Wait - he's taking my money?

Not long ago, I had a very smart (PhD) C-level executive tell me, "One thing we don't need on our home page is a bookmark button. I think people already know how to bookmark something." 

He could only have thought this by disbelieving or ignoring the advantage of custom bookmarks/feeds to your reader and the widespread use of bookmarking icons across the footers of literally thousands of web sites.  He let the relative simplicity of the tool's sophistication obscure the fact that for most people it has a high level of everyday usefulness.

The truth is we're all myopic in some way or another. It's dangerous to insulate yourself with your success (or degree/or title). A political heiress may need someone to tell her she's not cut out for the job. A governor may need someone to tell him that an FBI wiretap is probably not capricious. A pastor may need someone to point out that the huge slide about "Calvanism" should actually be spelled "Calvinism" (at least by the time the third service rolls around). 

Faithful are the wounds of a friend - even if she might not invite you to her Martha's Vineyard bash this New Year's Eve.

A very happy and safe new year to all of you, and all the best in 2009.  If you're a praying person, say one for me - I'll return the favor.

Do you have a mystique?

Every business needs a defining quality, call it a mystique or whatever you like. It's not your purpose statement or your elevator pitch, although it's probably included in those. It's that attribute your competition just can't duplicate - the thing you go to the trouble to do better than anyone else.

I attended a briefing this week at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago and was impressed with one of their employees in particular. He's the head parking valet and his name is Kofi Boasiako. Kofi did his job so well, I honestly don't think anyone else could replace him. He took his work seriously, put things on a personal level and went the extra mile when there was a complication. I'm not easily impressed and I'm more than glad to mention it when I am.

As it turns out, Kofi works at the Ritz-Carlton for a reason. He's part of the mystique. That same afternoon, someone asked me if I had seen this article (I had not mentioned anything about the R-C in the conversation). If you can imitate this kind of attitude, you will stand out from the competition.

Whether it's your business or your own personal brand, what will ensure your success in tough times? Mystique (and your commitment to it).

Thanksgiving

In doing business of course, there's a bonus for being thankful to your customers.  They'll be less likely to think about going somewhere else.

 

But a more spontaneous general attitude of gratefulness is a mark of decency. When children aren't appropriately thankful, they ought to find themselves up in their rooms thinking about it. True thankfulness, whether it's to your host, your parents or your Creator is like wearing shoes, eating with a fork and other good manners - it civilizes you.

Even more importantly than its effect on others, being thankful gives you a heart attitude that will keep you from a prideful death-spiral that ultimately seeks to be beholden to nothing and no one.  To the contrary, a heart of real thankfulness is one that evokes generosity, as it did with Edward Winslow in his description of the first Thanksgiving in 1621, "...and although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."

In tough economic times, you'll see more businesses opting for the default behavior (Walgreen's), which makes the few in the second category (Lands End), stand out all the more.  Taking your customers for granted (defining your competition differently than your customers do) will only put you in line for a government bailout.

Delegating the details

In the new era of transparency, do you still have an assistant writing your letters and then adding your electronic signature from a generic, or worse, a do-not-reply e-mail address? You might as well just start deleting people from your distribution list, rather than end up in their auto-archive filter.

How about research? Are you like Tim Conway's classic executive calling Missis-a-Whiggins on the intercom every time you need a reference source? Have you ever gotten this amusing link sent back to you? (Probably not unless your admin is in the habit of testing your sense of humor.) Hyper-delegation often has a way of making you look unprepared and hollow when there's a follow-up question.

What should your admin be doing? Well, particularly if you're sending out e-mails to thousands of customers, prospects or employees, there's a great value in getting a critical review. The CEO who "announced" an acquisition that took place two years earlier could have surely used a second pair of eyes before it went out to all of the acquired company's employees, as well as the (literally) thousands of others. The school principal who makes routine spelling errors in his updates surely amuses some sharp-eyed students, but not necessarily the members of the PTO.

Just a reminder to take your communications seriously - and make them real - if you expect people to read them that way.

The New Realities BSM Interview with Casey Kindiger

A couple years ago, the top-returned item in a google search of "BSM" was the "British School of Motoring." So it's a great leap forward already just to get to the clarification that it generally refers to "Business Service Management" (at least stateside).

