This years AREC event is situated at the Gold Coast and in true Hollywood style, the guys at Platinum HD have provided us with a video to launch the event.

Here is a video of the wrap-up of AREC kindly provided by VisualDomain:

Tony Blamey, General Manager, Real Estate for Fairfax Marketplaces said:

The Domain mobile apps are essential property-marketing tools in the 21st Century, and the real estate industry is leading in the take-up of mobile technology

As it becomes ever-more important to connect with clients in innovative ways, the Domain mobile apps allow agents to get their properties in front of more potential homebuyers and renters, as part of the multi-platform range of marketing tools from Domain.

Domain’s mobile apps have received a number of awards in the past including being named one of Apple’s top 25 free Australian iPad apps of all time in the Lifestyle section. Domain (and Fairfax) have invested heavily in mobile technology which is now beginning to payoff as users spend more and more time using handheld devices.

Investment Property Search (IPS) allows users to search properties for sale on homesales.com.au based on their investment strategy. It prioritizes financial search parameters over location which is the prime search field for owner occupiers.

Launched this week, IPS allows users to search based on parameters such as positive or negative cash flow; rental yields and historical capital growth (based on postcode). Other property search options include suburb population trends and home ownership rates. To ensure complete transparency, IPS does not search auction or POA listings.

“Finding an investment property is all about numbers. homesales.com.au’s new IPS functionality helps consumers find potential investment properties quickly by prioritising key search parameters,” Ajay Bhatia, Director of homesales.com.au and CIO of carsales.con Ltd commented.

“The new search leverages homesales.com.au’s native and partner datasets to deliver transparent and targeted results. IPS is not about replacing existing investment advisory services but rather complimenting them,” Mr Bhatia stated.

IPS is unique to homesales.com.au, the real estate arm of carsales.com Ltd (ASX: CRZ). No investment property specific search functionality exists on other mainstream real estate sites in Australia.

“Property investment is about making informed rather than emotional decisions. Therefore it was important to build a unique service for this part of the property marketplace,” homesales.com.au General Manager Rhett Dallwitz commented.

“IPS has been designed with input from consumers and the industry alike. It is the first of a number of market-specific launches homesales.com.au is planning moving into the next financial year,” Mr Dallwitz said.

Just a few months ago, Juwai.com launched and it’s now the largest international property portal for Chinese buyers.

Now, top-5 Australian real estate portal Thehomepage.com.au is betting there is also a demand for Chinese-language advertisements in its off-the-plan section. More than 50 new-development property ads on Thehomepage.com.au have been upgraded to Chinese less than a week after the soft launch of these pages.

I’ve pasted their official press release below, but first I want to disclose that Thehomepage.com.au is a PR client of mine:

Real Estate Developers Embrace Chinese–Language Listings On Property Portal Thehomepage.com.au

Real estate developers have embraced Chinese language listings on Thehomepage.com.au. More than 50 new property development advertisements have been upgraded to appear in both English and Chinese only one week after the portal launched the new feature. Thehomepage.com.au is the first and only top-five real estate portal* in Australia is to provide listings in Chinese.

The site soft launched the Chinese–language webpages for off the plan listings in the final week of April. Developers consider this an important new marketing tool for reaching the fastest growing group of buyers in Australia.

Chinese buyers, both local and from Asia, account for about 60% of enquiries and purchases in developments across Australia, according data collected from developers by Thehomepage.com.au. Chinese buyers doubled the number of applications to purchase property in Australia last year, according to the Foreign Investment Review Board.

“The need to market to the Chinese buyer requires an effective and cost efficient channel that can work in cohesion with the other channels to deliver a truly integrated campaign” said Clive Hayes, Business Director of JWT Property, which provides a full-service integrated communication offering to the residential and commercial property sectors. “This initiative by Thehomepage.com.au will be a very useful tactic to the property industry, and I expect it to be quickly embraced.”

Thehomepage.com.au CEO Ben Stockdale said, “When Chinese want to buy off the plan, there is only one major Australian portal where they can see listings in Chinese, and that’s Thehomepage.com.au.”

Many Chinese buyers prefer new property rather than resale property. Australian law limits prohibits foreigners from acquiring established dwellings for investment purposes.

Thehomepage.com.au also places residential listings on Juwai.com, the number 1 international property portal for Chinese buyers, when ranked by number of monthly unique browsers, property listings and editorial resources.

Thehomepage.com.au’s listings are translated into Mandarin by a team of professional linguists.

 

About Thehomepage.com.au

Thehomepage.com.au enables real estate agents to reach more buyers. Agents and developers who market only on the top two property portals fail to reach the more than 260,000 monthly unique browsers who only visit Thehomepage.com.au — and not the top portals. (Nielsen Market Intelligence)

 

Notes

• Nielsen NetRatings ranks Thehomepage.com.au fifth in monthly unique browser among residential real estate portals in Australia.

-ENDS- 

Over the next 5 to 10 years the real estate industry across the country is going to undergo massive changes as we shift from a collection of state based industry’s to a true national real estate industry. As we prepare to evolve into true national industry it makes sense that we ask ourselves just what role state based real estate institutes can play in that future.

So the million dollar question is how can the REIQ, REINSW, REIV, REISA, REIT, REINT, REIACT and REIWA survive with nationalisation of the property industry?

The first nationalisation initiative in place will be National Licensing for real estate agents and a little further down the track will be the much larger Real Property Law Reform.

National Licensing

The National Occupation Licensing Authority (NOLA) allows for the national licensing of real estate agents which is due to come into effect on 1 July 2012.

The stated aim of national licensing is to remove inconsistencies between the states and enhancing consumer protection. Under the new licensing regime, real estate agents will complete standardised training to achieve a national real estate license or registration certificate. This will allow far easier mobility in our industry with real estate agents more easily able to work in other states.

National licensing is going to arrive far quicker than most people in the industry realise but the change has been coming since 2009 when the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) signed an Intergovernmental Agreement to establish a national occupational licensing system for specified occupations which includes real estate agents.

Real Property Law Reform

Harminisation of various laws across the states has gained significant traction recently and a lot of attention from the Federal Government. One of the areas receiving significant attention is property laws.

National property laws are the goal of the Property Law Reform Alliance (PLRA). The PLRA is a coalition of legal and industry associations committed to bring about uniformity and the reform of property law and procedures in Australia.

The PLRA Alliance was formed in 2003 following discussions between the Property Council of Australia and the Australian Property Law Group of the Law Council of Australia about the need for uniform real property legislation.

The membership of the PLRA is quite large but includes the Law Society from each of the states and the Real Estate Institute of Australia.

The Alliance is working for the introduction of nationally consistent property law, practices, procedures and compliance requirements throughout Australia. In doing so, it is expected that cross-border property transactions will be simpler, more efficient, and more cost-effective.

As most land in Australia is now held under Torrens Title, it is a logical area to commence the harmonisation of property law as the application of Torrens Title varies so much from state to state. The PLRA has created a draft Uniform Torrens Title Act (UTTA) which they are seeking comments for until 28th of February 2012. Real Property Law Reform is going to be a slow process but the outcome seems inevitable. It is expected that the adoption of a UTTA would also provide a basis for further national reforms, in areas such as mortgage and lease legislation.

