Daily Archives: July 11, 2010

United Breaks Guitars (The Trilogy): 10 Million Views, All Thanks To You!

Last week, and three weeks ago, I reminded you that the one year anniversary of the first video release was this week (on Tuesday, July 6), that Dave was closing fast on 10,000,000 views, and that with your support we could get him there and send airlines everywhere a strong message.

I’m happy to report that, thanks to the international date line, Dave made it. (When the editor checked Tuesday night in his time zone, Dave was just views away, crossing it the next morning in the editor’s time zone, when it was still Tuesday in Samoa). Moreover, the counters are still climbing, which is very important as it seems that, as a whole, the airlines really haven’t gotten the message. (Delta is smashing bicycles of volunteers who TriAndGiveADam and who are working hard to make sure children in Africa have clean drinking water, and refusing to even refund the $200 “we’ll keep your luggage safe” fee.)

As of today, we’re at:

United Breaks Guitars Views (June 29, 2010)
Song 1  8,791,174 
Song 2  1,044,613 
Song 3  180,778 
TOTAL  10,016,565 

I encourage you to revisit these videos and share the links regularly. They’re good songs, even if they’re not your musical style, they’re a rallying point for the bad customer service we continuously get from the airlines (as echoed by Brian Sommer in his post on Eat that Cookie!), and I’m sure not enough people have enjoyed song 3, which is every bit as good as song 1 both in lyrics and video production quality (it’s funny!).

If You Really Want Communities to Work, Encourage Them!

The Harvard Business Review recently ran a well written and well argued article on how to harness your staff’s informal networks (subscription or purchase required) that was thought provoking, but a little too involved for my liking. While the methodology may be appropriate for many organizations, it violates the KISS principle. You don’t need an eight (plus) pronged methodology to make communities work. It can be as simple as one-two-three.

  1. Provide a home for the community.

    If you’re a multinational, make sure the participants have the online tools and technologies they need to meet and collaborate. If you’re a small company in a single building, make sure there are rooms available on a regular basis. There’s no one-size-fits-all home, so it’s important that you buy the right one for the community you want to create.

  2. Enable participation.

    Don’t just encourage participation, enable participation. Make sure your people have the time to contribute. Take a lesson from Google, and make sure your employees have 10% to 20% of their time free to focus on community projects and initiatives. That’s how you create communities that innovate and generate real results.

  3. Recognize and reward contribution.

    Recognize those who maximize their community contributions and those who go beyond the required commitment levels, regardless of whether their contributions get used or not. The true value of a community materializes over time as it’s collective knowledge, and knowledge base, enables and inspires others to greater heights. Even an almost-there solution has value, especially if it contains a distinct idea or process that can be applied to a similar problem that arises down the road.

That’s all there is to it. Really.

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Is Decision Making Really a Seven Step Process?

While some decisions are difficult, I always thought the process of decision making was itself pretty straight-forward:

  1. Identify the Decision that Needs to Be Made
  2. Identify the Alternatives
  3. Select the Best Option

    considering the advantages, disadvantages, facts, and goals

but according to a recent article in the Supply Chain Management Review, putting the structure in decision making is a complex seven step process:

  1. Frame and describe the situation about which a decision is to be made.
  2. Define the objective(s) of the decision and the criteria that define the objectives.
  3. Extract obligatory criteria.
  4. Creatively identify decision options that meet all obligatory criteria.
  5. Gather information on decision alternatives, and develop the judgment table.
  6. Assign weights to the obligatory criteria.
  7. Rank alternatives.

Wow! No wonder some organizations can never make a decision! If they even make it to step for, they’re too exhausted to continue!

Identifying the alternatives and figuring out which is best overall against multiple criteria is often hard enough — don’t make it harder than it has to be!

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