Now for the next question, when a company says they do "business service management," what does that mean exactly? The entry in Wikipedia describes it as a "methodology for monitoring and measuring IT services from a business perspective" including both process and software. What it really amounts to is one of Peter Drucker's new realities of how you view and use technology to make your business work better every day.

If anyone knows what's at the heart of BSM, it's the CEO of IBM's top-ranked Tivoli partner and service management software reseller, Casey Kindiger. Here's an interview that just came out in TechRepublic where I sat down with Casey to ask ten questions about what is really at the heart of this new way of looking at the purpose of technology in business, as well as the three types of BSM players out there today.

It stands to reason

If you're working for a monolithic, impersonal, quota-driven organization in these tough economic times, you're aware of the extra scrutiny people doing the "real selling" give to those applying the "marketing spin."  Being under the loop makes it all the more important to stay above the fray, far from the madding crowd and be the voice of discreet but genuine candidness.

Seth Godin (All Marketers Are Liars) does this on a regular basis. So does fellow New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Krauthammer, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in person recently.  No matter which candidate you're voting for next week, Charles has a knack for saying it like it is.  He does it again in last Friday's Washington Post. 

The FOX News Legacy

Our family just got back from a whirlwind trip to Washington, DC over the weekend where we got to appreciate some of the uniqueness of the nation's capitol. After living in Berlin and San Francisco and Chicago and visiting some other incredibly beautiful cities like Zurich and Paris, it's always fascinating to notice the contrast in different urban settings.

The primary reason for our trip was to visit my oldest son Axel, who is interning at the only news show mentioned in the presidential debates and the gem of Rupert Murdoch's crown, FOX News.  The team at the station was very gracious and gave us a fantastic tour and even let us sit in on a live panel show covering the "generated crisis" with Bret Baier.  Here are a few FOX facts I found intriguing and highly encouraging:

- The FOX News Channel is twelve years old this month.

- Since January of 2002, FOX has ranked first overall in total day and prime time audience.

- Just last month, FOX had its second-highest rated month ever (the top month was April of 2003)

- Since 1997, FOX has grown from a 3% share of the total day cable news market to its current 39%.

- Special Report with Brit Hume, who came from ABC News in 1997, is the #1 cable news program in the nation.

Another tidbit every baseball fan is aware of this week is that FOX has the exclusive coverage of the World Series, where they've carried 10 of the last 12 matchups.

Moving Toward 1:1 Marketing

How important is your customer relationship management solution to you? Do your customers know that you know them and are working to make their experience as personally relevant as possible? I've gotten two invitations in the last week that were addressed to "Dear Lynda" and "FirstName." Here's an interview I did in TechRepublic today with CRM expert Jon Cline that covers some great insights about the future of CRM. 

Thanks Jon!

How much is your degree worth?

A good percentage of the people I hear from and work with have technology backgrounds - including degrees in information technology of one kind or another.  Here's an interesting survey being done this week by the innovative people over at TechRepublic for all of you who have pursued technology as an academic endeavor (and for managers and recruiters who hire people for IT positions!)  The anonymous results will be the basis for a special report on IT/IS undergrad programs and will include the importance of that piece of paper vs. hands-on work experience.  

(HINT: All of you who were at my presentation yesterday in Chicago should be interested in this!)

Upcoming Webinar Series on Service Management

I'll be hosting a webinar series on service management coming up in October if you're interested in ways to make your technology act more businesslike.  The series is a prequel to IBM's big annual Pulse event at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas next quarter.  The three webinar presentations will come from experts at generationE and IBM and will cover automating service management, service quality management, and the service desk of the future.  The first call is on October 8. For a full description and the registration page, see the link here.

More on the OODA Loop (and Presidential Candidates)

Here's an interesting piece by Charlie Martin in The American Thinker related to my last post on the OODA Loop.  That's right, McCain was a fighter pilot too... and evidently one with a tight combat envelope.

