A Teaching Moment - What I've learned

After seeing "Meet the Press" today, I heard the discussion panel refer to the Don Imus firing, hoping that the incident would be a "teaching moment". No doubt, the panelists are fervently hoping that this will ignite a national dialog about how the races can be more tolerant of one another, how we can become more gender sensitive and how we all need to be watchdogs against intolerance.

Here's what I've learned from the "teaching moment".

1. There's a reason why, in our justice system, we have a trial which determines guilt or innocence, then at a later time, the actual sentencing. The time between trial and sentencing allows the judge to consider the appropriate penalty within certain prescribed guidelines, after a calm, re-evaluation of all the facts, including the context of the offense, any prior history of offenses as well as consideration of the moral or immoral deeds of the defendant. In the Imus case, the trial and sentencing were conducted all at once, in the public court.

In fact, I recent poll I saw yesterday asking how people felt about the firing in response to Don Imus' comments, had about 45% of the respondents thinking that a two week suspension was the correct sentence, 25% agreed with the firings and the remainder thought that nothing should have been done.

Rightly or wrongly, I wonder whether the outcome would have changed had the Rutgers team meeting and announcement of apology acceptance had happened before Don Imus was "sentenced".

2. "Imus in the Morning" sponsors' actions should in no way be taken as as "moral indignation" to what was said. The Imus sponsors have a financial responsibility to their shareholders and a huge amount of choice as to where they place their advertising dollars. There was absolutely NO financial upside to continue to sponsor any controversial show. Their abandonment of Imus had little or nothing to do with Corporate moral outrage. Need proof? How long have most of these sponsors been supporting a show that regularly offended minorities, religions and even personal physical appearance? Most of them, for a long time.

3. The Media is very lazy. When it came to getting a response to the entire issue from the "Black perspective" the only two numbers on speed dial were Rev Sharpton and Rev Jessie Jackson. They appeared on every show, throughout the day for a week. Frankly, the discussion I heard was loud and vehement outrage and rhetoric - the usual shouting points.

By about day 9, I started to hear from other black journalists, preachers and community leaders (and the Rutgers team) who engaged in a much more productive discussion about the events that transpired, which helped me better understand the entire situation. Lesson learned here is to make sure that we (and the media) regularly dialog with a wide range of minority voices from throughout society to improve the quality (and hopefully outcome) of our discussions. Let's lose Sharpton's and Jackson's phone numbers for awhile.

As for whether we've learned a lasting lesson about intolerance, only time will tell.

Could NASCAR Fix Global Warming?

Probably not.

But North America's best attended and fastest growing sport could go a LONG way towards influencing consumers to move to bio-fuels.

After a quick read of http://www.jayski.com/teams/fuel-sponsor.htm, it would appear that NASCAR and their mega-sponsors are sorely lagging behind the rest of the world on environmental issues. Beginning in 2008, NASCAR will BEGIN to use unleaded fuel. C'mon guys, you have to be kidding!

And one word to the petroleum industry. Stop with the "field of daisy's" ads and get on the bandwagon. I don't want to hear how wonderful you guys are for the environment. I want to SEE it in action. The time for pretty "sunny" logos is past, BP. Images of waves crashing on the shore doesn't give Shell a free pass anymore.

Imagine the positive consumer influence NASCAR could have on the switch to bio-fuels if they ran their races on E-85. What about featuring an E-85 logo on the hood of your favorite NASCAR driver? How about Sunoco (NASCAR's official fuel sponsor) adverising "E85 - the fuel of NASCAR" on their pumps?

We'd all be breathing easier next year.

52,496 Reasons to love Milwaukee

It was the fall of 1995 when I was transferred to Milwaukee, by my (then) employer. People kept asking us, how do you like Milwaukee? Is it very different from Toronto? How do you like the Midwest?

My answer to the question is that we immediately liked living in Milwaukee. I describe it as a little big city. It has major league baseball, basketball in town, and our beloved Green Bay Packers, just a couple of hours drive away.

Traffic is virtually non existent (as compared to Chicago or Toronto, my former home town).

