Showing posts with label web. Show all posts
Showing posts with label web. Show all posts

March 30, 2018

Technological Leaders

Virtual teaming is one of the fastest growing aspects of business today and it will only continue to grow. In our executive recruitment agency, we work with clients and candidates around the world.

Enterprise leaders are overseeing vast teams of people across large geographical areas and sometimes many are working from their home office. In his TEDTalk a few years ago, Gary Kovacs discussed the pros and cons of living in a connected world.


__________________________________________________________________

April 8, 2017

Do You Trust?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary lists "trust" as a belief that someone or something is reliable, good, honest, and effective. They use words like assured reliance on the character and a charge or duty imposed in confidence.

Trust is a big word we far too often toss around like it's part of a sales pitch. Trust me, my friend. It's all about trust. I trust that guy. But what is trust, really?

Trust is the transference of faith and Rachel Botsman examined the trust economy and collaborative consumption in her 2012 TEDTalk which continues to grow.


__________________________________________________________________

February 21, 2017

Investing Unwisely

You don’t have to go too far before you hear some mutation of the phrase “we can't do that here”. At first, it almost seems believable but with some thought it's more of an auto-response. No new ideas is often next in line.

It reminds me of what a colleague once said to me. He often boasted that "employees are overhead, customers are profit". Yes, dinosaurs do walk among us.

But before you feel compelled to say “we can’t do that”, one suggestion is to put the company on the hoist to expose waste before you make cuts on essential items such as the people who work there. Companies often bemoan decreasing results but think they can cut themselves into the black.

Or worse, do nothing.
__________________________________________________________________

February 15, 2016

What is Trust?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary lists "trust" as a belief that someone or something is reliable, good, honest, and effective. They use words like assured reliance on the character and a charge or duty imposed in confidence.

Trust is a big word we far too often toss around like it's part of a sales pitch. Trust me, my friend. It's all about trust. I trust that guy. But what is trust, really?

Trust is the transference of faith and Rachel Botsman examined the trust economy and collaborative consumption in her 2012 TEDTalk which continues to grow.


__________________________________________________________________

December 18, 2014

Let's Keep Searching...

Since 2001, Google has put together the highlights of the year in the spirit of our time or Zeitgeist. This year, they did something very different.

Watch this then share it.



2013 to 2001






20092008200720062005
2004200320022001
__________________________________________________________________
Kneale Mann | People + Priority = Profit

Google

November 18, 2013

The Disconnected Leader

I saw Warren Buffet along with his son and grandson on CNN last week. One of the richest humans on earth has sent exactly one email, drives a six year old car, and lives in the same Omaha, Nebraska home he and his family has lived in since 1957. Something to think about the next time we feel compelled to want the newest latest shiniest gadget.

Imagine we woke up tomorrow and there was no Internet, the smartphone had not been invented and there is no email. We have all those things but one idea we could try is to type less, turn off our toys more, and speak directly with humans rather than devices or channels. Mr. Buffett is worth more than $63 Billion. He may be on to something.

If we disconnect once in a while we may be amazed how connected we can become with each other.
__________________________________________________________________
Kneale Mann | Leadership Strategist, consultant, writer, speaker, executive coach facilitating performance growth with leaders, management, and teams.

impowerable

November 12, 2013

The Six Degrees of You

The world is shrinking. This is not new learning or a new concept. In my work, I can talk to people in 2-3 countries in 8-10 locations in any given day through email, phone, meetings, and webinars. It's the new reality.

Virtual teaming is one of the fastest growing aspects of business today and it will only continue to grow. Enterprise leaders are overseeing vast teams of people across large geographical areas and sometimes many are working from their home office.

Gary Kovacs is CEO of AVG Technologies. When he was CEO of Mozilla, he discussed the pros and cons of living in a connected world.


__________________________________________________________________
Kneale Mann | Leadership Strategist, consultant, writer, speaker, executive coach facilitating performance growth with leaders, management, and teams.

Gary Kovacs | TED

March 14, 2013

Google Spring Cleaning

The social web is a flutter about two big events this week. There’s a new Pope and Google has announced their popular website aggregator Google Reader is retiring on July 1, 2013. If you’re not familiar, Google Reader has been a place where you can add website RSS feeds for a convenient way to read all your favorite sites in once place. There are many others now scrambling to integrate a new solution. Much has been said in the last few days but the best comment so far has been that when we get something for free we can’t be too upset when it goes away.

