Before the social network revolution Job status was a way people could demonstrate their success in their lives and show off their social positioning in society and this has been around for centuries. Through job status people were able to improve their quality of life, the people they kept company with and often people would be looked up to in their local villages, towns and cities because of their job status they held. People felt inspired to go and work and serve time in a job that would help them reach that all important Job role title.

Even today there are some senior managers who continue look back on their time served in a job and have not realised that we are living in a very different world. These senior managers need to wake up and join the social network revolution. For the ones that don’t I am feeling concerned for because there is a definite sea of change , a truly remarkable thing is happening, and it has nothing to do with work or job title it is to do with who you are connected to in your social network. Your status is now influenced by your LinkedIn, facebook.com, and ecademy.com networks. There are even now social networking sites that are specific to the industry you work in such as HR.com for human resource execs and social networking sites like Govloop.com for people working in government and Academia.edu for academics.

 Today your next job is most likely to come through a connection in your social network and your social status will not be driven by job status alone but by quality and quantity of your social network connections. This new social status is a very new kind of status; it’s the era of the online networker.

There are websites that now measure your influence online one such site is called klout, it offers a score of your influence based on social networking, blogs etc. This is only the start of things to come within 10 to 15 years unless you have a social network presence on the web you will be a nobody a person who is friendless and one that will struggle to find work and most likely feeling very isolated.

On Twitter people can follow your comments and your followers can be part of your life experience in real time. Some of these people have a very large amount of followers on face book, and twitter and definitely do not have a business suit, it is most likely they are only in their twenties or early thirties perhaps younger and it’s highly plausible that some of these people don’t even have a job. Yet these people will be able to influence the masses, every word they type and put online will be followed and read and absorbed by thousands if not millions of people and in reality these people are the new stars of the global online stage and social revolution. These people are the ones who will become more powerful than our governments and politicians and most likely will become our representatives or politicians. These people will be able to mobilise mass support for things they believe in and they will be able to influence businesses and governments from their computer or mobile phone.

What does this mean?

For most of us it means we will either have to allocate time to make sure we have an online profile and presence that is up to date or employ a company to manage our online profiles for us. We all will have to consider carefully what we place on line about ourselves and share personal information carefully. It is important that we become selective about whom we will allow access into our social network and of course the level of personal information they can see.  More employers are definitely showing a greater interest in facebook and LinkedIn and there have been a few employees that have been dismissed because of what has been written on their facebook and or blog site. This goes to show we all need to be selective about what we upload or write online.     

 With all this personal information on line we need to understand that we run the risk of being identified and segregated because of our online information. If the world ever has a world war the social networking information could be used to cleanse that society of the people that do not follow the values and belief of the oppressor in power.

 Whatever we think I guess social networking is here to stay and it has become part of daily life for us as adults and our children born in the last ten to fifth teen years.    

When writing this blog I am making the assumption that the business is already trading with a product offering and the target market has been defined and potentially there is or could be a demand. I hope parts of this blog will be helpful and of course I am very happy to debate any aspect of this blog.

Throughout the twenty years or so I have been a manager I have come to understand that selecting and recruiting the right people and team, with the correct skill set mix for the whole business is fundamental and critical to having a successful business in the long-term. My view is that all businesses must be people centric at all times as well as being commercial.

I say people centric as I think many managers and employees seem to forget that a business exists because of people. People being the customer and people being the whole team from the board of directors to the staff that are the face of the company in direct daily customer contact.

 I am always shocked at how many companies and managers do not place people at the centre of their decision-making and explore the potential impact of any decisions made on the customer and the team. It seems to me in this day and age that many companies place too much emphasis on what the investors and stakeholders want, which in many cases drives short-term strategies to turn a quick profit for the dividend payment or to achieve a bonus. I would argue that if the FTSE 100 investors pushed for greater focus on the levels of customer service and the team running the business, they would see a much stronger return on investment in the medium to long-term. Just to be clear I am not saying at the cost of finacial performance , I am saying that if business decisions placed an equal or greater importance on people as they do a profit we would see greater more profitable companies , happier employees and most importantly happier customers.  

