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Still Standing

Before I became a LUCRUM employee I heard a lot of rumblings about LUCRUM .   My friends in the business were concerned about the mistakes LUCRUM had made in the past and the challenges that we faced moving forward.

When confronted with that, I asked my peers and I will ask you – what technology firm isn’t facing these challenges?  Who do you know that hasn’t lost money in one of the last 10 years? Is there a group out there that hasn’t had layoffs, turnover or tremendous organizational shifts and changes?
I sure can’t think of one right now,   I am betting not many of you can either.

But all this change is ok.  Change isn’t comfortable for a lot of people but it is OK.  One thing LUCRUM can proudly say after 15 years in this crazy industry is that WE are still STANDING.
Go back through your old contacts.  I bet you would be shocked to see how many places that were well known in the industry 10 even 5 years ago that don’t even exist any longer!

I know of several firms that bit the dust.  I was actually employed by one of them.  THAT firm was one of the great ones in Cincinnati during the mid to late 90’s.
THAT firm had a growth rate of 50% per month for a very long time.  Anyone that worked there made a lot of money and we were very proud to tell others where we were employed.

Where is THAT firm now?  Well the first iteration has LONG been gone.  After a multitude of acquisitions and name changes and leadership turnover THAT firm declared bankruptcy.
Within a blink of an eye our stock plummeted from 80 dollars a share to just around 4 cents a share.  Just last week the second coming of THAT firm failed again and abysmally at that.

So as an employee or a client or a potential client please remember that LUCRUM survived.  We survived the .com implosion, the 9/11 catastrophe, the Iraqi war (God Bless our Troops), the downturn in the economy and the exponential increase in foreclosures.   We survived.
As a LUCRUM employee, I have a great place to come to work every day.  LUCRUM hasn’t been through a dozen name changes or had a multitude of mergers.  LUCRUM still has clients that have been with the firm for 15 years.  THESE ARE GOOD THINGS!
So, whenever you wonder how is LUCRUM?  Remember this – LUCRUM is still standing strong – 15 years and counting!

LUCRUM, Meatballs, and Marketing

Yesterday I, along with the LUCRUM business development team, got the opportunity to listen in on a live conference call with author Seth Godin, courtesy of SFEntrepreneur.com. It was excellent and extremely relevant to the future of business.

Seth discussed his latest book, Meatball Sundae, which is about the revolution that is taking place in business thanks in large part to the growth and expansion of the web and other associated technologies. Seth claims that the old model for business, and thus Marketing, is broken and dying.

The old way is: big media, big advertising budgets, limited communication channels, top down, interrupt people with average, sanitized messages about average stuff made for the masses. This is the Meatball part of the Meatball Sundae and represents the old way of doing things - classical marketing and advertising.

The new way is: infinite communication through infinite channels in all directions, constantly evolving conversations, consumer oriented, niche focused, web enabled, search driven, and completely at odds with what used to work. This involves employee development, R&D, a commitment to making something remarkable, listening, problem solving, blogs, wikis, social media, word of mouth, and other emerging forms of technology in marketing. It is the Sundae - the whipped cream with a cherry that everyone wants to put on top.

The problem many companies face is that they try to keep the old (Meatballs) and then combine the new (the sundae). What you get in the end is not something great, but rather something that just does not work. A Meatball Sundae - Gross. You can’t just take the old way of doing things, slap some “new marketing” on top and expect it to work. What is needed is a whole new mindset. One that is about empowerment, accountability, open communication, transparency, honesty, and creativity.

I believe that Seth is absolutely correct in his analysis of the current state of business, and that what he says can be applied to what we are doing here at LUCRUM. When I started here at LUCRUM a few months ago, I had just read this book for the first time. I am now re-reading it. We are trying to make the leap from yesterday into the future, and as a result we are making fundamental changes to who we are as a company. It is a new mindset. A mindset that is focused on how we can make our organization one that thrives in the world of new marketing, and not how to we use the new “cool tools” to support our old structure. Our cultural and structural changes have been a widely discussed topic as of late - even making the paper (meatball). Many of these challenges are not unique to LUCRUM, but rather represent the changing world around us. Further, our recent struggles merely validate the ineffectiveness of the old way of doing things and serve as an impetus for change.