Property Law is highly complex and a national reform is not going to happen overnight but I think national property reform is a fait accompli and the only question will be the time it takes to get in place.

Do State REI’s have a place in a Nationalised Industry?

In line with the nationalisation of our industry it makes sense to consider combining all state based institutes into one national body under the REIA banner. Under this sort of merger the current state institutes would become the state operation centres for the REIA.

In my mind the one main primary aim of each state based real estate institute is political advocacy and over the years they ave worked with the state governments on the state based legislation that effects their membership.  The different state landscapes provided the justification for their existence. But as nationalisation increases and state based differentials disappear the viability of our state institutes seem to me to  disappear along with it.

I therefore believe that to remain relevant to our industry that the state institutes need to combine under the REIA banner to create one large institute. A single powerful industry body would bring with it a consistent and more powerful advocacy for the national laws.

It’s true that the REIA in its current form already provides advocacy on national stage but it does so with minimal funding from the state institutes and whilst property laws differ from state to state the role is very minor at the moment.  A shift to harmonisation of property laws across the country will dramatically increase the this role.

Other major roles conducted by our state institutes would all seem to benefit from a larger national body and the economies of scale it would bring such as property research, training, advice, member to member and consumer to member dispute resolution.

As an example each institute would run their own training departments and CPD programs. Combining them all under one banner would provide greater economies of scale. All the major cost centres that are currently duplicated in each institute around Australia would provide significant savings in such a merger allowing for a greater return back to members. But it’s more than just cost savings.

A powerful REIA would also be able to provide real direction for our industry that we desperatley need. In the past the fractured representation of members has allowed commercial entitites to have much more power in our industry than I believe they should.  I believe that the REIA should provide leadership and direction in a similar vein to what I see NAR does in the USA>

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) in the USA provides a great model of a powerful national trade association. They provide a real difference in member recognition with its Realtor program where it has trademarked the name “Realtor”. If you engage a realtor to sell your property you know they are member of NAR.

NAR conducts political advocacy on behalf of its members and is able to do so on a very massive scale as a national body. It is allegedly the third biggest contributor to political campaigns in the country. In addition to their normal membership the NAR also conducts a range of further accreditation for additional certifications after members conduct additional study.

NAR runs the Centre of Realtor Technology (CRT) which provides a range of member and industry services in the technology space that our state based real estate institutes could only dream of. Unlike our own state institutes it does not just write about technology in monthly journals but takes an active role in the technology space for its members.

The CRT creates a range of software for the exclusive use of members and maintains technology standards and protocols  for all industry participants. It plays a leadership role in Technology throughout the industry providing training, surveys and white papers for members on technology issues.

A more efficient REIA could use some of the savings generated to provide additional member services like those above that  NAR provides it’s members.

The Australian state institutes cop some flack from members and much of it centres around the online space. Claims vary but essentially they focus on the institutes failure to counter the dominance of large industry players like Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au.   What they have done in the online space has been too little, too late and most importantly too fractured across the states which all results in a  dramatic waste of members funds.

It is interesting to note that despite many more commercial players in the space than here in Australia, NAR runs the most popular real estate website for consumers at realtor.com which is completley seperate to their website for members at realtor.org. This is a free to list website for members with a range of premium add ons but it has none of the ads tat we see fill to overflowing our subscription portals here in Australia.

What are the Obstacles?

Initially I thought the major obstacles will come from within the institutes themselves but now I am not so sure. It’s hard for people to agree to merge and essentially make their organisation and their own position redundant.  I posed this scenario to the head of one of the state institutes recently and was honestly shocked with the response which recognised the challenges involved but in essensce agreed pretty much with the concept.

I sincerely believe that the executive and board members from each of the institutes are genuine in their desire to advance the industry. Whilst they may differ in approach and they certainly cant satisfy every member’s expectations I think that they will probably be less of an obstacle that many will predict.

I think the biggest hurdle will be the mass of smaller issues that will need to be dealt with when you merge 9 separate organisations into one. That probably means the sooner the state institutes decide that this is their future and they create a working committee to identify the challenges and work through the solutions the better.

What Do You Think?

It’s time to tell us what you think in the comments section below…

Is a merger of the Real Estate State Institutes on the cards?

Will it be good for the industry as a whole?

What timeframe do you think it is going to be applicable?

Will losing the state identity of our institutes be a good or bad thing?

In todays SEO world we all use calculated guesses and practice optimisation techniques based on the SERP  we achieve through many different link building methods, ie blog posts, forum posts, article marketing web 2.0 profiles etc. as mentioned no one actually knows exactly how google will rank a site. This most recent update had really taken some of our industries players for a rough ride as some results have been dropped by 5-7 rankings overnight. Which could indicate a case of “too many eggs in one basket” as SEO is about diversification. It’s important to diversify so that when certain ranking factors are updated by google it does not throw your site around the search results. Don’t get slapped by the panda !

I noticed a certain website was completely shut down overnight as a result of google deindexing 98% of its blog network. This was a subscription network with literally thousands of members paying $50 + pm ! It just goes to show you how powerful these guys are and that there is no point trying to “trick” Google as there intelligence will catch up with you soon enough.

This most recent update seems to be aimed at providing consumers a more accurate local results and tends to be showing more local businesses, a good thing for small business however can knock around some of the bigger guys.

Google on Wednesday morning (USA Time) released a YouTube video teasing its upcoming augmented reality glasses, a pair of lenses that interacts with what you’re seeing and acts as a phone, planner, navigation system, camera and more.

I am not sure what to make of these things, I as sure as hell would not be seen dead in them, but I can see their use. Maybe if Google integrated them or allowed others to integrate the technology in sun and prescription glases.

We believe technology should work for you — to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t.

A team within our Google[x] group started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment.

Follow along with us at http://g.co/projectglass as we share some of our ideas and stories. We’d love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?

An online real estate company in the USA as created an iPhone App that lets you take a photo of any of the 90 million USA properties available and near instantaneously give you an array of information about that same property. This includes a valuation, past sales record and local sales data and much more!

This if it works like the demo suggests is pretty impressive software! It not only uses GPS but also information about the person taking the photo including where they are pointing the camera making use of iPhone’s Gyroscope, the magnetometer and the accelerometer as well as obviously their GPS!

One just wonders what company in Australia could come up with a similar application, as I am sure every single agent and prospective buyer would love this.

This application was not developed by a big portal, or even a sales database organization – it was from a online selling real estate brokerage.

Applications like this give more power to agents, buyers and vendors and the more information they hold – the more agents are going to have to make sure they are on top of all of this technology and being able to provide value added services to justify costs.

So think about what you do and how you can add value to the services you offer your clients. You could invest in an application like this for your area and stay on top of other agents!

Link: http://www.sawbuck.com/

Google yesterday announced the launch of Consumer Surveys, a new service from Google that will allow organisations to create polls to measure the success of different products, services and other ideas.

Businesses can create fully customisable surveys and collect results for just a few cents (0.10) per response. The surveys are deployed from multiple Google affiliate publishers. My take on this is that if and when this becomes available for any website to run a survey on (including www.business2.com.au) then this SaaS will become a massive success. However for now you will have to create targeted surveys across the web from approved Google Publishers.

