Why Did Yahoo! Ban Telecommuting for Employees?
If you haven’t heard the recent news, Yahoo! decided to ban telecommuting and is now forcing all employees to physically come into the office to work and if they can’t or won’t then they can find a job elsewhere. At first glance this seems a bit counter intuitive to what many other companies are doing. [...]
Why Your Presentations Suck!
Ok, so everybody’s presentations don’t suck. But the vast majority of them do. I know I’m not the first person to make this statement. I’d include a list of others who have said it but it would take more space than my entire blog does. Take this example slide deck from a presentation I saw [...]
Me on TDD/BDD/Pairing and Jason Fried’s TED Talk and “why work isn’t done in the office…”
This talk is so right, but could it be so wrong at the same time?
…click through to see the video…
Just watch this, that’s all I have to say. Jason is so right about this topic. Here’s a few quotes to convince you.
“I’m going to talk about work, and why people can’t seem to get things done at work…”
“If you ask people the question, “where do you go when you really need to get something done?” you typically get three different types of answers; one is a kind of a place, a location or a room, another is a moving object, a third is a time…”
“The Train” < – That one caught my fancy, if you've ever talked to be about transit you know that one caught me…
"What you almost never hear people say is "the office""
"Managers and bosses will tell you the distractions at work are things like Facebook, Youtube…" "…and they'll go so far as to ban it…" "…what is this China?!"
"The real problem in the modern office is the M & Ms" < – Oh hell yeah, so very true.
"Manager's jobs are really to interrupt people…" "…they don't really do work so they have to interrupt you."
"You would never see a spontaneous meeting of employees, no, managers do that…"
Teachable Moments in PR & Crisis Management
I was recently approached by Fast Company to comment on “crisis management” at startups in the wake of the Airbnb “ranksackgate” story. I agreed to do the interview because the story was about what other companies can learn rather than about airbnb in particular. What are the teachable moments? The short article in Fast Company [...]
Twitter, Jobs, Democracy & The US Elections
I recently wrote a post about the open nature of Twitter and why I’m long on its future. I know it’s easier to write “horse race” stories about who’s signing up more users, raising more funding or who’s “hot” lately. But something more nuanced is at hand that is worth debating – is the future [...]
Google Wave Enters Apache Foundation Incubator
I am an unabashed sucker of Google Wave (see previous CloudAve coverage) and the two reasons for its demise are Mainstream users had difficulty seeing the value in Google Wave as a collaboration and communication platform Google didn’t flex its muscle enough to push it down the throat of users and make them see the [...]
The Art of the Quick Phone Call
All this heavy talk about angels, VCs, bubbles lately. I thought I’d go for a more tactical & practical post today. The art of the quick phone call. I had breakfast with David Tisch the other morning in NYC. If you don’t know David he’s the guy who will be running TechStars New York starting [...]
Oracle’s Influencer Relations: Mom Are We There Yet?
A fellow Enterprise Irregular posed this question to the EI’s relative to the maturity of the industry and the acceptance of bloggers @ Oracle Open World:Especially after the Workday session where 20 of us from small and large firms all…
Well-spent Workday @ Workday–Here’s the Firehose
Yesterday I was privileged to sit in a group of 20 or so analysts (many of them fellow Enterprise Irregulars) invited to Workday’s first ever Technology Summit. For short background, Workday’s original call to fame came from it’s Founder, Dave Duffield, an Enterprise Software Legend, who built PeopleSoft from nothing to a position of challenging [...]
Those Who Can’t Do, Teach. The Hidden Dangers of Email.
Oh, the irony. Communispond, the Agency that excels sending the same horrendously dumb email year by year actually has the ***s to hold a webinar titled: Writing Skills: The Hidden Dangers of Email: Emails are so quick and easy to write – and it’s so simple to hit the Send button. But most of us [...]
This Reminds Me of My Old Boss (Dilbert)
At least the ‘write down part’. His process for dealing with email was: Have Assistant print and fax email to whichever hotel he was staying in Make handwritten notations on fax, ask hotel to fax it back to his Assistant Assistant would then type it as email using his account The whole process would take [...]
Where's the Personalization in the Enterprise Software Buying Experience?
Can someone please point me to all those great personalized B2B web sites? You know the ones… they kinda ask you as you hit the home page who you are, gather some basic demographics/firmographics and then proceed to customize the content experience for you so you’re more likely to find what you need. I [...]
11 Methods To Get 25 Items From 8 Platforms For 3 Reasons Using Web 2.0
I gotta tell ya. I’m tired. I’m tired of reading posts like: …5 methods for improving your Web copy… …8 strategies for taking your marketing to the next level… …4 apps that rock your iPad… …3 experiences Starbuck’s should focus on to make their customer’s happy… Please… and I say this with all respect, ENOUGH!!!! [...]
All you need to know about Chatter –Salesforce.com’s Collaboration Cloud
I’ve had two experiences with Marc Benioff. One positive and one less so. The positive experience dealt with Marc taking a direct role in helping a friend of mine find a job within Salesforce. Marc didn’t have to but he did it because he cares about hiring great people. The second experience was in the [...]
The Toxic Nature of Email
I haven’t written a blog post in a week. I travelled for a couple of days for work and decided to get some sleep on those days rather than staying up into the wee hours as I often do when I travel. I closed one deal (I’ll talk about that soon) and issued one term [...]
