Everyone's been to a few "business networking" events. With talk of mixing business with pleasure made me consider the real similarities between networking ewvents and singles dating clubs.

read on... click on blog title

This is not an argument for or against an ID card for the UK citizen.  Life is too short to enter that debate.  But the letter below to the Passport Agency raises some interesting issues about - so "Who are you".

With so many social networking sites that I can join, what is my identity?  I can create a different persona on every site.  Maybe I'm getting old, but this is some form of 'managed schizophrenia' or 'mulitple personalities disorder'. How do you keep track of them all, and what is your motivation? 

Gartner talks about Generation-V, or the virtual generation.  This is probably analysts over-analysing and creating new terminology for their own gratification.

The infamous presentation by Dick Hardt of Sxip gives a perspective of the problem of defining who you are - online and offline.

But start by reading the letter from a British Citizen to the UK Passport agency - click in the blog title

It started as a spoof article in Jobs & Money in the Guardian, and has been emailed around the world with people believing it to be true.  Why? 

Because, for those of you who know the UK Goverment, it could have been.  UK Government, contrary to popular misconception is staffed with some highly intelligent, eloquent and witty people. They have to deal with the general public day in and day out - who on the whole are not highly intelligent, eloquent or witty.

So read and enjoy... believing that it could be true. Background on the letter

 read the letter   - click on title

One essential ingredient that is sometimes overlooked in the early stage of a company's life is sales. Everyone gets jazzed up about raising money, building a product, launching a website then, lo-and-behold, a few months or even a year rolls by and you wonder why the customer service team always goes home early. Rest assured, if you don't have sales, you won't have to worry about any other problems for long.Good sales are a critical ingredient in growing any company. If you think of sales people as the human fertilizer that helps to grow revenues, you won't be far wrong.

But what sort of sales person do you need?  Bearing in mind there are 4 sales cultures - yes:  4.   For more information read the Why Killer Products Don't Sell Book Summary ( or simply buy the book)

read more... click on the title

 I was lucky to have spent some time last week with the Director of Engineering and Production of an oil company. An American who has had 40 years working in every corner of the planet managing the major construction projects – mostly oil platforms, but he has also built a railway and a couple of bridges.

read  more...  click on title

It is not the first, not the last…. But this heart-warming story of £390 million needlessly thrown away on a case management computer system for the UK courts identifies in important change in attitude by the Government.

Big scary monsters, out of control

Government projects are big, high risk and high profile – and have a high price tag. Over the last 10-15 years the Government has tried various ways of controlling cost and mitigating risk – by engaging the big System Integrators with proven expertise, by PFI (Private Finance Initiative) where the system is not paid for upfront, but charges are based on some usage metric, and more recently by employing a high profile CIO to drive a hard-bargain throughout the bidding process.

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 Companies need to make managing change a COMPETENCE, not just have experienced a lot of change.

Many companies say that they "experience a great deal of change", or even "are experienced at change".
 

But to really drive continuous improvement in a fast moving world, companies need to make change management a Competence.  Something that they recognise as a skill that can be taught, honed and developed. Particularly in the next 2 years because it is going to be a very turbulent ride.

So your business card says Quality Manager or Head of Quality. But if you (or your team ) are the owners of the Quality Manual and ensures that you get your ISO9000 certificate on the wall each year, then you are an “unnecessary overhead”. It’s not that you are not working hard. I’m sure you are, but you are not contributing to the long term success of the company.

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A lot, actually.  Consider this: top golf equipment makers introduce new technology every year. Keen golfers the world over upgrade every two to three years.  Yet has the average handicap of these players fallen? No.  Where’s the ROI?

In this thought provoking article published by AMR Research, Tony Friscia explores the similar achievements of businesses upgrading to the latest versions of Enterprise Software, and why they too are often failing to achieve significant ROI.  And the root cause?  Failure to address underlying business process issues.

Visiting our Chinese subsidiary is always interesting.  The taxi ride from the new Beijing airport was like a film car chase – weaving from lane to lane – and using the hard shoulder when necessary…. and we weren’t even in a hurry - I dread to think what the journey will be like if I say I’m late.  However, it does support the statistics put out by the airlines that say flying is safer than driving.

Watching the bicycles and cars fight for dominance on the roads in downtown Beijing with little concern for personal safety always fascinates.  Every bicycle is old battered and ridden by all ages – so with such a large market where are the new bicycles?  When it suddenly rains it develops another perspective with some people managing to cycle and hold umbrellas, some put on plastic rain capes or dustbin bags, and others simply accept that the rain will stop and they will eventually dry in the 30 degree heat.

