Paul Wallbank – Communications Professional
Comms, journalism and writing
A global research for entrepreneurs and business people from Google
This is an interesting project – Google have pulled together all their entrepreneurial resources into one page at Google For Entrepreneurs.
As well as being a handy resource for anyone building a business, it’s a great overview of the various programs Google and their partners are running around the world.
If you are looking at setting up a business or have a fast growing enterprise it might be worthwhile having a look at the resources Google have pulled together.
Steve Blank and Mark Suster talk about start ups and customer service
“I’m a serial entrepreneur which means I failed with one company at a time” says Steve Blank in a terrific interview with Mark Suster.
Both Steve and Mark are experienced entrepreneurs conversation is one of these raps between two experienced and intelligent individuals where the questions are as smart as the answers.
One of the key take aways from the interview is that our customers are smarter than us. If they aren’t buying from us, they know something we don’t.
Whether we’re talking about startups or big business, listening to the customer is the core thing we have to be doing and everything else is noise.
Giving gifts in Asian cultures can be fraught with risks
A terrific little infographic from cross cultural PR firm Illuminant shows the right and wrong ways of giving gifts in China.
The first faux pas listed is giving clocks and the advice “if you happen to receive a clock from any Chinese source, get your butt to airport pronto” is marvellous.
Giving gifts in sets of six or eight is also a great little gem.
One of the cultural differences between East Asia and the west is the habit of giving small gifts of appreciation and it’s easy to get this wrong. What is acceptable in the People’s Republic of China might be a grave mistake in Korea or Thailand.
A handy little app for dealing with cross cultural misunderstandings is Hooked In Motion’s World Customs and Cultures that lets you dial up the basic protocols like not touching heads or hand gestures which should be avoided. Sadly it doesn’t cover gift giving.
Illuminant’s infographic and Hooked In Motion’s app remind us that the whole world isn’t being homogenised by the web and global communications as each culture takes today’s tools and adapts them to their own worlds.
How much pride can we take in the work we do?
Doctor John Bradfield shaped modern Sydney. His program of public works, such as building the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the city’s railway network served the city for nearly a century.
The picture of him from the NSW State Records archives riding the first train across the Harbour Bridge shows him swelling with pride. And so it should.
What we need to ask ourselves is whether our works could survive a century of massive change and become an international icon as the Sydney Harbour Bridge did.
If we can just strive toward that – even though most of us will fail – we can be proud of our works as Dr Bradfield was when he rode that train across the Harbour Bridge.
Mitt Romney and Alan Jones show how smartphones are changing politics and business
US presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Australian radio commentator Alan Jones have in one thing in common – not understanding that almost every person they know is carrying a listening device.
The smartphone is a powerful tool and one of its great features is how it makes a great dictation device, you can use the built in recording applications to jot down ideas or make a record of important conversations.
Political events are a great opportunity to record the candidates’ or speakers’ talks and this is what has caught both Jones and Romney.
The 47% dependent on welfare slur has probably sunk Romney’s presidential campaign. At the very least it’s exposed the contradictions at the heart of the Republican agenda as they try to demonise those receiving government entitlements while trying to win the votes of older Americans who rely on state subsidies to survive.
In many ways the US Republicans are facing the problem of electorates that believe their entitlements are sacred that all Western politicians will be grappling with over the next quarter century.
This contradiction isn’t something either the media or the Western political classes have the intellectual capacity to deal with, so there is little chance of a rational debate on the economic sustainability of the entitlement culture.
For Romney, this contradiction now threatens to sink his campaign.
The Jones problem is somewhat different, this nasty little man was speaking to the next generation of Australian Liberal Party apparatchiks and the controversy about his tasteless comments will probably improve his standing in the sewer in which he floats. In the wider community outside Jones’ increasingly narrow circle of influence his comments only confirm the low opinion decent people have of this man.
Jones though is not naive when using the media, the real naivety is among his guests. It’s been reported that before the event the audience were asked “if there were any journalists present”.
That question being asked betrays any claim that the organisers didn’t know Jones’ comments would be offensive. It also shows how the modern political fixer misunderstands the nature of today’s media. It’s likely a recording of proceedings would have leaked out through an enthusiastic supporter showing off.