We are striving to be the best in the world at using technology to solve the business problems of our Clients. I believe that our leadership team is committed to achieving this goal. Our blog represents this change on some level, but what I hope to ensure is that I am not the architect of a giant, disgusting meatball sundae of my own. I am very encourage by the fact that I see people here embracing a mindset centered on delivering incredible results for Clients. I see a company transforming into something amazing - something far bigger than “hey we have a blog now.” Yes, the blog is amazing. Yes I am very proud of it. Yes I am fascinated by the contributions of my colleagues to this experiment in marketing. But more importantly, I am fascinated and amazed by what it represents. Our people care - all of our people. Our people have a voice - all of our people. We are focusing on giving our clients and customers a voice too - all of our customer and clients. More importantly, we want to listen to that voice. No more of the highly sanitized corporate speak that plagues IT consulting firms. Just real, honest communication. We are on a journey. We have a long way to go. Still, look how far we have already come.

Back to the book… In it, Seth does a great job of identifying 14 of the trends that are shaping the future of business. They are as follows:

1. Direct communication and commerce between producers and consumers
2. Amplification of the voice of the consumer and independent authorities
3. Need for an authentic story as the number of sources increases
4. Extremely short attention spans due to clutter
5. The Long Tail
6. Outsourcing
7. Google and the dicing of everything
8. Infinite channels of communication
9. Direct communication and commerce between consumers and consumers
10. The shifts in scarcity and abundance
11. The triumph of big ideas
12. The shift from “how many” to “who”
13. The wealthy are like us
14. New Gatekeepers, No Gatekeeper

If you want to know what is driving the thought process of our Marketing, simply study these trends (or just read Seth’s blog). We will look to embrace these ideas wherever and whenever possible as we shape the future of LUCRUM. Everything we do is marketing, and thus everyone gets the opportunity to take part.

Thanks to Seth Godin and SFentrepreneur.com for putting the call together.

Live Call with Seth Godin Presented by SFentrepreneur (April 9th) by SFentrepreneur | Connecting the Entrepreneurship Community in San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley, San Jose and Oakland

What’s Cooking?

One of the things many people don’t know about John Bostick is that he has a great love of the culinary arts. I was fortunate enough to attend a cooking class at Jungle Jims in which John was the guest chef.

The class, entitled “Get the Winter Cold Out with Hot Thai Food and Beer,” was held at the Jungle Jim Cooking School on April 2nd. Within a 2 hour timeframe, John and his team of helpers created a multitude of Thai dishes including an appetizer, soup, a side dish, two entrées, and a dessert. Students were provided a recipe syllabus to follow along with, as each dish was prepared. The menu for the evening included the following:

• Shrimp Sticks with Savory Dipping Sauce
• Kaeng Jud Thao Hu (Bean Curd Soup with Meat Balls)
• Gai Yang (Marinated Barbecued Chicken)
• Taeng Kwa Brio Wan (Sweet and Sour Fresh Cucumber)
• Jasmine Rice
• Beef Panang Curry
• Sticky Rice with Fresh Mango

Giving Back - Continued

I was checking out our new blog today, and saw a post by one of our newest employees, David Bowman. It is great to hear about people in our company giving back. It is an important part of our culture and frankly, it’s one of the most special parts of living on this earth.

