Foxwood Online Marketing

The New Employee Rating System - Gamification

2012-02-18T12:50:28-06:00

There are more and more articles on gamification, the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences. I saw an article on LinkedIN News that was a good overview of the subject including 3 companies that are making some noise in this space. They are Badgeville, Bigdoor, and Bunchball. In the article they cite a Gartner report that advises all CIOs to have gamification on their radar and a prediction from M2 Research that the gamification market will be close to $3B by 2016. While there may be huge growth in gamification of process such as software development and social media applications such as Foursquare, my belief is that the real growth potential is with employee measurement/performance reviews. The target markets for gamification are the Millennials born between 1980 and 1995 and the Generation Zs born 1996 and after. They grew up with digital devices and one of their favorite pastimes is playing games. While you may think this activity is a complete waste of time, the feedback/reward in most games has established a model of expectation in these 2 generations they will take with them to the workplace. While Generation Z are a bit young for the workforce now, Millennials will be 50% of the workforce in 2014. Given their non-traditional approach to working, it is becoming more apparent that firms must get aggressive in meeting the needs of this growing resource pool to increase overall productivity and reduce turnover.

Bunchball has created a white paper that offers a methodology for companies to use as a model for providing feedback and rating employees using gamification principles. Here are the basics:

Performance

Real-Time Feedback - In a game, anytime you take an action you get immediate feedback positive or negative. The current state of once-a-year reviews won't work for Millennials.
Transparency - In games, players can always see where they and others stand. Millennials in the workplace want constant metrics on how they are doing.
Goal-Setting - In a game the goal may be to "save the princess" with sub-goals like "get to the next level". At work a sense of progress, however small, will be critical in keeping Millennials highly engaged.

Achievement

Badges - Online you have an identity or avatar. At work your identity is your achievements. If you receive small tokens of achievement (badges) you are motivated to attain more, increasing your productivity.
Leveling Up - Badges are indicators of specific accomplishments, levels are a means of indicating more long term achievements. Employers my consider adding more levels to their structure to accomplish this.
On-Boarding and Mastery - Millennials will NOT read instruction manuals. They are used to being able to get instant instruction at any point within a game. Employers need to learn how to provide easy immediate access to teaching aids; this will not be easy.

Social Interaction

Competition - Online games always involve competition. It's there in the corporate world as well whether or not the employer identifies it.
Teams - Being part of a team is motivating whether you are playing a game or as an employee participating in a cross-functional team.

I believe any employee of any age would flourish in this rating system. The problem is the cost of implementation and acceptance by older employees and management. The carrot here is increased productivity and reduced turnover. To put the cost of turnover in perspective, the following came from an article in WebProNews:

70% of Millennials leave their first jobs within 2 years
Turnover costs (as a share of their salary)
    30% - 50% for entry level employees
    150% for mid level employees
    400% for specialized employees

My opinion is that firms should deploy bi-directional mentoring immediately but also begin developing a gamification model for the not-too-distant future. Those that do will have more motivated employees and be more competitive in the marketplace.

Ron Paul is the Pied Piper of Millennials

2012-02-11T11:55:45-06:00

An article in the liberal Salon.com was titled, "The screwed generation: Libertarian not liberal". As a political and Millennial junkie, I couldn't pass it up. The basis of the article is that the Millennials are voting for Ron Paul in droves because the Libertarian philosophy holds more hope for this "screwed generation" than even the liberals. In 2008 Millennials made up 18% of the vote for president with 66% voting for president Obama. In 2012 they are expected to be 25% of the vote and based on their strong following for Ron Paul, they could be the demographic which propels the Republicans to victory if Paul can deliver them. But will he? If he continues to gain delegates through the primary and leverages those delegates to influence the platform and/or rhetoric from the eventual nominee, the Republican will probably win. But if he chooses to go the 3rd party route, he would most probably hand the election to Obama.

