Social Media in Management
Filed Under blogging, careers, life, my career, social media
CIO Magazine’s Sue Bushell has written an interesting article, called ‘Management 2.0? That’ll Be The Day‘, on the challenges that CIOs — and companies, in general — are facing with the advent of social media technologies in the workplace.
In his book, The Future of Management, Gary Hamel suggests that organizations today face a new set of business challenges that the existing management model does not match. The drone worker of yesterday is giving way to the engaged and vocal employee of today who expects a company culture that replicates the collaborative nature of Web 2.0 — in other words Management 2.0
The name Gary Hamel will, of course, be very familiar to anyone who has done any MBA and has studied the (frequently incorrectly-used) Core Competency concept.
The article is long but useful as it gives managers a lot to think about and hopefully look into:
Managers have a general sense of what Web 2.0 tools are — especially when it comes to applications they’re familiar with like YouTube, Facebook, or Linkedin. But they still struggle to understand these technologies, discover their real business value, address the risks and figure out how to best use them.
This, by the way, is where someone like me would come in: I know both management (theory and practice) and technology (uses and implementations) and can help senior management come up with an implementation of social media that enhances project management, decision making, and internal communication and collaboration.
The trick is that social media integration in an enterprise needs to be a long-term project and not something you hire a consulting firm to do for you in a few weeks. It needs to grow experimentally, possibly slowly, and from the ground-up. And while it will probably change a number of times as it develops — which means it’s not something you can really plan for in advance — you can start with a few basic governance rules (who does what and what everyone is in responsible for), some content guidelines (that cover privacy, security, and intellectual property), and a simple usage policy (like the two-word “be careful” policy that is often a good start).
Speaking of governance…
Challenges of the Multi-Generational Workforce
The discussion on how to manage a multi-generational workforce — which is an issue for many managers these days — reminds me of a blog post on banning Facebook that Toby Ward wrote on the Intranet Blog about a month ago:
Beware of Facebook! It will crush your productivity and hijack your employees!
[…]
Employees prefer to be treated as adults. Judge their performance and actions instead of counting their minutes spent doing “productive work.”
Trust me, the threat and problems stemming from a ban far exceed the embrace option. Prescient Digital Media’s Julian Mills last week highlighted the findings of one recent survey that warned of the perils of banning Facebook:
- 39% of 18 to 24 year-olds would consider leaving if they were not allowed to access sites like Facebook and YouTube
- A further 21% indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban
- The problem is less acute with 25 to 65 year-olds, of whom just 16% would consider leaving and 13% would be annoyed
Of course “consider leaving” doesn’t mean they actually will leave but it does mean that they probably won’t join your company in the first place. Especially if they announce your blanket banning policy on the Facebook group about your company that you didn’t know existed.
I know that I, for one, wouldn’t want to join a company that bans sites like Facebook or doesn’t let you blog, read blogs, pay your bills, read the news, check your e-mail, or basically have a life outside work while you’re at work. Limiting YouTube usage makes a little more sense since there’s a bandwidth cost associated with online video but, even then, it shouldn’t be banned outright.
As Ward said in his article, companies shouldn’t be taking the Taylorist approach to management. Of course you’ll get employees who’ll take 30 minutes to make themselves a cup of coffee or spend an hour on Facebook every now and then — but that’s okay as long as they (a) get their jobs done, (b) don’t stop others from getting their jobs done, and (c) don’t use-up too many freely-provided company resources (like bandwidth or, for that matter, coffee).
I guess all I can conclude with is that, with the advent of social media and the existence of a multi-generational workforce…well, the next five years are going to be really interesting
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CIO: Common IT Project Management Mistakes
Filed Under life
CIO Magazine just published a really good article by Meridith Levinson called ‘Project Management: The 14 Most Common Mistakes IT Departments Make‘. It’s a good checklist to keep in mind no matter how good a project manager you are because there’s always the opportunity to do better.
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How to Debate Climate Change
Filed Under courses, life, social media
Max Gladwell has started a really good series of posts called ‘How to Debate Climate Change with Conservative Skeptics’ and he’s written parts one, two, and three so far. They’re aimed at an American audience and use mostly US examples but they make a good read for everyone else as well.
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Online Reputation Management
Filed Under life, social media
Laurel Papworth wrote an excellent post a few days ago about reputation management in social networks. I highly recommend you read it.
I’d actually go a step further and say that most of what she said is also true for your reputation on the Internet in general — though that’s a little more scattered and is therefore a little harder to gauge. Still, if you’ve been online for even a short amount of time and have participated in almost anything, you will have left a trace.
People can (and do) search the web for your name, e-mail address, phone number, alias/handle/nickname, and so on. And the deeper they dig, the more they usually find. For example, you can search for me using the following queries and can learn a little more about me each time:
Cool, isn’t it? Or scary…depending on how you look at it. And the best (or worst) part of all this is that, once your information is up there, it’s pretty difficult (read: darned near impossible) to get down.
