IAM Talking - Information Architected

Mobile Readiness: Begin With the End in Mind

Dan Keldsen — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 02:00:19 +0000

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-collaboration/mobile-readiness-begin-with-the-end-in-mind-010524.php

My previous article “Mobile Content & Collaboration: Let’s Face It, You Aren’t Ready” seems to have struck a chord. Mobile is hot, and only getting hotter. But while individual people are moving en masse to mobile, most organizations are stuck in a legacy content box of their own design. I have received far more behind the scenes commentary than public (most people, myself included, don’t particularly want to admit we aren’t as ready to be as hip as we’d prefer…

IAM Talking: Digital Gifts and the Gift Marketing Economy with Ethan Bloch from Flowtown

Dan Keldsen — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 13:48:31 +0000

Today, the topic is about Gift Marketing – It’s not just powerful to “give away” content for inbound marketing – giving unexpected gifts of your physical goods (consumer goods and food manufacturers, I’m looking at you) can provide a huge sales rise as well. Welcome to IAM Talking, a periodic podcast interview series, with your host, Dan Keldsen, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Architected, Inc. (IAI). Today IAM Talking with Ethan Bloch CEO and Co-founder of Flowtown, and we’ll be talking about Flowtown’s evolution (thru two pivots or restarts) into the Gift Marketing platform it is today. Keep your eyes open for what they’re up to – this is a shift in marketing that everyone should pay attention to. It’s an interesting twist on influence, guerilla marketing, and stunning people with great products and services, not beating them over the head with TV ads and traditional media.

Free Samples aren’t just for Costco Aisles

Ethan is a whip-smart entrepreneur, tied into the best of both technology (a given), but also into deep roots of marketing and human behavior. He and his Co-founder, Dan Martell (with the rest of the Flowtown team) are bouncing right on the waves of the social media revolution to do things a bit differently. We talk briefly about the pivots/restarts of Flowtown, where the earlier incarnation to the current model was experiencing rocket growth only to be shutdown and rebooted entirely. The newest version of Flowtown, off to a great start since the launch in November 2010, focuses on Gift Marketing.

Gift Marketing?

Never heard of it? Pay attention to the stories Ethan mentions of a little coffee shop in San Francisco down the street from Flowtown’s offices, and the “Crush It” success of Pretzel Crisps, which Ethan almost forgot to mention, but is (ahem) tremendous food for thought. Unexpected gifts, customer engagement, listening to the market – that’s right folks, it’s a new world, but the good news is… it works. It’s cheaper. It’s faster. And you should be trying it right now if you haven’t already.

Comments or Questions?

Wondering how to apply Gift Marketing to your company? Can you use similar techniques inside your company? Comment below, and we’ll answer and discuss together.

Listen now!

IAM Talking: Geek Psychology and Selling Online with Noah Kagan from AppSumo

Dan Keldsen — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:27:05 +0000

Today, the topic is about Geek Psychology – Hint: Knowing (ideally, BEING) your community is more important than ever. It’s about THEM, not you. Welcome to IAM Talking, a periodic podcast interview series, with your host, Dan Keldsen, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Architected, Inc. (IAI). Today IAM Talking with Noah Kagan, the Chief Sumo (CEO) of AppSumo, and we’ll be talking about understanding your market or community, testing assumptions, and understanding why people buy (or for an enterprise spin – do [or not] anything). AppSumo provides Daily Deals for Web Geeks – and I stumbled onto both AppSumo and Noah in parallel, both as a customer (listen to the podcast to hear more), and in following with his personal activities in marketing and psychology through Ramit Sethi.

It all matters… but you need to get started first…

I’d summarize our conversation here, but to be honest, it was quite freewheeling, and one of the most entertaining and honest discussions I’ve captured in recent years. You’ll find that Noah is very action oriented, which would be easy to view as an addiction to an “ooh, squirrel!” approach to life. But no, Noah can and does dive very deep into experiment in many aspects of his business, and the world of selling online specifically, to rapidly build up solutions. We didn’t cover his role at Mint in this interview, but if you have any doubts as to what understanding customers pre-launch of an initiative, read about the pre-launch marketing plan for Mint (circa 2007). Strap in, and hit play below – I guarantee you’ll find some interesting ideas to put into action.

Comments or Questions?

How are you defining your audience, community or market? How do you target? Do you build a product/service for sale to the world before talking to and understanding your customers? How do you target enterprise solutions, if you’re building/buying for employees? Comment below, and we’ll answer and discuss together.