Google Consumer Surveys: How to create surveys

A walkthrough of how to target surveys to custom audiences using Google Consumer Surveys. Learn more at http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys

Google Consumer Surveys: How to target custom audiences

A walkthrough of how to target surveys to custom audiences using Google Consumer Surveys. Learn more at http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys

Google Consumer Surveys: How to view your results

A walkthrough of how to view results using Google Consumer Surveys. Learn more at http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys

Well, today Peter Mericka had his day in court only to find that it appears that Sifris J of the Supreme Court of Victoria decided “Lawyers Real Estate Have Been Breaking The Law”.

Peter Mericka provided the following comments on his blog earlier today

“Judgement in the matter of Dr Claire Noone, Director of Consumer Affairs Victoria v Peter Mericka & Ors was handed down today (27 March, 2012). The Court ruled entirely in favour of CAV.”

To read the full text of the judgement, click here: DR. CLAIRE NOONE, DIRECTOR OF CONSUMER AFFAIRS VICTORIA v PETER MERICKA & ORS

The full 26 pages of the judgement can be read Here but in essence the case was across 5 legal issues (extract from the judgement)..

• ESTATE AGENTS ACT 1980 (VIC)- Whether defendants carrying on business as estate agents. Whether defendants required to hold estate agents licence under s 12.
• ESTATE AGENTS ACT 1980 (VIC)- Whether first and second defendants fall within the exemption granted to Australian legal practitioners under s 5(2)(e).
• ESTATE AGENTS ACT 1980 (VIC)- Exemption under s 5(2)(e)- Whether carrying on business as an estate agent falls within the ordinary function of an Australian legal practitioner.
• LEGAL PROFESSION ACT 2004 (VIC) – Whether Australian legal practitioner referred to in s 5(2)(e) of the Estate Agents Act includes an incorporated legal practice.
• FAIR TRADING ACT 1999 (VIC)- Whether statements made by the defendants to the effect that registration as an estate agent is not required were misleading or deceptive: s 9.

Extracts relating to the findings for the first 4 points above are

Conclusion

69 In my opinion, the conduct of the defendants does not fall within the exemption in s5(2)(e) of the Estate Agents Act. Consequently, Lawyers Real Estate and SLOD are and, at all relevant times, have been in contravention of section 12 of the Estate Agents Act. Mr Mericka has, at all relevant times prior to 30 November 2010, personally been in contravention of section 12 of the Estate Agents Act.

70 Further, given that Mr Mericka is and, at all relevant times, has been the sole director, secretary and (directly or indirectly) the sole shareholder of Lawyers Real Estate and SLOD, I find that he knowingly authorised or permitted the contravention of s12 of the Estate Agents Act by those companies.

71 Further, Mr Mericka has aided, abetted, counselled or procured, or been, directly or indirectly, knowingly concerned in or party to the contravention by Lawyers Real Estate and SLOD of section 12 of the Estate Agents Act.

and

76 The statements appearing on the websites suggest that neither Mr Mericka nor Lawyers Real Estate is or has been required to be a licensed estate agent to sell property. For the reasons set out above, these statements are false and misleading.

77 As Mr Mericka is and, at all relevant times, has been the sole director and secretary of these companies, I find that he has:

(a) knowingly authorised or permitted;
(b) aided, abetted, counselled or procured; or
(c) been, directly or indirectly, knowingly concerned in or party to; such conduct.

During the discussion he turned around and started blaming me and the others for the poor performance of his business.  While I have never claimed to have all the answers, i was a little taken aback.  Was all the information we have provided him wrong or was something else at play?

One very common human trait is the inability of people to take responsibility for their own actions.  People always look for someone else to blame when things don’t go to plan.  It is so much easier to look for an external reason for things rather than to do what feels infinitely harder, and look internally at what they have or have not done.

This is no difference in businesses.  Everyone who runs a business is able to come up with the perfect scenario.  They plan for products, build sales plans, hire people, and so on.  Each of these are easy in theory but more often than not fall over in execution.

When looking at why things didn’t go to plan, the most important thing to do is be realistic and honest in your assessment.  Before blaming the market, the competitors, the customers or anything else, look at how well you have executed and how real your expectations were.  More often than not you have aimed too high and not executed as well as you could.

After a few questions and a long discussion it became clear that his expectations and reality were a mile apart.  In addition it became clear that his approach to execution was a little flawed and some of his hiring decisions questionable.  While looking in the mirror was a little unpleasant he realised that lashing out at those around him not only was wrong but alienated those that could have helped him.

It is only by truly understanding that we can possibly learn.

Capital raising is always a fun process.  You need to get the balance between valuing the company as high as possible to avoid too much dilution while at the time providing the new investors with upside.  However the balance of power is often driven by your current cash position and just how desperate you are to raise money.

When thinking about capital raising, it is always important to be realistic.  You need to look at the current state of the business and then build a realistic plan for the future.  Based on this plan, you can then determine how much capital you need to raise.  One mistake often made by companies is not raising enough capital.  Companies sometimes forget that they will almost definitely incur the expenses but the revenues may be missed.  If you miss the revenues, you will need more money.  Therefore budget appropriately.

Secondly, you need to put together a document that clearly articulates the capital raising objectives.  Make sure the document is realistic and clearly articulates the current state of the business and its potential.  Of course you have to be clear about why you are raising the money and what you plan to use it for.  It is much easier to raise money to fund growth while retirement of debt is always a problem and helping existing shareholders cash out is basically a no-no.

When raising money it is important to go back to existing shareholders and give them the chance to put more money in.  You never know what they will do.  In offering existing shareholders the chance to put more into the company, it is always a good idea to give them a discount to new shareholders coming in.   Also allow them to over subscribe so that some can take up more shares if they want to.

Having offered the existing shareholders the chance to take more, getting new shareholders is clearly the next choice.  Now the selection of the shareholder is very important.  They tend to fit into a number of categories:

• Industry specialists – these can be investors who are in similar businesses in other countries.  Often they will offer access to skills as part of the investment.  This often doesn’t amount to much more than talk.  Take this route with care.
• Vendors – these are often businesses in advertising who will contra in advertising for equity.  I am always cautious a about this as the equity is locked to a certain outcome.  Perhaps it is best with this to price the equity higher or tie the equity to outcomes.
• Customers – these are often a good choice for investment as they get the business and are often wanting to share some of the upside.  Make sure you don’t give one major customer too much equity as this can cause other customers to not do business with you.  Therefore offering to all customers equally could be a good outcome.
• VC’s and Professional Investors – they are definitely a good source of capital however they often come with terms and conditions that other investors don’t.  Look a these offers carefully and then, if you take the money, fully understand what the terms and conditions are.

Recently we closed down some of our businesses. These closures were pure because the business model and products that we were working on were just not working. That is life. Things work and things don’t. However, what was interesting for me was that one of the blogs picked up that we had closed some of our businesses and many of the comments were negative and critical of us failing. It was then that I remember the Thomas Edison quote of “I failed my way to success”.

