Sunday, December 27, 2009

Word and Quote of the Day: Palliate

Palliate means to excuse, alleviate, or otherwise diminish the severity of something. You may improve a person's life by palliating their suffering. On the other hand, if you palliate their shortcomings you may be enabling their poor behavior. I think Samuel Johnson's quote below is a great example:

“Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliate the other's failings because they are his own.” -Samuel Johnson (source: http://thinkexist.com/quotation/friends_are_often_chosen_for_similitude_of/149442.html)

Palliate comes from the latin word for cloak, which is pallium. This is interesting to me because it is a neuroanatomical term. In the brain, the pallium is the evolutionary precursor to the cerebrum. In all animals with a brain, the pallium clokes the brain and provides the superior, most complex functions. In humans, the pallium evolved in the cerebrum and provided us with a place for spatial memory, language, and other functions.

Check this out, a blog that uses cartoons to expand your vocabulary:

Monday, March 2, 2009

Guest Writing: 5 Productivity Tips

I was just published again at ChangeForge.com, writing about my 5 tips for boosting your productivity. Leave a comment on their blog with your favorite tip! http://www.changeforge.com/2009/02/28/gitterdun/

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Why I Use Twitter

Twitter is the most important and popular trend on the internet right now. It is such a simple service that many people are skeptical of its usefulness. On the other hand, millions of people worldwide are finding new uses for Twitter everyday. I was once a skeptic, but I have found a use for twitter and would like to share it with you.

In a nutshell, Twitter is a service for broadcasting a message of 140 characters or less. This message can include text, emoticons, links, and Twitter commands. If you use Facebook or LinkedIn, then you have already been introduced to this concept. Twitter is similar to a status update on other social network websites. You can use Twitter as an alternative status update; I use an application that automatically transfers my Twitter status to my Facebook profile.

If you just yawned, give me a second. That is not the end of twitter, that is the beginning. The fact is, few people in the Twitter world care what your status is. What they want from you is useful information in 140 characters or less. Do you have something to say? Do you have an agenda? We want to hear it. We have chosen to follow you, now preach away.

What would you say? If you believe in a certain ideal or brand, you can send out brief messages about your cause. You can send out links to news and blog articles that you think should be read. You can send links to pictures that support your cause. This is your shot to write headlines, reach out, and be heard globally. Better yet, your message is broadcast in real-time at the speed of light. People will be reading your message as soon as you are done typing it.

Going Viral Have you heard the term "going viral" as it relates to the internet? Think of it this way: You have just discovered a fascinating piece of information that you know is of interest to many people. There are many ways to transmit this information, and Twitter may become the media of choice in the near future. All you have to do is capsulize your message in 140 characters and hit enter. Everyone following you will instantly receive the message. Some of them will like the message so much that they will "retweet" the message to their followers. Some of those followers will "retweet". The "Six Degrees of Separation" applies here: if the message is interesting, it will spread like wildfire.

Search My next post will drill deeper into how I use Twitter, but I want to mention here that Twitter is an important tool to add to your research toolbox. Searching Twitter will add an important new dimension to your research: The dimension of real-time. If you need timely information, I doubt you can beat Twitter for finding video, blogs, and news articles since they are sent out over Twitter immediately after they're posted. Additionally, the culture of Twitter ensures that you will find obscure and unique resources that a search in Lexis-Nexis or ABI Inform/Global would never turn up, and would be buried too deep in Google.

Look for my next post, where I explain exactly how I use Twitter.

I Found a Use for Twitter

Over the last year, I have been seeing references to something called "Twitter" in discussions related to technology, internet trends, and other "geek topics" which I follow. Suddenly, I started hearing Twitter dropped in non-geek conversations. Twitter began making its way into the news, and onto the Blackberries of some unlikely people. (Lance Armstrong, Barack Obama, George Stephanopolis, etc)

I kept my distance at first and only glanceowd at Twitter references occasionally. I just didn't see any use for Twitter in my life, and I thought it was a lame fad. I expected it to burn itself out quickly, and I could get back to FaceBook and LinkedIn.

I can now see that Twitter is not going to burn itself out; it is snowballing itself into a YouTube-like freight train. Some of the most popular and intelligent people are using Twitter regularly. Innovative developers are building new applications for Twitter everyday. A group of venture capitalists recently threw $35 million at Twitter, even though it still lacks a profitable business plan. Read that again: $35 million invested in a service that currently is unable to make money.

Several weeks ago, I finally dangled a toe in Twitter. It still seemed like a blackhole, but I kept at it. I was looking for the hook, and the hook found me: Twitter is what you make it. The service is so simple and easy that if you just look for a way to make it useful, you will create the usefulness.