But the real reason we like Milwaukee so much is the people who live here. And nothing exemplifies this fact better than the past three days.

The week, Miller Park, home of the Brewers, hosted a three game series between Cleveland Indians and the Angels of Anaheim. On extremely short notice, Cleveland called the folks at Miller park and asked to borrow the venue for their home opener series, because the weather was just too crappy in Cleveland to play baseball. Rather than try to reschedule the entire series, they opted to play three "home games" at Miller Park, while the Brewers were on the road in Florida.

Without hesitation, the folks at Miller Park said yes, then immediately went about trying to make it happen. That's the kind of people we have here.

With virtually no prior warning, the games were placed on sale with all tickets $10 and preferred parking for $8. They sold the field level seats first, then the loge (second level seats) next, trying to sell the venue from the bottom up, in order to run the concession stands effectively and to minimize post game cleaning efforts to those levels where seating was sold.

No one knew whether anyone would show up. With virtually no warning, on a Tuesday evening in April at 6:05pm, 19,031 fans arrived to root for the "hometown" Indians. On Wednesday evening, literally minutes after a record breaking April blizzard blew through town, 16,375 fans enjoyed the second game. Just minutes ago, I returned from the third "getaway" game. The 12:05pm Thursday start garnered 17,090 fans.

Total attendance for the three games was an astounding 52,496. And that's why I love Milwaukee.

Web 2.0 The Dark Side

Few recent issues have garnered as much press, so quickly as the current Don Imus fiasco, where he hurled a racial insult at the Rutgers women's basketball team in a lame attempt to make a "joke".

There has been a tremendous amount of conversation about this incident - 24 hour cable news coverage on MSNBC (which, until today simulcast his radio show) and of course, CNN. The scene was completed with the usual suspects, Rev Sharpton and Jessie Jackson who immediately lobbied for his dismissal and in my opinion overshadowed the very articulate response from the Rutger's coach and team.

But here's the Dark Side of a participatory web..... just a few minutes ago, I searched Google: Here are the results:

Personalized Results 1 - 10 of about 1,970,000 for "nappy-headed hos". (0.19 seconds

In three days, the racial epitaph has exploded (almost 2 million references) on the web. The anonymity provided by the web allows all sides to be judge and jury, without the scrutiny of personal accountability.

No one is in the middle on this issue. Fire him (the majority) or give him a second (or third or fourth chance depending on who you listen to) seem to define the entire discussion.

The Dark Side of Web 2.0 has amplified the slur and polarized the discussion without providing adequate direction and discussion to address the underlying issues.

I can't help feeling that the entire incident is coated with hypocrisy; whether from the self-righteous bloggers (on both sides), MSNBC who "listened to their internal employees" just as sponsors were pulling their ads, to Rev Sharpton and Jessie Jackson, (who have had more TV airtime in the past 72 hours than the previous 3 months) and who give some Rappers and Comedians within the Black community a free pass to sling the same mud.

If however this incident causes all the media to re-evaluate and enforce their standards of conduct, the FCC to review enforcement of their policies and practices, Rev Sharpton and Jessie Jackson the voice to address racial injustices regardless of their origin, then perhaps it will be an outcome worth talking about.

I'm not holding my breath.

The voices I'm most interested in listening to over the next week are those of the Rutger's women's basketball team.

Getting to Fourth Base

Yesterday, some friends asked me to meet them for a couple of beers after work, at a small hole-in-the-wall sports bar called Fourth Base.

Before yesterday I didn't even know the place existed.

As it turns out, Fourth Base, which is located just south of Miller Park, (here in Milwaukee) is a Brewer fan favorite. Its walls (and ceiling) are completely covered in sports memorabilia. The televisions constantly broadcast all things sports related. The cramped quarters and noisy atmosphere are augmented by a tremendous staff, surprisingly great food and of course, cold beer.

It's the last place you'd consider high tech.

By complete coincidence I had downloaded Google Earth yesterday morning just to play around with its features and functionality. So when I got the call to meet up at Fourth Base, I decided to see if I could find it using Google Earth.

