AbleBrains

Hire Me Every Day!

Ok, now that I've got your attention, no, I have no plans to leave SAP.  But I thought it was an attention grabbing opener.  So why open with such a flagrant gambit for attention?  Because I think its important during periods of economic uncertainty, heck economic crisis, to continue to invest in innovation.

"Yeah, Steve we get that, you've talked about investing in innovation before, what does that have to do with hiring practices?"

Let me ask you a question.  How long do you think your organization can remain competitive, remain innovative without investing in your Human Capital?  Investing in the folks who you are depending on to deliver that innovation?  Innovation doesn't grow on trees (damm I wish it did but it doesn't).  It grows out of the minds of those working to make your company successful, whether it be on the product side, marketing, customer experience, social media, you name it... it all grows out of the fertile and creative minds of your employees.

So why the battle cry "Hire Me Every Day!"?

Each employee has to deliver in uncertain times. And companies in return have to invest in those employees, to make them feel they way they did on that first day of work at a new job -- excited, nervous, invigorated, motivated, ready to take on the world and do wonderful things.  That's the way I felt my first day of work and I strive to make my teams feel that way every day. 

I know, its a lofty goal. One that isn't reached every day for sure. But I think its a goal worth pursuing on a daily basis.

Fiddler on the Social Media Roof: "Attention! Attention."

In moving forward with thinking about SAP's Social Media marketing implementations, my thoughts are shifting from tools and strategies (I think I know where we need to go) to the notion of "attention."   

Our internal constituents... like yours have limited cycles to spend and will naturally  gravitate to the tools that deliver the most value.  Thanx @jenrobinson for spurring these thoughts on. 

My concern is that the balance between professional internal use, professional external use, personal external use and personal internal use of Social Media will carve up the Attention pie into so many small pieces as to be ineffective.

I know for me, I feel much more connected and part of vibrant community as twitter.com/stevemann and to our SAPListens experiment on Twitter versus SAP's internal SAPTalk laconica implementation.  I feel my own attention pie carved up into some pretty small pieces. I feel like a Fiddler on the Social Media Roof, balancing my attention precariously among these different efforts.

Where is the point of diminishing returns?  When do we get to the point where the Attention Pie is carved up into so many small pieces that diminishing value from a particular social graph is the result.

These are the thoughts that are consuming my cycles right now.  What are your thoughts on this potential Attention Deficit?

How Important Is a Candidate's Health to Your Decision Making Process?

Think about it...

Don't Vote

Pass it on...

The Elements of Style

When I was in College and Graduate School, I used to carry around Strunk & Whites Elements of Style. In this nifty little manual, all my obtuse and not so obtuse questions regarding the writing style and grammar were answered. I carried my dog-eared, coffee-stained copy everywhere because, well my undergraduate and graduate days were filled with reading but even more writing.  When I left graduate school and ventured into business, I devoured business books but few of them stood out as "nifty little manuals" in the same way that Strunk had served me. 

So its with a smile on my face and a bit of amusement that I find Culture Change discussions and manualesque rules and bullet lists of do's and don'ts when attempting to alter corporate culture. 

Over on the Hill & Knowlton community today  I came across a blog by David Ferrabee entitled "Culture Change" in which the author states (emphasis mine):

I believe that there are a few commonly held misconceptions about organisational culture:

1. Its all about  relationships and behaviour: more often than not [culture change] it is process driven: new systems, changing business conditions, new leadership.  To make people 'do' things differently, you need to change the way they do things. 

While I agree that new leadership and new ways of thinking are critically important to driving cultural change and that systems and disciplines are also important, without a vision of where the company needs to go, without leadership that can inspire both the vision AND the loyalty to do the hard work to get there, all the new systems and discipline won't amount to a hill of beans unless the organization knows where its headed. In other words, in many corporate cultures, especially those with deep, intricate informal networks, change is all about relationships and behavior.

2. It's heavily influenced by national culture, diversity and geography: Two businesses in the same field can be widely different.  But managers in France and managers in Iceland will tend to approach things in broadly similar ways.

I'm sorry but I must respectfully disagree with spirit of this remark.  Although managers may be "trained" to manage employees in a similar fashion. It has been my experience as an American manager, having the opportunity to manage Americans, Germans, Indians, Russians, citiizens of Eastern Europe and the UK and people of all races and creeds that each nationality demands a fundamentally different approach to management. For instance, when I speak in Germany I used to get up and call out the great work that so and so employee did.  NO NO NO. While this flies in the US, it certainly doesn't fly in Germany.  And my employees told me so in no uncertain terms. The consensus, team oriented mentality drives differentiation. Same for India. There are vast differences stemming from culture that alter the way one manages a team.

3. Certain business sectors will always have certain cultures: There are many examples of sectors that are deemed to be one way acting the other.  If you visit Abbey in their London HQ or Nationwide in Swindon you will see that banks don't act or look like we expect them to.