Judgment, Leadership, and the OODA Loop

Heard a great presentation this week at the Technology Executives Network from Major Matt Tracy, USMC, a decorated officer with some recent combat experience, notably in Haditha.  One of his main points had to do with the OODA Loop popularized by fighter pilot (Col) John Boyd in the 80's.  

Tracy is by current MOS (profession in civilian-speak) a recruiter, but his premise was that this kind of fast, ultra-dynamic, guerilla-warfare mindset is highly valuable in the corporate marketplace as well.  I also appreciated his emphasis on character in both worlds, which you would expect from an officer in the corps of course.

Making good decisions involves exceptional judgment and a willingness to take responsibility for them (as opposed to being hired as an axe-man to carry out a RIF and then skating off with a big cash bonus from Houston). Good judgment is not leadership though. Great leadership inspires ordinary people to do extraordinary things. And it is much more rare.

And because of that unfortunate paucity, (have you noticed?) people are sometimes put in management positions who have more judgment than leadership. Let's avoid that when we can.

Miraculous (or just remarkable)?

What's miraculous is hard to define and it's certainly subjective, but a lot of miracles and personal sacrifices seem to go largely unnoticed.  Which should make them all the more remarkable to us when we do recognize them - and let someone know we appreciate their work to make something extraordinary happen.  It doesn't take much folks, and it's part of good leadership.  

(OK, I'm jumping down from my soapbox now, but I do think this is important - and too easy to pass up.)

What's that snazzy new icon?

I understand some people are just going to be loyal to one browser.  For better or worse, I'm finding things that work better on each of three or four now.  The new Google browser has some easy-to-appreciate smoothness and seems to be at least as fast as Safari - and it comes with its own nifty (if a bit lengthy) cartoon...

I like the idea of rolling this out and having a mammoth userbase for a more thorough beta.  Possibly an idea to be adopted with the release of the Android phone.  There's a great article by Ed Catmull in the September Harvard Business Review about how Pixar realized that operating different areas of its business with differing standards was "bad for its soul."

Mean Time to Response

There's an old axiom that action is the intersection of initiative and opportunity. Technology (and other conveniences we take for granted) very often solves the issue of lacking opportunity. It puts the world right at our fingertips. All that's left is the initiative part.

"I didn't think of it" often becomes the last refuge for us, which of course begs the question "why not?" Technology is our deus ex machina in that defense too with any number of reminders and calendars and alarms. So - no more excuses.

More than ever, the final weight of responsibility for taking action comes down to our sense of priority. That's all that's left. So is it the environment? family? career? financial security? character? reputation? respect for others and their time? You fill in the blank.

For many of us with all this ubiquitous technology at our disposal, the questions "why weren't you there?" or "why didn't you call him back?" or "why didn't you reply to that e-mail yet?" or "why was that presentation so lame?" are more dependent than ever on our priority-driven initiative rather than on a question of opportunity.

A good question now is whether our priorities today are different than they will be when we look back 100 years from now.

iOpener Event in Chicago

Today's i-Opener event packed the house at the Chicago Cultural Center and was highlighted with group discussions around the importance of creativity and innovation to the future of technology in Chicago. Edwin Lange, EVP at SAP, made some revelations about how a company like SAP harnesses innovation. Get a picture of the impact i.c. stars is having on changing young people's lives with technology here.

The Business End of Social Networking - Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook

A day after the launch of the new Facebook, is COO Sheryl Sandberg focused on growing revenues? No. The emphasis is still on user growth, particularly outside their core demographic, and outside English as the core language.

Facebook's revenue stream, she says, is built more around the networking nature of the application, things like the recent ad design contest on Facebook for the Mazda 3. In spite of the monetizing of click-ads that now appear on each page, Sandberg holds that Facebook's objective is not to compete with direct-response advertisers like Google (where she worked for six years prior to taking the COO position), but on viral and brand ads.

See the interview here.

A Smartphone for the Mensa Pro

For the Mensa crowd out there, Palm has just announced a really smart new smartphone called the "Pro" this week. And if you're in that market, you know who you are.

I suspect that, like the credentials of PhD's who consistently say "for him and I" and have three points in their four-point presentation, this may be something to hang on your e-mail signature ("sent from my new Palm Pro") rather than a huge jump in thinking power.

