Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

It’s been 10 years since I wrote this. Nothing has change and, if anything, it’s gotten worse.

Rigidity has gotten more rigid, if possible, and it’s far more prevalent up, down, and round and round the generations. And it’s still a total waste of time and energy.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

There’s a lot of talk right now about the resistance of mangers and older employees to Web 2.0 initiatives and the information-sharing that goes with them.

Kind of amusing that this big generational argument is happening during the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, the start of the biggest generational fight most of us remember—we weren’t around for the Roaring Twenties, the rise of jazz, let alone rebelled with the suffragettes.

The Boomer theme of, “you can’t trust anyone over thirty” is being reprised today by the wired generation.

The Boomers accused their bosses of being unwilling to change and when they became the bosses, they were accused in turn. Some things never change.

Generational differences have always existed, with the younger generation blasting into the future and screaming that the older ones are holding them back, but it’s ridiculous to paint everybody over a certain age with the same brush.

In May I commented that I thought a lot of the problem was grounded in insecurity and I still believe that, but I’ve done a lot of thinking because the subject’s so prevalent and have some further thoughts.

It should be remembered that managers’ rigidity has as much to do as much with the corporate culture as with the individuals involved. Openness is based on trust and if the culture doesn’t foster that then you should expect people to be ultra turf conscious, not interested in sharing, and prone to spending large amounts of energy fighting every new thing that comes along. In 2007 it’s Web 2.0; twenty-five years ago it was telecommuting (and still is in many companies).

But if we’re going to talk about rigidity, then it has to be recognized that it’s on all sides—there are a lot of pretty rigid twenty- and thirty-somethings (and no one in their right mind ever called a teenager flexible). If you have any doubts about this, try getting to your twenty-something co-workers to approach a subject from any position other than the one they advocate.

It’s not so much doing it differently, as it is doing it my way and, unhappily, that attitude has substantially worsened.

It seems that everybody has a group and while their group is OK, other groups, i.e., any that don’t agree with theirs, are rigid, inflexible, and standing in the way of progress.

There’s value to be found in most approaches and when that value is tweaked and/or merged with other methods the result is usually worth far more than the original.

I was in New York this week to visit some clients, but also to conduct some formal sales training.

The client visits are always great because you get to uncover new insights and align with the common goals to achieve desired outcomes.

The same could probably be said of the training as well. You learn, ingest, and hope you improve to a desired outcome. Throughout the week, though, I was struck by the similarities between client visits and training.

The training we conducted was based on the challenger sales concept. Within that book the writers uncover certain traits that enable some sales reps to achieve greater results.

The key takeaway is to understand your client and be in a position to teach them rather than approaching them with a lot of questions. That’s a simplistic view, but even at that level it is a cultural shift for the company.

Sales reps are used to arriving, asking a bunch of questions and hoping some stick with the client. The usual result is a lot of wasted time for the client and lost revenue for the company.

Instead we need to approach it as a consultant who understands a broad set of issues affecting the industry in question and is able to deliver insights. This doesn’t happen overnight and it requires the whole organization to commit to the results.

What I learned through this process was the fact that you cannot just say you provide value. You must demonstrate and deliver it. The same can be said about life as with clients. You lose whenever you cannot be an asset to the organization.

Imagine if we showed up to life like that everyday? We would be crushing it regardless of what our job was. We would ensure success for ourselves, our family and friends.

I realize this week it seems to be a recap, but it’s been busy and there are a lot of moving parts. However I can fully appreciate the fact that with a little preparation we can make our lives easier.

Image credit: Connie

This week’s events have been shocking and heartbreaking for many. As I currently write this post, 58 people have been killed in the Vegas shootings and over 500 others have been injured.

An event that was meant to be an evening of fun turned into a nightmare. I cannot begin to fathom the pain people are going through and my heart is with them.

These posts will never become overtly political and I am not well versed enough in policy debates to chime in. One thing I do understand though is the value of life.

As a father I cherish my girls and wife. As a former Marine I have experienced immense loss as comrades have fallen in combat. I have seen the best and worst of humanity and at times struggle to understand it.

In this case we have had a tragic event that seems to have no apparent reason as of yet. As business people and fellow humans how can we respond?