The news commentators have often spoken about how Paul has the "youth vote" in the primaries. In New Hampshire he captured 46% of the 18-29 year old vote, 31% in South Carolina, and 48% in Iowa. What about Paul's rhetoric/Libertarianism appeals to Millennials? Paul's message of drastically smaller government, balancing the budget, and eliminating the Federal Reserve appeals to young workers who will pay an increasing amount of their salaries to cover the out of control spending fostered by both parties in the past and accelerated by the Obama administration. They also understand that they will be forced to pay for Social Security and other retirement benefits that they will likely not have. The Libertarian philosophy also appeals to the more diverse Millennials. In a recent Pew Research Poll 72% think homosexuality should be accepted by society. But the item in the news recently that you may not have paid much attention to but is critical to Millennials was the SOAP/PIPA legislation. These were the anti-piracy bills (SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate) that were pushed by Hollywood and big music but were opposed by the big internet companies. In this battle, Millennials were the foot soldiers who signed petitions and "liked" numerous online campaigns opposed to the legislation. Millennials are digital natives who grew up with the internet, therefore any effort to thwart its access hit a nerve. Finally let's not forget who fought in the 10 years of wars with Iraq and Afghanistan including multiple tours and significant loss of limbs. Paul's libertarian isolation opinion could mean literally the difference between life and death to members of this group.

While older voters may be concerned about Paul's open borders, allowing Iran to get nukes, and decriminalizing drugs, Millennials are focused on the domestic issues Paul supports and appear to be willing to following his lead to the voting booth. The question that remains is will Paul leverage this group in a third party effort or deliver them to the Republicans. We'll know in November.

Millennial Study Based on Their Facebook Pages

2012-02-04T11:33:33-06:00

Much has been written regarding Generation Y or as I prefer Millennials. Below is an infographic from a study by Millennial Branding on this generation pulled from their Facebook pages. I like this perspective because of the pervasive use of Facebook. Following are some highlights. Their largest employer is the US Military. This is in part due to their very high unemployment rates in the current economy and in part, I believe, due to their sense of service which some have argued make them the new greatest generation. Also as a function of the economy their number one job title is server and their top industry is Travel and Hospitality. A positive is their number 5 job title, owner. Again as a function of the economy they are venturing into the world of entrepreneurship.

Only 7% work for a Fortune 500 company. That doesn't surprise me as they typically don't have much experience. Whereas we Baby Boomers had multiple jobs throughout high school and college, the Millennials did not. They are also more independent and have higher expectations having been told they are great at everything (remember the soccer teams where everyone got a trophy and both teams won). So the Fortune 500 companies are less willing to put up with that attitude; well at least so far. As the Millennials become more plentiful (forecasts are 50% of the workforce in 3 years), these companies will have to learn to deal with their needs if they want to optimize productivity and reduce turnover. The study showed 80% have a school entry whereas only 36% had a job entry, reinforcing their unique perspective on work/life balance as well as the impact of the poor economy. Further supporting this is their average of only 16 work friends as compared to 696 total friends

Finally here is the statistic that is causing many companies to seek help in understanding this growing labor force. Their average tenure at a company is just over 2 years. While even we Boomer changed jobs frequently right out of college, the Millennials have a different perspective. They grew up watching their parents, both parents, work long hours and give their all to companies that eventually laid them off, and suffered high divorce rates. This has created a work/life balance need that has been described as an "attitude" in the workplace. If things don't go their way, they quit. To this point companies have just complained about this. But again as a function of their generation being 80 million strong and the majority of the workplace going forward, companies must understand this group and reinforce them in terms of what they want. One of their desires is helping others in need. So if companies want to lower turnover they simply need to sponsor some sort of charity activity and channel this desire. As I have written before and as a function of the book I am writing, another means of leveraging this desire is to establish bi-directional mentoring program permitting Millennials to leverage their skills as technology device users to help the Boomer managers, in return for help from the Boomers with soft skills like networking. Another suggestion has been to revamp the performance & motivation structure to mimic gaming since Millennials grew up playing digital games. If you are interested, you can download a white paper from Bunchball that describes this strategy by clicking here.

