The current market economy has forced into harsh relief those business that are valuable and have sound fundamentals and those that are weak. Or to put it another way, as Warren Buffett so eloquently did “When the tide goes out it is easy to see who is swimming naked”.

But even if your product has value, your customers love you and your business model works, you still need to cut costs and drive up efficiencies. This may be a fundamental shift to your strategy from loss-making growth to month on month profit, or it might mean fine tuning by examining every process to reduce waste. Or a combination of both.  Either way, a good understanding of the businesses operation processes is critical.  This is explored in my blog, The Wheels Haven’t Come off  http://is.gd/582T4

Reducing waste is deeply unsettling for employees. At best is means reduced budgets and asking them to cut travel expenses. At worst is means redundancies.  Both of these requires line managers to be better communicators and be more empathetic with their teams. They need to lead from the front.

Just when we should be better man-managers I see examples of poor man management bordering on cowardly. Here are just a few. Every one fails the “Would I like to be treated this way” test.

The redundancy process

The redundancy process is not clearly documented and hence it is not applied fairly, done with respect and dignity. The proper consultation period is given lip service, hence individuals who should be kept are laid off – and this damages the company. Those who are laid off and feel they have been treated badly or unfairly are walking adverts actively damaging the company’s reputation. This will really become apparent when they try to hire again.  This is a simple process to document and make sure every line manager has access to it.

At Nimbus we restructured our hosting team as over 70% of new clients want Nimbus Control, our BPM solution, hosted by us, and more and more want it hosted long term. This involved redundancies. The feedback on the process was staggering. “I’ve been made redundant, and seen colleagues made redundant on a several occasions over a 20 year career in IT. This was the best experience I’ve ever had. Thank you”

Redundancy not review

Companies are using redundancy to ‘cut out the dead wood’. A job that should have been done through fair and consistent reviews enabling the individual to correct their behaviours, or have training scheduled to help them up their game. Instead they are made redundant. This is not only unfair but it also squanders potential talent that should have been trained and coached. And often unrecognised stars in the organisation end up as collateral damage when wide-sweeping redundancies are announced.  Regular reviews would have recognised their value to the organisation and saved them.

 “I can treat my staff like shit – where else can they go?” 

The current market conditions are being used to cut staff salaries with the undertone of “well at least you have a job”. In many cases salary cuts are being made at junior levels but not the more senior ones which drives up resentment and hits morale. This will only be seen when the job market becomes easier and staff vote with the feet. I was staggered when I overheard one MD at a dinner say, “I can treat my staff like shit – where else can they go?”  The best ones can and will go. Nimbus is still hiring and we are getting the pick of the crop.

Clawing back commissions

At one major software company they have the typical hockey stick in sales – i.e. they all occur in the final quarter. But they pay their sales and support teams quarterly commissions on the anticipation of them hitting their annual target  because they have hit them  every year for the last 5 years. Except for this year.   So in the employee’s contract that commission can be clawed back.  Bearing in mind some of the commissions to be clawed back were 30% of an individual’s salary.

Instead of the Managing Director, Sales Director or Line Manager communicating the problem and explaining how the commissions were going to be clawed back, Finance sent out an email to each individual saying “Pay us a cheque for the full amount”. 

Training budgets unnecessary luxury

With costs being cut it is easy to see training budgets as an easy target. Again the “they’re lucky to have a job mentality kicks in”. Training is a small part of an employee’s annual cost but disproportionally important to maintaining their enthusiasm, skills and motivation.

What internally run training can you offer?  If the CEO is a brilliant speaker, then can't he running atraining course or coach one to one? Can you identify good podcasts or blogs and make them available to staff.

If you think education is expensive you should try ignorance.

No career planning, but at least you have a job

Every employee wants to grow and improve – or more importantly they want to see their salary grow. It is very easy in the current environment to lapse into the mode of ‘they are luck y to have a job  when every one else is losing theirs”. But not every company has gone into hibernation, paralysis or administration.  Good companies are looking for ways to innovate, grow and position themselves for the recovery.  That means a happy, motivated workforce which in turn means future prospects.