The business we closed down was called SoBox – short for social media in a box.  It was aimed at providing the real estate agent market with an out of the box social media solution.  In launching the product we discovered a few things.  Firstly that most real estate agents really dont have much of an idea about social media and more importantly have almost no desire to leverage it.  Secondly, even when we did sell the product to agents, the cost of sales didnt meant we were losing $ on each sale.  So naturally we closed the business but took the learns and leveraged them into another product.

Now some of the pundits out there called this a failure.  Technically they are correct however from the failure came learnings and from learnings came new business opportunities.  So, overall, it is possible to turn failure into success – but only as long as we plan to fail and plan to learn.

So how should businesses approach failure?

Firstly, lets get real.  People fail.  Businesses fail.  No one is perfect.  It is only through trial and error that we are able to develop new and innovative products.

When planning the launch of a product, don’t be afraid to fail.  Put in place clear milestones / expectations of how the business will perform and then track performance against these targets.  If you are not meeting expectations, then look at why this is happening.  Is it the product?  Is it the customers?  Is it the general market?  Is it your go to market approach?  What ever the reason roll up the sleeves and find out what is happening otherwise you will continue to fail to meet expectations.

Often any brand damage is reduced by small market trials where you can enter and exit the market without much noise.

If the product or go to market approach cant be fixed, don’t be afraid to pull the product.  You are better to take a product off the market to fix it than to try to fix it while still in the market.  And if you come to the conclusion that the product or business model just doesn’t work, close the business. This better than pouring good money after bad.

Hold post mortems.  Look at all aspects of the business and find out why things arent going to plan.  Talk to customers, sales people, anyone who will listen and has an opinion.  Learn learn learn!

Finally look at what you have achieved and what you have learned and then see if these learnings can be applied to a new product or service.  Too often large businesses lose the knowledge they have gained purely because different parts of the business are involved in the project.  Therefore having cross business project teams is also important so that knowledge is not lost.

The greatest crime for any business is not failing but failing to try!

We invest in Internet businesses that are generally in the classifieds or editorial segments, are in their early stages (but not at pure start up phase) and are in emerging countries.

Some when we invest, what do we look for?

First and foremost the business has to be in our sweet spot. I need to feel comfortable when I invest and to do that I need to know the type of business I am investing in. When people bring business ideas to me for investment in areas that I have no idea about, we tend to say no. The quickest way to lose money is to invest in something you are don’t really understand.

When investing, we like to invest once the business has been around a little while and have demonstrated progress. This usually means revenues (of some sort) backed by a realistic business model.

We also like to invest in realistic business plans. Too often we see the worlds biggest hockey sticks and just laugh (and cry). Management has be realistic about growth and what they can do. Too often they have their head in the clouds but their feet aren’t on the ground.

Another important criteria is the management and how they approach the business. They need to be enthusiastic, realistic, open to working with outsiders, and focused on the task at hand. In fact focus is critical. Too often start ups / early star businesses get distracted.

Finally, in looking for businesses to invest in we like fair valuations. So often I see some small company is a couple of years under its belt valuing themselves the same way as a Rigtmove, Seloger or REA Group. They have to be realistic and realise that there is significant risk in their businesses and that investors want to be rewarded for investing in the risk.

When we do invest like to work closely with management. Often we take a seat in the board, not to monitor our investments, but to help drive the business forward.  Working with management extends beyond the Board related functions – capital raising and strategy – to working on hard core operational issues.

It is by taking this approach to selecting companies to invest in and then working with them on an ongoing basis that we have managed to achieve better than average returns for the funds we look after.

For many small companies, being listed on a stock exchange is the holly grail.  It is seen as a way in which true value in the business can be released and a way in which all shareholders can freely buy and sell their shares.  However, as with all theories, reality is often a different world.

The first challenge is actually listing.  While it sounds simple, the reality is that it takes time.  It is not only dependent on how well the business is performing but also how well the markets are performing.  Often a business may be at the right time to list but if the markets suck, there will be no demand for the stock and therefore floating will be out of the question.

Of course part of the listing process is building a prospectus, spending days on the road building interest in the business and of course there are all the costs associated with floating.  Everyone will want a piece of the action!

Having floated the business, the real work has just begun.  For many small stocks the float is followed by a long protracted period of disinterest by the market.  Analysts wont cover the stock unless there is something special about the company.  Institutions, those with money, are unlikely to want to invest or build positions in a small business.  Therefore you will be left to the whim of the small funds and retail investors.  Communicating with them will be hard.

The result of all of this will most likely be a slow degradation of the share price from the listing high to some fraction of this.  You are then likely to see high volatility in the stock price driven by low volumes of turn over in the stock.  This can last for years.

Finally founders are likely to be locked with their shares for an extended period of time – up to 2 years.  Therefore losing out on the chance to sell on the post float euphoria and probably being stuck with shares at a fraction of their high.  And once the founders can trade, their just may not be much demand for the stock.

As you can see, floating may be the holly grail for many businesses however make sure it doesnt end up a poisoned chalice.

So what does a highly functional Board look like?

1. First and foremost it starts with the right structure.  This was covered more fully in yesterday’s article however, in summary, you need the right blend of experienced Board members, experts and founders to ensure the potential for the right outcomes.
2. You need to have a strong Chairperson who can drive the business forward.  The Chairperson should be responsible for setting the agenda and ensuring that the business stays on track, especially during tense discussions.  This person should NOT be the CEO or President but should be a non-executive.  They can be a major shareholder as skill sets are more important than shareholding.
3. You need to have a clear board meeting structure for the year.  My preference is a monthly phone call with quarterly face to face meetings.  The monthly phone calls can be 1 – 1.5 hours long.  The quarterly get face to face meeting should be half a day to a day.  Now each quarterly meeting should have a purpose – budgeting, strategy review, etc.  These should be agreed long before the meeting takes place.
4. Each Board meeting needs to follow a strict agenda.  This should include review of the previous minutes of the meeting, outstanding items from that meeting, a CEO / CFO report on the progress of the business, then any key strategic / operational issues that the board needs address.
5. Each Board meeting needs to have clear minutes taken and these minutes need to be circulated to the Board shortly after the meeting.  I prefer using a Company Secretary to take the minutes and help keep good board processes in place.
6. Each Board meeting needs to drive to a clear set of answers for the Management team.  It has to provide clear guidance and ensure that the Management Team are held accountable.
7. Finally, the Board has to operate in a cohesive, functional manner.  Any dysfunctional discussions should be held away from any management.

Now the major problem i come across with the Board structure of early stage companies is that they are made up of founders / managers / large shareholders.  This raises a number of problems.  If management are on a board, then who keeps the board honest?  The role of the Board has to be to keep the business on track, to hold management to the task, to push the business in the right direction and to ensure that ALL shareholders are represented.

RULE 1 – THE MAJORITY OF THE BOARD SHOULD NOT BE MANAGEMENT.

So the second issue i come across is that founders and large shareholders often make up the majority of the board.  Now in early stage companies, these shareholders are either friends or family and often are not strategic or skilled investors.  In addition these large shareholders often have a large part of their wealth tied up in the asset.  This leads to a different problem in which the Board members are often acting for themselves rather than for the business as a whole.

