CRM 2.0?
June 20, 2008
Conversations continue to take place bi-directionally between customers and businesses as they move away from the traditional uni-directional, tailored messages pushed to a customer base. And the tools available to support these bi-directional conversations continue to proliferate.
Newly minted Web 2.0 enterprise thought leaders experience “ah-ha” moments after truly interacting with a customer for the first time – as if they were blinded by a shining sun as they emerge from a winter’s hibernation. Before now, customer interaction in the back office may be limited to an executive’s annual ride in the delivery truck, or manning the cash register for an hour to “get in touch” with the front line. But even in these cases the conversations taking place took place between the executive and the employee – not necessarily the customer.
Drucker explains that Quality is giving the customer what they asked for. Peters described the Hedgehog concept as the one thing that an organization excells at better than any other organization in the world. Now that organizations have the tools to find out what all the customers are saying, the challenge becomes aligning customer feedback with the corporate mission. The risk of listening to all the customers is the distraction of delivering outside an organization’s Hedgehog concept.
What I find interesting about how far business has come with respect to listening to and interacting with customers is that these “new” concepts have been around since the beginning of civilization. Why does it take so long for a business to change it’s model to align itself with the normal human communication behaviors? Developing a Hedgehog concept is nothing different than, say, an ancient hunting tribe deciding to hunt black bear and not any other kind of bear, or moose, or bird because the tribe understood everything about the black bear and how it, more than any other bounty would best support the needs of the tribe. “Listening to the customer,” and concepts like crowd-sourcing, are these so much different than sitting around a campfire at night and discussing with the neighbors what works best and why?
Fast forward a few thousand years and we find these new communication strategies are generally bottom-up strategies. Technological limits tended to necessitate top-down strategies as delivery of radio, television, and newspaper messaging happened in one-way fashion. As technology changes, opportunities to generate two-way communication exist somewhat ubiquitously. And younger consumers will expect open lines of communication. They are getting back to their roots. We better be ready to deliver.
So when eWeek runs a piece on CRM 2.0 this week (June 16th, p32 – I can’t find a link) I have to bite my lip. Yes, there are some great platforms out there like Salesforce Ideas and Dell IdeaStorm that allow customers to suggest ideas and allow the crowd to vote on them. Yes, the conversation between businesses and customers has been enhanced in some amazing ways. I just need to swallow my pride when I think that many open source projects pioneered these strategies 10 years ago, forget who gets the credit, and just be glad that we’re arriving.
- Andy
How Have Leadership Principles Changed?
June 19, 2008
At times I feel old-school when it comes to leadership. My perspective of a good leader is a servant leader who can listen well and concretely respond to followers while providing a compelling vision for what an organization can accomplish. Followers, in turn, actually want to follow as they vest themselves in both the vision and the leader because the leader, along with all other responsibilities, has their interest in mind, and has proven this through speech and action. In business, where next quarter’s numbers matter more than pretty much anything else, and six-week cycles rule as companies release earnings guidance mid-quarter, implementing a vision is difficult at best. And servant leadership exists in two places:
- In theory as investors pound at the door demanding attention and earnings.
- In practice after a company has filed for bankruptcy or has missed earnings enough times to force out the current “leader.” In this case, the new leader is given the ability to implement a vision with a leash. Earnings better turn around in 18 to 24 months. Think Bob Nardelli at Chrysler.
George Andrews wrote a piece in the June 18th Journal about the influence of Peter Drucker on Asian business management principles (subscription required for full access). In China last year, 6,000 managers gathered to discuss Drucker’s principles, and next year’s conference expects a 20% rise in attendance. 14 acadamies exist to expressly spread the Drucker word. Why the enthusiasm?
“With China building up its manufacturing capacity…it’s probably more useful for Chinese management students to examine U.S. industrial triumphs of past decades, rather than get distracted by the fanfare associated with the various postindustrial ventures of today’s America.”
You see, when Drucker describes leadership, says Henry To, CEO of the Drucker acadamies, “he says that integrity must come first. He says leaders need to listen to their employees and be followers, too.” Andrews concludes that Drucker’s philosophy is “out of step with the tastes at many leading business schools, where the preference is for conclusions based on large statistical studies.