So maybe there are limited opportunities for promotion, but sideways skills-enhancing moves have the same effect. It builds skills in the organisation and keeps people fresh.  Even better if you can change the structure of the role so it is not a like for like swap.

“Can’t you stay with friends?”

Expenses comes under closer scrutiny, which is healthy. Perhaps a conference call could replace an expensive flight – saving money and employee stress.  But often undue pressure is a put on staff to rough it.  Stay with friends. Stay over weekends to make long-haul flights cheaper. 

All these are great ideas but how do you soften it.  Stay with friends – BUT take a bottle of wine and charge it to expenses.  Stay over the weekend, BUT charge the weekend hotel and a hire car to the company and make the most of the time away.

The future bright

If the current economy were a short blip with then a return to the market conditions we’ve seen of the last 5 years then some of the examples, whist not acceptable, are understandable.  But the clever money is predicting that the economy has had a ‘reset’ and we will have to operate with the current economic conditions for several years. Therefore these examples of poor management are actively damaging companies.
This means that some may not survive.  Which is good, because many do not deserve to.
 

Biggest issue with Cloud is that business users are using it to get results and bypass the CIO.  This has 2 MAJOR issues for the CIO

- It is driving an even larger wedge between business and IT because Cloud apps give "immediate gratification" showing HOW SLOW internal IT are.  See blog http://is.gd/57D3T

- Business users don't know what they don't know, so are buying from Cloud vendors is a compliance/risk nightmare waiting to explode in CIOs face. Books like "Thinking of Buying a Cloud Solution - Ask the Smart Questions" help. http://is.gd/57FFZ - Which is why I wrote it  8-)

Time for reality TVwhere CIO becomes business-savvy and trusted advisor to the business? This is a major challenge as the business has grown to despise the CIO for siding with IT and failing to deliver for years.

It probably requires a radical makeover, including the CIO reporting the COO and not having IT staff report to him/her.

They need a different philosophy, if only to emphasis the change.  They need to see themselves as business but with an understanding of what IT can do, not as IT with a knowledge of the business.

Having said that there are some role models out there.  They are radical, evangelical and a little edgy.  People like Jeremy Vincent from Jaguar Land Rover.

It only takes a minute to read this...

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke...totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE

Thank God for the sense to remember the '3' steps, STR . Read and Learn!

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.

Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

S *Ask the individual to SMILE.
T *Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (C oherently) i.e. It is sunny out today
R *Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call emergency number immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

New Sign of a Stroke  ---  Stick out Your Tongue

NOTE: Another 'sign' of a stroke is this: Ask the person to 'stick' out his tongue.. If the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other, that is also an indication of a stroke.

A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to 10 people; you can bet that at least one life will be saved.

In an excellent blog by Neil Ward-Dutton of MWD he laments the lack of progress in improving business processes.  In fact his example of a typical project, which has changed little since the 1990's goes likes this:

    * Someone senior decides that a process needs to be improved.
    * A group of specialists (process analysts, business analysts, whatever) conducts an analysis exercise. Cue much walking around with clipboards, making notes.
    * Time passes.
    * Workshops and interviews are organised where processes are mapped out on large sheets of brown paper.
    * A team writes a large requirements document.
    * Time passes.
    * The organisation starts to procure one or more packaged applications and/or carry out some custom software integration work.
    * Time passes.
    * More time passes.
    * At some point, a date arrives. The project is declared finished.
 

Sadly his view of BPM/BPR/BPI is absolutely true in 80-90% of organisations, and in 100% of organisations that have engaged one of the Big4 consulting organisations.

There are glimmers of hope as we are now seeing major organisations (Nestle, HSBC, Chevron, Unilever, CarphoneWarehouse (video) taking a different approach and getting the results they deserve. 

