An oasis to run to in blogosphere when the social networks begin to pale. iScatterlings will be here.
January 19th, 2008 — Business
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How relevent is Technorati now?
Dave Sifry and his crew developed a ranking site that ruled the roost. Technorati ruled the rankers!
But then along came Google.
December 18th, 2007 — Business
OK. While my hosting service or BT’s exchange is down, I’ll just Rant on Tuesday Too!
I want to reprise my article about the type of service I experienced in New York at the hands of the waiting staff at diners, restaurants, on tour buses, banks, delis etc etc - everywhere. Brilliant. They know exactly how to make you very happily take your money out of your wallet and then gladly put it into their till. And they are experts at getting you to come back and do it again and again and again.
And I am more than happy to do so. But why not in UK?
October 2nd, 2007 — Business
C’est la vie.
Once again the prospect of streamling costs will bring about the need to say goodbye to staff. Redundancy programmes are fraught with stress and if you are the boss telling staff they are listed, then you feel like the harbinger of death. And this sucks. Big time.
There are prescribed ways to tell your staff member that their job is at risk. While I know that I should concur with management’s dictates and follow the script, I cannot. The scripts I have seen are patronising and in my opinion this is one occassion where patronisation is the last thing your staff need from you.
I’ve even made myself redundant before. And that was like committing suicide. I had to call in the liquidators after the FD ran away and the MD hit maximum uselessness and could not utter any instructions or lead the start-up aged just 7 months, out of the dwang. But the time comes when you realise that there is no way to save the company from going down and the need to call it quits has arrived. So I made the call.
Following my experiences with my start-up colleagues I decided that there is no good way you can dress up bad news. And it is best to get the bad news out first rather than pussyfooting around waiting for an ideal opportunity to present itself. There never is a good time to tell someone that they just lost their job. So do it there and then in as gentle a tone as you can without falling into melodramatic colapsing into tears, vocal fades and hushed tones.
Just lower the volume a tad and speak confidently and clearly. You staffer needs to be told what the reduction in force programme entails so is relying on you more now than ever.
Your confidence must ooze through and it helps make a bad time ever so slightly easier. Not better. I express my confidence in the persons skills and character. I also guide them to openings in other departments that are not impacted by the need to reduce headcount. I also tout them proactively around the company and use my network to try get them into an interview where their particular skill will benefit the other department or outside company.
This is the very least I can do for a person whose time, efforts and skills have helped me succeed at my job.
September 20th, 2007 — Business
No matter how you view it, sadly the end for cork closures in wine bottles is in sight. Like so many things in our technology based world, natural materials have come under a lot of scrutiny from hygenists, biologists other ists as well as dieticians, technicians and a shedload of creeps in white lab coats.
September 18th, 2007 — Business
When I first started this blog, I installed the Stattraq plugin. It was rated as one of the best, worked well and supplies just the kind of detail about visitors that I regard as useful and meaningful. I still regard it as the better tool to use but as there is no development or support, I need to find an equal or better tool to replace Stattraq.
And herein lies my quandry.
Over the past couple of months I have installed and tried five tools that claim to be good. But they do not provide me with the sames detail that I like and use Stattraq for. Not even Wordpress’s BlogStats meets my need. I get no realtime stats like I do from Stattraq. Also, the way the data is presented does not meet the standard I get from Stattraq.
What do you use and do you recommend it?
September 17th, 2007 — Business
As reported by Total Telecom, “the closing of this deal brings to an end a saga of rumours surrounding the future of Pipex.
BT was originally thought to be interested in Pipex, with rumours emerging that the U.K. incumbent was lining up a £350 million bid.”
Deal closes just four months after Tiscali confirmed its interest in possible Pipex acquisition.
Tiscali announced Friday it has completed its acquisition of U.K. broadband provider Pipex in a deal worth £210 million, on a debt-free basis. However, less than two months later Tiscali announced it had acquired Pipex, financing the deal with a €600 million debt facility from Intesa SanPaolo and JP Morgan.
Buying Pipex has brought Tiscali amongst other things 650,000 voice customers, 570,000 broadband subscribers, of which 250,000 are dual-play customers, and 100,000 SME customers.
Remember that Tiscali had to sell off several of their operations around EU to pay off a $250m loan by July last year and then promptly went out and renewed the note. Now it concerns me how they will service the €600m facility.
Massimo Cristifori (Tiscali CFO) is sailing very close to the wind and I am questioning Tiscali’s ability to sustain iteself with the kind of debt it now has onboard.
I hope the service does not deteriorate. If it does the subscribers to Pipex broadband will seek a new supplier. I am already looking at changing vendor.
September 10th, 2007 — Business
I use Pipex (UK) as my broadband vendor. Pipex have an enviable record in the telecoms reseller market for great uptime percentage at a very reasonable price. In my eyes they are also a darling investment. That successive Pipex management has improved on then exceeded customer satisfaction and improved the ROI is fact.
Years ago they were a subsidiary to a large corporation which was then strongly on the acquisition trail. And I sometimes think of what might have occurred had the corporation not eventually hived off Pipex. Most likely not a lot of good. In my view, getting rid of a subsidiary whose core business is unaligned to the parent’s endeavours is sometimes not always in the better longterm interest of the corporation but justifiable if the existing management team lacks vision and cannot innovate a solution to support growth and set a course for the subsidiary to take. So, the corporation sold Pipex off for a pittance in similar fashion to what RACAL did to a pesky irritating subsidiary they called Vodafone. Look what happened to that little pest!
