The overriding majority of people who’ll ask ‘How did I do?’ or ‘What do you think of my new widget’ already have a strong opinion before they ask, and are unlikely to open enough to have you or others change it. The course has been set, the training is done, people have been hired, the script is written, the ads are booked, the product is in play – don’t make me change all that.

Next time you’re asked, ask them what they do with the feedback? If the project manager was outstanding does he/she get that fed into their appraisal system? Perhaps they qualify for a bonus? If the sales training was a dire waste of time, will the course be changed? Bottom line: will the feedback be actionable or are we just making polite platitudes?

If I’m fortunate enough to receive your feedback I’ll want your unfaltering honest opinions, not some lame schmoozing which equates to a lie. And ‘good’ or ‘nice’ do me no favours either because they don’t help me change and improve what I’m doing – they cry for more of the same (which doesn’t take me forward).

I’ll take the whole truth please. How about you and your team?

Photo credit: Gaetan Lee

They play this card as often as possible with their marketing messages. The company mindset can be, ‘Why do we need to do any better when product X sells just fine?’ It strikes me that the banking and motor industries have entrenched their businesses in this attitude.

The brave ones break new ground and create a tribe.

At the back of every great fortune lies a great crime (Honoré de Balzac).

What’s remarkable is that the same candidate could be ideal for both positions, yet the view from both chairs couldn’t be more polarised.

MySpace is one of the great brands of the new millennium and the next CEO has a massive opportunity if he/she thinks big enough (could you put Facebook on the ropes?). ITV is a beacon of the past with largely outdated revenue models and the reality that its scale is shrinking.

Both are ‘big ask’ tenures as they’ll surely oversee the most challenging make-or-break, eat-or-be-eaten stuff either firm has encountered. Very exciting times.

Personally, I’ve had a pretty awful time with my Philips TV and DVDR combo and I’ve sworn never to buy the brand again, but I can’t deny salivating at this. Quality advertising indeed then. Check out the microsite.

The news yesterday that the owners of this gateway to free content now face jail and bankruptcy has taken their awareness from teens and geeks, to the living rooms of the masses.

The BBC’s technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones was on last night’s 6pm news and actually demo’d how easy it was to download new blockbusters or the #1 album! (Not nearly as provocative as the Click show running its own botnet attack, though).

Surely The Pirate Bay’s visitor numbers will be spiking right now as even those without an iTunes account try to find out if they can get the latest fix of Brad or Angelina without paying for a cinema ticket? Considering they don’t plan on closing the site, one can presume this spike will become a step-change in future analytics.

It’s the age-old journalistic problem of news creating awareness, possibly creating demand. Trouble is, what’s the alternative?

The hopeful amongst you can upload a two minute video which gets voted online and the favourites will be broadcast on Virgin planes. Getting your ideas seen by business travellers would be a huge coo (for exposure if nothing else!).

The barrier to this is simply time. Don’t be thinking about spending your seed money on pucka cameras and an editing team. You can do the lot with a Flip and stopwatch for under £100 (honestly). Here’s the third example to be put online. You could’ve created something of equal quality last weekend if you’d wanted to.

For the audience, there’s the added benefit of not having to watch the Simon Cowell wannabies lash into the dreams of everyday passionate people in ‘the Den’. Oh yeah, there’s also an annual special prize from Sir B himself, and my bet is that’ll be some first-rate business support not recycled Christmas socks!

If you try it and you’ll probably be told something like, ‘You’re buying units at a lower price right now. When the market turns, these lower price units will have a potential benefit to your pension plan.’ Your financial advisor would call it ‘Pound Cost Averaging.’

Well, the house that Brown built is crumbling. People are hurting and businesses are under extreme pressure. Now that we all know this, what are we to do next? Join the Euro? Take to communism? Spend more and save less – or is it borrow less and save anywhere other than a bank?

As intolerably blame-ridden as Brown is (noticed how Blair has remained Teflon-protected throughout – luckily we’ve got Sir Fred to pin it ALL on, eh?), somehow I doubt voting for Cameron’s Blues is the magic wand we’d like. Regardless, he’s surely going to get a chance to show us all he’s not just the Yes Man we think he is in the next election when Labour will most likely lose by the same huge numbers that brought them into the driving seat in ‘97. Perhaps that’s when Pound Cost Averaging will pay off?

