Back To The Stone Age?

This past month has been filled with natural disasters that have left many of us crippled without cell phone service, electricity, hot water, and internet. Others have been even less fortunate experiencing floods in their basements and trees falling on their roofs. The things that we have been taking for granted, such as the stable ground under our feet, have been shaken. These tragedies are a true test of our dependence on a modern day lifestyle. Most people can survive a day or two without electricity, but then it gets old. We like to use our microwaves, electric stoves, and refrigerators for food preparation and storage. Many of us have phones that must be blugged in and charged. Some houses only have digital clocks. After a couple days you can only live off of nonperisable food items, there is no longer a simple method of communication with individuals outside your home, and you can't even tell what time it is because you have no clock to refer to. To some of us, these last weeks have felt like going back to the Stone Age.

Now as important as it is to be able to store nonperishable food items and to be able to take a warm shower, what really worried me with these natural disasters was the combination of power outages, cellphone tower damages, and lack of internet access. All of a sudden our technology and basic modes of access to the world were taken away from us. Many businesses cannot function without these staple services. Call centers were down, remote support was down, and simple services such as email were not accessible. Businesses have taken steps towards being able to function during floods or snow storms, yet most of these approaches have made them more dependent on technology. Take telework as an example. This is not possible without access to internet and cellular data networks.

Review Revise Reviews

Do reviews benefit your employees? Do they benefit the business? Some companies have found that yearly reviews have averse effects on their workers. Some individuals become discouraged by the negative feedback that they receive during a review. In turn, they become less productive. Others become overwhelmed by all the information that they are given during the review and then have a hard time forming their goals for the next year. There are then employers that find it easy to have weekly or bimonthly meetings with employees to give them constant feedback. They don't see it as hand holding but as an effective means of communication and development of expecations as the business moves toward a set of goals. These are two extremes in the review process. The Wallstreet Journal shared an interesting statistic:

Simplicity Is Key In A Complex World

We are surrounded by choices and advertising everyday. Companies are trying to get our attention with products, services, their branding, and more. In the midst of all this confusion, it may be tempting for a business to jump right in. We think that offering more products, diversifying marketing to all possible options, offering sales or coupons, going to every networking event, partering or merging with several companies,and making a lot of investments into design and innovation will move us forward. This isn't always the case. Complexity can be harmful to a business because everything becomes more about quantity than quality. When a business is doing well there may be a temptation to accumulate and the mess created is often masked since growth continues. When things slow down, as they have in recent years, inefficiencies and problems become more evident.

As a business grows expanding its products and services, the administrative costs increase. More employees are required to manage different aspects of the business. As the customer base grows the organization needs to put more time and energy into customer service. More products means more manufacturing maybe more factories or business partners. As inefficiency goes up, so do the costs. What's the alternative?

Don't Blame IT

This month I really got into watching a British sitcom called “The IT Crowd.” It's a play on words from the common phrase 'the in crowd.' This show is about the IT department of a large corporation called Reynholm Industries. The main characters are hilarious because of their awkwardness and lack of social skills. A woman is added to their team, which changes the dynamic of the group and adds to drama, confusion, and the department's relationship with the rest of the firm. A large part of the comedy comes from the depiction of the average day of an IT person and the types of problems that they have to fix. Each time they pick up the phone, they ask one question: 'Have you tried turning it off and on again?' This seems silly but often the solution to a frozen system is re-booting it. The following question is always, 'Is it plugged in?' The sitcom implies that the average individual has very few computer and IT skills and most problems could be fixed by simple trouble shooting.

Grammar Gramercy

When I look at a resume, you know what I do first? I see a misspelling, grammatical error, or outright typo and mark it in red. Every once in a long while, I hit a resume that doesn't trigger any application of the pen, but these specimen are pretty rare. If someone includes VMware experience and they put it in as "VMWare", points are lost. ZENworks, NetWare, and XenServer are other favorites for incorrect capitalization. I can spot a singular that ought to be a plural from fifty paces. And the other day I got to thinking about how valid this is in a world of disposable data - text messages, massive quantities of email, continually changing priorities, and Lolcats (I'll have you know that I just went to the icanhazcheezburger site to verify how lolcats is capitalized there; I acknowledge that many other references use LOLCats instead, and a few use LOLcats). Does it make sense to hold people to high standards of grammar and spelling when many of us try to save a fraction of a second by typing "plz" instead of "please" on a regular basis?