Saturday, December 20, 2008

I really like the straihtforward message of the song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTFNPHb71Z4

Monday, December 15, 2008

consistency

People have a deep need for consistency, and when they do something they need to have consistency and alignment between their actions and their beliefs. When there is inconsistency, they must either change what they are doing or what they belief in order to restore consistency. If they have already started doing something, then they cannot change what has been done, so they must change what they believe, particularly 'Why I am doing this'.


Source

Thursday, December 11, 2008

advice vs implementation

I can see the same pattern in behavior of any business that seeks for a consultant advice - they all whant to know what to do and they all want to do nothing with that.

Consultancy companies provide the solution - implementation part is up to the client. And the very implrementation part makes the difference between a successful company and a loser.

Well, I vote for implementation. Still having the consultant career in mind.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Sequence

Normal: Product - Promotion
If you want to include a product into catalogue, first ensure that you know the product, the supplier, the terms.

Preverse: Promotion - Product.
A company decides to act like others and includes first positions into catalogue without thinking out the supplier and terms. Result - a holy crap for communication dept to find pics, and then for buying dept to find this f#$king supplier... In the end clients want the damned product and the company still doesn't have it.

The preverse scheme occures when the CEO wants something to be included and other depts (sales, buyers) don't want to loose their time for preparation. When a smart decision comes - to make a last step to push others to act.

As to me I hate this reverse logic. Especially when I'm the last step executor.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Seth Godin on expensive logos:
I guess the punchline is: take the time and money and effort you'd put into an expensive logo and put them into creating a product and experience and story that people remember instead.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Key lessons for marketing in a recession

Coachie has written a list of notes from a report "Key lessons for marketing in a recession".

I can't say I agree in full, there are some typical marketing self-esteem lies to approve marketing existence. But for sure I agree that companies which cut marketing budgets are long term marketing losers. It was always easier and cheaper to maintain customer relationship rather than building them from scratch.

And of course, crisis is a great time to search for an opportunity and to use new alternative media which is cheaper than traditional one.

Monday, October 13, 2008

crisis behavior strategy

It's almost official - we're in crisis. At least now we can feel it by reconsidering payment periods for our clients, managing cashflows and thinking out our future possibilities in terms of both personal salaries and marketing budgets.

Now we have several possible behavioral patterns.
1. Making efforts to act if there's no crisis at all. Painfull and we're not sure if we have enough resources.
2. Doing nothing hoping to survive somehow until better time.
3. Reconsider our marketing policy, take our time to create all we can create by ourselves, communicate with our clients, choose strategy to do our best in terms of maket activity without spending much money - and get it all when economics gets out of recession.

We can use low-cost marketing still to ensure our clients to get enough attention.
We do.

Friday, October 10, 2008

One can't be a good marketer if his/her efforts are in product/client area only. The main product for a marketer is himself/herself. Self-branding is extremely important to a marketer.

I've heard from a collegue of mine that one of marketing gure started his seminar with a statement that he doesn't care about self advertising - his clients are the world-of-mouth channel. But to me this was a bit arrogant to say - very self-important and nothing about the audience.

The good example for me is Igor Mann with is slightly out of reality "I love all" image - he provides with a serious content without this burde of self-importance.

It is very important to show self-importance without showing it heavily.

Friday, September 19, 2008

marketer vs director

You can do most things alone. I can do, at least. But marketing goes beyond individual work. YOu can be a good analyst, you can have a good sense of what you need to do, but to have solid results, you need to have a marketing team.

Now I'm in a big project of creating the system of client's business improvement to establish long term win-win relationships. A mix of marketing, consulting and analysis tools. But to perform well I need a solid base of marketing support - and I can't do this alone.

Here is a problem. We have one marketer who doesn't think strategically. The only perspective he can get is his own interest, the more short term the better. WIth all that he thinks it is normal to interrupt other processes with his opinion. In most cases he is a pain in the ass.

My first move was to kick him out. If I start anti-promotion, soon or later I hit the goal. But before doing this I decided to provide him with some tools to improve his behavior. Before kicking out it is always better to find a way to fit the employee to ideal system.

