Best Management Practice

I just started subscribing to the WSJ recently in order to get information from "official journalists". I noticed two interesting articles on the WSJ regarding how to manage your employees and how to recruit executive talent.

The first article is great since it acknowledges you need to focus on the individuals that do all the work. However, I think it does not emphasize how you motivate people. Some people say you can motivate people by paying them a great deal of money or showing them a promising career path, but I think that is just wrong. If you have employees that are worried only about compensation or career growth, you have a fundamental issue in your organization. You need to make sure people are passionate about what they are working on, or understand how big an impact they are making on your organization. All individuals regardless of rank should always feel they are making an impact. People say you can only make a significant impact in small companies, but I think that is just an excuse. You can make a big impact in a larger company it just takes a bit more effort to make it happen. More importantly, if an individual is making an impact in your organization they are obviously going to get compensated appropriately so their concerns around monetary compensation or career growth opportunities become less of an issue.

I think the article about inflating titles with "Chief" is just demoralizing to employees that do all the work. There are obviously some game changing individuals in each industry for whom no title can do them justice. For the individuals that are not game changers, if they are not passionate about your organization why try to recruit them by inflating their title. Regardless of their rank, they need to feel passionate about the cause and want to join your corporation. More importantly, title inflation demoralizes individuals lower on the totem pole and complicates matters years down the road as organizations mature.

I may have said you need to be "passionate about your job" one too many times, but I think that is truly the key to motivation. If you are a manager and you are passionate, your enthusiasm is going to rub off on folks. If you are an individual contributor and you love what you do, you are going to do a kick ass job. If you have an enthusiastic workplace, everything will fall into place nicely and you can through the "how to manage" books out the door.

Amazing Use of the Wiimote

My bro introduced me to Johnny Lee's website over the Christmas Break. Some of the the things Johnny has built with the Wiimote and some infrared equipment is just awesome.

Ads on Good Ol' TVs versus Online TVs

I noticed an article on techcrunch talking about the effectiveness of ads on standard TV shows versus online version of TV shows. Anyone that reads this would think great you should move your advertising online, but then I noticed this article on RWW mentioning how hard it is to get a broad reach of users with scripted content online.

I think the next couple of years are going to be very interesting for the world of proprietary video. I hope there no longer is a demarcation of content from your set-top box verus what you get on your computer. Provided there is enough bandwidth all content should be available from any device at any time. That is the ultimate utopia. If advertisers and the distribution companies figure out how to build compelling and context sensitive ads that is icing on the cake for both the end user and the advertisers.

Nice Preview Tool for Firefox

A while ago I posted about "Read It Later" which is a great add on for firefox. I now found another tool "Coliris" via mixx that makes the browsing experience even better. Rather than opening each link in new tab to preserve my original page, I just preview the content quickly in a coliris pop-up and then determine whether I shoud push it to a tab or not. I just started using it this morning and it looks pretty cool.

Check out ElfYourself

The Office Max folks are putting the cool back into Brick 'n Mortar shops. The Elf Yourself tool is generating a lot of great comedic relief.

I played with it for a few minutes, and got my bro and his former colleague in a quick video. Play with it before it expires.

Day of Surprises

With Christmas nearing it seems appropriate to see some very surprising bits of news. The first article that caught my attention was about people using DVRs but not fast forward through commercials. Are you kidding me? Watching a sitcom with only 18 minutes of content for 30 is a waste of time. Except of course if Apple releases a new Mac vs PC add. Extrapolate it even further and imagine people watching a football game for 3+ hours instead of a little over an hour. So on average 30 - 40% of content on TV is just extraneous and people are willing to watch it. Pretty scary stuff. I read that in the US people spend an average of 4 hours per day on TV so that means they are wasting more than an hour a day even if they have a DVR.

Another bit of news that really surprised me was about the awareness of Google Apps. I was astonished when the article said over 90% of people questioned had never heard of Google's Application Suite. The article reinforces the fact that we are living in a very unique part of the world which revolves around all things technology. I am happy to be living here and be the certain of such great innovation, but the challenge is now to take all the great things we have picked up this area of the world and pass it to the "Long Tail".

Comcast Pricing Model

I recently moved into a new place and requested Comcast to transfer my service from one home to another. Everything went smooth, however, a week after I moved in I received a couple of ads from Direct TV, Dish, and AT&T with very cheap options to get DSL, Satellite TV, and a VOIP Phone. The satellite options were finally viable since I can face the Southern Sky from my new residence.

I did some research and I noticed I could save 50 - 70 dollars as long as I was willing to put up with the supposedly poor DSL download speeds. I decided to call Comcast and let them know I am going to cancel my service two weeks from now. The agent asked why and I said they are too expensive relative to other vendors, and within a couple of minutes she slashed my total bill by 50 bucks. I was fricken' stunned. She must have a playbook available or rather memorized when people request cancelling their coverage.

It is really disappointing that Comcast only offers a lower price when you threaten to move on. In the consumer space, transparency into pricing models is an absolute most to stay competitive and Comcast is not doing that since they pretty much monopolize the market especially in the bay area. I did a couple of searches on Google and it looks like I am not the only guy to run into this issue. Anyways, I am happy I saved 50 bucks but disappointed the way it happened.