What’s really instructive is how the kindergarten apparatchiks of the Young Liberals believe that shutting down recording devices will remove the risk of being held accountable. That mentality is pervasive through government and politics – shut down discussion and lie about what happened.
All of these politicians have to understand something Alan Jones has known all along; that a microphone should be treated like a loaded weapon and never assumed to be turned off and safe.
The days of what was said to the Poughkeepsie Chamber of Commerce or the Cootamundra Country Womens Association not being reported outside the local community are long gone. If you don’t want something broadcast nationally, then don’t say it.
On balance, this is good for democracy and leadership as it makes all politicians – and business leaders – far more accountable and transparent.
Accountability and transparency are anathema to the apparatchiks who run the political parties of the Western world. These people, despite their access to power, are ultimately going to be found wanting in a world where there is a recording device in almost every person’s pocket.
There are genuine privacy concerns with smartphones but for business and political leaders the days of “speaking with a forked tongue” are over. This is not a bad thing.
How did media companies miss the opportunities of the tech wreck?
ABC Radio National’s Background Briefing has a terrific story on the struggles of the Fairfax newspaper empire during the early days of the Internet.
One of the major themes that jumps out is how Fairfax, like many media and retail organisations, squandered the opportunity presented by the tech wreck.
The tech wreck was an opportunity for incumbents to claim their spaces in the online world, instead they saw the failure of many of the dot com boom’s over-hyped online businesses as vindication of their view the Internet was all hype.
As former Sydney Morning Herald editor Peter Fray said “In florid moments you could even think this internet webby thing would go away”.
For Fairfax the profits from the traditional print based business were compelling. According to Greg Hywood the current CEO, for every dollar earned by the company, 70c were profits – a profit margin of 233%.
The Internet threatened those “rivers of gold” and media companies, understandably, did nothing to jeopardise those returns.
Another problem for Fairfax was the massive investment in digital printing presses in the 1990s. These behemoths revolutionised the way newspapers were printed as pages could be laid out on computer screens and sent directly from the newsroom to the press itself which printed out pages in glorious colour rather than with smudgy black and white images.
Moreover these machines were fantastic for printing glossy coloured supplements and the advertising revenue from those high end inserts kept the dollars rolling in.
When the tech wreck happened, the massive investments in printing presses were vindicated as the rivers of gold continued to flow while the smart Internet kids went broke.
Fairfax’s management weren’t alone in this hubris – most media companies around the world made the same missteps while retail companies continued to build stores catering for the last echos of the 20th Century consumer boom.
In 2008, the hubris caught up with the retailers and newspapers. As the great credit boom came to an end, the wheels fell off the established business models and the cost of not experimenting with online models is costing them dearly.
Value still lies in those mastheads though as more people are reading Fairfax’s publications than ever before.
Readers still want to read these publications, one loyal reader is quoted in the story that Sydney Morning Herald should aspire to “being a serious international paper.”
That isn’t going to happen while management is focused on cutting costs to their core business instead of focusing on new revenue streams.
Somebody will find that model, had the incumbent retail and media organisations explored and invested in online businesses a decade ago they may well have found that secret sauce.
Now many of them won’t survive with their horse and buggy ways of doing business.
Will rewarding passionate workers solve American business’ poor return on assets.
As part of Deloitte’s Building the Lucky Country series, the consulting firm had a briefing last week from John Hagel, co-chairman of Deloitte’s Silicon Valley Centre for the Edge, to discuss how industries are responding to shifts in the workplace and their markets.
John’s thesis is that businesses can be broadly split into into three groups; infrastructure, product innovation and customer relationship business which he covers in his Shift Index that looks at how industries are being affected by digital technologies.
Infrastructure businesses are high volume, transactional services like call centres, logistics and utilities companies.
The product innovators are those who develop new products, get them to market quickly and accelerating adoption of those goods.
Customer relationship businesses focus on understanding their clients and using that knowledge to add value.
Each of these business models require different mindsets and because most large companies try to do all three, they manage to do none well.
One of the results of this is a lousy Return On Assets, which Hagel says have fallen in the United States to one-third of the levels of 1965 and he doesn’t see this improving as the ‘competitive intensity’ of US markets increases.