Listen now!

More Collaboration (isn’t Enough)

Dan Keldsen — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:42:59 +0000

If you’re looking to “Enterprise 2.0″ to make you:

Better at collaboration, or
More social, or
Better at innovation, or
Anything else that is equally vague… stop right now.

Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. And certainly, do not buy or build any Enterprise 2.0 tech just yet.

Let’s Back Up…

What will “better collaboration” actually do for me? Me – as in the one person currently reading this post (ok, you, if you insist).
What would that do for my normal team of co-workers?
What about the random teams/projects I get pulled into?
What about the company as a whole?
What about relationships to my partners, suppliers, customers, clients, patients, you name it?

Get specific, or go home…

A recent video posted by the Danish company Podio, illustrates a glimpse into the day in the life of a research scientist, and the wide variety of very specific, and quite different tasks/projects he needs to juggle to get his daily work done. Watch below… (and back after the break)

Make a Project out of Getting Task-y

After watching the video…

Have you really thought through the *specific* and real-life tasks, projects, etc. that you or other people in your organization really need to get done?
In the places where they’ll be doing the work?
With structure (when needed), or freeform (where desired) to support *real* work – and not just some vague idea of a “collaborative environment?”

Is the toolset you’ve bought, built, or are about to use actually going to be useful in a “day in the life?”

If yes – fantastic – go forth and multiply. You wouldn’t believe how rare your situation is – run like the wind and make great things happen!
If not… please put your RFP on pause for a second, and look at the *specific* work that is done currently in your organization, and ask what will support that work – to enable more useful collaboration, to create the transparency that you need/want, makes it easier to share information for those who need it (while protecting truly sensitive information).

Trust me – “better collaboration” is not what you really want (see article on Internet Evolution from last year, or listen to an interview with Carlos Dominguez, SVP at Cisco). Better collaboration takes focus, and technology is the least of your worries. As Carlos said “If you suck at collaboration in real-life, you’re just going to suck virtually.” For thoughts on other collaboration scenarios, see this webinar from last year:

How are you specifically supporting Collaboration/Innovation in your company?

I’d love to here the specific tasks, roles, etc. that you’re targeting with Enterprise 2.0 (or whatever term you happen to be using).

E2.0 Behavior Changes: Swapping Tools – Real to Digital

Dan Keldsen — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 16:54:32 +0000

This post is a variation on what I’ve started and plan to continue on Use Cases, but rather than a Use Case, this is a Behavior Change. What’s the difference? You need both, and you want as many available in your toolkit as possible. Use Cases show more in-depth and “tangible/measurable” scenarios that you, as a practitioner of whatever practice or technology we’re discussing. Behavior Changes, are frankly more important, because if nobody can drive a stick shift, it doesn’t really matter if the corporate Ferrarri is parked right out front with the keys in it. (That’s a personal example, incidentally – as I’ve not yet mastered a manual transmission, not that I have a Ferrari either.) Relating to Enterprise 2.0/Social Business, having the greatest Enterprise 2.0 system in the world will not do you any good if nobody knows or cares to use it. What I’ve been honing in on, particularly in workshops intended to help the people in large or small organizations, in the last several years of Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business work, is how to get more people to take that first step into realizing that “doing it the new way” is not all that different from whatever they did before. In some cases, I will literally hand participants a card that gives them a “License2Collaborate” or in an innovation context, a “License2Innovate” – which may seem simplistic and unnecessary, but being able to “unfreeze” people from the terror of learning a new technique or system, can be shockingly low-tech and easy. Why make problems or solutions more complicated than they need to be?

Remember, What is Your Information Architected FOR?

If your Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business System is not architected for real users to participate and take advantage of the capabilities of the system… well, you have failed. You’re not building a system to create a piece of art – but to have a system that will support your employees and the goals of the organization.

