Change: Your Platform for Success

There was a recent person, whose name I cannot recall at this moment, who used "Change" as his major political platform to catapult him into the Presidency.  Obviously change is a powerful tool, but why did it work so well for him?  There are many Presidents or CEOs of major companies who get their job not because his or her predecessor stepped down and rode into the sunset, but because they did something wrong and the stockholders/USA citizens wanted someone new.

So why is it that some companies are so averse to change??  Is it because the ones at the top have the most to lose if the change works out(or if it does sometimes)??  It could be because they believe their business model is working and hold their hat on the old cliche, if it aint broke...  What the smarter companies are realizing is they need to see the change coming before it is too late.  Even if the system isn't broke it still may be about to lose value because of a new trend which could change the landscape which the company operates.

I was working for a company which had just been bought by another major company in the same field.  It took about 5-6 months before even the smallest changes took affect, such as integrating employees into the company that had been bought out.  A year and a half later the buyers changed the system of the old company to theirs.  No one took this very kindly because not only did they have to refigure out how to input their hours and other tasks that took little time before, they had to figure out the new employee benefits, go through hours of new online training and attend endless meetings to figure out how the changes would affect them.  The place I worked at luckily did not have very many layoffs but the atmosphere had still changed dramatically.  People were angry about the changes, which they believed didn't have much of a purpose on what the employees did every day for their job.  They believed that corporate was just shoving all of this new information down their throats so they can now be considered Company X employees instead of Company Y.

Change is never easy, but if done in the correct way at the correct time can have a tremendous positive impact on the people involved.  If done in either the incorrect way or time it can have a detrimental and sometimes even final effect on a company.  That is why so many companies are averse to change

Social Networking: Get Used to It

My Space, where all the high school kids can post pictures of themselves with their favorite music hoping that the right girl or guy will look at their page and like what they see.  Hopefully their page will make them more popular or attract their secret crush or someone new that they hadn’t even given a chance until seeing a great My Space page.  It was the beginning of the social networking phenomenon.  It starts with high school kids trying to advertise themselves, and then came Facebook.  The more professional page for college students who were basically doing the same thing.  Once facebook realized they could use their wide consumer base and make big dollars by advertising, the days where social networking was just an after thought were over.  Now we have Linked In Twitter and all sorts of other networking sites.  Companies realize this is the perfect way to advertise for themselves, as well.  Firms can make their own page, post daily updates and send ads throughout the internet to millions of users just by updating a Facebook page or Twitter.

I think the mobile market just amplified the social networking market and took it to the next level.  Now you can reach people that much faster through social networking.  Whereas before you needed people to be online, now you just need people to have their phone on them.  It just means that if your company is not on social networking and accessing the mobile web you are many steps behind your competition in the race to reach consumers.  Once users are able to create their own apps, companies will need to spend more time searching what is out there to find what and who can help the company grow.  Even the current employees will be able to create apps and add-ons to help their company increase their reach.

As I was writing this blog, CNBC had someone from Netsuite on and he said how his company, which is centered around cloud computing has grown rapidly over the past few years.  Cloud computing is real and it is here right now.  It all has to do with this idea of sharing knowledge and ideas.  As we move forward the more technology is used to share knowledge and ideas and connect people together, the more valuable it will be.  Cloud computing is just the newest way to share knowledge and ideas, but I believe there is room for many other ways to share and network.  Could the next, newest and better, way to share knowledge and ideas be the next multi-billion dollar industry??

New Age of Technology

The New Age of Technology, I believe one of the most redundant phrases that is being tossed around today.  50 years ago we had a "New Age of Technology" and 50 years from now we will have a "New Age of Technology", but what I am interested in is This Age of Technology and how it will affect the next New Age of Technology.

To me it seems that in the not so distant past technology was driven by the need for companies or industries to redefine how they produce and sell.  The automotive industry because of the necessity to mass produce cars popularized the assembly line method which was recreated for years to come.  While television had already been created at this point, it wasn't until companies realized they could advertise better on Television that shows starting reaping more benefits, and more channels were created thus beginning the boom of television.  The internet can be seen the same way.  It wasn't until people and companies realized they could start sites for free, by advertising other internet sites on their webpage, that the real internet boom of the 90s occurred.  I would like to call this whole era, "Companies Reaching the Customer."  Companies were doing everything they could to just communicate and reach out to the consumer, so the consumer would know the company.  Well because of all these technologies companies are now easily able to reach out to the consumer.

I believe we are in a "New Age of Technology."  I would like to name this age, "Consumers Informing the Companies."  The consumer knows the industry in which they are shopping very well these days.  I believe the internet is the reason for this new era, because it is the first communication space in which there is two way communication from sender to receiver and back again.  With the advent of amazon and ebay and other online sites which let the consumers voice their opinions and reviews of items.  I believe one of the first companies to listen to the consumer was Apple.  They popularized the new trend of phones with consumer applications on them.  They listened to the consumer and put devices on phones to make life easier for the consumer.  Apple didn't just say I believe each phone should have a GPS.  The consumers wanted a GPS on their phone, and now that is a standard application on the I-Phone.

In the future I think the consumers will have an even greater control over the marketplace.  The telecom industry is booming because of how much input consumers have, such as creating apps and sending in requests to phone companies on how to update their new mobile phone.  I think it is now time for us as consumers to realize our potential and all start reaching out to companies and to governments.  We need to let them know what we want, because we are the ones who they ultimately are working for, and we pay their salaries.  I think it's time we let them know how to earn their money.