Interesting discussion in Rome on Friday night. I was giving a talk on maximising internet performance to some publishers and the conversation turned to the role of the publisher in the new world of Web 2.0. I suggested that the first publishing house to help facilitated on-line publishing for non-traditional publishers might have a first mover's advantage.
The response was in terms of quality control. One of the traditional publisher's activities is to act as a gate keeper - to ensure that what is published has some quality and accuracy.In common with many people in their industry, they are concerned about the lack of standards in the quality of info on the web.
I suggested that the online world can to some extent be self policing -after all wikipedia seems to work quite well - particularly as areas of contention such as the Palestine-Israeli situation are clearly flagged as being - well contentious. What's needed is peer review - not necessarily formally as with a scientific paper but the kind of thing that happens in an online social business network such as Ecademy. If someone posts bad advice they'll get jumped on and the error will be corrected - sometimes quite vigorously.
So the role of the traditional publisher might be to find ways to sponsor and monetise a role as an honest broker or at least to maintain the forums where this type of informal peer review can occur.
What opinions do others have?
Monday, February 26, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
2007 - the year of organic transition (1)
Well we have cleared out 1/4 of an acre and are officially in transition with the soil association towards organic status. We have 50 beds of 20 metres each in this glass house and we have 3 planted up and lots of plants germinating on the potting benches.
I'll tell you about the private vs public leadership competencies tomorrow
I'll tell you about the private vs public leadership competencies tomorrow
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Abandoned Heroes
Following up on yesterday's post I'm going to tell you a bit about "Abandoned Heroes"
This is the project I've been working on all year with Brunel and Royal Holloway Universities. Essentially we were looking at how small companies actually use IT and e-business in their work.
We did 400 telephone interviews and about 50 in-depth interviews of which I did 20. We were looking at 4 main clusters of industry - food, transport and logistics, media and internet.
We did a dissemination event in October called "Abandoned Heroes". I chose the title mainly because these organisations have been left high and dry by the abolition of the IT related business support initiative Uk Online for Business in 2004. What many of these companies need is some "IT Paramedic" training which will help them to set up and manage the IT networks that their businesses come to depend on.
The official channels, whether these are the IT industry, the educational industry or the various government support activities seem to recognise nothing between a user and a fully fledged IT professional. This does nothing for these Abandoned Heroes who are taking their companies into the future with little in the way of useful support.
One thing that was really interesting in the study was the way in which compliance with Government Regulation is driving IT uptake particularly in the logistics and food structures.
A summary of the findings can be found in my Ecademy blog while the full report can be downloaded here
Next entry will be about the differences in perspective between Leadership competencies in public and private sectors.
Alan
This is the project I've been working on all year with Brunel and Royal Holloway Universities. Essentially we were looking at how small companies actually use IT and e-business in their work.
We did 400 telephone interviews and about 50 in-depth interviews of which I did 20. We were looking at 4 main clusters of industry - food, transport and logistics, media and internet.
We did a dissemination event in October called "Abandoned Heroes". I chose the title mainly because these organisations have been left high and dry by the abolition of the IT related business support initiative Uk Online for Business in 2004. What many of these companies need is some "IT Paramedic" training which will help them to set up and manage the IT networks that their businesses come to depend on.
The official channels, whether these are the IT industry, the educational industry or the various government support activities seem to recognise nothing between a user and a fully fledged IT professional. This does nothing for these Abandoned Heroes who are taking their companies into the future with little in the way of useful support.
One thing that was really interesting in the study was the way in which compliance with Government Regulation is driving IT uptake particularly in the logistics and food structures.
A summary of the findings can be found in my Ecademy blog while the full report can be downloaded here
Next entry will be about the differences in perspective between Leadership competencies in public and private sectors.
Alan
Monday, December 04, 2006
Change of name, change of premises, change of everything
We have, like many small companies, been running out of the house for the last couple of years using a wi-fi peer to peer network with a domestic broadband connection.
The growth of our plants business, www.plants4presents.co.uk meant that we had to find some additional space - we actually needed 5000 square feet to store and pack the plants but it turned out that the only way we could achieve this was to take on 105,000 square feet - nearly 2 acres of unused glass house.
