OpportunitySmart

PetSmart finds a plush profit in luxury lodging for pets - from Miami Herald

Wisdom of the crowds vs. Wisdom of the 'links' the crowds make

Interesting article in Business week -

Crowd Wisdom vs. Google's Genius

More, more, more, more touch points

Another article in this mornings Mediapost - More touch points and more metrics...


The Next Frontier: The New Next
by Jack Feuer, December 2006 issue
Watch the Screens - All the Screens

The 'NETWROKED CONSUMER'

Interesting article on trends in types of consumers and the fluidity of the Networked consumer - MediaPost.

Some evolving consumer trends identified in the article:
Identity Flux: Gender-neutrality goes mainstream. People list skills on their business cards rather than title. They dress up in various costumes, depending on who they feel like being that day.

Liquid Brands: Chameleon-like brands focus less on communicating a static message and more on being the right thing for the right persona at the right time. Constantly morphing retailers carry products until they sell out, and never restock.

Virtual Immortality: While some let their avatars drift away to online purgatory, many more leave behind specific instructions on how their virtual selves should proceed. Services offering avatar surrogates flourish, and we bequeath avatars to friends and family in our wills.

Environmental Movement: Companies are expected to reduce the amount of damage they are doing to our minds. Savvy companies sponsor marketing-free white spaces in lieu of polluting the environment with models and logos.

Product Placement: Enviro-biographies are attached to just about everything, letting consumers know the entire life story of a product: where the materials were harvested, where it was constructed, how far it traveled, and where it ended up after being thrown away or recycled.
Brand-Aides: Socially responsible brands make a buck while providing desperately needed services. Communities are revived by Target daycare, Starbucks learning centers and Avis transportation services for the elderly.

Moral Status Anxiety: A person's net worth is no longer measured by dollars earned, but by improvements made. Families compete with each other on how many people they fed while on vacation, and the most envied house on the block is not the biggest, but the most sustainable.

Oldies but Goodies: Respect for elders makes a comeback in the form of Ask Your Grandma hotlines. The proliferation of online video clips by seniors show us how to tie knots and concoct home remedies.

Never Eat Alone

Just read the excerpt on 'Never Eat Alone' a book for all those who understand and believe you are worth your network. FastCompany has the excerpt published...

Interesting blogs in the blogsphere

Brands Create Customers
Innoblog

Thats a default brand!!

American Girl Doll - Article in LA Times

Navel-Gazers...

Article glorifying the interest in blogs, bloggers and their perspectives from Market-Watch

Navel-gazers will be the stars in 2007
Commentary: Your expertise is in vogue and exploited

They are out to get me!!

Recently I had the opportunity to seek honest, open feedback and guess what I got? People paranoid and scared and wanting to stay anonymous. I wonder why? I brain stormed and guess what I came up with?

• Don’t believe in ‘The Golden Rule’
• Questionable maturity
• Questionable perception of the world in light of personal maturity
• Conspiracy theorists lack of overall trust
• Low self value perception

Hail to the conspiracy theorists. I strongly believe feedback needs to be transparent so that the individual who is being reviewed knows what is being said about her/him. It provides the individual an opportunity to defend themselves if need be, especially if they have been misinterpreted. In addition it ensures constructive feedback.

Most people are slaves of their experiences and as long as they continue to associate with people who target them for their opinions, responses and behaviors it may be impossible to break the shackles. It takes effort to break the mold.

Find Their Calling

Fancy article...

"The match between your employees' values and the organization or team's values is a more powerful factor by far than money in keeping good people," write Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans in their latest Fast Company Talent Resource Center Column.

Out of Sight – Out of Mind

Marketing will live for ever! As long as the human mind does not change, Marketing is here to stay. I started this essay with a whole different thought in mind…

I was trying to pen down (it is crazy to use the phrase “pen down”, although I do write the frame work of my essay on paper before I type it up in its entirety) my experiences about people and our strategic goals. It is amazing how we do stupid things that don’t add value or align with our goals more often than not? Obviously strategy is not a goal! But none the less it needs to be a map of what we want to be and where we want to go.

I made a list of things I believe I need:
· Entrepreneurial spirit – Leadership experiences
· Selling & Marketing skills – Communication skills
· Learning & Updating skills – Knowing what’s new and learning it
· Valuation & Measurement – ROI on the investment in learning
· Networking – “No man is an island”, John Donne
· Strategies that link to long term goals – The map

Yet in my every day they don’t align? May be I need to hire personal career and goal marketers to help advertise to my mind. Some on who constantly and subliminally makes impressions of my goals and induces me to check every task with the six points above?

