CEO Geeks Rule

Dan Morrill (Security Project Manager)

If you ever doubted it, then you need to go over to the Business Week article that talks about the early integration of IT in business, and how CEO's who get it, who label themselves as computer geeks get their businesses growing faster than folks who do not.

While companies have many strategies to make them grow, in many of the companies that we have seen, IT is still off in its own corner, and not really integrated into the business. Business asks for things, IT says no, security says no, rather than try to make some kind of process where the decision is about risk management, rather than simply no.

Yes-73% of the "total geeks" reported double-digit average annual growth in their businesses over the past five years. Close to half-48%-of "total geeks" also reported that their businesses reached the 100-employee milestone within five years of launch, compared to one-third of all survey respondents.
We also found it was important to integrate IT into a company's business strategy early. The survey found that, while 98% of respondents said their company had a defined IT strategy as a small business, those who viewed IT as a "strategic or competitive resource" tended to grow faster than CEOs who said they "spent just enough" to ensure that employees could do their jobs. Plus, 18% of respondents said that "not integrating technology into our business strategy sooner" was their biggest IT mistake over the years. Source: Business Week

Many management articles will always say that people need to keep IT in the business, and that business should be an active participant in IT, and IT should be an active participant in business. The ability to do so it widely debated, but has a simple outcome. If you want to have a better company, IT is a base resource, that must be leveraged to make better decisions, grow the company faster, and generally support the business.

There are few real studies that back up this assertion, so the new one quoted by business week should be on every manager's desk this morning. Especially if the IT department is estranged from the company. Something to think about, grow faster by incorporating IT better, or grow slower by letting IT be on its own in some small dark corner of the company.

More Priorities, Less Likelihood of Implementation

by Tim Berry

I wish I had data to prove it, but I will say that I've seen it over and over again for 30-some years: in business planning, three to five priorities work, and 10 or 20 priorities doesn't work. In fact, it's a classic inverse relationship: the more priorities, the less likelihood of implementation.

Even without data, there is the anecdotal value of how many business plans I've dealt with. The illustration here is a slide I've been using in presentations since the 1980s.

It's a classic inverse relationship. If one goes up, the other goes down. Like traffic and speed, clouds and sun, or teenagers in the household and money in the parents' pocket.

There's an obvious reason. Planning is about people and management, and people and management is about knowing when to say yes and when to say no. Priorities are sometimes about having to say no, we can't do that distracting other thing, we have to do this important first thing. That boils down to a matter of priorities.

Priorities are manageable when there are three, four, maybe five of them; but they are meaningless when there are 10 or 20. Who is going to believe the importance of not doing something just because it's not a priority when there are 20 priorities already? What's wrong with a 21st?

The opposite is focus. I've seen some real successes in business planning when the priorities made sense and the entire company was able to understand the priorities and focus down hard on them. Example? Apple Computer grew from an unmeasurable market share to 15% and from $180 million annual sales to $1.5 billion from 1991 to 1994 mainly by focusing on two key priorities: work with major Japanese companies as allies and develop the differentiation of the graphic operating system as a tool for using Kanji characters.

Thanks to Seth Godin for reminding me of this today with his post The Power Of Chunking. "There really is a rule of seven," he says, "when it comes to putting ideas into your head." I'm saying less than seven in this business planning context, but Seth is in a much broader context. And, at the end, he adds:

Seven is probably too many bullets. Three is more like it.

Three we can handle. Three is manageable and memorable and actionable. Give me three things and I can find a place for them in my brain. Each of those three things can probably have three subthings if you like. And then, at least for now, that's it.

Tariff rates at tip of your cursor

The Star online News Thursday September 27, 2007

Tariff rates at tip of your cursor

By CHRISTY LEE S.W.

KUALA LUMPUR: Traders in the manufacturing industry will no longer have to deal with the tediousness of manually looking up information on tariffs through books or CDs, which may also only contain dated information.

They can now use the online search portal Tariff Finder Online (TFO) to find up-to-date and accurate information on tariffs.

The web-based portal was officially launched recently by Tradenex.com Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM).

“There is a lot of data on tariffs, but the problem is getting hold of the information at the right time,” said Soon Koi Voon, Tradenex.com CEO.

At present, he said, anyone who wants to import or export goods would have to call up the Customs department or manually sift through tariff books and CDs for information.