Photo credit: Mark Hillary

I know plenty who would say how the show appears to have a spell-binding influence on supervisors, managers and leaders across the country as they emulate the OTT attitude, ethos and aggression of Big Brother in suits.

If your boss’ only business coaching input is from this show and they believe life should be more like it, I feel for you. Tell ‘em to watch Mad Men instead.

Like The Apprentice it’s: contagious, on the beeb, equally outdated (set in 1960s), full of business daring-do, stars several of wrong-uns, and has plenty of out-of-hours issues.

It’s truer to its business theme, far less voyeuristic and much better all round.

Continuing the B fest, they’ve shown:
Belief – evidently they kept working hard when a full closure was more than likely.
Brains – the clean sheet of ‘09 regulations allowed them to show innovation beyond McLaren’s and Ferrari’s dreams.
Bravery – in the management buyout (and subsequent cut backs).

Brawn GP, now a euphemism for ‘Giant Killer,’ really have shown us it all this weekend.

Commentators said the grid was turned on its head. That’s untrue as the back of the pack looked all too familiar. But the midfield have undoubtedly caused the former front runners a major headache. To the victor go the spoils. Well, perhaps a Virgin.

Side quote: The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was the genius (Sid Caesar).

Photo credit: cbc888

One in three 16 to 17-year-olds are unemployed in the UK (BBC Today snippet). Ten percent of 16 to 18-year-olds are not in education, employment or training (N.E.E.T.). Considering that’s a Government stat I think it’s fair to say it’ll be on the low side of real.

Generation Y (born 1980 – 1999) look to be at the forefront of the redundancy queue. They are felt to have less experience – therefore less value – and have less service under their belts making the cost and effort of redundancy less.

At the opposite end of the working generations is my father who retires this month. He couldn’t afford to fully retire so was planning to scale right back, working a day or two a week at his current employer. But now he’s had the double whammy of his industry shrinking and his pension paying 40% less than was forecast only six month’s ago. After working diligently for 47 years he has less income than planned and even less of a chance of making up the short fall.

You can see these chains of pain in every town across Europe. Sure, Japan’s shrinking GDP and America’s supersonic unemployment are worrisome, but 2009 will be the year this worldwide fiasco really hits home for the majority of us (if it hasn’t already).
Photo credit: Daquella Manera

But the Guardian has suddenly become the pie-piper of the newspaper business by opening up its data more fully. The Guardian trumps NYT by allowing for-profit use of the data (opposed to NYT’s non-profit stance) and it allows full data from articles and pieces, as opposed to excerpts.

With the newspaper industry crumbling by the month, this really is a stake in the sand by the Guardian. They’re clearly enthusiasts of the freemium business model and I applaud their bravery. Will it be follow us or die; or is it a case of a freemium too far?

As usual, Mathew Ingram and Greg Stirling have great takes on it but I really want to know what the industry is planning next. This is a modern day equivalent to the steam liners fighting back against the passenger airliners of Howard Hughes et al. We’ve all heard enough whining about Google their ilk eating newspapers’ lunch – what are they cooking for dinner?
Photo credit: Terje S. Skjerdal

Well, it seems fast food won’t have the technique to themselves for long as Sears is the latest retailer in the States to test drive-through shopping. It’s a natural evolution from the reserve online, collect in store system pioneered so well in this country by the likes of Argos.

It appears to make perfect sense but others who’ve tested aren’t reporting positively. Personally, I can see out-of-town Argos extras and Tesco extras testing a drive-through system that would really help them at peak Christmas trading.

The courage, will and stamina of these guys is truly inhumane.

They’re doing it to raise money for several charities and you can support the spectacular here.

Twitter is the most popular and certainly the most talked about social media tool of the moment, yet there’s no clear indication on how they’ll monetise the whole shebang. They raised another $35 million in venture capital last month but to what end?