And what philosophy has Drucker forwarded that is out of step?
- The essential activities of business are innovation and marketing; it’s a mistake to fixate on profits.
- Good management should make work productive and the worker effective.
- Set objectives. Set separate ones for each crucial area of the business.
- Take social responsibility seriously. An enterprise exists only as long as society believes it does a necessary and useful job.
- Quality is what the customer wants, not what’s expensive and hard to do.
- Knowledge workers in modern organizations may manage no one, yet their decisions’ impact can be comparable to what executives do.
Mr. To explains that “Drucker’s fondness for business history is considered a virtue, not a fault. ‘I tell students: “The truth will not be outdated.” ‘ ”
I’d agree. Am I out of my mind?
- Andy
Brian Krahenbuhl Takes Home Best of Software!
May 23, 2008
Over the last year I’ve had the privilege of working with many of the students and faculty of the University of Cincinnati’s College of Applied Sciences (CAS) IT Program. These kids have really made a difference with their contributions to the Information Technology space. In late 2007, I was really impressed with the work Brian Krahenbuhl, a CAS graduating senior, began with .NET 3.5 as he built a Pet Grooming business management package called GroomIx for his senior design project. A couple of months ago LUCRUM had the opportunity to bring Brian into the company.
Yesterday, CAS held its annual Tech Expo (and here) event to highlight the work that their seniors have accomplished. Hats-off to Brian as he took home the Best of Software award as well as the Kroger Award of Excellence for the best presentation!
Brian’s GroomIx
- Andy
A Rational Conversation With My Mechanic
April 13, 2008
I took my Suburban in to the dealer for some brake work last week. I usually drop the truck off in the evening and then have the shop call with an oral estimate and explanation. This led to a rational conversation with my mechanic.
15 months ago I replaced the rotors and pads after the brakes began shuddering pretty badly after what seemed like a short time, maybe 18 months. A Suburban is a heavy vehicle, and it carries my wife and daughters, so I like to make sure the brakes work properly. The last thing I want to do is skimp on my brakes. At the time I was told that the rotors were after-market and that is why they warped pretty quickly. Oh, and there wasn’t enough material to turn them, either, so I needed new rotors. I, in fact, did use after-market rotors, so the diagnosis seemed correct, and I let them replace the rotors. Everything was good to go.
Fast forward to last week. The brakes are again shuddering madly on the Suburban along with a number of other issues. I drop the car off. They call me the next day. We talk. I’m told the rotors are warped pretty badly. I’m thinking, “after 15 months? That’s less than where I took it last time. Why should I spend money with the dealer if performance is no better?” So we talk this through. Service tells me that the records show the pads were replaced last time, and that’s it. “Hmmmm,” I say. “I was told last time that the rotors were replaced,” and then I go into my story about after-market rotors, blah, blah. Service digs a bit and sees that the rotors were replaced, but that they were replaced with an inferior, and less expensive, of two choices. “OOOHHhhhhhhh,” I say, thinking to myself that I was not given this choice 15 months ago. I assumed service would replace the rotors with better performing ones after chiding me for choosing after-market the first time.
I could have laid into this guy and the service department in general. I didn’t. I was somewhat disappointed, though. Still, in the end I got what I paid for, so it’s not like service pulled the wool over my eyes. I wasn’t charged for high-end rotors. It just meant that I had to bring the car in a bit earlier than I would have liked. At this point, as the customer, I finally had all the information I needed to make better decisions. Before I spent the extra $150, I did need to escalate. I told service I would call them back after conferring with my account^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hwife. She handles the money and I didn’t want to make the final call without approval 
My conversation with her went as anticipated, “They cost more? But they’ll last longer? Sure, let’s do it.” I called service back and said let’s do it.
This interaction with the service department doesn’t seem that much different than interactions that happen daily during IT project life-cycles. It’s all about getting all the information, even when it can be disappointing, making rational decisions when the guys under the hood find unanticipated issues, and then getting buy-in on the solution every step of the way while communication takes place with all parties to keep everyone on the same page.
So project managers, make sure you’re communicating to your project sponsors all the information all the time so that the sponsors can make decisions. And project sponsors, hold your teams responsible for what they’ve committed to, and when they bring you new information be ready to bend a little to make sure you get what you want.
