bBlog: The sales, marketing and business weblog
28th February 2007

Even more on No Job Titles

“Quite a bit back, I wrote on the subject of “No Job Titles.” The subject has come up again within Adaptive Path, as Todd’s post shows. There’s also been discussion on internal mailing lists, which prompted me to write the following…”

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28th February 2007

Starbucks chairman warns of “the commoditization of the Starbucks experience”

“Over the past ten years, in order to achieve the growth, development, and scale necessary to go from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond, we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have lead to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand.”

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27th February 2007

Users Who Know Too Much (And the CIOs Who Fear Them)

“A new IT department is being born. You don’t control it. You may not even be aware of it. But your users are, and figuring out how to work with it will be the key to your future and your company’s success.”

posted in Technology | Permalink | Comments Off

27th February 2007

Emotional intelligence and emotional competence

“A form of intelligence relating to the emotional side of life, such as the ability to recognize and manage one’s own and others’ emotions, to motivate oneself and restrain impulses, and to handle interpersonal relationships effectively. Originated by Daniel Goldman, psychologist, denoting the cluster of traits/abilities relating to the emotional side of life.”

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25th February 2007

Meetings make us dumber, study shows

“People have a harder time coming up with alternative solutions to a problem when they are part of a group, new research suggests.”

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22nd February 2007

“If you know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete.”

“Erik K. Antonsson, a prof at Caltech, has a page of quotations related to design and engineering. Some samples: ‘If a major project is truly innovative, you cannot possibly know its exact cost and its exact schedule at the beginning. And if in fact you do know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete.’ -Joseph G. Gavin, Jr., discussing the design of the lunar module that landed NASA astronauts on the moon.”

posted in Project management, Technology | Permalink | Comments Off

21st February 2007

Seven steps to remarkable customer service

“As a bootstrapped software company, Fog Creek couldn’t afford to hire customer service people for the first couple of years, so Michael and I did it ourselves. The time we spent helping customers took away from improving our software, but we learned a lot and now we have a much better customer service operation.”

posted in Customers, Technology | Permalink | Comments Off

20th February 2007

Five weeeeeeeeird tips for great meetings

“…while having fewer meetings is definitely the way to go in many workplaces, eliminating all meetings is not an option in today’s team-based work environment. This means that having good meetings become essential… If we really want open, fun, creative, participative meetings we need to go beyond the standard advice and venture into slightly-weird-land. Here are five easy ways to do it.”

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20th February 2007

To Save or Not to Save?

“I was talking with a friend recently that works the customer service phones for the company she is with. She mentioned that her company expects her to solve any customer’s problem in three minutes or less. That sounds like a policy created by someone trying to save a few bucks while thousands of potential sales walk down the street to the nearest competitor.”

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17th February 2007

100 Best Corporate Citizens

“Welcome to the 100 Best Corporate Citizens page. For the past eight years, Business Ethics Magazine (and now The CRO) has been working with KLD Research & Analytics to rank and recognize publicly listed U.S. companies that excel at serving a variety of stakeholders. The 100 Best Corporate Citizens list is regarded as the third most influential corporate ranking, behind Fortune magazine’s ‘Most Admired Companies’ and ‘100 Best Companies to Work For,’ according to a PRWeek/Burson-Marsteller CEO Survey.”

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15th February 2007

The Ultimate Getting Things Done Index

“Keep track of GTD blogs, software, news, etc. all on one page.”

posted in Project management | Permalink | Comments Off

14th February 2007

How to structure the day

“Steve Murphy, CEO of publishing company Rodale, says, ‘A line in a William Blake poem inspired me to think differently about my day: ‘Think in the morning, act in the noon, read in the evening, and sleep at night.‘ This has made a huge difference in my life. Now, I take out a yellow pad every morning and write my thoughts for the day, which allows me to be much more strategic and proactive than reactive.’”

posted in Life | Permalink | Comments Off

13th February 2007

The new corporate logo: Dynamic and changeable are all the rage

“Dynamic identities fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that consistency is essential to an effective corporate identity. The more we see the same corporate symbol — or so the consistency camp argues — the more likely we’ll be to recognize and remember it. Companies adhered to this throughout the 20th century; and the designers of some of the most successful identities, such as Jan Tschichold at Penguin Books in the late 1940s, and Paul Rand as a consultant to IBM from the 1950s to the early 1990s, were renowned for their rigor.”

posted in Marketing | Permalink | Comments Off

11th February 2007

“Rich versus King”: The Core Concept

“Here are three founder scenarios, all with parallels to cases I teach our MBA students: #1: You have an idea for a great product and want to start a company. Do you start it yourself (and keep all of the equity) or do you find a good co-founder (with whom you have to split the equity 50/50)?…”

posted in Entrepreneurship, Leadership | Permalink | Comments Off

8th February 2007

Don’t ask employees to be passionate about the company!

“People ask me, ‘How can I get our employees to be passionate about the company?’ Wrong question. Passion for our employer, manager, current job? Irrelevant. Passion for our profession and the kind of work we do? Crucial. If I own company FOO, I don’t need employees with a passion for FOO. I want those with a passion for the work they’re doing. The company should behave just like a good user interface — support people in doing what they’re trying to do, and stay the hell out of their way. Applying the employer-as-UI model, the best company is one in which the employees are so engaged in their work that the company fades into the background.”

posted in Business, Leadership, Office culture | Permalink | Comments Off