A big feature of this decline in overall ROA is how the best performers have travelled compared to the laggards with the ‘winners’ barely maintaining their returns while the ‘losers’ are seeing their results declining dramatically.
How Hagel sees the solution to this poor performance is through rewarding creative and passionate workers better.
Firms have untapped opportunities to reverse their declining performance by embracing pull. To accomplish this, firms must develop and encourage passionate workers at every level of the organization.
Additionally, companies must tap into knowledge flows and expand the use of powerful tools, such as social software to solve operational/product problems more efficiently and effectively as well as to discover emerging opportunities.
If Hagel is right, it’s the businesses who want to micro-manage their workers while stifling innovation, initiative and creativity in their businesses who will be the great losers in this next decade as we move to the next phase of the ‘Big Shift’ where knowledge flows improve business performance.
Starting the process of dealing with these shifts involves understand what the DNA of your business really is; if it is a transactional infrastructure business then management needs to acknowledge this and not kid itself about being in customer relationships.
There are weakness in John Hagel’s proposition – one being that businesses can be easily pigeonholed into three categories.
Apple is a good example of this where a company that is clearly product focused has also shown it can be customer orientated with the success of the Apple Stores.
There’s also the question of why are there only three categories? In the breakdown the immediate thought is that there are businesses that don’t fit in any of these boxes. Legacy airlines or struggling motor manufacturers are good examples.
Despite the criticism, John and the Center For The Edge have some good points about the future of business and it’s something we’ll explore more over the next few weeks.
Dictatorial managers are killing organisations in an era which rewards openness.
The sad story of the passing of Bea, the Golden Retriever who died while in the care of United Airlines portrays a fundamental problem in many organisations’ managements – the rule of fear by middle managers.
A telling part of Bea’s sad tale is how her owner Maggie Rizer was treated when she went to collect her two dogs from United,
When we arrived in San Francisco to pick up our dogs we drove to the dark cargo terminal and on arrival in the hanger were told simply, “one of them is dead” by the emotionless worker who seemed more interested in his text messages. It took thirty minutes for a supervisor to come to tell us, “it was the two year old.” Subsequently we requested that our dog be returned to us and were told that she had been delivered to a local vet for an autopsy. Whatever thread of trust remained between us and United broke and we then insisted that she be returned to us for our own autopsy by our trusted veterinarian, Shann Ikezawa, DVM from Bishop Ranch Veterinary Center. Over the next two hours the supervisor’s lie unraveled as it became clear that Bea was right behind a closed door the whole time and he had been discussing how to handle the potential liability with his boss who had left and sticking to the divert and stall tactic that they had been taught. Eventually Bea was returned and we drove her to the vet at midnight.
The ‘divert and stall’ tactic took over two hours for Maggie and her partner to get around.
When I recently flew United I saw a similar attitude from the cabin crew, their lack of initiative and beaten attitude was noticeable. As I said in the post;
Overall the cabin crew seem tired and beaten, while they aren’t rude or unpleasant one wonders if they have all received too many stern memos from management about being friendly to customers.
Those stern memos have a corrosive effect on a business where every employee worries more about being sanctioned for breaking a rule or directive rather than helping customers.
Eventually the entire organisation becomes risk adverse and focused on protecting staff, or management’s, interests rather than looking after those of customers, shareholders or taxpayers.
Too many organisations are like this, where the staff are motivated by staying out of trouble rather than helping and adding value to their customers.
Making staff fear you is one way to run a company, or a nation, but ultimately those who are scared of the leaders lose all initiative and the empire collapses because every decision has to be sent to head office as the minions are scared to do anything that will be bring the Imperial Displeasure down upon their hapless heads.
From ancient Rome to the Soviet Union empires have fallen because of this, in today’s private sector companies that run on fear are ultimately doomed, including the ones who can tap into government subsidies to kick the can down the road. Even public sector agencies where this attitude reigns will change when the chill winds of austerity blow through their corridors.
One staff member taking a little bit of initiative probably would have saved Bea the golden retriever. One supervisor taking responsibility and helping Maggie Rizer would have avoided the PR disaster United now have.
In an economy that’s radically changing, inflexibility and slow decision making are possibly the worst possible traits an organisation can have. It’s time for dictatorial managers, along with control freak politicians and their public service directors, to let the reigns go on their staff.