So it turns out that we are going through 2 of the common barriers that small companies face at once - moving into proper premises AND putting in a server for the network while hooking up to business broadband. So we ended up moving 2 businesses and ourselves all at the same time. I know I'm not happy unless achieving the impossible but this is ridiculous.
We've had to work quite hard to stabilise the premises - I'll tell you about the gory details another time - but we're currently gearing up for the Christmas Rush - the girls expect to ship 2000 plants in the next 3 weeks - mainly down to Emily's sterling work with the PR.
However it has taken Isobel a lot of work to get the server up and running - she's been writing code since 1981 and managed a large network in our last business so she knows more about what to do than the average small business owner. Nevertheless its been a struggle to get it sorted.
This has interesting links into my own current project "Abandoned Heroes" which deals with how small companies actually use IT and e-business.
I'll cover that in the next post.
The growth of our plants business, www.plants4presents.co.uk meant that we had to find some additional space - we actually needed 5000 square feet to store and pack the plants but it turned out that the only way we could achieve this was to take on 105,000 square feet - nearly 2 acres of unused glass house.
So it turns out that we are going through 2 of the common barriers that small companies face at once - moving into proper premises AND putting in a server for the network while hooking up to business broadband. So we ended up moving 2 businesses and ourselves all at the same time. I know I'm not happy unless achieving the impossible but this is ridiculous.
We've had to work quite hard to stabilise the premises - I'll tell you about the gory details another time - but we're currently gearing up for the Christmas Rush - the girls expect to ship 2000 plants in the next 3 weeks - mainly down to Emily's sterling work with the PR.
However it has taken Isobel a lot of work to get the server up and running - she's been writing code since 1981 and managed a large network in our last business so she knows more about what to do than the average small business owner. Nevertheless its been a struggle to get it sorted.
This has interesting links into my own current project "Abandoned Heroes" which deals with how small companies actually use IT and e-business.
I'll cover that in the next post.
Friday, April 21, 2006
The Final Conflict - for now
Over the last couple of days we've been looking at some conflict resolution strategies and how an understanding of these might be useful in leadership and team building.
I thought it might be interesting to try and illustrate how these different mindsets tend to cluster in different types of organisation. If your job involves managing partnerships that include combinations of public, private and voluntary sector organisations you may need to be aware of the different drivers in those organisations.
In this final diagram I've laid out these mindsets and the organisations which favour those combinations. They are superimposed on an image of the brain. Because these value systems grow out of the ways of thinking that the individuals favour.
We are familiar with the idea that we have a right side of the brain that deals with patterns and relationships and we have a left hand side of the brain that's drawn to logic, linear thinking and more importantly results.
We're also I'm sure familiar with the idea that the front part of the brain deals with thinking and the rear part with more instinctive behaviour.
This means that we can visualise combinations of thinking styles
Right + Front - idealists who like novelty
Left + Front - accountants who like control
Left + Rear - entrepreneurs who like results
Right + Rear - belongers who like community
And while this is a bit of an oversimplification it illustrates the dynamics of what's going on - why the values of public, private and voluntary sector organisations are so different and why people who are attracted to Knowledge economy industries - IT, media etc thrive by integrating left and right brain characteristics - systems and people, results and relationships.
I hope that these articles may give you some ideas as to how to reconcile some of these issues in the team and partnership situations you have to manage.
We've looked at how the mindsets of self vs group orientation evolve as they become gradually able to absorb more of the environment around them. We've looked at the conflict management strategies that they tend to adopt and how certain mindsets cluster in different types of organisation.
So if you need to manage teams across organisations being aware of this might just save a couple of issues from escalating out of control.
If you need help in managing or leading your team we sell the tools to help you assess your team and run and facilitate workshops on conflict resolution and leadership.
If you want to know more telephone us or visit our website. We have carried out work based on these materials for both small companies and some household names. If you work in the public sector in Wales some support is available via Public Service Management Wales.
That's it. Hope you found it useful.
alan
Dr Alan Rae - Founder - Howtodobusiness.com
Why not join the Ecademy How to Do Business Club - just click the logo
Small Business Research and Training Programmes
Free Sample Marketing Plan
Complete Marketing Course
I thought it might be interesting to try and illustrate how these different mindsets tend to cluster in different types of organisation. If your job involves managing partnerships that include combinations of public, private and voluntary sector organisations you may need to be aware of the different drivers in those organisations.
