I’m sorry it’s been a while. Not sure you missed me like I missed you, but being ill, travelling loads and doing my first speaking engagement in years (at Ecole Hotelier Lausanne, which went really well), not to mention continuing to try and be a better dad and husband have meant that you’ve had to take a back seat.
Leave it to those crazy French Canadians to try an experiment like getting all your news from social media for five days (coverage from the Guardian and The Toronto Star). The problem with this experiment is that Social media as a tool depends on your connections. More so today than ever before, who you friend and follow is really important to how successful you’ll be using social media for anything.
If you’re following CNN, the Guardian, BBC news and other news outlets on Twitter I think you’re likely to be pretty informed. But it all depends on who you follow! If you’re not connected, not following, not friending then don’t rely on the medium for your news.
The same goes with any task oriented participation through social media. If you want to get a job through twitter, follow people in HR, conduct searches for words like “job” “hiring” etc. Use Linkedin for the job hunt and you should be okay using just social media for leads (I’d never just use any one medium for a task like this, but that doesn’t change the fact that you could do it pretty successfully).
The lesson is social media can be good for almost anything, but if you don’t participate and commit, it’s likely to be good for nothing. It’s a tool, and like any tool it’s only as good as the person wielding it.
I’ve been lucky to work and meet some really smart people in the business world. Some people who are really creative, innovative, intelligent, analytical, strategic etc etc etc. But there’s a real differentiator that some of them have which others don’t, being nice.
My definition of nice is polite, making time for people, thinking about people, following up, introducing people to other people, and generally being considerate and good.
I like to believe there’s no such thing as a zero sum game in life, because unless you kill something totally there’s a chance that someone related to/involved in that game will have another interaction. With people this is really the case, you’re associate today could be you’re Managing Director in a few years time. There was a great post on Rajesh Setty’s blog where he’s done some research to show that actually being nice is a key to success (hat tip to Guy Kawasaki). It’s not about winning a short term battle, it’s about long term success.
I get motivated by people who’ve jacked me in the business sense, when someone steps on me I take names and I have a pretty long memory.
However, when someone’s nice and goes out of their way to help make things happen for me I would bend over backwards to return the favour. I’ve had a phenomenal couple of months as I plan my next adventure and have met so many really smart NICE tech people that I’m pretty excited about the upcoming year. Which is why I like to think helping, being good, and being nice is a better long term strategy, it builds a positive energy and inertia that can be hard to stop.
Two incidents this morning have me thinking about personal anthems.
I was driving in to work today and heard the Ting Tings “Shut up and let me go”, and it really resonated with my current professional situation. Then as I was reading about the Jets win over the Chargers (and celebrating a bit as this means my beloved Colts won’t be playing the Chargers who always seem to have their number) I read that Braylon Edwards playing Jay Z’s “On to the next one” as a team theme song.
I love music, I used to write a newsletter to friends with new songs to listen out for back in the day, When I’m not listening to podcasts I’m listening to music at work , at the gym, at home, and everywhere in between, and there are some times when a song inspires, pumps and gets people over the hump.
Right now songs that have me inspired (sorry I’m on a bit of a hip hop tip these days) are Successful (by Drake), Empire State of Mind (both the Jay-Z and Alicia Keys and the sans Jay-Z versions), Lily Allen’s F*ck you and of course the Ting Tings Shut up and Let me go.
Are there any songs that have you inspired these days? Feel free to send me tweet or a facebook message if you have song suggestions. I’ll put together a Spotify playlist and will post it via Twitter / Facebook if there’s a decent amount and mix of tracks.
I’m really enjoying using the Amazon Kindle application on the iPod Touch. I’ve downloaded 3 books and read 1 full book and am halfway through the second. Reading books on an eReader is not something I thought I would really enjoy – at least not as much as I have so far. In the past I argued that books won’t die. I still feel this way, but after seeing a Kindle, and using the Kindle app on the iPod/iPhone and hearing the bee request a Kindle, I’m starting to think this eBook thing might be bigger than I thought.
BUT, we’re really early in the industry today. So, when I see a piece of research claiming that Amazon will “win the eBook war” because they have 90% of eBook market share today it makes me laugh. To me it’s the equivalent of saying that Napster would win the digital music war because 90% of music downloads were done with Napster over 10 years ago. Or that Yahoo! would win the search war, or that Aol would win… whatever it was Aol was trying to do.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Amazon has a great chance at really killing it in the eBook industry, I would never bet against Jeff Bezos. Problem is I would never bet against Apple and Steve Jobs and I would never bet against Google and Eric, Sergey and Larry either. I think all of these companies have a chance to really redefine how books are read digitally.
Lot’s of rumours about an Apple Tablet machine have been circulating with lots of people talking about how they could launch an iTunes for books, like they’ve extended iTunes into movies. This could be pretty compelling. And if Google partners with Sony, Barnes & Noble and others to have a Book finder type tool, that could also be pretty powerful.