Google has announced the next round in their spring cleaning which began two years ago. With the ownership of more than 100 companies, phones, laptops, and now computer glasses, the tech giant has been built on the “always in beta” platform which often means dump something when it’s no longer relevant or linked even remotely to generating revenue. Google Buzz anyone?

Friending Feedly

I am in currently experimenting with Feedly which has been around since 2008 but just announced a seamless integration of your Google Reader feeds. I've made the jump and it’s working so far. There are rumors that the Feedly team has been working with Google. One wonders if that will turn into a permanent relationship. It's prettier but creates a lot more clicking and searching so the jury (me) remains in deliberation.

If you’re currently visiting this site through Google Reader, I have made the switch to Feedly so both will work until July. I will continue to share thoughts and ideas here for free and I hope you’ll continue to drop by whether it’s through a bookmarked visit, through a reader, or via the various social channels where posts are mentioned.

The green Feedly button is now on the right side of the site.

Kneale Mann | Leadership and Culture Strategist, Writer, Speaker, Executive Coach helping leaders create dynamic culture and improved results.

istock

October 21, 2011

700 Posts in 42 Months



It happened at a dinner on April 23, 2008. After the 5th person asked me where they could find my blog, later that night I started a blog. Like millions before me, I had no clue what I’d write about and I didn't think anyone would read it. So I started writing and I'm still surprised people read it.

I thought I'd write every now and then which turned into 699 posts in three and a half years with more than 12,000 comments and readers in 147 countries. There have been fun times and not-so-fun times in my career during that time but this space has remained the one constant. Thank-you for ensuring my thoughts aren't just fired into the abyss. If you want to write, don't wait for permission, write and keep writing.

Connect and Collaborate

Through this and other social channels, I have met literally hundreds of people I would never had met otherwise in a ten lifetimes. Some have turned into business colleagues, friends and clients. And the focus of this space continues to be to share creative ideas for business, leadership, strategy, marketing, social media and life.

My passion is to help business owners and managers become better leaders, build better teams and grow their companies. So let's keep sharing ideas and don’t hesitate to email, say hi, send thoughts, book a call or grab a coffee.

Thanks For Dropping By!

Kneale Mann

image credit: wikipedia

September 16, 2011

Social Networking Explained in Two Minutes

Seth Godin is recognized as one of the brightest business minds on earth. His daily blog posts are read by hundreds of thousands people and he consults large business clients. He is a celebrated author and speaks in front of hundreds of thousands people all over the world each year.

In order to help business grow, we must be able to show actual growth or it’s just a bunch of scores and counters and unusable data. Godin demystifies business, relationships and the web in 90 seconds.

If you haven’t seen this video, watch. 
If you have seen it, watch it again.



Kneale Mann

May 16, 2011

Leaving Our Digital Footprint

Who's Watching Who

There is an old adage that the only person who is really concerned with you is you. The rest of us are far too busy worrying about us. But with the online world, that doesn’t stop us from being able to peer into each others’ life whenever it strikes our fancy.

Voyeurism is alive and well when we can leave our thoughts on a Facebook wall or Twitter stream and others can read a moment in time, any time they want. But I hear all too often "I just connect with my friends". That may be true, but it's often done in front of several hundred million people.

Ten to fifteen years ago, it was important for companies to have a place on the Internet where customers and potential customers could find out more about their offerings. Now it’s imperative for companies to not expect customers to come to them but rather they need to go where customers reside online. This is the difference between having a website and creating a web presence.

Watch Where You Step

With close to two billion of us surfing the web all trying to learn from each other, gain information, get each other’s attention and put our best out there, it can get distracting and overwhelming. Add to that, we are human, so we experience grumpy moments that can slip into our online activity. That flippant lash can hurt a company as evidenced by faux pas by many large respected brands in the last few years.

If you get into a heated discussion at work or with a customer, that is a one-on-one situation that can be diffused and resolved between the two of you. But when you engage in a similar discussion online you are doing it in front of anyone who cares to watch. And that makes companies nervous. Many are concerned about opening themselves up to the digital mob. After all, anyone with an Internet connect can publish anything they want.

Checking References

Human Resources managers and recruiters are using the social web more and more to find candidates for job openings and they aren’t just reading a well crafted resume or LinkedIn profile to gather information. That offhand remark you make on Quora can come back and bite you.

