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From eMarketer.com

Quantifying returns needs most improvement

 Mobile is at least somewhat important to the strategy of more than three-quarters of marketers in North America, according to a January 2010 survey by R2integrated. But barriers to mobile campaigns remain.

The greatest obstacle, the survey found, was difficulty in developing the business case for mobile campaigns, followed by inability to measure ROI and a lack of a mobile component to the strategic marketing road map.

Asked what the most critical area of improvement was in mobile, 43% of respondents said quantifying ROI—the top response.

Awareness and leads are key goals

Respondents said the main goals of their mobile campaigns were raising company awareness and generating leads. To that end, marketers were most likely to measure their success by an increase in customers or sales.

“It appears that 2010 will be a year of experimentation and education on mobile marketing as marketers struggle to come to terms with its practicality and ROI,” said Matt Goddard, co-founder and CEO of R2integrated, in a statement. “This shouldn’t suggest that marketers ought to table their mobile marketing plans, but that they should pay considerable attention to how they can connect the dots back to driving revenue.”

Mobile website development important focus

Most respondents reported that they would spend less than 15% of their budgets over the next year on mobile, though about one-quarter would spend between 15% and 30%. More than one-half were focused on mobile Website development, while 40% used apps for their campaigns.

The marketers surveyed considered iPhone and BlackBerry the most important platform for mobile development. Consumers may be warming up to Android, but only 7% of respondents to the R2integrated survey thought it was “very important.”

To see complete data charts, go to emarketer.com. Printed with permission of eMarketer.

By Paulus Sarwana

SCIENCE BRIEFS FROM PhysOrg

 Airlines making a big push to offer in-flight Wi-Fi service February 17, 2010 By Richard Newman  

In-flight Wi-Fi, the next big-fee income generator for airlines, is available so far on 711 commercial aircraft, and the number is growing. Eight airlines, so far, have deals with technology provider Aircell to offer its Gogo in-flight service for $4.95 per flight segment and up, based on the length of the trip.

Microsoft Office 2010 beta ready to download    November 19, 2009 By Sharon Pian Chan  

If you want to try out Microsoft Office 2010, the beta is available for anyone to download, the company announced at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference.

IBM software safeguards consumer identity on the Web     January 26, 2007

IBM today announced software that allows people to hide or anonymize their personal information on the Web, ensuring protection from identity theft and other misuse. Developed by researchers at IBM’s laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland, the software—called Identity Mixer—will enable consumers to purchase goods and services on the Internet without disclosing personal information.

First germanium laser brings us closer to ‘optical computers’    February 4, 2010 by Larry Hardesty

MIT researchers have demonstrated the first laser built from germanium that can produce wavelengths of light useful for optical communication. It’s also the first germanium laser to operate at room temperature. Unlike the materials typically used in lasers, germanium is easy to incorporate into existing processes for manufacturing silicon chips. So the result could prove an important step toward computers that move data — and maybe even perform calculations — using light instead of electricity. But more fundamentally, the researchers have shown that, contrary to prior belief, a class of materials called indirect-band-gap semiconductors can yield practical lasers.

 Bluetooth 3.0 Launches April 21     April 10, 2009 by John Messina

The short-range wireless standard Bluetooth 3.0 will officially launch on April 21. The Bluetooth 3.0 standard is expected to deliver faster short-range wireless speeds up to 480 Mb per second.

 Study: Consumers don’t want wallet phones; airline, movie tickets on cell phones more acceptable     February 19, 2010

Of the things users expect their cell phones to be — address book, calendar, camera, music player — a wallet isn’t one of them, according to research by a Kansas State University marketing professor.

From Leading Effectively; an Interview with Chris Musselwhite

Change may be good or bad. It might be viewed as much needed or to be avoided at all costs. Sometimes small changes cause strong negative reactions; other times big change is welcomed. Christopher Musselwhite — consultant and creator of the Change Style Indicator — says our collective confusion about the value of change is tied to three individual perspectives: preference, process and proximity.

He explained about the 3 P’s and change preferences in a recent interview with the Center for Creative Leadership..