- Andy
Ehem…Standardizing Every Aspect of Delivery
April 9, 2008
LUCRUM works hard to standardize every aspect of our delivery processes. Mary wrote earlier about LUCRUM’s efforts in Quality Management. In order to focus on business problems, LUCRUM has implemented a standard dress code so that consultants don’t need to think about what they need to wear on a given day. Here Josh and Jeff show off for Tan and Teal Thursday.
- Andy
Ugh, Not Another PowerPoint?!
March 26, 2008
You can say it formally the way Edward Tufte did in The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, or you can just say it in plain English: Do I have to sit through another meaningless presentation? The answer is a resounding, “NO!” Okay, this post is more entertainment than thoughtfulness, but you can learn a *whole bunch* of what NOT to do by meandering over to Life after Death by PowerPoint and reviewing the first video. And then take a gander at the second one just for fun. You’ll hear Don McMillan’s life lessons.
When you’re done with your homework, visit Presentation Zen, pickup the book, then practice so that we don’t have to sit through your boring presentation
- Andy
Applying Exponential Principles to Personal Growth
March 14, 2008
I recently had an opportunity to listen in as our CEO, John Bostick, spoke to and fielded questions from Xavier Professor Tim Kloppenborg’s project management class. John captures an audience’s attention with his wisdom and propensity for great story telling. And he’s not afraid to share the hard lessons of his experience founding and running multiple multi-million-dollar businesses. This talk, although about project management and the trade offs of time, scope, and budget, hit so many inherently valuable life principles.
John reads voraciously. I’ve known this. Over my four years at LUCRUM I’ve listened to John apply lessons to his life and our business taken from content that he’s read and shared with us. Today I found the source of his motivation.
John described a very simple principle that he called the principle of exponents. I’m not sure that’s the clearest title, but the concept became as clear as day as he explained it. In essence, the principle is that if you spend 15 minutes each day improving yourself you will become exponentially stronger in character, will, knowledge, and understanding than the average person over time. Not that your goal is to be better than the next guy, but to become a generally stronger person with more to give.
John broke it down like this. If the average person can read, say, a bit less than a page a minute, then in 15 minutes that person can read about 12 pages. If the average book is about 350 pages long, then a person can read about a book a month. That is 12 books a year. Read three books purely for entertainment purposes (because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy). Read three personal growth books, like Covey’s 7 Habits, or Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. And then read 6 books about the business and profession you’ve built your career on. 12 books a year, every year, and you will have come a long, long way in a relatively short amount of time.
Then John graphed the principle on the chalkboard, and it looked something like this:
At point 1, both person A and person B graduate from college and enter the workforce. The graphs measure personal growth over time as the two people apply growth principles and life lessons learned. Person A out of the gate begins reading about his business and profession, networking into relationships that will help forward his career, takes entrepreneurial chances and learns some great lessons. Person B doesn’t.
Clearly, with the passage of time, person A experiences personal growth at a rate that far exceeds person B. 10 or 15 years down the line we might look at person A (point 2) and talk about how lucky that person has been in his life and career because we’re looking at a point in time. If we look at history, though, person A established a pattern on day-1 that guaranteed the trajectory of personal growth if it didn’t all but guarantee personal success.
And all that from just 15 minutes a day.
Tell us: how much do you read? How do you apply habits to guarantee personal growth? We’d love to hear about them.
- Andy
New Models in Warehousing and PaaS
February 29, 2008
Is a column-oriented database the optimal format for a warehouse? Database pioneer Michael Stonebraker thinks so. InformationWeek reports Stonebraker’s assessment that a column-oriented database improves warehouse performance 50x, and the larger the warehouse, the greater the gain. Why? Warehouses typically store transactional data. Where a row of data stores many pieces of one transaction, the typical row-based DBMS would retrieve all rows then aggregate the selected column, a column-based DBMS would not require the same overhead of row processing. Because column information is generally of similar format, columns could also gain compression and storage efficiencies. Interesting thoughts. How viable is a column-based platform? I’m not sure, but Vertica has secured $23.5MM in venture funding to find out.