“And very often, you’ll need to cross-reference more than one book or CD – it’s a time-consuming process,” he said.

TFO is targeted at manufacturers (who are involved in the import of components), importers, exporters, distributors and freight agents.

According to Soon, TFO was developed locally through a partnership with independent software vendor In-Glow Technologies Sdn Bhd.

“We took only three months, from the time of conception to completion, to develop the entire system,” he said.

TFO was built on Microsoft .NET framework, and uses both SQL Server and Windows Server.

Tyson Dowd, Microsoft Malaysia Sdn Bhd senior director of local software economy, likens TFO to the “Suez Canal” for the customs industry in the country.

“It is virtually the entire database of the Malaysian Custom tariff rates consolidated into a single web-based platform,” he said.

“With a click of the mouse, traders can now search for information – it will ensure greater efficiency for the industry,” he said.

TFO’s database contains entire tariff rates of the Malaysian Customs for more than 8,800 items under Harmonised Systems, and more than 12,600 under the Asean Harmonised Tariff nomenclature codes, according to Tradenex.com.

Ironing out inefficiencies
“There are a lot of inefficiencies in the supply chain industry, many of which are not due to poor business processes or weak management, but because information is not available at the right time and place,” said Datuk Paul Low, FMM vice-president and chairman of Tradenex.com.

He said supply chain processes in the country are often not integrated with warehousing, sales and suppliers, although they should be.

“As long as we have these inefficiencies, we will waste time and be unable to manufacture and ship products in minimal time,” Low said.

“Also, because tariffs now vary from country to country, the business of import and export has become more complicated,” he said.

Low said it has become harder to keep track of the latest tariff reductions. “If you’re overseas and you want to check for information on tariffs in Malaysia, you would have to make numerous calls or buy books from here,” he added.

Avoiding confusion
According to Ken Wong, In-Glow Technologies managing director, there are two concerns when importing goods – if a duty or tariff needs to be paid, and if an import licence is required.

“To find the answer, you will first need a tariff code,” he said. “If you do not have years of experience in the manufacturing industry, you’ll have a hard time looking for tariff codes because the terms used in this business are not the same as those a layman uses,” said Wong.

For example, a layman who wants to find the tariff code for cars might simply search for the word, although the typical term used is “vehicle,” he said.

TFO has a smart search feature which enables a person who is not familiar with manufacturing jargon to find the proper tariff codes easily.

“You just need to key in a word, and the smart search feature will provide suggestions of what it thinks you are looking for,” said Wong.

TFO also comes with multilingual support. “Misinterpretations often occur in classifications, which might cause an importer to pay the wrong duties and get fined for it,” he said.

For example, if someone wants to look up tariff codes for importing live fish, he might come across the word “fry,” which is a classification for immature fish.

But the word “fry” may have an ambiguous meaning, Wong said, especially to those who are not well-versed in English.

“The finder can check boxes for Chinese and Malay, and the site will display the translated word in these languages on the same page,” he said.

Pay to use
Traders who are interested in using TFO will have to register at the website, and pay a registration fee of RM200 (per user).

A one-day pass costs RM20 while a 12 month subscription costs RM600.

“We also have corporate rates for companies that want to register multiple users,” Soon said.

But those who just want to preview some of TFO’s features without registering, can log in with the username and password “demo,” he said.

