Listening is something we should all be working on. It is one of the most important things you can do in business.
Listening to you employees, customers, vendors and competitors (or anybody for that matter) makes you more effective.
When you are passionate about what you do it is very easy to get caught up in meetings and talk the whole time.
When you are really busy it is easy to not hear what your employees are telling you, through not only their words but also their actions and faces.
When you are focused on developing and delivering products or services for your customers it is way to easy not to take them time to listen to what they need.
Save everyone time and operate your business by taking off all your clothes and encouraging your employees to do the same.
Current and potential customers can feel comfortable that your organization is hiding nothing. If you are providing services and/or software as a service (SaaS), transparency will speed up the timeline of trust. Today and even more so tomorrow trust will be critical to success.
Your ability to innovate is directly related to you attracting and retaining the very best people. Brands like Google and Cisco will always get top resumes. The way the rest of us do is by showing those leading job speakers what is really going on under the hood. Anyone that can help you get to the next level will do their homework. The more videos, blogs, and twitter’ers (etc.) they can find the better. If you are doing cool stuff they will be able to figure it out and will apply for your positions.
You ability to maximize relationships with partners, vendors, and investors, whether current or potential will substantially increase by showing them what is truly going on inside.
I would even argue that having your competition see this transparency is also to your benefit. You might find that by being so open with what you are doing your competitors are more comfortable in working with you. You both probably have something that you are better at than the other. Figure out how to leverage each other’s strengths so that you can both grow.
I’d love to hear what you think about being transparent. Benefits AND drawbacks.
We are evaluating which platform to build the Total Attorneys ultra-collaborative intranet on.
We know that an internal community mashup /collaboration environment is needed to support our collaboration needs as we continue to grow as an organization.
Our company currently is 170 super talented people, from software development, sales, customer support, accounting, HR, IT, marketing, call center, legal process outsourcing to yours truly.
Here are some of the features we feel we need. We are willing to write some custom code to accomplish our needs. However, we do not want to build the platform from scratch. We want the ability to setup a platform and enable everyone to build on it.
Personalized homepage for each employee. (Facebook like)
• Allow employees to express themselves and get to know each other
• Mashup of all feeds, blog, twitter, videos, content created/edited on intranet
RSS Aggregator
• Internal blogs and videos – show most viewed, most commented (this month, this year, today, etc.) Comments obviously only to be seen from within as these are internal only blogs and videos.
• External blogs and videos – show most viewed internally, most commented internally, (this month, this year, today, etc.) Keep comments contained only within our intranet.
• Internal tagging system (tag videos, blog posts)
Ability to blast messages to entire company (Yammer like)
• Reduce all company blast emails
Ability to create Polls/Surveys and track results (Survey Monkey like)
• Query our people, pick their brains.
• Take votes, enable democracy.
Document Repository for HR/Corporate
• Employee Manual, HR, 401k Info, Benefits, etc.
Internal Email/Messaging Capabilities
• Communication amongst teams
• Discussion boards
• Internal classifieds (looking to sale your car?, need nanny?)
Collaborative Workspace
• Google Docs/Spreadsheet like
• BaseCamp & Writeboard like
Allow Users to Form their own Groups/Communities (Social)
This might be the most historic day in modern American history. Regardless of political beliefs, it is a wonderful day to be an American.
I started volunteering at the national headquarters of Obama for America on April 11, 2007. (Here is a post from my first day – wish I had kept blogging about it!) Winning the primary, let alone the election, was beyond a long shot. However, the energy in the office was palpable.
Senator Obama wanted a phone number Americans could call and talk to a real person. I became one of the people who answered. Often three-days a week I would leave my office for a three-hour shift. The call center started out as 4 phones; by election night rooms were filled with people on the phone.
In a few short hours, as he takes the oath of office, the Obama honeymoon will be over. While we are all still enjoying it, I thought I’d share my very small part in this very large day.
In an all company meeting on snowy Dec. 19th, I announced that Infra-Strategy would be rebranded as Total Attorneys.
The Infra-Strategy name means a lot to those who work here. However, the culture we have created and the manner in which we serve our customers is what makes us appreciate coming to work everyday.
Having a consistent name internally and externally is required for us to continue our rapid growth in the legal space.
I’m trying to figure out the best way to go on a vacation. Do you stay connected and check email throughout your trip or completely disconnect?
Stay connected and you do not let your mind completely rest. If disconnect then you have 1000+ emails to welcome you home from your trip.
I think you need at least a week a year that you “get off the grid.” If you are able to stay on top of things while on vacation, then perhaps you can take more vacations?
(On a side note, I have not received work email on my phone for 3 years. This has been a huge boost for my sanity. A topic for another post.)
In the video: Managing employees (I hate that word) today is very different than 10-20 years ago. The new generation (which I’m a member) of workforce insists on being treated as individuals. While employee handbooks can be wonderful tools for both the employer and employee, the new generation expects to have their circumstances and needs dealt with on an individual basis.
Good news. If done properly, this can benefit your company more than you know!
In this video: The difference between design by democracy and design by dictatorship. While you must listen others input and advice at the end of the day one person needs to make the call when it comes to designing a logo. The more you let the decision be driven by a committee and appease everyone the less chance you have of achieving a strong mark to build your identity off of.
In this video: I discuss why I’m no longer going to try and define Services 2.0. I will continue talking about how you should be delivering services to business. However, I’m dropping the ‘2.0′ moniker.
In this video: I discuss a characteristic of Services 2.0 – allowing your customers to see the true value of the service you are providing to their company. It forces you to deliver value, encourages you to improve your offering and empowers your customers to be a smarter consumer of your goods.