Oh My God!!

What's next? We already have...

Teens
Tweens
Boomers
Gen X
Gen Y
Millennials
Meterosexuals
+
+
Jetrosexuals

from FastCompany

Addressing a Business Need

Every meeting I have ever participated focuses on a business need, of course who wants to waste time chit chatting? I certainly don’t! I’ve go better things to do in life, be some place, do something, live life, enjoy it. Yet day after day folks talk about addressing a business need. I wonder if they talk about the same at a non-profit. I hope that don’t or at least they focus on societal needs versus the ‘chit-chat’? In any case the thought or the comment that sparked this essay was actually quite mundane. We were discussing a strategic opportunity and it boiled down to who needs to use the system and how they should to be trained.

Some one suggested lets position the training as a business need that the users will be addressing versus communicating as a training to use a process/system. What a brilliant idea! I thought for a second… either the organization has hired a bunch of order takers who do not logically process information or lack the leadership to challenge directives. Don’t you think they will make the leap from what is told and what is expected? I don’t expect any and every one to be able to bridge the operational and tactical into the strategic vision. People do need hand holding and sometimes even connecting of the dots, but this one is too obvious don’t you think? .And if they don’t want to get on the bus (or get to the same destination) we are better off without them in the first place.

Asking the tough question!

Just noticed this article on Fortune.

Are You Making Too Much Money?

I found the following insightful questions in the article...

• How does our pay compare to the competition in total, not just salary?
• Was our management team outperforming the competition?
• And was this related to their specific performance or just being in the right place at the right time?
• To what extent does our pay vary with performance?
• Do we have enough variability in that pay, or are we building in expense that will hurt us if and when the next retail downturn comes?
• And what principles should guide the value sharing between management and staff and the shareholder?

Questions from Alison Winters chair of Nordstrom's compensation committee to their board.

Branding in China

Interesting article in this morning's Knowledge@Wharton News letter:

How and Why Chinese Firms Excel in 'The Art of Price War'

Equity building and Equity erosion is a huge debate but it is a tough call to pull back on the pricing related sales fundamental.

"In China, where companies have earned a reputation for starting price
wars, the outbreak of a price war is considered a legitimate and effective
business strategy."

Wharton marketing
professor Z. John Zhang

Choosing Your Own Parents

At a recent presentation I heard a speaker comparing the idea of ‘accepting your corporate leaders’ akin to ‘accepting your own parents’. The thought got me thinking, I wondered if I buy into the concept but I guess it is true to a large extent… although with certain caveats.

I trust my parents but I will evaluate and screen every suggestion or recommendations they make! I believe it is absolutely stupid to entrust ones destiny into some one else’s hands. Not even your parents and obviously not your leaders. I do agree and accept you inherit some traits from your parents much like I have learnt a lot from my leaders, but it is eventually up to us to make the most of what we have or what we acquired! I love Mark Twain’s quote “Put all your eggs in one basket and-WATCH THAT BASKET”. If need be don’t hesitate to break the basket.

Scientifically choosing your “parents” may still be some time away and by laws of nature not sure ever really possible. I won’t say the same about my leaders…. If things get really bad disown them, change ships or better yet take reigns into your own hands (there is a lot of news on LBOs lately).

Talent Pool

There are 10 ways from Tuesday to skin a cat. So is true in developing a talent pool! Here is a shortlist of verbs that came to mind when started thinking of the talent pool - Acquisition, Development, Transfer, Sharing, Management, etc.

ALIGNMENT is everything. Agreement and alignment on the required skills and competency, expected adaptability, how the organization plans to leverage and foster talent it into the next level?

It is often easy to start with the tactical needs. Small wins and little successes help build credibility. Although the tactical may be lost in the strategic vision? One may soon realize that skills were acquired not talent! Not much different from hiring a consultant to get a task accomplished, that may not have much to do or value to add once the job is done?

It is not just essential to get the right team on the bus like Jim Collins puts it but to make sure they agree and understand the destination. The team must together have the passion and vision to drive the bus home.

ROI - ROI - ROI

ROI - Return on Investment, is the talk of the town. As we start to enforce accountability within the community, ROI has spurred more and more discussion.

Here are a couple article on the topic.

On ROI: Keys to Measurement
Taking Measure: A Need-to-Know Basis

Extreme Jobs

Just yesterday I referred an article about the talent pool at Goolge and this morning I came across another interesting one about people work hours and NEEDS... Yes NEEDS!

