new role. A role that lets me do what I do best, solve problems, restore services to a golden age when service to a customer meant something to them, and us. Along the way providing social media content for my staff and company to get found and recognized as a great team is just an added benefit.

Tweet/Call/Email/Skype me from this blog or my http://about.me/keithbrooks page.

What if Darth Vader won?

May the Fourth Be with You!

Ever wonder what it would be like if Darth Vader won?

Could Darth Vader have won instead of the Rebels? Could it be that a strong network of Sith Lords could control the masses through social media efforts using The Force? These may be strong words, young Padawan.

There is an amusing Twitter account I follow called @DeathStarPR that brings my point forward. What if social media was used as an insidious effort to gain the upper hand against the Rebels? What would the Star Wars universe look like decked out in only black and white?

To read more hop over here to the IBM Social Business Insights Blog.

Analytics and Crickets

While hanging out at #Sugarcon this week with good friend Stuart Mcintyre we were struck by what we saw as a lack of socialness (made that word up) from the attendees. Granted this is in contrast to the obscenely over the top socialness of my fellow IBM friends which can be zealous in their path to be social.

SugarCRM itself is fairly active as are Larry Augustin CEO and Clint Oram CTO on Twitter. Keeping in mind we can only really see the tweets or posts if #sugarcon was in the tag or discussion. So where is everyone?

In this graphic on the left, courtesy of NextPrinciples, which by the way you can click on and move any of the links and connections, a very nice benefit, you can see who had tweets retweeted or was the primary creator of the original tweets. You can see about 30+ accounts were pretty active although over 700 tweeted something, see Engagement below. If I presume about 1,200 people attended then about 2-3% are active socially. And since I know many of the names, they are business partners. Begging the question, where is the audience? Where are the customers? The lines to the small balls in the graphic are more customers but still the audience was not heavily active. Even at the voting for the AppTakeDown winner it was about 25% that voted. See graphic on the right.

How do we engage people better? Are we happy with this little or this much engagement? 

Let's look at this information, again from NextPriniciples. Keep in mind these are just for the few days of the show and do not imply anything other than what went on at the show. In some cases SugarCRM people themselves or their accounts were excluded in these graphics.

Sugar7 is announced, but no you tube videos for it? Lost opportunity. Customers like videos, social media people love graphics. perhaps they were posted, but just not included in the analytics.

 

This is hopefully untrue, but only 10 blog posts? I wrote 2 and Stuart 1, but surely there were more. maybe my friends at NextPrinciples can help with this.  A lack of primary bloggers may be hurting. then again, if we look at a week long view, will we see better details? 

The last graphic is probably not as helpful because I do not believe @sugarcon is an account on twitter so it is not surprising that there was no growth in followers.

Large numbers of followers, attendees that are social, bloggers and more all help to provide proper analytics but I was surprised at the details for the conference. If you can't get people excited enough at your annual show, I wonder what the analytics look like during the year.

Now look at  this graphic that shows the top 20 7 Hashtags:

IBM was a Diamond sponsor, no doubt this helped raise the Hashtag, but also many people expressed there impression that IBM was not the older IBM. Nice to see IBM getting that traction and awareness.

We were probably too small to get #sugarcon to trend on Twitter, but then I don't think the keynotes were livestreamed for those that could not attend which could have helped grow more awareness. 

I'd like to see more reach out to the world by SugarCRM. Their product is great, they have a great executive team, they are priced appropriately. How will they reach the goals that Larry Augustin mentioned at the opening keynote? Without leveraging their social customers they are missing a great opportunity to enhance the brand and value of the product.

4Square, 52 Weeks, An Asifa and Social Business

Most of you will go, what is an Asifa, more on this later.

A little over a year ago I started checking in to Shabbat on 4Square. An unusual thing to do, after all it is not a place, a company or anything tangible, it is however something which is important, to me, and something which others should know about me.

I bring this up today because although I tried to check in every week, some weeks I could not due to holidays and others I ran out of time. Huh? How do you run out of time you may ask? I point you to this post I did a while back. Still, to do something that is not work or family repeatedly is no easy task. Are there times when I wish it wasn't a holiday or Shabbat? Sure, especially when certain sports teams are playing.

