Exploring the blogosphere - Searches

One of the best and most enjoyable devices that I have found is to actually use the search facility on the blog.

These are far from perfect. For reasons that escape me, a search on this blog on blog, blogs, blogging yielded just one result when it should have thrown up several entries. Sometimes, too, you have to plough through a lot of ephemeral material to find a few nuggets. But it is still worth while.

This is best illustrated by example.

I found Gautum Ghosh's blog, Gautum Ghosh on Management - http://gauteg.blogspot.com - through our common membership of LinkedinBloggers - http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/LinkedinBloggers.

Gautum is an Indian HR professional. He uses his blog to talk talk about a range of management issues, especially from an Indian perspective. So when I found the blog I used the search engine to get an overview, searching on topics of particular interest.

I started by searching on professional services, finding 10 posts. These included several general posts on blogging that I scanned quickly for interest. In one I found a nugget, a link through to technorati - http://technorati.com.

I am sure that all the blogging experts know this site, I did not. It appears to be a very good blog search, monitoring and measurement site.

Drilling down, I searched on law firms, another interest of mine within professional services. In this case, no results. So I then searched on outsourcing, an interesting topic at present because of India's role. Here I found 29 posts, some containing interesting material.

I then looked at training, 27 posts. This showed me that the Indian discussions on topics such as training metrics were a subset of broader global discussions. I found some interesting links here, but did not pursue them because of time.

In all, I thought that this was not a bad yield for half an hour's investment, so will come back from time to time.

Exploring the blogosphere

When I started this blog, I said that I wanted to chat, to reflect on things that might otherwise get lost in a busy professional life. Now the use of the word chat implies a conversation.

When I began I knew the that the blogosphere was incredibly crowded. I had not realised how crowded.

Technorati presently monitors 47 million sites with 2.7 billion links! The number of blogs grows all the time, especially among young people. My eighteen year old's group uses blogs as a device for keeping in touch, for sharing photographs in particular. Some of those blogs are created and then just sit there, others change all the time.

So how do we explore this incredibly crowded space to best advantage, how do we use it to achieve our own ends whether they be professional, business or simply conversational? I think that it all depends upon purpose.

I first became interested in blogging because I saw it as a tool that my own professionals within the Ndarala Group might use to achieve their practice objectives, promoting their expertise to a broader world. This can be especially helpful for the self employed professional lacking the promotional resources of a conventional organisation. This remains my view, although there are a number of difficulties to be overcome if it is to work.

I then looked at blogging as an internal communications device and learning tool within organisations, especially where an actual or potential community of practice was involved. I think that this is one of the most exciting practical applications of the blogging format.

More recently, I have focused on blogging as both conversation and a way of finding things - personal and professional - that I might otherwise miss.

In the next few posts I want to record some of the things that I have learned. In doing so, I will write not as a technical professional - I am in awe of the technical expertise I have found among bloggers and cannot hope to match this in anyway - but focus instead on the personal lessons.

Blogging Woes

A few days ago I established a third a blog - http://professionalservicesmanagement.blogspot.com - to focus on the management of professional services firms. I did so because I want to use this blog for conversation across the full range of my interests.

So far so good. However, Google's automated anti-spam system then decided that the new blog might in fact be a spam generator. This means that while I can still post, I have to keep filling in letters before I can do so. This happpens each time I save to draft. I do this a fair bit having lost previous posts, so it's time consuming and annoying. It also means that while the blog can still be found at its web address, there is some loss of access and I think indexing.

Worse still, Google has now extended the anti-spam system to this blog, presumably because of the link between the two.

Whatever my blogs may be, they are clearly not spam. I have sent the required follow up measures to Google so that they can inspect the sites. Hopefully this will not take too long, or I am going to expire from frustration.

the southcoast: the Geoff Robinson blog

I have just come across a very thoughtful and I think useful blog - http://thesouthcoast.blogspot.com.

Published by Geoff Robinson, the blog defines itself in part as "historically informed comments on labour and politics with an Australian & North American focus."

I come at things from a different perspective to Geoff.

To the degree that I now have a party political position I describe myself as Country Party. My grandfather (David Drummond) was a Country Party parlimentarian. As a child I handed out party how to vote cards at election after election. Later I was a Country Party machine official, helping rebuild the party in Eden-Monaro. In this role, I supported and actively promoted the change of name to National Country Party, a move I now regret. I also ran for but lost party preselection.