Why do people respond so differently to change?

A large part of your response is driven by preference for change. In my research, I’ve found there really are cognitive differences in how people view change. People frame it differently, analyze it differently and have different emotional responses. A lot of that is personality and preference.

But other factors have a say in your reactions as well. If you have been through the process of change many times and had life experiences (even if very difficult) that gave you a positive view of change, facing change may not be particularly scary or worrisome to you. But if change in your life is consistently tied to negative things, it is understandably more difficult to embrace change.

The factor of proximity will also magnify or diminish your change response. The closer you are to the epicenter of change — if you will be directly affected — the more your identity is connected to the change.

Explain about the preferences people have.

How people deal with change – both creating it and responding to it – is a function of identifiable individual preferences. It’s helpful to think of our preferences on a continuum of conservers to originators, with the pragmatists holding the large middle ground.

Conservers are people who view change primarily as a danger. In times of change they appear deliberate, disciplined and focused. They are good at defining and clarifying current reality and prefer a well-defined structure. To create improvements, conservers prefer to make gradual changes and work within existing systems.

On the opposite end, the originators like to challenge current structures and systems. They enjoy taking risks and tend to focus on new possibilities, vision and direction. They are action-minded but may not be effective implementers.

Pragmatists tend to focus on getting the job done. They often see merit in the perspectives of both conservers and originators and are motivated to find solutions.

Using the Change Style Indicator, I’ve been able to gather data on more than 100,000 people. With two-thirds of the results analyzed, I’ve found that about 25 percent of the general population are conservers and another 25 percent are originators; the rest are pragmatists.

How is this information about change style most helpful to individuals? How can it be helpful in organizations?

Understanding your own preferences is very helpful just in understanding your own feelings and behaviors in times of change. Then you are able to create routines or seek support that allows you to process the change and adapt.

It’s also important for building teams. For example, if I’m really a strong originator, I need some strong pragmatists and conservers to work with — and I need to know not to ignore or marginalize them.

When teams come together, use the Change Style Indicator tool and talk about their preferences, it can also open up everyone’s eyes to why the team functions the way it does. Often conflict in teams can be connected to tension between the three change styles. But the differences that you struggle with can become assets if you know how to manage them.

How do effective leaders manage these differences?

First, be careful not to throw the labels around unless you’re taking time to understand change styles as a group. It’s helpful to have the concept in your head, to use for your own thinking. You can ask questions of yourself such as: How am I responding? Might Joe be reacting to me from a conserver mindset? I wonder if we can get an originator perspective in here?

When you better understand people you have on your team, or the people you work with, you can orchestrate change processes with more finesse. For example, if you manage a project team, early on you have to have good originators. You want to consider all possibilities. Over time, you’ll rely more on the pragmatists and the conservers. Throughout the process, all perspectives are represented; it’s just a question of where to put the emphasis.

Preference for Change
When facing change …

From Leading Effectively

Does your company expect the “natural” leaders to rise in the organization? Does it offer periodic leadership development courses or coaching for select employees? Or, does it have a well-considered strategy for growing the leaders and the type of leadership it needs to make the business strategy succeed?

“Knowing the best way to develop your people and grow organizational leadership begins with clarifying your business strategy and asking, what should leadership look like to get us there?” says CCL’s Bill Pasmore. “Then, you create a leadership development strategy with specific recommendations for developing current and future leaders, as well as the collective capabilities of the organization’s leadership.”

A comprehensive leadership development strategy will address multiple avenues for learning and growth, says Pasmore, including:

