Business Insight Zone

[A shortcut to the good stuff -- the month's most-viewed posts -- for anyone who visits the archive.]

1. The Basic Basics: Go the last mile(s).
2. Managers beware: Facebook isn’t the problem — e-mail is.
3. Company of the Day: General Motors
4. Fun with the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
5. Nortel Networks: how wrong I was.

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Image by Kevin Dooley.

Sometimes I write something that expresses an idea that’s important to me for understanding business, but that elicits little response from readers. For the most part, I assume this is my own fault for not striking a chord. C’est la vie.

But sometimes, the good stuff may simply fall through the cracks during a busy workweek. So on the off-chance that you have time to spare on this Friday — which is a de facto holiday for many in the United States — here are three posts that I hope will appeal to you.

1. Confirmation bias: fight the Procrustean instinct.

What we need is a sort of corrective lens to keep us from falling victim to confirmation bias in ourselves. Do you remember the mission that fixed the giant corrective lens onto the Hubble telescope? The telescope was too valuable to let die, but its flaws were insuperable without that sort of correction. So NASA went to great expense to fix it. The result has been a trove of space images unlike any before it. The trouble is, you and I don’t have a team of engineers and astronomers to tell us that, by the objective record, our view of our personal cosmos is distorted.

2. Expectations of waste.

“What consequences unfold if the price of energy rises high enough that no one sees energy as a commodity that they can afford to waste?”

3. Not logic, but culture.

It’s the same for organizations as it is for individual people. Most folks don’t change their actions unless they change their whole way of looking at things. It’s true of heart patients trying to live longer. It’s true of people who want to fix what’s broken in their lives. And it’s true of organizations that want to embrace change.

Thanks for giving these a second chance.

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Photo by brewbooks, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

A few weeks ago, I shared some of my favorite sources (including blogs) for financial news and commentary. Once in a while folks ask me to name some of my favorite blogs in general, so here are a few favorites, culled — unscientifically — from a trawl of my RSS feeds.

• Lateral Action by Mark McGuinness — The first post I ever saw on this blog was the iconoclastic “Tyler Durden’s 8 Rules of Innovation.” McGuinness Brian Clark* had me at “hello” with that post.
• TimeBack by Dan Markovitz — If you’ve been reading me long (e.g. here, here, here), and especially if you share Dan’s and my obsession with the misuse of e-mail in the modern workplace, you won’t be surprised by this pick.
• Shannon Paul’s Very Official Blog — I met Shannon through Twitter, which means I got to share in the fun when she was recently hired by the Detroit Red Wings to direct their social-media efforts. Shannon’s a smart person with an open mind who wants to share the benefits of social media broadly.
• Conversation Agent by Valeria Maltoni — Valeria is another Twitter friend, and I’ve come to value her blog for its thoughtful posts not just on social media, but on broader topics like the importance of forming better connections with customers.

Now, if you would be so kind, please recommend four of YOUR favorites in the comments.

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* Update, midmorning November 27: In a gracious e-mail, Mark McGuinness points out that his Lateral Action co-author Brian Clark wrote the Tyler Durden entry.

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Photo by avlxyz, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

Earlier this year at South by Southwest, I had the good fortune to meet Scott Monty, a heavy hitter in social media who was then doing consulting work in his longtime home of Boston. Over the summer, Scott made a big career move when he took Ford Motor Company’s offer to direct its social-media efforts.

Ford’s been in the news plenty lately — and I’ve written about the company myself — so I wanted to know from Scott how a company like Ford hopes to strengthen its business using social media. He answered my question in generous detail, as you’ll see from the transcript.

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Q: You were well-ensconced in a consultancy tied to Boston’s vibrant social-media scene before you moved to your current job. What convinced you to pick up stakes and move halfway across the country to work for an old-school company like Ford?

It’s a good question and one that I get a lot, as you can imagine. When I was first approached by Ford, I turned them down flat, because I didn’t want to move to Detroit. After a while, we reconnected and I was a little more open to speaking with the communications team; after taking the time to fly to Michigan to meet with key team members in marketing and communications, I was sold on the passion, talent, and intelligence of everyone I met. When I heard that I would have the full support of the Vice President of Communications and the Group Vice President of Marketing, that clinched it.