So what is different:
 - mapping in live workshops = speed and end user engagement
 - mapping with end user as intended audience (not IT) = useable content & end user engagement
 - content (processes & supporting info) available to every employee via web or mobile device = making end users 20%+ more efficient
 - an application (rather than a tool) to capture, deploy, and manage the changes to the content   ['application' as it is used long term, tool is only used on a project] = governed content
- the content has multiple uses  - training, performance measurement, compliance, business improvement = reduced cost of compliance

Question - what is this application called.  It is NOT a BPA tool. BPA tools are used by Enterprise Architects  to deliver the 1990's approach described above.  A BPMS is about automating the processes.

The collective term for this breed of application is still emerging.  But there are already vendors out there delivering staggering results  - BusinessGenetics, ProcessMaster and Nimbus Control to name 3.

These are ?????  Business Optimization Management Suite (BOMS) ??? applications.  

What is most disappointing is that if the effort of documenting processes in Visio was used instead to document using a BOMS there would be NO EXTRA EFFORT and a FAR GREATER RETURN.

So once we understand what it is called, more people can ask for it.  So for now lets just agree to call it BOMS??

 

The ongoing debate is “Is the iPhone ready for the enterprise”, but this is rapidly becoming irrelevant and the wrong question. The iPhone is infiltrating organisations hidden in senior executives pockets much to the dismay of CIO’s. But the iPhone has the potential to be a powerful ally when deploying enterprise applications, where lack of adoption of applications by business users is the real enemy.

So the question should be “Is the enterprise ready for the iPhone?”

Most of the talk is about the core use for the iPhone – as a phone and email device. So the topics of security are discussed at length in the blogosphere. As are the other discussions about the iPhone support for MS Exchange and sychronisation. It is clearly getting better – except for Tasks.  What happed to that? Perhaps once you get an iPhone you are either too cool to understand tasks and deadlines or so senior that you have delegated everything 

For those not in this luxurious position read Stanley Bing's excellent Being retired at work blog

But the debate that is starting, and a recent post at CIO.com although they are arguing for the Smartphone rather than just the iPhone and the topic of my keynote at iCE09  in Amsterdam is how the iPhone and iPod Touch is becoming an enterprise platform.

As an enterprise platform it is the perfect device for the CIO to engage the business users – getting closer to them. Closing that ever widening business-IT divide.  A divide that Cloud Computing is making even wider as I discussed in a recent blog Why Force.com is the CIOs nightmare 

A book I’m currently writing with John Appleby of Bluefin Solutions  is Thinking of… Developing an iPhone app for the enterprise? Ask the Smart Questions, published by Smart Questions.  What is interesting is the number and range of questions that need to be answered BEFORE you start writing code. 

So what are the challenges (over and above those simply using it as a phone and email device)?  BTW I’m only going to be able to scratch the surface.  Obviously we will going into a lot more detail in the book.

Ownership & device

The first debate is what device and who owns it. Notice earlier I said iPhone AND iPod Touch. The iPod Touch is essentially the iPhone without the phone and a few other bits and pieces. As it has wifi and no ongoing cost it maybe is a cheaper better platform if the person who will be using it does not need a company phone.

If the iPhone is owned by the employee you have some interesting challenges which I’ll discuss in distribution.

What app

At the moment there are relatively few iPhone Apps that are design for the enterprise. There are lots that are aimed at business people  - let’s call them standalone productivity apps.  But a true iPhone enterprise app is where the iPhone as an integral part of an enterprise application. So the apps supports all or part of an enterprise process such as R2R (Recruit2Retire), O2C (Order2Cash), or I2P (Idea2Product). Good examples are the recently launched Salesforce.com Mobile app.

Buy vs build

Are you implementing an app built by a 3rd party or building your own?

Buy - Buying and distributing a 3rd party app

If it is a buy what due diligence have you done on the supplier? How good is their coding, security, scalability and encryption? Will they be in business next year?

If it is a 3rd party how are you going to get it onto the device as it will probably need to be downloaded from the iTunes store by the owner of the device and paid for.  Even if is only 99c how is the person going to be reimbursed.  Or is the IT department going to register every iPhone user and download the apps for them.  That sounds like a McJob.

