There is a great deal of hype and mystique surrounding Web 2.0 and myriad of 2.0 terms that now exist as a result, such as Work 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Office 2.0 and so on.

The hype is as loud and as significant as the last dot com boom where 2.0 has replaced “e”.

However, what is different today is that this revolution is focussed squarely at collaborative technologies and information sharing, as opposed to primarily transaction exchange of the dot com era.

Are you in a capacity to provide a leadership role in the emergence of Web 2.0? For it is as certain as night follows day that your staff are using these technologies without you knowing or seeking your consent - all in the name of getting the job done quicker.

Over the next series of posts I will outline the following:

• Outline the facets of Web 2.0 and compare and contrast to dot com
• Explain some of the technologies that underpin Web 2.0
• Show you some great tools you can take advantage of new technologies
• Explain a myriad of terms used including RSS, Mashups, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, blogs, wikis and you show you tools such as 37 Folders and tagging approaches
• Outline how you can start to incorporate these types of tools and approaches into your Information Management Strategies
• Outline some of the moves the larger vendors are taking to support these types of collaborative technologies

Could this be EDRM nirvana - an opportunity to tap into content - or is the animal out of the cage threatening everything done before it?

I look forward to your feedback…..

I was speaking with a friend today who was feeling pretty frustrated. You see, he had purchased a CRM product for his business, but it wasn’t doing what he wanted. The vendor had considered that he had done his part - sell the product, install it on site, provide the user documentation, all thumbs up….

What the client actually needed was:

1. Assistance to clearly understand how to implement CRM as a strategy

2. Get the people on the bus committed to the approach

3. Define the new processes, and define these into an agreed requirements document

4. The vendor to configure the application to meet the defined requirements

5. The vendor to train the users and the administrator in exactly how to make CRM technology deliver on the CRM strategy

6. The vendor to come back and check / realign things after staff have been using it for awhile

My recommendation to you - be very, very wary of buying any software that runs across your business without buying implementation services (not just technical ones, but solid business analysis).

So, what is your experience? Please share the good, bad and the ugly, I’d love to get your feedback….

See my post on people, process and technology for more on getting software implementation right.

If you have ever found peformance issues and the reasons being given seemingly incredibly complicated, then perhaps distilling the essence back to the number only may be the answer you are looking for.

For example, let’s say sales performance is down. A person can provide any number of reasons, incredibly well argued, as to why their sales performance is off. Or why they missed their last deal. And if they are any sort of sales person, they should be able to be pretty persuasive in their argument as they probably have been constructing in their minds for some time!

So how do you reshape the nexus of this? Well, get back to the numbers and the causal factors of success.

Step 1: Fishbone the profit and loss statement to look at where the revenue comes from

Step 2: Drill into the customers spend to determine which customers, what product lines, and which sales when.

Step 3: Determine the causal steps ie activity, necessary to get the success you need. For example, to sell $10 million of a service, you may need to have generated a sales pipeline of $30 million if you close 1 in 3.

Step 4: Determine the metrics that make sense around the steps to get to the target. For example, to get to $30million pipeline, you may need to have qualified $60 million of opportunities. If each deal is $10 million, it is 6 deals. You then track activity to create deals - number of presentations, meetings, sales calls, product demonstrations, roadshows and events.

Step 5: Turn the above into simple numbers next to boxes and track that against performance. This will in turn drive activity that leads to success and also may provide some focus to improve success rates on each successive step.

Used correctly, the above approach can move to an empirical analysis of activity that reinforces the right behaviours, and also how you can help along the way, and quickly ends long and unfruitful discussions.

If you have had a good experience - or a not so good experience - in applying metrics to your business, please leave a comment, I’d appreciate your feedback.

Have you ever experienced the debilitating situation of not knowing what decision to make in a difficult circumstance? Or found yourself overwhelmed by the sheer volume of email and interruptions within your workday?

In case of the former it is caused by uncertainty (not enough facts) and a less than comfortable risk of decision failure.

In case of the latter, in many cases the day to day interruptions really get in the way of the big picture and most important jobs to be done. That type of continual interruption will make you highly ineffective - so you’ve either got to live with it, or change the environment.

I’m a big fan of getting time management in order, and my continual reference book here is by Alan McKenzie called The Time Trap. In this book he identifies the top 20 time wasters, and specifically how to deal with them.