In addition to the people of Ford, I stopped to think about the opportunity that was being presented to me: I was being given the chance to lead social media efforts for a top Fortune 500 company (#7 at the time), doing exactly what I had been doing for the past year an a half. When else would that happen? Further, I knew that the U.S. auto makers were behind the competition in terms of perception, and I thought that I’d like to be part of the effort to turn that around. To me, it’s a much more exciting and challenging opportunity than leading marketing & communications efforts for a brand that simply needs to maintain its status.

Q: What have been the biggest transitions for you to make in terms of your daily work?

The most significant change in my daily habits is that I don’t have as much time to dedicate to reading the blogs in my feedreader. There’s just so much information that we’re creating at Ford (and materials that I need to review in order to be effective at my job) that I don’t have time to spend time in my feedreader. On the other hand, since I’m now commuting in the car for 25-30 minutes each way, one of the things that I’ve been able to take up again is listening to podcasts.

In terms of time management, I’m constantly battling the two-headed beast: my inbox and the constant requests (and need) to attend meetings. At at company this size, it’s imperative that we share information, and in our current model, that comes in the forms of email and meetings — both of which take up an inordinate amount of time.

Q: A century-old car maker might not be the most obvious breeding ground for social-media innovation — what do you aspire to accomplish at Ford?

Ultimately, I’d like to see Ford recognized as a leader in digital communications and as the world’s leading social automotive brand. This isn’t going to be easy, by any stretch of the imagination. When you consider our global market and the various nuances between regional social networking habits and information consumption, along with our vast audiences (customers, employees, suppliers, dealers, investors, retirees, etc.) and various departments that have the need for social media (marketing, communications, HR, product development, customer service, IT, etc.), it’s a very complex assignment.

If we can start with a solid social media strategy and begin to execute both internally and externally, we’ll be in a position to humanize the company to the outside world. If the world at large could be made more aware of the stories we have to tell (and of the storytellers themselves), and if we give them the ability to share these stories with their own communities, we’ll begin to see perceptions changing, and, ultimately, to see a rise in sales.

Q: In what areas of social media do you see Ford making an impact?

One of the areas I started on very early was the idea of opening up our media events — in-vehicle programs and forums with our subject matter experts — to bloggers at large. Historically, these have been open to traditional journalists and, more recently, to automotive bloggers. But my contention is that nearly everyone needs to buy a car, so if we can form relationships with mainstream bloggers, we can reach more mainstream customers — the readers of these blogs who trust the authors because they’ve been following them for so long. With that theory in place, I’ve been pushing to reach out to bloggers interested in technology, environmental issues, luxury/design, and parenting, to name a few.

Aside from blogger relations, we’ve got an immediate opportunity to help change the perception through my own personal participation on Twitter, blogs, and forums. I do a lot of commenting on posts that may have some misinformation, and I share news and information from my unique position within the company. And I hope I do all of this in an authentic way, to give the company a little more of a human element.

Q: What are the biggest impediments — technical, cultural, financial, or otherwise — that Ford faces as it tries to become a social-media-savvy company?

Overall, I think this is going to be more of a cultural effort than a technical one. Sure, we’ll have to train people on rudimentary tools and the rules of the road, but the technology will continue to evolve. What needs to happen is that Ford employees need to be empowered, trained, and trusted on digital communications in general, and various levels of leadership need to demonstrate that this is a crucial part of Ford’s business plan moving forward.

I often compare the corporate culture of fear that runs rampant through legal departments everywhere — the fear that employees will say something they shouldn’t say — with the same panic and skepticism that they met e-mail with some 15-20 years ago. I think e-mail has turned out pretty successfully, don’t you?

Managing risk is always at the top of mind for legal teams at large companies, mostly because in today’s litigious society, there’s always a chance of public statements being used against a company. But if we approach the practice with common sense (they haven’t removed our phones or e-mail accounts) and clear communications guidelines, things should work out. If a company has policies in place and an employee abuses them, then there will be consequences, no matter what the format or venue of those transgressions.