Build - architecture, development & release cycles

You also need consider the future functionality of the Apple iPhone OS roadmap (or what is visible of it) when you architect your app. What other apps in the iPhone are you going to integrate with? What about your core external systems.
Certainly when Nimbus started to develop its Nimbus Control for iPhone application there was as much work to do to our core enterprise app (developing the web services) to let it to talk to the iPhone, as the work to create the iPhone app itself.

But that ties you into the core app release cycles. How do you disconnect yourself so that you can iterate your iPhone app more rapidly as the true requirements emerge? That requires a clear view of the roadmap for the iPhone app so that you can build in the hooks into the core app.

iPhone vs Smartphone

I’ve focused on the iPhone because in many ways it is easier to develop for than other Smartphones. At least it has a single OS, a single screen size, one app running on the device at a time, and a single mechanism to download/sync apps (iTunes store).
 

The Americans are all off celebrating Thanksgiving. Giving presents. Fighting through airports at any cost to get back to their loved ones in time for this special day. In many ways it is more important that Christmas.

But despite the close relationship between the US and UK, started in the Thatcher/Reagan era we we really don't understand what it is about.

So I thought I'd let Eddie Izzard explain.  Izzard is best known in the UK as an off the wall transvestite comic and appearing in the odd film. The US will know him as an actor in the The Riches ina very traditional role as a straight husband.  My doesn't money change people!!

So in his alter ego he is explaining what Thanksgiving is all about.

I'm currently researching a book aimed at every corporation that hires people.  Those people joining the work force are the iPod generation, or Generation Y (or Generation V – virtual) as they are sometimes called. 

They are one or two generations away from those hiring and managing them.  But hasn’t this always been the case?  So what is so different?  Every parent claims that they don’t understand their teenage children, and even less so when they leave school or college.

Technology is what is different.  The technology that is now ubiquitous has created a completely disruptive change in these people’s working and leisure life.  Lets looks some of the disruptive examples that are less than 5 years old:

-    Everyone has a mobile phone from the age of 10.  Advances in processing power, battery life, screen resolution, available applications and low cost talk plans have made it possible to use it as the universal communicator  (voice, email, Instant Messaging), a media center (music, video stored or streamed), a games machine, and a micro-computer running applications .

-    Internet access is available in most homes so consumers have become accustomed to a very rich internet experience (Web 2.0). This has set an expectation for business applications.

-    Social networking sites and MMP (massively multiple player) computer games have changed the way they interact, communicate and play with their peers. Their confidence and trust of the internet and the way they evaluate others they meet on internet is very different from the traditional face to face meeting. They bare their souls, quirks, passions and fetishes on social networking sites, which they would never reveal them in a job interview.

-    Internet search (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live), Wikipedia and plethora of website, blogs, podcasts and video sharing sites means that information is a couple of clicks away: “how to do something”, “where to go”, “cheapest place to buy”.  It has also changed the way that they learn.

-    Every one of them seems to have little white earphones permanently inserted in their ears. Even when they are working, when they need to concentrate, if they are on the phone or out in a group of friends.
But there are other changes which mean this work force is very different from their parents when they joined the world of work.
-    The entrepreneurial opportunities due to technology and highly visible role models mean that they could already have tasted commercial success well before they leave school.

-    They have a variety of working modes available.  Full time employed with a number of different and very distinct careers over their working lifetime. A part-time portfolio lifestyle combining periods of travel, vocational activities or further education. Setting up and running a business – either with an aim to fund their lifestyle or make it big and get rich. This has profound implications for employers in terms of managing staff turnover and continuing training.

But companies will need to hire, motivate, manage and fire these new breed. The iPod generation. The book will give some insights and some practical actions from hiring through to firing.
 

I recently attended an improv comedy workshop with John Cremer, who has just been awarded Speaker of the Decade by the Academy for Chief Executives. John is founder of  The Maydays, an improv troupe based in Brighton.

I thought improv would be a great way of extending my presentation skills.  But I was surprised that I got a lot more out of it than just some new techniques.

