Research in Motion’s public battle

5 07 2011


Highlights of the RIM letter:



What can you do….


Meeting Expectations

18 01 2010




  • What % of time do you spend in meetings?
  • In what ways could you improve meeting management?


19 08 2009

This is from Paul Bayne, a guest blogger:





10 06 2009

On of my favorite hobbies is coaching little league baseball.  During a game last year it hit me that many meetings are run in a similar manner.  Pardon me for the comparision, but the similarities can provide a little humor at a process that all too often needs improvement.

As I watched, I noticed I had three outfielders playing in the dirt, my third baseman had one foot in foul territory, and my second baseman was standing on second base.  I also had a few players that were ready, on their toes, and prepared.

  • How often at your meetings do you have the back of their room paying sporadic attention while most of their focus is either on their laptop or blackberry?
  • How many people do you have playing by their own rules?
  • What percent of the room is prepared and actively participating in the meeting?

As a coach, we know we need a game plan.  Yet often we “wing it” because of experience and love for the game.   Sometimes this works, and sometimes not-so-much.

During practice, we can move people into groups of like needs and work at different speeds to excel learning (or at least repetition).  We can redo things as many times as necessary.  We can freely move people into different positions.

We have the luxury of a practice schedule – organizations and managers do not.  They have to learn while doing.  They do not get trophies for participation.  We need our people to be prepared and active in a meeting or else we are not maximizing our use of time.

If the meeting is to understand a performance issue, then we need to have someone write up the issue and send a brief summary to the team.  We need the rest of the team to have read the brief, done their relevant research, and prepared a list of potential recommendations to discuss.  The meeting should not be about discussing what research needs to be done – it should be about looking at the research and agreeing upon a course of action.

Manage vs. Monitor

21 05 2009

It has always struck me as a little odd that a great deal of marketing literature in the Business Intelligence and Performance Management space talks about “monitoring” performance.  Isn’t the entire goal of this space to help companies actively “manage” their business.  My concern is that “monitoring” assumes that all is well unless some alarm is triggered.  

While it is fine for the thermastat to monitor temperature, perhaps business is a tad more complex.  Instead of waiting for things to get to a threshhold, we need to understand a number of things that all work more or less together to explain a more complex concept.  

Instead of just showing up for a meeting, what if we focus on creating a culture of being prepared for a meeting.  We can then use Business Intelligence as a organized and focused set of tools to help with our prep work.

Clarity – Pick One Voice

17 05 2009

A few months ago during the Presidential inauguration, a concept I have kicked around a bit presented itself in a vivid example.  What stuck me was all the pomp and circumstance, all the background noise.  Did I really want to hear the opening prayer, the closing prayer, all the singing, and the poetry?  No, I wanted one thing – to hear the message this President was going to deliver on how he was going to set up his presidency.  Everything else was in a way, distraction.

As organizations, how often do we set a clear and concise goals for the organization and the individuals?  How many times do we repeat what someone else just said?

When we design KPIs for the organization, do we create a single measure for a goal and use other analytics for support?  Or do we create a number of ways to view the goal?  If we create many definitions, we allow for people to pick the one they want.  Use KPI design as a way to gain clarity of a goal.  Use Scorecard design to gain clarity of purpose.

Customer Lifecycle Value

1 05 2009

Depending upon on how well your know your business, a great discussion to have somewhat regularily is whether or not the customer lifecycle value is increasing or decreasing.  To achieve this we need to know a few things…

  • How much has the customer purchased from us?
  • How long are they likely to stay with us?
  • What does it cost us to serve them?

None of these are necessarily easy questions to answer, but that does not mean we should not talk about these items. Worst case, you should at least be looking at the average revenue and cost per client and see how those are changing. They are probably pretty good indicators of lifecycle value.  If we look at the trends of our revenues, costs (COGS & SGA), and profits per customer this should certainly indicate if we are doing better or worse.

While most of us do this to some degree, we probably also throw in a great deal many more variables and business rules and end up discussing various concepts. What about once a month or once a quarter getting all the department heads together and discuss progress on only these items.