To quote an already oft-quoted quote, Sun Microsystem’s CEO Scott McNealy way back in 1999 said: “You already have zero privacy (on the Internet). Get over it.” Yup. Get over it and, since it follows logically: manage your online reputation really well. Particularly since your online and offline reputations are increasingly crossing over — that too in both directions.
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MBA Skills at Work: Part 1
Filed Under courses, life, mba, melbourne business school, my career
I’ve been working at Linfox for almost two months now and I’ve hardly even noticed. Time really does fly when you’re having fun and working your butt off, doesn’t it?
Now that my major project at Linfox is complete — we re-launched Linfox.com last week — I thought it would be a good time to do a quick recap of how things have been at work and how the Melbourne Business School MBA is helping me do my job really well.
But before I get to that…
Actually, funnily enough, the thing I found most immediately useful at my new job was not something I learnt during the MBA but is something related to the work I did in MBS’ Information Technology Solutions department earlier this year. That is: I knew how to use SharePoint really well.
In May, MBS launched its new intranet (called ‘MBS Direct’) based on Microsoft’s SharePoint technology. Just a month before that Linfox launched its own intranet (called the ‘Lintranet’) also based on that technology. Having learnt a great deal about SharePoint at MBS — and many SharePoint tips and best practices from our vendor, Bullseye — taking over from the previous Online Coordinator was incredibly straightforward and hassle-free.
E-Commerce and Information Management
As you would imagine, stuff learnt in Pat Auger’s E-Commerce and Information Management courses is coming in really handy in my new job. Here are two lessons I’m finding most useful at this time.
1. Making a business case: My boss understands how important both the intranet and public website are to the business; she is, after all, Linfox’s Group Communications Manager. People in top management, however, are more focused (as they should be) on running a logistics company, a couple of airports, and a few other Linfox Group businesses. My boss and I therefore need to demonstrate — in almost everything that we do — the business benefits of maintaining these two sites (which I am in charge of and she is the champion for).
This is where something like Google Analytics comes in. My boss can now tell her boss that, just last week, over 1,000 unique visitors got to Linfox.com via a search engine (we also know the keywords they used to get there) and that, by far, the most popular section on the site is the ‘Working at Linfox‘ one. Now the site’s only been up for ten days so there’s more data to collect before we take things to the next level (like further developing the recruitment section) but already it’s clear what one of the major benefits of having a good website is: you can communicate directly with potential employees in order to get the best and most suitable candidates to apply for jobs that you advertise.
2. Internal communications: Having spent years in IT — which in many companies is the one of the least communicative, least understood, and possibly least-liked departments — I know how important it is to communicate internally the benefits of the work you’re doing. Things are a little different in the Communications department but internal communications is still an important task for me.
For example, two phrases that I’ve found to be really useful are “it’s on the Lintranet” and “search for it”. These are important because the last iteration of Linfox’s intranet took the usual route to uselessness: it had too much stuff on it (it had become a bloated file archival dump) most of which was irrelevant (no versioning, lots of replication) and hard to find (limited search functionality). This new iteration is lean, well-organized, and has versioning, no duplication, and excellent search functionality. However, not everyone knows this.
My job, then, is to (a) keep the intranet in great shape and (b) to tell everyone how great the intranet is. My aim is to make this a virtuous cycle: if people expect it to be great, they’ll make sure it stays great — with a little poking, prodding, and policing from me, of course! So when someone asks me for something, I usually say “it’s on the Lintranet” (since it usually is) and, most of the time, they’re able to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. If not, a simple search does the trick.
One thing that really helps me here is the direct support I get from my team. This mostly comes in the form of a line in every bit of internal communication that we do that goes something like “you can find (more information about this) on the Lintranet”.
More in Part 2
There’s much more I want to write so I’m going to split this into two, or maybe three, posts. I have yet to talk about:
- Applying people skills learnt in the Managing People for High Performance, Negotiations, and Leadership courses.
- Applying marketing skills learnt in the Brand Management and Consumer Behaviour courses.
- General skills learnt while doing the MBA; such as how to handle multiple projects, deadlines, and priorities without breaking a sweat.
- Observing how things are working at a more strategic level within the company; such how business and corporate strategy are playing-out, what leadership is being exhibited by senior management, what the company’s environmental strategy is, and how intellectual property is being managed.
But more about all this next time.
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Parentonomics Launch at MWF
Filed Under life, melbourne business school
Joshua Gans, professor of economics at Melbourne Business School, is launching his book, ‘Parentonomics‘ at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival on 31 August. I’ve been meaning to buy the book and will hopefully attend the launch and pick up a copy then.
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Journey Around Leadership
Filed Under courses, life, melbourne business school
One of my favourite professors at Melbourne Business School is Amanda Sinclair. I took her Leadership course and, some weeks ago, attended one of her public lectures on leadership, called ‘Journey Around Leadership‘, that is now available online (both audio and video). It’s a great lecture that I highly recommend you watch.