Founders present a different problem.  Often they are highly entrepreneurial or they have a limited skill set and this is often operational rather than managerial.  Therefore the skills in running a business are often different to the skills they have.  While being on a Board is a great educational process for them, founders have to realise that professional managers and Board members need the freedom to have input and help shape the direction of the business.

RULE 2 – KEEP THE NUMBER OF FOUNDERS / NON-SOPHISTICATED SHAREHOLDERS ON THE BOARD TO A MINIMUM 

The final challenge for any early stage business is attracting value adding experts to be on the Board.  This is often the hardest part of all.  Being on the Board has liabilities attached to it and if you are not a major shareholder but there as an expert, there has to be some personal upside.  Often experts can be attracted is the business is at an interesting stage or if there is upside.  This is where some companies have a problem in that they dont want to pay board members – however if you want someone to help you, you have to pay them.  Options and cash are a good mixture here.

RULE 3 – ATTRACT EXPERTS TO BE ON THE BOARD AND PAY THEM FOR THEIR TIME 

The other often contentious issue is the appointment of a chairman.  Some companies like to have the CEO / President and the Chairman as the same person.  This never made sense to me.  The Chairman is there to run the board and the board is there to drive the business and set direction.  Sometimes this is at odds to how the CEO / President is managing the business.  Therefore these two roles need to be separate for good corporate governance.

In the early stage of the business development, the Chairman doesnt need to be independent but does need to have the right skill levels to drive the business forward.  It is also important that the Chairman has a good working relationship with the CEO.

RULE 4 – APPOINT THE MOST QUALIFIED PERSON ON THE BOARD TO BE THE CHAIRMAN

One last thought is around board size.  In reality more than 5 is hard to manage.  Therefore i think between 3 and 5 depending on the size and age of the business.

RULE 5 – KEEP THE BOARD SIZE REASONABLE – IE < 5

How often do you sit through a meeting in which you walk out the other end going “what was that all about”?  It happens all the time when looking at new businesses.  I often ask the person doing the pitch to explain the business in 30 sec – a minute maximum.  If they cant, how will they ever explain it to a customer!

I think Apple is probably the ultimate embodiment of simplicity as the ultimate sophistication.  How often do you look at an Apple product and realise that have thought about almost everything and the packaged it into a highly attractive and incredibly simple to use package.  This takes real skill and Steve Jobs clearly knew what he was doing.

So the challenge for all of us is to firstly work out what it is we are building / doing / communicating.  I don’t mean the high level “we are building a property portal” but the more in depth “we are connecting buyers and sellers” or perhaps there is an even deeper “we are providing the advertiser with a low cost, high value marketing platform”.  What ever the real underlying proposition is, it is important to think through what it is that you are trying to do.

Secondly it is all about how do i put this into simple, easy to understand language.  Or in the case of building a website, into a simple, easy to use interface.  Look at Google.  A massive company built primarily off a single search box.  I often see property portals around the world try to put so much on the page that they forget the real reason people visit the website.  In this case it is about search, search results and the property details page.  Therefore the challenge is to make this as simple as possible, highly intuitive and without clutter (i.e. low value information).

Either way you look at it, keeping it simple is extremely hard but when you achieve it, the value created can be enormous.

Therefore, the question that all investors ask is, do you have enough capital to either reach profitability or to deliver enough results that demonstrate great progress and will ensure more capital can be raised?

So back to my friendly Russian property portal.  Their cash flow projections were based on their P&L.  The problem with the P&L was that it was extremely aggressive, especially on the revenue side.  Therefore, if they failed to meet their revenue assumptions (let alone their collection assumptions), they were clearly not going to have enough cash to fund growth.

When this occurs, management gets distracted with capital raising rather than operational growth and the business then fails to hit its growth targets.  This then has the ripple effect of needing more capital as it is often hard to pull back expenses fast enough.

So, what should management do?

Firstly, when building a P&L, build one that is conservative.  Ensure that you test it with experts and LISTEN to what they have to say.  A conservative P&L is one that you have a good chance of out performing. When building this, don’t be afraid to underestimate the revenues and over estimate the costs.

Now you have to build a cash flow budget.  Assume that all expenses are paid in the month occurred and that it takes some time to collect the revenues.

Out of this, you will now have a good idea of the true cash flow requirement of the business.  Having identified the low point in the cash cycle, then add 30%+ onto this requirement.  This should give you the amount you need to raise to fund growth.

The most important thing to remember is that nothing ever goes to plan and you will always need more money than you expect.

The other important thing to remember is always raise money when you can … as raising it when you need it means that you will get screwed down on price.

Happy capital raising

I say all of this because the process is important.  There is a flow between collaboration and exploration, to knowledge creation, to information creation.  We’ve been talking about knowledge management for ages.  Let’s face it – knowledge management has not necessarily worked out.  It’s an old topic that many people are sick of hearing about, but the truth of it is that we still don’t manage the knowledge in our organizations well.  Many of our organizations still have thousands upon thousands of documents stored in Sharepoint databases, but they are poorly versioned, not well cataloged, and hard to find.  If knowledge management practices of 10 years ago had panned out, we would have it all figured out by now.  Part of the problem is that we’ve changed technologies and user requirements rather rapidly, but at the core of the problem, we really didn’t understand what it was that we were actually cataloging.  Turns out, it was not all about knowledge management at all.

Let’s take a sample process.  If we are creating a business case, we create a task force or project team to investigate the problem, any risks, possible interactions, costs, etc.  Through this process, a significant amount of collaboration happens in the course of the investigation and discovery, after which some sort of decisions are made.  It is through the collaboration that knowledge is often created.  However, we can’t manage that knowledge that is created until the information is created in the form of the business case.  A good business case will document not only why we want to do something, but how, what were the risks and costs, and all the other components.  The business case, or the information we can catalog, is the output of the knowledge gained, that which we cannot catalog.

So we talk about knowledge management, all the while realizing that we can’t catalog what is in people’s heads.  We can only capture what they record – and this has gotten more interesting as we have gone from documents to blogs and wikis.  But the quality of that content is still in flux.  Do people actually record everything that went into their decisions?  Do they only blog about what is interesting to them?  If a high performer leaves the organization and they were a good documenter and quality blogger, how do you know that you still have all the knowledge they produced with they worked for you?

In today’s world, we talk a lot about how to create productivity gains from collaboration networks – and this is clearly important – it’s the starting point of knowledge creation.  We’ve spent years talking about knowledge management and how to catalog – and this is also important.  We’ve created knowledge bases that are not always optimized, but it’s a starting point.  What we have not done is effectively have a conversation about information and the quality of that information in the organization.  How do we actually make sure that all of our data is good data and that it’s complete?  Collaboration and knowledge is the starting point, but I think we need to start having a discussion about what is next.

I’ll be honest, these days when I’m on the bike, the barrier for me is not usually my legs or my lungs.  If I have a few rides under my belt, I’m really pretty good.  The problem is all mental.  I’m not in college anymore and I really don’t like pain.  There are times I’ll be doing an extended climb and one of my riding buddies will “attack” and while I often could follow, something in the back of my head says, “nah.”  I could follow the lead, but I know it will be painful.