I launched Google Earth, clicked on "Find Businesses" tab and typed "Fourth Base, Milwaukee".

Lo and behold I was presented with a satellite photo of the area, with a red "push pin" identifying the very building on National Avenue. Clicking on the push pin presented me with an option of driving directions, showed me it had been rated "5 stars" and hosted links to 3 reviews of the place.

I never got the chance to ask the staff whether they knew they were listed on Google Earth, but after sampling the food, beer and service at Fourth Base, I have resolved to do more restaurant research from 200 miles up in space.

Martha, Martha, Martha!

This week Martha Stewart, the Domestic Diva, unveiled her new website. While I can't claim to be a fan, whenever Martha does something marketing related, I pay attention.

The new site is designed to position itself as THE place to go for answers on all things domestic. The big effort here was to re index all the content; tips, recipes, video, products etc to make searching the site far more effective for visitors. They went back and re tagged and indexed 15 years worth of TV, Magazine and Web content. To quote the MSNBC article; "When you search for chicken, you're getting 6,000 results, you're not getting 40 results."

For the record, when you search for "chicken", you only get 1263 results. Arguably it's not 6,000, but it's certainly more chicken than I care to eat.

For those companies out there who are EVA based (the concept of which is to leverage asset performance to the max), Martha's strategy is a good one. After all, the value of Martha's brand lies in her ability to position herself as an expert. 15 years worth of information was (until this week) a tremendously underutilized asset.

So this begs the question. Does your company have any underutilized information asset? How does your website position YOUR company as THE expert in your industry? Chances are, like Martha, you'll discover that there's more to your story, than you're telling.

The Pity Blog

A number of weeks ago, I wrote an article about how fun it was to work with my son. He's a geek (like his old man) and for his birthday, asked for a copy of Photoshop. Over the past number of months he learned the program and put it to use designing T-Shirts, Posters and helping a local company design Websites.

After writing about how fun it was working with him, my daughter demanded equal time. She calls it the "Pity Blog".

Jessie is a junior in High School. Like every girl her age, has a MySpace page and can IM at light speed. In fact as we speak, she's with her mother in Toronto, visiting relatives. While Jessie would NEVER describe herself as a geek (she's way too cool for that) she did bring along her laptop to stay connected with friends. In fact she's keeping tabs on Dad and her brother who are busy being bachelors while they're gone. Just yesterday we made dinner and exchanged photos by phone - including a mandatory picture of a clean kitchen after dinner was done!

A social animal (just like her mother), she can enter a room and take over a party. Perhaps her most amazing talent is being able to conduct a conversation over the phone while IMing 4 friends, listening to music and watching television - all while doing her homework.

She's a whirlwind. When not taking one (of her three) dance classes, or working at a local clothing outlet, she's bombing around the neighborhood in her (slightly dented and scratched) Corolla.

We can always count on Jessie for some excitement. While only driving for about 18 months, Jessie's claim to fame as a driver are her five (very minor) accidents she's had so far, including backing down our driveway (into "the forest"), scraping her car while parking in our garage, backing into a light pole at the local gas station, and being rear ended by a neighbour. Even nature is working against her. Last fall she suffered hail damage to her car! The local repair guys love her.

I have to admit that while she's been in Toronto, its been very quiet around here. I can't wait till she returns and the chaos resumes!

Love ya sweetie.

Web 2.0 and Politics...more musings

I just read that Chris Hughes (creator of Facebook) has joined Obama's campaign team. Not that Obama's campaign needed more coaching in building community - he's already garnered double the number of campaign contributors than his closest Democratic rival. Agree with his politics or not, clearly he's a candidate whose campaign really understands the power of online community.

And now they have added Chris Hughes, who as founder of Facebook, clearly understands how communities can be built and grown over the Web. It will be very interesting to see what is in store.

To that end I have one idea... I've been writing recently about how Dell courageously introduced IdeaStorm - an open discussion with the online community about how to improve their products and services. If you're not familiar with IdeaStorm, click here. Dell invited interested parties (anyone) to suggest improvements. Participants can vote to promote or demote any proposed idea. They also promised to respond to the most popular ideas. So far, they've committed to take action on the most popular idea - which was to expand their offerings of Linux based PCs and laptops. This is already underway.