First example

E2.0 Behavior Change: Swapping Tools – Real to Digital

Goal: Get the “non-evangelist” and early adopters to try any new system Business Objective: Show that the “new way” of working is just a pivot or step away from the “old way” – no big deal, so why not give a try? Exercise: Stage 1: Make a discussion “transparent” and visible. Whether it’s the kick-off of a new project, or discussion around some problem area, capturing the details of the discussion and surfacing it visibly (not just audibly) makes it both real, and moves you out of the hazy area of having everyone in the room with their own perception of what’s being discussed. How? Have a stack of PostIt Notes, or in my office, we have wall-to-wall whiteboards (the walls are full-scale whiteboards covered with IdeaPaint – which is fantastic, and highly recommended), and note all of the ideas in a visible area. Have people stand-up to do this exercise (which will make them more productive and get them engaged), and there are no excuses for not participating. It’s everyone in and involved (which will happen naturally as individuals begin to take action – others will follow – it’s the wisdom of the herd to follow a leader), or stop the meeting and call it off. If you need to, use a facilitator to get the first few sessions running, but really, this isn’t rocket science, folks. Get the ideas out and in the open, without criticism or discussion yet, and aim for 5-10 contributions from each person, with a time-limit of 3 minutes. At the end of 3 minutes, you will have accomplished a few things:

You will have far more ideas than you normally get in any given meeting
You will have actually engaged the brains (which is unfortunately rare in many organizations) of everyone in the room, rather than allowing a single or small majority to talk over everyone in a typical meeting
You will have set the stage for teamwork – by getting everyone to participate, even if you haven’t yet worked “as a team” in a coordinated way, everyone has been present and visibly engaged, alongside others
By surfacing all of these thoughts of the individuals in the room, you will have helped everyone to find a context to what you’re trying to do. When everyone on a “team” is left to figure out the context on their own, it’s far too easy to only focus on “me” versus “us” – there is nothing to tie people to the common ground because that common ground is often never built by a team, it’s handed down from the top without context, or is never defined, period.

Stage 2: From Real to Digital The next stage of the exercise after this, is to show how doing this in-person, with physical tools, is really no different from doing it online in whatever collaborative tool you happen to have. If you do not yet have a tool officially bought and paid for, use an environment that has realtime capabilities to it, so everyone can see the screen filling up, such as Google Docs. You’re not looking for the “perfect toolkit” at this stage, remember, you are simply creating the stepping stones that allow people to unwind themselves from their old tools, to easily grasp and use (which is the key!) a new tool. People are amazed – “Wow, It’s not that much different, and it’s actually very easy.” Why? Everyone can type, their typing is typically far better than their handwriting, the information is now captured digitally instead of as a temporary PostIt Note or scribble on the wall, and before you know it, people have been tricked into taking that first step of collaborating online. Why It Works: This works simply due to the fact of human psychology. While are tools are getting more sophisticated, our brains, and the psychology of decision making, will lead most people back to the comfortable and familiar ways of doing things. You should expect that! Leverage it, in fact, and use that to your advantage. I’ve been studying the social psychology behind Influence and Persuasion (See Dr. Robert Cialdini’s work of the last 35 years for more information) for the last 5 years, and applying that directly to enterprise work. What I’ve been honing, and have now cut to a very concise impact, is creating an array of micro-actions that get people off of the brakes, and onto the gas. Quick social psychology glimpse: Taking micro-actions triggers the “consistency” principle – which states that people are more likely to act in the future as they have acted in the past, and the size of those initial actions doesn’t particularly matter. If you can’t get someone to budge from an initial position (the classic “can’t teach an old dog new tricks”), then obviously, it’s going to be difficult to get them to run all the way to an entirely new way of working. As soon as you can get someone to take an initial step in the direction of using your new Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business System, you are beginning to create a new context that does not require that they throw away the “old way” entirely (which can trigger the fight or flight mechanism we all have), but simply turns them slightly in the right direction, with some guidance and reassurance. Combine this with “social proof” (or consensus, as Dr Cialdini’s group now calls it) of other people in the organization doing these exact actions, and surviving, makes it again, that much less threatening, and more of the next logical, easy step in the right direction. None of this, incidentally, required getting people to understand what RSS, XML, CSS, SaaS, or any of the other hyper-technical terms are. Combine the psychological aspects I’ve been using with the understanding of maturity/readiness models, and individual problem solving and decision making skills – and it’s even more obvious than ever that most people should never need to know the details of what’s under your Social Business hood. People have jobs to do – faster, better, cheaper, with less people than ever before. Enable them to succeed, and make it easy to keep taking steps in the right direction, and you will be lightyears ahead of your competition. Debating whether to call this Enterprise 2.0, or Social Business, or Enterprise Wikis, etc. – trust me, most people don’t care. For all of us in the “inner circle” – let’s discuss the subtleties when it’s appropriate, but I’d rather focus first on actually helping people Get Things Done (which is also built on consistency and micro-actions, incidentally). Additional Research Context: Every Enterprise 2.0 project (just like any other project) will have people who will have completely valid reasons for not wanting to use the system. While the approach I’ve described in this post (micro-actions for swapping tools) will not eliminate issues of putting in place a new way of work that is completely inappropriate, or that has chosen the wrong tool/toolkit for the job, or is downright user hostile – providing people with a way to take that first step, and then make it easy to continue to take steps into the new system, is the only way you are going to get large-scale adoption. See the presentation of our research into 2.0 Adoption from the Enterprise 2.0 Keynote in late 2009, embedded below:

Enterprise 2.0: Straight From The Horse's Mouth

View more presentations from Dan Keldsen

What have you done to introduce new tools or ways of working?

Have you tried a similar approach? A different approach? Please comment below (anonymously if you feel you need to) and collaborate on getting people involved and unstuck. No more hand-wringing and whining about how people aren’t using the wonderful system you bought, built or duct-taped together – what are the steps you’ve taken to enable people to take their first steps?

Try, Fail, Own, Learn – Part 1 of 2

Dan Keldsen — Tue, 24 May 2011 12:42:56 +0000

There’s something in the air… I’ve been involved an interesting series of workshop engagements recently (mix of Enterprise 2.0 and Innovation) which made me stop and pause to think about what’s transpired to my own approach to work over the last few years. I’m going to cover this in a two part series…

Try, Fail, Own, Learn… Part 1

Can’t Improve What You Won’t Acknowledge

An article in The Economist (“Fail Often, Fail Well“) and a Discussion in the Design Thinking group on LinkedIn collided for me recently. The Design Thinking discussion came first – and to respect the privacy of the group, I won’t quote from the discussion with direct attribution. The gist of the conversation was around an issue of the group members discussing, essentially ”Why isn’t Design Thinking recognized and appreciated by more people?” Part of the discussion was on the “brand name” of Design Thinking, and part of it around the lack of more widely accepted credentials, such a degrees, in Design Thinking vs. more traditional skills or roles such as Accounting, Law, Medicine, and the like. One member described the frustration at being a “guiding force” type of manager within his organization, but frequently received no credit for providing a Design Thinking approach to getting things done in projects and meetings. My response to him focused on whether there were incentives, across members of a team …

Failure, Bias, Learning, Controversy

Nobody really wants to fail, but admitting that nothing is perfect, and explicitly addressing the fact that there is always room for improvement (sometimes dramatic improvement, as the ship might be sinking) has *real* implications for organizations. From The Economist article, one paragraph in particular that stood out for me, was:

A more tolerant attitude to failure can also help companies to avoid destruction. When Alan Mulally became boss of an ailing Ford Motor Company in 2006 one of the first things he did was demand that his executives own up to their failures. He asked managers to colour-code their progress reports—ranging from green for good to red for trouble. At one early meeting he expressed astonishment at being confronted by a sea of green, even though the company had lost several billion dollars in the previous year. Ford’s recovery began only when he got his managers to admit that things weren’t entirely green.

And which of the major American Automotive manufacturers both owned up to their fragility in the 2008-2010 economy and also refused to take the easy way out and get bailed out? That’s right, Ford Motor Company. Turns out they did make a better, faster horse than the others in the game, eh? One of the comments to The Economist article, from Tom Agan, a Managing Director at Nielsen Research, was:

According to a study we did at Nielsen across consumer packaged goods companies in the US, companies that learn from their innovation successes and failures by having standardized post mortems and a knowledge management system average between 60 and 100% more revenue from new products than those that do not. But only a relatively low percentage of companies take these high impact steps. The real challenge is overcoming the internal organization barriers that hinder learning. - Tom Agan

Well look at that, 60-100% more revenue from new products through Knowledge Management. For those of you who wonder what good is “Knowledge Management?,” or who go on and on about how “Knowledge Management is Dead” (or it was always broken, or Wikis are the One True Way, etc.) – let’s stop focusing on labels, trends, and details that don’t matter. Call it whatever you want – but I’ll take real (and massive) results any day of the week over bickering about what term we should use.

No Blame? Less Pain

You either want to own your future, and do something about it, or you’re playing the blame game. Or perhaps even worse, you’re a bump on a log, waiting for someone else to take responsibility. If discussions in your business are focused on blaming the technology, the economy, competitors, minions, colleagues, bosses, executives, customers or anything other than yourself and the responsibilities you *could* take, if you were willing to face your problems and deal with them, my advice to you is two fold.