Q: I’ve praised Ford for its recent efforts at improvement, but the company has also lost more than $20 billion since 2006. How do you sell the benefits of social media at a time when the company must be tempted to keep its focus on the short-term bottom line?

We also had our first profitable quarter on our way to a turnaround under Alan Mulally in Q1 of 2008. Were it not for the spike in oil prices and commodities, as well as the housing and financial market crisis, we’d be in a better place. But I digress.

There are two ways to think about social media and our focus on our bottom line: one is that it’s a low-cost channel that has the potential to garner disproportionate impact. So we were to shift some money from a more traditional media spend to social media efforts, [and] we can show immediate and measurable results. The second is, as we tell the press in general, we have a plan and we continue to take fast and decisive action to implement that plan. Digital communications is a key part of that plan and of the future of Ford.

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My thanks to Scott for sparing the time for this interview. Since Scott and I talked the other day, he wrote a long, impassioned post at his personal blog that shines even more light on his efforts at Ford:

How You Can Use Social Media to Help the U.S. Auto Industry

If you’re at all interested in the fate of the Detroit-based auto makers, by all means take the time to read what Scott has to say.

Meanwhile, I’ll hand the mic to you:

What do YOU think of Ford’s efforts in social media?

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It’s easy, when everyone seems to be talking about recession / depression / meltdown / catastrophe, to get worried and stay worried. But it’s also unhelpful, at least if you’re looking to cope with the current business climate by taking positive steps to improve your business.

When we succumb to limbic hijack — that is, when the stimulus we take in hijacks our ability to respond cogently — our performance suffers. It’s unavoidable.

What IS avoidable is succumbing to limbic hijack in the first place. If a tiger suddenly runs into the room, okay, you can be forgiven for freaking out. But for our workaday lives? We have lots of choices about the inputs we receive and the ways we react to them.

I’m thinking about this because of an exchange I had with a commenter last month. This is the key part of what he said:

. . . I read the WSJ every day, and the only show channel I watch is CNN. Well, over the past month all of the negative energy that I was getting from these news mediums was starting to take effect in my personal life; I was doing poorly in school, my nerves were getting to me, etc. I decided that this must be because I’m surrounding myself in a constant state of negative. So what did I do? I quit reading the WSJ, did not turn on the TV, and focused on some activities that would help me chill out.

Here’s what I said in turn:

As I’ve earned more experience in my career, I’ve realized the importance of being able to manage your moods. We’re not always going to feel optimistic, energetic, or fired-up — and it’s not a challenge, anyway, to move ahead when we feel that way. The challenge comes on the days when we’re feeling flat and blah — or during the longer spells when we’re feeling stressed or depressed.

This applies very well when we put the stress on ourselves. Try as I might to keep myself on an even keel, I’ve had several occasions to return to a sage comment on another post from last month:

I learned an interesting lesson about crunch time and overwork many years ago. Many times, when it’s past 6, past 7, and you’re pounding away at whatever . . . because it Has To Be Done . . . Stop. Go home. Rest. Think about something else. Pet the cat; walk the dog.

Tomorrow morning you will be rested and the problem will resolve itself relatively quickly. It may be difficult to believe but often, last night’s impossible-to-solve problem untangles in 10 minutes the next morning.

Also, remember, the longer you work without a break, the more brain-fried and inefficient you are. You make more mistakes. When you overwork you’re doing yourself (and your project) a DISservice.

The links below to other posts of mine will tell you that this is a topic to which I’ve returned many times. I keep coming back to it because (1) my own self-induced stresses frustrate me (though I’m getting better), (2) because I keep seeing friends, family, and coworkers struggling with the same challenges, and (3) because I keep finding useful reading to help all of us deal with the issue of managing our moods.

Here are three posts by others that you might find useful if you’re struggling to keep yourself on an even keel in your work:

• Mark McGuinness — How to Maintain Your Enthusiasm When Things Get Tough
• Mark McGuinness — 7 Ways to Stop Worrying When You’re Under Pressure
• Scott Berkun — Your quota of worry and how to shrink it

Now, if you please, tell me:

What are YOUR best methods for managing your moods?