I bring this up, because the same idea could be a powerful way to further engage Obama support. What if Obama's team launched their own IdeaStorm? Can you imagine the power of unleashing the creativity of hundreds of thousands of people, engaging them in discussions about every major issue facing the country?

The campaign could then respond, by issuing position papers on the highest ranked suggestions or by having Obama issue a YouTube video, responding to the ideas - or both. I can't imagine any other tactic more engaging that allowing voters to interact directly with a candidate and one another. Besides the benefit of potentially surfacing ideas that might otherwise stay at our kitchen tables, it also reinforces the fundamental message that we all need to work on these problems together rather than falling into the trap of thinking and acting along traditional party lines.

This could potentially energize the voting public in a way that's never been done before. For Obama, it might offer a competitive advantage over the other candidates who seem to be struggling with Web2.0 - relying on the shifting tides of public opinion polls and recreating their images to better the outcome. What a great way to sidestep the interests of PACs and special interests and let the voice of the people be heard. What a terrific way to drive a constructive conversation on the issues that matter.

When Web 2.0 goes from campaign to government.....

Yesterday I mused about how Web2.0 was affecting the political races. Here's an opine from the Obama website discussing the same thing.. http://www.barackobama.com/2007/04/05/obamas_savvy_internet_campaign.php

It now makes me wonder. If he gets elected, without PAC money and WITH the social networking skills and apparatus that helped spread his proposed policies, how might Web2.0 affect the way government works?

Can you imagine the power of putting the Iraq War question to the people? Asking Americans how they would support the efforts against global warming? What to do about security on our southern borders?

And what will it say about representatives and senators who don't use the web's collaborative tools to help raise and discuss issues?

The next few years will be an interesting ride!

Will Web 2.0 Change Politics?

That's the question I've been asking myself recently. I've signed up to a number of campaign websites just to observe how campaigns are using the Web to energize each politician's support base. Obama sends me emails monthly and makes it very easy to host, find and attend "house parties" in my neighborhood, to discuss his campaign platform and build support.

In my view this is a tremendous marketing and organizing tool. In 3 months he's raised virtually the same amount of cash as his primary rival who is better known, better connected and has the advantage of an ex-President husband for fundraising.

Of most interest to me is the number of contributors. Raising $25 million across a far wider (double the base) of Hillary's contributors must surely translate into broader support (more votes) at the polling station.

Another recent example of Web 2.0 technology in action is the candidates use of MySpace and YouTube. Just yesterday, I saw Newt Gingrich clarifying remarks he made with respect to his views of English as the "official" language in the U.S.. In the old days he would have had to make the talk show circuit to get his message out (and be exposed to potential bias of the interviewers). Now politicians can quickly craft their own messages, in their own words and distribute it for free to an awaiting internet public.

John McCain has his own MySpace account. His campaign is going through a bit of a learning curve with respect to internet etiquette. His campaign used a MySpace template without proper accreditation, and was subjected to a graffiti attack.

It's clear to me that candidates resonance with the younger voter will in some part be measured by their internet savvy. McCain's campaign is going through a steep learning curve, Obama's seems to be more "at home", with Web 2.0.

I wonder how this will affect the "traditional media buys" that accompany every election? Will it help level the playing field in future elections? Ten years from now, will campaigns be run entirely over the internet? Probably not. But it would be interesting nonetheless.

Instead of making a New Year's Resolution, this year I changed my Windows wallpaper to remind me to keep all things in perspective.

I selected perhaps one of the most famous photographs in the world - Earth Rise. It's the shot from the moon showing the Earth rising over the lunar surface.

It sends me a powerful daily message to try to keep things in perspective and to stay focused on the "big picture". It strikes me that we all live in one big ant farm. To listen to the nightly news about Iraq, local crime or perhaps a local "News Team investigation" on "Escalators - The Silent Killers!"strikes me that our priorities are all screwed up.