Here we are - just making a step from sole marketing executor to a strategical thinker.

Monday, September 15, 2008

presentation

http://www.slideshare.net/ethos3/storytelling-101?type=powerpoint

i like the idea and the structure, although the whole appearance is not close to russian presentation style

Thursday, September 4, 2008

promises

Am I totally wrong being against the practice of producers of putting advertizing of products which are not included in the catalog?

My perspective is the following:
- We put advertizing with the product which is not included in the assortment of a company.
- The customer sees it, wants it, asks it.
- We can't provide the customer with the desired product.
- The client needs to search another way to get the product.
- The client is disappointed by the company.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

salestaff motivation

I'm having a chat with my client now aboput sales staff motivation. It is normal for sales people to claim for more clients and more clients' satisfaction. Normally sales compensation is a percentage of sales to motivate people sell more and to give the opportunity to be paid on the basis of their efforts. Well, I understand that effort doesn't mean sale or result, but th classical payment system is more or less adequate.

What do we have now in Russia? The only lesson on career build-up process young graduates know is to get a good payment. They've been told that companies have money, that salaries are high and the higher starting salary is the better for you - you will get dramatical rise only if you change a job. Which is true in most cases.

But for fix salaries.

Young sales people here in Russia normally ask for high fix salary. Which means that they don't want to work. And that is not the right person for a salesteam.

Friday, August 1, 2008

motivation

I beleive that people are better managed by premiums rather than by fines. Especially this is true to me - I hate being paid less than I expected.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

i like it

We have a bonus collecting system called Mnogo.ru. If you buy with their partners, you receive virtual bonuses you can convert to gifts (provided by partners). The more you collect the more you can get. I use this occasionaly collecting bonuses for buying books with boffo.ru and paying for mobile services and transform them into aeroflot miles to get free ticket.

So, Mnogo.ru has a promotional quizes. You can pass it, receive 20-50 bonuses (the prizes cost more - 800 bonuses for DVD, 1050 bonuses for a jar of coffee)and if you pass it successfully, you can try to get a prize from a partner. So, typical staff - answering simple questionary, you get your bonuses and think for a couple of times about Mnogo.ru itself and its partner.

But let's look deeply. The questions are posted in a way you can easily get an answer (with a link provided to a site you can check info). And that is a great trick - if you can easily increase your chances for grand-prix, you most probably will go for it and check. And get more information about the company.

E.g. What is the price for a model XXX (link to a model)? Of course, you will realize that the price is low and will have more incentives to buy the product.

Or: what is the color of a t-shirt XXX (item nr) at a website (link). You will go, see a t-shirt and may be continue browsing the catalog.

And all it for 2.5% of a DVD!!!

I like it!

Saturday, July 26, 2008

FF 3.0

I'm crazy about FireFx 3.0. It is perfect. With one excepton. Del.icio.us buttons don't work although the opposite is said at help part.

I hate two things (at the moment). When I need to change my habits. And when the promised thing isn't true.

Upd. Mea culpa. It works. But in a different way. Now I have my post button again. What a relief!

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

attention, please

Last saturday I came from th business trip. I had 6 meetings within 2 days to get known to our clients and collect their impressions about our program (just to check if they need it). During those meeting I made some notes about not only words I heard, but also about the things the CEO's like. E.g. I know that one of the clients loves Eastern culture (katanas on the wall, expensive herbal tea, china on the shelves). I know that another CEO has little space in her study, but crazy about small girlish souvenirs. To know your client better you need just to open your eyes.

One more thing. Durng all the meetings before I leave, I used to give a 'free advice' - if the company just started planning website creation process, I provided them a link to a good newsletter about the components of the project. Another company received a hint to read a very useful book about 'micromarketing' - cheap basic steps anyone needs to implement if (s)he wants results without big investment.

Just open your eyes. And be eager to know your client better.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

visualization

It is very hard to sell a service idea. It is easily to sell the thing behind the idea.