This study is one data point in the massive research that is building regarding how different the Millennial generation is. They could save us or they could drive the US into a third world power. Time will tell which is the case but considering how large this generation is, it sure makes sense to learn more about them and take a proactive approach.

The Politics of Piracy: Hollywood VS Internet Companies

2012-01-28T11:47:35-06:00

Politics has hit the internet! You've probably heard about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) from the House of Representatives and its counterpart in the Senate PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act). But have you heard of ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) or OPEN (Online Protection & ENforcement of Digital Trade Act)? Makes you think: SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, OPEN, OH MY!...

So here's what happened. The Hollywood and big media lobby got SOPA and PIPA created based on the logical need to prevent websites from sharing their content without getting paid. However neighter Hollywood nor the politicians really understood what the bill as written would mean to the internet. So that community banded together and notified their users and blacked out many of their sites as a protest.

The internet community leveraged their users to contact their representatives and senators by the thousands and the bills, which were cruising through congress, were stopped in their tracks. Then at a roundtable discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, we were told that ACTA could be even more harmful than SOPA/PIPA. And worse yet, the US has already signed off on this agreement. To complicate matters more, the US politician who understands these issues the most, Darrell Issa, has another proposition called OPEN which he and others, including Google are supporting. If you are a nerd like me (I know I am a nerd rather than geek because of an infographic that defines the difference), you might be interested in the roundtable discussion at Davos hosted by Mashable:

What I picked up from the 43 minute video is that there is a political battle building between Hollywood, the music industry, and big media companies (content generators), and the internet companies (communicators). The content generators are losing millions in dollars to internet pirates but the communicators are concerned that drastic remedies will inhibit user generated content and the entrepreneurial spirit that has made the internet what it is. The best example here is Wikipedia. As the bills were written if it was determined that some piece of owned content was placed on Wikipedia, then a DNS (Denial of Service) would be enforced basically putting it out of business. The internet folks argue that while there is still some music piracy, the public has gradually gotten on board with subscription pricing like iTunes which has delivered millions to the content generators that wasn't the case in years past. For years the content generators, particularly Hollywood, have learned how to lobby congress. They also have tight-knit associations that pool money and speak with one voice on issues. The internet folks who do not have this yet are beginning to realize they must if they are to compete in the realm of politics. Another factor about the politics in this situation was raised by Representative Issa. That is most of the elected people in Congress nor do their staffs have any depth on issues concerning the internet industry. Following SOPA and PIPA where many were embarrassed to the point of withdrawing their co-sponsorships of these bills, including my favorite Senator Marco Rubio, have recognized they need to move up the learning curve fast.

Part of the political process is for a lobbyist to give a political contribution to a member of Congress in lieu of being able to present their side of an argument. The content generators and their associations have developed sophisticated processes to do just this over the years. As the Google attorney in the video explained, their company just hasn't been around long enough to have developed this capability in spite of how much money they have. The content generators have been good at putting their movie and music stars out as spokespersons to support their political issues. The internet companies have the power of rallying their followers but must be careful to not overuse this tool. It seems clear that this battle will continue.

I suggest you keep an eye on Congressman Darrell Issa. He was the past president of the Consumer Electronics' Association and attended CES 30 years including back when he was an exhibitor. He is very knowledgeable about current technology. I chopped a session of PBS' Communicators shot at CES to give you some perspective on him:

If you still want more, check out this chart from Congressman Issa's website that compares SOPA, PIPA, and his favorite OPEN by clicking here. Given how much there has been in the media, I'm sure this story will go on for some time.

R.I.P. Kodak

2012-01-21T14:14:48-06:00

Last Thursday the 131 year old icon in photography, Kodak, filed for Chapter 11. Thus ends a long and storied history of a company that helped create memories. Due to the onslaught of digital photography, competition from Fuji, and high-quality cellphone cameras, they were unable to adapt and fell by the wayside like buggy whip manufacturers of old. To help see the recent financial picture, here is a graph from Tech Crunch:

The curious thing in this story is that Kodak invented digital photography and still owns $1B+ in patents. While the company continues to lay off the remainder of its 18,800 employees, down from 150,000, they will continue to seek patent relief from RIM (Blackberry), Apple, HTC (smartphones), Fujifilm, and Samsung.

