Defrag 2008

Defrag 2008 delivered on the promise to “augment the pace at which we achieve insights on raw data.”

Being a casualty of today’s economic climate (aka unemployed) I have been following the web advances and coming up to speed on Web 2.0 and beyond with my extra time. Due to location and a last minute ticket from Ross Mayfield (@Ross) with SocialText, I was able to get a front row seat to some very eye-opening information. It certainly fed my data addiction for two days.

Charlene Li gave an enlightening presentation on Harnessing the Implicit Value of the Social Graph. Starting off with a statement like “Social Networks will be like air” can get your attention. Charlene then went on to show how traditional corporate “Walled gardens are breaking down.” Later in the presentation as she was looking towards the future and making use of the technology we have available to us she encourages the audience to “Prepare for the demise of the org chart.”

I would ordinarily say such lofty ideas are great, but we are a long way from realizing them. Ordinarily that is, except, I happened across a blog on Obama's Seven Lessons for Radical Innovators by Umair Haque today. Umair independently validates Charlene’s ideas by pointing out how Barrak Obama did just this; “By tapping the game-changing power of self-organization. Obama's organization was less tall or flat than spherical - a tightly controlled core, surrounded by self-organizing cells of volunteers, donors, contributors, and other participants at the fuzzy edges.” This was very similar to the notion that Charlene was expressing.

Rich Hoeg and Neeraj Mathur illustrated how their Fortune 500 companies can be seen as leaders in the new social web era. Both individuals are in the process of establishing extensive social networking operations inside Honeywell and Sun respectively. This network enables their companies to leverage the collective brain power they have access to in order to efficiently perform their corporate functions. Having come from such an environment, I was truly impressed that these large corporations could be so forward thinking. It gave me a boost to be free of my previous employer and hope looking forward to the next one.

The opening presentation - Strategic Intuition and Defrag by Professor William Duggan from the Columbia Business School and author of Strategic Intuition was entertaining and informative. Prof. Duggan used examples from history to show where the “Aha” moment comes from. He pointed out that Carl von Clausewitz gave us four steps to get this which are:

1. Use examples from history – how did someone prior achieve greatness?
2. Presence of mind - Enter the situation and clear your mind of all preconceptions (what the solution is etc.)
3. Flash of insight - shows you what to do. With a clear mind you now know what is needed.
4. Taking off and putting flash into action.

Professor Duggan also pointed out that “great artists steal” using examples from Picaso and Thomas Edison. He also related these individual’s accomplishments to the above steps in order to achieve the Aha moment. In summary, steal a concept that was used earlier and apply it to your need today. For example, Larry Page (Google) developed Page Rank. This idea is an adaptation from an earlier concept of using academic citations and how often they are cited to rank university researchers. From this, why not apply to web pages?

The final presentation of note was Brian Oberkirch’s “Under Sousviellance: Personal Informatics & Techniques of the Self.” This was informative because Brian showed “What happens when you can make those invisible life patterns visible?”

Brian presented viewing the web as a stream of data as opposed to distinct web pages. Objects in the world are being automated and enabled to “throw off data.” Many services and ideas are coming about with how to more seamlessly make use of this data. Brian cited and gave many examples of such companies and devices like:

• Feltron.com - Annual report for himself, very interesting minutia
• Plodt.com – Chart your life using Twitter
• Xobni - email analytics
• Dopplr - business traveler tracking and carbon footprint information
• Fuelly - track data for your car
• RescueTime - Ridiculously easy time management

These services and many others like them begin putting much information about you and your life out in the open. It raises a host of questions along with providing a wide array of services.

So when you have a quite moment, think about your past year. What would you do if you new how many web pages you visited, how many miles you traveled, how often you communicated with a loved one. Now, with that information, what would you do differently in your life going forward?

Did you have any revelations?

Chicken Little Syndrome

With all chatter about the "dire economic situation" and the "bleak horizon" I have to chime in to advise some sanity. I am not trying to belittle the situation any and the position many businesses and business owners find themselves in. As everyone states, it is bad. Accordingly, it will probably get worse before it gets better. So with that understanding, the question you should be asking yourself is how to come out of it not only in one piece, but also positioned to capitalize on the market's eventual return?