I appreciate that some decisions need to be timely and if not there could be some risks to the revenue and profit lines. Although Id argue that if you did not think about the impact of your decisions on your customers , and team , you will be wasting resource and time trying to realign or restructure the business somewhere down the line and this will be far more costly. What I am suggesting is that when making decisions at all levels of the business these three questions should be asked.

What is the impact on our customers?

What is the impact on our team?

Can we do it commercially?

Asking yourselves these questions will drive other questions and if you have invested wisely in your management team and employees and created an environment they can contribute too your employees will find the best solutions and or an alternative way to make things work, much like Spencer Silver in 3M and the post it note which has now earned 3M millions of pounds.

Your people are your greatest asset, many years ago when I worked for Dominos Pizza as a Technical store trainer responsible for training franchisees and new openings there were some Franchises that went bankrupt for various reasons, Dominos Pizza International at that time would recover the store and keep the store trading with the support of someone like me until another Franchisee was found to buy the store. Most of these stores had very low sales , yet the moment they had a great manager of a Franchisee who was very focused on the business the revenue and profitability of the store grew massively , one store in particular I can remember in the 1990s went from doing 2.5k per week to over 10k per week with the same area and most of the original team and the same product. The difference was that this Franchisee had made people central to all his business decisions and never compromised any standard that impacted on his customers and his team.

Really not sure how this blog is going to turn out as I am going to write this on the fly and even where or when this blog will end so please forgive me for flipping thoughts from one point to another. I will write as I see a connection and perspective to what I am blogging and thinking about at that time. (I hope it’s not too confusing) 

Human beings are such complex creatures and I could talk about us forever and no doubt I will, this blog may never end as I am always amazed at people and  how they think , behave and develop. The craziest thing is that just as you think you have seen it all a curve ball comes and smacks you right on the head and you learn some more about human beings and how they respond. I guess this is called evolution! Long may this continue to happen.

I think on the surface it looks really easy to be a human being and if I was an alien looking down on earth at first glance id probably think how cool it is to be a human in comparison to a fish or bird or other animal. More importantly I think if I was a fish, chicken or other animal id think I got the short straw but then no matter where you are the grass always looks better on the other side. I like the thought of being a bird or fish until I realised that I’d probably end up on a plate or be another animal’s dinner.

I am a bit of people watcher and always have been since the earliest days I can remember when I was a child I  think it was my way to try to work out why adults are so difficult to understand and how sometimes they react and make weird choices and definitely behave in the most oddest of ways.

As a child you can do something that in your child’s mind seems perfectly logical and correct and yet you will get a good telling off from your parents and then on the other hand you will do something or behave in such a way that you are expecting the worst from your parents and you will get lots of love and praise.

 How complicated is that for starters. Yet to a child all things appear the same just adventuring and learning. As adults we would describe these as opportunities and would think about exploiting them, it isn’t long before we have these conditioned and shaped up by our education system of conforming and parents.

 Although to my mind which is based on I being a child all things appeared as an opportunity the thing that told me if it was right or wrong was dependent on the emotional state of the adult and in which way a response was given back to me. Mostly I would say it was definitely not proportionate or consistent.

We can quickly see as a child it’s a challenge to be a human being and that’s even before we have embarked on the issues of relationships with the nuclear and extended family, friends, social and personal relationships aspects of being a human being. Let’s not forget we then have to try to work out the ” I” question and sense of belonging , sense of purpose questions with finding answers to questions like who I’m “I”? And Where or does god play a part in my life?  This leads to us having to answer questions like freedom of choice, being good or bad and dare I say taking responsibility for our own lives and actions and not blaming society and others, which is a chapter in itself.

As children our parents lie to us as they force their beliefs on us which are based on lies (to protect us mostly and to give us an element of happiness), an example is father Christmas as children we are told he exists, we are told tooth fairies exist. So we look to underpin these beliefs, through seeing the gifts and finding the money that is placed under our pillow only later to find out it is not true. So we have to ask ourselves as adults how many of our beliefs are false.

Given that most of us hold untrue beliefs we can see why stress is now a major cause of sickness in the work place. I once read an article about a little girl at school in an art lesson and the teacher asked the class to draw and paint anything they like. As the teacher walked around the class room she stopped and asked the little girl what had she painted the little girl said “god” the teacher responded and said to the little girl we don’t know what “god” looks like. The little girl said we do now. This type of schooling represses innovation and creativity and the ability to think for ourselves. Perhaps some of us as human beings conform so much through external influences that we lose the real us and become what others want us to be.