All it took for Pipex to succeed was a new owner with a dream to change a pest into a success. He did and earned a cool £32m for him and his family when he sold the company on. Since selling, the new management has enhanced and delivered more on the original dream to the point where Tiscali is now salivating at the prospect of snapping up the broadband subscriber base.
Oh dear. Dream service is over. I will have to look for a new Broadband supplier. Tiscali do not infuse me with confidence.
September 1st, 2007 — Business
Myth #3: Suggest ways to make the boss more popular with the team.
By Geoffrey James Copyright CNET 2007
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM:
The boss will appreciate your efforts to improve morale and teamwork.Why it’s a myth:
If your boss is unpopular, there’s very little you can do to change that perception.Try this instead:
When boss-bashing takes place beyond his earshot, don’t join the fray. Instead, give the boss credit for things he does well. When the department spy (there always is one) reports back to the boss,he’ll learn that you’re an ally.Example:
“Yeah, Joe loses his temper sometimes. But he’s really good at defending our interests in front of the budget committee.”
August 31st, 2007 — Business
Myth #2: Ask for permission before bringing up difficult issues
By Geoffrey James Copyright CNET 2007
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM:
You want your boss to be in a good mood when you deliver bad news.Why it’s a myth:
Thanks to email and cell phones, word travels faster than ever. If you don’t tell your boss the bad news, somebody else will, and then you’ll look evasive or stupid—or both.Try this instead:
Deliver bad news in the context of what you’re doing to fix the situation or make it better.Example:
“The Acme sale fell through, so we’re launching a quick sales campaign with the other customers to make up the revenue loss.”
August 31st, 2007 — Business
Myth #1: Always be in the office before your boss arrives
By Geoffrey James Copyright CNET 2007
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM:
If you’re even five minutes late, the boss will think you’re a slacker.Why it’s a myth:
In an age of flex time, telecommuting, Blackberries, and instant messages, bosses care more about whether you’re getting the job done than whether you’re warming your seat.Try this instead:
Make sure the boss knows you’re putting in extra hours at home or on the road, both by maintaining a rapid-response email or instant message presence, and by hinting at when you’re putting in those extra hours.Example:
“I had to work over the weekend on this report, but I think you’ll agree the extra effort was worth it.”
August 29th, 2007 — Business
On 5th August I went online at Amazon.co.uk to order and pay for a Dell Axim X51v Powered Speaker Mount for the car. Having recently loaded TomTom v6 Navigator onto the Dell X51v, the speaker mount seemed the appropriate ‘extra’ to purchase.
Afterall it’d be nice to hear if I am supposed to turn or to go straight on. Also, I wanted to be able to listen and shout back at John Cleese and confuse him by taking the opposite direction to what he commands you do! Small things please small minds, particularly on long roadtrips to Scotland.
August 28th, 2007 — Business
Complaining customers are a business’s best friend. Happy customers are a business’s worst enemy. Why? Because they do not complain.
Like it or not complaining customers are a business’s best friend. Regrettably, most businesses fail to recognise this. To their peril. Because businesses that ignore criticism and complaints never get to hear about where or how they fail the customer.
However, dissatisfied customers keeps the business on its toes and forces the business to be at the ‘top of its game’ and to keep on fixing problems and striving to perfect their service or product(s).
August 12th, 2007 — Business
I have fallen many times under the spell of the clever ones and impulse bought something I cannot afford or do not need.
You have done it too.
Thanks to Hugh Macleod at gapingvoid.com and his genius back of business cards cartoons, I found the above cartoon to place on the reverse or in fact the face of my new business cards.
August 10th, 2007 — Business
Hi, my name is Rob and I’m recovering from job burnout.
I had a bad burn out. I ignored the warning signs. It reached the lowest point when I began to physically suffer because of it. Angina attacks are painful and absolutely not where you should let yourself get to. I did because I refused to let burnout or the boss get to me. Both did. I lost out.
August 3rd, 2007 — Business
Do you work for a toxic boss? Are you completely devoid of any motivation to do your work? Ever felt that you simply cannot go to the office anymore, and the internal forces driving these thoughts through your mind are so utterly compelling?
Well you are not alone. A friend of mine has unfortunately kept quiet for two years about her experiences under an arrogant, micromanaging, insecure bully of a boss. And it has driven her close to a total nervous breakdown.
I was appalled to learn about what her toxic manager put her through. I heard how he undermined her, would never listen to her innovative concepts and totally discounted out loud in front of others any ideas she came up, had the temerity to order her directs, (never had the courtesy to ask her to get it done), to do tasks regardless of what work she had assigned them and then shout at the staff member for providing the wrong data plus he would never take responsibility for his initiatives going wrong. It was always someone elses fault.
My immediate reaction to hearing all this was an adrenaline pumping violent urge to confront him and sort it out man to insecure bully. But I realise that this was not going to resolve the issue nor keep my friend in a job she used to love and be highly regarded at doing. She was/is thought of as being in the top 10% of her profession.
What she had was a manager the company thought of as the ‘blue eyed wunderkind’ and so promoted him in from another division to direct the department with zero experience of her professional discipline nor what the department actually did.
Who is to blame?
Let me know what your thoughts are.
