I had to return to this blog to report on the Verizon Droid. I’ve used it all weekend, and I love it. In short, it’s everything the iPhone isn’t. Here, in no particular order, are some of the apps:
- StreamFurious — like Wunder Radio on the iPhone
- NewsRob — great GUI for Google Reader
- Xeeku Twitter
- Listen — podcast client
- Act 1 Video Player
- FBReader — for PDFs
- Scoreboard – sports scores; integrates with phone’s alert system so you get real-time scoring alerts
- Pixelpipe — syndicate your photos and videos
- GDocs — Easy access to Google Docs
- Widgets for Facebook and the weather
The Droid runs up to six apps in the background, and not just apps made by one vendor (Apple). This, combined with the fast processor, means that it’s virtually seamless to shift between apps — all while music plays in the background.
The Droid also has a really good onscreen keyboard if you don’t like the one that’s built in. It uses a standard micro USB slot, rather than Apple’s proprietary connector, which means all my old Nokia e71 cables work just fine with the Droid. Oh, and as an Ubuntu Linux user, I can simply drag and drop files onto the Droid without going through the cumbersome process of using iTunes. Love it.
The Droid’s screen is sharp and really puts the iPhone’s to shame. It’s battery life is longer, and the battery itself is removable. Don’t like the Droid’s 16GB of storage? No problem — take out its 16GB microUSB card and put in a 32GB card. The video camera takes HD-quality video and the 5MP camera with flash and zoom reminds me of the one in my old Nokia e71: good and really easy to use. Again, photos and videos are a snap to move to my laptop using simple drag and drop. The Droid also has Pixelpipe, a great app I used on the iPhone to move photos and videos onto numerous social networking sites with one click.
My daughter loves the physical keyboard, but it is an acquired taste. As for apps, you can buy them on the Android Market — and, unlike the iTunes store, you can use it for up to 24 hours and then return it for a full refund if you’re not satisfied.
There’s lots to love about the Droid, and I encourage anyone stateside who’s starting to feel limited by the iPhone to make the move to Android and especially to the Verizon Droid. You won’t regret it. It’s a phone that treats you like a grownup.
In talking to customers and colleagues about social media, I’m sensing a new trend. It’s thinking of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as the be all and end all of social media. More and more they’re even being mentioned together in the same breath.
That’s all well and good, but when companies are looking at social media, they do themselves a disservice with such a limited social media universe — especially when ROI is factored into the equation. What if, dare to dream, organizations began looking at social media tools to facilitate things like customer service, idea generation, behaviorally/contextually relevant Web sites, and user-contributed content? These things all touch on and/or benefit from social media. Indeed, I’d argue that companies like Salesforce.com and Omniture as much social media players as Facebook and LinkedIn. And they have the added benefit of providing a more easily measured ROI to the guys who pay the bills.
If we think of social media as the universe of sites and services that provide personalization to the Web, along with ROI — and not just tools for communication — then we suddenly have a much richer social media framework. Social media is about connecting our systems and business processes to people (for their benefit) as much as it is connecting people with one another.
I’m not saying we throw Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn overboard, but we need to connect them to larger frameworks. If the social media debate and discussion is to progress into 2010, we need to move beyond the Big Three as existing in a vacuum and start thinking of social media as a suite of relevant tools and services that can make our connections with customers more personal and personalized.
What do you think? Please share your comments.
Today I drove past a real estate sign that said ‘New Price’ at the top. Wait, what? A new price? You mean the price went up? No, of course not — the price went down. Why not just say that? Does the real estate agent think we’re all stupid? Who’s he or she trying to kid?
The same goes for the phrase ‘pre-owned car’ and a few others. Just say ‘used car’ — please. No one thinks that a ‘pre-owned’ POS is better than a ‘used’ POS just because you changed the adjective. Just sell quality cars that provide good value, and we’ll come knocking. That’s it.