Even from a work perspective we have to have the right look and fit and that’s before the company has decided that you have the right experience and skill sets. Things are definitely going to be getting tougher with social networks like Face book, Ecademy, LinkedIn – soon we will see that having the right people in your network will be commensurate with the quality of life you have. What is very worrying is automatic deselection from and isolation in society based on your web profiles.   This may even be here now, the truth is it mostly likely is.

We really do have a very challenging start to life, with what is true, and what is false, we have learned ours parents values and without really knowing it we have had our emotional states and reactions influenced and shaped by people that we have come in to contact with daily and the huge amount of media we are exposed to.

It is not really difficult to understand why our society is a messed up and how for us as individuals how difficult it is to grasp and learn how to work through the debris and challenges of our human existence!

Consider this if our happiness is shaped by all the things we are exposed to and the things I have mentioned in this blog we have not got it easy to be human being at all. The problem is we learn our behavior in auto pilot and most of us then go in to auto pilot in our interaction with others and because of this we become unaware of our own behavior and its impact on other people.  This causes us conflicts which we have to learn to overcome in order to move forward or we end up being in an institution of some sort or have a complete emotional breakdown.

Something I want to share with you is when I was in India recently and I saw some very poor people from a material perspective and yet they looked some of the happiest people id seen for a long time. It goes to show that as a human being where and what you anchor or tie your emotions too is a very important question and for many of us we do this trying to or in seeking happiness. On happiness very few of us take in to account the true perspective and value of our current life situation , personal beliefs ,  life values, and take in to account that our self perception could be flawed. Therefore if we compared our life to others who were born in the wrong place , with bad parents or with a health issue we  may appreciate that we are already in heaven.

Our mind is an incredible piece of natures design, yet it can destroy us as individuals in a moment, It is so important we control how we talk to ourselves as a child and as we are grown ups. Our eyes physically see only a small part of what is reality the rest is filled in by the brain which may not be as it really is. So we have the challenge of managing not only what others tell us about ourselves and our world but what we tell ourselves in words while we work, rest and play. If there is one thing we should all do and that is shut our minds voice off when it tells us negative things.

The reality is being human is a bit of a lottery from a learning and living perspective because if you were born as a child in to a wealthy country or in to a royal family or in a  wealthy family you may have a head start (depending on nature not disadvantaging you) but this does not mean or guarantee us being happy (another challenge of being human) and as each generation comes along for children being born now in this day and age we now have the challenges of the digital age and it is getting faster and more complicated by the hour to live through.

You could argue that it should be easy with technology but the reality is every time we simplify something to save pressure and time we add something in to that time slot so we can keep doing more. I believe we will see very soon information sickness as common cause of most reported stress. People will be suffering from a form of social network related sickness because of reasons like too many people have left their network or a friend has upset  them on face book, this is only around the corner.

It will not be long before we see people who completely shut down due to the amount of things we cram in to time , humans have to manage and cope with a large amount of information that comes to us via our TVs, Phones, computers, tablets and other gadgets. We are shaped continually by media, advertisements selling a life style we aspire to have that most of us will struggle to reach.

I have only covered just the surface. I will continue this blog in more details as soon as I can make time. So please give yourself a break from life and celebrate and appreciate all the challenges we have had to overcome in becoming us and in our efforts to become a fully fledged human being.

Feel free to contribute

Michael Butler

www.intravici.com

http://twitter.com/intravici

The Background

Companies will be reviewing their business strategies and opportunities for 2011 to negate the impact of the coalition’s austerity plan and to compensate for any consumer spending reductions in the UK and in the wider euro zone / global economy. Many retail and hospitality companies will expect to see their revenue lines suffer, as across the globe people tighten and review their spending.

CEOs and FDs will be reviewing and looking for signs that areas of their businesses are at risk and will initiate some company change management programs and initiatives that they believe will protect their revenue lines and profit conversions and in some cases improve customer service.

It is likely recruitment freezes and headcount reductions will be enforced in the early part of 2011 and companies will be only allowing essential expenditure rather than investing. With planned public sector cuts in the UK, combined with the private sector tightening and targeting their spending, we will see a snowball of business closures and a lot change management activity to try to off set risks.