It can be cliché to say we should treat every moment as our last, but there is some truth to that. In addition though we can look at ways to add value to people’s lives daily.

In sales we are taught to always generate value. Understand a client’s problem and seek to find a solution.

Just today I spoke with someone who is evaluating a complex software solution. After speaking for a bit it became apparent that he needed more information, so I sent him a relevant white paper and followed up to ensure it helped on his quest.

There are also times where we can generate massive value in a short period of time.

One survivor of the Vegas shootings found a truck with the keys still in it. He decided to take it and made three trips to the hospital delivering roughly 30 people who needed care. This person adapted to the situation, identified a need, and acted.

Tomorrow when you’re at work what will you identify as a need?

We always have a choice to lament the problem and not act.

Or we can choose to take massive action.

I choose action.

Image credit: Olga Berrios

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over nearly a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time. Read other Golden Oldies here

A [2006] survey (no longer online) done by ICR yielded interesting, but certainly not surprising, results.

The survey asked the question, “How often does your boss ask for your advice on solving a problem at work?” The result? Those at lower levels were asked substantially less.

Heck, that wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s had the experience of watching their management bring in high-priced consultants who end up telling them the same thing their own workers had been saying knows the frustration.

It’s been 25 years and I still remember an IT buddy from Bechtel saying that the only difference between the solutions his group presented to management and what the consultants presented was the quality of the report’s paper and the dog and pony show that went with it—oh, yeah, and the more than $100K that it cost.

But I understand. Can you imagine how embarrassing it is for a senior executive, or a Harvard/Sanford/etc. MBA, to have to ask questions of people who barely finished high school? After all, why ask the grunts who actually do the work when it’s much more pleasant to have lunch with someone on one’s own level to discuss the situation and brainstorm solutions in a civilized setting?

Of course, not every manager or MBA thinks that way, but enough do that, “…45.7% of employees earning less than $25,000 annually reported never or seldom being consulted, compared with just 24.7% of those earning more than $75,000.” (Makes me wonder what the 24% who don’t get asked did to alienate their bosses.)

Interestingly, age has no effect on who’s asked.

It’s much easier for management to tell their investors and the media how much they value (asking = valuing to most employees) their people than to actually listen to them—that would mean walking their talk and probably changing their MAP.

And everybody knows that’s it’s far easier to talk, than it is to walk, let alone change.

Flickr image credit: Ron Mader

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

Craig and Randy Rubin are married entrepreneurs who built a $50 million, 130-employee company that was acquired in January by Nanotex.

20 years ago they saw a giant, although relatively mundane, need that you probably remember complaining about (assuming you’re old enough).

It was almost impossible to have a decorative fabric that would stand up to the abuse of people coming to a restaurant and spilling on it. What was used was a vinylized fabric that would crack and peel.

Craig knew textiles and had an inventive streak, so he set out to solve the problem.

They patented their space-age material, called it Crypton (more on the name in a moment) — and their first customer was McDonald’s.

Randy Rubin summed up successful entrepreneurship this way,

“If you want to become an entrepreneur, make sure you have something that fills a need or solves a problem. Someone will always pay for something if it brings value.”

Perhaps the reason so many Internet businesses are dependent on ads for all or most of their revenue is because it requires real value to charge for your product.

Image credit: HikingArtist

History is interesting, the more ancient the better, but ‘ancient’ means different things by context.

Ancient Internet history dates more to the 1990s and one interesting historical nugget is that the general attitude that everything on the Internet should be free was nonexistent.

Enter Angie’s List, which has always been a subscription service.

Because this was 1995, nobody was yet shouting from the rooftops that information wanted to be free. “Some of the choices we made early on were dictated by the world we lived in,” Ms. Hicks said. “People paid for content.”

Angie’s List went public in November, 2011 at $13, jumped 25% and trades close to that number today.

Angie’s List has over a million subscribers and around three quarters of them renewed in 2011, up from 62 percent in 2008.

The business is built entirely around user-generated content, but differs in a very significant way from other rating sites, think Yelp.

Angie’s List allows no anonymous reviews and the staff goes to great lengths to keep the content authentic.

