Unless you’ve been living on another planet or alternative reality you’ve heard that Facebook is going public.

Facebook loves to position itself as users’ friend, with only their best interests at heart.

In his founder’s letter Mark Zuckerberg said “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.”

Huh?

There is far more truth in the editorial comment, “This also seems disingenuous considering that Facebook’s biggest triumph is to help advertisers by mining user data to target ads and to train them to treat corporate brands like friends.”

The exception is the 845 million people who log in on Facebook’s mobile app, “We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven.”

But I’m sure they’ll find a way.
How much personal data does Facebook collect?

Consider the disk sent to Max Schrems, a 24-year-old law school student, a Facebook user since 2008, who is spearheading a protest against “Facebook’s illegal practices of collecting and marketing users’ personal data, often without consent.”

The disk contained 1,222 pages of information.

That’s a very rich vein of ore for any marketer to mine.
Privacy is a far bigger deal in Europe.

Europeans demand more privacy than Americans and the EU is far more willing to enforce that desire than the financially beholden US Congress.

That makes international monetization more difficult.

The drive for monetization underlies everything Facebook does—but that’s not what’s bad.

What’s bad is their pretense that it isn’t true.

Facebook as a social force isn’t going away, but you would be wise to remember that Facebook is not your friend.

Flickr image credit: marcopako 

An engineer friend sent the following story because he knows I’m an evangelist for KISS** and this is such a great example of it.

A toothpaste factory had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes, without the tube inside. This was due to the way the production line was set up. Small variations in the environment (which can’t be controlled in a cost-effective fashion) mean you must have quality assurance checks smartly distributed across the line; otherwise you will have disgruntled customers at all points.

Understanding how important that was, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in the company together and they decided to start a new project, in which they would hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem, as their engineering department was already too stretched to take on any extra effort.

The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, third-parties selected, and six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution – on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time. They solved the problem by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box would weigh less than it should. The line would stop; someone would walk over and yank the defective box out of it, pressing another button when done to re-start the line.

A few weeks later the CEO checked the ROI of the project: amazing results! No empty boxes shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place. Very few customer complaints and they were gaining market share. “That’s some money well spent!” he thought, but before closely checking other statistics.

To his consternation, the number of defects picked up by the scales after the first three weeks of production use was zero, where as it should have been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report.

He filed a bug report and after investigating the engineers came back saying the report was correct; the scales really weren’t picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were filled.

Puzzled, the CEO traveled down to the factory to see for himself the part of the line where the precision scales were installed.

A few feet before the scale there was a $20 desk fan blowing the empty boxes out of the belt and into a bin.

When the CEO asked a production worker about it he got this response, “One of the guys put it there ’cause he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang.”

While I agree that this is a great example of KISS it also highlights another piece of management idiocy.

How many times have you seen a similar story play out not only in manufacturing, but also in development, marketing, finance, sales and especially administrative areas?

How much money is spent every year on expensive consultants and external specialists while the actual workers are never asked for solutions?

Why haven’t more bosses learned that solutions can come from anywhere and listen to all their people?

Of course, workers’ solutions wouldn’t be described in multisyllabic words in bound in custom folders on heavy bond and presented in a darkened room using impressive power point slides by ego-stroking consultants.

Mostly, they would just work.

** (Keep It Simple, Stupid!)

Flickr image credit: L Gnome

Are you familiar with Rube Goldberg? He gained fame as a cartoonist and inventor of complicated machines that performed simple actions.

Kinetic artist Joseph Herscher provides a modern-day example of a Rube Goldberg machine.

The hallmark of Rube Goldberg communications is using a complicated, convoluted sentence when a simple one would provide the same information.

It’s using five-syllable words where two syllables mean the same thing—juxtaposition instead of nearness.

It’s confusing instead of clarifying.

It’s annoying and demotivating.

Are you a Rube Goldberg communicator?

YouTube image credit: allonewordplease

Creativity. Thinking outside the box. Innovation. Whatever you call it, idea generation often starts with a brainstorming session and too often goes no where.

