Your Lowest Common Denominator Cannot Be Tactical

These past weeks have been insanely busy at work. Sometimes, writing is the only chance I have to take a breath, look at the big picture, and generally feel like less of a cog. There are a lot of really cool projects, but there is also a large amount of work that simply needs to get done.

The "why" is key, not just the "what".
Last Friday was an exception to this rule because it started off with about an hour-long meeting with Scott, our Product Manager. We were talking about our upcoming software upgrade and, inevitably, we ended up discussing strategy/big picture issues. He said something that struck me as being particularly true: especially when the economy isn't good, people tend to huddle around the tactical. You keep busy, you do stuff, and somewhere along the way, you begin to lose sight of what it means to be a thinking person.

Your lowest common denominator cannot be tactical.
I see many people fall into this pitfall, me included sometimes, which is why it's important to recognize that it's a problem and actively work on fixing it. In my limited experience, meeting purely tactical demands on a daily basis, has never moved the needle. In fact, allowing your employees to have the tactical as the lowest common denominator can easily be one of the worst things a business can do, regardless of the state of the economy.

Who Needs Fireworks....

[Off-topic, personal travel note.]

It took me about two years, but I finally made it out to the Oregon coast the other day. I was amazed to discover that this place has a lot of personality and even more soul than I could imagine. Faced with the choice, I would always pick mountains over the seaside, but the NW coastline is a brilliant mix of the two. I may have to revise that choice in the future!

I'll share a couple of my favorite photos:


Who knew the Oregon coast could look like a Chinese painting? :)


I love the gradations of altitude in the distance, the mist, and the wild tree standing guard.



I could hardly tell where the sea ended and where the sky began. A Victor Hugo quote played in my head over and over: "There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky". Looking forward to going back there again... :)

No One Reads Codes of Conduct

Image via Wikipedia

Every once in a while, I call out that the emperor is naked only to be called on it in return.. it makes for an exciting work life :) Case in point:

In a storytelling meeting our company had with Edelman PR the other day, we were talking about Kathleen Edmond from Best Buy, who blogs on her company's code of conduct breaches in hope to educate the employees with stories. She uses real examples of what is happening in the organization and the kinds of resolutions certain actions have within a business environment. I am not sure about blogging on it publicly, but I definitely agree that seeing examples/reading stories is a much more valuable way to learn about the code of conduct of a business. My question is, why didn't people realize it sooner that no one reads the existent codes of conduct?

Of course, when I mentioned that no one reads codes of conduct, I was told that our CEO has a file somewhere with my signature on it, saying that I have read and understood it. At which point, everyone in the room started laughing at me. I explained my statement by saying that reading and being aware of what a document says are two very different things. (wasn't that a nice save? :P)


I think all codes of conduct are pretty much the same in that the company expects some level of loyalty and common sense about work issues from its employees. I get it. The question is, do most employees immediately think "gee, I should check the code of conduct" whenever they see a questionable behavior around them?

I'm willing to bet the answer to that question is "no".

Why is the most important document in the company written in legal jargon?
Which brings me to the question above - why is the company's most important document, the very basis of its sustainability, written in jargon that no one can sit through without yawning? I know the legal team owns it, but if it's a means of communication, then the medium and the approach is completely inappropriate for fulfilling the goal of the document. This is probably why when companies start thinking about implementing hotlines, they start to think about posters and messaging to their employees. Really, that messaging should have started MUCH earlier - with the key points from the code of conduct.

I'll be honest here, reading legal jargon is interesting from an intellectual exercise point of view, at least for me, but I doubt that the average employee has this curiosity. They mostly just want to get through the paperwork. So why is the company making this message about the culture of the space so hard to understand?

Take a lesson from the social media policy
I like the fact that social media blogging policies (the good ones at least) are written in a more accessible language. The code of conduct should take example from that. You're talking to a broad audience of people. Unless you're using graphics or simple language, your message WILL get lost. If you want to encourage an ethical culture within your company, re-write your code of conduct so that the average Joe can understand what you need him to do in edge situations. Make it simple. As if you were explaining it to a 5-year-old.

