As part of an exercise for Paul Sparks’ class in my doctoral program, we were asked to come up with a personal mission statement. This was a task that I took seriously, because I saw what I was doing in my education as a potential turning point–well, more of a focus point. I wasn’t planning on turning anything around; I was working on developing a focus on what was important to me. A year later, I have come to understand the importance of aligning my energy with what it is that I want, and as I look back at my mission statement, I can see that it is more relevant than ever. Read more
A big thank you to everyone who came out to see my presentation at podcampaz.org. I am working on putting together a high-quality version of my presentation online soon, but I wanted to post the slides and my speaking notes here, so people could take a gander while I work on the polished product.
The notes are my personal speaking notes, so unless your brain is as crazy as mine, some parts might not quite make sense. Read more
I have been working on creating a set of social media guidelines for a corporation, and as a result, I am examining social media policies across the business spectrum. They range widely in quality, from the relatively liberal policy at Intel to the draconian Associated Press policy that not only demands that you watch what you say on social media, but asks that you also delete any postings by friends that may violate the policy. As a general rule, I have found that the existing social media policies address two areas: First, guidelines for what to do when you are representing the company in an official capacity, such as blogging on a corporate website, and second, guidelines for personal social media activities such as facebook, blogging, etc. Read more
We were discussing a process at the office this week and a co-worker of mine mentioned people “getting written up” for not following proper procedures. Hearing that phrase caused me to experience a deep feeling of nausea, disgust, panic, and a number of other unpleasant sensations. I absolutely detest hearing the term “write up” in the context of a performance management system. There isn’t anything wrong with documenting employee behavior, mind you, but using the threat of a “write-up” as a way to manage employee performance is almost always an indication of an ineffective, immature manager. A good manager should never need to use threats that sound like they came out of a fourth grade classroom to get his employees to do his bidding. Read more
I was driving home from the airport on a Friday afternoon. It had been a long week. As the regional quality auditor for a large beverage company, I had done a mini-tour of my Southern California territory. My phone rings and I answer. It is my manager calling to let me know that a C-Level executive was currently in a store in East LA County and he was very upset because he thinks “the store looks like crap.” He explained that the executive saw outdated products everywhere, cases of product were sliced open and taped back together, there was dust and dirt all over the merchandise, and the owner of the store didn’t seem to have any answers. My boss told me that the executive is furious and wants something done right away. Read more
The conventional wisdom about Twitter seems to be that it is great for posting a random thought about the news or getting some friends together for beer, but it can’t be used for anything that serious. I disagree. Microblogging can be a powerful communication tool in an organization.
Tweeting Tech Support
Chris Arkenberg wrote about a recent incident in which he called up AT&T/iPhone support with a question about whether iPhone Twitter apps use SMS to transmit data. He eventually got a hedged non-answer after 15 minutes of waiting, but it got him thinking about how people find answers to questions in business situations. Read more
I frequently read Janet Clarey’s blog and was interested in what she had to say in her recent post about social learning in small and medium businesses.
I was particularly struck by her conclusion:
If you don’t have a supportive culture of openness and sharing you are screwed. Need to do the work there first.
This reminded me of a recent conversation I had with a Vice President at a medium-sized retail company. The topic of Twitter came up, and he had an opinion that is typical for those who are skeptical of social media. He asked, point blank, “what good would it possibly do for [CEO Name] to be on Twitter?” Read more
One of the biggest mistakes I see from web designers is making accessibility more complicated than it should be. When most designers think of creating accessible content, they imagine hours of exaggerated tagging, designing tab-browsing and hot keys for every minute function of a site, and writing over-descriptive metadata. Most people just give up and don’t even bother. However, by using some simple techniques and following basic guidelines, you can make your website accessible to a wide audience of users without spending too much time and energy.
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