Category Archives: Consulting

June 30, 2016 · 11:15 am

You Need To Own It

Since today is something called “Social Media Day” (when is it not?), I’d be remiss if I wrote about something other than a big topic in social media. Depending on your perspective, Facebook announced something yesterday that will either have you jumping for joy or throwing your hands up in frustration. As they put it in their announcement:

Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Fr...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We’ve heard from our community that people are still worried about missing important updates from the friends they care about. For people with many connections this is particularly important, as there are a lot of stories for them to see each day. So we are updating News Feed over the coming weeks so that the things posted by the friends you care about are higher up in your News Feed.

Can’t get enough of those pet pictures, I know.  But if you’re a publisher who has carefully cultivated a Facebook community over the last few years, this is really bad news. It decreases the likelihood that your audience will see your posts. When Facebook has become the source of a significant portion of your traffic (research says in the 40% range for many publishers), that’s not good. As an aside, there is more good information on this here.

Of course, the cynic in me wants to remind you that one can always purchase traffic from Facebook via ads and that despite Facebook’s statements that this is only to serve users who want to see those pet photos, it’s really a move to generate more ad activity. That’s fine. Facebook is there to serve its shareholders and it’s a business.

What this should also serve to do is to remind us that we need to own the audience and the platform. We can’t rely on third parties such as Facebook or Google to keep our communities (and content) front and center.  History tells us that the rules will change and that those platforms will come and go (Friendster, MySpace). Your community isn’t a bunch of bedouins who will decamp and follow you anywhere.

I’m always amused when a client asks if they should invest less on their own website and more on building a presence on third parties. You can guess my answer: own it! Do you?

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June 28, 2016 · 11:00 am

Going Backward Is Dumb. Looking Backward Isn’t.

There was a story in this morning’s paper that had me shaking my head once again. Seems as if it’s a daily occurrence, I know. This one got me thinking about the things we can take away from the subject and apply to business, which is also a daily occurrence. The story was about our shared stupidity and our general refusal to learn. Let me explain.

Here is the headline: American Drivers Regain Appetite for Gas Guzzlers. I’ve linked to the story but as you can imagine it has to do with many people giving up their fuel-efficient cars to buy gas guzzlers as the price of gas has fallen. Of course, in addition to adding a lot of room to the passenger compartment, these vehicles also add a lot of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, and unless you’re one of the few who are ignoring virtually every scientist on the planet, that is creating a changed climate for us all.

I’m not ranting today about the politics of this. To me, it’s not very different from what a lot of managers do in their own businesses. The higher price of gas was a crisis. Many car owners adjusted by decreasing driving, buying more efficient vehicles or using mass transit if it was available. Most good managers do the same sort of thing in a crisis. They cut spending, focus on business development, eliminate inefficient product lines, and do all of the other things one can do to continue on until the crisis has passed. What the great managers do is to continue to operate with that mindset even after the crisis is long gone under the assumption that the same problem or another one is virtually certain to rear its head at some point. That doesn’t mean they fail to invest once conditions have improved. It does mean that they learn from the crisis and adjust and they don’t go back to doing exactly what they were doing before.

I own a hybrid and my family owns two others. I can’t see going backward with respect to fuel efficiency and greenhouse emissions no matter how cheap gas becomes. I try not to go backward in business either. Going backward is dumb. Looking backward and learning isn’t. Your call.

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June 20, 2016 · 12:45 pm

Make Up Your Mind

At the risk of compelling you to sound like Ronald Reagan (“There you go again”), I’m going to weigh in on a lesson learned from yesterday’s US Open Golf Championship. I promise not to get into a discussion of the rules of golf!

There was a moment when Dustin Johnson, who was leading the tournament, had his golf ball move a tiny bit while he was preparing to putt. He notified the rules official about what had happened and the official told him that since ball moved without Johnson doing anything to cause it, there would be no penalty. At some point, other US Golf Association officials notified the on course officials that they were going to review video of the indecent and that Johnson might be facing a one stroke penalty. What ensued was chaos, and is instructive for any of us in business.

Put yourself in the position of the golfers. At the time, there were several competitors within several strokes of one another. The on-course scoreboards might no longer be accurate and every walking official had been notified that Johnson’s score might be one shot lower than the scoreboards were reporting. Do the golfers play more aggressively? More conservatively? The point is that there was uncertainty and that uncertainty might not be resolved until after the round was over when more officials could chat with Johnson.

That’s the business lesson. Putting aside the complexity of the rules, the USGA should have made a decision immediately. No golfer can compete without knowing how they stand and neither can the folks who work in your business. I’ve worked in organizations where there were rumors of layoffs and/or budget cuts. It was paralyzing. Employees were focused on their jobs and not on their work. Partners were worried about both with whom they’d be dealing and if the business could live up to commitments it had made. I’ve found people can deal with almost anything except not knowing.

There is a corollary lesson here. If the scoreboards aren’t accurate, the golfers don’t know how they stand nor how they should operate going forward. If your data is incomplete or possibly inaccurate, neither do you. We need to make decisions and we need to have accurate, complete information as we do so.  Lesson learned?

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