When you look at the tiny blue marble we call home, one might think that the environment, health care and generally looking out for one another might take precedence over Corporate profits, gun lobbyists, illegal immigration, disputes over territory, wondering about the real father of Anna Nicole's baby, or whether Sanjaya will be voted off American Idol.

I think we all need a different perspective. Perhaps one from space.

Time for mainstream Linux!

After reading more on Dell's IdeaStorm about Dell's proposed actions to offer pre-installed Linux on more of their desktops and laptops, it came to me that if there are any CIOs out there who are NOT experimenting with Linux based operating systems and OpenOffice 2.0 (or other web based applications like Zoho), they're crazy.

Eliminating the Microsoft "tax" is the next big cost savings opportunity for your IT department. Not only does their software cost more and more as a percentage of the cost of a PC or laptop, the forced upgrade support costs are completely none value adding (IMO).

Many companies must now support at least two operating systems (assuming they're running Microsoft exclusively) as PCs and laptops "refresh". And anyone who has gone through this learning curve knows the pain; applications that don't quite work the same way (or at all) under the new O/S. Then there's the learning curve of the employees (and your IT department!).

Even those intrepid souls who try to keep standard by upgrading older machines are faced with the possibility of having to upgrade memory, video cards etc or face deteriorating performance. Our end users don't need to be put through this! The whole exercise is simply non value adding for most companies.

So perhaps the time has come for the great Linux and OpenOffice experiment. What have you got to lose?

Some Predictions!

1. Jobs that will become in high demand in the future: will include Business process Engineers, Organizational Development professionals and Technologists. Increasingly U.S. businesses will compete based upon the effectiveness and engagement of their people, their effective and efficient processes and the tools they use. Managers (in the traditional sense) will become increasingly irrelevant

2. PowerPoint presentations will be considered "old school". They will be replaced by video as Generation M enters the workforce. The "YouTube effect" will mean that younger persons entering the workforce will increasing become more comfortable with video capture and editing as a means of communicating and collaborating. Certainly, most people I know would rather view a 10 minute video than read a brochure or a website for the same information.

3. Communications will "come alive and converge" in the form of multi-media blogs. I recently played with embedding both video and a PowerPoint presentation in my personal blog. It was VERY simple to do (I consider myself the lowest common denominator) and I think will make for much more interesting presentation instead of multiple embedded links which lead to more text pages.

4. Collaborative social skills will propel the wiki to new heights in usage. What seems to come naturally to so many of the "younger generation" will revolutionize the way information is captured and continually refined. Most will see this as the smart way (the only way?) to work. The older generation's watch phrase "Knowledge is Power" will take on a new meaning: "Shared Knowledge is Power". Collaboration will be King.

5. It will take some time, but Mash Ups will rule the world. Mash Ups bring together various web services to create applications on the fly. Here's an informative video from IBM on their QEDwiki..

Web 2.0 video

Here's one of the best videos I've seen which explains the phenomenon called Web 2.0.





Here's a Powerpoint presentation I made a couple of years ago and just recently uploaded into Zoho...

Watch this space!

A couple of days back, I wrote about Dell's new IdeaStorm project - the one where they allow anyone to make suggestions to Dell regarding their product and services offering. I hailed it as a highly innovative and courageous decision. I still believe it is.

But, what's next? After recently reviewing new posts, the newer ideas generated less than thirty days after the opening of the site seem very narrow and specific. The major (most popular) ideas seem to be unchanging. The two most popular ideas suggest that Dell offer Linux as an O/S option (and make their PC drivers Linux compatible). The second most popular suggestion is for Dell to offer OpenOffice2.0 as an installation option.

If anyone out there has ever participated in a brainstorming session, all the great ideas (most obvious?) seem to get generated in the first 5 minutes, followed by dozens of suggestions with ever declining value. Can it be that after only a couple of weeks, Dell has mined all the great ideas?

So the trick will be - how Dell tries to generate sustained interest and participation in the site. In my estimation they need to:
1. Quickly identify the best ideas and respond to them (They are doing this).
2. Implement some of them.
3. Archive the IdeaStorm database and clean the slate every 6 months to allow other ideas some prominence. Right now, there is so much clutter that even if a great idea was submitted today, it's unlikely that members would find it, to vote for it.