Wake-up and realize if nobody is willing to rock the boat to call attention to real problems and not the surface indicators, it’s only a matter of time before your organization is doomed. It’s time to beef up your personal social networking strategy to bail out and create a new position for yourself (and on a personal level, I’d be happy to help – LinkedIn has been a great resource for me since 2003/2004).
Decide to act on getting results and focusing on the jobs to be done, rather than blaming. As I told a potential employer a few years ago “I’m the kind of guy who sees a piece of trash on the floor and picks it up. Please, tell me now if this is the kind of environment that wants people to do what needs to get done, or only ‘does their job.’” (I didn’t end up taking the job, among other reasons, because the answer to that question was not what I was looking for.)

Get things done, fix problems, search for opportunities, and keep your improvement radar tuned so you can live to fight another day.

Where are you in your learning cycle?

Are you sitting things out, or:

Trying?
Failing?
Owning?
Learning?

ECM Use Cases: Onboarding New Hires

Dan Keldsen — Thu, 12 May 2011 18:27:03 +0000

Many of the people and organizations that sell products or services for content management and knowledge management are guilty of putting the technology before the problem. It’s easy to do, because it’s the most obvious piece of the puzzle to point to – but that doesn’t mean it’s the best way to discuss the impacts of content management. This is why, during the 13 years I spent at Delphi Group and Perot Systems, we talked constantly about BizTech – the Business of Technology. Heck, that’s why I created my personal blog 6-7 years ago, BizTechTalk. It’s also why I co-founded Information Architected – it’s not about the architecture, it’s what you do with it. It’s not just the art of the architecture, but the function and final impact. Or as I like to say…

What is Your Information Architected FOR?

Meanwhile, technicians and those who are already involved in the “secret language” of content managers bury people in the details of the features and mechanics, when what they really want to know is…

What will Content Management do for my company?

It’s not just about generic efficiency in handling or finding content – let’s get specific. Let’s get *very* specific. I’ll be posting a number of Use Cases for ECM (Enterprise Content Management) and the related topics of Use Cases for Knowledge Management, Use Cases for Enterprise Search, and more, over the coming weeks, based on real-world work. I hope you find this useful – and if you have other resources that you refer to, feel free to post in the comments, where to find those resources, and how you’ve used them, or what value you’ve received from them.

First example

ECM Use Case for Onboarding New Hires

Goal: Increased efficiencies for new hires Who: Mid-size life insurance company Business Objective: Reduce staff-turnover, shorten new hire ramp-up time – to manage staff and training costs Solution Scope: Began as departmental solution (New Client Processing) as the Pilot, and into the field for regional offices to offload responsibilities locally for their client base. Formally documented processes with automation (workflow) and pre-defined templates for OCR/Imaging of paper documents, made the ramp up of new employees more focused on standardized documents, and moved exception-handling to dedicated groups at a smaller scale. Business Impact: This particular client experienced a 50% reduction in new hire ramp-up time (6 months to 3 months), due to consolidation of the number of systems they needed to use individually, and introduction of workflow in the “typical tasks” that their role required. Turnover of new staff in particular, decreased from 30% to 10%. Additional Research Context: The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM): Estimates based on survey that 70 – 85% of total hiring costs come from the new hire ramp time before new employees are fully up to speed in their work.

Do you have metrics for ECM or KM Onboarding impacts?

If so, please comment below (anonymously if you feel you need to) – the mainstream event of content management is finally upon us, folks, but only if it’s made bloody obvious what the impact is.

Creative Mobile Hiring Pitch

Dan Keldsen — Tue, 03 May 2011 03:38:03 +0000

I’ve been busy writing a series of articles for CMSWire on mobile strategy, and as a result have been even more hyper-tuned into interesting mobile approaches. It’s not just for companies however – I recently stumbled (via Mashable) onto a combination paper resume, QR Code, Mobile and Video Pitch by a fellow looking to intern for a Creative Agency. Years and years ago (more than I care to admit), I did a similar pitch for a gaming company in Cambridge, MA (blocks from our new office). I was not using QR Codes and YouTube (neither existed, and the web was but a dream), but it was a similar approach intended to leap over the normal plain resumes, cover letters and white envelopes to get in the door for the interview. It worked for me – as it did for this fellow (read comments on the Mashable article). See video of the resume to video pitch below. Great approach.