So improv.  There is 1 principle and 3 rules for actors when they are on stage doing improv:

Principle: You don’t need to be funny, clever or witty and therefore you can’t “get it wrong”

Rule 1 - Listen: you can’t be preparing what you are going to say when the other actor is speaking because you won’t be listening to what you need to react to.

Rule 2 – Always say Yes: always be open and positive to what ever had been suggested.  Worlds like ‘But’ and ‘However’ are banned as they suck the energy out

Rule 3 – Commit: even if you don’t know what you are going to say or think your response is not going to be very good, deliver the lines it with passion and energy, you will get some surprising results

So how powerful are these 3 rules if we applied them to life or business?

Listen: How many times in a conversation are we simply waiting to make our point whilst the other person is speaking. We are not listening. We don’t hear their point of view and genuinely think about it. We are preparing our defence or attack. We never really hear.

Yes: Sir Clive Woodward put it well.  He identified that in his England team there were ‘energy sappers’. He deselected them and built a winning team of ‘energy givers’.  These are people who love to say Yes and get stuck in. And don't we all just love working with people like that? Which leads to my last point.

Commit: Life is not a dress rehearsal. Do what you do with passion and energy or don’t do it at all. No successful entrepreneur, business man, parent or teacher has done it by sitting in the shadows.

Improv workshop
The workshop was 8 people with a wild mix of backgrounds; business, actors, students. Before the course I asked what I needed to prepare and John was polite enough not to say "Nothing - it's impov - doh!!"

The day was fun, engaging, scary, enlightening and stressful all at the same time. But when John said “It is nearly 4pm we need to wrap it up” my immediate reaction was “No, we can’t stop now”.

What next
So I haven’t. John is keen to understand how to really make improv relevant to business and I'm very excited that he has asked me to join a small focus group to develop the “improv for business proposition”. 

John has written an excellent book on improv. And now there is even talk of him and Neil Mullarkey, one of the founders of the Comedy Store Players, writing a Smart Questions book Thinking of.. Using improv for business? Ask the Smart Questions.

So if you want to 'enrich your (business or real) life' think about improv. No preparation required.

A recent survey on bad language at work makes interesting reading. What is interesting is the idea of a politically correct joke.  A joke is often making fun about stereotypes...

So the findings of the survey are:
 
A seismic shift in the acceptability of jokes and slang within the UK workplace has taken place over the last decade, according to a survey of more than 270 company directors by the spoken communications consultancy, The Aziz Corporation.
 
•    Company directors are ten times more likely to find politically correct jokes acceptable in the office than they did ten years ago,  when nearly 40% believed jokes were unacceptable at all times.
 
•    In 1999 only 1% of respondents found politically correct jokes acceptable in internal office meetings, today the figure has increased to nearly 70%.
 
Another shift has taken place in the differentiation between offensive and inoffensive jokes.   In the earlier survey 64% of directors thought politically incorrect jokes were acceptable in informal conversations with colleagues, if funny. Today the proportion has dropped to 47%.
 
•    Mild swear words in internal meetings were deemed unacceptable by all respondents ten years ago. Today 50% have no problem with this with nearly 20% even accepting strong swearing in the office.
 
•    Increasingly slang has become accepted with 64% of directors finding this appropriate even in internal meetings.
 
Khalid Aziz, Chairman of The Aziz Corporation commented:  “British business has been stereotyped for its formality but this survey demonstrates a dramatic change. “
 
“I suspect this process has accelerated during the recession when people are desperate for anything that will raise their spirits.  Britain has a long standing tradition of gallows humour and that may also be a factor; what's the difference between a banker and pigeon?  A pigeon can still make a deposit on a Porsche!"
 
 
 

The lights dim, the audience quietens in response - and you step towards the rostrum.  It was an extraordinary honour for an amateur conductor, Philip Glass – a ‘mere’ business CEO - to be invited to do a cameo with the Vienna Philharmonic.

It was a simple piece of course, an early Mozart piano concerto, featuring a young Chinese pianist. But snow at O’Hare had cancelled two days of flights – so there had been no time for any rehearsals at all.  Gulp - you lift the white baton to gather the orchestra. It was now or never.  Hell, this was more nerve-wracking than any investor presentation.