Another idea I would have would be to duplicate IdeaStorm for each country where they do business. In this way they could solicit country/cultural ideas that might help them better serve Global customers.

I applaud Dell for their courageous initiative and truly believe that we need to "Watch this Space".

Have you visited Dell's new IdeaStorm?

About a month ago, Dell launched a brand new, leading edge, daring experiment called IdeaStorm. If you're unfamiliar with the concept, Dell has started an open suggestion/discussion forum with its customers using many of the concepts from Digg. The software was developed by Crisp Ideas and private branded by Salesforce.com.

Their IdeaStorm site allows users to suggest improvements to product and services offered by Dell. All users can then "vote" acceptance for the ideas they like. In this way Dell begins to directly solicit product and service improvements from their customers.

I think this is a very novel idea and an exciting one, but it's a double edged sword. By allowing customers (and I may be making an assumption here - users need not register using real names, nor do they have to be customers) to register suggestions, Dell is obliged to respond to the most popular.

Early on, the process was a free-for-all, with many duplicate posts, accusations of censorship (Dell was actually merging similar ideas and votes to help reduce the suggestion clutter). The process seems to be stabilizing somewhat now.

Interesting enough, the top ranked suggestion was for Dell to offer (free) Linux O/S instead of shipping all PCs and laptops with Microsoft Vista. The second most popular suggestion? Install OpenOffice2.0. Clearly the IdeaStorm has attracted many Linux fans.

What this has shown me (and Microsoft?) is that consumers want choice in their operating systems, directly from the hardware supplier. Obviously anyone can download their version of Linux, post hardware purchase, but the fact remains that they had to buy MS software they didn't want in the first place! As the price of computer hardware declines, the pre-bundled software is becoming an ever increasing portion of the purchase price.

The fascinating thing about IdeaStorm, is that Dell's competitors (like any participant) can see the suggestions and voting. If Dell doesn't act, their competitors might!

And it makes one wonder what the folks in Redmond are talking about this week.

My Inner Child is Growing Up

I used to tell everyone that while I was forty-something on the outside, I was 14 years old on the inside. Lately I find myself doing some things that signal some major changes are underway.

1. I find myself muting TV Commercials. My Dad (who is in his eighties) used to do this quite often. I found it mildly amusing and somewhat eccentric - until I became tired of the same old voices trying to get me to buy their products or services. It is somehow comforting (empowering?) to just shut off the sound - to tune out. After all, these days it seems that unless you're looking for a medication with potential side effects worse than the illness the medication pretends to alleviate, there's not too much to buy.

2. I find myself talking to the TV. Yes, I know it can't hear me. But it's so frustrating to watch 24 hour "news" when 23.5 hours is spent speculating about what might happen, could happen and only 30 minutes is spent on what IS happening. What's with all the political speculation on who's running for President in 2008? Don't we have issues that need to be addressed NOW? Do we waste the next 2 years while more people die in Iraq and Darfur, while we continue to be addicted to middle eastern oil, while 40 million of us go without healthcare, while our status in the World continues to erode, while our education system crumbles, while Political ethics continues to be an oxymoron, whil;e the Earth continues to warm, while Homeland Security continues to be a priority, but open borders do not?

3. I'm tired of people trying to scare me. Whether it's the local 6 o'clock news telling me about deadly escalators, why I can't eat spinich (or was that lettuce?), what the Homeland Security threat color of the day is or whether killer bees are coming to get me. I'm too busy to worry about terrorist threats. I can't waste my time on deadly trans fat. I have the upcoming bird flu pandemic to worry about!

4. Is it me or do "Talk Shows" do more shouting than talking? It seems to me that for an exchange of ideas to occur, one needs to listen to a response. More and more, the news show hosts pose a question or state an opinion, wait 3 seconds, then talk over their guest! I am especially frustrated with the 4 person split-screen format when everone talks at once. I'm barely interested enough to listen to one person that to pay attention to four all talking simultaneously!