A religious figure once said, "Knock and the door shall be opened, seek and ye shall find." If you play with Twitter long enough, you will create the door that you want to knock on. You will answer your own prayers. Twitter has so many potential applications that you are guaranteed to find a use for it.

In my next post, I will explain how I use it. For now, just realize that for whatever question you may ask, Twitter is the answer. Twitter will eventually be a network service that we take for granted like GoogleMaps or YouTube. It will not, however, go away for lack of usefulness.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

A Brave, New World

I just got an email from the President of the United States. The most powerful man on the planet sent me an email to announce a new initiative, broaden my understanding, and encourage my commitment. It's not the first time he has contacted me. We're connected on LinkedIn, he emailed me throughout the campaign, and continues to send occasional emails about what he is doing. His wife and his staff have sent a few emails too. He even sent me a text message to reveal his choice of running mate, prior to making a public announcement.

I try not to get a big head about it. I mean, I know I am not the only American who receives emails from the President, and we still have not met face-to-face. But he does solicit my feedback. I think he is truly interested in my opinion, approval, and support.

Yeah, Obama has no idea who I am, I know. In fact, it would make me nervous if he did know who I was. What I am excited about is the fact that the President of the United States has embraced social media. He has provided an avenue for dialogue that is unprecedented. Government will never be the same, and neither will the governed.

Love him or not, Obama is giving you access. You can still link to him on Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. He still carries a Blackberry. Obama is leveraging the cutting edge of the internet, and finding new uses everyday.

Love him or hate him, you should pay attention to Obama's use of social media. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What will be our reaction over time as Obama's administration finds new ways to communicate with us? This is even more important for the candidates in the future, for every office.

The president elected in 2012 may find that their real cost is in time spent online, rather than in dollars spent on TV and Radio commercials. In fact, the future candidates may need to demonstrate more savvy in social media than they do in fundraising. Campaign costs that cost less may dampen the voice of the interest groups who pay the most. A whole new paradigm of power may emerge.

The email I received today is for Recovery.gov which is a website dedicated to providing transparency and accountability with the money that congress approved for economic recovery. The intent is that any citizen may go to this website and be assured that our money is being invested in our future. Part of economic recovery is our own psychological perception. With Recovery.gov, we may have a quicker recovery due to the confidence of the American people.

Will this become the norm? Will we eventually take for granted having a government which communicates directly and immediately? Will we learn to demand the accountability and transparency that Recovery.gov is introducing? Will this change how our congress spends money?

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The True Cost of Layoffs

In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit now that I am unemployed due to a layoff, and have also been laid off in the past. Am I bitter? No, but I would have handled it differently. This post examines the benefits and pitfalls of a layoff from the perspective of symbiotic economics.

First, what do I mean by symbiotic economics? I mean that we are all connected economically and that our economic actions have effects on each other. When I spend a dollar at a retail outlet, you will likely receive a benefit as an employee of that company, a shareholder, a vendor, or a member of the community that receives the sales tax. Alternatively, if I destroy value in the economy through theft, dishonesty, tax increases, or otherwise, you will pay higher prices, higher taxes, or miss out on potential opportunities.

I laid out the tenets of my philosophy of symbiotic economics here.

Starting with the paradigm of symbiotic economics, let us examine the ramifications of layoffs. As a shareholder, you may view all layoffs as good for your bottom line, but I would argue that is not always the case. There will be times when layoffs are necessary to protect the value that your firm possesses. If your market does not allow for growth and there is no way to keep your employees engaged productively, then a layoff is probably the best option.

However, there are times when a layoff is used to cut costs and appease investors. On the balance sheet, a layoff is an attractive thing. It allows a company to reduce losses reported in a quarter by offsetting them with a cut in operating expenses. It all comes down to a ratio: the amount of money spent compared to the amount of money earned.

However, this ratio hides many important costs that are all being paid across the globe today. When one firm cuts payroll and another firm hires, then the result is basically a wash. Today, as in many times past, we see too many firms cutting and not enough hiring. Unemployed people do not spend money. Also, growing unemployment makes employed people nervous, curtailing their spending.

If you accept the fact that our economy is symbiotic, then you can predict that reducing spending in retail will reduce the revenue that the wholesalers and vendors receive. Transportation receives less revenue. More employees are laid off, salaries are frozen or reduced, stock prices and mutual funds fall short, and we find ourselves in a viscious circle. Basically, as we see in today's headlines, if everyone cuts headcount at the same time we actually ensure that our next quarter will suffer.

There is another cost that is overlooked. You layoff 10% today, and next year you find that you need some of those employees back. Now you have to spend the money to recruit, evaluate, hire, equip, and train the workforce that you already possessed one year ago. Did you really save money by eliminating their salary? Many HR professionals claim that it costs 150% of salary to replace an employee. It could be higher than that depending on the employee.