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Related posts:

• Limbic hijacking in the workplace.
• We are not beasts of burden.
• How much are you asking of yourself?
• Self-help and business-help in stressful times.

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Photo of un-worried people by Winstonavich.

Let me tell you a funny story.

Some time ago I started working on this post — wrote the title, found the creepy picture, added “related links” at the bottom, blasted out a bunch of ideas.

I say “some time ago,” but a quick search of Twitter tells me that it was actually September 29, because that’s when I polled my friends about this very topic. So for two months now, “Killing off a vampire project” has been staring at me, day after day, from my blog drafting folder. I believe this is a mild form of what’s called irony.

Anyway, today I decided I’d had enough.

The Project That Will Not Die

We all have them, right?

• The nagging task that’s too big for a chore but too small for a holy war.
• That Unfinished Thing Upon Which So Many Others Depend.
• The project that that goes bump in the night, scaring us out of our sleep even though we know it shouldn’t.
• _____________ [fill in the blank with your own horror story here]

What to do?

• Suggestion #1: “If I knew then what I know now . . .” — Ask yourself whether you’d launch the project all over again today, if you were starting fresh. Would it be worth it? If the answer is “No,” just kill the project in some way that lets you hold your head up high.
• Suggestion #2: Cry out for help. — In the old vampire movies, the would-be victims were often saved by the timely arrival of help from the outside. In the case of vampire projects, you might find that you nervously broach the prospect of killing or modifying the project with others affected by it, only to find out that everybody else breathes a sigh of relief that you suggested it.
• Suggestion #3: Brutal honesty. — Sometimes your boss (or your boss’s boss, or whoever) needs to hear that the project is an outright waste of money, and that any more time spent on it is unconscionable. If that’s the truth, figure out a polite but blunt way to say it today.
• Suggestion #4: Analyze it from the outside. — If you’re not sure whether the project is an outright waste, consider whether you’ve become trapped in the mire of sunk costs. Sometimes we want to plow ahead with a project simply because we’ve spent so much time with it. We get wrapped around the axle of our own emotions. If that’s the case, review the project like an outside analyst would. If you were coming to this situation with no preconceptions, what would you think? What questions would you ask? What next steps would you recommend?
• Suggestion #5: Do the minimum. — For some people in particular, it’s easy to get lost in grandiose visions of what could be. I’m not just going to write an RFP; I’m going to write the Crime and Punishment of RFPs! Sure you are. Instead, dial it back, figure out the minimum needed for a passing grade, and forget about earning an A+ on this project. Sometimes, constraining yourself to do things fast-and-light unlocks all sorts of creative energy.
• Suggestion #6: Swiss cheese. — I first learned of this approach from Alan Lakein in his classic book, How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life. The method is to complete the handiest bits of your project so that it looks (figuratively) like Swiss cheese when you’re done. So, for example, if part of it involves talking on the phone with someone you enjoy talking to, dial them up and do just that part. Or if you have to do some tedious collating, schedule it for the deadest time of your day so you can do it mechanically. By carving bits out of the project, this method gives you momentum at the same time that it cuts the project down to size.
• Suggestion #7: The priority principle. — This is something that Arnold Schwarzenegger employed to correct his deficiencies as a bodybuilder. (Believe it or not, he had some.) He would pick a weak body part, for example his calves, and hit them first and most often during his workouts. For your project, book meetings with yourself first thing in the morning and first thing after lunch every day. If you hit it early and often, you can even work slowly and you’ll still get the thing done before you know it.
• Suggestion #8: Call in an expert. — Are you the right person to do this job? Even if you have no budget to outsource it, there may be someone in your organization who can do the work — even have fun doing it — in half the time it would take you. When Hoover’s organized a formal community-outreach committee a few years ago, I was one of its first co-chairs. My other co-chair and I still laugh about one vampire project from those days, which had both of us flummoxed until we realized we had split the duties the wrong way. I took her part, she took my part, and we were done in what felt like minutes. Sometimes it’s just that easy.
• Suggestion #9: Make it funny, or sexy, or cool. — You’ve been thinking of this thing as a massive piece of drudgery, and maybe it is. But is there any way that it might not be? Is there some way to “whistle while you work,” or to make this project a winner for you, your department, your resume? Sometimes a little bit of time spent pondering this can energize you to take on the vampire bare-handed.
• Suggestion #10: Ask for more budget. — This one was suggested by a friend on Twitter. (But I can’t find the right tweet! Please let me know if you find it.) He suggested that asking for more money could achieve one of two things: (1) give you the resources you need to finish the project right, or (2) demonstrate to those who control the budget that the project can’t be done without investing more than the organization is willing to commit. Either outcome gives you a light at the end of the tunnel.