Compare:
Our program includes a consulting service to optimize your business.

to:
During our program after carefull analysis you will receive the recommendation pack and visual communication templates kit (website to be customized, presentation and information letter template) which can increase your communication level and sales ability if you use this.

And to:
You will have a website* for free and a draft of your sales presentation. It will increase your rewvenue and will cost nothing.


* we haven't mention that a website will be slightly customized (colors, fonts, size, logo) from universal template and will cost little to the provider company.

That's why educational programs sell books and CDs with information. That's why hospital has VIP rooms. Extra profit for visualization. People want to pay more for what they can see and touch. Much more than this costs.

Monday, June 30, 2008

resources

It is not funny when people plan to do something without relevance check. With existing resources. You know, I would be happy to provide my clients with templates of website for their own use - but only if my website works correctly. If not, don't bother me with trying to promise. Until I get a resource to do it to myself, how I can propose this to my clients???
Ok, I have a resource to adjust, to customize, but do I have a resource to create a template base for adjustion?

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

motivation

It is very trendy to speak about non-money motivation for manager. Something like managers value better groth possibilities, recognition etc.

All mentioned above makes a real difference between a good hr program and a not-so-good one. With one thing to be said - money motivation should be good enough. There's no sense of promoting non-money motivation if a manager can think about fitting his/her expenses into budget.

Monday, June 23, 2008

from to do... to done (Esselte slogan)

I've made it. Sat - decided to act. Sun - designed an announcement. Mon - printed out and posted it at salon's reception. Nothing much.
I also gave instructions about value-added consultations to a cosmetic girl.

One more step - I will ask her on Thursday when we'll meet to count the number of cosultations and repetitive service consumption to understand money our small trick will bring to the company.

I also finished processing revenue's data. Waiting for official statistic of costs and taxes to get the profit figures.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Just do it.

I've recently got (finally!) the book by Alex Levitas about improving profits. The most valuable advice (apart from lots of business situations the author described) is the thing of acting after thinking out the solution.

With the salon of my friend we decided to male stimulation action: give a free cosmetic test to everyone who has bought the 30-60 minute atrificial tan station pass. This is a trick - everyone who uses solarium needs a special skin treatment to hydratate it. If we advise directly, people might be afraid of being pushed to pay for cosmetic service. But if we give free test and explain, that additional treatment might be needed, it;s a person's choice if he (or she) will take it.

Sounds smart and easy. But we decided the trick a couple of weeks ago - and nothing has been done since that time. Well, it's really a time for me to push the program. 2 steps from me - calculate profits (since march 2007) and post an announcement.

Ready, steady.... no-no-no, not later... now! go!

It will never work

"It'll never work" from Daseg.

Friday, June 6, 2008

One more self branding tool...

As Mauricio sais, "this video is part of a self-branding exercise that serves as a tool to reach my goal of obtaining a job in the communications / interactive marketing / public relations field".



Proud of you, coachie!

Wanna get know him? Please, visit.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

wanna news?

My dear friends from beauty salon still haven't put any announcements I suggested to make. We created one more program to promote cosmentologists among to artificial sun station users, but nobody made an effort to announce it.

Well, very typical.

Today I'll make all the papers for them to put. It seems to me I'm thinking more about the company than the owners. At least they allow me to make them a field for experiments.

Friday, May 23, 2008

don't loose profits

When the discussion comes to entrepreneurial profits, the business owners are often puzzled how they can increase net income. The real question first is how to use the whole potential of an existing business.

My favorite small business - beauty salon has recently bought artifitial tan station. They need to pay off the credit. But since it is working no announcement came. Of course, best clients know about this service. But not all of them. I asked them to put info note at the wall close to reception area. Three times. Today I will check if they managed that.

Inform! How your clients can buy if they don't know what to?

Sunday, May 11, 2008

pleasure

What MBA really gave to me is a pleasure of choosing a place to work. Not companies are choosing me, but I'm really choosing my future employer.

A pleasure that requires a great deal of responsibility, but it is still a pleasure.

