Michael N. Dundas

I took a bit of time this busy weekend to listen to an interview with Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson.  I personally try to limit the number of blogs I read and I am constantly culling my list.  His blog is the best leadership blog of the ones I follow.   I find him to be an excellent source of advice on leadership and management.  His posts are reasonable and just makes sense to me.  I pay attention to him because amongst other things what he says and his reasoning behind what he says is very similar to leaders I have worked for in the past.  These are people I respect and who have helped me become a better leader and person.  My leadership skills have improved immensely over the last years because of these individuals.  But I am not great at it, not even close to his level.  As with all things, there is always room for improvement and change for the better.

I found the entire interview with Michael interesting and useful.  Some key statements that stood out for me were:

I think I am pretty successful at delegation.  Really figure out what I am good at, what I am not good at, where do I add the most value, where don’t I add value and stay out of the stuff where I don’t add value.  And that is tough I think particularly as a young leader because you want to look like you are good at everything and you are nervous about your weaknesses showing.  But the truth is I am not good at everything, I am good at a few things.

But there is absolutely nothing in my view more annoying than sitting with a person you are trying to have a conversation with while they keep checking their email or their Twitter account.  And honestly in meetings like that I just stop.

Idea that the content has to be vetted to the delivery format particularly the format that we’ve grown very accustomed to … I love books, I love the smell of them, I love the tactile feel of them.  You know I like candles too.  I love burning candles, I love the smell of them, I love the ambiance they create, but I light my home with electricity.

One of the things you have to do as a leader is create an environment that is safe for creativity and the only way you do that is create an environment where it is safe for dissent.  People got to feel like they can disagree with a leader, they can have their own ideas, that they can fight and collaborate and struggle and wrestle.  Because it is out of that process that you are going to get the best ideas.  I think as a leader you have to invite people into that process.

For anyone interested with 30 minutes to spare, the interview can be found here.

A confidential memo leaked from the Associated Press, explains a 3 part plan to control news they produce, to stop websites, blogs, Twitter, and anyone else from ‘scraping’ the content and using it without their permission.

While I think they will have a tough fight on their hands and I doubt their plan will be acceptable today, the analysis provided in the confidential memo is interesting. Specifically, I like the analysis of how the news of Michael Jackson’s death propagated and how Wikipedia, Google, and Twitter where the main benefactors of the traffic.

Michael Jackson died suddenly on June 25, and within 30 minutes,
the news absorbed 25 percent of all web traffic. Online news
sites logged an astounding 4.2 million visitors a minute,
according to the delivery network Akamai.

Two of the biggest beneficiaries of that traffic bonanza were
Twitter and Wikipedia, a couple of digital natives that would
have been viewed as very unlikely news competitors even a few
months ago. Indeed, a new pattern of consumption was validated
in the confusing minutes that followed the first reports of
Jacko's death: Users shared; they searched and they clicked
on Wikipedia.

In the course of only a few hours on the first day of the story,
the Michael Jackson page on Wikipedia received 1.8 million
visits.  By Friday, the total reached 5 million visits.

For those with long Internet memories, the new routine of
Twitter-to-Google-to-Wikipedia contrasts sharply with the
behavior of users in August of 1997, when millions loaded
and reloaded bookmarked news sites to get updates on the
death of Princess Diana, another celebrity icon of similar
magnitude.

I have to agree with their behavioural analysis of consumers of news.  I myself saw a tweet on my PDA about the death of Michael Jackson.  Next, I searched Twitter and clicked on the links that made sense to click on.  Twitter is my main source of news.  From Twitter, I can decide what news tweets if any I am interested in.  If I am interested, I can investigate further via other tweets, links and/or Google.

The memo goes on to explain their 3 step approach to regaining control of the news from consumers.  AP did a press release on their “News Registry” to help “protect content” which is one of the steps in the memo.  However, the confidential memo is much more revealing and ‘colourful’ if you are interested.