If you concede that Google want to know far more about you and your digital habits along with the world at large, this source would make an obvious acquisition. The speed at which trends and news appear on Twitter is unmatched elsewhere on the web. Google could leverage this into their algorithm and gain much more real-time searching (certainly opposed to Google News).

Of course, we’re not privy to the magic that’s being created right now in Mountain View where Google’s rocket scientists wave their wands over the web with reckless talent. Have they got a Twitter-killer waiting in the wings? Personally I doubt it. And if they have, will it be another Google Video which was always the poor cousin to YouTube – remember Google later bought YouTube purely to get that online video foothold?

They’re into harvesting strategies and don’t need to monetise everything immediately. Again, YouTube teaches us that. So the lack of income at Twitter won’t be such a problem; the data is the treasure worth the capital outlay. Although, Twitter wont keep its monopoly forever – when you show the market what’s it’s capable of, it rarely stands and applauds for long. Immitation is immenant.

Then again, others might get to the buy-out first. Facebook is reported to have offered $500 million and Carol Bartz could do with creating some buzz about Yahoo other than dismal reports of staff exoduses. Either of these firms would be salivating at the thought of gaining those 6 million Twitterers and all that live data.

What do you reckon? Do you think Google will crush Twitter, buy Twitter or just look at it like a play-thing in the corner?

I’ve always subscribed to the theory that if a customer phones you for an update on completion, you’ve failed. Not in a ‘call the administrators sense,’ but in a service world, the supplier should be driving the contact. If I’ve ordered a TV, a sofa or new roof tiles and I’m told I’ll receive them in 10 days, then it’s no surprise that’s exactly what I expect. On day 11, I’m on the phone. Unhappy.

Preventing my call with one of your own on day nine makes delivering the bad news so much easier. No, I’m not going to do cartwheels at the delay, but I’ll be more tolerant than if I’ve done the dialing. It’s a small but hugely significant difference.

After they take my ‘chase up’ call, your team will say the client was actually fine with the delay. That he wasn’t in such a rush anyway, that next week will be cool. They’re wrong. Just because no-one got blood on their shirt, doesn’t mean the disappointed aren’t thinking you’re useless cretins who don’t care.

Name it whatever you like: diary calls, client updates, whatever. If you’ve got 500 to do, an email template or two is in order but if you’ve got a handful then bespoke contact should be possible. One-man-bands can email me while eating their sandwich or after the kids have gone to bed. Tell me, ‘the news is that there is no news’ or that ‘we’re still waiting on the solicitor’ but tell me something… anything. Get in contact – it is a golden rule. Honestly.

I’ve seen too many organisations revert to the ostrich method: ignore the issues and it might just all come out in the wash. The trouble is, if you wait for the screamers to start deafening you, it’s too late in the game and both you and your business are in for a torrid time.

Yes, it’s time consuming and, yes, it interrupts the actual task of completion, but professionalism demands it. Better still, improve your time and project management and trump your own deadlines (with regular update contacts along the way of course).
Photo courtesy of: Thunderchild tm

Look beyond the ‘shocking’ persona and you see a caring and driven business leader who believes in hard work across the board. He has a huge tribe of followers and all those who work with him seem to sign up. Sound like a bullying waster to you?

His latest show from the States is currently airing and is, as usual, over-edited thanks to Channel 4, but Ramsay’s work is excellent. No, he’s not facing challenges on the scale of a motor industry bailout, but he does cut to the heart of the problems and offers simple solutions that he proves can work – usually by making their lives simpler.

A regular SME superman. Perhaps it’s time Jose Mourinho passed on his Special One mantle?

This show is a business must: Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares is on Channel 4 tonight at 9:00pm.
Photo courtesy of: jo-h

He’s not a ground-breaking intellectual – academia would never cite him like they do Philip Kotler et al (and we wouldn’t read him either). But he’s superb at taking ideas and formatting them into cohesive thoughts that spread via his stories. He is a visionary and he’s dialled into leveraging the web 100%.

He’s most captivating because his ideas are top-notch and he shares absolutely loads of them. This, coupled with his style and honesty, make him unmissable.