Thanks to Mashable here are some photos of memorable Kodak products:

In 1900 the Kodak "BROWNIE" was introduced. This cardboard camera sold for $1, with film at 15 cents a roll. The BROWNIE is credited with bringing the medium into the financial reach of everyone. Kodak continued to produce BROWNIES until the late 1960s, selling millions of models across the globe.

In 1957 cameras got even easier to use with the release of the first BROWNIE STARMATIC -- the first automatic snapper in a range of seven models.

Kodak sold 10 million STARMATICS in five years, an impressive figure later surpassed by the phenomenally successful INSTAMATIC range.

Kodac sold 50 million INSTAMATICs from 1963 to 1970.

Kodachrome was the best slide and movie film in history.

I feel sad at Kodak's closing for 2 reasons. First, they were a customer of my firm back in the 80's and 90's and I had many fond interfaces with their personnel. They loved to come to Nashville, especially in the winter, and were always making jokes about how bad the weather was in Rochester. They were respectful of us and fun to go to dinner with. The second reason is their company was like mine, Nortel. Nortel was over 100 years old, grew to a $20B firm with 120,000 employees, and failed to make the successful transition to digital technology. In our days we were the leading edge in technology and we ruled the market. Such is life however. New guys came in and we were gone. In spite of the loss of Kodak and Nortel, progress must be made. So there will be others who grow big only to vanish. My prediction is that Facebook will not be around in 10 years. Time will tell. So rest in peace Kodac, and thanks for the memories.

How Millennials Can Fit Into A Boomer Workplace

2012-01-14T11:38:45-06:00

For the 2nd week in a row I received a Google Alert concerning an article on Millennials and Boomers in the workplace. It is titled, "How Millennials can fit into a Boomer workplace that doesn’t automatically think they’re brilliant". The article from the Toronto Star featured comments from Jim Finkelstein, author of Fuse, Making Sense of the New Co-generational Workplace. Finkelstein, like me, is a Boomer who is dealing with the issues of co-generational workers. His approach is to mold the entire management function to accommodate the differences between generations. This includes leadership, training, compensation, performance reviews, communication, and change management. To get a feeling for his message, check out the following video:

I find it comforting and encouraging that there is a successful consultant in San Diego that has a similar perspective to mine. While Finkelstein focuses on all the generations and all functions my approach is to focus on Boomers and Millennials considering how large these 2 groups are in the workplace and that through these 2 groups I can make my pitch that the Millennials are what they are as an outcome of how we Boomers raised them, the boomer-rang effect. I ordered his book and probably will reference his work frequently in my forthcoming book.

The Wrong & Right Way to Mentor at Work

2012-01-07T14:18:38-06:00

I saw an interesting article. I have a Google Alert set up to let me know when something new is issued on the term, 'Millennial'. It notified me that there was an article in Forbes online. The article is titled, "Millennial Women Battle with Older Unwanted Mentors". Since this subject comes close to the book I am writing, I thought I would comment. Rather than establish a formalized bi-directional mentoring program between Baby Boomers and Millennials, it seems that informal mentoring is occurring in businesses which is infuriating the Millennials. The article states that in almost every office there are older women who think it is their duty to inform all the other women about how to wash the coffee cups, monitor lunchtime microwave use, and here's where it really gets dicey, proper office attire. The problem with this is the Millennial women don't want or appreciate this kind of mentoring. "They say these older co-workers are old-fashioned, too judgmental and don’t understand their values. In fact, communication style (72%), technology use (65%), work style (53%), and priorities (52%) are the four most reported clashes between Millennial women and their older colleagues, according to the Business and Professional Women’s Foundation (BPWF)."