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Deconstructing Advertisements
Ian Ayres wrote a really interesting blog post on deconstructing advertisements on the Freakonomics blog yesterday. Having taken a course on Consumer Behaviour (with Brian Gibbs) at Melbourne Business School last term, reading Ayres’ post was a lot of fun because, as we learnt in quite a bit of detail in that course, marketing tactics do play a significant role in influencing consumer behaviour.
Danger = Cool
The kind of influence being used in the Silk Cut ad, as Ayres rightly points out, is of this kind:
[…] Silk Cut may even intend for viewers to think (subconsciously) that it is cool to smoke because you do it knowing its risk; smokers are courageous, risk takers who are willing to try to cheat death.
The ad agency may be trying to take the biggest product defect and re-spin it as a positive attribute. Sun-screen is for wimps, smoking is for the intrepid.
Which is pretty much standard operating procedure for advertising stuff that has the potential to be harmful to you, particularly if used in excess; such as alcohol, carbonated beverages, or energy drinks.
The rest of the blog post, which is about an earlier Silk Cut ad, goes into the fascinating area of semiotics and talks about the difference between metaphors and metonymies.
Style = Cool
All of this is, of course, a shift from the old “come for the style, stay for the taste” type of ads that tobacco companies used to run in developed countries and still do run in developing ones [1]. That particular line, for example, is from a campaign that Red & White ran in Pakistan for a number of years [2]. Pakistan has done quite a bit to limit tobacco advertising since then but, as always, it’s more an issue of enforcement than of simply formulating legislation [3]. Still, it’s a big step in the right direction.
Freakonomics, The Book
By the way, if you haven’t already read Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, you must. It is quite awesome. And once you do, make sure you subscribe to the Freakonomics blog as well.
Postscript
Funnily enough, I have a long history with Silk Cut since both my parents smoked that brand for about fifteen years. Apparently, it is ’smoother’ than most cigarettes though, of course, not any less deadly: both of my parents stopped smoking it thanks to health scares and strong recommendations from doctors. My mother switched to a ‘lighter’ brand before dying of cancer in 2005 (she’d been smoking since she was in college) while my father now smokes the Dunhill brand despite an incident of heart failure in 2004.
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[1] Though one can argue that, thanks to Hollywood, developing countries still strongly associate smoking with style, the successful completion of a difficult task, and stress relief.
[2] For more on tobacco advertising in Pakistan, read ‘Why Tobacco Promotion Should be Banned in Pakistan‘ by the Tobacco Free Initiative’s Ehsan Latif.
[3] See the Dawn.com article on ‘New Restrictions on Tobacco Ads‘.
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The Story of Stuff: Raising Awareness About Sustainability
As you might know, I recently took a course in Business & Sustainable Development with Jeremy Baskin at Melbourne Business School. In it we learnt that two of the biggest themes in sustainability these days are the concept of limits and the idea of sustainable consumption.
Thanks to a reference from a friend, I came across this website called The Story of Stuff that talks about both of these issues in a very approachable and easily digestible way (i.e. in plain English).
In a brilliantly-produced 20-minute video, Annie Leonard (who is behind the whole concept) tells us about the consumption-based system we currently live in: where it came from, why it’s wrong, and what we should be doing instead. The video (which you can download from this page) is a little oversimplified, of course, but if you go to the Resources section you’ll find a lot more information on limits and sustainable consumption. Leonard also writes a blog on the site, which is another really good information resource.
Anyway, since the point of the video is awareness raising, please tell as many people as you can about both the site and the video. The topics that are being discussed there are among the most important issues facing the world today and the video is definitely worth a watch.
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Keeping Your Data Safe at the US & UK Borders
Filed Under life, technology
If you’ve been following what’s been going on in the world of technology, politics, and international travel over the last few years you’ll know that, if you want to enter the US, border patrol agents are allowed to search your laptop, mobile phone, or MP3 player without limitation and without telling you why. Meanwhile, if you want to enter the UK and you have some encrypted stuff on your hard drive, the UK government can demand that you hand over your encryption keys or face jail time.
In light of all this, both CNET and the EFF have come up with ways in which you can keep your data both safe and private when crossing the border. Before reading that, though, check out Computerworld’s Jaikumar Vijayan’s article on Five Things to Know About U.S. Border Laptop Searches.
Then read these:
- For a quick overview of how to secure your data, read CNET’s Chris Soghoian’s article Keep Your Data Safe at the Border.
- For a much more in-depth discussion, read CNET’s Declan McCullagh’s Security Guide to Customs-Proofing Your Laptop.
- And, for a more legal perspective, read EFF’s Jennifer Granick’s article on Protecting Yourself From Suspicionless Searches While Travelling.
Most important of all: be careful. Your really don’t want to suffer Maher Arar’s fate.
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