• On-boarding processes: New leaders must be socialized into the company and leadership culture and must be made aware of the expectations and developmental requirements that come with each promotion.
• Individual and organizational assessments: Assessments are used to help individuals gain self-awareness, but also to provide information that allows the organization to identify talent that is a good fit with available positions. On the organizational level, assessments determine how the organization and its leaders are performing, or the impact of development activities on business results.
• Individual development plans: These are plans that leaders make for their learning and growth over time. The best plans are comprehensive, covering work as well as program activities; and they’re discussed by the individual leader with his or her HR representative and manager.
• Work assignments and action learning: Work assignments are often overlooked as an opportunity to help leaders develop specific competencies or practice key behaviors. To enhance the focus on learning from work assignments, it’s important to have specific goals, opportunities to receive feedback on progress and a coach or mentor with whom to discuss learning strategies. Action-development projects tie special assignments to learning objectives.
• Team-based, cross-functional learning and relationship-building: Many organizations cite the inability of their executives to work together on teams and across boundaries as a major obstacle to success. The way to learn these things is by doing them, but with the supports that make learning powerful: learning objectives, content inputs, assessment, observation and feedback.
• Leadership meetings and events: Leadership meetings and events are sometimes overlooked as opportunities for people to learn, as well as to receive information. Given the high costs of assembling people these days, every effort should be made to leverage these meetings and events for multiple purposes, including learning.
• Executive engagement in talent development: Many of the benefits desired from executive development will not occur unless senior executives buy into the process, support the investments being made and model the behaviors that are desired. The creation of a different leadership culture starts with those at the top stepping up and stepping forward to demonstrate their personal engagement and support for change.
• Employee-engagement activities: Many employees are informal leaders, whose help is indispensable in achieving organizational objectives. Engaging them also helps leaders continue to develop, as they receive feedback on what does or doesn’t work as they attempt to create direction, alignment and commitment.
• Leadership by level, function and location: The leadership development strategy should take into account differences in requirements by level, function and location. Lawyers, accountants and marketing professionals need special attention just as leaders in China need different inputs than those in India or Brazil.
• Development over time: Rather than the one-year outlook driven by budget cycles that is typical in most leadership-development curricula, the leadership-development strategy should look out three to five years from the perspectives of both the organization and individual executive.

With a solid leadership strategy and an equally strong implementation plan in place, there’s a much better chance that your organization will successfully implement its business strategy, according to Pasmore. But, he warns, “Don’t mistake a checklist for the work. Leadership development doesn’t end with the strategy and plan; it’s an important beginning.”

Printed with permission of Center for Creative Leadership.

Older users take to Net as younger ones pioneer new territory

With 71% of Americans using the Internet at least monthly in 2010, US Internet users now closely resemble the general population. Over the next five years, that trend will continue. Overall, eMarketer forecasts the number of monthly Internet users in the US will rise to 250.7 million in 2014, up from 221 million in 2010.

Half of new users are 45 and up

More than one-half of new users will be ages 45 and up, as many of the remaining laggards come on board. Among younger groups, the Internet is nearly ubiquitous, and most who are able to access it already do so, leaving limited potential for penetration growth. Notably, though, eMarketer expects significant increases in usage among children ages 3 to 11, as technology becomes a part of consumers’ lives at increasingly younger ages.

Currently, 12- to 24-year-olds represent a major bloc of users at 51.7 million, or 23.4% of the total. By 2014, though, their share will wane to 21.3%, even as their numbers increase to 53.5 million. Meanwhile, those ages 45 and older will grow from 35% to 38.3% of total users to more closely align with their relative share in the overall population.

The 24 and under group continue to be heaviest users

While older groups will occupy a larger share of monthly users, that measure is quickly becoming antiquated. Younger groups have already entered a new phase of always-on Internet use, where the Web never leaves their side and is accessible 24/7 through their phone or other devices. Those 34 and under will continue to be the heaviest, most engaged and most voracious consumers of content online.

“The Internet has been a mainstream medium since at least 2008,” said Lisa E. Phillips, eMarketer senior analyst. “In 2010, more and more US consumers—even the baby boomers—are going mobile, on laptops, smartphones and other devices. The desire and the ability to stay connected will drive Internet usage to even higher levels.”

For complete data tables and article go to eMarketer.com. Printed with permission of eMarketer.

By John Riley

 Nothing has alarmed me more recently than reading the details of the Obama budget in the New York Times which projects a deficit that will grow to 11 percent of our total economic output in 2011. Additionally, the budget projections suggest deficits will NOT return to sustainable levels over the next ten years, but by 2019 are expected to rise sharply to more than 5 percent of the gross domestic product. This outlook, following the Republican administration’s spending spree in the latter years of their term without any efforts to pay for those increases, is a severe indictment of our political leaders.