There is no way to know what an employee would have learned, created, or innovated during a year. There is also no way to know how much damage that employee can cause by taking your knowledge out the door. I know that elitist executives do not admit the value that their employees possess, and that is shameful. A lot of money is wasted on training and developing human capital, only to see that investment return value for someone else.

The intelligent executive is aware that the best asset that he can invest in with little risk of depreciation walks out the door every day. Investing in your employees can pay tremendous dividends. Plant and equipment alone cannot create wealth without the introduction of the right people. Cash, credit, energy, and brand are all powerless to create market value, but the right people can take advantage of such resources to create value, even in the face of economic adversity.

Recently, a contact of mine started a job on a Monday. On Friday of that first week, the company announced a 5% pay cut in response to economic forces. That person complained to me, the unemployed guy who would have accepted a 10% pay cut rather than a layoff. After scolding this person into a sense of gratitude, I pondered the situation from an executive perspective.

If I had been in my former CEO's shoes, what would have been the best decision to make? He runs an S Corporation, meaning that he has only a few private shareholders to answer to and wields greater power over his company than the CEO of a publicly traded company. He could have decided to accept a loss for the quarter without fear of lawsuits for fiscal irresponsibility. The CEO could have decided to cut costs and salary temporarily, with reasonable expectations that his company would grow again in the near future. The third choice was to cut a certain percentage of salary out of the operating expenses, which he did.

By ignoring the balance sheet and accepting the loss, the CEO would be acting irresponsibly. As a shareholder, I would be disappointed (to say the least) if my investment was not protected and money was wasted. Wasting cash in this quarter could have a detrimental effect on the firm's ability to pay expenses next quarter, putting the firm in grave danger. When the firm is in danger, then the employees, shareholders, vendors, customers, and community are also threatened. That is to say, there are many stakeholders who have an interest in the profitability of a firm besides the shareholders. As an employee, investor, client, or vendor, I want this company to maintain profitability for my own selfish and symbiotic reasons.

My former CEO chose to lay off 4 % of his workforce. Most of these people were good/great employees with unlimited potential. Many of us also possessed proprietary information about the firm's products, methods, and clients. We were 4% of the current workforce, but percentage of the firm's future growth did we represent? We'll never know.

The firm's market is in a current recession due to outside factors, and we all assume that once the global economy turns around, the firm's market will begin to grow again. At that point, they will need to staff up. I have already been told that I will be on a shortlist of employees called first. They already know my work ethic and abilities, and I have already worked through the period of training and connecting. I loved working for that employer and would return today if they called. However, I expect to be in another rewarding position when they finally call and will regrettably turn them down (unless they offer a lucrative salary increase.)

I know for a fact that my layoff represents an opportunity cost for the firm. I learn something new everyday, and will be far more valuable next year than I am this year. I am innovative, passionate, and entrepreneurial. My future includes great potential that they could have harnessed for their own benefit, but will now only read about or compete against. I am sure that the same can be said for most of the other 4%.

If they cannot rehire me and the other 4%, then they will incur the additional expense of recruiting, the cost of training them, and suffer through time it takes to bring someone onboard and get them productive (6 months or longer in the technical world.) They would have been better off if they could have kept us around somehow. That way, when the market rebounds they would simply need to plug us in and reap the benefits.

The company I left spends money on keeping their employees happy. They buy premium coffee, pay for free coke, offer fantastic benefits, and pay above average salary. What if they had cut salary and benefits/perks before cutting headcount? Could they have cut enough to save the quarter and offset future rehiring costs?

When you layoff a group, the people remaining realize suddenly that they are expendable. They realize that they may be next, despite valiant efforts to prove their value. They update their resumes, send out feelers, and surf job websites. They lose any altruistic ideas about helping the company, and begin to serve their own interests more.

Would the same effect take hold under a reduction of pay and perks? I think not. I know for a fact that in the culture I left, the CEO would have been lauded for his efforts to keep the team together. He is already respected by his employees as a generous man, and there is a lot of gratitude in the company for his efforts. The culture was similar to an extended family, and the layoffs are a very emotional topic. I think it is completely reasonable to assume that amidst any grumbling, there would be a lot of employees who felt grateful to remain employed.

Personally, I would have been grateful. We all knew that sales were down and cash was tight, so losing the free coke would have been expected. A 5 or 10% paycut would have been understandable. I could have contributed to another area of the company, and not only added value to the company but a gained valuable set of learning experiences.

My fear is that by laying off workers to save the share price, we ensure reduced revenue for our firm and our symbiotic neighbors for the next quarter. Only the forward-thinking, innovative, and opportunistic leaders will save us from this downward spiral.