McKinsey alumni Kevin P. Coyne and Shawn T. Coyne offer a seven point guide that will make your efforts much more productive.

1. Know your organization’s decision-making criteria.
2. Ask the right questions
3. Choose the right people
4. Divide and conquer
5. On your mark, get set, go!
6. Wrap it up
7. Follow up quickly

Sounds like common sense, right? But you’ll see from the explanations how habit, misconceptions and politics often undermine these efforts.

And remember, while the first six points assure you of a productive effort this time, ignoring number seven will cripple not only this time, but all your next-times, too.

Flickr image credit: By Bengt Nyman

As most of my readers know, I’m not into social media; I am on LinkedIn and my company’s new product Option Sanity is on Facebook and Twitter, but other than the blog posts, I can’t say that any of them are particularly active.

I also freely admit that I don’t really understand how to use them for business (I have no interest in building my ‘personal brand’).

The negative side, especially the bullying, personal attacks, hate and amazing level of active stupidity, that I read about dismays and disgusts me. Beyond the negative much of what I heard was just totally inane; granted, I’m not a celebrity watcher and wouldn’t care what God had for breakfast, assuming h/she bothered posting the information.

Then came the so-called Arab Spring and suddenly social media showed a decidedly positive side.

Right around Thanksgiving I read about Amit Gupta’s friends who started reaching out after he was diagnosed with leukemia.

And so his friends set up a website, amitguptaneedsyou.com, to encourage donor drives, during which the tissue type of potential donors is collected with a cheek swab. The site links to the National Marrow Donor Program website. It provides instructions on hosting a bone marrow dive and provides PDF fliers to promote the events. Yes, there is a Facebook page. Twitter blew up with news of the drives and Gupta’s health. And, of course, there’s a Twitter hashtag (#IswabbedforAmit).

When word of Gupta’s need for a match started circulating, unique visits to the marrow donor program website increased from about 16,000 on a typical day to 40,000. “That’s 21/2 times,” says Dr. Jeffrey Chell, the donor program’s CEO. “That’s impressive.”

I found many other stories of social media’s impact, and lives saved, as a result.

It’s good to know that social media, especially the 5000 pound gorillas Twitter and Facebook, can facilitate more real good than just keeping families in touch.

I guess the good offsets the bad.

Of course, the real problem is the humans that use it; they are just the same as they’ve always been—social media just makes them more so.

Flickr image credit: PUBLISYST Comunicaciones

Last Friday I cited HBS research that indicates that the best results are achieved when those in charge are both good managers and competent leaders and that the key factor is excellent communications.

Whether you think of yourself as a leader or a manager, communications is about more than talking clearly, it’s about providing all the background necessary for your people to understand why they are doing their jobs, as well as what jobs they are to do.

Think of it this way,

• operational communications provide people information on how to do their jobs, while
• management communications tell them what their jobs are and why they do them, giving form and purpose.

People need both.

Many of the problems that managers face daily stem from their own poor or inaccurate communications, often as a result of using jargon in an effort to sound sophisticated, knowledgeable and with it.

Jargon doesn’t work for several reasons.

• You may not totally understand or be comfortable with the jargon;
• your people may have their own individual understanding or be guided by their previous boss’ definitions that have nothing to do with your intended meaning. This happens often enough with words of one or two syllables, let alone multi-syllabic management-babble; or worse,
• your people may shut down when they hear jargon.

You can create a relatively jargon-less environment by

1. keeping it firmly in mind that your goal is to provide your people with all the information needed to understand how to perform their work as correctly, completely, simply, and efficiently as possible; and
2. providing clear, concise, and complete communications at all times.

Follow these two steps religiously and the results will amaze you,

• Productivity will skyrocket; which will
• make your company more successful;
• your employees happier; and
• you a more effective manager with better reviews and an enviable reputation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Be sure to check out this months Leadership Development Carnival; it’s been broken up to run over several days, so I can’t repost it here.

Flickr image credit: kevinspencer

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

It may sound like complete heresy, but entrepreneurs rarely build companies—they found them.