  It is no exaggeration to say this puts our national security at risk, erodes our leadership position in the world and threatens our standard of living.

Government Uses Bottom Up Budget Process

 The government uses a traditional budgeting process, albeit much more complicated than business. Essentially, it’s a bottom up approach where all departments and agencies of government build their budgets and submit them to the White House for approval. Then it’s up to the President to make whatever adjustments he feels are appropriate, influenced largely by political considerations. When the budget goes to congress for approval, local and regional interests take over and the numbers are tweaked unsparingly.

 In essence, the hot button political issues in a given year are the areas that get the funding increases without regard to providing for the out years. For example, the country’s infrastructure has been ignored for years and continues to deteriorate although the President has made this one of his many priorities.

Situation is Serious and  Requires Fundamental Change

 The country’s situation is serious and calls for a fundamental change in the way the government budgets. Without knowledge of the constitutional or legal issues involved, I would like to see a top down budget process where the public takes a one time, binding vote to set the country’s budget number and budget deficit ceiling for 2011. The 2011 budget number could not be less than the 2010 budget.

 Economists say budget deficits should not consistently exceed 3 percent. However, the administration’s budget projections call for 3.6 percent each year for the next 10 years.

The public vote would bind the administration and congress to reduce the deficit below 3 percent by the end of 2013 and three years after that, reduce it further to 2.5 percent. Thereafter, future administrations would be bound to deficits of no more than 2.5 percent. The only program exempt from the resulting cuts would be National Security which should include NASA.

National Security Would be Exempt From Cuts

 For example, in 2011 the National Security budget is approximately $782 billion and Iran threatens the Persian Gulf prompting the United States to take action to forestall their aggression at a cost of $100 billion. When the administration prepares the 2012 National Security budget, it would use the $782 billion figure for the 2011 deficit calculation rather than $882 billion. 

 If the politicians don’t have the will to take action and they fail to meet these financial accountability goals, there would be consequences. The voters would become engaged. If the deficit has not been reduced to less than 3 percent by the end of 2013, the Democrats would present a set of budget cutting options, as would the Republicans, and a public vote taken on which plan to adopt. If neither plan receives a majority vote, the parties would submit revised plans. The same process will be used again if the 2.5 percent deficit goal is not achieved by the end of 2016.

Need to Bring Entitlement Programs Under Control

 The top down approach means the administration and congress would be pressured to work together in finding a solution to the growth of entitlement programs and find common cause in ways to bring them under control. It also will weigh heavily on the administration to find better ways to grow the economy and create jobs to get the revenues that would enable them to meet their deficit reduction goals, legislate new programs or expand existing programs.

 If and when an increase in the national debt became necessary, another public vote would be taken if the administration and congress have not met the deficit reduction goals.  This will help refocus Washington politicians from spending on their favorite projects to rebuilding a strong financial engine that will restore our world leadership.

 However, the greatest benefit of a top down budget approach is to put power back in the hands of the people. We gave them the power, so let’s take it back. Can it be done? Let’s ask the voters.

 By John Riley

 Sales managers don’t get much sleep these days. Scouring the landscape for orders is a character building experience. Meanwhile, the economy continues to limp along as sales managers and their master’s search for solutions that will keep their companies afloat.

 Of course, management recognizes many companies have drastically cut back their inventories, but they also know some companies are still buying and they want a piece of that action. If that isn’t happening, executives usually make a change in sales managers or restructure the sales force. It’s a predictable course of action, especially if they are not familiar with, or have forgotten, how sales people fight for Team One in the trenches. The real problem may be management itself.

Expectations can be a problem

 For example, management expectations can exceed the sales force’s capabilities. This can easily happen if there has not been a dialogue between management and the sales manager to set mutually agreed sales goals at the outset of each year. Motivation is normally built into the process through a sales incentive program that handsomely rewards the high achievers. While the goals must be realistic, they need to be ‘stretch’ goals, which usually call for a stellar performance’. With both management and the sales manager on the same page, unrealistic expectations can be minimized or eliminated.