In this final diagram I've laid out these mindsets and the organisations which favour those combinations. They are superimposed on an image of the brain. Because these value systems grow out of the ways of thinking that the individuals favour.
We are familiar with the idea that we have a right side of the brain that deals with patterns and relationships and we have a left hand side of the brain that's drawn to logic, linear thinking and more importantly results.
We're also I'm sure familiar with the idea that the front part of the brain deals with thinking and the rear part with more instinctive behaviour.
This means that we can visualise combinations of thinking styles
Right + Front - idealists who like novelty
Left + Front - accountants who like control
Left + Rear - entrepreneurs who like results
Right + Rear - belongers who like community
And while this is a bit of an oversimplification it illustrates the dynamics of what's going on - why the values of public, private and voluntary sector organisations are so different and why people who are attracted to Knowledge economy industries - IT, media etc thrive by integrating left and right brain characteristics - systems and people, results and relationships.
I hope that these articles may give you some ideas as to how to reconcile some of these issues in the team and partnership situations you have to manage.
We've looked at how the mindsets of self vs group orientation evolve as they become gradually able to absorb more of the environment around them. We've looked at the conflict management strategies that they tend to adopt and how certain mindsets cluster in different types of organisation.
So if you need to manage teams across organisations being aware of this might just save a couple of issues from escalating out of control.
If you need help in managing or leading your team we sell the tools to help you assess your team and run and facilitate workshops on conflict resolution and leadership.
If you want to know more telephone us or visit our website. We have carried out work based on these materials for both small companies and some household names. If you work in the public sector in Wales some support is available via Public Service Management Wales.
That's it. Hope you found it useful.
alan
Dr Alan Rae - Founder - Howtodobusiness.com
Why not join the Ecademy How to Do Business Club - just click the logo
Small Business Research and Training Programmes
Free Sample Marketing Plan
Complete Marketing Course
Conflict Resolution 2
The task of a leader is to create a synthesis between the needs of the group, the need to implement the vision in the specific objective circumstances that you find yourself in and the value systems that the individuals are using.
The language used is critical - if you (or others) use "me" language around "we" people they will sulk, sabotage, use passive aggression and generally thwart positive developments.
If you use "group" language with "me" people they'll perceive you as weak and you'll run a real danger of loss of control and marginalisation through them ignoring you.
These issues are quite real and need to be handled effectively.
In his book The Strategy of the Dolphin, Dudley Lynch came up with a nice little way of looking at this. He characterised the self orientated mindsets as Sharks and the group orientated mind-sets as Carp - mainly because the self orientated group see them as victims and the fact that they try and see themselves as victims also. He identified involvers as "pseudo-enlightened carp" and choice seekers - who integrate systems and people skills as dolphins.
Being a dolphin is reckoned to be a good thing because it means you can use any of the previous mindsets as required. Dolphins combine the insights and instincts of fairness of the involver with the mental toughness of the sharks. They believe in self expression but not at the expense of everyone else and combine systems thinking with empathy to try and build situations that work.
What this means for conflict resolution and leadership is shown in the next diagram.
Essentially in a confrontational situation sharks will use take over or trade-off, carps will get out or give in while "pseudo-enlightended" Carp use a combination of Trade-off or Give in.
A Dolphin by contrast might use all of them as required and will go for Breakthrough and a true win-win if the issue is worth taking the time over.
It's important to be aware of who you're dealing with - when times get hard Sharks will instinctively try and do more of the same harder while Carp will bury their head in the sand.
Environments full of shark behaviour display lack of awareness of the real position, burn-out, stress, denial and continuous motivation meetings in a blame culture. The entire focus is on results.
Environments that are carp dominated have an air of doom, buck passing, superficial niceness covering up back-stabbing. There's a lack of completion, lack of learning and a tendency to wait for salvation. The entire focus is on maintaining relationships with people like us.
A successful organisation will need to bring these tendencies into balance. This is your task - to harness the energy of the individualists for the benefit of the whole and to keep the glue that's necessary to keep any organisation together from gumming up the works.