But I want to focus on Social Business and what this means from a community perspective.

Last week a sect of religious people gathered, Asifa means gathering, in New York at the Mets stadium to listen to some Rabbis discuss what was to be about the downside of using the internet and social media. The descriptions going in were not against the use per se, but the way the devices and programs keep one's mind away from what is important. Namely God especially when praying and your family. He isn't wrong. Most people have a need to be wanted and desired and Social Media does this for them, in spades.

Now contrast what the Rabbis tried to express with what we try to explain to customers about "getting social". Management thinks you will just be goofing off all day, and they are partially right for early stage efforts. Maturity of the systems shows that levels out and people get their work done. Other management views are it brings more 24x7 employees, also not a great thing and a bad expectation, yet many do reply to emails or other "messages" during off hours.

What the Rabbis failed to discuss, in contrast to the better sales people I know, is the benefits that can be found from using the Internet. There are numerous websites devoted to learning, praying, education, family life and many other topics that can help everyone in Hebrew, English, Yiddish, Russian and more. This Renaissance2, so many people can learn and be part of something so much greater than before has rarely been accomplished in such a way that it is a shame to see the opportunity wasted.

Yes for every proper online webinar/class there is a Fantasy Football pool, some latest video, NSW(Not Safe for Work) sites and more. People will always push the boundaries, if not, no one could get in airplane or we would not have electricity and those were as heretical as Columbus believing the Earth was not flat.

So in my little way, by checking in on 4Squareat Shabbat or some other Holidays I try to bring that little bit more into every thing we do. It would be great to see #Shabbat trend on 4Square or Twitter but just not likely to happen. Someone suggested it could be used to encourage kids to re-engage with their religion, by mixing the gamification and religion. Very hard, given you can not use the electronics on Shabbat but just as refrigerators are now an accepted appliance used on Shabbat (it was banned) someday maybe we will have devices that allow for it.

An intriguing idea.

Here's to another year of checking in, Mayorship is nothing if no one else joins in, so if you are religious or not, think about it, you could be helping someone else in search of what it is they seek. For after all isn't Twitter and the Internet there for us to learn from and find that which we feel is unknown or hidden from us? Others may need that little push, no matter if you go to Church, Mosque or Synagogue or every SocMed conference on Earth letting people know there are other options out there is never a bad thing.

Social Business can work for everyone but you need that deeper perspective to get the most out of it for your clients and yourself.

Silos Happen? Part 1

http://behindbricks.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/a-new-silo-a-new-obstacle/

Been a while since I posted about the competition. One reason is the competition has changed. It is no longer about this vendor versus that vendor but more insidious. It is now about Silos vs Openness.

In the past I may have painted a picture of a Silo company to look like many things but usually referred to them as Microsoft companies. Usually because Microsoft promoted the individual over the network and as an after thought provided a way to share the data. In contrast to Lotus which from the ground up was about sharing data and has been for over 20 years.

While I may have vented against the Silo companies and the people that thrive on that culture, think an evil pointy haired boss instead of just incompetent, there may be companies that have become Silo organizations purely by accident and have no idea they did it.

I was on a conference call today that sparked a number of questions and one which I am pondering in this post....can you become a Silo organization by accident?

The simple answer is of course, no. Someone or something puts other wheels in motion and before long the car is roaring down the highway with the dog's tongue hanging out the window.

As David Byrne once said, "Well, how did I get here?" This is the question. For if we can figure out this question properly, we can unravel possibly years of bad corporate culture and set you on a course of social enlightenment, beauty and enjoyment.

Most of the Social Media experts of course point out the benefits of a social enterprise. That is easy. They will tell you write a blog, post here, do this do that, but none of this will change a culture, let alone an executives mind set. Examples abound, best practices are in White Papers, but yet it does not hit home because in some cases it happened by accident over time.

To borrow a common idea, if you spent 10,000 hours being a Silo, how many hours will it take to reverse course? And if it was all by accident, now what?

Sales people will spend hours in meetings trying to gauge why an organization needs their product or will try to transform the enterprise but what if they get it wrong or are missing one key point.

Purpose.