Friday, May 9, 2008

entrepeneurial spirit

Today I had a talk with my friend. She is around 50 and she is an owner of small beauty salon close to my appartment in Ryazan. This lady is a very active person, she's about to open her own kid's store here, in Ryazan (they're remaking an appartment at ground floor to a shop now) and also is an active member of one of the churches (she coordinates also a rehab center project for ex-prisoners).

Yep, she has a typical entrepreneurial soul with a lot of personal time devoted to her business activities. She understands the necessity of establishing the contact with her clients, she has a high percentage of clients who visited her salon more than 1 time. She has a bit higher prices than most of the hairdressers close by, but still, she has her clients. She loves her staff, her girls treat her as a close elder friend. She has a great inner ennergy sourse, that helps her to make actions even if she doesn't know how to act.

Well, she does a lot of things successful entrepreneurs do. But she doesn't know her profit. Yes, she has all the figures for taxation purporses, but she never counts the difference between revenues and costs. She operates on a basis of cashflow - if she has enough cash to pay her rent and public utilities, she's happy. Sometimes she knows that she hasn't earn enough money to cover them in curret period, but she has some money left from previous one.

I asked her to provide me with all data about receips and expenditures to understand her profit picture. I hope understanding inflows and otflows of cash will help her to understand her situation better and improve profit. I also asked her to make minutes about all the small expenses left unaccounted - at least this will give me a full picture to start my recommendations for improvements.

I will keep an eye on this company.

Monday, May 5, 2008

marketing essence

Marketing essence from Seth Godin:

Make big promises; overdeliver.


Mistakes:
- Making too big promises - unrealistic.
- Making not enough promises - not attractive.
- Deliver less than promised.

Friday, May 2, 2008

self promotion

Seth Godin's post about different approaches of self promotion: me-centric vs. client/customer/audience centric.

I published a book so I need you to read it
vs.
There’s something you need to read, so I wrote about it.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Tradeoff

I have a tough decision to make. The simlest tradeoff between stable position of brand manager with local operational challenges and a very challenging position of strategy consultant, which gives a lot food for brains but also requires a lot personal resources (time, attention).

Yes, after MBA I feel tired. But I had 4 months of my family period and recovered a lot. And passive way of leisure is not a best way for me. Consulting offers a constant thinking process - I love it, the same to challenge. Branding offers me a stable work in a field I know, lower cost comparable to consulting (region location, less requirements to lifestyle).

The only question that is crucial is if I'm ready for stable family life now. Not a professional one, not a financial one.

Phuf...

Mauricio again

Well, my bad influence went to its peak - my coachie finally became an official blogger and wrote his first couple of posts in his blog. In his very first post he kindly made a piece of PR for me:

Marina’s role in all this was pivotal. She was the first avid blogger I had ever met in depth that can actually claim to have a significant level of daily readership of her online conversations. Most impressive was her discipline in terms of keeping her content constant and fresh, despite the heavy academic workload demanded by our program. After watching her do this for some time, it became evident that the main driver behind this discipline was the relationship she had forged with her readers who looked to her for advice on obtaining scholarships in Russia for academic programs abroad, as well as everyday girl-talk (Marina is also a contributor to the Russian COSMO blog). All in all, a very special cyber-relationship indeed! One that peaked my interest and drew me into the sport of blogging.


From my point of view I can add the followng. Blogging is a process that corresponds to my nature - I can easily and quickly write all the posts and find interestng information to be posted. I love sharing - sharing thoughts, knowledge, things that make me smile. I love receiving feedback; of course, I prefer a good one to a bad one. And having a loyal audience, it is easier to get a good comment. And the last but not the least is that my blog becomes a good tool for network and relationship creation, it makes the process of people knowing me better faster. and I appreciate that very much.

Good luck, Coachie, and thank you for PR:)

Sunday, April 27, 2008

My Netvibes

What are you reading now? What do you read on regular basis?

My answer to the last question is my gmail and blogs.
I can't share my private email, but I certainly can do this with blogs. Netvibes, to be exact.

Here is my universe. Here I posted two pages of blogs I usually read - English and Russian ones. Thanx God, now the public profile is available to everyone.

Monday, April 21, 2008

twitter2

What is more important to have: a love to a product you manage or a match to people you will work with.

meeting time

I entered labor market for active job search a bit less than a month ago. It´s really a time when my ambitions meet market requirements, supply meets demand.

Sometimes it hurts. E.g. when demanding part doesn´t understand that it asks a bit different things the supplying one can offer (I'm speaking about overqualified personnel who is offered lower position just because (s)he can do this) and demanding part starts pressing. Sometimes you have a perfect fit but too low-start position. Sometimes it is a total dismatch.

The thing I use to forget about labor market is that information is not perfect here. If you don't want to loose time for interview, you'd better clarify positions and interests. Just to save time.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

books

I'm preparing to my first consulting interview now and happy to start reading recommended books for the company. One of them is "Say it with Charts
The Executive's Guide to Visual Communication" by Gene Zelazny (I'm reading the book in Russian). I realy enjoyed it, wishing I had a chance to look at some tips before or at least during my MBA.

Even if I had internal feeling about diagrams to use, I've got a great sence of complex charts. And the most useful tip, propaly, in this chart is about headlnes of the slide/shart. We got used to put simple general names instead of showing the concrete idea of the chart.

And now I need to make a small analytical presentation. I almost hate it - it is mechanical job. But the only one nice thing about it is the fact I can train my new skills of creating charts. We'll see.

Friday, April 11, 2008

wants vs stopper

I have just read Wad's wonderful sketch (in Russian) about wants and their limitations. He formulated a simple process of getting from wants to consumption.

1. Space-hold.
2. External irritant activates The Want part, showing assosications with pleasant emotions.
3. The Want starts working, but the rational part knows that pleasant emotions should be paid, the Stopper activates.
4. To get the Want to win over the Stopper, the irritant needs to show the idea of acessibility.
5. There's no reason to retrain the consumption.

Therefore, if the irritant (the producer or distributor) wants to increase demand, he needs to show the consumer, that it is possible to acquire the good or service. And vice-versa - if you want to resist the temptation of consuming something, just create the idea of full impossibility to get.

Nice thoughts.

Monday, March 24, 2008

mentality

We just had an icq talk about russian mentality. It is started with the fact I menioned about recruiting agencies and their non-professional approach to company's websites. My position is that no compamy should use a website if it can't make a proper tool. In Russia website boom startes spontaneousely, everyone decided to have a status point - website. The quality didn't matter, the company needed to check the box - done.

My opponent gave me an exuse - Russian mentality. I could agree only with one thing - Russian mentality means to have and excuses for everything without making anything for better life (the second mentality thing is all-country sadness - bad weather worse history (Stalin's repressions, e.g.).

It's not a Russian thing to want more things for less money, it's international.
It's not a Russian thing to create a tool just for the sake of creation.
It's not a Russian thing to do and then to think. But some people understand that this way is not efficient. And some of them prefer to use excuses.

During my diploma's presentation my reviewer told that the same tool - a knife - can be used by both surgeon and murderer. Just to develop this metaphor - every surgeon practice with dead bodies before he works with humans. If a company that sells me its products or services using a bad tool it doesn't sell.

Yes, I'm Russian. But I'm also a professional.

(With a voice of Diesel advertising). Tools. Use with caution.

an example

Just fogot to share a wonderful example of my favorite coachie successful and creative way of promoting himself. I think he has chosen an appropriate tool corresponding with his goals: to show himself as a very creative and communicative specialist in PR area.

It´s my special pleasure to introduce Mauricio.

self ad

Ok, as I promised, here is the list of things I can give to the company I will work for.

- Loyalty. I don't know why, but every time I start working with a company or team, I get stuck to it. I will work for them and with them until something extraordinary may happen. E.g. I wasworking for my first serious company for 5 years. Just because I loved my partners, my product, the things I can do. And despite all the problems that may occure in every company. I left the company when I won a scholarship for my MBA. Extraordinary, heh.

- Result orientation and high work efficiency. I love to achieve. Love to strike out points in my to do list. When I was a child, my father told me that I get involved into many thing and loose my attention to some of them without finishing. Since that I've got a special feeling then I finish the task. I can control my interest to different things. But I prefer to have a tme to finish all of them, that's why I work efficiently.

- Curiosity. I like to dig into the things. This require some creativity along with analytical skills. I love to create different table forms to get better perspective or vision. I love to get information. I like to be prepared.

- Quick mind and ability to learn. I could easily understand how to avoid the paper jam into big professional printer machine with spanish interface (by this moment I've just started studing this language). I can easily become feeling comfortable with any software (it took me one night and half a bottle of rioja vine to understand meta-tag language of wiki programming - I'm still using it while making my fitness diary in tiddle-wiki).

- Ability to work with strategic goals and tactic tasks. I do it in my day-to-day life. I do it during my business activities. I love take a wider strategic perspective and break it down to a set of practical things to be done.

- Love for mentoring and coaching. I love explaining complicated things in the easiest way for people to understand. I love when people can do wonderful things after discussing with me different tasks. I love to get appreciation from those people.

- My experience and skills. As I told during one of my interviews with an employer: "I'm not cute because of my MBA certificate, only because I'm cool, I decided to get it".

BTW, it was a great exercise to make. I feel more confident before meeting my future employers.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

quick MBA notes

During last 3 months after graduation I became very sensitive about all MBA talks anyone can read in blogs and news discussions. Here in Russia we have and MBA-blaming wave among business people. Most of them don't have an MBA degree and still think they have enough information to judge the topic.

I'm not idealizing MBA, cause I know the program inside. I know that professors are just normal people and they make their professional path among people - mistakes may happen. I know that if you have a course of 240 people it is hard to provide professors of equal quality to every group. E.g. we had 2 awful marketing professors and 1 perfect bitch who was very exigent and at the same time he was balancing at the edge of roughness. Many of us hated him, I still beleive he was he of the best. People are diferent.

MBA teaches how to present your thouhts. My first course was about presentation skills and I still beleive most of our professors should be obliged to take it as well. Later I took one more course of this professors just to enjoy his style. MBA alumni are perceived as people who put format behind the content. Something like put a lot of graphs and smart words in your presentation - and you're a winner! Well, some of MBAes are stil like this, but not all of us. I always idealize content, then I spend several hours (if I have them) to put it in the best form to give it to my audience. But first is the content. Distill and deliver, as my favourite entrepreneurship professor told us.

Sometimes people think that CEO shouldn't take MBA because after the program he start to manage finances or marketing himself. MBA is an overall course, it is not specialization. It gives a width, not a depth. MBA knowledge is enough to ask smart questions to your CFO or Marketing Director. If CEO goes directly to financial management, if he can't trust his CFO, either he has a bad CFO or he is a bad CEO.

People also blame MBAers ask for a huge money for no value. I know the value I can bring to a company (I will make a separate post about that). And during my interviews I always show the company exact things I can do for them. And I know it costs a lot. My experience, sharp and quick mind, problem-solving skills, my loyality and the fact I care about my reputation - I tink I can ask a lot for this. If MBAer asks for big money only because (s)he spent a lot for the program and needs to pay for a credit - that's a reverse logic.

Just to finish the post. MBA now is something between semi-closed club to make business connections, extension courses for those who wants to change from industry to business sector, lifestyle camp and a lab where smart person can make his experiments about different business situations (I mean communications within groups, project management of case solving, but not cases themselves). It is not a panacea from all the business problems, but it gives you a good practice how to act in a situation of time and information shortage and huge peer pressure (as any group for problem-solving is temporary and everyone has his/her ow intersts). And MBA is a Master of Business Administration, that is equal to general management specialist. Not marketer, not financial guy/girl. In Russia there are a lot of programs of MBA:marketing or MBA:finance. They just mix two or more master programs. And people eat this. Cause everyone wants to buy a piece of a dream to become a good CEO just paying for a program.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

funeral management

Funeral requires a lot of management skills to pass through. High emotional involvement combined with high time pressure. Inspite of a limited procedures needed to be done, the stress level is incredibly high.