 Since sales people are in a high risk/high reward function, executives who do not have sales backgrounds may sometimes find the rewards earned by their sales staff to be unjustified and an unnecessary burden on the company’s budget. As a result, they may be prone to reduce the size of a sales person’s territory or the number of accounts he handles as a not so subtle way of reducing the commissions the salesperson can earn. Additionally, a salesperson faces aggressive and skilled competitors who are equally determined to earn their commissions so producing results is by no means assured. Establishing and maintaining a well structured incentive system is absolutely essential to attract and keep high achievers.

 Things aren’t always what they seem

 Reliable organizational support is necessary to provide service continuity to customers when a salesperson is off calling on other customers or prospects. Support personnel occasionally see their sales people entertaining customers, flying to exciting locales to meet with prospects, accompanying the company President to call on an account, or being invited to a customer golf outing. This sometimes leads to members of the office staff becoming envious of their sales people undermining their commitment to sales support. What the office staff doesn’t see is their sales person being called at home at 9:30 pm to hear an irate customer report the salesman’s product had failed resulting in a production line shut down. After rushing to the customer’s plant to help resolve the problem, the salesperson finally gets home at 2:00 am. Or office staff doesn’t see the salesperson’s face when she learns, after four intense months of working on specifications and production issues for her customer that the promised order was going to a competitor who did none of the work, but offered a slightly lower price. Management needs to insure the support staff  recognizes and understands the multifaceted and essential role of the sales staff.

 In the final analysis, the sales force is accountable

 So when sales tank, don’t be too quick to blame the sales force. Ask if sales goals have been mutually agreed, a realistic incentive system is in place and the organization is providing the necessary support.  Make adjustments if necessary, however, in the final analysis, the sales force is accountable.

By Jeffrey Yipp

Nothing teaches leadership like experience, but often those powerful lessons don’t have a place on a resume or performance review. In fact, they can easily be overlooked.

In a new book, Return on Experience: Learning Leadership at Work, Jeffrey Yip pulls together key themes of CCL’s leadership development expertise to introduce a new framework for learning from and leveraging work experience.

By acquiring what Yip calls “a Return-On-Experience mindset,” you are able to understand and clarify accomplishments that may not be measured easily, but are essential for leadership success. The ROE approach allows you to evaluate and communicate important lessons from previous experiences. Just as important, it can drive your on-the-job learning from today forward.

Think of your experience as having value in three ways: mastery, versatility and impact.

Mastery is about sharpening existing skills, building greater depth of skill or knowledge. To increase leadership mastery, the first step is to identify what needs to be learned or improved. You’ll want to look at this from two perspectives: the needs of the organization and your own needs. Then ask yourself, through your work, what skills are you building? How can you sharpen your existing skills and ability to lead? To heighten your skills, seek experiences that offer challenges that will stretch your capabilities and deepen your expertise, such as job rotations or strategic assignments.

Whereas mastery represents a move toward more expertise, versatility represents a move toward breadth of capacity. It is about the expansion of your capacity through learning. If your experience is too narrow, you can begin to expand your repertoire of skills and abilities by working across different organizational boundaries:

• Go vertical. What assignments require you to work across organizational boundaries of level and hierarchy? Examples include supervisory responsibility, mentoring roles, managerial responsibilities with hierarchical-reporting relationships and special assignments with senior executives.
• Reach across. Horizontal assignments require managers to work across organizational boundaries of function and expertise. Examples include job rotations, working on a cross-functional team and action-learning projects involving different subject matter experts.
• Engage with outsiders. Stakeholder assignments require managers to work across the boundaries of the firm, to interface with stakeholders. Examples include managing joint ventures, working with vendors and being responsible for public affairs or corporate citizenship functions.
• Cross geographic boundaries. Assignments that require managers to work across geographically-defined boundaries of regions and nations also enhance versatility. Examples include international assignments, regional or global management responsibilities and management of geographically-dispersed teams.
• Discover new demographics. Some assignments require managers to lead or work with members from different demographic groups: age, ethnicity, gender, nationality. Where geographic crossings involve cultural boundaries by location, demographic crossings often occur in the same location, with members of different cultures. Examples include working in or managing a culturally diverse team, being responsible for organizational diversity initiatives and mentoring employees of a different culture.

Finally, the true measure of learning is impact — your ability to apply it. To have value, learning must be transferable to different situations and to other people. Consider how your lessons learned have (or can be) applied in other ways. Pursue strategies for transmitting your knowledge to others in the organization. Look beyond your current scope and seek out relationships or processes to help you capture and disseminate lessons learned.

Printed with permission of Leading Effectively, Center for Creative Leadership.

By Doug Riddle

We’re fascinated by the reasons that things go wrong. And they go wrong quite often. Sometimes in spectacularly unpleasant ways; sometimes in a slow slide into irrelevance. Whole industries are devoted to the diagnosis of failure and there are some lovely, detailed models of organizational disaster. I’m persuaded that in many cases there is a simple, accessible common factor that affects us as individuals and as organizations. It’s anxiety. Actually, it’s rather the difficulty individuals and organizations have managing their anxiety. This lens has been helpful to me as I’ve watched smart, talented people and organizations drive themselves into the ground.

 It happens when the whole focus of attention is on the risks and dangers of living in this difficult world. While I’m not so pollyanna that I think we should only focus on our strengths and opportunities, it isn’t difficult to get into an obsessive preoccupation with managing risks, real and imagined. I used to think it was something we could blame on the corporate legal department, because it’s their job to identify and hedge the organization against excessive risk. But now I think it has more to do with the way we react to potential risk:  we let it control our business choices.

 It manifests in a couple of ways in organizational life. One occurs when organizations begin to multiply their policies and rules to cover every potential problem. The paradox is that contracts and policies that build in protections from every type of malfeasance or negligence define the relationship as fundamentally absent of trust. That is, they communicate more than limits or boundaries; they also communicate an implicit expression of the relationship itself. Perhaps more importantly, the multiplication of rules and policies has a chilling effect on creativity and innovation. When there are many rules, it becomes the first responsibility of employees to check to make sure that they are not violating them.

 Then comes the documentation. While documentation is important to preserve records of actions and ensure reporting, the need to document everything can mean that 20 to 30% of the creative energy of the organization is diverted from customer service, product development, or business strategy. Some businesses find that filling out forms is their new business model. New rules and requirements in HR policy or in contracts should be subject to their own rigorous risk assessment: do they add sufficient incremental safety to justify the additional negative impact on climate and workload?

Consider culture if you want to improve performance

 Last week I met a consultant whose firm focuses on performance improvement through people policies and practices. She told me several stories of companies who had accelerated the aggregation of HR policies, thereby clearly communicating to the workforce that none of them could be trusted and they were expected to attempt to steal everything possible from the company. She said something that the Center for Creative Leadership believes most fervently: you can’t change performance if you don’t address the culture. She has proposed a single sentence HR policy: Every employee is expected to work for the best interests of the company and its customers and employees.

 A culture of distrust (and its cousin: control) cannot spawn an organization where everyone gives their best. That kind of culture only comes where leaders believe in the capability and generosity of their follows. Unfortunately, when the market is down and the strategy isn’t working all that well, it becomes easy to blame the attitudes of the workforce. Or when someone goes off the track, it’s easy to clamp down on everyone. The multiplication of “zero tolerance” policies shows how quickly we accede to the hierarchical solution; even if the result is the arrest of 5-year-olds for carrying camping utensils for show-and-tell.

When anxiety strikes, fall back on your core values

 Our culture is flailing in a sea of anxiety…about the economy, about jobs, about competing on the world stage. This is the time to reinforce our commitment to collaboration, to mutual trust, to shared goals. When anxious, our best escape is in a return to core values. We need to line up with people who are leading the way to positive environments, inspiring innovation, making high performance a pleasure.

 Find them. Shine a light on their energy and grant others the freedom to do it, too.

Printed with permission of Leading Effectively blog; Center for Creative Leadership.