My views on social issues never fitted exactly with the conservatism of some party members. But I felt strongly then and now that the basic philosophy of the party, its belief in the small person, in the virtues of cooperation, in the need for electoral systems to prevent the oppression of the minority by the majority, was right.

While I come at things from a different perspective to Geoff, I support what I see as one of his key points, that the past should be used to inform the present. I also find his different perspective refreshing. Finally, his blog seems to include a wealth of interesting links.

Why can't professionals sell?

One of my clients is a CBD law firm. Their professionals find marketing hard. The same thing holds with the professionals in my own Ndarala Group. They know that they have to get the work through the door, but find it hard to go and chase the necessary clients. Why is this so?

I think that part of the reason lies in the combination of personality and training. The professions attract people who can examine problems objectively. Our training reinforces this. But sales works on emotion, on the ability to explain to the prospective client why we can solve their problem. Our training in objectivity makes this hard.

But I also think that part of the problem lies in intellectual arrogance. We actually expect the client to understand why they should use our services simply because we are a professional. But why should they? It is our task to help them identify their needs, to give them the information to choose us.

More on Brainstorming

David Jago's initial post on brainstorming (see Brainstorming and Other Techniques, 21 June 06) has generated some interesting email discussion among my Ndarala colleagues who use these types of techniques as part of their professional armoury.

Now David has put a new post on the smart meetings bog (http://www.smartmeetings.com.au) including links to some interesting articles.

The Business of Blogging

Like many of us, I am still learning about blogging. So I try to take the time to search for good sites that can help me.

One of the best sites that I have found that focuses especially on the business of blogging is Des Walsh's blog - http://www.thinkinghomebusiness.com/. Des describes himself as a blogging evangelist, I know from my own experience with him that this is pretty accurate.

The site provides a steady stream of new material on blogging, especially from a smaller business or personal business perspective. It is also a well structured site.

Brainstorming and Other Techniques

David Jago put a short but interesting comment on his blog (http://www.smartmeetings.com.au) drawing from a very interesting article by Jared Sandberg originally published in the Wall Street Journal.

Sandberg points to some of the pitfalls of brainstorming, arguing that the technique is likely to fail unless very well planned. This got me thinking about this type of technique.

When my daughters began primary school, I noted with fascination the way they were introduced to a whole series of process techniques including project management, mind mapping and brain storming previously falling to the management domain. At the time I thought that this was a good thing. Now I am less sure.

Part of the problem lies in the crowding of the school curriculum, reducing time for thought. But part lies in the nature of the techniques themselves.

I use most of these techniques in my professional life. I know from my own experience that the point made by Sandberg on brainstorming apply to them all, that they are likely to fail unless well managed. And this is actually not easy.

Take brainstorming. It seems so easy, get a group together and let a thousand ideas bloom. yet the reality is that real skill is required to make a brain storming session work. And this requires not just planning but also practice.

One difficulty with brainstorming is that people focus on its role in generating new ideas. However, those ideas are almost inevitably set within a frame created by the combined ideas and experience of the group, making it hard to get outside the box. Further, brainstorming is also a technique for creating sometimes enforced consensus among participants.

This point can be illustrated by taking another technique, the delphi process, often used to generate and test ideas among a distributed bigger group, usually experts in the subject.

Initial material is circulated for comment and the generation of ideas, the comments are consolidated and the material revised and then re-circulated. This proceeds until a common view is formed. The process is very good for establishing a majority view, for testing things, not good when it comes to moving outside the box.

Developing a Personal Education Program

In my last post I looked at the reasons why people found it so hard to develop personal education and training programs. I suggested that a core reason was that they simply did not know how to do it. In this post I want to make some simple suggestions that may help in developing a personal learning program. But first, a confesion.

Starting with Elementary Latin at University, a subject I did as an extra, I have a long history of paying for but not completing formal training courses! Why is this so? I enrolled because I thought that they were a good idea. I failed to complete because they did not in fact meet my real immediate needs. So the starting point in developing a personal training program is to focus on your needs.

Now this is not easy. Most of us have some idea as to where our knowledge gaps are, but this does not mean that we must fill those gaps. My advice is not to bog down. Simply prepare an initial gap list. You will revise this several times.

The next point to remember is that 80 per cent of learning is informal, with over half of this coming from work experience. This leads to a core principle: in thinking about your own learning program, start by defining just what you are learning from your current job.

