Aussie Rules

Dicken Doe

(Episode 384; 13 minutes 17) Many business decisions are based on asking customers how they intend to behave. Or they’re made from conclusions based on whatever data is available for analysis.

Dicken Doe from Beyond Analysis says a lot of the time people can draw the wrong inference from partial information or ineffective methodologies. He says it’s important to look at what customers are actually doing. It might lead you to question how you use some conventional techniques, like customer segmentation and catchment area analysis.

In today’s BTalk Australia podcast you’ll hear why catchment areas work particularly badly in Wales and why a travel agency in Sydney’s wealthier suburbs could be a bad idea.

We’ll discover why some of your assumptions about customers’ predictive behaviour might be plain wrong and find out why is this happening?

Have you got other examples of conclusions that turned out to be wrong? Add them to the Talkback section at the end of this post.

Subscribe to BTalk Australia on iTunes.

View all BTalk Australia podcasts here.

Fortune magazine has just named Steve Jobs as the CEO of the Decade.

The edition features a number of stories about Steve Jobs including this wonderful article about the 21 Jobs-related books that have been published. Besides a terrific quote “He would have made an excellent king of France” by a former colleague, the author defines the books as falling into one of three genres:

1. Genius: when he is developing some new product.
2. Creep: discussing his personality flaws when he was ousted from Apple by Scully.
3. Creepy Genius: when he returns to Apple and releases the iPod and iPhone.

However the question I am trying answer is what is Steve Jobs’ EQ?

If the first step in EQ in understanding your core emotions it would appear that Steve Jobs has invested considerable time and effort is trying to work himself out. Whether he has succeeded or not is moot. The Fortune article quotes Larry Ellison as saying Steve has never been motivated by money yet on the other hand being enormously proud that Apple is now the most highly valued company in Silicon Valley. Steve is regarded by many observers has having poor self-control of his emotions, which the second stage of EQ.

In her excellent article The downside of being nice. Fiona Smith describes Jobs as screaming, crying and making threats when the colour of new NeXT vans did not precisely match the colour of the exterior paint of the new manufacturing facility. Managers had to spend precious hours and thousands of dollars getting an exact match.

On the other hand Steve Jobs does appear to have a terrific ability to attract, hire and motivate high quality people. In my previous blog I related the famous story of his recruitment of John Scully at MOMA: “Do you want to change the world or sell sugared water for the rest of your life?”

I also said what made Steve Jobs interesting is that his personality seemed combine the conflicting components of stubbornness and flexibility. His very keen focus on what is visually attractive and practical, combined with dismissal of customer research make me think that he is an Artist-Hustler with low Normal. The two components that have the most empathy with other people are the Artist and Hustler and being strong in both these components makes Jobs particularly good at working out what makes people tick and a terrific interviewer. In addition his ability to communicate a vision combined with ability to change tack means that he will be good at relationships. Thus in summary his social EQ is extremely high while I would rate his personal EQ as probably average due to his low self-control.

Morgan Stewart

(Episode 383; 12 minutes 56) Facebook was set up as a networking site, so people could talk to each other. So it’s no surprise that they don’t want this social engagement to be interrupted with marketing messages. Yet some companies are using Facebook as an effective part of their marketing program. So how do you market to people who don’t want to be marketed to?

Morgan Stewart is the Director of Research and Strategy at Indianapolis based one-to-one marketing solutions agency ExactTarget. They carried out some research in the US recently that showed that 70% of Facebook users don’t want marketing on the site, but Morgan says there are different intepretations on what people mean by marketing. For example, they don’t mind a message reaching them if it’s an exceedingly good deal for something they are particularly interested in.

In today’s BTalk Australia Morgan provides some useful advice about how to use Facebook as part of your marketing activity.

Have you had success with Facebook in your marketing activity? Or, conversely has it taken a lot of time for not much in the way of results? Add your views in the Talkback section at the end of this post.

Subscribe to BTalk Australia on iTunes.

View all BTalk Australia podcasts here.

Juliet Bourke

(Episode 382; 13 minutes 12) At the start of 2010 the new National Employment Standards come into being. The standards include:

- maximum weekly hours of work
- parental leave and related entitlements
- annual leave
- personal / carer’s leave and compassionate leave
- community service leave
- long service leave
- public holidays
- notice of termination and redundancy pay

There’s also a requirement to respond to requests from employees for flexible working arrangements. Juliet Bourke, a Partner at Aequus Partners, says many employers are not aware of their obligations.

In today’s BTalk Australia Juliet talks through what you need to be doing and the consequences of not following these new flexible working arrangements.

Will these new arrangements work? How ready are you? Add your comments in the Talkback section at the end of this post.

Subscribe to BTalk Australia on iTunes.

View all BTalk Australia podcasts here.

In a survey commissioned by HSBC Bank International, Australia came in second, behind Canada, as the overall preferred destination for expat workers (or number one in the Asia Pacific region, if you really want to push it).

Here are a few more findings pulled from the report.

• The survey revealed that the land of sun, sea and sand has the ingredients for a healthier life, as almost half (45 percent) of expats living in Australia reported experiencing a marked improvement in their personal health.
• When asked to provide the top five reasons for staying in Australia, expats are much more likely to name the general environment and quality of life for their children than anywhere else (48 percent compared to the global average of 33 percent). Unsurprisingly, 83 percent mention that the weather is one of the best reasons for living in Australia.
• What commute? Just 15 percent [of expats in Australia] have issues with their journey to work.
• Expats living in Brazil are the most likely to go home at least once a year, with almost all (94 percent) doing so. This contrasts with expats living in Australia, where a significantly lower number (43 percent) of expats living there go home at least once a year.
• Over a third (41 percent) of expats living in the UK find it difficult to sort out suitable accommodation. This differs significantly to Australia … where finding accommodation is relatively simple — just one-fifth — find it difficult.
• Australia is also among the top five countries in terms of quality of accommodation, entertainment and family life.
• Living in Australia also allows expats to make purchases that they may not be able to do elsewhere. Over half (56 percent) of Australia-based expats claimed to own a property compared with one-third (31 percent) of expats globally.

You can download the full HSBC report here.

And check out the BNET feature Are You Expat Material?

Meredith Fuller

(Episode 381; 8 minutes 52) The Christmas and Aussie summer holidays are just a month away. The party season is now underway. For some people it can be a danger period, as you pay the price for inappropriate behaviour. For others work functions mean tedious nights of talking to colleagues you wouldn’t choose as friends.

So how do you survive Christmas parties and maintain your professional integrity? If you’re the boss, what responsibilities do you have? How should you behave and what responsibility do you have for the behaviour of others?

On today’s BTalk Australia I talk to Meredith Fuller, writer, psychotherapist, psychologist and careers counsellor, about navigating your way through the work party.

You might have other tips to add? Use the Talback section at the end of this post.

Subscribe to BTalk Australia on iTunes.

View all BTalk Australia podcasts here.

Last week, Phil Dobbie spoke to Richard Denniss, executive director at The Australia Institute, on National Go Home on Time Day. Well, it’s come around — today, November 25, is the day. And to commemorate the occasion, I thought I’d present a list of seven tips from Sage Business Australia — tips that will hopefully help you catch that early train home.

1. “Email alerts” can be evil. Turn your emails off for one hour a day. This allows you to hone in on the task at hand, pay full attention to it and complete it with minimal interruptions. I bet you can now complete your activity in half the time.
2. Company meetings are the key to employee happiness. Set a dedicated team meeting once a week or fortnight. Employees can bring questions or ideas to this meeting. This saves time and ensures both the employer and employee is not continually interrupted throughout the day with regular queries. This can also boost staff morale as there is a dedicated time for them to share ideas.
3. RAF — Read, Action or File. Here’s a simple system used for email management to ensure you aren’t double handling correspondence. Read: Look at each email and decide on the first view if it needs to be answered right away. Action: If the email needs to be answered, action it then and there and cross it off your to-do list. File: If the email can wait, file it in a suitable folder (by client or by employee) until you have time to action it. To ensure you don’t forget to complete the task, red flag the email for follow up.
4. Knowledge growth. Set aside 15-20 minutes a day for reading both online and print news. You save more time by concentrating solely on one task and absorbing all the information, than opening several news sites during the day and trying to read and concentrate on multiple tasks.
5. Your online diary can be your best friend. Block out your meetings in an online diary accessible to all staff and keep it up-to-date. This not only ensures you are on time to meetings but it also ensures you are never double booked.
6. The cc: in emails stands for “causes confusion”. Don’t cc: everyone on an email unless it’s essential. People can automatically assume that their inclusion means they must take action leading to double-up on tasks or outcomes. This impacts productivity and also creates an unnecessary volume of extra emails in inboxes.
7. Use your legs. Look beside you — your colleague could be sitting just metres away. If so, don’t send an email to them asking them to do something. Stand up and walk over to their desk. It saves you both time and ups your fitness levels.

