Tag Archives: Business and Economy

April 12, 2016 · 11:22 am

Get Dirty

It’s amazing how much every business depends on technology.  Whether it’s as basic as email or as complex as cross-platform measurement and analysis, it’s hard to find a job that hasn’t been changed over the last two decades by the advent of various technologies.  That’s obvious for those of us who work with technology and technology-related businesses every day.  It’s less obvious for people in non-tech businesses or areas of responsibility such as accounting.

English: This diagram details the layout and w...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One thing I see happening is that we tend to isolate ourselves into our primary areas of responsibility.  We learn, for example, what good marketing entails but we draw the line at understanding the technology that drives much marketing activity.  We might write great content but we have little notion about what’s involved in making that content visible both to humans and to search engines.  It gets worse as you go higher up the food chain.  I’ve known plenty of managers or directors or higher-ups who not only don’t get their hands dirty but don’t wish to understand much of anything involved in the workflow.  They love to see the finished sausage but they refuse to see how it’s made.

We can’t allow specialization to keep us from knowing a little bit about a lot. I’ll give you an example.  I got a frantic call from a client years ago.  Their new website wasn’t showing up in Google and they couldn’t figure out why.  They had used an outside developer who was unreachable (I think avoiding them since they were kind of high maintenance) and wanted to fix the issue.  One look at the homepage code showed that the developer had used a “Noindex” command which tells the search engines to ignore the page.  It’s a common thing done in development and easy to spot if you know about it. I’m certainly no coder but by knowing a little bit about it, I could help.  Problem solved.

We need to know more than just our jobs.  We need to know a little bit of everything.  You have to get your hands dirty in many processes and speak the languages spoken elsewhere in your company – tech, finance, marketing, whatever. Does that make sense?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , , , ,

April 11, 2016 · 10:58 am

Are You A Mechanic?

Unless you are a very knowledgeable gearhead, you’ve probably had the experience of something going wrong with your vehicle and heading to a mechanic.  Hopefully, I’m not the only one who is immediately paranoid about the diagnosis offered.  I’m always concerned that what I’m being told is causing a rattle is a broken motor mount that requires expensive repairs when it’s just a loose hose that could be fixed with a zip tie.  By the way, if you think I’m exaggerating, read this article. 

The mechanic situation is an example of someone with more knowledge and, therefore, more power taking advantage of you.  You might be reading this while shaking your head and saying I would never behave that way.  I’m sure on the surface that’s true.  Let’s think, however, about another situation in which you might just be behaving just as badly and taking advantage of someone.

An employee leaves and you ask someone else to cover that work as well as their own.  Given that most jobs take at least a month (and generally more) to fill, what are you doing to compensate that person for assuming the extra workload?  Is it possible either to have several people cover or maybe some things just go undone while you go through the hiring process?

Another example.  No one ever really leaves the office anymore.  Email is never off and most people carry email access on their persons at all times.  That said, we’ve all heard of situations where someone sends an email at night and when it isn’t answered in a few minutes, follow up with either a second note or a phone call.  Unless it’s a major crisis, why can’t that wait until work hours resume?  It’s one thing to make these demands of salaried management; it’s quite another to ask hourly employees to keep working outside of work since they’re not getting paid for the time.

Finally, when was the last time you said “thank you” to every member of your team?  Sure, a paycheck is a nice “thanks” but you’ll be surprised how far a few kind words can go.  It makes the folks with whom you work confident that you’re not the evil mechanic who is taking advantage of their situation.  Willing to try?

Leave a comment

Filed under Reality checks, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , ,

April 5, 2016 · 11:41 am

Hanging On

We’re selling our home. The kids are grown and living on their own.  We don’t need all the space and the property is too large and expensive to maintain. In other words, we’re doing the downsizing (or rightsizing!) that many folks in our situation do. Obviously, a lot of “stuff” has aggregated over the 30+ years we’ve been in the house and we spent many hours over the last few weeks decluttering. 

This past weekend was spent scanning old tax returns and putting the supporting documents into a “shred” box. Why were we hanging on to receipts from anything beyond the 3 years the IRS recommends? Who knows. We also found (and put in the shred box) cancelled checks from every decade beginning in the late 1970’s. That was long before banks did everything electronically and held scanned copies for you. I guess we got in the habit of filing them away.

In addition to the financial documents, we tossed (or donated) things that had sat in the basement or the attic for many years without anyone missing them. It’s nice, for example, that nearly every sporting event I attending during my years in sports TV gave out a duffel bag of some sort but having 20 bags in the attic gathering dust when someone somewhere needs one is silly, right?

So here is the question for you. When was the last time you took a look at the “stuff” hanging around your business? I don’t mean extra duffel bags or cancelled checks. All the detritus we collect over the years is due in part to a process we have in place.  When was the last time you examined the things, processes, etc. – to which you’re hanging on and why?  It’s not just a matter of freeing up space.  It also means you question each thing you touch and its relevance to your business moving forward.

It’s not just a matter of freeing up space.  It also means you question each thing you touch and its relevance to your business moving forward. I found a number of things (an automatic pasta maker, a countertop deep fryer) that I won’t ever use again but were hanging around the basement.  I rarely eat pasta anymore and it takes less time to make it by hand then it does to clean the machine after a use.  Why was I hanging on to it?

Old habits die hard, especially in business.  We need to stop hanging on and get our proverbial business houses cleaned up.  It makes wherever we decide to go next a much easier move.  You with me?

Leave a comment

Filed under Helpful Hints, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , ,