My Twitter 2.0: Why did I stop following more than 75% of the people I followed?

November 5, 2010 Leave a comment

I have been on Twitter for almost a year and a half and this is definitively a platform that helps me to stay informed about what’s going on. But as many folks out there, I got carried away with the whole ranking/number of followers syndrome. It gotten to a point where I was using automation tools to try to augment my number of followers, increasing of course the number of people that I follow. Earlier this week, I decided to go on a Twitter diet and reduce the number of followers by almost 75%. You may wonder why I did such a drastic cut, here’s why:

Signal to noise ratio

While I was still getting all the information I needed, the added number of people that I was following was basically creating noise on the communication channel. Implicitly, I was spending more time and checking more frequently my Twitter feed in order to catch all the tweets I wanted to see. While this is good for Twitter, this was not good on my time and efficiency. Less noise means more quality on my feed.

The importance of a Bio

One of the first things I did to start this aggressive diet was to check each Twitter account I was following and looked at their Bio. Do I know this person? Does his/her bio compel me to follow them? For each Twitter account’s bio that did not meet certain criteria, I stopped following. For me, some of the criteria were entrepreneurship, people in product management and marketing, people in the media (mostly local media that is) and Twitter accounts that were news feed or providers of valuable content (such as Mashable).

Do I know you? What do you have to say?

As part of this diet, the level of relationship I have with these Twitter account was also key. Knowing a specific Twitter account personally increased the chance for me to continue following. Also, the quality of what you had to say had a lot of weight in the balance.

When were the last times you tweeted?

Another factor was to check certain Twitter accounts for the last time they had tweeted. While some accounts had interesting tweets, if you had not tweeted for several months, you have been removed from my list. I do not want to keep following someone just in case that this person might have something to say a few times a year. If its business related, we are most likely connected on LinkedIn and I can see any status updates over there.

The result

Well, it feels like I have truly lost a lot of weight. I have now at a little over 600 people that I follow. My Twitter feed is easier to read and I am getting a lot more quality content each time I check the latest updates. It also makes it much easier to trim the last 10 pounds – I basically got into the habit to removing additional Twitter accounts as they tweet things that I don’t find interesting anymore. Also, for the first time in a lot of time, I have more followers that people that I follow.

I will keep you posted on how my Twitter 2.0 experience pan out, so far it has been a breath of fresh air and makes me appreciate Twitter a lot more…

Filed under Business Principles, Marketing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Note to investors: hope is not a strategy

June 2, 2010 2 Comments

How many times do you see companies that are not doing the right things or do not have the right management or strategy in place? You would be surprised to see how many times these same companies have investors hopeful that things will work out at the end. Well I have bad news for you: hope is not a strategy.

A good strategy does not happen by miracle
Unless a company has spent the time to build a proper strategy, it won’t fall from the sky. And when I say a good strategy, I mean one that can be actually executed. Nothing worse than a strategy that while fantastic on paper, will never be close to be well executed or realizable. A strategy needs to be realistic, something that you know that the management team can really accomplish. Expecting something amazing to happen without execution is a pipe dream.

Does the management team really know what they are doing?
Anyone can blame outside elements for lackluster results: economy, weather, customers, competition, etc. How capable is your executive team in foreseeing potential problems? Do they have a plan of action if these occur? Are realistic are these sales targets? How sustainable are these marketing activities (and at what real cost)? No matter how hard the market conditions are, a great management team is capable to navigate in difficult waters and find the best path possible (don’t mean it will be easy or flawless).

The role of the Board
A Board is not just about adopting resolutions and reviewing budgets. There is a great responsibility in making sure the company is well managed, with a well thought out strategy and the means to execute. How often is the Board meeting in difficult time? Are there any special committees being put in place when the tough gets going? How accurate is the information flowing back from management?  If you’re Board is not taking attention to red flags, there just as part of the problem as the executive team. And there are a lot of red flags we just prefer to ignore (it’s amazing on how much you can discover by doing a few internal reviews and ask a few questions). We should not just be diligent when we acquire a business. Everyday should have its share of on-going reviews.

Shareholder return does not happen by chance
If your executive team is not building a sustainable business and a competitive advantage, you might just end up failing to successfully sell the company; at the right valuation that is. Any investor should never accept hope as a strategy. Expect more from your Board and executive team. They are playing with your money and you should make sure they know it. If something is not working out to your liking, you need to make some changes – and sometime at both levels. Often enough, just getting a new Chairman or CEO can make a lot of good in cleaning up a business and making it better. Don’t wait until hope is your last chance.

Filed under Acquisitions, Business Principles, Finance, General, Quotes Galore Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Succession planning in management

May 12, 2010 Leave a comment

This is an exercise that is most often done in larger organization but never really in small or mid-sized companies. Of course, most entrepreneurs might believe that they can’t be replaced or that everybody will stay on board forever. You might thing that until someone important leaves the company. Then of course comes a flurry of panic on how to deal with the situation and you look at promoting the most senior or what looks like the closest replacement available.

Moving up the hierarchy requires coaching and mentoring

I am a strong believer that in order to successfully move up the ladder, you need to not only have the right skills and experience, but also to get proper coaching and mentoring BEFORE and AFTER you get a promotion. I can never understand managers promoting people assuming that somehow they will become a great manager because they got more responsibilities. I have seen too many times great contributors to the business become less valuable as they get higher on the food chain.

Working the career path

Each employee has some form of career path. It is up to the manager to understand this path and guide the person the best way possible in achieving this plan in accordance to the need of the Company. Some employees might need more support, even some training in order to learn what is needed before embarking on a bigger challenge. The better you work and coach your employees, the more options you have as you need to plan to replace someone in the organization.

Building a succession map

While you don’t want to think about someone leaving the company (including yourself), there are many conditions under which a key employee might decide to leave for another opportunity or might not be able to work anymore (health related issues). It is very important to take the time at least once a year to build a succession map. This process will allow you to determine where you have gaps for certain replacement roles as well as what needs to be done in order to bring specific employees at the right place.

Employee succession planning

Succession does not always come from obvious places

Once you get all your managers to do the same exercise, you might be surprised on a few potential succession – widening opportunities to coach and mentor specific individuals that will better support your business in the long term. Just as well you might realize that some people used to be highly marked as potential successors but have now been set aside. This exercise is also a very good conversation piece with your managers – getting better insight on how they are seeing their direct reports.

Filed under Business Principles, Human Ressources Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Employee mapping based on performance and potential

May 7, 2010 Leave a comment

Whether you are involved in an integration planning process (as part of an acquisition) or maybe you just joined the Company; it is important to identify how are the key players in the organization. Just as well, you want to know how have the best potential (given the right support and coaching) as well who are the low-performers.

While some employees might feel threatened by such process, this is more about understandings the team you have in front of you rather than just finding reasons to get rid of some of them. I believe that we all have things to learn and to improve; it is the role of every manager to support, coach and mentor. Nobody can convince me that great employees and leaders were just born like that. Yes, some people might be more gifted and while you need to be realistic about each person’s limitations; everyone has an ability to get better thru hard work and proper support.

Performance vs. Potential

Each manager needs to be able to evaluate not only the performance level of a given employee, but also his (or her) true potential. I believe that we each have our own degree of potential based on a given role; meaning that our potential need to be fully evaluated upon the role and responsibilities you currently have (or potential in the case of a upcoming promotion or succession planning) but we might have variable degrees of performance. Performance can be linked to given targets and objectives, how specific challenges are met; but can also be affected by external factors that can range from work related (employee conflicts, political situation, financial constraints, etc) and/or life related (family, love life, living conditions, etc).

Mapping on a chart

Once you have determined the level of performance (high, medium, low) and potential (high, medium, low), you can now easily map this on a chart such as the illustration below. It is important to note that this mapping process is not only on an individual basis but also comparative to other employees that fit in the same level or group (for example, reviewing your product management team). As such, you cannot just have high performers and high potential employees. As a rule of thumb, you should have a 25/50/25 split on both axis. Of course, there are always exceptions so you just need to use your own judgment.