Transforming HR is really, really hard work.  For much of the readership, it’s not just hard work for us, it’s even harder work for the employees we would deploy to the effort.  When our execs chose to switch out the payroll system, guess who gets to work long hours in December prior to a January 1 go-live?  We deal with a lot of pain to implement systems, both in effort as well as cash, and the ROI is not always financially obvious, but to get to the top of that hill, it’s something we have to commit to, and something our staffs need to commit to.

In understanding the work behind HR transformation, there are a few things to remember:

• People actually don’t like change.  When you change their processes, they will resist doing something different than what they have done from years.  It’s not that they don’t want to support better processes, but a certain amount of fear arises when they are unsure how well they will perform in the new environment.
• People resist making others change.  HR transformation is just that – we are changing ourselves.  But teams often protect people internally realizing that friends will lose jobs, or be forced to make unwanted shifts and compromises.
• We get to do multiple jobs for a significant amount of time.  Not only are we going to have real jobs to do, but there will be project roles as well.  I don’t care if you bring an army from one of the large consulting firms, the internal team is going to be burdened with more work.
• Outsourcing done right is hard.  Organizations don’t remember the depth of retained organizations that are needed, SLA’s need to be formulated to be specific and measurable, and internal staff are resistant to seeing their jobs performed differently than how they did them themselves.

Often when we deploy and new system that has the opportunity to be transformational, we focus too much on the external.  We train managers, communicate to employees, figure out who the main audiences are that we need to convert.  We assume that our own people are already bought in.  All I’m saying, is we can spend some time to look internally.  Give them some love and attention.  Encourage and motivate them.  Otherwise you’ve got a Justin at the top of the hill looking down, wondering where the hell I am and why I didn’t make it up there with you.  It was just too much pain.

We often time our HR technology projects based on fictitious end dates.  Sure, there are a few out there that make a whole lot of sense.  It’s really nice if payroll implementations can go live on January 1.  It’s nice if new benefits vendors go live in time for a new open enrollment season.  But every once in a while, our CEO tells us in October that we had better have a new, global talent management system by January 1 in time for February performance reviews.  Huh?

In most of our projects, we have actually messed up our overall project timelines.  We don’t spend enough time thinking about some fairly significant parts of an implementation.  We’re all about getting the requirements blueprint down and hitting the config tables.  As you all know, I’m a big fan of prep.  When we rush into implementations, there just isn’t enough time to reengineer our processes and realign what we are doing to our core HR strategies.  We find out over and over again that we’ve simply reimplemented the same processes or the same config and not made HR any better.  We find out that we didn’t spend time cleaning up our data and our reports are still horrible.

1. Map to our mission and create actionable measurements of progress – Just because we map to our mission in the business case to implement a new system, does not mean we can stop measuring success.  Success needs to be measured before implementation, during implementation, and score carded repeatedly after go live.
2. Improve the quality of our data – data cleansing is not always sufficient.  Yes, it’s true that we should not just import data and begin a new system with the same crappy data that we had before, but it is equally wrong to clean the data without addressing the fundamental problems that created the bad data in the first place.  More on this in the next bullet.
3. Redesign our processes – Process redesign is not just for the sake of aligning process with the new technologies.  It’s an opportunity to address other issues within your environment.  Often, our processes are actually the cause of data issues we have.  Because we don’t use high quality data practices throughout our workflow, we end up auditing data on the back end when we catch only a fraction of the issues rather than ensuring high data quality throughout.

If we miss a step, it does not mean we don’t go live.  Nor does it mean that our implementation was not any good.  However, it might mean that our long term success is suboptimal.  For HR to have continued credibility with upper management, we have to do all the steps that it takes to create long term success.

If I can get all of this personally for $165, I’m trying to figure out why it feels like I don’t have access to this type of data as an HR professional.

• Case management tools are readily available:  Call centers do it.  If I go to my HR call center, they are probably tracking the number of cases each rep takes, how long it takes them to clear a call, etc.
• Transaction data is usually available, but takes some effort:  I suppose I could audit my database tables to see how many employee name change processes there are and exactly how long they are taking.  But it’s not like I’m going to make my data entry staff use an extra minute to create a case for a 2 minute transaction.  Adding 50% effort to a small transaction is rather silly.
• Data would be pretty impossible to get in an automated way: I mean, how much time does my staff spend in department meetings?  Not project meetings or something useful, I mean department get togethers, communications for what’s going on in the organization.  I’m not saying that this is not important stuff, but I had to run an activity analysis once just to prove to an organization that some of their people were spending 5% of their time in department meetings.

All I’m saying is that I feel like I should have a much better handle on my organization.  If I want to measure effectiveness, we seem to have dashboards for that.  Similar to my example where my bike stats can measure fitness, our dashboards can measure performance, talent acquisition, turnover, etc.  But similar to how a scale would then measure the miniscule core details of why I’m getting fitter (or not), I don’t feel like I have a dashboard for that.   For another example, we track training really well, but I think most of us would acknowledge that learning happens outside of training, and we don’t track real learning activities that well at all.

We’ve come a long way in the last [number] of years.  I’m hoping that in 3 more years, we can look back at 2011 and think, “god I’m glad we have this stuff in (in 2014).”  But no matter how far we go in the next [number] years, there will still be critical gaps.

1. I actually weigh myself 4 times a day when I’m home.  It’s a California thing. [back]

www.cedarcrestone.com/survey/systematicHR.html

For those of you who are actually going to read this, there are several surveys out there that the industry counts on for trending year over year. How much are people spending, what systems are being bought, what functions are getting the most focus, and how are users reacting? We’re always interested in finding out about emerging trends and the last few years have seen us go from talking about things like collaboration to actually implementing them.

I’m a big proponent of benchmarking. While I realize that any benchmark is to be taken with a grain of salt, or many grains, it’s still invaluable “directionally” as to whether you are heading in the right direction at the right pace. I’ve decided over the years that saying an organization should peg itself to being at the “75th%” only leads to trouble, but being able to say “we’re ahead of the curve, and we’re focusing on many of the same things as our peers” is both comforting and strategically helpful.

The point being, CedarCrestone’s survey is the largest survey out there. They get not hundreds, but thousands of respondents. If any of you out there ever hire a guy like me, you depend not only on my experience gained from prior clients, but also that I’m keeping up with all of you through tools like this survey. It’s only as good as the number and people who respond though.

In the meantime, there was a very interesting Bill Kutik show a few weeks back where Lexy Martin discusses the origins, objectives and surprises of the HR Systems Survey www.billkutikradioshow.com.

Apparently in a new poll, fully 50% of the US population registered with the Republican party believe this¹  I mean, COME ON!!!! Seriously?  I remember having an argument with my uncle back in early 2002.  Before the US “shocked and awed” Iraq, there was a pretty large part of the US population that was quite sure we would never find WMD’s there.  The evidence that Saddam didn’t have WMD’s was actually stronger than the evidence that he did.  And listen, I’m sure the other side does it too.  I just can’t give you examples because I’m sure I’ve bought into all of the left’s version of crap as a left leaning Democrat.  (Please don’t stop reading because of that)  At least I’ll admit it.