No one wants to hear they are wrong or doing something seemingly proper only to find out they have been promoting a closed culture. Look around you at the businesses you frequent, the non-profits you assist, the schools your children attend. You can see the dichotomy and yet if you try to raise this awareness you may be pushed out or ignored. The reason is because management does not like to admit when they made a mistake and worse, if they are not sure how to get out of it, hate the messenger. This isn't about making the executive look bad, although usually their ego's are what makes them feel this way, when in fact they could be appreciative that someone has raised a potential problem of monumental meaning. It is about providing reasonable doubt that the companies efforts may be what is blocking their ability to embrace the cultural shift to openness.

In order to find that purpose again and revisit it, you need to ask some important questions. I suggest starting at the outer, peripheral items and work your way backwards. It is not a top down approach, but putting the executive in their own seat of a situation and having them see and feel the experience in a whole new way while trying to understand what the real purpose is behind the effort.

Walking in someone else's shoes is just the tip of the iceberg.

Do You Want It Or Do You need It?

As I just finished the 2nd of what are 3 out of 4 weekends without cell phones, the internet, TV, email, Facebook or Twitter for that matter due to holidays, an interesting discussion popped up.

Why do we need technology? Or rather as it was stated, how do you live without it?!

In all seriousness, I don't personally need it and only mildly want it and really could live without it, the technology side that is of phones, email et al. In fact I, as do many other people throughout the world, every week for 25 hours(18 of which I am awake usually) do without all these items, some even more so. And it is a great feeling. Although the message light on the office line is never a good thing to see come Saturday or in this case Sunday night.

Business of course is different. Our business is technology and managing others infrastructures so certain items become a need for business.

We all love new gadgets and toys or games or whatever excites you, but when it comes down to it, is it really what you need?

No denying our lives have all been enriched by technology in various forms, from medicines to machinery to communications, not denying any of that is helpful and needed and always will be.

But there are people who really can not live without "knowing" what is happening someplace, somewhere or every email or every Facebook entry. This can't be healthy...or can it? Does it produce more information to make better choices or better consulting to your clients? Does it help provide you ideas or dreams?

The Social Networking/Media side of life has some people feeling left out or ignorant of situations because they do not have regular access or know how to use some of these tools or in other cases refuse to be part of this culture change.

Some friends refuse to join Facebook, yet ask me what happens all the time in our community. I tell them to ask someone else, I don't really go into Facebook. My Facebook is 85% automated or uses bots to update reply to various things. Now one of these peers works in IT has the latest HTC phone and yet no time for Facebook but can stay up all night watching TV, to each their own is all I could tell him.

If we can have someone listen to a conference call for us and give us the notes from it, is it like we were there? Executive summaries of executive summaries? Do we need to be on every phone call or do we want to? While I agree if one doesn't hear it, one may not see it and thus miss some opportunity, there is also the reality that we all have less time to get work done as well. So if I need to be at a client, someone else should be telling me what I missed on a call, but the problem is they may not know what is or isn't important. So do I need this call or do I want this call? Usually one doesn't need every call, but wants to be part of them because hearing what a client or vendor says is important to business.

While on phones, what do you do?
When your phone rings, do you always answer it?
Do you check the caller ID before answering it?
Do you let all your calls go to voice mail?
How do you want people to contact you?
Do you even want them to?

Some businesses, believe it or not, never answer their phone and prefer people to be told they are busy or in a meeting. My feeling is if it is a client, SOMEONE should be answering their call live if at all possible, by design. Never brush your client off since you need them so you can keep your business, which you want to grow, in existence.

Luis Suarez of IBM has been on a mission(this is my interpretation of part of it) for the better part of 2 years now to curb his reliance on email, and thus others reliance. While using more Social Media tools and sharing methods to reduce the inbox clutter he has, in his own way, set out to prove that what is important or needed comes from the individual and how one reacts is just as important. In doing so he has not only influenced his fellow IBMers, but customers, vendors and followers of his blog, tweets as well as others in the IT world.

In the end, I am happy for the day every week and some extra days a year where the only thing I need is to enjoy my holiday and being with my wife, my kids, family and friends. Without that break, one surely can get lost in the world of what you need vs what you want and impose that on one's clients as well.