Many businesses are hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with today’s realities and are doomed to extinction
“Bringing a knife to a gunfight” describes showing up hopelessly ill-equipped for the task at hand.
Two recent conferences, the massive Dreamforce in San Francisco and the smaller, but still fascinating, Australian Xerocon in Melbourne illustrate just how radically the commercial world is changing and how many business leaders are poorly equipped for today’s times.
In July, the Melbourne Xero Convention bought together 400 Australian partners of the cloud accounting service which showed how how one New Zealand based company is building it’s business through engaging other suppliers who add features to the basic service.
Vend, a Point Of Sale cloud service provider, was one of the companies exhibiting at XeroCon. In the past POS systems have been a pain for retail businesses with most suppliers’ business models being about locking customers into expensive contracts.
With cloud services, the old vendor lock in model dies as stores can use any device they like such as a PC, tablet computer or a smartphone so a business is no longer locked into using an overpriced and often antiquated piece of equipment.
Making the cloud offering even more attractive is that Vend, and many of their competitors, also take advantage of APIs – Application Program Interfaces – built into other services so they can seamlessly change records.
So a shop can make a sale in their physical store and inventory levels will automatically change in the online stores and on services like eBay. If an item is now of stock, the websites are automatically updated to reflect this.
This business automation makes it easier and cheaper to run a business. It’s everything that computer have promised for the last thirty years and is now being delivered through cloud computing services.
At Dreamforce in San Francisco last week, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff showed the 90,000 attendees how these services work on a corporate level with demonstrations from companies as diverse as General Electric, ski company Rossignol, and Australia’s own Commonwealth Bank.
What really stood out with all of these presentations was how each business had made major technology investments that in turn allowed them to deploy modern tools.
The Virgin America Dreamforce presentation was particularly telling. Having just endured a 13 hour United Airlines flight in a plane that had been barely refurbished since 1988 it was clear that the older airline simply didn’t have the hardware to compete with the upstart even if management and staff wanted to.
From both Dreamforce and XeroCon the message has been clear, those legacy managers who won’t invest in new technologies or re-organise their businesses to meet the realities of the 21st Century are simply doomed.
In Australia this sense of doom in the business community is confirmed when MYOB and Google missed their target of giving away 50,000 free business websites as part of their Getting Aussie Business Online program.
Depending on whose figures you use, between 50 and 65 percent of Australia’s 1.7 million small businesses don’t have a website – and websites are last decade’s technology.
Business has moved onto mobile and social platforms, those 800,000 businesses who are yet to move into the new century are roadkill – the competition are just going to run over them.
If you are still struggling with the idea of a website – let alone a mobile site, mobile phone app or social media strategy – then you haven’t bought a knife to a gunfight, you’ve bought a sharpened stick. It’s time to figure out whether you still want to be in business.
Disclaimer: Paul travelled to XeroCon in Melbourne courtesy of Xero and to Dreamforce in San Francisco as a guest of Salesforce.com
General Electric’s GEnx engine illustrates how social media is changing business
“What if my jet engine could talk to me and what would it say?” Asked Beth Comstock, General Electric’s Chief Marketing Officer, at the Dreamforce 2012 conference.
The idea of social media connected jet engine is strange, but the idea that a key piece of technology can talk to engineers, pilots, salespeople and management makes sense.
At the Dreamforce conference, Salesforce.com were showing how their Chatter social communications tool can be applied to more than just salesteams, in GE’s case by giving their new GEnx engine the opportunity to talk to its support teams.
In flight telemetry is nothing new to the aviation industry, ACARS – Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting Systems – have allowed airlines to monitor the performance of their aircraft over high frequency radio or satellite links during flight since 1978.
The difference today is the sheer amount of data that can be collected and who it can be shared with. If relevant data is being shared with the right people it makes managing these complex systems far easier.
More importantly, it helps teams collaborate. The GEnx engine is a new design that’s fitted to Boeing’s latest airlines including the troubled and late Dreamliner 787 so streamlining the design process of a new, high performance piece of technology pays dividends quickly.
Although things can still go wrong – one wonders what the final tweet from this engine would have been.
