Entries Tagged 'Corporate' ↓

I know what you’re thinking.  I’ve created a provocative headline to lure you in, and the actual post that follows is going to be nowhere near as interesting as the title.  Maybe you’re right, in which case I apologize.  But this post came about as an extension to some conversation I’ve had recently with people at EMC, on the subject of change, turmoil, and heightened expectations.  And when I put it like that, maybe there are some comparisons I can draw between Barack Obama and my work environment.
Continue reading →

ROI is a magic code word in business.  It stands for the ruthless bean-counters who ask one simple question in response to any proposal.  What will I gain if I do it?

As I and others have written, EMC is investing in social media, both externally and internally.  While it’s easy to quantify that investment, defining the return can be a bit harder.  How do you measure the brand perception among decision makers?  Among potential new hires?  Among employees?  Or, from my standpoint, how do you know if your workforce is more engaged, more involved, and more connected?
Continue reading →

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” - Muhammad Ali

I’ve written in the past about how we need to embrace and even seek out risk at times.  Since I used American Football to discuss the topic before, I thought I’d continue the discussion with an example of poor risk management from this past weekend’s games.
Continue reading →

One of the more interesting moments in my transition from developer to manager was when, in a training class, an honest instructor said, “If you don’t want to see office politics, you shouldn’t become a manager.”  I always thought I wasn’t one for office politics, but I was beginning to get dragged into them as an individual contributor, so I realized it was a non-issue for me.

But I’m not here to talk about that kind of office politics.  I’m here to talk about politics in the office.  Well, politics, religion, and whether you prefer waffles to pancakes.  You know, the hard questions.  I recently saw a discussion sparked by an employee who felt “harassed” by having unpopular political views criticized by others at the workplace.
Continue reading →

Every person who meets me has an image of who I am.  And in every relationship, there are things I choose to open up and things I choose to keep closed.  You can call the controls I exert here “filters” or “lenses” but they are an explicit attempt by me to influence the person you see when you interact with me.  As these relationships transition into the digital realm, similar filtering is bound to take place.  I’ve written before about maintaining separate identities in different online circles, but that’s not the truth.

The truth is that your identity is distributed among those circles.  Your “self” is fragmented and strewn about your digital footprint.

Continue reading →

I’ve been involved in software development for over a decade, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this question: Who owns this code? Generally, if someone has to ask, it’s already a bad sign, but the real bad sign is what comes next.  “Oh, Bob used to own it, but he left the company, and then it was Kumar, but he transferred over to the other team, now I guess Sue could probably answer questions about it,” but nobody owns it.

Well, that last part is seldom verbalized, but it’s on everyone’s mind.
Continue reading →

I wish I had a picture to accompany this post — me, sitting on a chair, in front of a green screen, with high tech A/V equipment all around me, and bright lights shining in my eyes.  Me, nervous, blabbing off topic.  How did I get into that mess?
Continue reading →

In my continuing effort to add to the cluttered world of sports analogies in business conversations, today’s post covers a rather sensitive topic to this Tom Brady fan.  You want your quarterback to get sacked once in a while.
Continue reading →

Some time back, I talked about some lessons I’d learned from a couple different (fairly geeky) games.  There’s a valuable lesson I didn’t include there, and I think it deserves its own post.  In honor of the start of the American Football season, I’ll even add some sports analogies.

The lesson is simple: don’t ever forget the object of the game.  But there are a couple side lessons which follow from it.
Continue reading →

If, like me, you read the Consumerist, you are greeted on a daily basis by stories of idiocy, incompetency, and outright evil done by “faceless corporations.” Home Depot did this, Target did that, Wal-Mart did this other thing. Oil companies, airlines, cable companies, retailers, you name it. The common thread is that a paying customer has a bad experience, and the person whose job it is to interface with that customer is unwilling or unable (due to corporate policy) to fix things. Often, the issue is escalated enough, common sense is eventually applied, and the customer is appeased (for now).

We hear this story almost daily, with different players in different roles. And yet there’s still this image that corporations are faceless entities.
Continue reading →