When the latest delay in the Google Android was announced, I decided to go ahead with Palm's Centro which had just been rolled out for Verizon users. Palm had quietly sold over two million of these by the end of July at $99 each. I'm not jeans-and-sandals enough for an iPhone yet, and I'm not ready for a phone that cooks breakfast for me, so the Centro is a good fit.

I'll leave the technical details to those above my pay grade, but there are some very handy improvements in the way I use the phone every day over my old Treo. It switches smoothly from MMS to SMS, copies and pastes from one application to another, has easily accessible "stacked" text conversations, creates a customizable drop down menu for any function (i.e. "text Joe," "e-mail Sue," or "GoogleDocs"), and it runs mobile versions of applications like Facebook, YouTube, TripIt and GoogleMaps very nicely. The "pTunes" audio player works for me and offers a bevy of web-radio stations. The keyboard is smaller but very usable and fast and I prefer it to the virtual version.

See if you can save yourself a couple Ben Franklins - and if you edit your signature to say you're e-mailing from your Palm Pro, I'll never know the difference.

generationE Makes the 2008 Fast Growth 100

generationE Technologies was pleased to be included among this year's 100 fastest growing IT channel companies. Average growth for the group from 2005-07 was 153% with sales of $106 million, so it's quite an honor to be included. All contenders are required to be independent IT consulting companies based in the US, with at least $1M in sales in 2005. The full list from CRN, parent company of Channel Web and VAR Business is here.

Two Handy Tools For Your PC - Tripit and SnapShots

I've been finding these two free apps very handy and easy to use and I hope you do as well.

Tripit allows you to do two things, track travel plans and make travel reservations. Just create an account and forward any itinerary to plans@tripit.com. It picks out all the key information and puts it all in one handy schedule. Once you've got that, it collects relevant information like local maps and weather, and also shares access to schedules within your network.

On the front end of the trip, you can also use their search tool to compare expedia, hotwire, travelocity, orbitz and priceline, along with some of the major airlines' sites, all in one shot. Anyone who does any amount of traveling should try it. My instinct says there are even more features to come.

SnapShots is an easy application for a quick site preview with a mouse-over. That's it. Very simple and easy to use. You can also add it to your own site for people not using snapshots to see a preview. Try it and you'll be amazed at how un-animated a regular url looks without it.

Webinar Next Week on Performance Management

We've got a great webinar put together for anyone interested in finding out more about IBM's performance management solution "Proviso."  I'll be talking with generationE's resident expert, Gordon Owens, about the competitors, the current state of performance management and of course, why now is the right time for taking a look at the Proviso solution.  You can register at no cost at this link - just click the dropdown for the 7/22 event.

Are you finding what you're looking for?

Sometimes we really don't know what we're looking for. But we've got an idea. And we've got the right direction. Even when we get the results, we still have to be satisfied that we're headed in the right direction and we can try some further refinements. George Will used to quip, "Perfection is the enemy of the good," but it helps to keep pursuing it... relentlessly.

If I were putting together a survey about supporters of a presidential candidate, I wouldn't expect to find a correlation with pet ownership. But if you throw it in the mix and there's a connection, it's something to follow up on. What is it about pet owners anyway? Does this make sense, now that you think about it? What about cat owners vs. dog owners?

Admittedly, surveys can be quirky and the results can be subjective, but it can be interesting to see what direction the results take you. What helps you connect the dots with your customers? Do you ever let people on your team take a (more) random shot to try to uncover something totally unexpected?

What kind of work do you do?

You’re in a rut. Your job has nowhere to go and you’re not getting an abundance of direction from your first-line manager on your career path options. Your first thought is, “I’ll start sending out my resume so a potential employer sees it and contacts me about my work.”

What if you were thinking, “I need to get my work out there so a potential employer sees it and contacts me for my resume” instead? I’ve hired hundreds of employees and as much as I try to trust people until they give me a good reason not to, I always trust the ones I found more than the ones who found me.

Here are six tips to getting yourself “out there.”