We lie.  Does not matter what side we’re on.  We lie to get what we want.  No, don’t call it manipulating the truth.  There is no truth in the tools that many politicians use to coerce their voting populace to give them money and votes.

How many of our organizations do we describe as “political”?  We politic to get ahead, to get funding, to get systems, to get employees, to get what we want.  Even though we all decry how much we hate it, we all play the game to some degree. In some cases (Mau Mau sympathizer??) we’re just making up crap.  In other cases, (WMD’s) we might actually believe we have the right information, or have manipulated the data to say what we want it to say.  ROI studies are probably the best example.  We’re big believers in ROI not just so we can get funding, but so we can get executive sponsorship.

There is an art to presentation and telling a story.  Crafting an effective story is truly the difference between getting change and not getting it, whether it’s a sale, executive sponsorship, funding, etc.  At the end of the day, the story is about conveying emotion, not data.  We use data as a tool, but we realize that the data can skew the emotion of what we’re trying to change by many degrees.  Knowing this, we sometimes  manipulate the data.

I’ll be honest in saying that every now and then the data surprises me.  I’ll go back to colleagues saying, “is this really telling me what I think it’s telling me?”  The result is going back and re-cutting the data several more ways to validate the results, and then, instead of crafting new results and “spinning the message,” going back to the client and admitting, “this is not what we expected.”

I recently did a survey with one of my clients which was supposed to tell me what their functional and system weaknesses were.  Instead, the data I got back was crap (self described).  It took me a couple days and many conversations to realize that the result I wanted (knowing what areas they needed to target to improve service delivery) was never going to materialize.  Instead, a completely new and unexpected story started to unfold in front of me.  Upon reanalysis and looking at the data in a completely different way, the client had deeper issues than functionality and technology.

Sometimes we know what we want, we get some data, and it’s just not corroborating our story.  But we end up telling our story anyway.  But you know what? Somewhere in the data lies a truth which is waiting to be uncovered, and that truth is stronger than any fictional story we want to tell.  It’s hard work, and it isn’t always the direction we want to go, but get to the bottom of it.  There’s no point being 3 years down the road later and wondering why anyone thought the Mau Mau thing was anywhere close to real.

1. Joe Klein, “Huckabucking.”  Time Magazine, March 11, 2011.  Page 15. [back]

How about this: ¹

1. Measure the time of day employees log into their PC in the morning.
2. Measure the time of day employees log out of their PC in the afternoon.
3. Measure the cost per day per trip (expenses) calibrated to some standard.
4. Measure the number of sick days on Monday and Friday.

I mean, why would you wait 6 or 12 months?

• If your employees are (on average) coming to work later or leaving earlier, they are less engaged.
• If the aggregated cost of a trip to NYC costs more per day, employees are “fudging” their expenses, and they are less engaged.
• If Monday and Friday sick time is increasing (faked sick time), they are less engaged.

I mean, come on, we want to have close to real time measures, right?  I’m not saying that employee engagement actually changes on a day to day basis, but charted weekly, you could get some really cool trending data and identify exactly when the engagement curve increases or decreases.  You could then correlate all of the events that happened in that timeframe and figure out what is actually causing increases or decreases in engagement.  You could also isolate specific groups and populations (sample size would have to be large enough).  Say a VP leaves and is replaced, and 6 months later employees are staying at work later.   Or, the cost of a meal in NYC seems to be getting higher for a specific project team – are they celebrating, or are they all depressed and eating more?

How cool would it be to then look at performance in correlation with a weekly trend in engagement?  This is assuming that we start managing and developing our employees on an ongoing basis rather than once a year, but the possibilities are out there.

1. The idea for this post came from:  Ariely, Dan.  “CEO’s probably think of their employees as more like rats in a maze than as people.”  Wired Magazine, UK Edition.  April 11, 2011.  Page 44 [back]

I should mention here once more that this was all years ago.  I now own a Motorola Droid 2 Global on the Android platform, after having owned the Motorlola Droid 1 and the Droid 2.  Absolutely love these phones.  I don’t know about you, but I have basically owned the popular cell phones of whatever era we were in (iPhone excepted since until very recently it was not available on my wireless provider of choice). I had that huge motorola flip phone in the late 90s, had the nokias like everyone else around the turn of the century, been given the blackberries by my employers, and I’ve been on the motorola droid for the last couple of years.

Phones are popular not because of their technology. They are popular because of what they do for us. Sometimes its the image. We all remember theMotorola Razer (or something like that – i didn’t own one of those) that everyone loved because they were small. We remember the nokias because at the time they were the simplest to use. We realize that many of us bought iPhones even though they were useless as phones in the US. The point being that the choices had almost nothing to do with technology. We sacrificed the ability to make phone calls on a phone so we could buy an apple product that had apps.

The point is this, if you have to explain why your product is better, your product has failed, and you will fail in marketing it. All too often, we deploy new HR systems and tell our clients (employees and managers) how great it will be that they have new tools and self service, only to find out that they hate the new system since they can no longer delegate manual tasks to their assistants – that we have actually just given them more work. We continuously fail in our change management programs for a large number of factors, but one of those facts is definitely hat we are trying to sell the wrong thing. It’s not about what they can do with the technology, it’s what the technology can do for them. (I am feeling like a Kennedy at the moment i suppose.)

In a perhaps more appropriate appropriate approach, applications like alert management must be acknowledged to put more activity on the individual manager’s proverbial table. Indeed, many a survey have shown that manager activity either stays the same or increases any time we give them more technology, but we keep advertising how much easier their lives will be. Instead, we should be owning up to the fact that their lives get busier and more complex, and that’s not a bad thing. The whole point of modern human resources is t hat we continuously get better at managing our people. What are our direct managers if not people managers? Sure, they have to manage activity and process, but it’s the people who have to execute those activities and processes. The technology enables managers to actually do their jobs better, and sometimes just to do their jobs. The fact that more work comes with doing jobs that they are supposed to have been doing all along is merely a byproduct of the technology. sure, you get more work, but now you can do it effectively. In the end, you’ll have happier people, they will stick around longer, have stronger capabilities, and you’ll look really really good.

Or, you can be like Motorola a decade ago when Nokia was cleaning their clock. Instead, give them something they can use, and understand easily. “It’s your job, dammit, and we’re going to make you better at it.” If we have to explain the technology, we’ve already failed.  Today, Motorola has transformed the market and you see Motorlola and iPhones everywhere, but not so much Nokia anymore (in the US).  Turns out that the technology is important, but it’s really about the experience.

• “Eh, voila!” universal for “eh, voila!”
• “Ah, asodeska” Japanese for “I understand”  (sp?)
• “Bo ko dien” is Taiwanese for highly unlikely or that’s ridiculous. (sp?)
• “Oh shiitake” (shitzu is also appropriate), is an imperfectly polite way of saying “oh &#!+”

Basically, these are phrases that i love, but at least the latter two are meaningless to most people i say them to. I could of course go to Japan and most people will know what I’m talking about when i tell them I understand them, but they will then look at me funny when i exclaim in the name of a mushroom in anger.