In today’s economy, customers are looking for business people to be honest, say what the mean, and do what they promise. They’re tired of buzzwords and marketing spin that try to disguise reality. Adults are adults. We can handle the truth. Stop the insanity. We have enough to worry about without having to enter the spin zone at every turn.
We’ve all worked for those companies where everyone seems like they’re going through the motions. Morale is through the floor, everyone’s phoning it in, etc. Funny thing is, no one working there happens to think the situation is good, yet no one steps forward to fix it.
Or can it be fixed? What does it take to inject some new life into a stagnating organization?
I had a call recently with someone who was angry with another colleague — and rightly so, I might add. I was in the unenviable position of having to hear the anger in the first colleague’s voice. I knew I was simply picking up the pieces left by the second colleague, but I felt obligated to let the first colleague vent. She was yelling at the first colleague through me.
In a few minutes she calmed down and we ended up getting the loose end tied up without inflaming the situation any further. What did I learn from this experience? Keep your eye on the goal and don’t get sidetracked. Be professional and your long-term relationship gains will be great. You’ll be known as that guy (or woman) who took one for the team, and that will mean another deposit in your bank of favors.
Sounds vaguely Machiavellian, but it works. And your blood pressure will be low to boot!
I know it’s not conventional wisdom to lay out a new business idea/musing in your blog. Oh no, “they” say, someone will steal your idea. Well, I’ll just have to take my chances because I need some help.
I’ve been thinking about what it would take to get into the business consulting game (yes, I know it’s not a game). I know I can offer some solid advice and coaching to business leaders/managers on how to help evolve better companies. (After all, I’ve seen firsthand what it’s like when companies *cough* don’t invest much in their employees.)
That’s a very vague idea, I know, but as any reader of this blog knows, I have lots of ideas and I enjoy teaching.
Is anyone in this business now? What’s it like? Could you use a partner in crime?
Just throwing this out into the vastness of cyberspace to see what I get back…
It’s a good thing that business consultants and others have paid considerable attention to corporate culture in recent years, but they’ve done so primarily from an ethical perspective. (With all of the corporate scandals in recent years, who can blame them?) What interests me here, though, is how your corporate culture creates a framework wherein certain activities and beliefs are what the American philosopher William James called a “live option” – meaning that they are more likely to be pursued or adopted than others. In a sense, you have to get in touch with your inner pragmatist (also William James) and understand what your corporate culture is like, and then you have to learn how you can use your existing corporate culture to your advantage in project management, even as you seek to change that culture for the better.
So how do you gain a greater understanding of your corporate community? The first thing you need to do is to step outside of yourself and see your corporate culture through the eyes of your peers, customers and prospects. Think of it as cultural triangulation – you can zero in on some important insights as you get multiple perspectives. Or, changing the metaphor, you need to look at your business through a lot of mirrors.
While mirrors of various kinds have been around for over 8,000 years, they’re still considered a luxury in some parts of the world today. That means some people today live their lives seeing only glimpses of themselves in the blackness of still waters. They never can get a clear view. For example, famed actor Sidney Poitier (Lilies of the Field, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner), who grew up in the Bahamas, didn’t see his face in the mirror until he was 10 years old.
Mirrors are important because they let us see who we really are – in some cases, literally warts and all! On an automobile, they help us see past our blind spots and gain clarity and perspective on the traffic moving around us. In business, mirrors are held up to you by your peers, customers and prospects – if only you have the courage to look into them.
So how do you find these mirrors? Just ask your peers, customers and prospects what they think about your company. Here are some sample questions:
For employees
-
What five words best describe the company?
-
What were your impressions of the company when you were hired?
-
Knowing what you know now, would you still apply to work for the company? Why or why not?
-
How does a person get ahead in the company?
-
Would you recommend the company to a friend looking for a job? Why or why not?
-
In what ways has the company exceeded your expectations?
-
In what ways has the company disappointed you?
-
What do you love about your job?
-
What do you hate about your job?