Transparency Isn't a Spectrum

Generation Y Doesn't Understand Confidentiality
I was preparing for a client-exclusive webinar on which I was a panelist, alongside our General Counsel, Amanda Mayhew. The goal was to have a conversation about social media and compliance moderated by our CEO, David Childers. As we went through the slide deck yesterday, I heard David mention that some companies are considering remedial training for Gen Y employees. Apparently, all the social media has turned my generation into people who don't really understand the notion of confidentiality.

Transparency Is Seen Differently by Different Generations
Now, I don't feel like defending the generation because that statement is probably coming from an overly-conservative corporate counsel. For that group of people, corporate transparency can never be 100% and is often viewed as a spectrum that goes from 0% to close to 100% (but never actually reaching 100%).

Transparency Is a Binary Value
However, the corporate world might be a little right about Gen Y concepts of transparency. I think this new generation has an expectation and an understanding of transparency as a binary value - you're either transparent or you're not. And it's probably this shift in mindset that creates a lot of the tension in the workplace and beyond. (Thanks again to Tom for a random conversation in which we coined the "transparency is binary" concept together)

Lean Business

Don't get comfortable.
There's an interesting thing that happens as people or businesses mature - suddenly, there is a realization that you can afford slightly better things, that comfort can be an option. The lean business approach begins to take a backseat and not govern your every decision. That also means you're getting just a little lazy - you'll go for the easy solution because you can afford it. Not to open a can of worms on creativity, but there's a reason why hackers in under-developed countries come up with endless ways to beat security systems. When resources are low, creativity/resourcefulness tends to get a bump.

The additional problem with this sense of security is that it's very easy to jump into overpaying for a lot of things, in particular for items/services you can get much cheaper & better in another way. Plus, this is also something that impacts the culture of the workplace, from the way people make decisions to the level of accountability among employees.

Image via Wikipedia

Make the smart choices. Always.
I remember having a conversation with Tom, my boss, a few weeks back and he expressed some concern about being able to keep our company lean moving forward. That conversation was quite timely because, after dealing with a vendor that put a hard stop on a lot of projects, I was in a position to push for an in-house solution based on an open-source platform (Drupal) instead of overpaying for a nicely-wrapped software package.

As a technology company, you're always torn between creating something in-house or going out to buy the solution you need. However, choosing to work with great open-source platform like Drupal is a no-brainer for us at this point. If everything works well, Drupal will end up powering our intranet, our customer forum, our partner portal, and much more... all in good time. :) We can built is according to our needs and we can expand it with a myriad of modules.

I'm excited to write more about Drupal & its business benefits once we finally start our development.

P.S. Just found this neat article from Paul Graham, on being Relentlessly Resourceful. Very good read, talking about a similar concept - just with different terminology.

Bad code

That is, bad human code - the subtle illusion of personal limits, the scarcity of true insight.

I'm finally getting serious about my training for Hood to Coast and a lesson from a long time ago is coming back to me. Every time I go out for a run or for my kickboxing training, there is a point in the routine when I feel like my breathing is out of sync and I need to stop before I break down. The more out of shape you are, the sooner that moment finds you - I'm sure this is not news to anyone.

The funny thing is, as soon as I push myself through that barrier, I fail to understand what had stopped me before. Everything becomes easy, out of sudden.

And I see examples of this everywhere - business models that are crazy enough to work, science experiments that are so simple and so elegant that they bring inexplicable change with them, etc. I almost wish that evolution had equipped us with a sense of perspective - ok, this is really going to kill us, while this other thing is something we can push through with some willpower.

Quo Vadis, Telligent?

Image via CrunchBase

In a world where there are a lot of smart people writing about business management, sales, and the importance of customer relationships, it seems almost unreal that a company people once loved can start doing everything wrong. I'm talking about Telligent, the company who owns the much-acclaimed Community Server platform. I've been debating about revealing the name, but since there are many public conversations about this issue, it's more or less a well-known fact by now.

The history
Community Server was (and probably still is) a platform most developers love. As platforms go, it's simple to install, has (or used to have) a very small barrier to entry price-wise, and it allows a lot of creative customization. All these features make it the preferred solution for many applications that are centered around creating online communities. I've seen Community Server work really well in some past projects, so I'm definitely a fan of this product.