QR CODE – Content-rich Resume from Victor petit on Vimeo.

Two questions for you…

Are you pitching yourself like this? If not, why not? If so, what was the reaction? If you are hiring people, can handle receiving resumes like this? Or would your “hiring submission process” blast his resume straight into the trash? Anyone who has recently been hired or is hiring – I’d love to hear your reaction to this type of approach. It’s a new world folks – are you ready?

IAM Talking: Innovation Stalled? Meet The 90% Rule, An Interview with Ken Tencer from Spyder Works

Dan Keldsen — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:20:08 +0000

Today, the topic is about redefining innovation – Hint: You’re not starting from Ground Zero.

Welcome to IAM Talking, a periodic podcast interview series, with your host, Dan Keldsen, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Architected, Inc. (IAI). Today IAM Talking with Ken Tencer, the CEO of Spyder Works Inc. and co-author of the book “The 90% Rule” which we’ll be discussing in this episode. Ken’s company, Spyder Works, is a branding + innovation firm that enables clients to look at themselves more strategically… to imagine themselves differently in the marketplace. Find out more about Spyder Works at spyderworksdesign.com, and more about the book at 90percentrule.com. Thanks goes out to Tom Martin of Tom Martin Media, Ken’s PR guy (and a common friend between Ken and I), for making the introduction, and arranging for a soft copy of the book to arrive at my office in advance of the interview.

Key Concepts of the 90% Rule

There is so much attention given to the 80/20 rule (Pareto’s Rule) – which is typically phrased that 80% of returns come from 20% of the appropriately targeted efforts – that immediately the 90% Rule caught my eye. The core concept of the 90% Rule aligns perfectly with what I’ve been promoting for several years – stop thinking of innovation as THE NEXT BIG THING! (what I call “BIG I INNOVATION”) and focus more time on leveraging what you’ve already done – that 90% of the repeatable core of your business/products/services that you can use to pivot to your next piece of business. It’s continuous improvement (or what I call “small i innovation”) and offers far more bang for the resource buck than people seem to give credit for. Ken has some great examples of these pivots or extensions in the interview (listen below) and of course in the book, directly. As you’re listening to the interview, we briefly discuss the Six Steps to Creating a Culture of Continuous Innovation, and which Ken was kind enough to provide the infographic we discuss, as eye candy to go with the discussion.

Six Steps to Creating a Culture of Continuous Innovation

The end-to-end process and infographic from the book: Breaking down the six steps, we have: Step One:

Revisiting your company’s origins and identify where you want to take it long-term

Step Two:

Exploring what you *can* be, not just what you are (Note from Dan: We hone in on this step in the interview)

Step Three:

Building a relevant brand rooted in customer-centric thinking.

Step Four:

Maximizing leverage by outlining your best opportunities and the criteria upon which to assess them (Note from Dan: decision making and critical thinking lags in almost every organization I run across – ideas are only part of the battle, folks)

Step Five:

Building an opportunity matrix to determine the human and financial resources required for moving ahead.

Step Six:

“Speaking” to be heard clearly by all your audiences. (Note from Dan: If you’ve done your work up front in this Design Thinking approach to Innovation, you already know your audience quite well – and now it’s time to reflect that knowledge right back)

Comments or Questions?

How are you defining innovation? How do you target? Are you building on your 90% base, or going for disruptive innovation opportunities? Comment below, and we’ll answer and discuss together.

Listen now!

More details on our practices related to Innovation can be found at:

Innovation Management Workshops and Coaching/Consulting

Mobile Content & Collaboration: Let’s Face It, You Aren’t Ready

Dan Keldsen — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 14:11:31 +0000

This article was originally posted on CMSWire – see the original for early comments.

It’s 2011 — and mobile devices are flying off the shelves faster than ever before. It’s time for the real mobile revolution! Except… Let’s Face It… You Aren’t Ready for This. I don’t mean YOU. I mean your organization, and your infrastructure. And the direction the culture and technology of your organization has been headed for a long time. Look around at the systems and applications you’re probably using right now. From an IT perspective: If you’ve created any internally developed applications, more than likely, they aren’t web-based, or if web-based, are stand-alone apps with their own unique, browser and window-size specific display properties, and a dependency on a platform-specific technology such as ActiveX or for that matter, Internet Explorer.