-
How well do you know the management team? What’s your relationship with them?
-
Are you looking for another job? Or do you plan to do so in the next 3 months?
-
Is the management team responsive to employees? Why or why not?
For customers
-
What five words best describe the company?
-
Will you buy from the company again? Why or why not?
-
What do you think of the company’s web site?
-
Would you like to work for the company? Why or why not?
-
Do you recommend the company to your friends and family? Why or why not?
-
How can the company better serve your needs?
So much for the questions themselves. Your next task is to take their answers seriously, even if the truth hurts. If you’re in a leadership position at your company, these answers will help you see beyond the ‘yes men’ who tell you only what you want to hear. As Michael Roberto wrote several years ago, great leaders don’t take yes for an answer because they want to know what’s really going on within their organization.
I recommend that you collect these responses and take some quiet time to read through them. Put your cell phone on vibrate. Walk away from the computer. Just read, think and write. So get to it.
Welcome back. What did you discover? Don’t like what you see in the mirror? I welcome your comments.
As a project manager, it’s vital to understand the importance of tackling first things first. By that I mean you need to put yourself in the shoes of your customers and work from there. Everything you do should be directed toward providing the very best tools and experiences to your customers to help them succeed.
What do your customers want from you? How do they interact with you? What are those customer touchpoints? If you begin with what you want your customer experience should be, the rest of what you do will flow from that.
Peter Merholz, writing specifically in the context of online at HarvardBusiness.org, says the the flow should go this way, not the other way around:
Oddly enough, as Merholz points out, many companies begin with systems and procedures, working their way up the stack to touchpoints, interactions and experiences. However, the opposite should be true. I couldn’t agree more.
Everyone needs something at a given moment. Your child might need a hug. Your spouse might need encouragement. Your colleague might need your support. Today, look around and think about what the people in your world need from you — spoken or unspoken — and do what you can to give it to them. Then please let me know the results.
Communities can be personal, professional or both. While we don’t want to push this or any metaphor too far, it does seem clear that communities are like organisms because both of them adjust – for good or ill – to changes in their environment. For example, one corporate community might adjust to changes in the economy by producing lower-cost products, while another might decide to focus on higher-cost products because they reason that the wealthy always tend to have money to spend! In either case, the company is adjusting, even evolving, in light of changing conditions in its environment.
What makes a community, a company work well? What causes it to suffer? The answer in both cases is the same: People.
Jono Bacon, the well-regarded community manager of the Ubuntu Linux project, put it this way:
I am a firm believer that positive culture is largely driven by positive personalities. Communities are vessels of dependent relationships: we have thought leaders for the entire project, sub-communities with their own thought leaders, people who follow those leaders and people who listen to those followers. At each step in the chain we need to encourage positive participation both in the cogs of the machine, but also in the personality and outlook of the those who drive those cogs. It has been an explicit desire of mine in the Ubuntu community to not only ensure that the machine is simple to interact with, but to encourage people to bring their positivity, excitement and enthusiasm to the machine so the community feels like a fun and inspiring environment to be part of.
Bacon gives us lots to ponder. Just make a quick list of a few of the key phrases in this one paragraph:
-
Positive personalities
-
Dependent relationships
-
Thought leaders
-
Positive participation
-
Positivity, excitement and enthusiasm
Do these phrases describe the company you work for, your corporate community? If not, keep reading.
I’m sure you’ve haven’t spent hours thinking about the sort of context in which your working life plays out. If you’re a manager, you’ve been too busy just trying to put out fires around the office. If you’re a C-level executive, you’ve been too busy building the business. Still, it’s important to understand what you’re up against as you identify needs, form project teams and try to lead positive change.
If you haven’t gotten into the habit already, you need to start thinking strategically at work if you want to get things done. You need to understand more and more about the dynamics of the community – the company – in which you need to operate. This is a vital part of leadership. You ignore the larger “theater of operations” at your professional peril.
What has your experience been like?