If you are developing an Internet company counting on advertising revenue is the norm, but the idea of targeted ads is facing a major backlash. The only way to target is to track.

73% say they would…

NOT BE OKAY with a search engine keeping track of your searches and using that information to personalize your future search results because you feel it is an invasion of privacy

The subscription model is making a comeback and it is one you should consider—assuming you are offering something of real value.

Image credit: Angie’s List

The medium is the message. –Marshall McLuhan, 1964

The network is the computer. –John Gage, VP, Sun Microcomputer, circa 1982

The data is the business. –Richard Barrett, 2009

Previously I reviewed some aspects of new business models that are emerging to accommodate new employee-employer relationships.

Business models are also changing in response to many factors. In this post we will explore business models where “the data is the business.”

In these models, the underlying data has become as valuable, or often even more valuable, than the product or service itself. While it sounds a little odd, these examples amply demonstrate the considerable value of the data itself. In some cases the data is the product, but in other cases, the data is ancillary to the service and only over time did the supplier begin to understand the value of the data, and then to package, promote, externalize and even sell the data itself. A few examples:

Package Shipping and Supply Chain Logistics

FedEx pioneered overnight delivery, but quickly discovered that customers really wanted proof of delivery even more than overnight delivery. Proof of delivery (POD) has perennially troubled the shipping industry; the receiver claims the packages have not arrived and the shipper says “Yup, we delivered it”—leaving the sender in the middle with neither the product nor the payment. After being swamped by POD requests, FedEx went online with its package tracking service. Now you can watch your package move through the FedEx system—its location recorded by scanners at each stop in the delivery chain.

Soon after, UPS and the entire shipping industry followed suit. Shipment tracking has become a cornerstone of the supply chain (logistics) management industry, leaving suppliers no place to hide except in their all-to-visible performance.

The Power Grid

Companies producing and delivering electric power have long since mastered the ability to track and measure the performance of their production and distribution systems with SCADA (system control and data acquisition). Now they are installing smart meters which can not only track power consumption minute-by-minute, but can report it back to the company SCADA system through an internet system on the electric power lines. Soon they expect to impose “time-of-day” pricing to capture the value of power demand during peak times.

Solar City, a regional installer of solar power systems in the southwest, offers a performance monitoring service to each of its customers for a small fee. The monitoring service not only tracks system performance, but eventually will have the capability to reconcile power production with credits from the electric company purchasing the power. Solar City charges its customers for this data collection and monitoring service as part of a comprehensive maintenance package. Within a few years Solar City expects the database of solar power production to have significant value to power companies themselves and other agencies interested in tracking aspects of green power.

Tracking Consumer Preferences

Many companies make a business from tracking and measuring consumer preferences. AC Nielsen, now Nielsen Media Research, started tracking the habits of radio listeners back in 1942.

Today Alexa Web Information Service and others track website traffic for millions of websites.

A Tale of Two Databases

Jigsaw Data Corp has harnessed a social network to create its database of business contacts, which Jigsaw then sells to business contact consumers such as marketing departments. With a database of over 12 million contact records (really complete business cards) Jigsaw cannot even begin to keep each contact record up to date much less to continue expanding the database. Instead, Jigsaw has developed a network of over 300,000 contributors, who earn points by adding to the database and updating individual records when a person changes a job, or telephone, or title, or email.

Of course, the mother of all data businesses is Google. Its AdWords business, tiny paid ads displayed in the right-hand column in response to a user’s search words generates well over 90% of Google’s revenue. The AdWords process is amazingly simple. The power comes from harnessing the search-word data and tracking the click-thru performance of each AdWord.

Incorporate Data In Your Business

Does your company collect data in the normal course of business? Of course it does. That data has significant value to the right audience. Consider these questions to make a business out of your business data:

• What data do you collect from customers, suppliers, partners?
• How can you develop the data collection into a fee-based service?
• How would another business use that data?
• How can you package your data for consumption by others?

As you contemplate selling data you will encounter a host of questions regarding original ownership, distribution rights, payment models, privacy, and protection. But when you have created valuable data, building the data business will provide years of fun, challenge and profit.

Let me know how your team is making a business out of data. Ask your questions here or you can email me directly at rbarrett@one-one.net.

Here’s to your new (data) business,