I am certain for hospitality, restaurants and retail companies that they will be looking for ways of increasing revenues and reducing costs to try to neutralise the impact of the 2.5% VAT increase on the net sales line and inflationary driven supplier increases. As well as this business will have to contend with the austerity plan impact and in particular the fear brought about by people feeling personally at risk job wise and thus saving and reducing debt rather than spending on non essentials items.

In efforts to try and encourage consumer spending and reduce costs many companies with initiate some sort of change management program in order to maintain performance or to survive. The problem is companies will enter in to the change management process with an initial momentum with limited employee buy-in that will quickly fizzle out due to the method, approach taken and scope of the change , Change is difficult to make happen and even Harvard Business School recognises that only one-third of all change management initiatives succeed.

Why do Change management initiatives tend to fail?

Clearly for me to try to blame failure of change management initiatives on one particular cause would be rather judgemental and could not be substantiated. What I would like to do is explain how I think change management has a better chance of success and the method I believe is best to use.

Most change management programs are initiated from the top down and fail because the people at the bottom of the company either have not understood why change has been implemented most likely because most change management initiatives can become diluted or if there are not enough benefits to the organisation meet resistence. 

Buy-in is a fundamental requirement for all stakeholders for change management to reach a successful conclusion.  While it is usual the rationale of the change management programs  may be sound and logical the reality is in a lot of businesses change initiatives , changes are normally focused on fixing the symptoms rather than the root causes of the poor business performance, so while in the short-term things look like they are improving the reality is in the medium term momentum will be lost and quite possibly the business would have ended up standing still and put needless strain on either the remaining work force or suppliers. It is my belief that companies should take the time to decipher the noise and de-tangle the root causes of the reason change is being tabled and discussed ideally through empowering people at all levels of the business to be able to contribute ideas / solutions for improving the business and for the company to listen. ( perhaps using small working groups.)

 Change management should not be bull dozed through the business unless your intention is to cause huge resistance and increased employee turnover. I believe companies should look at change management as very similar to growing a plant.

What has the success of change management and growing a plant have in common?

Change management involves mostly people; people are natural and organic beings and follow the laws of nature.  Change management should be viewed in this way. There is absolutely no point in trying to get change in to a business that does not involve or reach the roots of the business, the roots being the employees. Be sure to consider that the fix being suggested is not politically motivated or hiding a poor performing manager. (or gardener if you take my suggested approach).

A gardener plants a seed in our case it’s the change management strategy. He will water it and make sure all the conditions are right for the plant to grow, some times the gardener may influence the speed of growth  (growth being change management initiative) through changing certain conditions. The gardener understands that he will not receive the fruit he is looking for without caring for the plant as it grows and continually watering the roots and ensuring the plant has sunshine, sunshine being praise for good work done. A gardener allows the plant to grow naturally and can influence growth by increasing food (food being communication) , sunlight (praise) and if necessary change the temperature (reviewing of change Strategy)  A gardener will help the plant grow naturally and will provide support throughout its whole life until he receives the fruit he wants.  Many companies start change management programs and provide an initial amount of support and then after a few weeks nothing including feedback or communication of the progress or if the end result was reached. Imagine watering a seed only once ,   It would germinate grow a little and die like many change initiatives.

My point is change is a journey and usually ends up evolving,  it’s a continuous process and one that should be treated with care, attention and reviewed for the life cycle of the change that is needed. Most importantly are you fixing the symptom or the cause?I hope I have been able to get my ideas across and if you have any questions please ask.

Michael Butler

www.intravici.com

I was walking past the Strand in London and saw several red London buses with different numbers going to different destinations and stops and of course leaving from different places with different people from all walks of life. I then got thinking about life and success and achievement and how the choices you can make will contribute towards you having a good journey and reaching your destination or a not such a great one. There are other factors like in life such as timing of the bus, will the bus break down, will someone on the bus introduce you to another opportunity or will they cause you further challenges.  It must be the thought of the New Year and knowing that I want to try and achieve so many things that has got me thinking in this way.

Buses and Life?