++++

http://tariff.tradenex.com

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Understanding Employees

3 Ways to Make Employees Miserable from Planning, Startups, Stories by Tim Berry I just listened to an HBR Ideacast interview with Patrick Lencioni, author of The Three Signs of a Miserable Job. Here's a quote: A friend of mine was a waitress in college ... she said her and her friends would come to work and complain all the time about the people who came into the restaurant because they stayed too late, or they made a mess ... and they always wanted to get out of there as fast as they could. Finally their manager sat down with them and said 'look at these people who come here. These are people who are celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, or who are coming in to meet an old friend, or who have a stressful life and they need to go someplace where they can actually relax and get a good meal. We are the conduits of that. Everyone who comes in here has a story. Our job is to help them make this the best experience possible.' He was sincere in that. After a while these waitresses starting coming to work with a different sense of purpose. During the breaks and after work they would talk about the different events they'd served, and the people who came into the restaurnat. He turned what looked like a crummy job into a vocation. All people deserve that. Notice the way his story puts it, that the waitresses deserved to have meaning in their job. It isn't about how their manager tricked them into working harder, it's about how he gave them relevance. Irrelevance, he goes on to say, is one of the three signs. People deserve to have their jobs matter. Good companies, and good managers, need to give them that level of satisfaction. Who does the administrative assistant help? Her boss. Yet her boss is probably reluctant to acknowledge the impact that he or she has on his or her life because they don't want to seem selfish, so they fail to really sit down and say do you realize how much better my personal and professional life is because of you? Do you know every thing you do for me makes me happier and less stressed? Every employee needs to know that there is somebody out there that they serve, and when we don't let people know that, we deprive them of a fulfilling job. This irrelevance is the second of the three signs. The first is anonymity: People cannot be fulfilled in their work if they are not known. All human beings need to be understood and appreciated for their unique qualities by someone who is in a position of authority. People who see themselves as invisible, generic or anonymous cannot love their jobs, no matter what they are doing. The third is a coined word, immeasurement. It reminds me of what I called metrics in a recent post on this blog. All human beings in any kind of a job need some way to assess their own performance that's objective. It might not be numerical or easily quantitative, but it's somewhat objective and observable by them, because then they are not left to depend upon the opinion or the whim of a manager once a year during a performance appraisal. People need to be able to go home from work every night, or every week, or every month, and know where they stand, and know what they can do to influence how they're working. this is why sales people are generally very satisfied in their job, because they have very clear evidence of their performance. Most people think they are coin operated, but in fact a quota is a wonderful scoreboard for them evaluating themselves, and all people need that. Sometimes it requires a manager to be very creative in how they come up with that. In my book this one guy works at the drive through window in a fast-food restaurant and the manager helps him realize that the best way he can measure the impact of his success is to find how many times he can make somebody smile or laugh that comes through his line. So he writes down or records for himself how often he can do that. We have to give people that sense that they have some measure of control.

Cash Flow Magic

Run Silent, Run Deep, Run Out of Money from Planning, Startups, Stories by Tim Berry I'm posting this today with a double purpose, I admit, because in about two hours I'm going to be giving a workshop at the annual Small Business Development Center convention in Denver, on the topic of "Teaching Cash Flow." The win here, I think and hope, is to distinguish between planning cash flow and teaching cash flow. Those are separate problems. The most important problem is getting people who haven't been running companies to believe that cash flow and profits are different. That's just so important because it doesn't add up. It isn't believable. I developed business planning software originally as templates for business planning clients to deal with the following amazingly typical exchange: Me: so if you grow faster, then you'll need to get more financing. They: no, that can't be true, because we're profitable. We make money with each sale, so the more we sell, the more we can fund ourselves. Me: bingo! Please sit down here for a few minutes and deal with these numbers. And so it would go. As soon as you're managing inventory or selling on credit -- which means about any sale to business -- then your cash flow is waiting on the wings, a silent killer, to foul you up. I learned this first in business school and then forgot about it. I learned it later again, the hard way, when Palo Alto Software sales tripled in 1995 and that nearly killed the company. Why? How? Well the huge sales increase was selling software product through traditional channels of distribution, meaning stores, and that means selling to distributors who then resell to stores, and that means that it can take five months between selling the product and being paid for the product. In the meantime, you've got to make payroll and pay your vendors. Yes, it's a good problem to have, we all want to increase our sales and profits, but it's a whole lot easier to deal with if you plan the cash implications well. Today in my presentation I'm going to use one of my favorite metaphors, the Willamette River as it runs through Eugene , Oregon, which is where I live. The river slows down coming out of the cascades and into Eugene, and it looks deep, slow, and peaceful; but it's much more dangerous there than when it's throwing up white water through the rapids. Why? Because it seems so calm and welcoming. People disrespect its currents, get caught in weeds, branches, or rocks, and ... well that's a good metaphor for the way cash flow hits small business when things are good, when sales are growing. What's particularly painful about the cash flow problems that come with growth is that, precisely because there is growth, these problems can be prevented by planning. We've had growth spurts since then that were far less painful because we understood the dangers of cash flow, planned for the cash implications of growth, and worked with our bank ahead of time to make sure the working capital was there.