My wife thinks I’ll meet him in the corridor. She also reckons I’ll dribble and soil myself at the mere presence of a [my] marketing god. Let’s hope she’s 50% right.

Teaser video of Seth at Google:

Few marketers can claim to have pulled this business magic trick off, but two significant examples have already been seen this year: T-Mobile and the Best Job in the World.

T-Mobile orchestrated an involuntary dance with 300 people in London’s Liverpool Street station. The fact that the public joined in to varying degrees, with plenty taking out their phones and capturing the moment to relay it to others, was right on cue.
This technology in the participation of the event is a masterstroke. No, they’re not in the dancing business; they’re in the communication business and they demonstrated how we all interact today through some very clever ‘cause and effect’ staging. Over 3 million YouTube views, 7,000 comments and a national TV ad campaign would certainly allow the team to claim that they ‘got the eyeballs.’

Best Job in the World
The self-proclaimed ‘Best Job in the World’ lit the blogosphere’s blowtorch. Marketing RSS feeds squawked with the ingenuity of Tourism Queensland accepting video applications for the job as caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. A once-in-a-lifetime job deservedly received massive exposure and applicants surged forward for six months of ‘work’ at $150K.

The tactic scored right from the off, but a touch of greed must’ve set in as the ad agency started posting fake applicants (which are public viewing). One of these was from the Digital Project Manager for the agency. Oops.

This was the pin to the party balloon. Trust evaporated and respectful praise turned into negative PR with the crying of ‘Fake’ from hundreds of keyboards. When caught they failed to pull the brakes and it went on to be a train wreck – they denied it. This went down as well as an oil spillage.

The job is real – more authentic, even, than T Mobile’s “spontaneous” dancers – but one campaign stepped over the line that the other seems to have courted.

Tread carefully, folks. Innovatively, openly and carefully.

Despite colossal losses, employees within RBS will have smashed targets and proven themselves thoroughly deserving of the rewards offered when negotiating their terms of employment.

Of course, public contempt is such that our knee-jerk reaction is to cease and desist on ALL bonuses. Today’s coerced apologies will do little to reverse that derision. But this would almost certainly breach employment contracts, anger deserving staff and demoralise a non-too-confident team.

I can hear myself saying, “So what? They ruined the business. We own 70% of RBS and if they don’t like it…” Well, we need the banks to drag themselves back from the brink and pay back our investment. We do hope to get our money out remember and like it or not, we’re in bed with these bankers.

Whipping all RBS staff with the same ferocity and capping salaries will lead to a two-tier City: capped, non-bonus work for the Chancellor; and, non-capped, bonus-rewarding. Barclays appear to want to be in the latter group. Which of the two sectors do you think the brightest talents will be attracted to?

Carl Icahn writes, “The real problem is that many corporate managements operate with impunity—with little oversight by, or accountability to, shareholders. Instead of operating as aggressive watchdogs over management and corporate assets, many boards act more like lapdogs.”

Many would vote for re-opening Alcatraz to house Sir Fred and his brethren. The negligence and recklessness of these ‘industry leaders’ and their ilk has brought the world to its knees. The greed of bizarre derivatives and securities filtered through their investment arms like heroin. They’re more deserving of pistol-whipping than a pay packet. These guys should get nada.

But below board and senior management level the bonuses will probably stand, albeit deflated and with more leaning to deferment. And rightly so I think. Staff should be grateful the bank is still solvent and paying salaries, let alone bonuses. Scores of other employers weren’t felt so valuable to the UK that they be given CPR (think Woolies, Adams, JJB et al). Banking has proven itself a special case. I pray it can do something special in return.

Bottom line: the reason this all smells like a rotten carcass is because that’s exactly what we taxpayers bought.
[You noticed how few females have featured in this whole debacle?]

Photo credit: Eladesor

I got to thinking there’s a simile to be drawn with the recent snow across the UK that has loads of people excited (especially my daughter) while causing massive inconvenience – and obvious cost – for business.