Paul Steffens

(Episode 380; 13 minutes 34) The Queensland University of Technology is participating in a four year study following the development of 1,400 new and young firms in Australia. Associate Professor Paul Steffens is one of the leads on the project.

Based on the findings from the Comprehensive Australian Study of Entrepreneurial Emergence (CAUSEE) study, Professor Steffens has come up with 10 commandments for successful entrepreneurs. We discuss them and other findings from the survey in todays BTalk Australia podcast.

Here are the 10 commandments:

1. Spend a lot of time on it
2. Be action focused
3. Be adaptable
4. Plan with care
5. Be frugal with money
6. Start in an industry you know well
7. If you don’t know the industry team up with someone who does
8. Don’t be concerned about having the right education
9. Don’t worry about why you got involved
10. Make sure you network

Want to add some commandments of your own? Use the Talkback section at the end of this post.

View the report here.

Subscribe to BTalk Australia on iTunes.

View all BTalk Australia podcasts here.

Chris Morris/Ray McQuillan

(Episode 379; 10 minutes 26) The role of the CIO is going through a transformation. Although many come through the traditional technology route, many are now coming from other parts of the business. The IT strategy is also being heavily influenced by the CFO.

These changes are being driven a lot by cloud-style services and a reducing reliance on in-house infrastructure. On today’s BTalk Australia, to find out more about how this is transforming decision making within a business I talk to Chris Morris from IDC Asia Pacific and Ray McQuillan from Verizon Business.

What do you think are the ideal attributes for a CIO? Add your thoughts in the Talkback section at the end of this post.

Subscribe to BTalk Australia on iTunes.

View all BTalk Australia podcasts here.

What kicked off this blog was a excellent article by Fiona Smith in the Australian Financial Review (16 November 2009): The downside of being nice.

The thrust of the article was that while every management book in recent years has stressed the importance of workplace harmony, there is a counter argument personified by Steve Jobs. Fiona quotes how Bob Sutton describes Steve Jobs as the successful archetypal asshole in his book The No Asshole Rule. I then went on to google Bob Sutton+Steve Jobs and got this great post.

Also I discovered that Bob Sutton was the same Robert Sutton who is a co-author with Jeffery Pfeffer who I have already blogged about.

Closing the circle got me thinking how much EQ does Steve Jobs really have?

In the late 1980s I read Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple : A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future by John Scully. The part I really remember was how Steve Jobs recruited Scully to be CEO of Apple. After several meetings Scully and Jobs went and spent several hours looking at paintings at MOMA. According to Scully no work was discussed except right at the end when Jobs turned to Scully and said: “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?” If EQ consists of being able to both analyse someone’s core emotions and then gain their co-operation through this knowledge, one could only conclude that the EQ of Jobs is very high indeed. It was a perfect pitch.

In the book Scully goes on to describe how he orchestrated Jobs’ firing after a power struggle in 1985. And in his memoir, Sculley dismissed Jobs’ vision for the company. “Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products company,” Sculley wrote. “This was a lunatic plan. High tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product.” As so often occurs with predictions, 100% wrong. Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. The company was on its knees. He then went on to launch two of the most successful hi-tech consumer products ever: the ipod and the iphone. Fortune Magazine in its 23 November 2009 edition has just named him the CEO of the Decade. So what does make Steve Jobs tick?

Part of the answer can be found in this long and carefully researched article: The Trouble With Steve Jobs.

Two quotes stand out. This by a former employee:

Often Jobs would suddenly “flip,” taking an idea that he’d mocked (maybe your idea) and embracing it passionately — and as his own — without ever acknowledging that his view had changed. “He has this ability to change his mind and completely forget his old opinion about something,” says a former close colleague who asked not to be named. “It’s weird. He can say, ‘I love white; white is the best.’ And then three months later say, ‘Black is the best; white is not the best.’ He doesn’t live with his mistake. It evaporates.” Jobs would rationalise it all by simply explaining, “We’re doing what’s right today.”

The other was by Apple director Levinson, describing the time when Jobs discovered he had pancreatic cancer in October 2003. For nine months he tried alternative treatments before finally submitting to successful surgery. Of course this was a major issue for the Apple Board, knowing the news would cause a major drop in the share price. Levinson and another director, Bill Campbell, tried to persuade Jobs to have the surgery. “There was genuine concern on the part of several board members that he may not have been doing the best thing for his health,” says one insider. “But Steve is Steve. He can be pretty stubborn.”

How do you reconcile flexibility and stubbornness in one personality? Does this help or hinder your level of emotional intelligence. I will try an answer this question in my next post.