In the United States we celebrate Valentine’s Day on February 14th. For many, it’s a day to remember romantic love relationships. It’s marketed and promoted by candy, florist, greeting card and other retail businesses as a reason to give gifts. But, it’s just good to celebrate love in any and all of it’s forms.
I sent the following to my personal list. It felt so good, that I decided to share with my blog reading friends. Accept this as my wish for you. Please enjoy some of the lyrics to the song “I wish you love”.
I wish you bluebirds in the Spring
To give your heart a song to sing
And then a kiss, but more than this,
I wish you love!
And in July a lemonade
To cool you in some leafy glade
I wish you health, and more than wealth,
I wish you love!
I wish you shelter from the storm
A cozy fire to keep you warm
But most of all, but most of all…
When snowflakes fall, I wish you wealth
I wish you health…I wish you love!
Barack Obama is campaigning on the theme of being the candidate for change. That’s a message which is resonating with many. And then there is Mike Huckabee who is promoting the fair Tax (not the flat tax). That’s one concrete measure, which if implemented, would cause a dramatic change in the United States. It would eliminate the IRS and more importantly put an end to tax code manipulation by Congress. One drawback to the fair tax is that the transition would be painful.
Although people may say they want change, its human nature to resist it. We’re creatures of habit. We like ease and comfort. Many people stay in jobs they hate because of fear of the unknown and fear of change. How many do not stop smoking or shed excess pounds because the process of getting to the goal is uncomfortable, painful, or downright scary.
My good friend, Rev. Angela Harrington Rice, just announced “Life Designs 2008″ which facilitates change and self actualization on a personal level. Angela’s announcements included the statement “Change is good and inevitable”. I think all would agree with the inevitable part, but there may be some debate about how good it is. And, most would agree that there are many things that other people, our country, and the world should change. I love the saying by Mahatma Gandhi “Be the change you want to see”. It puts the onus back on us.
Companies putting in new technology, software or systems would do well to incorporate change management programs. People like to feel like they’re an expert in their jobs. A change in new systems and technology will inevitably require employees to learn new skills or to do things in a different way. So, another consideration when implementing software is business process re-engineering / improvement / management. New systems may have great potential benefits. But if it is not used, circumvented or resisted, companies have wasted time and money to implement. My announcement about the cure for “Post Implementation Distress” service, highlights these issues.
Noble & Associates Consulting, Inc’s cure for “Post Implementation Distress” is an assessment, diagnosis, and remediation service. Key parts of the cure and healing process are change management, process improvement, documentation and training.
If you had good project management and governance (Independent Verification and Validation -IV&V) on the front end, you probably avoid “Post Implementation Distress”. And if you budgeted for resolving people issues at the beginning of the project, there may be some stress, but no “Post Implementation Distress”. However, if you’ve already implemented and things have gone awry, wouldn’t it be prudent for your organization to get the cure for “Post Implementation Distress”? Or, at least incorporate a change management program?
A business acquaintance, Judy Mod, was promoting her former company, CoreSpeed. She was very gracious to spend time educating me about this new community. Or I should say trying to enlighten me. She kept using words like community and conversation. I kept think of it as a typing exercise. Or text messaging, which I don’t do. The mental blocks went up. I didn’t want to learn online community. But, on the other hand, I need to keep up with technology.
I mean I do have an information technology (IT) consulting company, Noble & Associates Consulting. However, I like to say I am a non-techie techie. My company does business analysis, project management, documentation, training, change management, and process improvement / re-engineering. And, we’re the cure for “Post Implementation Distress”.So we deal with business issues related to technology.
Noble & Associates Consulting also provides ERP (enterprise resource planning) and other enterprise wide software system implementation services from a functional perspective. We bring business background and knowledge, and we can write technical specifications. In order to do that, we must have the ability to understand and coalesce both business speak and computer programmer / developer speak.
I heard one of the gurus of social networking, Sherry Heyl, speak on Web 2.0 at a Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) event. Had I not already been investigating the subject, I really would have been lost. But I accepted her invitation to connect on Linkedin anyway.
My take away from that was that social networking was just another method for connecting, developing relations and finding out the interests of prospect and with people in general. There were people of all ages at the SoCon08 un-conference. The twenty-somethings were definitely represented, but there also a good number of grey hairs. The were lots of people with business –to-business (B2B) companies. And back to Judy Mod: She did say one of the ways in which folks are using community is for pre-credentialing their company prior to RFP release for public sector projects. So that relates to business-to-government (B2G). I found I knew some of the SoCon08 attendees from other business / technology networking groups and events. I even met a lady looking for someone to do a SAP (ERP) interface!
As I mentioned previously, I’m currently on Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Plaxo Pulse, TAG TEAM Marketing, DirectMatches, and CollectiveX (BDPA). If you happen to want to find me, try sannoble.
Once again I made an attempt to actually use the networks. My initial experience with DirectMatches was horrendous. I got all these emails saying “I’m just introducing myself” and by the way, they had an eBook to sell. This network also has a network marketing flavor to it. I was told by my “upline” that there were people out there with real businesses. I’m interested in business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) business prospects. Preferably with annual gross revenues of at least $200k. Don’t have time for DirectMatches training on how to use the network.
The assumption is that the network is composed of like minded people. Many are consulting their social networks for advice and recommendations. I was hoping that joining network would somehow save me time and/or facilitate marketing and closing deals. Am I misguided?