Millennials, women or men, do not take on the same value set as their parents, the Boomers have. In fact this is the basis for my title, Baby Boomer-Rang. I had as a sub-title "How to Leverage Your Skills + Digital Natives for Success in Business" but have since modified it to be, "How Bi-Directional Mentoring Can Help You and Your Millennial Employees Win". I may change the sub-title again but the thesis is that what the Millennials are is in great part due to the influences of their parents, the Baby Boomers. I contend that this pattern is consistent with the G.I. Generation who parented the Boomers. However what's significant now is the size of the Boomer generation who are about to retire and the Millennial generation that is even larger who are digital natives. The combination of the size plus the technology revolution creates a unique problem in business that requires a unique solution.

I believe a systematic approach to bi-directional mentoring is the answer. The Boomers need help with technology. Note that the Millennials are tech-dependent not tech-savvy but there are and will be advantages that they can bring to the Boomers as technology continues to explode. And the Boomers who mentor the Millennials must be trained to focus on soft skills like leadership and networking and not on information as Millennials clearly understand how to find facts through growing up with Google. And each group needs to be taught about the other. As in the case with the example cited in the article, if businesses allow informal mentoring to occur they may do even more damage than no mentoring.

I'll keep you posted as I progress through the book. I have much of the structure of the book completed and have about 11% of the first draft content done. More to come....

The Best of 2011

2011-12-31T11:15:33-06:00

As the new year approaches there are lots of lists of the best of this year. I looked through several lists and decided to use the Time Specials, "Top 10 Everything of 2011" though I did have some of my own picks or liked some other choices better than those Time picked. Here goes:

Top Number of the Year - Time picked 7 billion which is the number of humans on the planet currently. My pick for the top number is 15 trillion dollars which is the US national debt.

Top Picture of the Year - Time picked the picture of President Obama and the operations team during the Osama Bin laden assassination operation. My pick was the photo-shopped version of the same picture. I just think it is funny.

Worst Tweet - Congressman Anthony Weiner on Anthony's Weiner (Time's wording).

Best Gadget - Apple's iPad2 (Time)

Top Sports Story - Penn State's sex scandal and the downfall of coach Joe Paterno (Time). My opinion is that they should have cancelled the remainder of their games this season.

Best YouTube Video - My choice: Ultimate Dog Tease. This has over 82 million hits and money made from it is going to the ASPCA. Time's choice was that annoying Friday song by Rebecca Black.

Best Animal Story - The dog that was part of the Bin Laden assassination. Good choice Time. In the article, General David Petraeus said, "The capability they bring to the fight cannot be replicated by man or machine."

Best Movie - "Puss in Boots 3D". My choice because it's the only movie I saw this year and only because my daughter was in from Asheville. Movies are expensive, they make you sit through tons of previews and commercials, and then there's the talking in the theater. However we both laughed through the entire movie and you can't get 3D at home (at least not good quality). Time picked The Artist, a silent movie.....

Top Marriage Story - Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding (Time).

Worst Fashion Moment - Time's choice with which I agree. I just included the marriage story above so this would have meaning:

New Findings in Parenting - Trying to be Supermom is a recipe for depression (Time). Look out Tiger Moms.

Non Fiction Book - 1493 (Time). Interesting theory of how Columbus and team reconnected the separated worlds through ships and trade that had once been connected as one giant continent, Pangaea. If you are interested you can see the author discuss the book on C-SPAN's Book TV.

Top Green Trend - Nuclear fears following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami at the Fukushima Nuclear Complex (Time). By the way the death toll in this tragedy was 3. In fact the total number of fatalities from all nuclear accidents is 70 including 56 from Chernobyl in 1986. And by the way there were no deaths from the Three Mile Island incident in 1979 that spawned the movie, "The China Syndrome" which scared Americans away from this relatively safe and clean energy source continuing with our dependence on burning fossil fuels which causes many more deaths and pollution. Sorry for the tangent but there are still things in this world I just don't get....Oh and the death toll estimate from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami is over 10,000.