The buses to me are going on a journey and it is up to the passengers to get off at the right stop at the right time or to get off when other factors and influences helps them change their mind. I then recalled that if you get a bus late during the week many people sleep on these buses and miss their stops. I likened this to life that many of us go about our lives getting on different buses that could take us to different stops and ultimately to a different destination but many of us sleep through the journey and miss so many opportunities.

I then thought about all the people that get on buses everyday go to the same destination and then get off at the same stop and in some cases wonder why they are having the same result in their careers and life. Maybe for once they should consider getting a different bus?

Planned Journey?

So does this mean if you planned your journey, left in time and waited that you would get the right bus and achieve everything? I think not as there are some buses that breakdown others that can arrive early or late , the bus driver may make a decision that prevents you getting on the bus , such as striking or being sick or even another factor such as an accident  something may happen to prevent you getting to your planned destination. Does this mean you should give up or wait for another bus? I guess that depends on the consequences and what the weather is like outside?

So what does this mean?

To me it means that you can set yourself a destination in your life and the journey you take may not be the one you set out to go on for numerous factors, for some people the journey will be easy for others they may not make it and for most they will sleep through it. At the end of the day would you get on any bus? Probably not! Would you hope the bus will get you there most definitely, will you deal with it if it something happens so you can continue your journey most likely. Bottom line life is like the buses you choose a number, destination and journey some of us will get there on time, some of us won’t at all and some of us will change our minds, but those of us who are determined to get to our stop in 2011 will

Michael Butler

www.intravici.com

I was watching and listening to Thomas Power talking on the future of social networks. He brings to us some insights based on his experiences having spent 16000 hours online and adjusting to the digital age and the digital humanisation. After watching his video it raised some questions in my mind and I want to share some thoughts that are in my mind. He discusses about information sickness and tries to offer some insights on how to deal with this through Filtering and provides some shocking stats.  His advice is about being open, receptive and supportive to people who come to your attention through various digital platforms including spam.

He mentions governments and companies that like control and warns us about fighting to keep control out of the web and digital age. I then got thinking, I love technology and love to see how it helps us all, and it is really quite amazing, when you consider where we are now. We can order pizza online, make our friends on line , get our next job on line , lose our job online , learn online , shop online ,report a crime online , have a library on line of music, photos and books and this is only 5% of how much we are engaged, connected and integrated into the digital world and web based platforms.

It dawned upon me that effectively we now will have the birth of Digital NLP, where people can learn about our behaviours and copy them without actually meeting us or interacting with us. They can see what words we write in and understand our preferred sense to communicate through and for those of us that are immersed into the digital world they can study us online by watching our videos see what content you like to talk about, read and study. Twitter is a god send it lets them know what you are thinking or doing in real time.

The thing that amazes me is that most of us know and have people in our networks that are scattered across the world and yet we don’t know our next door neighbours.

 We have to be careful with this powerful technology. We will become assimilated like the Borg on star trek through technology platforms that recommend and or introduce. We are becoming socially adverse to physical interaction and communication in the true human sense as we are starting to do most of our socialising through face book, my space, LinkedIn and twitter. Google shows people where we live and with GPS on line in map software like Tom Tom, Google maps and social platforms like face book.

 In fact even thieves have become smart – they can steal your car and the GPS in your own car they have now stolen will take them home while you are working. I have heard some people become your friends on line or a friend of your friends online to gain information about you. Yet we trust ourselves with this technology?

Thomas Power focuses on filtering the right things, in our heads we all have something called the reticular activating system which helps us filter information although usually influenced heavily as a child and subsequent life experience , this is what we need to reprogram for the modern digital times.

An example of the reticular activating system is that if you buy a particular red car and prior to this you have never seen this car in red! Guess what now you own it you see many other red cars like yours –

My point being all of us need to filter carefully and just now and then be random, focus on learning something you would not normally do, speak to someone who you normally would not come into contact too. Change your habits frequently; don’t let technology blind you to your true capability as a human being.
Knock on your next door neighbour’s door and introduce yourself. I am not saying technology is bad as I could not imagine being without it myself and of course I develop web based tools to help businesses, but I do remain cautious about being fully immersed and do not want to become at one like the Borg – Remain true to yourself remember it’s good to have a break from the information high way.

Michael Butler

www.intravici.com