I had lunch with a friend a month ago. Before "all hell broke lose" on Wall St. During our conversation he mentioned impending layoffs due to the cyclical nature of his business. Below is a follow up e-mail to him. Hopefully it provides some food for thought and spurs some more creative ways to face the tough times ahead without breaking out the hatchet for something that can be carved using a pairing knife.

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Hi J---,

I was replaying some of the conversation in my head last night and thought I might be able to offer you some food for thought on the downsizing topic. At X----, during the 2001 recession, the CEO at the time, promised to try and make it through that without having layoffs. His inspiration was a book called Shakelton’s Way.

[The CEO] explained the situation to the employees. He also laid out the options and his intentions to try and not have layoffs. As an employee, I could see the predicament the company was in and appreciated his desire to have everyone make it through it. His options were the following:

1.Voluntary severance. I forget the amounts and time offered, but it was attractive. (The worry with this one is the top performers may take it since they can find a job anywhere else easily enough)

2.Because vacation time came out of a different accounting bucket than operating expenses everyone was asked to a mandatory 3 days off initially. These generally were before or after traditional holidays so it gave more time for employees to be with the families. (e.g. Friday after Thanksgiving or the Christmas week 12/25 – 1/1)

3.Offer a year sabbatical to those who wanted to take it. There was no guarantee their job would be there when they came back, but the company would make every effort to find a position when they returned. During this time, health care, profit sharing, employee stock purchase were all discontinued. Any stock options continued to vest though. Note: Some people took this option, allowed their stock to vest and then came back only long enough to sell it off. Many people also took this time to get additional education (MBA) or try to start their own business. It was a win-win all the way around.

4.Things got a little worse, so another 5 days / quarter were asked to be taken as either vacation or time off without pay. Many opted for the time off without pay. This people up to get used to what they may need should pay cuts come into play. This was scheduled as every other Friday in order to minimize business impact.

5.The situation as you know did get worse and [the CEO] came back and asked everyone to take a graduated pay cut. "Looking in the mirror he took the biggest cut" of 20%. VP’s took 17%, Directors 15%, Managers / Sr. Managers 10%, individual contributors 5%, mail clerk types since they had the lowest pay and probably least disposable income they didn’t get a pay cut. (This also did a good job of keeping the most amount of money with the company and impacting the least number of people too hard) Seeing that upper management was giving just as much as the rank and file while not having layoffs made it more palatable.

We retained a large part of the personnel and IP that had been accumulated. This put us in a good position once the tide turned to ramp things up quickly. There was no rehiring or retraining needed. The outcome of this was a very committed work force. The downside was that some dead wood was left. Layoffs allow corporations to purge some of that. Since we didn’t, these people had to be worked around or processed out. As a recent casualty of downsizing though, sometimes the wrong people are let go in that purge process.

Listening to you yesterday, it sounds like you are in touch with who is on the bus and should remain on the bus. You probably also have a good idea of who might benefit from getting off at the next stop. The alternatives suggested may make someone voluntarily get off and not have it be your decision.

Good Luck,
Larry

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Am I saying these are the only creative ways to handle a difficult situation? Hardly. Each situation is unique. What worked at a 2500 employee company may not work at a 25 employee company. What I would like to advise though is you communicate the situation with your employees and work to develop a mutually beneficial solution. You may be surprised with the suggestions you receive and the willingness to work through it to the greater good of all involved.

I would like to hear what suggestions you do end up coming up with. Share so others may benefit as well.

Layoffs

Today I went riding with the guys at lunch. One topic of conversation that came up was a blog post about the "company" and its competitor. One sentence caused some mixed emotions amongst the riders - [competitor] "is growing faster, has slightly better gross margins, and most significantly better employee morale." And then if you didn't fully grasp the concept of that sentence it went on to say [company] "work-force with a lot lower employee morale." Having worked as well as riding with existing "company" members there were some mixed views on the previous sentences.