We face the same problems when we talk about data calculations in HR . The most common of which is the simple headcount calculation. “Simple?” you ask. I mean, how hard can it be to count a bunch of head that are working in the organization on any particular day, right? The smart data guys out there are scoffing at me at this very moment.

First, we put on the finance hat. Exactly how many heads is a part time person? HR exclaims that is why we have headcount versus FTE . But finance does not really care, and they are going to run a headcount using a fraction either way.

Second, we put on our function and division hat. Every division seems to want to run the calc in a different way. And then there are realistic considerations to be made, such as the one country out there that outsources payroll, and does not have a field to differentiate a PT versus FT person. or the country that has a mess of contractors on payroll, and can’t sort them out.

Then you put on the analytics hat, and realize that when you integrated everything into your hypothetical data warehouse, the definitions for other fields have not been standardized around the organization, and you can’t get good head counts of specific populations like managers, executives, and diversity. I mean, is a someone in management a director and above? Or is she jut a people manager? How many people does she have to manage to be in management? Are we diverse as an organization simply because we have a headcount that says we are more than 50% people of color even though 2000 of those people are in Japan where the population is so homogenous that any talk of non Japanese minorities is simply silly?

Then you put on your math hat and some statistician in the organization tells you that you can’t average an average, or some nonsense like that.

So the Board of Directors comes to HR and asks what the headcount of the organization is. You tell them that you have 100,000 employees, plus or minus 10%. Yep, that’s going to go over really well.

I’m not saying its an easy discussion, but all it really takes is getting everyone into the same room one (OK, maybe over the course of a couple of weeks) to get this figured out. I’ve rarely seen an organization that is so vested in their own headcount method that they can’t see the benefits of a standardized calculation. I fact, most of the segments within are usually clamoring for this and we just have not gotten around to it yet, or we think they are resistant. In the end, it’s really not so hard, and we should just get to it.

Asodeska?

There are some organizations that are quite liberal with knowledge management.  Many technology companies deploy blogs and wikis and actively encourage employees to write and participate.  Many brick and mortar companies won’t deploy enterprise social platforms because they are afraid of what might come out.  Rather than encouraging the discourse (ALL of which will happen anyway), many of us have suppressed it based on a fear of “bad behavior.”

The problem about this is not about trust.  It’s about generations.  Unfortunately, many of us (I’ll just draw a line at 35 years old and up), realize that large corporations have not been democratic societies.  We work in states that are oligarchical at best.  Even in companies where the corporate center does not have much power over divisions, the individual divisions can command the employees at will.  Those in the workforce in their 20’s have no acceptance of such a model.  We’ve always talked about them as being insistent on having access to decision-making, being vocal and contributory, and demanding the be part of the conversation in general.  They have grown up in a world where technology has democratized the world, and it’s their expectation that data and information is part of their realm.

Evidence supports that actual instances of “bad behavior” are so low that it’s really not worth being afraid of – and the community will generally self police itself.  People realize for the most part that the conversations that happen in the workplace are different than the conversations that happen without – and the 5 horror stories you hear each year are insignificant compared to the potential for collaboration you have.  We can’t control the thinking.  Nor can we control the content.

Between everything that has been going on in the Middle East and of course the earthquake in Japan, I think April will be a current events month.  My thoughts and best wishes go out to all those throughout the world as they struggle in their various ordeals.  (written a while back obviously – sorry)

INDEPENDENT DIGITAL MEDIA TO LAUNCH WEDDING SITE THEKNOT.COM.AU

Independent Digital Media (IDM) has announced a significant step in the creation of its high-quality women’s lifestyle portfolio of websites with an innovative, one-stop wedding site, TheKnot.com.au, set to launch in October 2009.

IDM has entered into a license deal with the world’s #1 wedding website TheKnot.com, which has an average of 2.3 million unique browsers globally per month, to launch the hugely popular site in Australia.

“TheKnot.com already boasts more than 31,000 monthly Australian-based unique browsers, which gives us a strong local audience from day one,” said IDM’s Publisher Marina Go.

“IDM differentiates itself from competitors through innovation and elevating both the user experience and the advertiser experience, and this new site will be a perfect example of this approach.”

The site is set to become the most comprehensive and integrated wedding site in the country, a mix of locally produced editorial and international content.

Former Westfield’s whatswhat.com.au Editor Alicia Richardson has been appointed Editor, and Conde Nast New York’s former Accessories Editor for Modern Bride Magazine Tania Riddell has been appointed Fashion Editor.

“We’re so excited to be working with such a strong editorial team. Together we’ll collaborate to combine our vast archives with fresh local wedding planning content, creating an inspirational and practical resource for Australian brides,” said The Knot Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief Carley Roney.

TheKnot.com.au will join IDM’s beauty site PRIMPED.com.au, which launched in August last year and is now considered Australia’s leading premium, dedicated beauty website.

“Our goal is to launch five key online lifestyle brands. PRIMPED.com.au has beauty covered and we are confident TheKnot.com.au will become the market leader in the bridal category,” said IDM’s Deputy General Manager James Hannan.

“With the Australian wedding market worth $5 billion, 110,000 weddings a year and the average price of an Australian wedding at $30,000, TheKnot.com.au not only has broad appeal, but will cater to a relatively recession-proof market.”

Site features include:
• Unique format of searchable directories of everything from gowns to jewellery to flowers to honeymoons
• Photo galleries of ideas for all wedding elements from engagement to reception
• Advice on etiquette
• Planning tools covering budgets, guest lists, gift registers and seating plans
• A virtual scrapbook
• Community forums
• Real Weddings

TheKnot.com.au landing page, live from 3rd August, features a competition to win a Palazzo Versace escape prize; and a there is a display advertising package to be won for clients who sign up to join the directory with an enhanced listing from launch.

From: ##### <…..>
To: Seth Yates <….>
Sent: 27 March 2009 12:38
Subject: Out of Office AutoReply: Are you still there?

The person cannot be found

The person you are looking for might have been removed, had their  job changed, or be permanently unavailable.
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Please try the following:

* Try send your email to someone who still works at ###COMPANY NAME REMOVED####.
*If you sent this email by clicking a link, contact the Web site administrator to alert them that the link is obsolete.
*Click the Back button to try another link.

HTTP Error 404 – User or recipient not found.
Internet Information Services (IIS)

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Technical Information (for support personnel)

*Go to Microsoft Product Support Services and perform a title search for the words HTTP and 404.
*Open IIS Help, which is accessible in IIS Manager (inetmgr), and search for topics titled Web Site Setup, Common Administrative Tasks, and About Custom Error Messages.

Ilya Grigorik of Igvita has proposed and built a collaborative Map Reduce system in JavaScript that allows browsers to dive in and use their CPU to do some things.

Christian Johansen has released Juicer a very nice Sprocket-esque tool for packaging and managing your JavaScript AND your CSS.

It has taken all of the best practices and put them in one tool, including:

• resolve dependencies for JavaScripts and CSS files
• combine files
• add cache busters to URLs inside CSS files
• cycle asset hosts for URLs in CSS files
• minify files (currently only with YUI Compressor, later others as well)
• check syntax of JavaScripts with JsLint before they’re minifyed

The cache buster feature is quite cool. Take a look at the output of these commands: