Failure

Why Email Still Dominates the Workplace and Your Life

April 3, 2012
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Careful.  This one will make you nervously laugh because chances are (unless your Luis Suarez) you feel the same way, too. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) surveyed their employees & contractors over a year ago.  The results came in, but I don’t know if many people noticed the comedy. A question near the beginning asked how they feel about email.  The answer was a resounding, “We can’t stand it.  It is a time waster.”  Then, another question at the end asked (paraphrased), “What is the best way to communicate information to you?” The answer? Overwhelmingly EMAIL. Ask yourself the same questions and, if you are like most people, you will probably have to admit that you would have answered the same way. (You may nervously laugh now.) So why do we do what we hate doing?   In an earlier post I said it was because of emotion and [...]

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You Must Fail to Succeed – The Virtues of Intrinsic Failure

December 12, 2011
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“Failure happens.”  Is that your bumpersticker?  It should be because no matter what, it will happen.  It just depends on us what type of failure it will be. This bumper sticker embodies the sentiment behind what I call Intrinsic Failure – the third type of failure (#1 Pandemic, #2 Catastrophic).  It happens.  If we want to be successful there is nothing we can do about avoiding some failure. Indeed, this type of failure is good.  How failure be good?  First, it says that we are trying.  If we don’t fail sometimes, we aren’t trying hard enough. I know some that never fail.  Yet they never really progress, either.  They are stagnant.  They stay where they are and let every wind of adversity or trial blow them around. (Yet this, in and of itself, is a type of failure.)  They rarely stand up and fight against the wind, get blown down, stand up again [...]

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Catstrophic Failure (aka Epic Failure)

December 9, 2011

Netflix went from a high of $305 per share this July to $77 in three months. September 18th, 2011 saw the last of the Borders Bookstores close its doors. 77 days after New Coke started selling, the company announced that they would bring back “Classic Coke.” ** Catastrophic Failure is a type that does major harm to interested parties (in these cases, stockholders and employees).  The harm could be economic, physical, emotional or otherwise.  It does not need to be a complete failure, just create major harm in some way. We should remember that part of the nature of failure is that it was unintentional.  If you meant to cause harm, you have achieved your goal.  But failure is an unintended consequence. ************************ ** The Coke story has an interesting ending.  This Catastrophic Failure actually turned into an Intrinsic Failure and eventually into a company success.

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Pandemic Failure – Failure Unabaited

November 28, 2011
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A couple weeks ago I gave a keynote speech at the Enterprise 2.0 conference entitled, “Embracing your E2.0 Failures” (watch the video here).  There I talked about three different types of failures, Pandemic, Catastrophic and Intrinsic failure. At the beginning of the keynote I showed this video I created which exemplifies the most dangerous of the three failures: Pandemic Failure: Pandemic Failure has three main characteristics: It runs rampant within a culture. It is obvious to most within that culture and it is often discussed and complained about. Rarely does anyone take action to make the needed changes. This is the most dangerous because bad behavior becomes an acceptable way of working or accomplishing a task.  For example, when was the last time you were in a meeting you didn’t really need to be in, but felt obligated to be there?  You didn’t lend any real advantage to the meeting [...]

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Age Decreases Usage: Social Business Failure #15

October 19, 2011
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Age: We hear it all the time. “The young guys coming in – they all know how to use this stuff.  If we can get them on board we will have an easier time with people adopting our social tool.” I agree.  And I fully disagree. If you can get the younger workforce to adopt your tool, then (imagine this) more people will have adopted your tool.  But we can’t think that just because they are young means that they will use it – because that’s not necessarily true. The example that sticks out most to me is a time when I was doing some analysis for a customer on who was using their social tool and who was not (back a few years ago when all of this was still young).  I found one fresh-out-of-college gal who never used it.  Why?  It didn’t have anything to do with her job.  On [...]

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React – Social Business Failure #14

October 11, 2011
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That’s right.  You want to fail right away?  Then react. Why would reacting lead to failure?  Because you will be hit from so many different sides with so many objections that if you react you would 1) spend your time trying to clean up other people’s messes and 2) you would be so frazzled that you would not be focusing on your goal which leads to 3) a perception that you don’t have a clue of what you are doing. And you do. So what do you do?  When someone says, “This is a waste of time.  No one wants to be social!”  Or if they come up with any in the list of objections, do you just ignore it?  Yes and no. Think of it this way.  If someone came to you with one of those objections, turn it around and pretend that it was a criticism of you.  When someone [...]

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Forget About the Human Experience: Social Business Failure #13

October 4, 2011
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Disney got the human experience right.  From the moment you walk up to Disneyland, you are in another world.  The environment is set to walk you through an experience.  From the layout of the streets, to the paths you walk, to the music, sights and colors.  There is a story behind it all and you are led fluidly from one experience to another. Contrast this with a discussion I have had many times… Me: “When employees log in to their computers, they should be able to open up this tool and automatically be logged in.” Them: “We can’t do this. It is against policy.” “If we don’t, they won’t use it.  If it is a pain to get to, they won’t use it.” “But policy says, ‘blah blah blah.’  This is something we need to follow.  If they want to use the tool, they will follow these policies.” “But the [...]

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Social Business Failure #12: “This Isn’t About the Tool”

September 20, 2011
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  In complete juxtaposition from last week’s post, we can’t forget this is also about the tool. When I first started working with NASA, there was a group sent out to look at tools. (Although this story is about NASA, there are others I have worked with which have done the same thing – this is a pretty common scenario.)  They went through the usual drill.  They gathered features, functionality.  They conducted a bake-off to determine which tool is the best.  They chose one and implemented it on a pilot basis. It failed, which is why they asked me to help.  It didn’t work for a number of reasons, but not the least of them being that although they were looking for social media, what they were evaluating were tools that were not “social”.  They thought they were social tools (indeed, the tools marketed themselves as such) but they were not.  They [...]

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Social Business Failure #11: Being Social is About the Tool

September 13, 2011

Social technologies have become wide and varied making the landscape confusing.  ”What product should we use?”  This is a question I am asked all the time. A number of the organizations I have worked with have come to me and said, “We want to be more social so we thought we should use SharePoint / Jive / IBM Connections / Yammer / Drupal / etc…”  But there is a fundamental flaw in that sentence. “We want to be more social” is not solved by buying a tool. It can be aided, but it does not solve the issue.  Although slight in semantics, the different is huge in application. When I talk to these organizations they want to see how they can be more social online.  It is for this reason that I rarely bring my laptop to these type of meetings – I don’t want to talk about technology. Social Technology will [...]

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Social Business Failure #10: Assume This is About Being Social

September 7, 2011
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  In preparation for a meeting, I came in early and set up the computer and projector with the organization’s social networking application.  My job was support a team lead as she rolled out how they will use the tool to totally revamp and streamline their on-boarding process.  The first two ladies came in.  As they talked among themselves, one of them looked up at the screen and said, “What is that?” “Oh, its our social networking site.  I don’t know much about it.” “Social networking?!  I don’t have time for that.  Who does?  I don’t have time to waste.” “I don’t know – neither do I. I have been in a couple times, but haven’t done anything.” I sat back, silently, smiling, knowing that they are about to be asked to use it and wondering what their reaction will be in an hour. After everyone arrived, the meeting kicked [...]

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