We’ve been talking for a long time about how social media and cloud computing services improve collaboration in a work place, the GEnx jet engine illustrates just how fundamental the changes these technologies are bringing to organisations.
If an industrial jet engine can be using social media it begs the question why service based companies and workforces aren’t. It’s where the customers and staff are.
These tools are radically changing the way we work right now – the question is are we, and the organisations we work for, prepared for these changes?
Paul travelled to Dreamforce 2012 courtesy of Salesforce.com
The fast talking Steve Wozniak surfs into town on a wave of enthusiasm.
When the opportunity comes to meet co-founder of Apple computer Steve Wozniak you jump at it, despite being jet lagged from the previous day’s flight.
One of the tough things when writing about Steve Wozniak is that he is a fast talker. You have to be quick to keep up with his ideas and words.
Steve was in town to show off the range of solid state computer memory cards manufactured by Fusion-iO, a company based in Salt Lake City.
Wozniak liked the idea so much he became Fusion-iO’s chief scientist in 2009. “When I first saw the iO drive, it was so beautiful I had to buy one from the company and put it in a frame just to frame it at home.”
What enthused Woz were Fusion-iO‘s range of NAND flash memory cards that speed up servers while reducing their power and cooling requirements.
Those power savings are important for data centres when hundreds of thousands of servers might be in one building, Fusion-iO’s CEO and co-founder David Flynn estimates this could save up the industry a $250 billion a year in operating costs.
Probably the biggest benefits though are in the corporate space, one Flynn’s boasts is how one movie studio used Fusion-iO’s products to reduce transcoding between formats from two hours to 39 seconds.
Another case study they show off is how grocery chain Woolworths were able to reduce the 17 hours to run their weekly trading reports to three hours meaning they were able to capture weekend figures for their weekly Monday morning board meetings.
For smaller businesses, the biggest benefit is these products can turn fairly basic desktop computers into workstations with the $2,500 ioFX card promising some serious post production capabilities for a system although one would expect an entry level box wouldn’t have the data connection, hard drive or – most importantly – power supply to cope with the demands of such a device would put on the typical cheap components in a basic desktop system.
All of these changes though are heralding some pretty big changes for big and small businesses.
Where Steve Wozniak sees the greatest application of moving data faster is in Artificial Intelligence applications like voice recognition. Apple’s Siri is a good example of this.
The barrier to effective voice recognition is the sheer amount of data processing required to effectively understand voice commands. Doing this on cloud services is a far more efficient and effective way of doing this.
As we saw at Dreamforce last week, the sheer amount of data pouring into companies is changing how they manage information. Getting access quickly to relevant information is an important part of managing it.
“I’ve never gotten so excited about or fell in love with a technology like this since Apple.” Says Wozniak.
Having a chance to speak to Steve Wozniak up close shows that fast talking enthusiasm is for real. The Woz is a real geek.
Like all true geeks Wozniak is passionate about what he believes in – whether it’s about NAND flash cards or becoming an Australian resident he bubbles with enthusiasm. Just don’t try writing notes down while he’s in full flight.
Is United’s Economy Plus worth the extra money?
One of the tough things about long haul, overnight flights is getting a decent night’s sleep. I find this can only be done in a windows seat where you can snuggle against the fuselage and get reasonably comfortable. So it’s a priority to get those windows seats for a big flight.
With the return flight to Sydney from San Francisco it turned out there were no window seats in the basic economy section so a $150 upgrade to United’s Economy Plus section was needed to grab one of those essential windows seats.
The United online check in, while clunky, still worked and the upgrade to Economy Plus was a simple online credit card transaction with a straightforward seat allocation, the selection was painless and effective.
At San Francisco airport the check in, albeit three hours early, was friendly and quick with no quirks and thankfully the seat allocation had been kept.
One thing to keep in mind with United’s seat allocations is they reserve the right to change them and even kick you out of Economy Plus, albeit with a refund of the supplement, if the flight is full and the Sydney flights are usually packed.
So it’s a good idea to get the airport and check in early to reduce the chances of losing your seat which is highly likely if there’s been disruptions elsewhere in the United network meaning connecting passengers have missed earlier flights.
