New Business Ideas 4 U

Posts Tagged ‘technology’

Are you a creator, a critic, a collector, a joiner, a spectator or an inactive? I bet you don’t know. And I have to confess I don’t know for sure what I am either.

And does it matter?

Now that question I can answer, based on the ideas proposed in Groundswell, our book of the month for January. Yes, it does matter. In fact it matters a lot!

The classifications are those defined by Forrester Research in US for classifying the people in the groundswell. Let’s check out what it all means.

Forrester Research created the concept, which is explained in the table below. They use the classifications in their research for their customers.

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I have been asked to explain a little more about the ‘average’ approach from the book Performance Intelligence at Work that we talked about in the last posting. So here is an supplementary posting for you to consider.

I am a FreeCell addict. I am fascinated by the game and I play it more than I should, I guess. Since I am a performance measurement nut, one of the features I like about the game – part of the Windows basic package, for those who haven’t come across it – is that it keeps score. After each game – win or lose – you can check your cumulative score. This allows you to calculate your average – how you are performing at the moment in Dr Julie’s terms. I have played many thousands of games over the years, so what I do is play a series of 100 games, enter my percentage wins for that 100 games, then start again. The reason I do this is simple. After a number of games have been played, the winning or losing of one game has a minuscule  effect on my overall average. Even a run of 50 wins – which I achieve sometimes – has a tiny effect on a database of 5000, but is significant in a series of 100. Read the rest of this entry »

Groundswell
Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, Harvard Business Press. 2008

A groundswell is normally thought of as a movement of the populace in a certain direction. We talk of ‘groundswells of opinion’, don’t we? The groundswell that Li and Bernoff write about conforms to the common concept. They define groundswell as ‘a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from institutions like corporations‘.

That definition ought to be sending quivers up and down your corporate spine – no matter what the size of your business. Is there a possibility that people may be going to bypass the traditional outlets at which which are selling things? If so, what about my/our business?

What indeed!
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Hi again. Here is a second idea from the book Performance Intelligence at Work by Dr Julie Bell, and Robin Pou ( McGraw-Hill, 2009). It made me think, and I am sure it will do the same for you.

How do you feel when you are termed ‘average’? Many people – including me – bristle a bit at the term, because we feel that we are above average – even outstanding! But the way Dr Julie – as she likes to be called – explains ‘average’ makes good sense. She defines average as ‘the place where you perform on a consistent basis today’.

If we are totally honest with ourselves we do not perform at an outstanding level all the time. We certainly don’t perform perfectly, since perfection is not standard practice among mortals. Dr Julie suggests that we shouldn’t even strive for perfection, because we are setting ourselves up for failure, and that doesn’t seem like a sensible thing for us to do. Rather we should assess our day-to-day performance as average, and rate ourselves on a scale similar to the one below.

There are several important implications from thinking this way:

According to the scale, there is considerable room for improvement. Now that’s a positive!

The average we are talking about is a personal average. It is your present level of performance.

The average is a moving target. The more you perform above your present average – the more you succeed, according to the diagram – the  higher your average becomes.

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