Write something. Anything. One of the things consultants are encouraged to do for their own benefit, and even given performance incentives for, is to write a white paper about what they are doing. Get it posted on your corporate site, corporate blog, personal blog, networking profile, e-bulletin board, etc. It’s painful to put technical work into writing and often it just doesn’t get done; which means all the more value for you if you do.

Include a photo. It may sound funny, but it’s not like it used to be. It’s just not that much trouble anymore. Especially in a sales position, you can communicate your professional appearance with a small photo. More networkers are doing this. Sure there will still be an interview, but set expectations with a simple picture. Tip: have someone you trust pick the photo for you.

Emphasize abilities over skills. I was talking to a CIO of a large transportation firm at an executive lunch recently, and he told me his new employees over the next five years won’t have a particular skillset, but the ability to learn new skills as they become necessary. The landscape is changing too quickly to hire a bunch of people who can do process X v.5.1, when 6.1 is coming out next week and it may be part of the cloud by next quarter.

Entry-level: focus on objective line and qualifications. If you’re pursuing an entry-level job, writing a good objective line is key. It’s your elevator pitch. Make it very clear, even narrow, what it is you are hoping to do next. “I could do any of these five positions,” is not a strong opener. Also, for your first or second job, qualifications are more important. If you just got certified for the Apple genius bar, or ITIL foundations, or Netcool Precision, put it at the top of your profile. What is valuable to a prospective employer at this level is that you have done some serious consideration of what it is you’re good at.

Career move: focus on experience with problems and opportunities. For those farther along in their career, it’s much more helpful to be able to describe two things: problems you’ve resolved and opportunities you’ve created. Spend some time building these two categories in your profile on a regular basis. At this level, you’re not all about certifications but about having developed some combination of unique and valuable abilities. Pick something you’re good at where you’re as extraordinary as possible.

Use your network. Along with the advantage of experience, a more seasoned employee should have built some relationships along the way. Using a business network like Plaxo (now a $175M part of Comcast) or LinkedIn (a $1B company by comparison) will help you to keep track. You still need a resume but use your contacts, colleagues, business associates to network. If you don’t and you’re coming to me blind with no introduction, I’m wondering why.

Don’t wait for a pink slip to start working on this. Building a profile is proactive and constant and it sets you apart from the next guy a little more every day.

The Telecoms Triple Play

If you remember back in your world history class to Europe's “Triple Alliance,” Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary joined forces to create the most powerful combination of military might in the world through the start of WWI. If you hadn't noticed, another alliance of three powers is emerging recently to dominate the world of global communications.

Over the last few years, the common objectives of our three primary media of telephone, television and the internet are increasingly being combined in bundling arrangements, both from the providers' and end-users' perspectives, with significant impact to both business and residential users. Whether you’re dialing a number on keypad, pressing a channel button on a remote, or clicking a mouse, you're likely to soon be sharing the same physical cable or fiber with the same amalgam carrier.

There are a few big names duking it out in terms of dominant standards. Cisco Systems leads the charge in supporting “Multi Protocol Label Switching” platforms to allow both the new and existing services to converge and to enable a transition to an infrastructure more dependent on internet protocol, particularly in VOIP services. IBM has rolled out internet-specific management software like the Tivoli Network Manager-IP edition to monitor events, alerts and alarms across the broadened Internet-Protocol Transfer spectrum, as well as keep tabs on overall availability and reliability.

For a more in-depth look at the significance of unified communications technologies and particularly the impact on you as business or personal user, take a look at this free webcast coming out at TechRepublic next month.

Not by Abraham Lincoln: The "Ten Cannots"

Apparently these have a lot more clout if you think Abraham Lincoln came up with them. Or if you think Ronald Reagan used them in a speech in 1992. The truth is Reagan did but Lincoln didn't. They're actually by a little-known German pastor whose life overlapped with JFK's. But they certainly do sound like Lincoln.

Sometimes you can find great stuff at Wal-Mart (don't tell Paris Hilton).

