Empirical Rationalism and Other Oxymora
Archive for December, 2008
The State of the Market 2009
Dec 29th
Starting analysis on the 2009 State of the Market report. There is still time to respond… click here. Thoughts and comments about tech trends and the business environment in the coming year are welcomed!
Customer Management Tips for Uncertain Times
Dec 29th
New article on CRM Buyer.
There is little doubt that these are increasingly uncertain times for managers. In 2008, U.S. businesses cut nearly 2 million jobs — amounting to 11 straight months of shrinking payrolls — and some economists predict that we could lose another 3 million jobs in the next two years. In the past four months, we’ve seen continued triple-digit fluctuations in the Dow, and in November the Supply Institute announced that the Factory Index was down to the lowest point since 1982. If this wasn’t bad enough for business, it was confirmed this month that we’ve officially been in a recession for over a year.
In a recessionary environment, sales and marketing managers should prepare themselves for
lengthened sales cycles and decreased pipeline velocity. Tried and true tactics that have always worked — e.g. month-end discounting, bundling and promotions — will begin to sound increasingly desperate as sales reps struggle to make the quotas that were set months ago in the budgeting process. Customers — those in a buying mood — will buy on their own terms, and it is increasingly unlikely that they will be “sold to.” Therefore, price erosion will take hold as vendors struggle to adapt the new competitive conditions.
The Cost of Transparency
Dec 24th
Historically, much of the discussion that I’ve seen about transparency (particularly in an enterprise web 2.0 sense) centered around the notions of risk vs. the relative benefits. However, in a recent blog post, Chris Anderson (of Long Tail and Wired fame) discussed the energy and effort it takes to be transparent:
Perhaps most people can only be truly transparent about one thing at a
time. After all, it takes a lot of energy to loop the whole world into
every twist and turn of your progress. Transparency is hard work.
Constantly updating the world on your status can become a job all by
itself.
Personally, this is the biggest reason that I curtailed my blogging over the past year (and have been slow to pick up Twitter). Putting together cogent thoughts day in and day out (beyond, “I am now having toast with my coffee”) actually takes a lot of work. Chris agrees:
For all that Twitter and other microblogging makes lifecasting and
other status updating easier, for most people it still feels like
another obligation, taking time to do well and causing guilt when
neglected.
From an organizational perspective, this discussion raises an interesting dilemma — once you’ve introduced transparency, and your customers/employees begin to expect it, how do you continue to deliver on the implicit expectations that you have created? If you are transparent on some things and not on others, can you maintain a sense of authenticity? What about the Hawthorne effect?
CFO Rising – Row You B@st@rds!
Dec 22nd
The economist proclaims that 2009 will be the year of the CFO, with the “war for talent” declared a ceasefire.
The biggest loser in the struggle for power will be the human resources director. In the past five years HR has been enjoying the greatest power it has ever had. The “war for talent”, which companies have fought tooth and nail, will be over in 2008, neither lost nor won: there will be a ceasefire brought on by lack of funds and exhaustion of the troops. An old truth will be whispered by the brave: most workers are not terribly talented and most of them don’t need to be, as most jobs don’t require it….
…In this new world the HR director might just cling on to his title, but his job will be downgraded to personnel and in particular to payroll.
What do you think? A downgrade for HR and a move away from some of the recent progress the function has made?