Employee Mapping based on performance and potential

Performance and potential mapping

So what’s next?

Once you have this mapping done, you can determine how you want to treat each individual. Employees that are in quadrant 1,2,4 need to be rewarded (bonus, promotions, increased responsibilities). Staff located in quadrant 3, 5 & 8 needs to be reviewed in getting them to either better perform (assess what prevents better performance) or how to handle high-performers with low potential. Depending on their role, you need to assess if these individuals can continue to perform; especially if the challenge rises in the future (and making them at that point mid-low performers). Lastly, people in quadrant 6, 7 & 9 can be problematic. Are the low performing / low potential employees at the right place? What is preventing them to perform, why do they have such a low potential? As for low performing / high potential people; is this a problem of motivation? How long have they been working there? Are they just waiting for a better opportunity? How driven were they in the past?

At a minimum, this tool is great to start a discussion on how to rank the organization or a team. In the coming posts, I will be writing on additional tools that complement this employee mapping process.

Filed under Business Principles, Human Ressources Tagged with , , , , , , ,

How to get your Team to Perform

August 19, 2009 1 Comment

How many team organizations and re-organizations that you’ve been through that failed to perform? Ever wonder why? As we see conflicts and frictions in a team, our reflex is to break the team, change some people, re-org the whole thing to find out months later that things are not better… Of course, we need to act when a specific individual has a negative impact on the team. But how do you get the WHOLE team to perform?

Teamwork is as good as the people that make the team. It is all about the people and getting the best of them . But beyond the individuals to perform, getting a team to perform requires also time and investment. Numerous teamwork models have pointed out that teams progress through various developmental stages. The most famous model was created by Dr. Bruce Tuckman, who coined the maxim “Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing.” This is a model I learned while taking a training class from Catalyst Consulting Team

From the Tuckman model, there are 4 basic development stage:

  • Team Forming Teams identify and determine how to serve the key external entities such as customers, business partners or internal stakeholders that are critical to achieving their goals.
  • Team Storming Team members learn to voice disagreement openly and constructively while staying focused on common objectives and areas of agreement.
  • Team Norming Team members learn to define different roles and different ways of making team decisions and when to use them.
  • Team Performing Teams assess their responsiveness to external conditions and their ability to serve the needs of customers and constituents.

The common mistake in Management is to expect Performance out of Forming a team, thus neglecting the Storming and Norming stages. Excluding someones’ bad behavior, it is normal to see some debate, friction and tension once you have formed a team. Individuals want to perform and unless you fully understand the boundaries (i.e. norming), this is difficult to achieve.  Only once you have normalized the team’s work that you can truly expect performance.

So how do you get to perform as quickly as possible? First, it is very difficult to put a pre-defined timeline in place; some teams will take more time than others to perform. In my rule of thumb, I usually plan for a 6 months timeframe to get to PERFORM. So if you have built a team and expect everything to perform flawlessly in a shorter timeframe, well then you are an OPTIMIST and will be disappointed.

Here are my 2 simple tools to get teams to perform:

Communication: I’ve talked about this before and I will say it again, communication is key. Spend the time both individually and as a team to explain things to make sure that everything is well understood. Making sure that each individual understand what is expected form them and what is their contribution and responsibility in a team is critical. Also, communication is both ways and you need to be available to take to time to listen to your employees. Always free up at least an hour or so a day for communication – having your staff to require a meeting scheduled in order to talk to you won’t cut it …

Team Meetings Regular meetings where the team can talk about individual and group issues are fundamental. And please don’t take the whole time-slot for just status updates – make sure that you allocate for people to share their point of view and stimulate collaboration amongst the team. There is no better way than when you have the whole team in front of you to detect frictions and where some people can work better together. Also plan some team meetings that can allow for everyone to learn more about each other – plan once in a while for a team lunch, go play curling, go on a wine tasting – whatever activities that will line up well with the Company culture …

Once you achieved in getting the team to perform, it is always impressive to see how each individual is also performing better, seeking assistance from their peers in getting things done and ultimately making the whole group more successful.

Filed under Business Principles, Human Ressources Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

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