Tomorrow we'll finish off by looking at the mindsets typical of different types of organisations
alan
Dr Alan Rae - Founder - Howtodobusiness.com
Why not join the Ecademy How to Do Business Club - just click the logo
Small Business Research and Training Programmes
Free Sample Marketing Plan
Complete Marketing Course
The language used is critical - if you (or others) use "me" language around "we" people they will sulk, sabotage, use passive aggression and generally thwart positive developments.
If you use "group" language with "me" people they'll perceive you as weak and you'll run a real danger of loss of control and marginalisation through them ignoring you.
These issues are quite real and need to be handled effectively.
In his book The Strategy of the Dolphin, Dudley Lynch came up with a nice little way of looking at this. He characterised the self orientated mindsets as Sharks and the group orientated mind-sets as Carp - mainly because the self orientated group see them as victims and the fact that they try and see themselves as victims also. He identified involvers as "pseudo-enlightened carp" and choice seekers - who integrate systems and people skills as dolphins.
Being a dolphin is reckoned to be a good thing because it means you can use any of the previous mindsets as required. Dolphins combine the insights and instincts of fairness of the involver with the mental toughness of the sharks. They believe in self expression but not at the expense of everyone else and combine systems thinking with empathy to try and build situations that work.
What this means for conflict resolution and leadership is shown in the next diagram.
Essentially in a confrontational situation sharks will use take over or trade-off, carps will get out or give in while "pseudo-enlightended" Carp use a combination of Trade-off or Give in.
A Dolphin by contrast might use all of them as required and will go for Breakthrough and a true win-win if the issue is worth taking the time over.
It's important to be aware of who you're dealing with - when times get hard Sharks will instinctively try and do more of the same harder while Carp will bury their head in the sand.
Environments full of shark behaviour display lack of awareness of the real position, burn-out, stress, denial and continuous motivation meetings in a blame culture. The entire focus is on results.
Environments that are carp dominated have an air of doom, buck passing, superficial niceness covering up back-stabbing. There's a lack of completion, lack of learning and a tendency to wait for salvation. The entire focus is on maintaining relationships with people like us.
A successful organisation will need to bring these tendencies into balance. This is your task - to harness the energy of the individualists for the benefit of the whole and to keep the glue that's necessary to keep any organisation together from gumming up the works.
Tomorrow we'll finish off by looking at the mindsets typical of different types of organisations
alan
Dr Alan Rae - Founder - Howtodobusiness.com
Why not join the Ecademy How to Do Business Club - just click the logo
Small Business Research and Training Programmes
Free Sample Marketing Plan
Complete Marketing Course
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Conflict Resolution 1
Dealing with conflict
Managing conflict is one of the core skills you need to lead a team.
You have to be aware of how the different ways in which team members think and the value systems they adopt can impact on the way they relate to each other (and to you!) when difficulties arise.
This knowledge has to be played against the different strategies that can be used to deal with a conflict of interest. Sometimes it's your role as a leader to minimise these in the interests of harmony while at other times you need to almost insist on a conflict as part of your role in raising the game as you maintain the tension between what could be and what is.
Essentially there are 5 strategies that can be followed to resolve a conflict.
• Get Out• Give In• Trade-off• Take Over• Breakthrough - going for Win-Win
Small business owners often use a combination of Give-In if it's not important and breakthrough if is. Breakthrough is the most powerful strategy but it's too time consuming to use for trivial issues.
Sometimes of course you just have to take charge if things are going badly wrong and it's necessary to use the take-over strategy which is really powerful for delivering short term results but over time it tends to have a debilitating effect on the group field.
Trade-off is conventional bargaining which leads to a result that everyone can live with but nobody likes. It is quite effective but if used repeatedly it tends to dull the group environment.
So those are the strategies that you might use - how do you deal with what's going on amongst the others and what kind of behaviour are you likely to have to deal with.
For most of us there is a tension between results and relationships, between self and the group.
In "The Strategy of the Dolphin" Dudley Lynch explains the range of behaviours that individuals adopt. These are shown in the following diagram which illustrates some of the emotional drivers that keep people attached to these world views or which propel them forth to the next.
In essence we lurch from self focus to group focus, from results to relationships.
Basically the odd numbered systems on the left are self orientated, the even numbered ones on the right are group and team orientated.
Your task as a leader is to create a synthesis between the needs of the group, the need to implement the vision in the specific objective circumstances that you find yourself in and the value systems that the individuals are using.