Have you heard of Ed Yourdon? He’s a veteran of internet marketing Web 1.0 technology and now guru of the hot new Web 2.o movement. On a side note, I just attended SoCon08 conference in the Atlanta Area about Web 2.0. But the keynote speaker, Chris Heuer, said that we should replace references to Web 2.0 with either social networking or social media.
Back in September, Mr. Yourdon was featured at the annual signature event for Atlanta Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN). You can get a recap of his talk in the October Atlanta SPIN newsletter.
Anyway, I attended the first part. At one point during his talk on Web 2.0, he asked who had wiki’s at work. Truthfully 80-90% of the room raised their hand. Yourdon assumed the rest knew about wikis, but weren’t participating. So, on he went. And there I was – feeling left out and antiquated. Having been an entrepreneur for a few years, I was a bit out of touch with what corporations are doing these days.
I had to leave early. Not only did I leave, but I left with a dilemma. I was acutely aware that I needed to know what a wiki was, but still not knowing. But being smarter and more intuitive than I sometimes think I am, I began to piece together what I did hear.
Wikipedia I assume is wiki and I did comprehend that it is an unorganized, publicly updated writings. Decided to impress my “over 60″ friend (James) with my new found knowledge. He of course was skeptical. But he actually pulled up Wikipedia and found that it was updateable.
I always thought that Wikipedia was the authority. Can I trust it?
When I asked about a social network, I meant an online one. I’m in a couple but I’m not sure why. “They” say it’s a way to get known and somehow get a boost in website page rankings. So you can find me on Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Plaxo Pulse, Tag Team Marketing, DirectMatches, CollectiveX (BDPA), Meetup, not to mention various yahoo groups.
After one person’s rave reviews about the usefulness of Linkedin, I did try to actually do targeted searches. So, I decided to reach out to business people from my college – Albright College in Reading, PA. I questioned why a couple of my colleagues even on Linkedin. I told them about my ideal clients for both my IT consulting business and for my receivables financing business. It did not occur to them to provide reciprocal information on their own companies until I asked. Anyway, since there was a limit to the free queries, that’s the end of that. Since then, Albright has established their own social network. I believe it’s for alumni. At some point I may investigate that
I notice that the Linkedin “invitation to connect” e-mails has gotten shorter. It used to be a couple of paragraphs. Now it’s just: I’d like to add you to my connection. I guess, as online social networking and connecting becomes more commonplace, it requires less explanation.
I have accepted numerous invitations to connect. Just cleaned up a couple of unanswered connection requests which dated back to 2004. Obviously, I’m not on top of things.
Super Tuesday has come and gone, and those of us in Georgia got to take part. Being a good citizen, I voted. But I have to admit I don’t always make an informed decision. For example – the judges. On what do I base my decision? I could safely vote for the unopposed candidates. When I had no clue, I used to randomly pick women or non-incumbents or anyone from my party of choice. However, in more recent years, I decided to just leave those positions un-checked.
Even more basic than that, I have trouble keeping track of what districts I’m in. And on any given day I couldn’t give you a list of who my representatives were. There’s a Congressional information website that I now keep handy. This site allows me to enter my zip code and get the applicable district numbers and elected official names.
I’ was much better informed about the 2008 US presidential candidates. I found a couple of websites which were invaluable for supporting my desire to make educated choices: WQAD candidate selection quiz and vote chooser quiz. I got different results from the two quizzes. And, recently my results for the one quiz were different from taking that same quiz a couple of months ago. So, I guess I’m being influenced by the media. I found that my heart wanted to do one thing but my head (based on quiz results) wanted to do another. Which should win?
I see an analogy here for selecting software and vendors. There’s lots of interesting choices in the 2008 election – a black African American, a woman, a Mormon, a preacher. But in the United States’ democratic system of government, the impact of electing a Republican versus a Democrat is relatively small. We have our checks and balances. But the wrong software selection could be costly: #1 in terms of your organization wasting money and #2 in terms of your personal well being. Often technology projects gone bad results in job loss or demotion. Not to mention the cost of non-compliance with SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) or other regulations which your system or technology was supposed to address. You could go to jail!
So how to make intelligent decisions in the realm of vendor / software / technology / system selection? Noble & Associates Consulting Inc provides evaluation and selection assistance. The above mentioned candidate selection questionnaires are based on the assumption that the most important issues have been addressed. And the two quizzes differ in that respect. Similarly, before any evaluation process it’s imperative that you clarify what you’re trying to accomplish and what’s important.
We suggest a five step process:
1. Clarify goals and strategic direction
2. Understand and document requirements
3. Prioritize and rank requirements, and develop a scoring strategy
4. Map vendor/software/technology capabilities to requirements.
5. Evaluate and select.
Technology and the world in general is changing fast and I’m constantly trying to keep up. You see I’m ne of those over 50 folks who don’t find it second nature to keep up. But I am and I will.I’ve created this blog to vent, communicate and bolster my position as a viable business person. Have you heard the buzz about those who made it big, i.e. rich, by age 30? Well, that’s impressive. But what about the over 50 babyboomers who’ve perhaps been downsized, rightsized, laid off or fired. And hose who’ve more gracefully retired and now are looking to make a second mark on the world.We’ve got skills, wisdom and business savvy. If we can stay healthy, we have unlimited potential.Power to the “Over 50″ people!
In the United States we celebrate Valentine’s Day on February 14th. For many, it’s a day to remember romantic love relationships. It’s marketed and promoted by candy, florist, greeting card and other retail businesses as a reason to give gifts. But, it’s just good to celebrate love in any and all of it’s forms.