At the same time Sybase has funded column-based research since the mid-1990′s. An also-ran in the database world, Sybase saw revenues up 70% last year “because the column approach yields better query performance,” says Sybase Engineering VP, Richard Pledereder.
Column-oriented DBMSs require rethinking the data and indexes because the transaction is not the central idea. Instead, the data architect must think in terms of collections of similar records, and subject based indexes rather than transactional element indexes.
One company, Sonian Networks, archives e-mail for other businesses housing data in Vertica’s data warehouse on Amazon.com’s Simple Storage Service. Which segues into the platform as a service model. Sonian expects its warehouse to grow from a few terabytes to a petabyte sometime in 2009. And to deliver, Sonian relies on infrastructure hosted elsewhere. Sonian develops the warehouse platform and releases to a hosted environment. Their clients never miss a beat and always have the most up-to-date platform. Which reminds me of the Salesforce.com platform-as-a-service model.
If you haven’t heard, Salesforce.com, Oracle, and Google have partnered to bring PaaS to an application near you. In this model you can develop business solutions on the Salesforce.com APEX platform that targets every end-user device without having to develop custom code for each device and, drumroll here, without having to manage the infrastructure behind the applications. Right now companies must manage the intricacies of their infrastructure along with devoted staff to ensure users can perform their business functions. With PaaS, your company can continue to narrow it’s strategic and tactical focus to the services and business solutions that matter, and can offload the infrastructure responsibilities to partners who effectively do this. Okay, we’ve heard that before. Yes, except that Salesforce.com signed up 100,000 customers soon after its announcement. With a goal of disrupting the Microsoft model of software delivery, we’ll see where this goes.
- Andy
So You Think You Have What It Takes
February 28, 2008
I work with this amazing marketing guy, Dave Bowman. I call him Mr. Dayton because he knows, well, everybody in Dayton. He changed my life in about 1/2 an hour teaching me the farther reaching concepts of social media and how to market myself. Anyway, Dave is looking for 2 undergraduate students to fill Marketing Coordinator positions at our offices in Downtown Cincinnati. If this can grow into an internship or a co-op position for you, let’s talk and determine how we might be able to do this.
Let me tell you a bit about the position. Our Marketing Coordinator will fill a critical role in the execution of integrated marketing campaigns. Okay, what the heck does that mean? The Marketing Coordinator adds to the success of the LUCRUM’s Sales and Marketing team. You’ll support our sales and marketing efforts. How? You’ll assist with items direct mail, marketing fulfillment, database management, web management, blogging, social network development, market research, proposal development, event coordination, sales support, and more. Imagine that. You get paid to blog. In fact, it will be part of your job description.
If you have great communication skills and are looking for a cutting edge marketing opportunity, please apply. Really. We’re looking for folks with “can do” attitudes and a hunger for learning by doing. If you are the right person, LUCRUM will work around your schedule needs to make this fit for you. And I can promise you that you’ll walk away from LUCRUM with an amazing ability and some astonishing new skills to market yourself when you’re done.
You’ll be communicating with a broad range of individuals from co-workers to CIOs, so you’ll need to write well and have a solid phone and speaking presence. You’ll manage small projects from start to finish, so you’ll need to have command of your personal time management habits along with a demonstratably strong work ethic. Don’t get me wrong. This is no cushy job. We’re going to squeeze 8 hours of work out of you during your 4 hours here. You’ll also leave with bleeding-edge personal marketing skills and business relationships that could help you land your dream job out of college.
LUCRUM is not constrained to Business or Marketing majors. If you think you have what it takes – and you’ll want to really think about that first – please take the time to introduce yourself to us. We are looking for 2 great people that we can employ, and in return offer some cutting edge skills to help further your career. If you want to give this a shot, complete the contact form behind the Contact LUCRUM link at the top of this page and let us know how to get in touch with you.
As stated earlier, the position offers tremendous schedule flexibility. Each of the 2 candidates will be expected to work 2 to 3 days per week for approximately 4 hours per day. Ideally we will find one candidate to work on Monday & Wednesday, and another for Tuesday & Thursday – with Friday being used as needed.
LUCRUM will pay $10/hour and reimburse downtown parking costs.