5. The butchering of the english language is beginning to bother me. I think it began with the phrase "You've got mail." Whatever happened to "You have mail"? While we're on the subject, I think that any TV interview with any professional or college athlete should include closed captioning. I'm also tired of words like "spin", unless it describes rotation. "Spin" is nothing more that "lie" or intentionally misprepresenting the facts in support of one's belief. Like "We're winning in Iraq" or we may recoomend a troop "surge" when we really mean escallate troop levels for an undetermined amount of time.

Okay. I hereby declare myself Andy Rooney.

I recently had the opportunity to spend some time with my son, designing a website for a group of friends. I have to admit that it was an awakening for me.

First, I saw him in a whole new light.. I knew he was a bright guy, but never got to experience him from a co-worker perspective until I had this opportunity. We were able to focus on the task at hand, treat each other like peers and work through design changes, differences in opinion, in a way we'd never done before.

Jeff, while only 15, is pretty adept at Photoshop, and in the course of a couple of hours, were able to design, what we believed to be a stylish and effective website. My friends liked the website so much that they are now using him to test web applications across platforms and with a variety of browsers. A sophomore in High School, he's already taking on tasks that I would have had experienced IT folks perform in a previous life.

In the next few weeks I'll be forming an LLC with Jeff as a partner.

The next time I pass a company with a name of "xxx" & Son, it will always remind me of the special afternoon I recently had. Hopefully we'll get to spend many more together working on IT projects (assuming his homework gets done!)

How are good business practices like losing weight?

Because the advice seems so simple and straightforward, yet is difficult to execute!

Want to lose weight? Eat sensibly, in moderation and exercise regularly.

Want to improve your business?
Develop a compelling vision, backed by a realistic, executable strategy. Translate the strategy into an operating plan, with clear milestones and expected outcomes which can be objectively measured. Assign the plan and responsibility to the right people and compensate them based upon their results. Sounds simple.

I just finished rereading four of my favorite business books; "Leading Change" by John Kotter, "Execution: The Discipline of getting Things Done", by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan and Charles Buck, "Lean Thinking" by James P. Womack and "The Toyota Way" by Jeffrey Liker.

These books offer interesting insights into how some companies clearly outperform the competition.

What all the examples in these books have in common is that the founders or CEOs had a very strong vision with which, they were able to build a strong company culture (of process innovation, waste reduction, innovation, execution, employee development etc) that enabled them to compete very effectively over many years.

If every business leader were like the one's mentioned in these books, all American companies might be executing far better, but in reality, not every company is blessed with gifted leaders.

So the real question is; Is it possible to change a corporate culture from the middle? or must it always happen top down?

I love innovation!

Have you seen Amazon.com's Fishbowl?

While surfing the web yesterday, I ran into an innovation I had to write about. Yesterday I came across Amazon.com's Fishbowl. Fishbowl is an innovation from Amazon.com and UPS which marries the power of television entertainment and retailing into the same personal experience, "broadcasting" over the web.

Now commercials have been on television forEVER, and product placement in movies has been around for a decade or more, but "Fishbowl" is completely different. Fishbowl is a weekly video webcast, hosted by Bill Maher, which includes interviews with authors, filmakers and musicians. As each interview is taking place, Amazon.com links are presented below the screen, to enable the viewer to explore more information or to purchase the product.

The links are not obtrusive, so one can enjoy the show without being too distracted by the links, which change with each new guest. The shows can be viewed "live" Thursdays at 8 pm (Pacific) or after the fact, in whole or in part, at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/16305491/red%3Dent%5Fold%5Ffb%5Furl%5F16305511/103-7186298-2958232

Brilliantly, Amazon.com posts all previous shows (which can be played back in whole or in part). Just for fun, I also went to Amazon.com and searched on a specific song that had been featured on the show and voila! - there appeared a link to the performance featured on Fishbowl.

As more and more shows are produced, more and more "clips" will enrich the Amazon.com shopping experience. Only time will tell whether this new form of cooperative marketing effort actually sells more product for Amazon.com and boosts business for UPS, but the innovation is exciting to observe.

I wonder whether the television industry is watching?