Now interesting enough, although national culture, language and other societal norms driving behavior modify  corporate cultures, I believe that fundamentally a bank is a bank is a bank. Yes, SOX compliance reigns in the US while Basel II in the EU but again, I think the author misses the mark.  I believe there is more consistency among sectors than difference regardless of geography.  Its the underlying corporate culture drives differentiation and that's where the "sector" issues come from.  Lets be focused on root causes shall we?

4. A culture change programme will need to touch every part of your business: Culture change programmes can be quite small and discrete.  You can change the way work is done in one part of the business.  We do it all the time.  A manager or employee will suggest a change it will alter the culture of that part of the company.

Of course one can compartmentalize change and in some limited cases that's warranted. But most often is the case, the interdependencies among even silo'd organizations minimize the effectiveness of discrete change management initiatives.  While boiling the ocean is never a valid business strategy, comprehensive change, where dependencies among functional units are factored into the change equatoin is a must. 

So its a nice little Elements of Style type approach to culture change, only in this instance I'd be tempted to rewrite the manual.

Are Americans Mis-informed?

I have to tell you. I have been getting some of the strangest emails and comments on some of my posts as a result of my stand in the upcoming presidential election.  Some of these include (emphasis mine):

Interesting charts. Obama's would be useful to use in school when teaching socialism

Your support of Wright, Rezco, Fleger, Ayers and their lacky shows poor judgment.

he is an EXTREME liberal who will bring this country closer to a communist nation than any other in history!

What disturbs me are not the comments themselves. I'm a big boy and can take it.  What I find disconcerting is the extreme nature of the comments... and the lack of reasoned thought behind them. I mean come on folks. Is it possible to have an impassioned yet well reasoned discussion on the issues and the candidates' relative stance on issues?  It seems that not many of us can not.  But why?

Is it because politics itself is a polarizing subject?  Yes.

Is it because we have a tendancy to intermingle our emotional and intellectual selves?  Indeed.

Is it because we're mis-informed?  Possibly. 

How many of us have taken the time to understand the positions of  each of the candidates.. in detail?  So that we can cogently discuss their merits or lack thereof.  My belly button says, not many or not as many as needed. So as a result, arguments infused with emotion and personal attacks are what surface.  Rather than appeal to logic, appeasl to emotion or authority ensue.   We attack the candidate or the person representing that candidate because frankly that's the only arrow in the quiver these folks have.  Now I'm not saying that I'm an angel in this department either, far from it.   But I do believe in trying to shut down that aspect of the discourse. 

We're emotional and intellectual beings.  Political elections are as much if not more about connectedness to a particular candidate than about the issue positions they hold.  But please, can we try to keep the melodrama to a minimum?

Please Make It Stop: "Sorry Not Gonna Happen (Not Yet Anyway)"

JasonC posted the following comment on my Comparing Tax Plans post yesterday:

Please make it stop. This is yet another blog I used to come to for business insights. Now I'm reading this. I need another aspirin.

Jason, I very much appreciate that you come to my blog for business insights. I'm flattered.  I also hope you can understand that these insights come from the same place that my thoughts on family, politics, religion, food, art, neuroscience etc. come from. I guess what I'm saying is that being unidimensional makes Steve dull and a dull Steve is an uninspired Steve. An uninspired Steve can't generate business insights.   I'm a passionate fool, who really throws himself into his work and life, so ya gotta bear with it, if you value the insights I provide.

I believe that this is one of the most important elections in modern US History. The country is at an inflection point. It will either continue being an isolationist declining member of the world or join other nations in doing the hard work we've neglected. You know where my sentiments lie on this matter. 

But please don't ask me to be unidimensional.  That would make me quite dull don't you think?

Keep reading and commenting though!  I enjoy all of your insights.

My CIO.com Interview on Social Media

Tom Wailgum was kind enough to spend some time with me talking about what it is I exactly do for the SAP.  :)  You can find the article here... but one of my fav lines?

Our strategy has been to tie social media to specific business objectives, and the reason why we're focused on customer experience is that as an organization we've recognized that a lot of the power in the market has shifted. Traditionally, vendors were very much in control of selling cycles; we don't believe in selling cycles any more. We believe there are buying cycles now, and in buying cycles, the customers are in control.

So our focus around social media has been to ensure that we're giving customers the tools they need to be empowered, to make the right decisions regarding the software services and selection process, and that will predispose them to do business with SAP.

Comparing Tax Plans

Saw this over on Chartjunk and just had to post it. For all of you McCain supporters... here's a graphical representation of just whose taxes he's raising and whose taxes he's cutting. As far as Obama is concerned, you only get hit if you are making over 600,000 per year.  Can ya dig that? I knew that you could.

Who You Should Vote For

From Michael Seitzman's recent post on HuffPo:

Vote for someone smarter than you. Vote for someone who inspires you. Vote for someone who has not only traveled the world but who has also shown a deep understanding and compassion for it. The stakes are real and they're terrifyingly high. This election matters. It matters. It really matters. Let me say that one more time. This. Really. Matters.

I couldn't agree more.