You can find additional information about LUCRUM at our website, www.lucruminc.com, and more information about the people of LUCRUM right here on these pages.
Recession-Proof Your Software Development Career
February 28, 2008
Some time ago I answered the LinkedIn question, “What does networking mean to you?” Suzette West, a west-coast real estate broker, asked the question, and she marked my response the best answer. Here is how I responded:
For me, networking is local. Although I have global and regional reach through LinkedIn and social networking sites, my most valuable contacts are local. Local, that is, through my sphere of influence. Folks I reach out to gain some level of immediate trust due to my proximity to them, whether geographical or relational. Then, it’s up to me to take the first step and add value.
Because most of my most valuable networking relationships are also geographically local, part of my next step is a face-to-face meeting. Connecting with the best-of-the-best becomes very difficult without a face-to-face meeting. Of course this takes time, effort, and generally some small amount of money for coffee or lunch. And when we meet I’m looking for ways I can offer them value. If my colleague understands networking, I’ll quickly receive value from them. If not, then I’ll follow up our conversation with email or a phone call when I have the ability to offer more value. Eventually my colleague will catch on and begin offering value to others as part of the cycle.
So my philosophy towards networking is, “What can I give?” I view my role as building community and bringing others together. I subscribe to the notion of what goes around comes around, and I’ve been amazed more than once at what has come around to me when I’ve least expected it. I suppose another way to look at this is, those who are the luckiest work the hardest.
That’s what networking means to me.
Networking is having value and then giving that value away. It’s serving. It’s mentoring. Networking is sharing for the benefit of others. It’s looking for ways to help without an expected reward. Suzette and I share this philosophy and have since become long-distance friends encouraging each other’s networking activities.
I look to serve the Cincinnati IT software developer community. My goal is to strengthen this community and make it a place that people want to be a part of. I devote most of my time and energy bringing folks in this community together. And I’ve been able to watch a number of other folks do the same thing.
I especially look around at local developer events that take place about 10 times a month and think of folks like Mike Wood, Kishore Subramanyam, Mark Windholtz, Melissa Messersmith, and Marco Morena. These folks lead local user groups and spend countless unseen hours organizing, preparing, and presenting in order to bring the most valuable information to our local community. Why? Because they believe in our IT community. Do they ask for thanks? No. In fact, these folks usually give things away at their events on top of all the time they spend. Because they are givers.
Here is a snippet of an email that Natasha Allie recently sent me:
Networking is defined as developing an extended group of people with similar interests or concerns who interact and remain in informal contact for mutual assistance or support. It needs to start well before you need something. Indeed, it is a continuous long-term proposition that’s about building positive win-win relationships. We live in an unpredictable world. We don’t know when a recession will hit, if we’ll lose our job, or if a contract will be cut short. We don’t know if our skills will be relevant or if we’ll outgrow our current careers. Having a strong network helps us deal with those eventualities. A network is a safety net. If you’ve done your job well, developed relationships, given more than you’ve received and kept in touch, your network will have no problem helping and supporting you when you need it most. Eighty-five percent of all jobs are filled through personal references and contacts. It’s how you meet future clients, employers, life long friends and business partners. It’s how you find amazing employees, unearth tremendous opportunities and learn how to transition your career. It’s also how you establish information avenues, solve problems and mentor other people. Networking accelerates your career and business success.
I don’t know how accurate the statistics are, but I do know that software developers generally don’t pay attention to their network “well before [they] need something.” And many do not spend time, at least professionally, giving to their network more than they receive. My understanding may not be entirely quantifiable. My first-hand experience is. I attend quite a few of the Cincinnati IT community events, and I probably meet or see a total of 200 people a month. I would bet this is about 5% of the total community.
So my admonition, especially in the face of a recession, is to start to understand networking. Get out there and give of yourself a little. You have a job today? Great! That is the best time to start. So you’re introverted or shy? That’s okay, too. Find me at an event. I’ll start a conversation with you. I’ll also introduce you to the folks you should probably get to know. Consider yourself having an insider that wants to show you the ropes. These events give the developer community an opportunity to network together, branch out, and build relationships outside of their glass-walled corporate towers. I bet you’ll see that you’ll be welcomed. And when you *need* your network, you’ll be glad you came.
- Andy