This is not to suggest we have to be perfect, because once you get that new gig you will need to be yourself but it does serve as a reminder that perhaps the next time we’re having a tough time or in a rough mood we may want to step away from the keyboard for a timeout.

Does that sound like a wise plan?

Kneale Mann

image credit: adrianakems

May 10, 2011

Business Strategy | We Can't Do That

Conform (verb / kənˈfôrm)
Comply with rules, standards, or laws. Behave according to socially acceptable conventions or standards. Be similar in form or type. Agree.

You don’t have to go too far before you hear some mutation of the phrase “we can't do that here”. At first, it almost seems believable but with some thought it's more of an auto-response. It becomes part of the fabric of the organization. No new ideas is often next in line.

One phrase I hear almost daily is; “we don’t need marketing, we need sales" and it reminds me of what a colleague once said to me. He often boasted that "employees are overhead, customers are profit". Yes, dinosaurs walk among us.

Underspend To Success

Sales training is not a simple process and it's not free. The process to master the art of sales usually takes a few years and a lot of expense. If short-cuts are made, a company can be decimated. There are few quicker steps to failure than an inexperienced sales team on the street with a product or service that isn't ready for customers who have never heard of it.

So before you feel compelled to say “we can’t do that”, one suggestion is to put the company on the hoist to expose waste before you make cuts on essential items such as people and letting customers know you exist. Companies often bemoan decreasing results but think they can cut themselves into the black. Or worse, do nothing.

What are your thoughts?

Kneale Mann

May 4, 2011

Finding Your Digital Audience

Don't Wait For it to Find You

The world is travelling at the speed of light and we are trying to hang on just a moment longer to live in the now which has already passed. We are attempting to digest a mind numbing amount of content.  The Harvard Business Review published a piece dealing with the age old interview question: “Where will you be in five years?”

How About Five Minutes?

Depending on the circles you travel, you can feel completely out of sync with your clientele while it seems your competitors are cashing in. I’m asked all the time if YouIntegrate can help. The first step is to find out what you want to do with these digital channels and how you feel it can help you find your audience.

It is easy to create a profile. It is much more difficult to populate it with content that serves both your customers and your business. And it's even more challenging to have the patience for the time it takes to grow the community. After that you need to tend to its health and longevity. Campaign mentality will not create long-term growth.

You can spend a lot of time and money on messaging and media choices to see very little result. Or you can strike gold and then try and replicated it which is rare. The social web is a warm inviting temptress that can woo us into thinking we’re getting somewhere in short order. But there are no quick wins.

Easy Peasey

It is simple to go online, find a place to land and start barking. It is much more difficult to develop strong B2B or B2C relationships through the social web. This stuff takes time. If you look at how you built your business so far, it is the same process.

Mitch Joel wrote this week about the Mutterings of Twitter. He explained that we can easily pull out our smartphone at the check-in counter the moment our flight is delayed and send out an angry tweet or Facebook status update. The real-time web has given us the ability to publish material for free in an instant. The key is for companies to be with their customers all along so responses to service issues can be addressed. If they aren't there, they can't set the record straight.

Our Need to Connect

The only prediction we can make is that this will only get more challenging. We are not making less mobile devices, we are not shrinking the online world and the ability to grow a personal network is not diminishing.

But what you can do as a manager or owner is find your voice no matter the platform. Yes I can help. Then you can discover the power of sharing it no matter where your audience resides.

Have you found your voice? Have you found your audience?

Kneale Mann

image credit: istock

May 3, 2011

All Search Results May Not Be Created Equal

Let's imagine you need a plumber and you don’t have one. You can call some of you friends, send out a tweet, maybe a print directory although doubtful or go to a search engine. Most of us think the results are a list of what we're looking for mixed with the work of savvy web designers who have mastered search engine optimization.

The keywords your customers search for may not be the ones you think they use as evidenced in the fact that Google gets thousands of search inquires every day they've never before received. And that list of plumbers in your search results may tied to your behavior more than you realize.

Search is a multi-billion industry where companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo make bags of money. Eli Pariser has some concerns about the world of search and
the social web. He explains in this TEDTalk. [video]


Kneale Mann

visual credit: TED

January 15, 2011

Looking Inside

The opinion of them.