Fast-forward to earlier this year: the geek turns chic
2008 brought us a new version of Community Server and placed the software in direct competition with existing products, such as Jive, Sharepoint, etc. . Additional coverage by Forrester and existing wide adoption in the marketplace made Community Server a shiny new hero - geek turn chic, if you will.

Everything comes with a price-tag, but at what cost?
The improvements came with a cost, I'm sure that's what most of us can understand. The problem is that the cost of the new product was a factor of 10 greater than the previous version. Upgrading became prohibitive, especially in this economy, and there was no system in place to notify existing clients when maintenance contracts ran out. A lot of companies (my employer included) were left loving the new product, but finding that Telligent hard to negotiate an agreement with.

The Smart Way - pricing with customer usage in mind
I had a somewhat similar pricing problem with Salesforce last year, when I was looking into purchasing their customer portal. The way that service was priced made absolutely no sense for how we needed to use it. And ours was not a unique case...Thankfully, Salesforce has an active, loyal community on the IdeaExchange. After many conversations and suggestions, I was extremely happy to hear from our sales reps earlier this year that they had changed their pricing model based on all this feedback. The win? More people could actually PURCHASE and USE their product.

The tally
So here's what happened:

• My company's maintenance agreement for last year's version of Community Server ran out
• Telligent didn't notify us on time for us to take action
  
• We reached out to Telligent and asked about their new version. Our rep told us it would be about $1,000 more to upgrade. We got jazzed.
  
• After a demo of the new version with a new sales person, my company made the decision to upgrade
• That's when a new sales person created a proposal for 10x the original price we bought the old software package
• Telligent will not honor previous quotes (written quotes, mind you) from our initial sales rep and refuses to understand that it's not typical for prices to increase this much from one year to the next

Like I said, I've seen the new product and it's great (that's why we wanted to buy it in the first place!). Is it 10x better? That's debatable. In addition, as my boss mentioned, Telligent's prices are suspiciously neat numbers, not to mention that they are way above any of their competitors (Jive, Sharepoint, etc.), without offering a tremendous added value. Did Telligent just wake up one morning and create a new price list, without any plan on maintaining old customers or acquiring new ones? It seems that Community Server was under-priced for a while and Telligent probably lost money. However, losing clients in this economy and leaving a bitter taste in people's mouths can't be a wise approach.

I wish we could use something like Drupal. Too bad my company's security settings will not allow it. I guess we'll wait and see where our negotiations with Telligent and their competitors end up.

Turf Wars (or "The Situation When We All Lose")

Image by beta karel via Flickr

We live in a day and age when people who lead an initiative are seen as the true heroes. However, we often seem to forget that it's physically impossible for all of us to be leaders. The next best thing you can do is follow ideas that are good/smart. Having the ability to discern between an idea that will take off & one that won't (or, better yet, make an idea take off) is a pretty unique skill and deserving of some recognition as well.

What prompted this train of thought? David Childers (@EthicsPointCEO) said it best, last week was ethics & compliance week and it's probably one of the best-kept secrets in our industry. The tradition started with a compliance group who launched the celebration a few years back. Granted, it may have begun with the intent of using it for promotional purposes, but in the economic situation we're in and after so many financial scandals, you'd think that people would unite and celebrate this week because it's something much bigger than the sum of its parts.

I'm happy my company (EthicsPoint) choose to jump in and organize some events around it, including awarding the top companies who put a lot of thought into the experience their employees have when they try to report breaches of ethics in their workplace. However, as a young person in the field of compliance, I'm genuinely disappointed in all these groups who say they help companies, and yet refuse to join a celebration like this because some petty reason. At some point, it really shouldn't matter who came up with the idea, whether you have a partnership or not with the entity who did, etc. We're not in 5th grade anymore.

Come on, people...this is why the world is in its current state.

Of Herding Cats And Other Wonderful Stories

Image by law_keven via Flickr

Warning - long-ish post.
I've been thinking a lot about online community management. Ever since I've been tasked with coming up with the strategy & implementation around the re-launch of EthicsPoint's customer forums, I had to do a bit of head-scratching around the best ways to tackle community creation & growth. In addition, I've also been involved for a few weeks (and mostly quiet lately) on the Patoomba project with Scott Berkun & his team. Thanks to both these activities, I can finally put some of my gut feelings about community management into words.