The Ten Cannots
- You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
- You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
- You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
- You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
- You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
- You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
- You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
- You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
- You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.
- And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

William J. H. Boetcker, 1873-1962

The Pulse Event (IBM in Orlando)

Just got back from IBM's powerhouse "Pulse" event at the Swan and Dolphin in Orlando this week. If you can imagine every parking spot on the acres and acres of Disney property being filled, you get the idea. Of course, in the larger-than-life Disney/Epcot atmosphere, everything seems all the more enormous.

generationE Technologies was a major sponsor of the event this year as our focus on IBM solutions has become increasingly central to the business. Three big splashes were the service management partner award for our work creating a Google Earth-Tivoli Netcool mashup with Aircell (see their intro to wi-fi when you fly here), special recognition as the partner with the most certifications in IBM's new AAA partner ranking system, and a rollout of a collaborative wiki around the application dependency and discovery solution "TADDM," where generationE was a featured contributor.

In the photo above is generationE's Managed Services Director Gregg Spencer, who ranks as one of the people with the most diverse backgrounds I have ever met. Gregg has faced down an angry mob as a Dallas policeman, single-handedly rescued a large software-driven embroidery company, spent some time in firefighting, miraculously survived a high-speed truck crash and in his spare time takes care of all our internal technical systems. And he's an all-around great guy to work with.

Do You Want to Permanently Erase These Files?

Have you ever considered donating your old computer(s) to a school or other organization, but been reluctant because of the chance of your data still being on the hard drive somewhere? If you've been thinking about about selling, donating or otherwise getting rid of a pc, how do you make sure you've eliminated all the sensitive information (passwords, financial information, work-related documents) you've stored on your hard drive? Deleting only eliminates the file reference until the space on the drive is overwritten; hence the usefulness of programs that "undelete." Here's a free Windows utility to overwrite your data with a random pattern and make sure it's really gone before you find a new home for your pc.

Now i c stars

Today's big event in Chicago was the i.c. stars Capitalize on Illinois event. Wow - what an assembly of CIO and other executives all in one room. Founder Sandee Kastrul commands a fantastic energy level and a list of participants from companies like Siemens, Allstate, IBM, Hewitt, Motorola and a roomful of others. If you're in business in Chicago and you don't know about this yet, you need to get on board. i.c. stars is a remarkable program in Chicago that transforms aspiring young talent into IT professionals over 1000 hours of concentrated training, many times doubling and even tripling their income. See their recruiting page here and their corporate page here.

Kellogg MBA Dave Peak made a special presentation on his latest endeavor, LiquidTalk, which is a solution designed to increase productivity among mobile workers by pushing content out to their phones and PDA's while they're on the road. Particularly for companies with large sales teams, this has real potential for adding value. Here's an article about their launch with Blackberry earlier this year.

Wi-Fi When You Fly

OK - so at the moment the FAA is about as popular with the airlines industry as an American flag at a Dixie Chicks concert. But once we get past the "recent unpleasantness," there are some changes about to be rolled out that will shake things up in a good way.

Imagine this - your flight touches down, you get off the plane and walk out through the gate. You turn the corner and with a flash of your ID you pick up your made-to-order latte and sandwich. It's got your name on it and it's already paid for. You ordered it through the web site on the flight back and the barista knew when you'd be landing and when you'd be walking by. And by the way you also finished your report on the flight and ten hardcopies are at the printer kiosk as you continue toward the cab stand... where your car is waiting.

Is it reasonable to expect this anytime soon when the airlines are still sending surveys asking things like whether or not you checked luggage, whether you had a connecting flight and if it was on time? Well, the competition for your airmiles is about to get tougher as broadband rolls out to the air travel industry. See the article on Aircell here.

Free Speech in a Flat World

In the wake of international scrutiny China has lowered the firewall for its citizens to access the English version of Wikipedia - with some sensitive pages blocked. Sounds like a step in the right direction. I would expect the "olympics" page is one that may be blocked or unblocked on a daily basis.

How's freedom of speech doing in the U.S.? Are there questions you can't ask? Positions you shouldn't hold? If you look very far on the web, it would appear there aren't many things you can't say.

In American academia though, challenging Darwinian dogma is the new taboo. And Ben Stein is being decried as a "willful ignoramus" who "must have lost his mind" and now risks being Expelled on or about April 18 when his controversial movie is released.