From a user perspective: With a wide variety of systems in daily use, it’s likely you have multiple logins to juggle. Perhaps these systems grew up independently of each other, and the mandate was “we have to get this working now — just make it work!” End result? Credentials are stored in many different locations, with different requirements for both username formatting and password strength/standards. From an IT Security perspective: In the recent economic downturn, Single Sign On (SSO) is a project that has never been prioritized, as it’s “merely” a productivity issue, and doesn’t have the big bang cost reduction, nor the direct revenue creation that has driven all decisions recently. Pre-econolypse, things were too good to worry about SSO, as the “inconvenience” of multiple logins wasn’t an issue in the face of (relatively) easy money. From a Web Developer perspective: Any web expertise that might already exist in-house, is unlikely to have multiple platform, touch-oriented user interface experience (almost nobody outside of commercially shipping products does, after all), and the ramp up to create usable let alone useful mobile apps is only a glimmer in your most cutting edge designer/developers eyes. If only he/she wasn’t so busy working to make sure your web apps still worked on IE6 — there would be time to address cutting edge mobile tech, front- and rear-facing cameras and 4G networks. From a cultural perspective: As much as we want to embrace the always-on, mobile, multi-tasking capabilities of the consumer web, we’re comfortable with “the way we’ve always done it here” — that’s our culture and what made us successful! Why change now? From a manager perspective: I didn’t get to this position by wanting to hear everyone else’s opinion. I got here by clawing my way to the top, the way Machiavelli always intended. Now you want to democratize decision making so everyone has a voice? What’s the point of being a company man, if everyone gets a say? Now of course all of these are stereotypical extremes… perhaps. Even in the worst economic times of anyone currently alive — it’s all too easy to “stay the course” — even if the ship is repeatedly bashing into icebergs, while we claim to be unsinkable. Is that the sane course? Is that the way to get to revenue growth? Employee engagement? Customer satisfaction? Loyalty? Are you ready to start seriously questioning whether the mobile future you claim you want is possible given where you’ve put your focus to date? Throwing iPads at systems that aren’t made to be easy to use, and accessible in the “micro bursts” (seconds to minutes rather than hours of use at a time) that mobile use typifies, is only going to result in pain for everyone. Prepare yourself. It is going to take work to unwind the past and pave the future. But the possibilities? Endless. But only if you take the steps to move forward. Are you ready?

IAM Talking - Information Architected

Mobile Readiness: Begin With the End in Mind

IAM Talking: Digital Gifts and the Gift Marketing Economy with Ethan Bloch from Flowtown

Free Samples aren’t just for Costco Aisles

Gift Marketing?

Comments or Questions?

Listen now!

IAM Talking: Geek Psychology and Selling Online with Noah Kagan from AppSumo

It *all* matters… but you need to get started first…

Comments or Questions?

Listen now!

More Collaboration (isn’t Enough)

Let’s Back Up…

Get specific, or go home…

Make a Project out of Getting Task-y

Is the toolset you’ve bought, built, or are about to use actually going to be useful in a “day in the life?”

How are you specifically supporting Collaboration/Innovation in your company?

E2.0 Behavior Changes: Swapping Tools – Real to Digital

Remember, What is Your Information Architected FOR?

First example

E2.0 Behavior Change: Swapping Tools – Real to Digital

What have you done to introduce new tools or ways of working?

Try, Fail, Own, Learn – Part 1 of 2

Try, Fail, Own, Learn… Part 1

Can’t Improve What You Won’t Acknowledge

Failure, Bias, Learning, Controversy

No Blame? Less Pain

Where are you in your learning cycle?

ECM Use Cases: Onboarding New Hires

What is Your Information Architected FOR?

What will Content Management do for my company?

First example

ECM Use Case for Onboarding New Hires

Do you have metrics for ECM or KM Onboarding impacts?

Creative Mobile Hiring Pitch

Two questions for you…

IAM Talking: Innovation Stalled? Meet The 90% Rule, An Interview with Ken Tencer from Spyder Works

Today, the topic is about redefining innovation – Hint: You’re not starting from Ground Zero.

Key Concepts of the 90% Rule

Six Steps to Creating a Culture of Continuous Innovation

Comments or Questions?

Listen now!

More details on our practices related to Innovation can be found at:

Mobile Content & Collaboration: Let’s Face It, You Aren’t Ready

It all matters… but you need to get started first…