The chatter in the digital channels is deafening. Opinions, blogs, news articles, podcasts, expert analysis, tweets, the list goes on and on. If you spend any time skimming through websites for information, you can’t even get near scratching the surface. So I am amazed you took the time to visit here, thank-you.

The challenge for any business manager is to try and remain a few steps ahead of the day-to-day which is near impossible because of distractions and deadlines.

Who has time to plan and look forward when you’re trying to keep a company rolling in the right direction and trying not to hit a pothole?

Victim of busy.

Some say you’re not embracing all the right tools to maximize revenue. Others claim you are missing opportunities right under your nose.

You need to manage all the moving parts, ensure stakeholders are working toward their strengths and keep the black ink flowing.

It can be confusing and divert momentum

If you travel in some circles, they will tell you that you need to be everywhere. Others have bottles of snake oil with the promise of instant results.

If you are one of the few who can eliminate judgment from others, clear your mind enough to focus on exactly what you are good at and more importantly decide what you want to do, you are way ahead of the curve.

How do you focus and eliminate disruptions?

knealemann | email

image credit: flickr

October 21, 2010

Fear. Educate. Organize. Implement.

Your business is not a campaign and your people are not all the same.

I think the reason most organizations are having trouble navigating the new ways of communication stems from fear and that's okay as long as you recognize that. Once that happens, you can then educate yourselves with what is out there and how you can activate some of those ideas in your company.

Once you educate - which is an ongoing process - you can then begin to organize thoughts and departments and job descriptions. This is not an overnight process, but it is a process that needs to happen.

So you deal with the fear by educating and organizing then you need to implement some of what you've learned into your organization. Again, this won't happen right away. There are no quick fixes and everyone in your company has a different view of this stuff.

If you can implement some new ideas, then the review and revise process begins.

This is a cool video that was produced by Jesse Thomas or as many know him JESS3. If you are having trouble grasping the explosion of the Internet, social media, mobile and digital, this may excite you, this may scare you. Some of the stats are out-of-date but focus on the overall message.

This is about human behavior not theory. And if you embrace it, you may just be able to battle the fear, educate each other, organize what works and begin to implement. [video]



knealemann

Bookmark and Share

August 16, 2010

The Virtual Office Grows

Where Do You Work?

According to a report published back in February from IDC Research, one billion people will work in a virtual environment by December and 1.2 billion by 2013.

Through technology and social networking, we are creating alliances and partnerships across thought silos rather than geographical ones.

The notion of the office is changing rapidly. Companies are examining associate models and consultants are creating a home office/travel type work experience.

The adjustment continues as over a quarter of the world’s working population moves to home offices, web technologies and virtual work spaces.

Here are some details from the report:
• The United States has the highest percentage of mobile workers in its workforce. The U.S. will remain the most highly concentrated market for mobile workers with 119.7 million workers, being mobile in 2013.

• Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) represents the largest total number of mobile workers throughout the forecast, with 546.4 million mobile workers in 2008 growing 37.4% of the total workforce in 2013. At the end of the forecast, 62% of the world's mobile workforce will be based in this region.

• Western Europe's mobile workforce will enjoy a healthy compound annual growth rate of 6% over the forecast period to reach 129.5 million mobile workers in 2013, surpassing the total number of mobile workers in the United States.

• Japan's mobile worker population will total 49.3 million in 2013, representing 74.5% of its total workforce.

• The rest of the world, which is comprised of Canada and the emerging market countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa and Latin America, will see its mobile worker population grow to 153.2 million by 2013.
The World Gets A Lot Smaller

I hear people lament all the time that their boss won't let them do some work at home or entertain a flexible work schedule plan. The boss doesn't think the job will get done without employees sitting in their office during office hours.

How is this affecting your career and business?

knealemann
strategy. marketing. media.

Bookmark and Share

image credit: apeasternpower

March 2, 2010

The State of the Internet

Mitch Joel shared this video a few days ago, I thought I’d do the same.

It was done by Jesse Thomas or as many know him JESS3. If you are having trouble grasping the explosion of the Internet, social media, mobile and digital, this may excite you, this may scare you.

This is about human behavior not theory.

Watch. Share. Discuss.



@knealemann
strategy. marketing. social media.

Bookmark and Share

Add to Google Reader or Homepage
 
© Kneale Mann knealemann@gmail.com people + priority = profit
knealemann.com linkedin.com/in/knealemann twitter.com/knealemann
leadership development business culture talent development human capital