In doing this, try to distinguish between knowledge (things that you know) and skills (things that you can do). Do not worry if they are small things, the aim is to have a complete list.

You should also try to identify areas of decline in knowledge and skills. This can be depressing, especially if your job is in fact limiting you.

Now compare the results of your job related learning experience with your initial list of training needs. What are the gaps? Do you want to make any changes to your needs list in light of the results? Again, don't bog down. You are going through a process.

Having now refined you needs list and identified gaps, start thinking about different ways in which you might fill those gaps.

At this point, it can be helpful if a little depressing to draw up a list of personal problems that you have to overcome in moving forward. How much can you afford to spend? How much real time do you have? How do you learn best? Any action plans you develop need to take these into account.

In thinking about filling gaps, start with your work environment looking at both formal and informal learning. Are there things that you can do there that may help you develop your knowledge and skills? What training activities does the company provide? Are there any ways to improve the work that you are being given? Are there people in the company that you might talk to, not necessarily either your boss or the HR people, who can give you advice, act as a sounding board, provide some form of mentoring?

Then look externally. What things can you do on your own through personal study, what things might require more formal study?

The distinction between knowledge and skills can be important here. Knowledge can be obtained through personal study using a wide variety of free resources including the web. However, skill acquisition requires practice, one of the reasons why informal on the job learning is so important. So if you are targeting a skill, especially one relating to interactions with others, you have to think about just how you are to practice that skill. This may require a formal course or at least interaction with others.

Having got this far, you should now be in a position to define a personal training program including both work related and private learning activities.

This need not, indeed should not, be complicated, nor should it be too ambitious. You want to succeed, not fail. To this end, try to chunk things into the smallest possible bits so that you can do them easily and thus build a sense of momentum.

On Time and Training

In a recent post on his FRACAT (Free Resume and Career Toolbox) blog - http://www.fracat.com/index.html - Dan Sweet commented that he talked to a lot of job candidates who complained that their employer had not offered any training.

Dan's experience fits with my own. However, and as Dan said, it is up to the individual to make sure that their skills are current. So that started me wondering why individuals had so much trouble in defining personal education and training programs..

Time pressures are an obvious problem. Unless compelled to do so, we all tend to put our own training and personal development in the important but not urgent basket. Cash is another issue, although an enormous amount of material is available for free. But beyond this, I wonder if the problem simply is that people do not know how to develop their own training program?

It seems to me that many of us get locked into a triangle made up of formal qualification courses at one apex, generally short course corporate offerings at the second and, in some cases, continuing professional development requirements at the third.

The difficulty with this lock-in, at least as I see it, is that it ignores the single most important thing, the individual's real training needs. These may or may not fit within the triangle. So we have to start by defining those needs before we can define the required training program

However, this leads us straight back to the core problem in that many people have great difficulty in defining their training needs and hence in defining the training required to meet those needs.

I will return to this issue in my next post, looking at ways in which individuals can in fact plan to meet their own training needs.

Time, or the Lack of It

Where does the time go? A month since my last post, and I wanted to use this blog to chat about all the things that would otherwise be submerged!

I will try to do better.

On Time, Business Fads and the Destruction of Value

We all complain, certainly I do, about the way in which our lives seem to chew up time. We are so busy travelling, so busy doing things, that spare discretionary time seems to vanish. From a business advisory viewpoint, everything has to be done and presented to fit in with the very limited time clients have to consider issues.

This obsession with time extends to payback issues. Results must come quickly or the project will be shelved. This obsession with quick results makes executives, and especially CEO's, incredibly vulnerable to new magic bullet ideas promising great results in short time. Yet the reality is that most most new things take time to plan, time to develop, time to consolidate. Yes, we can shorten the time involved through better planning and project management, but there is still an irreducible minimum required.

The problem is greatest in people related activities. We all still accept that a major engineering project will take time because of the technical and logistic issues involved. But when it comes to investment in people, in the development of structures and supporting processes and cultures, we now want instant results. The outcome can be disastrous.

The current obsession with brands and branding is a case in point. Brands are seen as something with value to be managed and maximised. All this is of course true. Yet when we look back over the last fifty years, it has been the greatest period of brand destruction in history measured by the number of previously great brands that have simply vanished.

This shortening brand life expectancy is simply accepted as a feature of modern life, something inevitable in a world of greater information and rapid change. I challenge this idea of inevitability. I would argue that brand preservation is still possible, but only if a longer term management approach is adopted.