Linkedin

I have been working on my Linkedin profile recently and am starting to see some interesting results.



Having played with Linkedin and ecademy I decided to concentrate on growing my Linkedin network. ecademy just seemed to be too hard to navigate and sent me too many 'update' emails.

It is taking a while but I am now making contact with past colleagues, clients and contacts. Starting with a view that quality of contact is far better than quantity, I am engaging with some really interesting people. For me it is essential that you know why you want to make contact with a person - business, personal or maybe just to say hi - but collecting names is not for me. For each person I link to, I am trying to find a way to engage with them outside of Linkedin. There seem to be some real 'professional' Linkedin'ers who have hundreds of contacts and it must be a full time job to keep in touch.

Some interesting tips at http://www.linkedinhelp.com/

If we are heading into a recession then business is going to become even more focused on who you know and I see Linkedin as being a great getting to know tool.

Apple iPhone - a generational thing?

Had an interesting exchange with a colleague at the end of last week about the iPhone. It was prompted by an article on the web http://www.b2bm.biz/news/?groupId=&articleId=28579

To me, the iPhone is a personal phone that has an uphill struggle to be accepted as a mainstream business tool. Cool but useless for business was my view.

My colleagues is gen 'Y' and his take is that the iPhone interface is the way forward and the rest had better watch out. I was taking a thinking approach and he was taking a feeling approach - seems like a classic generation divide. Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of the argument it will be his generation in charge of corporate purchasing soon! Need I say more?

Talent Management

I went to a seminar last week that was all about talent management. One of the talks was on managing 'troublesome talent' and that sparked quite some debate.

Questions from the audience included:
Are talented employees, by their very nature, troublesome?
Shouldn't all troublesome employees be moved on - whether talented or not?
Is troublesome the worng word?
Are all gen Y employees troublesome?

The test seemes to be to focus on the talented bit first - is an employee talented? If so, then you should spend more time and effort on accomodating them. The alternative approach being suggested was to work with a troublesome employee just in case they are talented!

Peanut Butter salary policy

I have sat in on meetings with clients where the subject has been how to handle the annual pay round. Companies typically have a policy about how to award salary increases, but in essence many take a pot of money and spread it thinly across every employee. However, those self same companies will say that they reward performance - a real contradiction!

In doing some research around this subject it seems to be a common problem and has been dubbed as the 'Peanut Butter' approach. Spread it too thinly and it wont be as tasty. So why does this happen?

One typical cause seems to be management's ability to carry off the policy. If an organisation truly wants to reward employees based on performance they need to ensure that managers have the tools and ability to handle the situations that inevitably arise - how to handle under performers, how to get a difficult message across etc.

Pay for performance must be the right approach if organisations want to recruit and retain the most talented people and as is so often the case this starts with a mind set change followed closely by training.

Too fast with the product recommendation

Happy New Year.

I have just responded to request on a networking site for CRM system recommendations. The request was posted on the 2nd and already a number of vendors have rushed in and recommended their offering. Well done to them for getting there before me but I have a problem with their responses - almost without exception, they didn't ask and questions. How can they know what is right without knowing requirements (eg what pain is being targeted?, # users, # contacts etc etc).

A few simple questions to understand more about the situation would make the recommendations useful rather than just a blunt sales pitch.

Target Marketing

I got an email today at work that was offering to re-enamel my bath! A bit strange as, unsurprisingly, the office doesn't have a bath. Worse than that, it was sent to info@centurion-ms.co.uk so it lacked any kind of targeting. If I was being generous I could give them credit as at least they are in the south of England like me.

Why is it that so many companies don't understand that marketing, and particularly email marketing, must be focused, specific and relevant. This is so easy to do - marketing lists are easily purchased, and software to manage campaigns is not expensive. They have obviously put a lot of effort into this but the results have to end up disappointing.

Sadly for them, their good looking and well formatted email got filed in the bin.

Global warming and the generations

I pick my daughter up from school 2 or three times per week and on one journey home this week we got talking about global warming. The conversation was sparked by a radio article covering a recent announcement that the situation was worse then previously thought.

She told me that all the talk of global warming frightened her and that if you listened to the news there was little to do to stop it. We, as a family, try to minimise our carbon footprint by reducing use, buying local, recycling etc etc - not the best, but certainly far from the worst. However, she hadn't put it together that this was our way of helping reduce global warming. We talked about what we are doing and agreed that if everyone did their bit it was a good step in the right direction.

When it comes to the generations, I found it an interesting thought that the 'Traditionals' created the problem, the 'boomers' continued the process but feel guilty and realise something needs doing, 'Xers' know the solution must start NOW but love all the stuff, so it seems left to the 'Ys' to turn it around. Here was my 'Y' frightened and a bit confused!