I usually drive in early to work and my drive is a bit of a distance along back roads.  If I don’t have the time in the morning to make a coffee, I usually stop at one particular Starbucks that is not too far out of the way.  It has a drive-thru, but I prefer to go in.  I like to see the staff and patrons, for no particular reason, but it is more interesting than the drive-thru.  This Starbucks  has a manager that personally I could not work for.  She makes a big deal about talking to the staff loudly giving them directions.  I feel she does this so that all the customers in the store know she is the one in charge.  It is not necessary, but it seems it is necessary for her.  I have often sat with a coffee working when she has been working,  observing the staff and customer interactions in detail.  Her behaviours and mannerisms scream low self-confidence.

The staff have different reactions to her.  Some actively listen to her instructions to appease her, but you can tell by their facial expression they already know what to do and think her directions are unnecessary.  Other staff roll their eyes behind her back ensuring that their colleagues and sometimes even patrons can see their reaction.  Overall, my sense it is not a good environment to work in.  I went in one evening to work when she was not there.  It was a completely different environment, a much better one.  Staff was more relaxed, were in better moods, appeared to be enjoying their work.  They were talking amongst themselves and customers more, still being attentive to the customers requests and getting done what needed to get done.  Overall, they were more organized and on top of things. The atmosphere was completely different, much happier, more enjoyable.

I wonder what the criteria for a manager at Starbucks is and what their training program is like?  She also might be the owner which makes her ‘in charge’ by default.  Unfortunately, owning a business does not make you a good or effective manager.

At my company they offer training to managers.  It is not a one time thing, but rather an on-going training that happens every few months.  It is optional to attend.  I have attended many of these over the last 2 years and I find them invaluable.  Sure, some of it I already know, do innately or in my opinion is common sense, but it is still a great refresher and I always come out learning something useful.  We have managers that choose not to partake in this opportunity and that is unfortunate.  Many of them make mistakes that are costly and completely avoidable.  Employees leave meetings with the manager where they feeling bad, upset, where they should have been positive.  In some cases they don’t ever communicate it to the manager, and in many cases unfortunately it wouldn’t matter if they did.

If you have thse opportunities at your place of employment, I would suggest taking them.  They don’t hurt and can only help.

I used to be an avid user of Last.FM until they decided that Canada as well as most other nations need to pay for its use because the Last.FM marketing group can’t figure out how to advertise effectively in these markets. Recently, I was doing some research for an unrelated topic, which brought me to this article. The graph from Google Trends caught my eye. I had not used Google Trends yet, so figured I would give it a try.

The question I pondered was if the effect of charging all but 3 countries for monthly access to last.fm had a significant effect on their subscriber base? There were many complaints about the change voiced when the announcement was made, so if the user community truly was upset and was large enough, it could cause a drop in their listening base. Unfortunately, from the perspective of Google Trends this didn’t occur.

They originally announced they would be charging all listeners in countries except the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany on Mar 24, 2009.  Last.FM explained the rational behind the change on Mar 30, 2009 – not because they wanted to, but the ‘noise’ generated from customers seemed to force them.  Finally, the change was deployed on Apr 22, 2009.  The graph above for last.FM is basically the same since April 2008.  No apparent change during the announcement and discussion phase, but there is a decline in April 2009 and what might be a trend downwards.  I included the same graph for imeem.com to compare against.  imeem.com has been in a steady downward trend since July 2008 but I suspect this trend is largely due to the removal of all personal videos and the ability to upload videos, a service that last.FM never offered as far as I know.

Unfortunately, I could not come to a definitive conclusion that the latest downward trend for Last.FM is due to the subscription model.  I personally hope it is, but I doubt it.  I would actually consider paying for for it, but I am put off by the fact they only charge certain countries.  I feel they should either charge everyone or no one.  Finally I do not know how much of their userbase was impacted by the change.  If you believe Google Trends above, then the change is not significant and Last.FM marketing did their homework well.