My father would always say “Don’ta worry - what’s the worst that can happen?”. He isn’t Italian, but for some reason this simple sentence would provide some perspective and give the mind some necessary breathing space (distraction if you like) that allows the subconcious to trigger a logical decision.

Business and leading people can both be hard and easy.

Getting stuck in a mental rut is also easy, and no wonder as making a similar decision based on past experience makes a lot of sense. It saves time, allows you to move onto the next task. But it also can increasingly become dangerous without some benchmark or checking from time to time.

The Harvard Business School published a book on Decision Making, 5 Steps to Better Results.

After your first step (buy the book) the 5 steps are:
1. Establish a context for success which is about setting the stage for making a good decision and involving the right people in the process
2. Framing the Issue Properly to make sure you are tackling the right question with the right constraints on an outcome
3. Generate alternatives through brainstorming and other techniques
4. Evaluate alternatives
5. Choose the best alternative

The book also covers a range of other issues that are really useful in considering ways to get to a smarter more considered organisation and team.

When I was a child, my father would take us to school. Sometimes he would go a completely different way to normal and make us late. When asked why he was taking the longcut, he would reply, “you can’t get stuck in a rut”.

My children also complain when I take a longcut. When I tell them “you can’t get stuck in a rut” their response is, “yeah, but carts are from the olden days when Grandad was a boy, there are no such thing as ruts now”. I do remind them that my Dad also got to enjoy sealed roads in cars….

Thanks to Mark Eveleigh for permission to use the above pic - ©Mark Eveleigh. Visit his site at for a range of great pics…

If you are in a professional services firm, then one of my favourite books is called Managing the Professional Services Firm. The book describes what to do when you have extraordinarily bright people, smart consultants, who know what they should be doing - but just simply aren’t doing it. The book covers so much more than that, and you will find it really useful if you are in or trying to move to that kind of role.

Many of the themes in the book talk about ensuring everyone is aligned towards the same goals. For example, remuneration schemes encouraging the wrong kind of behaviours.

It was good to see my post on 3 Reasons Why Smart People in Organisations Do Dumb Things generated some interest, and a colleague of mine Bill Wallance got fired up enough to create a new blog succinctly called Stupid Leadership dedicated to the topic.
I am keen to hear from you - you will have your own ideas, and I’d appreciate your comments.

I was chatting with Bill Wallace about marketing ideas, particularly given he has recently joined a new consulting business, and I wanted to understand what it was all about. More on that later, but one of the many key points that came out of the conversation was that it is really is necessary to pay attention to yourself as a brand. In other words, how would someone else articulate your value or understand your personal traits in a business and social context.

I read in Harvard Business Review an interesting article, and it suggested asking some colleagues for some frank feedback on things you do well. It suggested not asking about the things you don’t do well - primarily because human nature can easily tend towards the negative and focussing on improving those things you don’t do well. Chances are you will waste your time and you are much better spending the time working on being the best at the things you do well. If you are interested in this, see Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham - a very good read.

It is a good place to start, but expect that:
1. People whom you think would respond to that sort of request often don’t
2. You will be surprised - generally pleasantly so - about strengths you didn’t realise you had.

If you can concentrate on really working hard on those things you do well, you are bound for success.

It is no surprise that in business the greatest pressure is - of course - on the boss. Whilst staff enjoy up to 14 days per year paid sick leave with 4 weeks annual leave, and cumulative long service leave, the poor business owner who has their house on the line often is unable to take a sick day, rarely gets a holiday and certainly gets little choice when to be able to manage this. However, being a “super human” boss isn’t the path to prosperity - just the path to a heart attack.

So here are some tips to get the organisational management and people structure right.

Today’s generation is about a flat management structure, the flatter the better. A meritoracy, where position is based on performance. Bullsh!t seems to come as a bi-product of hierarchical structures. ( You know the sort of thing - I need a car parking space/an assistant/better car / should be promoted to the same position as him/her etc. )

Here are some rules:
Rule 1 No assistants
Rule 2 Pay is measured against performance
Rule 3 Bonus all the staff on group performance
Rule 4 Have regular team meetings
Rule 5 Promote self help and survival tactics and don’t hide the bad news (or the good news) from the staff
Rule 6 Do not tolerate system abuse or bullsh!t from the staff (and occasionally use the f-word to get your point over – see next post, Management by the F Word)
Rule 7 Use contract staff wherever possible (No risk, no politics, pay on performance, no payroll tax, no hassle)