I guess when I think about giving, I go back to my parents and the stories that they taught me about their growing up in the Great Depression. In today’s world and the complex financial crisis that the sub-prime mortgage market has along with the recent failings of some of Wall Street’s giants, I have to admit: I still think we as a society have no clue about the real impact of what our families and relatives went through in the Great Depression. My parents were fortunate. My mother is First Generation American. Her parents immigrated from Eastern Austria-Hungary and the Ukraine shortly after the beginning of this last century. Coal-miner, shoemaker, Goodyear Rubber & Tire factory work, her parents always put food on the table and had a modest life of comfort and stability. During the Depression, they constantly had people coming to their door asking for chores. Back then, pride was 100% of your character. One never took hand-outs. You would not take “free food” even though my grandparents were willing and able to share. My father grew up the 6th child of a Southern Alabama farm family. Again, lots of people were very unfortunate in the South during the Depression. He learned to give to his neighbors and support the community. This was a practice that he continued throughout his entire life.

Fast forward over my years growing up with them. My 2 brothers and I were in Boy Scouts in our formative years. Outside of camping in the Upstate New York Adirondacks once a month, community service was the core of our activities. Weekends were spent participating in newspaper drives, helping in the neighborhood parks, cleaning up the “teen center” and many other volunteer activities. We learned to support our community.

Fast forward to today: I still have it in my blood. LUCRUM is committed to participating in Community Service through providing 4 approaches: economic, leadership, professional, and material assistance to local and regional organizations. Economic simply means donated cash. Leadership is where people in our firm invest their time in guiding, assisting, participating in community organizations. Professional is where LUCRUM provides consulting, web development, and general software development services. LUCRUM’s community support initiatives have recently included: The United Way(www.uwgc.org) and the Tocqueville Society Campaign, the Central Clinic (www.centralclinic.org), the Boy Scouts(www.danbeard.org), the Evans’ Scholar Golf Outing, the Epilepsy Foundation, the Cincinnati Art Museum (www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org), the Fine Arts Fund (www.fineartsfund.org) and their new Technology Sector campaign, and the National Father-Son Tennis Tournaments to name a few. As you can imagine, it’s contagious with our employees and their commitment to the community amplifies ours.

So, “thank-you” David Bowman. “Thank-you” to all of our LUCRUM professionals in their commitment in supporting our community.

Follow the Leader?

More and more in today’s spin zones, trade magazines, training classes, and blogs, a focus on leadership continues to grow - a trait that many feel everyone must be good at. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, there’s becoming a more and more noticeable lack of focus on what it takes to be a good follower. After all, if no one’s following, why lead?

Leadership demands great capacity for learning, communication, discipline, humility, vision, execution, initiative, and host of other characteristics and traits bantered about by today’s leadership “gurus”. All of which are good and essential, to one degree or another. Interestingly enough, these same traits are essential to good followership as well. Think about it. As a leader, don’t you look for people to be a part of your team that have these traits? I certainly do!

Another way to look at leaders and followers is to consider that our leaders today are actually followers too. Think about it for minute, the VP’s unto the SVP’s, unto the C-level, unto the board of directors, unto the people (public company example). So while the SVP for business development is certainly in a leadership role, they’re following someone higher up on the corporate ladder.

Is there a difference between leaders and followers? Absolutely. Is everyone in a leadership position, absolutely not. Is everyone in a state of followership, absolutely.

I believe that in order to be a great leader, one must be a great follower. And since we’re all followers to one degree or another, who better to place responsibility on for the development of followers than on ourselves! Confusing? Not really. It’s a state of reality that we too often choose to ignore, especially if we’re already in a “leadership” position.

So what then can be said about good followership? Well in today’s media, the hyper-competitive market, Wall Street, you name it, not very much is said about being a good follower. Why is this? I’ll argue that much of it stems from humanity’s inner will to appear stronger, smarter, “better” than the next person. Our own egos. Admit it, we’re all afraid of embarrassment.  Maybe we think that we won’t make enough money simply being a good follower (…don’t forget the SVP example above). The list goes on…..

How then can we make a difference? By becoming better examples to others in our current follower roles. Some spin this as “Managing up” or “Leading your boss”. Call it anything you want, bottom line is most of us have as much room for improvement as we have to offer others. Without attempting to pull together an exhaustive step-by-step recipe for success, let me suggest a few principles to guide us.