Just to survive, I used the following tricks:
1. To lower emotional pressure, I dove into physical labor - cooking (in Russia we have a tradition of funera repast, that is normally cooked at home), serving the food etc.
2. When somebody wanted to help me and at the same time started to anny with a phrase "we don't have enough time until..." the only way to limit the hysterics was to give the person some occupation, cause in the case of high emotional pressure there's no possibility to explain for the person to understand.
3. Just remember that this pressure is not endless, the time for pressure is limited wit a traditional set of funeral procedures.

Let my granddad's memory live on forever.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

selfactualization

Sorry for Russian, but this is my opinion about russian article from e-xecutive.ru.

Реально понравилась статья "Тайны корпоративного двора". Прежде всего тем, что поднят вопрос самоактуализации.

Обидно, что практикам не хватает более формального и системного подхода - в статье сформулирована проблема и показаны плохие примеры, мол, не справились, мол, не получилось. Есть пару-тройку намеков о том, что можно делать, но основы под это никакой не подведено. Замечаю за собой ту же слабость - лень формулировать, проверять на целостность и полноту теории. Нас долго пичкали статьями Портера. Я все удивлялась, мол, написал книгу, молодец, но потом еще двадцать пять лет объясняет ее в статьях. Теперь понятно - он постоянно ее тестирует на соответствие изменяющимся условиям. Подходит ли модель пяти сил для анализа интернет-бизнеса, почему сил именно пять, не пора ли ввести еще парочку, и тут же тестируются кандидаты. Но Портер - он этим и живет, преподает себе. А тут управленцы же.

Monday, February 4, 2008

wrongly perceived incompatibility

My dear friend is creating his reputation-building website as a tool to promote himself as a forex-trader and asset management specialist. Since I was working as an editor and corrector while making my product catalogues, he decided to trust me the proofreading.

And we had a great fight.

He wrote a text to optimize his website in searching systems. I proofread it as a reputation-building tool. I really beleive that all the texts should be written in a vivid manner to create with a reader the sense of sincereness and opennes. By saying "to create" I mean to give a clear message that the author is open and sincere.

The fight was severe. Until the very moment we both understood we can combine those two limitations we thought were uncompatible. I was re-creating some sentences and passages after he had given me hints about optimal sentence structure for search engine inquires.

Most of limitations and conditions are perceived as incompatible but they are not. If you change the requirements specification, you can find the best solution. Not compromise, but consensus.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

free+ or how to make money on add-ons

Seth Godin just gave a link to Kevin Kelly post "More than free" about eight ways of making something worth charging for.

He mentions the following:
1. Immediacy - get now or at least earlier than others.
2. Personalization - generic version is for free, customized one is not.
3. Interpretation - software, free, the manual, $10000.
4. Authentacity - how much are you ready to pay for a trueness certificate?
5. Accessibility - low access cost, how much are you ready to pay for it?
6. Embodiement - making services r intangible goods tangible.
7. Patronage - audiences want to pay the creators.
8. Findability - makeing money by helping the audience find works they love

I love the article.

Saturday, January 5, 2008

free your twitter mind

Is it possible to trust people in your private life and be a rigid manager in business one?

twitter-style

Just realised, that there are two basic styles of thoughts - twitter and let's say blogger. Blogger generally assumes in-depth analysis, even if you write about your breakfast - scrambled eggs with tomato without bacon, I love healthy food and hate animal fats. Twitter is a way to quickly mention the thing without digging in. Just scrambled eggs. Or better say, I had a breakfast.

What is better? The favorite mba-style answer - depends. Giving grades means having a system of assumptions, and this is biased anyway. Think out your goal and drop your tools (Ianna, hi, there).

I just stopped blaming myself for twitter style. This is the reason I decided to classify this. And thanx to Varsavsky, of course, his latest posts are in twitter style.