Those are just ten possible techniques; I’m sure there are many more.

So, what do YOU do to kill off vampire projects?

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Related posts:

• When is it time to kill a project?
• What is it time to let go of?
• “Workiness” is to work as “truthiness” is to truth.
  

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Image by guano, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m the speaker for the fourth Austin Social Media Breakfast scheduled for December 2. “Speaker” sounds fancy, but these events tend to foster a high degree of give-and-take, so I hope that my role will be closer to “provocateur/moderator.”

Just to whet your appetite, here is a highly cryptic look at just some of what you can expect from my SMB remarks:

Martin Luther, social-media pioneer.

Bob Hope, archetypal media surfer.

The social-media ramifications of the humble mimeograph are legion. Legion.

That is all . . . for now.

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(Image credits: Luther, Hope, mimeo — the last under a CC-Share Alike license.

Way back in January, I mused about whether we were already in a recession — or something that acted like a recession — despite no official proclamation of one from government economists.

Here’s my question for today: now that the official “recession” bridge has been crossed, has it made any change in your consumer or business behavior? To put it another way, did anybody wait until the official proclamation to change what they were doing economically?

My underlying concern: the news media spent loads of time, as they always do in such cases, debating whether the U.S. economy had officially entered a recession. And it may not have mattered one bit.

The moral of this story is an old one: just because the media covers an angle heavily doesn’t make it important.

Keeping with the theme of the past couple of posts – and taking the suggestion of my friend Liz that champagne goes well with hors d’oeuvres — here are a few light and crisp items worthy of celbration. You will detect a distinct Hoover’s-oriented theme . . .

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Xobni Extends Functionality to Yahoo, Facebook, Hoover’s

That’s right, folks — if you use the Xobni inbox tool, you can integrate Hoover’s company information right into it. (Note that, contrary to what the linked article implies, we have lots of data on private companies as well as public ones — not to mention foundations, government agencies, etc.) This nifty development builds off of . . .

~ ~ ~

. . . the Hoover’s API.

If you have an application that would benefit from Hoover’s data, you can get in on the fun, too. Just go to the Hoover’s API pages to find out more (especially via the dedicated blog). Then you can request your own API keys so you can use our top-flight company data in your app.

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As if that weren’t enough, we’ve launched (free!) beta versions of Hoover’s Mobile, with separate apps for Apple’s iPhone and for smartphones like RIM’s Blackberry.

I’ll be writing more about these apps later, because I’ve only gotten to fiddle with them a little bit so far. While I’m certainly biased, for now I’ll give you this two-word impression of them: Useful! Pretty!

Feel free to amble on over to the Hoover’s Mobile page and download a mobile app for yourself. We’d love to know what you think of it.

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Photo by FXR.

A little gem passed along from Geoff Colvin’s Talent Is Overrated:

“As the strategy consultant Gary Hamel likes to say, if customer ignorance is a profit center for you, you’re in trouble.”

Colvin’s point: in the Internet-enabled world, there are many more potential threats to the customer ignorance that may have sustained your business (or your own career) in the past. I’m hardly the first to note that industries as airlines and newspapers are finding this out to their peril.

Are you relying on the ignorance of customers?
What if you took the bold step of teaching them instead?

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Photo by takomabibelot; original words by William Shakespeare.