Substitute Twitter or snow fights for the following viewpoint:

Sideline humbug of snow fight/Twitter – fruitless waste of energy spent on juvenile entertainment in existence purely for its own sake. Where workers are engrossed in something pleasing to themselves with no business outcome but for the few (e.g. grit suppliers in the case of snow, contacts in the case of Chris Brogan).

or

Engaged participant of snow fight/Twitter – liberating and inspiring in the sense of something different from the monotony. It’s not a task ridden process and outcome – it’s original, genuine and creative. It improves your outlook and certainly broadens it. No, ten more widgets weren’t sold but maybe, just maybe, my heightened spirits and/or that new connection I made might just turn out for the better.

What say you? Is Twitter the best social business tool since the telephone, or is it a toy for time wasters?

[BTW Stephen Fry is the most popular person on Twitter. President Obama is followed by the world's terrorists and every political party under the sun, so we'll claim his numbers void. Ergo Fry wins.]

Photo credit: Justin Beckley

But some shopping can be a much more emotive affair: the pride of a dad’s first pram; unpacking a new Mac; the smell of new running shoes; freshly laid carpet at home; the sound of a new golf putter. All can hit you with a lot more gusto than buying postcode credits for your website.

It’s not news to you that some brands, not just product categories, can make that difference as well. MP3 players are pretty simple machines in today’s superconducting world but few would argue it’s easier to be impassioned about a new iPod, than a £9 Sweex.

And I’m feeling much the same about this bike. I could’ve bought six other brands, all with very comparable machines but I’m drawn to Specialized. They’re arguably the BMW of the bike world but they’re not the obvious choice for the layman. Chavs haven’t heard of them and the masses won’t be interested even if they do stumble into a store that carries them. High prices should be enough of a barrier for that.

If Stephen Fry were buying a commuting bike, I could easily see him on this:  technical enough for Steve Jobs (our Fry is an all-out Apple geek) but understated with a hint of performance about it.

I might be thinking (or is that feeling?) totally different about it if Beckham’s seen riding one and sales go intergalactic. But for now my heart feels secure knowing my bum gets to work a couple of times a week on my Apple-esque bike.

Unlike the frost, I hope my high isn’t short lived.

Enter Aaron Wall (SEObook.com), one of the Internet’s geek superstars. He is to SEO what J.K. Rowling is to wizards. Mr Wall started out with a desire to learn and has become a true guru of search. His latest [free] tool is an upgraded version of the SEO toolbar that’s been pumping iron.

Okay, Page Rank’s relevance is a moot subject but this toolbar also gives you: domain links, page links, directory links, site age, monthly usage and loads more – check out the video.

This is a simple but penetrating tool – he warns that too much use may have engines thinking you’re scraping data! The power of these freebies never ceases to amaze me and SMEs should be lapping them up. Get hooked up here.

Seth Godin is coming to London. Book yourself on his first UK talk. Quick.

Seth’s in London!

Yes, London, UK.

These guys have proven themselves entrepreneurs, figureheads, statesmen, leaders and visionaries. Their products embody people’s emotions. Both are bowing out of their current roles: SJ to hopefully improve his health; RD to look after the bigger picture at McLaren Group. SJ is planning to return in June, RD is an always-listening ear to call on.

Game-changers like this pair don’t need my luck but I certainly wish it.

“The real leader has no need to lead – he is content to point the way.” Henry Miller

Is it me or do you find the timing of Israel’s “cleaning Hamas of military capabilities” a tad hurried? There are insurmountable differences and the arguments are too complex and far-reaching for Ban Ki-moon, but I have to ask, regardless of continued provocation, what civilised government goes to war over Christmas?

If news teams are saying this then I’ve missed it, but Israel clearly wanted to ‘get the job done’ while they had such a sympathetic (make that submissive?) ally in the Oval. You gotta dance with the one that brought ya…

I really can’t see this continuing much past Obama’s inauguration next week, regardless of Israel’s aims or achievements at that point. But Prime Minister Olmert says he’ll continue the campaign for however long it takes. Let’s pray that’s more bravado than planning.