Getting through security is the usually fraught hassle however the TSA staff deal with flummoxed tourists and language barriers with a brisk efficiency. Keep your sense of humour and accept that travellers’ dignity was one of the early causalities of the War On Terrorism and the process shouldn’t be traumatic.
San Francisco’s International Airport is a delight compared to the snarling, customer unfriendly Sydney Airport. While food outlets aren’t cheap, San Francisco’s are decent and there’s plenty of accessible power sockets, working desks and free wi-fi that works.
The gates themselves can be some distance from the facilities so be prepared not to stray too far. The gate lounges themselves are fairly spartan and there’s no reason to wait there until a few minutes before the aircraft starts boarding.
Sadly I didn’t get the aircraft registration numbers for this flight or the previous inbound trip but it appeared that this plane was newer – say mid-1990s – than the flight into San Francisco which could well have been one of the first 747-400s ever built in the late 1980s.
The Economy Plus seats’ additional 3″ of legroom are definitely worth it. The moment you get in the seat, you know the extra room makes a much more comfortable trip than the cramped 31″ of standard economy class.
One thing to keep in mind is that while Economy Plus adds nothing more in service, being at the front of the economy cabin does mean you get first choice of food, beverages and easy access to the middle toilets which is a slight advantage over those crammed at the back. It’s also a little quieter as the seats are over the wing rather than behind the engines.
Another benefit with the additional pitch is that you don’t get a faceful of headrest when the seat in front of you reclines so it is possible to work on a laptop, read or eat in comfort even when the person ahead of you is still sleeping.
While the system was still the shockingly decrepit 1990s cabin screens, there were for some reason additional choices on the audio channels including a classical music selection which made it far easier to relax than cheesy 1980s love songs or gangsta rap.
Naturally there was no inflight power in the cheap seats so take advantage of the plentiful power sockets at SFO to make sure you’re fully charged before boarding.
Shortly after take off the cabin crew come around with meals. Overall the cabin crew seem tired and beaten, while they aren’t rude or unpleasant one wonders if they have all received too many stern memos from management about being friendly to customers.
An interesting thing about cheap airline food is how they cook and serve it in ways that make it difficult, if not downright dangerous to eat with plastic cutlery.
In this respect UA 863 didn’t disappoint. The tough, mystery chicken lying under a red sludge masquerading as barbecue sauce was difficult to cut and risked sending one’s drink flying into your neigbour if you weren’t careful. This isn’t helped by the weird ridges United insist on putting underneath their trays.
The bread had a strange chemical taste while the Love and Quiches Double Chocolate Crunch Bar was the highlight of the meal. The red wine was nice as well.
After as good a night’s sleep as one can get in an economy class seat, breakfast was served around two hours before landing in Sydney. Again it was tough to eat.
Like the chicken earlier in the flight, the French toast was tough to cut and hard to eat. Fortunately a good soaking in maple syrup makes it almost edible.
The fruit salad was spartan but fine while the cold croissant tasted strange like the roll served the night before. It’s a shame United can’t find one of San Francisco’s excellent bakeries to supply their bread.
The plane arrived on-time and without problems with immigration straightforward after dodging the embarrassing and garish duty free ripoff shops.
Customs is the standard mass brawl that’s normal for early morning international arrivals at Sydney when a dozen or so wide bodied jets arrive at the same time from Europe, Asia and the US.
If you have the choice, it may be worthwhile choosing a flight that arrives in Sydney after 8am so you can avoid both the customs hall and traffic peak hours.
Once past customs it’s welcome to the snarling, belligerent and anti-traveller horror that is Sydney Airport. Get out of there as quick as you can by train, taxi, bus or car.
Note if someone is meeting you, the pick up area is on the far side of carparks A and B. It’s not marked for either passengers in the terminals or for those driving into the complex. None of this is an accident and it’s best for both parties to have mobile phones so they can co-ordinate movements.
In many ways the customer hostile attitude of the Sydney Airports Corporation is good news for United Airlines as it makes their tired inflight service feel warm and inviting.
Overall the United Economy Plus option is worth the extra $150 charge to at least get earlier service and more legroom if you have to fly UA. It’s difficult though to recommend United while they fly such awfully old equipment and you should only consider it if the connections or the fare make them the best option.
