Tag Archives: business

June 27, 2012 · 9:24 am

I Can’t See You

Once in a while we play a little game of compare and contrast which is what we’ll be doing today.

Person with PDA handheld device.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The two items causing a bit of cognitive dissonance are studies from Pew and from Mongoose Metrics.  Let’s start with Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project:

  • Nearly a third (31%) of adult U.S. mobile Web users say they now go online mostly through their cell phones
  • Leading the mobile-only Web trend are young people and minorities. Nearly half of all 18- to-29-year-olds (45%) who access the Internet on phones do most of their online browsing on their mobile device. Half (51%) of African-Americans and 42% of Hispanics in the same category also mostly go online through their phones. By contrast, only 24% of white mobile Web users turn mainly to their devices for Web access.
  • Less affluent (income of under $50,000 annually) and less well-educated people were also more likely to rely mostly on their phones for Web browsing than those with higher incomes and college or higher levels of education.

OK – pretty straightforward.  Nearly everyone has a mobile device, more than half (55%) use them to go on the web at some point, and as incomes go down the mobile device tends to become the primary point of access.  Got it.  Next.

Part of the 2012 Mongoose Metrics Data Series found that mobile internet access accounts for approximately 9 percent of all traffic. However, the report also found that about 10 percent of websites are fully optimized for mobile access, which means 90 percent are incapable of serving these users completely.

Oops.  You can read the study here if you’re interested.  It also reminds us that 80% of users preferred mobile sites when searching for prices and product reviews.  But then again, if they can’t see the great content you have, what difference does it make?

We’re at yet another point of change.  The desktop computer is dying a lingering death, and I think it will be an enterprise-only device within 5 years.  So why are a lot of us behaving as if nothing has changed?  We need to be thinking and building mobile first, as the data points out.  After all, being discoverable and social is useless if you’re not optimally visible.

Right?

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June 26, 2012 · 9:22 am

Chosing Ignorance

Today’s screed is a little backwards.  As you might have noticed, much of the time I’m taking something I learned or realized and applying the point to business.  Today I want to do the opposite – take a business point and apply it to life outside of business.

I don’t believe that anyone who plans on staying in business for very long chooses to be ignorant of what’s going on in that business.  Sales reports, analytics, financial reports and such are all part of the daily life of a businessperson.  In fact, one big complaint I hear from clients is that they’re often overwhelmed with the amount of information that’s available to them and they need help sorting it out to understand what it all means.  They do NOT, however, simply ignore it.  They also tend not to take a single piece of data that supports their world view and ignore many others that contradict their position without a number of damn good reasons to do so.  Using a good sales report to say you’re doing well while ignoring the P/L that shows you’re losing money on each sale isn’t just irresponsible – it’s suicidal.

Most of us who’ve been doing this for a while (like more than a year, frankly) understand this.  So what has me baffled is why we chose to do exactly the opposite when it comes to our government.  No, this isn’t a political statement but yes, it is about politics.  I’ve spoken with a number of pretty smart people lately who have done with their political views something they would never do in business.  They didn’t get the facts or let one fact which supported whatever world view they had obliterate an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary.  In some ways it’s like my grandmother choosing to vote for the Jewish-sounding names regardless of their political positions – she had the only fact she wanted and chose ignorance about the rest.

We live in an age where there is a lot of  information about issues.  Some of it is carefully researched, some is twisted into propaganda, and some is totally made up.  It’s not easy to sort it out but each of us has to try, whatever our own beliefs about an issue and a candidate.  What are the facts?  Is what a candidate saying today the same as what they said last week or month or year?  Do they acknowledge inconsistencies in their positions?  Is someone telling the truth (and please let me know when you find someone who is!).

Obviously I support certain candidates and have positions on the issues but I respect those who disagree as long as they’ve got a grasp of the facts and have thought through their positions.  We never choose ignorance in business because if we do we’re not in business for very long.  Why would any of us chose to do so with something that has an even greater impact on our collective lives?

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June 25, 2012 · 8:40 am

What A Soccer Player Teaches Us About Business

I spent part of the weekend watching the UEFA Euro Tournament.

European football government body badge

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you’re into the sport of soccer, it’s must-see TV and the matches have, in general, lived up to the tournament’s stature as the best football tournament on the planet behind the FIFA World Cup.  During one of the games, the commentator described a player in a way that triggered an immediate business thought and that’s today’s topic.

The defender was described as having “a lack of pace but always a perfect reading of the situation so he’s quite valuable.”  In other words, he has the ability to read the situation on the field, react appropriately, and is rarely out of position even though he’s pretty slow relative to the other players on the pitch.  In my mind, that’s a good description of some desirable business traits as well.

How many executives do you know that act on knee-jerk reactions?  When they’re right, they’re often ahead of the field or have headed off a problem before it starts.  When they’re wrong, however, they often spend resources chasing markets that don’t develop or betting on new technologies that never pan out.  They end up out of position.

As businesspeople we can’t confuse activity for progress.  Moving quickly is always desirable but moving a bit more slowly while compensating for our lack of speed with a much better understanding of the situation is even more desirable in my book.  It’s not a particularly new thought:  we’ve all heard the fable of the tortoise and the hare and I expect we all know a few folks we’d describe as “slow.”  Slow is, in my mind, a relative thing – if they get to where they need to be because they can analyze a situation and react appropriately within the available time frame, they’re pretty valuable.

How about in yours?

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