But, really, what could go wrong?  You knew the piece intimately, and had even conducted it before.  And the Vienna Philharmonic Phil were among the world’s finest musicians. So relax and enjoy.

It was the second bar when you realised something was awry. The orchestra was going faster than you’d ever imagined. It came crashing into your head that they were using the revised October 1782 score, while you had the original September 17812 score  in front of you.  Never mind – maybe you could still get through this.
The orchestra built raggedly towards the entry of the soloist, their eyes looking at you in increasing bewilderment, wondering why your arms were off-beat. 

You turned to introduce the pianist.  She played from memory of course.  It was half a bar later that you realised that she was performing Mozart’s later revision of this work – his January 1783 score, which was much the same, except for the revised timpani line.

The music careered along, jumping and spluttering like a car with water in the tank.  Maybe it was OK  for an amateur – you might just make it to the end.

But not much can survive when the timpanist is confused. The cacophany grew. Only true grit could save the day. You waved and pummelled the air, and pulled them through into the final bar - and silence.

First one clap, then another, then spreading around the hall – until finally tumultous applause.  You bowed, amazed, and left the podium.

In the wings, you overheard a radio presenter gushing into his microphone: ‘…a stunning new interpretation of Mozart in the style of Philip Glass …’

A miraculous survival – again.! But as you headed back for a final bow – and definitely no encore – your thoughts turned inexplicably to work. 

How well are your teams performing? Is it that talented heroics are required because everyone has a slightly different or no view of the playbook? How much more profitable could your company be if their skills were harnessed and directed?

Didn’t you just put that HowTo project on the backburner? Wasn’t it aimed at getting consistent processes and documents delivered real-time to all staff.Maybe you should pay attention to that programme to deliver a real-time and authoritative ‘intelligent operations manual’ to every one of your people. Hey, you might even get the Europeans onto the same page, at last.
 

Inspired Thinking by Mike.Gammage (at) Nimbuspartners.com

Up on stage, mouth goes dry, mind goes blank, everybody is looking at you, you struggle through your Powerpoint slides, heart beating wildly. You sit down vowing never to do it again.

But worse than that, it has reflected badly on you and yor company and disturbed the sleep of 100’s of innocent people. But conference after conference the same mistakes are made.

A little known statistic is that 42% of the population are more scared of death than speaking in public. 

But for business people being able to present well is a core skill, right up there with managing people. If you can’t present then you will never be promoted as quickly, you will not make the salary you aspire to, you won’t enjoy the success you deserve.
Sadly as professional speaker I attend a huge number of conferences and witness poor (or worse) presentations.

Presentations that, based on the material, could have been engaging and entertaining.  Instead they were embarrassingly boring.

Maybe you’ve watched in awe as a presenter commands the stage, works the audience, and finishes to a rousing finale. Is it nurture or nature?  Is it a learnt skill or is that person ‘just a natural’.

For all those of you hiding your fears behind the excuse “It’s nature”, I’m afraid you are very very wrong.  It is a skill you can, and should learn.

How do you get better?  3 simple steps
-    Understand the principles
-    Practice and stretch yourself
-    Learn from the feedback

Understand the principles: sounds obvious.  “You stand up and communicate some information using Powerpoint.” 

How wrong can you be?   This is where most if not everybody gets it wrong. Your job is to engage the audience. That means you want them to “Think. Feel. Do,” in that order.  So how do you get the audience intrigued? Make them sit up and want to hear the end?

Practice and stretch yourself: find some safe environments to practice - the local school or college is always after outside speakers, your local sports club or Toastmasters Club. But try something different each time.

Learn from the feedback: ask someone you trust in the audience for candid feedback. Use that feedback to learn and improve not to force you back to reading Powerpoint slides.

For some more ideas on presenting listed to a quick interview on the Top 10 ways to improve your presentations here
 

In a blog later this month I'll explain why Powerpoint is like my 10 yr old daughter's attempts at make-up