The business is equally diverse ranging from the street seller with suitcase of pirated software and DVDs to the corporations with 100,000s of employees.  But my attention is on the corporations – some state owned and desperate to apply western business principles and systems – others privately owned who already look like their western counterparts.

All the companies are looking to the west for the latest business thinking on improving productivity and competing on a global scale. Which is why we have a flourishing business here. 

4 years after we launched a subsidiary we ar emaking progress.  we now have the references to be crible.  The next few years should be fascinating / amazing (hugely financially rewarding??)

I was in a major Waterstones store in London in the business section seeing if I could see my latest book Why Killer Products Don't Sell. You may say author ego, but I'd like to justify it as "checking up on my publisher, Wiley"

The book is about how to sell innovative products and services into corporates - B2B.

Finally found the floor where there are business books - bearing in mind is it's HUUUGE store. There had to be 30 meters of shelving with business books. Everything from Accounting for Dummies through to Macolm Galdwells excellent new book Outliers which looks at what makes people successful.

What was interesting, was there were only 50cm of shelving for books on selling.  5 metres of shelving for books on marketing.

So do people not buy books on selling?  In which case Dominc and I have wasted our time writing Why Killer.  So if they don't read them, how do they gain the skills?

As sales is probably the most critical skill to get a job, to get the order, to get a lifelong (or short term) partner - how come it is not taught in schoolds, University or Business schools?   Are we expected to just absorb it - or are 'sales simply born'. 

Some interesting perspectives from Bob Apollo from Revenue Insights who has been tracking the principles of the Chasm for a number of year, having spent some with Geoffrey Moore just after he published “Crossing the Chasm”


"It’s clear that you can’t wave a magic wand and cross the chasm overnight (or at all).  One of the things I’ve observed is that start-ups reach the chasm faster now than it used to be when Moore wrote the book (fewer early adopters).  Pragmatic buyers rule!"


Reaching the Chasm quicker is an issue as the start-up doesn’t have the referenceable clients, resources or cash to be able to engage with the Early Majority.  The Early Adopter will pay for professional services. The Early Majority will not.  The Early Majority will tie you up for months in a procurement because their job is to minimize risk and pick the right solution.  The early Majority want to get going NOW because they want to get the benefits for the company.


It is there are fewer Early Adopters, as Bob suggests, or is it that the internet has made companies globally visible far mor quickly.  And that is not necessarily good.  At time you want to keep your head down, below the radar in a client and build some revenue, some friends and supporters and also  a track record to protect you when the Early Majority in IT get to hear of you.

In the last week I've taken two flights. The two journeys were similar distances (Amsterdam and Brussels).  The planes’ were the same size. My luggage was the same. The only difference was the airline and hence the attitude of the staff. 

One made money, the other lost £250 and my respect.

 
As a great many businesses are now service based B2C (eg insurance, IT, retail, automotive) often the lowest paid staff deal exclusively with the customers.  Or even worse a 3rd party call center does.

I have realised one thing, you can have the best and latest equipment, the nicest showroom, and even the best stock, but if your staff are so stupid, they don't have an understanding of your underlying business and 'intent' you deserve to die in this recession.


What rules do you have in your business that are stupid, hack off customers and push them into the hands of your competition?

Facebook started as the hangout for the iPod Generation.  Stanley Bing wrote a very funny article for Fortune called I'm sorry, I'm not linking to you.  He makes some good ponits.  But that was back in April 08 - nearly half a decade in web-years (slightly less than dog-years).

So, as we are not the iPod generation there is a real risk we are the digital equivalent of your middle-aged Uncle gatecrashing your student parties, hanging around and trying to chat up your mates. 

Being cool is just like being powerful or a lady.  If you have to tell people you are... then you are not.

So is Facebook morphing, or it is we are just mourning our student years?  Someone please tell me because I'm not sure whether to accept the invitation from Juli, Jaz, Myles and Rebecca.  And if I do, I certainly don't know how to fill out my profile.

In the world of txt / IM / email TLAs have a place.  Type less. Say more.

But, what seems to the biggest barrier to entry into a new company or new industry is the terminology often hiding behind the TLA (three letter acronym).  People talk using TLAs almost to show how clever they are rather then to make the conversations shorter and more succinct.

So I launched acronymcentral.com   It has no business plan, no revenue, no exit - so must be worth$1.7bn even in this market.

What is MORE interesting is with current technology it took less than 2 hours to build the website, build the back end database with user login and permissions, buying domain name and redirecting it to the website.   That is Business 2.0 for you.

All that is needed now is a revenue model.  But with a domain name costing £9.99 and the hosting free, the ROI (sorry!!! - Return On Investment) could be quite quick.