I am a huge proponent of the Dilbert principle OA5.

We are all unique and each and every individual is different. One size, one policy or the same culture does not fit us all!! Some of us seek out the unbalance in the work to challenge them and drive them. Here is an article from FastCompany on Extreme Jobs. About those of us who seek the long hours to stay excited!

Hooked on Work: the Allure of Extreme Jobs

I watched it and loved it! - PERSUADERS

PERSUADERS

Interesting documentary by Rushkoff on PBS-Frontline.

Executive Interaction Channel

Interesting resource from IBM - Executive Interaction Channel

Talent Management Challenge

Just noticed the posting on Fortune this morning on Google -

Is Google too smart for its own good?

• brilliant minds boxed into a big company inevitably grow dissatisfied with their inability to shine individually
• a team of superstars destined to underachieve

The quotes are very interesting... but that does not mean the pool of talent cannot be managed.

It just needs a smart and creative entrepreneurial environment and an open mind to let it blossom. It has been done before and will continue to be done, will it happen at the 8th wonder of the world is a question for the times?

Hiring: The Lake Wobegon Strategy

Vanity Plates

Interesting article from The Motley Fools -

Top 10 Vanity Plates We'd Like to See
10. NXT PREZ -- Eliot Spitzer (NY Attorney General)
9. APLSCKS -- Steve Ballmer (CEO, Microsoft)
8. ITWRKED -- Ken Lay (Late CEO, of Enron)
7. LUV JUNK -- Meg Whitman (CEO, Ebay)
6. HOTR N MRA -- Liz Claman (NBC, CNBC News Anchor)
5. YRFIRED -- Donald Trump (The Apprentice)
4. IMADETHIS -- Martha Stewart (Martha Stewart Living, Omnimedia)
3. VDKAPEE -- Dennis Kozlowski (TYCO)
2. MTRMOUTH -- Jim Cramer (CNBC, Money Madness)
1. IH8SHRTS -- Patrick Byrne (CEO, Overstock.com)

Letting Consumers In Is Good For Brand Health

This is new... Improve ROI on your advertising by letting your consumers define and create your advertisements, AMA thinks so!

Letting Consumers In Is Good For Brand Health
Guess how that compares to the recent article about trust in celebrity spokes people... may be the common consumer does not consider a celebrity to be a representative consumer?

Moms Say Advertisers Don't Get Them

Making mistakes & Talking about them

Hind sight is 20:20, and yet it is not very easy to notice our own mistakes, let alone talk about them. It takes tremendous courage to accept your mistake and all the more to acknowledge in public. I recently came across an article in the Knowledge@Wharton news letter “Pitney Bowes' Michael Critelli: Not Your 'Celebrity CEO'”. I did not know much about Pitney Bowes beyond the common knowledge of their mail sorting business. Then I read Good to Great by Jim Collins. I have been very impressed with the company ever since and then this recent article just built on my respect for the leadership at Pitney.

You must read the K&W article for the rest of my essay to make much sense…

While sipping coffee I ruminated over the article and wondered would I have hired Michael after he had been passed for a partner at two firms? And then again would I feel confident in appointing him the chief executive? In all honesty probably not! Not to belittle his potential and his accomplishments but I have always believed success begets success. True we all run into little failures all the time but I am not so sure his were little by any stretch of imagination?

I thought further and develop a hypothesis. It is only worthwhile and/or easy to talk about mistakes until one gets beyond a certain accomplishment level! It is easy for the successful to talk about their mistakes then for those who have failed. It is not only because they learnt from the mistakes and capitalized on them but also because in light of their success their mistakes seem minuscule. On the flip side it could very well be true that the failed individual/s were not lucky enough to have found another opportunity to learn and capitalize on their mistakes? Who is to judge? For me I will only talk when asked.

Articles on the Web...

Interesting article on FCNow -
How Do You Feel?
Mistakes

Emotional Intelligence

We don't just think with our head! We use our entire body in the process. Why does the corporate world expect that we leave our emotional baggage at the office door or even at home when we get to work? The reverse is certainly not true!

I remember days when I was able to get a ton accomplished just because I had a great start to the day at home and on the other end had a crummy day at home only because I have had issues at work.

Wouldn't it be great if we could think with our mind body and soul?

That's no to say we don't maintain professional standards at work but let people express themselves through more than just family photos on their desk. I think we can be a lot more productive if we let more than just the numbers speak for the likely outcome from a venture... how I feel about things, my gut about a decision is often a very strong read of the likely outcome from a decision/action.