Tomorrow we'll look at how these map to the conflict resolution strategies and on Friday we'll look at how these mindsets tend to surface in different types of organisations
alan
Managing conflict is one of the core skills you need to lead a team.
You have to be aware of how the different ways in which team members think and the value systems they adopt can impact on the way they relate to each other (and to you!) when difficulties arise.
This knowledge has to be played against the different strategies that can be used to deal with a conflict of interest. Sometimes it's your role as a leader to minimise these in the interests of harmony while at other times you need to almost insist on a conflict as part of your role in raising the game as you maintain the tension between what could be and what is.
Essentially there are 5 strategies that can be followed to resolve a conflict.
• Get Out• Give In• Trade-off• Take Over• Breakthrough - going for Win-Win
Small business owners often use a combination of Give-In if it's not important and breakthrough if is. Breakthrough is the most powerful strategy but it's too time consuming to use for trivial issues.
Sometimes of course you just have to take charge if things are going badly wrong and it's necessary to use the take-over strategy which is really powerful for delivering short term results but over time it tends to have a debilitating effect on the group field.
Trade-off is conventional bargaining which leads to a result that everyone can live with but nobody likes. It is quite effective but if used repeatedly it tends to dull the group environment.
So those are the strategies that you might use - how do you deal with what's going on amongst the others and what kind of behaviour are you likely to have to deal with.
For most of us there is a tension between results and relationships, between self and the group.
In "The Strategy of the Dolphin" Dudley Lynch explains the range of behaviours that individuals adopt. These are shown in the following diagram which illustrates some of the emotional drivers that keep people attached to these world views or which propel them forth to the next.
In essence we lurch from self focus to group focus, from results to relationships.
Basically the odd numbered systems on the left are self orientated, the even numbered ones on the right are group and team orientated.
Your task as a leader is to create a synthesis between the needs of the group, the need to implement the vision in the specific objective circumstances that you find yourself in and the value systems that the individuals are using.
Tomorrow we'll look at how these map to the conflict resolution strategies and on Friday we'll look at how these mindsets tend to surface in different types of organisations
alan
Monday, April 17, 2006
e-blogger relatively easy to use
Well from a standing start I have a blog appearing in squidoo tailored into my house colours and with links into my existing sites.
Getting the house colour was a bit of a stress though. Fortunately my designer had given me the RGB numbers - but were does the hex come from? Google came to my rescue with a link to this utility - thanks guys. In order to amend the template chosen I had to do some experimenting and assumed that if I took the 1st 3rd and 5th digits in the full hex code ie #209b98 went to 299 it would probably work - it did!
Might be an idea to put your own converter and instructions in though chaps - would be really handy
Getting the links in place was straightforward enough. Although not an html professional I know enough about it to reverse engineer it
Total time elapsed about 2 hours including a break for breakfast with the boss (her indoors)
Next stage will be to post something on Ecademy that links to the blog
whizz for atoms
alan
Getting the house colour was a bit of a stress though. Fortunately my designer had given me the RGB numbers - but were does the hex come from? Google came to my rescue with a link to this utility - thanks guys. In order to amend the template chosen I had to do some experimenting and assumed that if I took the 1st 3rd and 5th digits in the full hex code ie #209b98 went to 299 it would probably work - it did!
Might be an idea to put your own converter and instructions in though chaps - would be really handy
Getting the links in place was straightforward enough. Although not an html professional I know enough about it to reverse engineer it
Total time elapsed about 2 hours including a break for breakfast with the boss (her indoors)
Next stage will be to post something on Ecademy that links to the blog
whizz for atoms
alan
First Steps in Blogging
I have been commenting and using information on ecademy for some time now but as I have a demanding marketing assignment on the go which is going to need some serious viral action I've been looking into this with some more energy recently.
Accordingly I have been trying out some blogging tools and have created a squidoo lens which seems to work quite well as a technical tool.
Its effective as a tool for allowing one to pull together a lot of information in a single place. Easier to set up than creating new web pages and easy to link in
Will post some more later
Accordingly I have been trying out some blogging tools and have created a squidoo lens which seems to work quite well as a technical tool.
Its effective as a tool for allowing one to pull together a lot of information in a single place. Easier to set up than creating new web pages and easy to link in
Will post some more later
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