We all face stressful days, more now when financial market is uncertain, setting off a fuse with just a little nudge. The trick is to remain cordial in your correspondence – if an email ticks you off, instead of replying right away, hold off till you’ve calmed down. I’ve found walking away from the computer or ignoring the email helps.

Then there are days when your polite turn down of a service or product is considered an offense. An effective tool I’ve learnt from my brother is that when people offer you unasked advice – we are very good at telling others what to do, without rectifying our own very similar shortcomings – thank them, regardless. Sometimes you have to thank more than once when people insist you act on their advice or that you agree with them. You don’t have to agree, but you can take the high road and will probably eliminate conflicts by expressing appreciation and ending the conversation.

I’ve two sets of people, old school and new school thinking, whom I consult regarding my business. It’s fascinating how different the thoughts of those two schools are. As our business matures I find new school thoughts are more in alignment with our business needs. However, old school leaders share different sets of expertise and is valuable in certain aspects. Identifying these differences are crucial while maintaining healthy relationships. Although, no doubt these two schools are bound to cause friction at some point.

Opinions will differ. Don’t loose your cool though – just say thank you.

Tags: Business, conflict, friction, new school, old school, thank you
Posted in Business |

illustration source – Wikipedia

I admit I’m one of those people who roll their eyes – as Oliver Marks put it in his most apt post on ZDNet – when I hear Twitter, Facebook (two examples for this post) and the likes for enterprise collaboration. My pupils probably totally disappear when I hear “social media”. Add “expert” or “guru” – let’s not leave the “influencers” out of that equation – to that sentence and I’m transformed into an eye-rolling-face-cringing individual. It’s not a pretty sight, mind you. The Pied Piper of Hamelin – illustrated above – comes to mind if I were to observe the social media mayhem from Hanover.

Now, now children, before you start throwing tantrums, bear with me a little.

The word social is so overly used in the context of emergent technologies that I doubt most people comprehend the message they themselves wish to deliver by the usage of that term. Applications that provide platforms for communities to seamlessly interact and engage in dialogues no doubt should be embraced. But, by whom and for what purpose?

Twitter and Facebook are excellent mediums for branding, advertising or marketing of a product or service. With real-time interfaces and very little cost, both platforms allow instant response and communication between clients and customers. They should be utilized by marketing, customer service or advertising guys or gals, of any size business. The trick though? Have a clear message, same one as you’d normally use in traditional medium.

Confusion has arisen because some of the same category of people mentioned above, have evangelized social media, for their own gain, to the point that they claim the entire company should actively use Twitter and Facebook while at work. In other words, if your employees or you aren’t tweeting or updating your status – about work maybe (?), to the entire world – during hours that you are paid top dollars to complete assignments, you aren’t embracing “revolutionary” tools, never mind that in the process your productivity declines – multiply your employees with time spent on Twitter and/or Facebook unrelated to work, I guarantee the numbers will be staggering. Emergent technologies are now tools for employees to cheat the very company that feeds them? Really?!

By now, I should probably reveal that I’m an advocate for enterprises. Since I’m coming clean, let me also add, aside from a fleeting boost of ego, number of followers or “friends” on Twitter or Facebook is absolutely meaningless, even if you see some self-proclaimed heavyweight Twitterers claim otherwise. Personally, this popularity contest would have been fun if I were still in middle or high school. But alas, I’ve matured since then – my family may dispute though.

It goes without saying if all of Twitter and Facebook employees are tweeting or updating their Facebook statuses, it’s to their advantage: they benefit directly and have vested interest. Now, if our coders did the same, I wouldn’t be a happy camper, not when we have demanding clients paying us top dollars to take care of their problems. Would you?

Perhaps I’m one of the child who didn’t quite hear – or just stopped following – the Pied Piper of social media. Now if you are an Enterprise 2.0 conference goer, you too decided not to follow the Pied Piper and are in Hanover shaking heads with me…

There, children, so I’ve finally said it. Still tantrums?

Tags: Collaboration, enterprise, enterprise 2.0, Facebook, Pied Piper of Hamelin, Social Media, Twitter, ZDNet
Posted in Social Media, Technology |

Remember Enron? More recently AIG? What did these two corporations have in common? Corruption and ethics violation.

Corporations do not collapse overnight. Corruption start in small doses, a little stealing here and a little stealing there. Very soon, that appetite for greed and total disregard for corporate standard of business conduct consume the greedy, dragging down the corporation along the way. These violations always occur at the top of the ladder. Unfortunate but history tells us so. Violation of ethics and corporate compliance should be stopped early.

Most companies formulate policies, often known as corporate compliance and ethics guidelines, that pretty much is – or should be – the backbone of a corporation. These policies set standards for internal employees as well as relationships with vendors and partners. Many companies take these guidelines seriously providing seminars and training employees to practice business standards set forth.

When a senior vice president of a publicly traded corporation is entrusted with added responsibility of overseeing  specific operations and performance, it becomes her responsibility to engage teams most suited for a specific job in the best interest of the corporation she serves. But when she engages or exerts influence so that her husband is hired, it’s a conflict of interest. Furthermore, she stands to receive direct financial gain by giving or influencing her husband to get the job. If that step involved zero opportunity for other competitors then the misconduct is much more serious and should be investigated, at the least. But the most obvious? You simply cannot, and should not, hire your spouse if you don’t own the company.

It is healthy to have competition and for corporations to practice equal opportunity. But, when privileged information is stolen under false pretense, it is not a competition. It’s dishonesty and playing dirty.

Recently, I evaluated and had lengthy discussions with a former executive of perhaps one of the largest corporation and the most recognized brand in the world. Learning of my intention, one of my well wisher advised me against engaging him. My advisor thought he was not a good fit for us and reminded me that his wife was our competitor. However, the gentleman assured me that our and his wife’s space were very different – our focus is on large corporations, his wife’s on small to mid sized market. With that clarification and verbal assurance, I briefed him on a couple of companies I had studied. Little did I know he was sharing my privileged information with his wife. Worse still, he encouraged his wife to pursue the very companies that he was gathering information from me, under the false pretense of working for us. Mind you, this is the same gentleman who once ran an IT division for one of the largest corporation. It gets more interesting: one of the employee of his wife is the husband of the senior vice president, mentioned above, whose office has the direct authority to oversee the hiring as mentioned earlier.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!

Looking back I feel sorry for him, even though he was dishonest and demonstrated poor integrity. Without a corporate title, the person that is left behind is the true nature of an individual. When that proves to be devoid of basic human decency, it is a very sad image. Here was a man who received very handsome severance package, has a daughter nearly my age, betrayed my trust and cheated a very young company, all for some instant profit? Monetary gain is fleeting – money disappear as quickly as they appear – but the reputation you leave behind and the impact you have on people, will follow you to your grave. After 20 to 25 years in the corporate world, last many years holding executive positions, should have left him with dignity, honesty and self-respect. But, he failed to reveal any of those traits. What can be sadder than that?

Businesses are run by people. The success, or failure, are the result of the conducts of those same people. Without executing ethics and best practices, I doubt any corporation can survive. It is to my advantage that I’m rational, objective and practice zero favoritism at work – running a very small company compared to that corporation – so much so that my inner circle of people feel they need to watch my back, since I myself don’t do it, as someone put it recently, while friends are sometimes offended when we hire the best person qualified over them.

And what about that senior vice president? She violated the Corporate Standard of Business Conduct of the very company she serves as stated on that policy in Section 4 and 5 of certain pages.

Is business ethics really a gray area as the sage, above, claims or is it simply good for our business?

Tags: AIG, Business, compliance, Enron, ethics
Posted in Best Practices, Business |