Archive for April, 2006

April 23, 2006

Insane for Propane

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On King of the Hill tonight, they riffed on Cold Stone Creamery and similar “fun” workplaces. (They opened a Cold Stone down the street from me a year or two ago, and I’ve only been once — the ice cream is good but I’ve always found singing retail workers fall somewhere on the continuum between disconcerting and creepy.)

In the episode, Hank’s boss steals the operations manual for the “Frozen Cow Creamery” and applies it to the propane store, thus driving his employees crazy (and not just “Insane for Propane”). They’re so busy “having fun” that they never have time to get any work done.

Finding the balance between having fun and getting work done is hard, because it really does need to be a balance. We’ve all dealt with people who fall on opposite ends of the spectrum: the sour one who never wants to do anything except review numbers (which can make for some dull lunches), and the goofy one who thinks the secret to “building morale” is having a party for every conceivable reason (what I call “managing by serving cake”).

Thing is, “fun” is a relative term, and creating a workplace that people look forward to coming to — employees and customers — isn’t about staff parties, team-building exercises, and forcing people to socialize. It’s about putting the right people in the right positions, setting the right goals, and giving them the freedom to make mistakes.

Hmm, sounds simpler than it is …

Category : Management

April 21, 2006

What is Web 2.0?

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The best definition I’ve found is buried in the Wikipedia entry on Web 2.0:

“A marketing term to differentiate new web businesses from those of the dot-com boom, which due to the bust now seem discredited.”

More often used, though, is the definition found in the first line of that Wikipedia entry:

“Web 2.0 generally refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that let people collaborate, and share information online.”

Which sounds familiar because that’s pretty much what people thought the first generation was supposed to do.

The primary (only?) difference is that the web applications commonly grouped together as Web 2.0 really are easier to both develop and use. So while it’s easy (and fun!) to be cynical about all the ridiculous hype, the implications of these applications for associations are real.

In short, here’s what those implications are:

Content … Is easier to produce.
Information … Is easier to find.
Connections … Are easier to make.
Events … Are easier to organize.
Groups … Are easier to form.
Filters … Are easier to avoid.
Irrelevancy … Is easier to notice.
Hierarchy … Is easier to ignore.
Loyalties … Are easier to change.

Category : Rants & Raves | Technology

April 16, 2006

Blurry Lines

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Citizen media at work or overreacting self-righteous lynch mob? I vote the latter. You decide.

Category : Asides

April 13, 2006

V Is for Vendor

Posted by Kevin | (6) Comments | Print This Article

I can be a demanding customer and an even more difficult client to land in the first place, especially since I never like being contacted by salespeople and am sometimes not very polite about it. Somewhere I know vendors in the association community get together and complain about people like me. From printing to production, programming to planning, I have fairly high standards, and I’ve been spoiled by a few vendors who exceed them regularly.

I view vendors in just about any arena as partners — I expect them to have the same commitment to whatever we’re working on that I do. They have a stake in the successful outcome and should act like it. When I get treated as just another client, with just another deliverable, nickel-and-dimed to death, I tend to get irritated.

The problem is that we’re never a vendor’s only client, and very rarely the biggest. We fall into that middle ground of business, with a lot of very specialized needs, but a very generic budget. For most projects we don’t have the bucks to make demands and expect the most qualified vendors to line up panting to cater to our every customized whim.

And while all businesses, including suppliers to associations, talk about the importance of customer service, and how “every client is our most important client,” in the real world of deadlines and budgets and limited staff resources and 24 hours in a day, every business has to make choices about how to spend those hours. Suppliers may become adept at making clients “feel” like a priority with good interpersonal skills, but the reality is that there are “levels” of output.

(And association suppliers, I know a lot of you read this blog, but please don’t send me an email filled with platitudes talking about how your company is “different,” because it really isn’t, unless you never have more than one client at a time, or you don’t know how to run a business. I know you have to keep up the marketing pretense, but the fact is that all customers are not alike and should not get treated as if they are, whether you’re a for-profit business or an association.)

Luckily for those of us without mega-budgets, there are other ways companies differentiate between clients and decide how much time to spend on them. Though we are all trained to view those budgets as the end-all be-all, and assume that we play second fiddle to those with a lot more to spend, it doesn’t always come down to dollars-and-cents. It can also come down to this:

People are proud of what they do. Designers love to design and think they are good at it. Production companies love to produce events and think they are good at it. Programmers love to program and think they are good at it. Consultants love to — well, whatever it is consultants do, and think they are good at it.*

People follow the path of least resistance. Even when they’re experts and perfectionists. How many times can you design the same kind of survey for the same kind of organization? Hell, you really only need to design it once and then tweak, right? An association needs signage for an event. Well, you know what associations mean when they say signage. An association needs a new membership brochure. Well, you know what association membership brochures look like. An association needs a new members-only area for its website. Well, you know what assocation websites are like. An association needs an insurance affinity program. Well, you know what insurance affinity programs are like.

People don’t like to be bored. And no matter how much you like whatever it is you do, the path of least resistance is boring. It’s easy. It can sometimes be a lot more profitable. But it’s boring.

People like to be challenged. Want to produce an exciting publication? An event that really sizzles? A survey that really works? A project of any kind that produces results and pushes the boundaries for your organization? But you’re not made of money? Then it’s not enough for you to be excited about it. You have to get your outside vendor excited about it. Not excited in the “woo-hoo I landed another client” kind of way. Excited in the “wow, I’ve never done this, how can I make this work” kind of way.

This means doing something more than producing a standard RFP, picking a vendor, and paying the bills. It also doesn’t mean micromanaging every last detail of every single project for every single vendor. No, it means becoming a fan of the possibilities of what it is you want to achieve. It means moving beyond describing a deliverable. It means asking questions like, “What if we did this? What if we did that? This part — how can we make it different?” (And not deciding on the answers before you ask the question.)

Get a vendor excited about doing something new in his or her chosen field and you’ll find you get a lot more of their time and better, more interesting results. In fact, working within a limited budget can be a fun challenge in and of itself if you’re engaging the supplier in something that is outside the ordinary.

Associations are a strange industry because, while we all do similar things, as a general rule few of us compete with each other. So we look at other associations and think “well, if XYZ Inc. did such a good job with Project A for the Widget Association, then he can also make Project A work for my association.” In fact, we should be looking carefully at how XYZ Inc. can do a different, bigger, better project for our associations — something beyond the norm. Something neither the Widget Association nor XYZ Inc. thought of.

Not only does this get better results from vendors. It produces better results for associations.

* Just some good-natured ribbing for my consultant friends…

Category : Education/Meetings | Management | Membership | Technology

April 10, 2006