Well, things look to be going all Sky One for this genre. These creations have attracted A-list attention as “a collaboration with fifteen leading episodic television writers from popular series–such as The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live and Seinfeld–to develop 15 original episodic comedy pilots…”

There’s plenty of talk lately about what the blending of online TV will mean with the BBC, ITV and BT soon to become bedfellows on a common platform for IPTV (known as Project Canvas). We shouldn’t be closed to the fact it’ll be as much about content as it is accessibility. New ground is soon to be broken, I hope it’s original and entrepreneurial and not all crass reality show spin offs.

With a couple of leftovers from last year, I’ve now got enough reading material to last me ‘till the FTSE touches 6,000 again. My dad would have these done and in the church bazaar by Valentine’s Day and I’d kill to be a match for his speed-reading right now.

Why do you always want a movie to start, but can’t wait to finish a book?

Forget resolutions, try predictions. J.K. Galbraith said ‘there are two types of forecasters: those who don’t know and those who don’t know they don’t know’, but there’s always Tom Asacker. He hits it right between the eyes with his article, “Nine Predictions for 2009.” As ever, he is articulate, succinct and on the money (at least that’s my prediction).

Unfortunately this is a common business dilemma and it usually doesn’t have the charitable option available. The classic example is selling ad space towards a print deadline: slash prices (sometimes to zero) or increase copy against advert ratio.

Phoning clients telling of ‘super one-off deals’ makes it incredibly difficult to go back next month with an invigorated rate card. Even though the timeline has changed will the client understand today’s price is 300% more than last month’s offer? All the more so as the clients now believe they’ve done the advertiser a favour and got them out of a jam.

M&S have been playing this card recently with their 20% off days but if they keep repeating this it makes the non-20% days much harder to carry and justify. They’re educating consumers to find bargains.

This is going to be a huge dilemma for many in the Q1 squeeze that’s coming. Then again, with PWC estimating that 82% of retailers discounted goods the weekend before Christmas, are there many retailers who think we’ll get back to full pricing any time soon?

If they’re half as committed to that oversimplified strategy as I believe they are, why don’t they help us digest their content more easily? Granted, they’re much better than they were (understanding that we don’t want to log in to read was a real boon) but much boundary pushing is needed if they’re going to carve a real niche out of the net.

Next to Google Earth, RSS is the best thing about the Internet. It’s simple and brilliant. Instead of typing in dozens of web addresses to check out what’s new, you can tell the web which sites you’d like to read and watch them all come into one page (or reader) as and when they refresh themselves. Instead of buying a paper or magazine which will have a good proportion of waste (i.e. I won’t read) Google can deliver 100% relevant content to any desktop or mobile device I choose – for free. Helpful. Genius. Time saving. Wonderful.

Not so the experience you’ll find online at most of our British newspapers. Check out this article by Timothy Fadek at the Guardian.co.uk (note: no RSS in their address bar). Where is the feed for this page? There’s the usual social networking buttons, but what about a longer term buy-in? Sure, you can subscribe to the RSS feed from the business home page and get hooked up. The trouble is, it feeds you the whole of the business section (approx 270 posts per week) not the daily missives of your chosen journo or subject.

Telegraph.co.uk and timesonline.co.uk (what a dreadful URL) help you a wee bit by offering a selection of feeds, but they’re insufficient. You’ve got more chance of most writers cooking you dinner tonight than giving you an easy to find RSS feed. It’s a genuine shame that their technology is missing such an opportunity to gain attention and eyeballs.

A 20 second brainstorm on what could be better:

• Allow us to plug in to ANY correspondent/writer;
• Allow us to filter the feed by keyword or tag e.g. I want Brian Moore at the Telegraph.co.uk (actually possible if you’re persistent in your quest) but only on international rugby, not his club rugby, football or general pieces;
• Allow us to skew to excerpt or full text (don’t force me to your site to read a whole article – it’s just tight);
• Allow us to take the feed live, daily, weekly or monthly (as a magazine would arrive);
• Allow the feed on keyword only but across all sections e.g. Lewis Hamilton could be in several areas other than F1 sport; and,
• Allow a matrix of any the above.

RSS is chronically underused; newspapers could blow it open to become one of their saving graces. Of course, their content (and their contributors) is another matter entirely.