Community Management Is Not Project Management.
Adding the word "management" to this type of role begs the assumption that if someone has business management experience, this should be something they can easily tackle. After all, it's simply another project, right? Well, not exactly.

Managing a community is much more like shaping a bonsai tree - it's a highly organic process. You always work with your big vision in mind and you need to sometimes chop down small pieces, for the sake of a better growth somewhere else. I'd say the strongest characteristic of someone successful in this role is an incredible amount of self and goal awareness. This should come together with the ability to act swiftly on whatever decision helps the community in the long run.

I've also heard people describe this role using a military command & control term, situational awareness. It makes the whole picture less friendly, but there is something to be said about being able to make swift decisions in a highly dynamic environment.

A. The Content Is King Approach.
There's a very thoughtful thread on Edward Tufte's Ask E.T. forum on one aspect of community management - how you moderate internet forum discussions. As you scroll down the page, you might end up feeling that the guy is a bit tyrannical in how he manages dialogue on his site. However, it's precisely because of the care he puts in editing the published content that people go back to these threads and consider them valuable. I know that whenever I read Ask E.T., I will get the most pertinent, well-written points of view. It also makes me think twice before I rant and ramble on that forum. The result? A niche community that is built and thrives on top notch quality.

B. The Pinata Approach.
Being a Community Manager is like being a pinata. People beat you with sticks and you still give them candy - Heather Champ, Community Manager at Flickr.

I'll oversimplify here: there are communities for which this pinata approach might work - for those communities, growing (in numbers) and engaging with people are the only goals. This type of community requires a different kind of maintenance, mostly because in edge cases it tends to generate a lot of banter and internet drama. In that case, the goal of the community manager is to make sure that things stay exciting and the forum isn't run over by trolls. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it!

The rules are dictated by the kind of community you're trying to grow.
"We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate." - Thoreau

The edge case I've seen many times is that community managers are afraid to upgrade technology or made landslide changes (even ones for the better) because users might be inconvenienced to re-enter their information/sign-up all over again. I understand the fear of decreasing numbers, but at the same time, if people can't be bothered to sign up again, how active were they in the first place? How valuable were they to the community and how valuable was the community to them?

Going back to my quote above: not all users are equal, you can't use the same incentives for everyone, and the choice of technology can't please everyone. You have to make sure that the choices you make empower the core of your community, and not just a clique. If people really care about an online group, no amount of technology or bad user interface will stand in the way. And, as long as you don't abuse or overly strain that thin line between healthy purging and a line of changes that can't be manageable, the community will adapt and grow. New users will replace old users and bring new energy with them.

The Perfect Is The Enemy of The Good

Image by bitzcelt via Flickr

I heard this expression a long time ago and, after I figured out what it meant, it proceeded to irk me every time it was used as an excuse to push mediocre work out the door. I happened to see the sentence repeated on blogs about startups/business recently, so I thought I'd rant a bit about it.

The Limited Case Scenario. There are only two situations where I can envision the sentence "the perfect is the enemy of the good" being true without cringing too much:

1) if you are a very new startup. You simply need to get stuff done, understandably. There's a lot of work, limited resources, and the ever-present feeling that you'll never clear your to-do list by the end of this century.

2) if you're collaborating. It's obvious that the result you're producing is just meant to get some creativity/shape around the issue you're solving. No need to fret about it, you'll get there as a team.

The Nightmare. Once you get in a rhythm in which you're pushing poor work out the door in hope to get items off your task list, it's incredibly hard to push yourself to change your standards. Multiply that across the team and you're now having a workplace cultural problem. This is much, MUCH harder to change.

You can't build a brand on mediocrity. Since the damage is so profound and difficult to reverse, I'm happy if I never hear that sentence again. I think we tend to forget that words carry meaning and power. More than that, we forget that repeating certain words cause them to become ingrained in the way people do things.

I should rephrase my conclusion though, it's not that you *can't* build a brand on mediocrity - of course you *can*, but why would you want to?? The result of this approach will never be a trailblazer brand, one that attracts a strong following and polarizes people. We have plenty of lukewarm brands everywhere....talk when you have something meaningful to say and start a business when you have a revolutionary idea that you can implement WELL. (P.S. Don't forget the last part.)