Thanks to The Vision Thing, I was able to check my nerd score.
I got 87. I Rock! 😉
Month: January 2005
Hello, my name is Brand X and I will define my company for you…
Jennifer Rice: Brands are Human.
Very interesting ideas, which I suscribe to. The people at a company are the ones that define the brand. If Microsoft was actually in the retail sector, wouldn’t that change them from being perceived as "bossy and arrogant, but we’re stuck with them like a bad marriage"?
Web Performance Affected by Router Security Flaws
Information Week (and likely other more technical sources) is reporting that Juniper and Cisco routers have a security flaw that will allow DoS attacks to be launched.
Likely you will see interruptions and hiccups as IT teams work madly to patch all of their devices.
The Philosopher King
Hans Henrik points us to an article discussing how the philosophy of a business leader should be a criteria during the selection process.
This is relevant to me, as the company I work for is currently conducting a CEO search. Now, based on my experience with the leadership of my company, I know some of the criteria that they are looking for. I just hope that the search committee also considers how the candidates envision possible upheavals in our industry over the bext 5, 10, 20 years.
One thing that never happens when a CEO is chosen is the interview by the staff below the board and the C-level. My company is very small; I would love the opportunity to listen to the CEO candidates speak to me as a member of the team he will lead. But that will never happen, as boards and C-level leaders are focused across and up; they very rarely look down, how a leader actually is seen by the people who make the company go.
I have mentioned that I am reading Execution, where Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan speak about how great leaders execute on strategies and ask the questions that need to be asked about how things get done. However, as all business books are, it is aimed at the MBA, director, VP and C-level players. What about the majority of us, the individual contributors? How do we make an impact on a company? What say do we have on the vision?
Being in a leadership position does not mean you are a great leader. Company leaders, how do you inspire your individual contributors on a daily basis?
Addendum: Tom Peters says it best. CEOs are idiots because….
20. Their egos distract them from the Real Work of Business.
The Diagnostic Channel
Darren Barefoot and Travis Smith both comment on a channel that shows weird Dr. Who-like graphs.
Believe it or not, the graph channel is a diagnostic tool used by Cable Companies to be able to determine how their headends are performing.
At least that is how it was explained to me by someone who has worked for 3 different cable companies in two countries.
Good Design == Higher Profits
Allan Jenkins has posted a link to a paper posted by Hans Henrik (don’t you love blogs) on how companies with good design have outperformed the FTSE 100 over the last decade.
Very cool. It would be interesting to see if the paper also correlates whether good design can make or break a company.
Free == Worth Less
The non-billable hour is back again with a great comment via PschoTactics on the true value of FREE. [here and here]
As a consultant in a product organization, I often see my services thrown in for free to close a deal. The clients who we then work with value our efforts less, and as a result, they do not invest adequate time, money or energy into the ideas and projects we are working on.
Free means that the service is Worth Less.
Process, Not Task, Management
The non-billable hour continues its run of quotables on this blog, by finding an article detailing that businesses will grow and be more successful if they undertake the very difficult task of implementing process management. [here]
This idea links the entire business end-to-end in process maps instead of departmental silos.
This is the entire philosophy that we have been attempting to pursue with companies in the area of Web performance. The objective of a successful company is that departmental silos exist, but are meaningless. "Cross-functional teams" becomes a meaningless term, because you don’t have to make it seem like you are doing something new, as everyone just does it, and understands how they fit into the process map.