Stein apparently implies that scientific bias can be a result of, and a justification for, a preferred worldview. Is he allowed to say that? We'll find out in a couple weeks.

Web 2.0 and Problem Resolution

If your IT department is still using a traditional knowledge base to speed problem resolution, you'll want to consider stepping up the pace by automating the process.

Wiki-based automated runbooks take advantage of collaboration and clickable fixes with advantages similar to those of Wikipedia over a hardback Brittanica. I wrote a short article describing the new breed of RBA that the good people at TechRepublic were kind enough to publish this week - you can link to it here.

Marketing China

Ten years after Bill Clinton returned from the far east to say, "China is moving to join the thriving community of free democracies," the ancient empire is surging forward from an economic standpoint, but that seems to be in increasingly starker contrast to their stubbornly repressive social policy.

Last summer, economic reports positioned China as a threat to Germany's status as the world's third largest producer after the US and Japan. Today Germany has its work cut out in quelling doubts about its economic challenger's ability to host the quickly-approaching summer games. The proponents of commercialized Leninism seem bent on the idea that they can reverse Gorbachev's strategy of politics-then-economics for a winning model of modernized communism.

On the other side of the globe, how much of a stake do we hold? 30% of China's exports currently come to the United States. For 1.3 billion Chinese, western perceptions will affect more than the disposition of the Olympics, but as Tibet is well aware, the Olympics may be anything from a harbinger to a flash-point of what is to come. With a quickly diminishing latency, the Sino-American relationship has potential to be one of the central issues driving the candidates' platforms by November.

Just Jott A Voicemail To My E-mail

When the iPhone came out, one of the spiffs Apple touted was the ability to organize your voicemails like e-mails.

But what if your voicemails came to your inbox and you could read them, hear them, forward them or archive them? That might be enough to switch to AT&T... or maybe not. Save that dilemma for another day - you can do it with Jott.

You can also transcribe a reminder to be sent to your phone or computer on a given date, or transcribe notes in the car on your phone as you're coming back from a meeting. In the messages I've sent so far the voice recognition works remarkably well, although I haven't used it long enough to be the poster child for Jott.

But maybe you will. Try it out here.

Let Us Talk of William F. Buckley

The silver cord has finally broken for a man who lived the fullest of lives. William F. Buckley, Jr. died today at 82.

On a cloudy night in 1987, as a sergeant at the end of the cold war, I was driving an eight-hour night shift with a truck full of barbed-wire through the streets of West Berlin between Andrews Compound and Doughboy Field. It was part of an exercise for logistics measurement so we never unloaded, just turned around and drove back and forth again. Fortunately the giant diesel beast had a cassette player and I brought my new copy of William F. Buckley's book "Right Reason" on tape and listened the entire time.

I missed the prematurely-abbreviated "Jaunt Around The Globe at Mach 2" on the Concorde with Buckley that year, but I did get started on his Blackford Oakes spy series with "Stained Glass" and named my first son after one of his characters. It wasn't until fifteen years later that I met Mr. Buckley in person after attending a debate at the Moody Church in Chicago and got to talk with him for a few minutes. He was obviously tired after the event and the interviews that followed and I truly appreciated his graciously taking the time.

His thoughts were always on a higher level and seemed to look beyond the superficial even making more mundane matters seem elevated. In fact, one of Buckley's greatest books is "Nearer my God" about the victories and struggles of his life of faith. You don't get any nearer than he is now.

Starbucks - The Missing Three Hours

Caribou should have seen a little spike for three hours yesterday afternoon as thousands of Starbucks customers were forced to drive down the road to order "grandes" instead of "ventis." Can you communicate the importance of "we'd rather not do business at all than not do business right" by closing your doors to your customers in order to do training?

Jon writes to explain the logic behind Starbucks' marketing decision: Howard Schultz wants everyone to know he has "retaken" the company and is behind this move. They are reigning in growth in the States in favor of more overseas expansion which could make more sense. Building more stores doesn't mean people will stop in more times in a day for coffee just because they pass five more stores on their ride home.