Start by recognizing that everyone’s (including you) following something/someone. There’s our  (your) baseline.

Next, place yourselves in the position, for example, of wanting to get a promotion, a raise, etc. (this shouldn’t be hard to do) How would you go about getting that? Would supporting your boss be a good start? I would think so. What can you do better, different, more of, less of? Sorry, no hints here, you all know these answers.

Next… put your ego on the shelf. Pride cometh before the fall.

The Journey. We must ask ourselves what is the true purpose of being a good follower or leader.   The Whats, the Whys, the Where To’s….  To what do we aspire? Is there an end? Is it just money? Hopefully not. I say it’s a journey…one on which we’re all traveling. Becoming an effective follower or leader is a journey….the journey is about people working together in many different roles to achieve a worthy ideal. To cultivate others, to learn, to live, to perform, to decide, to take risks, to laugh. When we focus our time talents and energies here, leaders will emerge, followers will rise up, and there”ll be no end to the possibilities that we can achieve. This is the paradigm shift we all can help make happen.

Go and make a difference,

 John

No Whammies! No Whammies! Stop!

There are two words that can strike fear in the heart of the most seasoned of managers: PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS. But why is that? Companies spend countless dollars each year training their managers on how to do evaluations and refining their performance evaluation systems, but has any of it really made it easier?
When it comes down to it, we as human beings, no matter how many courses we’ve taken, or books we’ve read, we are just not “wired” to give very direct, honest feedback. Think about it. How many times as child did you say something brutally honest only to be told by your mother “that’s not a nice thing to say”?
How many people go home at night to their spouses and initiate a conversation something like this: “honey, I need to give you some feedback on how you’re performing as my significant other”? Sounds crazy, right? (Can you predict how that feedback would be received?)
And yet, that’s what good managers are supposed to do for their employees on a regular basis. It’s only fair to let people how they measure up to the company’s expectations- not to mention that it’s typically the basis for performance increases.
The consulting environment adds another quirk that most corporate managers do not face with the same regularity- and that’s the challenge of managing people that we may never work with directly. In the consulting environment, most of our managers are billable consultants first then managers second. They typically maintain their own client engagements which may never cross paths on a daily basis with their direct reports. So how do you provide feedback on people you don’t work with everyday- or whose work you don’t supervise?
Forget annual evaluations! In my opinion, performance feedback- both positive and constructive- should be given monthly. Yes, I said monthly. And, yes, I know how much work evaluations are to do annually. And yes, I know how busy everyone is with their “day jobs.” But, even in an informal fashion, monthly feedback will help to make the annual evaluation a review of the year versus the annual WHAMMY that most evaluations turn out to be. An employee who has received nine to twelve pieces of feedback on their work has headlights as to what is working and what needs to be adjusted in order to meet the company’s expectations.
When it comes to evaluations, a good manager knows what they don’t know, and seeks input from others in order to provide the most accurate feedback to their employees. They seek out client opinions, colleague opinions, perhaps even peer opinions- even if it means bucking the internal HR systems a bit to do so (apologies to my HR brothers and sisters out there!).
At the end of the day, giving direct feedback will never feel especially comfortable to most of us. But most people don’t like surprises- especially when it comes to their performance evaluations. No matter how you give the feedback- formal process, casual conversation- it doesn’t matter as long as you are giving your feedback frequently. So leave the WHAMMIES to the game shows, and don’t even think about giving your spouse their performance evaluation!

More Birthday Fun

More birthday fun, courtesy of LUCRUM recruiter / amateur videographer Andy Erickson. Here is a clip from our birthday lunch last week. Note that the most popular response to “what do you love about LUCRUM?” was the people - with Andy’s mom coming in a distant second. All in good fun. It is a great place to work. I just surpassed 15 days (business days) with the company, and it is already clear to me why the company has been around for that same number of years. Great people. Thanks for the footage Andy.

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