I have no idea what will happen with eBooks in the next couple of years and I really doubt that anyone else can truly predict this either.
Okay, this is going to be my last post around cultures in Europe, I promise (fingers crossed behind my back just in case).
Tech Crunch UK Europe (sorry Mike) has a post up about Spartoo.com raising 12M Euros today, calling the company the “Zappos of Europe”, sure Zappos and Spartoo both sell shoes, have an s and a p in their name, but I’m not sure if Spartoo could really classify as a Zappos.
Here’s why, Zappos has a phenomenal culture and has bread a cult like following with it’s customers and partners. I’m neither of these and they still sent me a Zappos culture book for 2010 where every employee has written a paragraph or more about Zappos culture. Zappos will return your purchase and will make it a pretty good experience. I personally don’t know if Spartoo does this well – anyone?
I don’t believe that Zappos bottom line was the reason they were purchased, I believe Amazon wanted to learn and leverage the Zappos attitude to it’s customers and employees and it’s approach to social media. I think Zappos will teach Amazon a lot about customer service, and Amazon will teach Zappos a lot about costs and distribution.
The real learning might even be on international operations, and if that’s the case and Amazon helps bring Zappos to Europe and the rest of the world, I wouldn’t want to be Spartoo.
I’ve been reading Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization (note I’ve started using Amazon Affiliate links on my blog posts as a trial) on my iPod this week, I’m really enjoying the book but I can’t help but think about where all the international examples of great companies/leaders/tribes are?
This is especially needed when it comes to tech companies. I found a piece on the Sunday Times discussing the best 100 companies to work for in the UK and the best 20 big companies to work for. The sad thing is that most of the good big companies are American or headquartered in some other country. What gives? The highest rated technology company in the UK is Telefonica, seriously?
I’m surprised by this. Surely there are more great companies to work for in Europe. Surely the best companies to work for in the UK are not big American companies, are they?
Are companies in the UK just not that bothered about culture? Or is there a deeper issue here where companies don’t really know how to foster environments where people are happy about work.
I’m really hoping to put a lot of the philosophies outlined in Tribal Leadership to the test when I start a company later, but I’m scratching my head wondering are there not other companies doing this right now? I’m wondering if the next generation of companies, for example the companies on the Telegraph’s growth list, are changing the way British companies are approaching culture in the workplace or maybe I’m just being optimistic.
“Getting things done is not the same as making things happen.” – Gina Trapani page 68 in What Matters Now.
When you set the theme for your year as “learning to do”, you’re in for a long year. It was definitely a long year, but it was a good one. I managed to got a lot done; professionally and personally. I dreamed, planned, pitched, worked hard and I’m not looking to slow that done one bit. The Bee and I welcomed the beautiful Mira into our lives (though the Bee and Mira had a lot more to do on that one, I like to think I played a strong supporting role). Not bad at all for a years work.
Last year, the bee and I joked, was a year of purgatory. Well the year is over and our stay in purgatory is nearly over. Next year’s the resurgence (you have to say it three times, RESURGENCE, RESURGENCE, RESERGENCE), so watch out.
My personal theme is “making things happen” and I can’t wait to make stuff happen and I can’t wait to share it all with everyone on this blog.
Side note: Kind of cool that I was listening to the song “Good Life” as I wrote this post. Totally captures how I’m feeling right now.
Had an interesting backandforth this morning with my friend Natasja about best of versus prediction lists. I like being nostalgic, but my preference is for thinking forward. Natasja’s point about lists being based on the “now” and not saying anything new, is a good one. But still which trends are going to follow through and which are going to explode is an art form, but I’m going to give it a shot. So here are my thoughts on what things are going to carry on from now and into the next year.
First the obvious, the continued explosion of social media – This whole post is a great excuse to highlight the fact that Rage Against the Machine is the Xmas number one in the UK. A purely grassroots social media campaign got the song – which is over 15 years old – to the top spot. Regardless of what you think of the song, you gotta love the fact that a Facebook and Twitter campaign toppled the machine (get it, rage against the…) that is the x-factor. People trump marketing dollars in this instance. I think more and more companies are going to spend less and get more mavens, influencers on board to promote goods and services, 2010 is the year where marketing dollars seriously move from the traditional to the emerging social channels. An example is the news today that the Economist is going to try and acquire over 500K in facebook fans and 750K in twitter users.
Secondly the less obvious but pretty transparent and related to the first, the continued explosion of local – small is the new big. Being small, being nimble, being flexible is going to win. Big brands are going to lose more and more market share to the little guy. As Gary Vaynerchuk likes to say, “small town rules”, where the internet allows smaller companies to compete. More small guys are going to leverage social and other channels to acquire costumers at the expense of the big guys.
Thirdly, the wild/out there, based on a hunch – Newspapers will fold their print publications. I’d like to see a couple of major newspapers move from a mix of print and online to being purely online. Physical newspapers are costly, not only in manufacturing but also in terms of distribution and other costs. I think we’re going to see some news brands move to less copies (if not none) and more online news distribution as their major means of revenues.