They grew too fast, took business away from established stores, caused managers to miss their bonuses (because of the cannibalization) and created some unhappy baristas. It looks like they are going back to their "happy place" of what makes Starbucks what it really is; a company that is 100% coffee. To wit, they just got rid of their expanded food program. Customers don't go to Starbucks for a salad and sandwich, they go there for a latte and a scone.

It's clearly a great company that had the right marketing going, but got too big and drifted away from their roots and their niche of what they do THE BEST IN THE WORLD. If they get back to what made them great, they'll be fine. An anchor on FoxNews was just ripping on customer service and how it took ten minutes to get a latte. That's not good. You pay $5 for a latte that is made fast, well and with a dash of coffee attitude. Today's closing is for that reason. Back to basics!

Thanks Jon - great lesson here for all of us.

Marketing Darwin and Ben Stein

Thirty years ago, we remembered this as Abraham Lincoln's birthday and every year we cut out silhouettes of the president who guided us through one of our nation's most troubled times. Now the 12th of February is being marketed as "Darwin Day" by several groups in the US, such as PETA.

I have a wonderful dog (boxer) and of course I view dogs as far superior to cats, but I have a tough time grasping PETA president Ingrid Newkirk's claim that "A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." (In fact, I have to wonder if she has ever had a dog.) There are at least a few, like the author Aldous Huxley in "Ends and Means," who admit that they embrace this kind of worldview without any deeper meaning, "because it frees me to my own...pursuits."

But not former presidential speechwriter (and game show host, lawyer, professor, etc.) Ben Stein. The trailer for his new movie "Expelled" came out today, not coincidentally. An interesting new/old challenge for the 21st century's egalitarian claims in the marketplace of ideas. Every generation has its rebel - see what you think.

Video on Demand and a Worthy Competitor (Redbox)

Have an opinion on downloadable video? With the introduction of Apple's online video offering, Techdirt is running a poll for market input on how Netflix stacks up against the iPod company's foray into the growing market.

In the world of physical DVD's, the innovative folks at Redbox have offered to give you a free rental just to try them out. You can find their kiosks all over, from Walgreen's to Wal-Mart (parent company: McDonald's Ventures). As of late last year, they had over 6000 locations - more than Blockbuster - and you can return the disc at a different location than you rented it with no penalty.

Best thing about the Redbox business model - every rental is $1/night. Can't beat it - except free, which you can get by entering "dvdonme" when you check out.

Measuring Leadership

Leadership is a topic I'm fascinated by - and I am intrigued by the ways it is measured both commonly and at a higher level. I'm enjoying re-reading Maxwell's book on leadership's 21 irrefutable laws at the moment with a group of friends and would recommend his organization highly.

Different people view leadership as distinctly as any other thing in my experience. I remember sitting on a conference call where a silver-fringed senior manager bristled back at the voice on the phone with a vicious, "what do you mean exactly by servant-leadership?!" She obviously saw it differently than Tom Peters does.

My friend Eric Lannert at i.c. stars wrote recently about the difficulty in quantifying leadership in his non-profit organization. He says for-profits have it easy. Thanks a lot Eric!

The Internet Voter

In the building swirl of issues and debates, you may be wondering just which candidates you might want to vote for. Wouldn't it would be helpful to have a guide to some of the key financial, moral and foreign affairs issues (as well as noting how key they are to you) like immigration, Iraq and definition or marriage along with the relative positions of the candidates? Enter my politically savvy friend Tony who sends us this fourteen-question virtual voter quiz to a sort of online candidate dating service to help sort things out. Try it - it may not be give you the result you expect...

12 Questions with Sharon Taylor on ITIL V3

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which has become the best-practices standard in managing technology, has just come through a much-anticipated revision ("refresh") which effectively transforms it into a new kind of animal. I had the opportunity to talk with ITIL's key contributor Sharon Taylor about the impact of the new version and how it changes the best-practice landscape and the role it now plays in the business of technology. Here's a link to the interview in TechRepublic magazine. Feel free to digg, vote, forward...

Character in Advertising

A friend of mine thought this ad from Hyundai was unusual enough to point out its decidedly narrow-appeal message in a society where commitment isn't trendy. I think so too - interesting angle for a car company.

The more democratic our society, the more its success depends on our collective character. And on keeping our commitments.