So happy new year. Look for big time politics in this election year, more unrest in the middle east, more new gadgets, and more crazy times.

How the Internet Has Changed Education

2011-12-17T11:14:34-06:00

There's no doubt that the internet has changed our lives in so many ways. As shown in the infographic below, education has not been immune.

The question is how do educators and parents decide on how much technology to use in education and which applications. There is a huge problem when kids are constantly on digital devices outside of school then come to the classroom and deal with a teacher at a chalkboard talking. Their brains are geared to switch tasks quickly, instantly Google a subject they need more information on, and communicate with their peers information, opinion, and even seek help. This causes problems as their digital activities are good for short term memory and problem solving, but it does not do well for long term memory. It's the same argument they used when I was in school for book reports. I must admit I sometimes used Cliff Notes as a source for book reports in college. For those books I couldn't tell you much of anything today. But even for the ones I did read likewise I cannot tell you much. Since then, I have discovered that I am an audio dominant learner. In fact there was a time when I subscribed to Books on CD for my daily commute and remember much more from those than the ones I read. And of the types of learning the dominant type is kinetic, that is movement or activity. This is why we did homework. It can be argued that digital learning is kinetics but lecturing using a blackboard is not. Finally one last comment about the internet in education. Many of the people who make curriculum and process decisions in education are non internet literate (note in the infographic that 1 out of 3 academic leaders consider online learning inferior). This is not a good decision model in any arena but for education I think this is very critical. So the beat goes on. If there was competition in education we might be able to determine empirically the optimum combination but alas here's another problem facing students going forward. So while the infographic above is encouraging, I am frankly pessimistic regarding education's leadership ability to adequately decide the best application of technology to further learning.

My Website & Blog Are Back Up!

2011-12-15T15:02:37-06:00

I just got my website, blog, and Foxwood email back up again. And as you would expect there is a story and a lesson. A couple of years ago I signed up with an agency ownership program out of Seattle. Included in my agency fee was website development and hosting support. Earlier this year the organization decided to get out of that part of the business and focus on marketing and training. They provided the name of a person and at first it was a seamless transition. However a couple of months ago I started to have problems with my website. Sometimes it would be unavailable but my blog and email would work. A call to the support guy was usually handled quickly even if he was in Texas fighting forest fires. Then almost a month ago I lost access to all 3. I had 3 email addresses and 2 phone numbers for my support guy. I was relentless chasing him without any success. Considering how he likes to live on the edge I checked the obituaries in Seattle. I even sent an email through LinkedIn disguised as a connection offer to a man in Seattle with a very similar name. All the while I was tweeting and sending messages to any social media site the support guy had. I went on WhoIs to check all the places where my website was found. I then began filing trouble tickets with each of them. Finally I read through my support guy's blog to see if there was a clue and I found it. He said one of his clients had a self-inflicted problem with his site and contacted the server (host) firm claiming they were my support guy. An argument ensued resulting in the hosting company dropping all of my support guy's clients including me. Now I knew what happened. But because I relied on my organization and then this support person, I did not have the proper log-ins and passwords so for a time my trouble tickets went unanswered. Finally when I contacted the sales department I got a response. After some long explanations, they turned on my site, blog, and email again. All is well. Except the final part of the process is to move everything to a local source, a friend I trust. AND to get control of the log-ins and passwords.

Actually while everything is back to normal I learned a few tricks just in case. My website could be copied and pasted from Google Cached Pages. My blog site, TypePad, had all the content from my blog but none of the videos, links, or images. And there was even a way to go to the domain company and get a bypass on my email. Thank heavens I didn't have to do that as there would have been many hours of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

So as you might expect, there are lessons. Don't assume a supplier has completely investigated a substitute if they get out of a particular service. Don't rely on an "expert" for your ownership responsibilities. Finally it's always better to do business with someone you know and trust, even if it costs more. While this adventure appears to be almost over, it certainly was not a pleasant one; and you know, I should have known better!