Fourthly, I think we’ll see the return of the IPO. Linkedin or Facebook are my bet for this one. I think one of these companies will get going on their move to an IPO in 2010.
Lastly, the big dream, I believe there will be a lot of good happening in 2010. I think we’ll get closer on the climate change exchange, maybe not a legally binding agreement, but there will be a serious agreement on climate control. I think politics will move in the right direction. I think the US President Obama will have a much better second year than his first. I think he’s inherited and had to deal with some serious challenges and we’re going to see 2010 where the US, and it’s administration, gets over the crap from 2009 and starts really performing.
Not sure which of these predictions will come true and which ones are going to fall flat, but I would totally trade all four of the first ones for the last. Any out there have any predictions for 2010?
I love Disqus. It’s made managing comments on my blog pretty easy, between that and Facebook, I feel like I can engage with the people who read my posts pretty well. I own the conversation. I can’t always control where the discussion goes, and nor do I want to, I’m not a dictator but it’s on my turf.
I’ve been railing against sites that made it difficult to add comments on their site for a while – my instances of twitter to and fro with Kara Swisher are legendary (if only in my own mind), where the highlight for me was when she called me the #1 guff giver (I took it as a compliment). I’m glad that AllThingsD eventually went to Disqus, I thought it was a good move which will hopefully allow them to own the conversations around their posts.
The Economist on the other hand doesn’t own their discussion. I came across this article on the Economist from Lucy Kellaway discussing the end of the MBA*. There are 10 comments on the post. 10. That’s it. I found a much richer discussion about the article on Hacker News! There is an actual discussion happening there, 52 comments and more coming. It’s a proper discussion not just a couple of blow-hards shooting their mouths off. And the community wins.
The difference between the two is that the Economist has made it really difficult to comment, and as a result you get a lot of the same people commenting and not really reading the other comments. Where as Hacker News and a lot of blogs/sites which use Disqus, make it easy for readers to reply and manage discussions rather then just allowing people to shoot their mouths off.
Whatever system you use for commenting, you need to make it easy to manage a DISCUSSION. Allowing users to reply and follow a CONVERSATION is a much richer experience than having a couple of “comments”.
*For what it’s worth, I think MBA’s are good for some people but not for everyone. Mine was definitely ROI positive already, and I don’t mean just financial returns. Mark Suster has a great post on MBAs for start ups / VCs which is a pretty good read and goes through what you get out of an MBA later on in the post – read through long enough and you’ll find a comment from yours truly – Mark uses Disqus, go figure.
Umair Haque wrote a post for the Harvard Business Blog a couple of months ago talking about “Awesomeness”, the principal being that being Awesome will trump innovation. Personally, I prefer amazing to awesome. Being amazing… well it amazes. It leaves people with their jaw open, tweeting people, facebooking people, whatever it is, being amazing means that people want to shout about your service. I’ve been amazed twice in this last week and I shared it on twitter which started me really thinking about the amazing principle.
Seth Godin is amazing. He’s conceived the idea and put the team together to share a free book called “What matters now”. A bunch of really smart people have contributed a page each about a concept that really matters to them. The people in the book are amazing. Some of the people are people who’s books, lectures, blogs etc I’ve been following for some time, people like Fred Wilson, Tony Hsieh, Chris Anderson, Hugh Macleod and a lot of others – sorry I’m too lazy to link to all of them, but if you don’t know who those people are do a search for ‘em. And there’s some people I haven’t heard of before as well. It’s a great little book, sharing little bits of wisdom and I’m sure everyone would find some information that’s inspiring in there. Here’s the kicker though. It’s free! People are tweeting about it, people are downloading it, other really smart people are blogging about it. And it’s a great way to promote all the people in there as well as a great charity, www.roomtoread.org. In short it’s amazing.
Zappos is amazing. I met Alfred, the COO/CFO at Zappos last week in Paris, and I heard Tony Hsieh the CEO, speak in Paris as well. One of the things that really got me was that they have a culture book written by the employees and they give it for free to anyone who asks. I couldn’t believe it. So I emailed Zappos and asked for a copy to be sent to Switzerland. It arrived in literally 3 business days. 3 BUSINESS DAYS TO SWITZERLAND. I’m not a customer, I can’t be a customer as they don’t serve to Europe! And they still sent me a copy with some kind of priority post. That’s amazing.
I truly believe being amazing is key. If you can amaze people they’ll write about you, they’ll tell people about you, they’ll buy your product and most importantly they’ll use you over and over again. Being amazing might not be the most profitable, but squeezing margin could hurt your business in the long term (service suffering), being amazing is the key to sustainability. Zappos and Seth aren’t alone, but they’re the ones who’ve amazed me recently. Who amazes you?
(note I’ve started using Amazon Affiliate links on my blog posts as a trial) on my iPod this week, I’m really enjoying the book but I can’t help but think about where all the international examples of great companies/leaders/tribes are?