Founding a company requires a product vision and enough passion to draw a few others to the cause.

Building a company in the 21^st Century requires the ability to both lead and manage.

“Increasingly, the people who are the most effective are those who essentially are both managers and leaders.” –HBS professor David Thomas

Today’s knowledge workers, especially the type that gravitate to and succeed at startups, demand both leadership and management skills from those in charge.

And the key attribute is communication.

“Communication is the real work of leadership. Great leaders spend the bulk of their time communicating, and they know how to employ all three of Aristotle’s rhetorical elements.” –Nitin Nohria, Dean, Harvard Business School.

The best communicators are also the best listeners; moreover, they listen to everyone not just those in certain positions or at X level and above.

But listening and communicating require time and energy and many entrepreneurs are too busy.

They are company founders, not company builders.

Which are you?

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Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

Today’s post is short because reading the articles to which it’s linked is critical.

Are you a good communicator? Do you provide clear, complete, timely information to your team? Do you ever worry that it’s not as understandable as you think?

Have you ever read or heard a professional communicator and wished you could do that, too?

You would expect the two top people of an innovation consultancy to be good communicators and not make the assumption mistake.

They recently wrote an article in Business Week describing the three types of people to fire immediately if you want to increase innovation in your company.

The article was the most read for eight days and generated in excess of 1000 comments, mostly negative.

Why?

Because the way the article reads it’s the workers who should be fired, not the bosses.

So they wrote an apology and explanation.

“And that brings us to the ultimate irony. When we talked about firing people, we were thinking about those higher on the org chart, not lower. We meant the boss and senior management team. … We thought we made this implicit in the article. Judging from the response, we didn’t. We should have made it clearer.”

Communicating takes effort and the number one rule of clarity is no assumptions.

Read the articles and save them to read again whenever you find a disconnect between what you communicate and your team’s actions to be sure that you aren’t the source of the problem.

Flickr image credit: zedbee

Dear readers and friends,

My apologies for no post today, but my very own personal tech hell is still happening.

For whatever reason my blog refused to save anything last night and is being iffy today.

Hopefully things will improve next week.

Have a wonderful Sunday; I WILL return!
Miki

Do metaphors fly free at your workplace? Do you find yourself using them in order to be heard?

According to Ceri Roderick, emeritus partner at business psychologists Pearn Kandola, while metaphors can be a kind of expressive shortcut, they can also have a detrimental effect.

“The language you use can affect your corporate culture.” Thus, if you spend long enough talking about “cutting the competition off at knees”, he says you are going to have a workplace where a kind of Nietzschean ethic rules and the weak are meat for bullies.”

I admit to using metaphors, although far less than I did a few decades ago. I find some are good ways to achieve focus, such as “the elephant in the room;” I may be guilty of the occasional 500 pound canary, but not of 800 pound gorillas. (Science writer Richard Conniff notes that “gorillas are vegetarians, not predators and the average alpha male spends most of his time passing gas, picking his nose and yawning; not the image a hard-charging executive wants to present to the public,” but actually a valid description of many executives.)

And while I know good culture fosters innovation, thinking outside the box has little to do with it, since it’s not possible.

The biggest problem with metaphors is that they are boring and limit people’s ability to effectively communicate.

If you don’t believe me play the metaphor game at your next meeting as follows:

• choose a scorekeeper;
• explain that the point of the game is to NOT use any metaphors;
• attendees listen for metaphors and call the speaker on them by shouting ‘metaphor’;
• the person who used the metaphor then restates their comment/point;
• using a metaphor scores one point;
• the person with the lowest score wins and
• gets the prize (candy bar, lunch coupon, etc.)

It’s surprising how difficult it is for many people to discuss anything sans metaphors.

Jamie Jauncey, a business language trainer and author, says, “Business is ultimately about people and connecting and relationships. It should be using the real language of human exchange, not some Orwellian bizpeak.”

This is true whether you are in sales, engineering, finance or whatever. You and your people need to connect with each other and with ‘them’, wherever and whomever ‘them’ may be.

Flickr image credit: ZedBee | Zoë Power