When those leaders turn this situation around for us, it will take longer to recover due to the additional expense incurred of hiring and training. If we were innovative and forward-thinking, we would have discovered enough opportunities to keep these employees fulfilled and productive during bad times. We could then respond to economic growth with a strategic and natural hiring process, rather than a hurried and wasteful one.

We would respond to a growing market with employees who had endured a downturn with us and grown more valuable and more loyal. We could respond with a team who is already an expert on our product, procedures, resources, and client-base, and chomping at the bit to conquer the market.

There is a time for layoffs, to be sure. However, I am sure that it is an abused accounting trick which is destroying more value and preventing more revenue than is realized. It takes fear, backward-thinking, and herd-mentality to execute a layoff. It takes an innovative, resourceful, proactive, and visionary leader to avoid a layoff and strengthen his or her business.

We can't set sail until we raise anchor and embrace the potential adventure on the horizon.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Web 2.0 and the President of the United States

Like him or hate him, you have to be at least mildly curious about the President posting on YouTube and other web 2.0 mediums. The idea that a message from the most powerful office on the planet could "go viral" and be seen by millions within minutes of recording, without the expense of live TV, is going to be huge. The President can post a video in forums that allow commenting, and generate discussion among billions of people about his video.

If you trust Obama, then you can be excited that he will be able to get his message out and counter any criticism far more effectively. If you do not trust Obama, then there may be something to fear. Someone who is good at manipulating the masses now has a method of doing so on a grander scale and perhaps more thoroughly.

The ultimate question: will this new method of communication allow a manipulator to dupe the masses, or will this lead to greater transparency and make it harder to "spin" the message? What would ahve happened if either of the Bushes used this medium, or Reagan, or Clinton? Consider how Iran/Contra, Monica Lewinsky, The Bay of Pigs/Cuban Missile Crisis, and the signing of the Declaration of Independence could have been managed with access to Web 2.0!

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Friday, February 6, 2009

ChangeForge: Control the Airwaves

ChangeForge is a nationally recognized blog that normally has high standards for their content. Today, they have lowered those standards a little and posted a piece written by yours truly. Please give it a look and leave a comment on their blog for me! http://www.changeforge.com/2009/02/05/control-the-airwaves/

Monday, February 2, 2009

Innovative Thinking

We had an interesting discussion in my class tonight for “Innovative Business Thinking.” The discussion turned to whether people can learn to be creative and innovative thinkers, or if some people just have “it” and some don’t. Our instructor’s point was that in his work as an executive consultant and coach, he had seen people who were normally stoic and “un-innovative” surprise people with a creative burst. .

One person who had no artistic experience suddenly took up a paint brush and created an impressive work of art. Another person was straight-laced all year round, but at Halloween became very expressive and regularly won awards for his Halloween costumes. .

The point our instructor made is that some people may have a larger measure of creativity, and some people may be naturally innovative, but much of it has to do with our comfort level. He said that we tend to fall on the creative or conformist side depending on where we find safety. .

If we could never feel safe as a conformist, and find that our weirdness leads to better poetry or music, then we will tend to feel safer as an innovative person. On the other hand, if our creative thinking never led to a feeling of safety, we would tend to flee to conformity. .

The implication is that the enemy of innovation is fear. If people are afraid of the consequences of innovative thinking, then they will avoid it. Many of us have seen figures of authority squash good ideas because the innovativeness threatened their empire. We have also seen people stick their neck out with a crazy idea and get laughed at, ensuring that they would never voice their thoughts again. .

Eventually, this kind of despotism will scare people into policing their own innovative thoughts. Out of fear, we will proactively prevent creative thinking and make sure that our thoughts conform to the perceived standard. .

If your team needs a new idea, then give them freedom. Allow failure, encourage crazy ideas, and forget about measuring productivity for a second. We fail to plan and fail to brainstorm because we fear it will waste valuable time. .

There are two possible perceptions. Perhaps your lose two hours that you could have spent making a few thousand dollars. On the other hand, you may invest two hours leading to the million dollar idea. .

Every time you “sacrifice” productivity for creative thinking and brainstorming sessions, you will be building up your team’s innovative abilities. You will raise their natural ability to think creatively, and you will raise the odds of hitting on the big ideas.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

New Blog

I am really interested in Social Entrepreneurship, and I have begun to develop that interest into expertise. I plan to track my progress, sound out ideas, attract mentors and partners, and edify curious readers with a new blog: http://charitystartup.blogspot.com/ Please stop by and say hi, make it a favorite on technorati, and add the link to your blog if you would like to help me. I will gladly return all favors with interest!