What I found more interesting was reading the comments made by a "competitor" employee and their view of moral. This came with a layoff story as well. Reading the thread there were many similarities to what I had observed and or experienced at the company. Regarding the layoff element, they are never fun or expected by the individual. When it does happen to you it is easy to fall into the trap of negativity. However, if you keep in mind the data associated with the economy today of on the order of 1M laid off and more predicted.

With that background, the topic of layoffs was on my mind. I came across some interesting numbers from Denise Palmieri as well as an assessment of the economy. In her commentary on pe HUB, she mentions several large numbers about the macro economic situation and how it may relate personally. Basically, we are all 1 or 2 degrees away from a layoff. She also talks about a Gen-E sentiment (for entitlement and what they are "entitled to" just for showing up).

I have seen the Gen-E mentality growing. I am not sure where it comes from. Maybe it something that originated from the media and what appears to be an "all about me culture" it seems to cultivate. I tend to believe that there is some karma in the world and that some point everyone get's their just rewards. If you work hard and support the team in the end you will be happier. This can take on a monetary recognition, but it can also be as simple as fostering a good work environment.

What price can you put on that? I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Irrational Exuberance

This week was a roller-coaster ride on the lessons to be learned in life (and reviewed often). The last time I had dabbled in the land of start ups was over 10 years ago. At that time, it seemed that Boulder was getting a few, but that they were few and far and between. Of course the Internet at that time did not offer the level of connection possible today. You had to be in the know of someone at one of these "places". If you wanted to be part of a start up you needed to head to Silicon Valley (SV).

Fortunately for me, the trade-off of SV did not beat out the benefits of living on the front range (Den - Ft. Collins). I put my head down and acquiesced to the larger company and its stability. Learning a new craft (product marketing / management) and new techniques for developing software provided enough of a challenge to limit my scope.

Fast forward to today. The Denver-Boulder New Technology Meetup I attended this past Tuesday had an infectious high-energy quality. One would assume that money and opportunity was flowing like the Boulder creek in June. Reading more about various start up opportunities this week perpetuated this thinking in my mind. Start-up opportunity had arrived and it was just around the corner, figuratively speaking of course.

This morning after my usual swimming workout a casual locker room conversation about my perceived state of things met with reality. I entered a conversation with a video entrepreneur and fellow swimmer. We got to talking about the state of business being. He relayed that he was in the process of closing down his office since they were unable to raise an initial round of funding. This was despite of lots of sweat equity, prototypes, and interest from several prominent names.

The locker room is not the place to get into the gory details of why and what have you tried, etc. Suffice to say, it offered some reality to the week's earlier storybook reading. I then met with another gentleman for coffee and a discussion on his start up perspective. He shared some of his past experiences and failures. Listening was a good review of what not to do and what to avoid.

In all, I am optimistic about the state of things here in Colorado. It no longer appears that you have to head to a coast for high quality start up action. At the same time, we are not immune to the realities present with a start up. At the end of the day, you have to have a viable revenue stream and solid business model.

Maybe I have been out of the loop for too long. I think that new opportunities are coming - or have they been here and I have just missed them for the past couple of years?

Initial Post

"And on the Web, if you're not in Google and the blogosphere, you're not in the conversation"
From the Long Tail blog

I tried this a few years ago to document and rail on what I thought was a pitiful situation. I got one meek post out and thought better about the derogatory intents. The site dropped by the wayside and I found other ways to amuse myself and spend the excess energy.

Due to life changing circumstances I find myself with a little bit more time. The more I read/click the more I realize that I have been on the sidelines. You can delude yourself that you are in the conversation, but as the saying goes, you don't know what you don't know.

Fortunately, I have been on a steep learning curve for the past month. I attended the Denver - Boulder New Tech Meetup earlier this week and didn't feel too out of place. Actually, it was refreshing to find a support group for what is becoming a bad habit - new tech.

So, without further delay, I post my first blog and join the conversation. I look forward to future submissions. Suggestions are always welcome.