Three Key Elements of a Successful Technology Implementation

If you put yourself in a room of business leaders and IT managers and ask how many have had a failed implementation of some technology application, hardware or service I would estimate that nearly every hand in the room would go up. Ask how many have had an implementation that didn’t fail but could have experienced more success and again most (if not all) of the hands in the room would go up. Too often IT implementations fail completely or fail to realize their full potential because they aren’t set up for success from the beginning.

While there are many ways to insure that an implementation of a technology product or service succeeds here are what I consider three key elements you can use to insure that your next implementation is a success.

1. Be sure it’s the right tool – Too often it is easy to go after what is shiny, new and exciting. Business leaders do it because their peers or the marketers and sales people they are listening to are saying that the tool is a game-changer. IT managers do it because they want to play with the latest and greatest. Do your homework. Understand first what you are trying to accomplish and then understand how the tool fulfills those goals. Take the time to investigate other tools that would help you achieve your goals and compare their featureset. Pick the tool that most closely fits with the your requirements not the one that’s the most exciting or publicized.

2. Establish and maintain sufficient executive sponsorship – Too often the key decision maker selects the application or service and then turns over the implementation to the team members responsible for the day-to-day activities and moves on to their next task. The result is that the implementation lacks an authoritative leader and, even if completed, has the potential to get lost in the quagmire of everything else that the business is trying to accomplish. At the outset the executive sponsorship needs to be established and that person should be engaged throughout the project insuring that milestones are met and taking it beyond the implementation phase into steady-state where the true value will be realized.

3. Create the measurements for declaring success – It’s not enough to just complete an implementation yet too often the measuring stick’s last tick mark for determining success is the final milestone on the project plan of the implementation phase. Huge mistake. Determine some tangible ways to measure your goals to insure they’ve been reached. Don’t take what you were hoping to achieve and just toss it into the winds of every day business activities and hope it falls into place. Put the people and processes in place in order to guarantee you succeed at what you are expecting to accomplish.

There are lots of details within and around each of these actions, but if you have these core elements in place you are setting your IT  implementation up for success from the start.

What has your experience been? Am I missing any key elements? If you could list your own three, what would you have on that list?

When Facebook Tried to Become Twitter

Yes, the title is written in past tense. It’s because I believe that facebook will redesign their home page layout and revert to something more like what it was and should be. We will then have a whole series of conversations, posts and tweets from days when we talked about facebook trying to become (or better yet, incorporate) twitter.

Did you know you could vote on the new facebook layout? You can. Go here and share your opinion. So far the feedback is incredibly negative. You can merely give it a thumbs up or down or you could also give them specific feedback. Here’s the feedback I provided:

The new facebook now changes the engagement model. instead of being able to casually visit facebook to keep up with my friends, I have to constantly be engaged b/c you no longer give me the 10,000 ft. view of their activities. If you’re honest, this is a direct response to twitter. Twitter works because it’s intended to be a stream of consciousness destination, and if that’s not what people are looking for they don’t have to use it. In facebook, you created a destination for keeping up with friends and family, and the new layout creates a discontinuity with that model. Instead of launching a direct assault on twitter you should have improved areas you’ve already ventured into that need attention: groups and events pages for example. Instead of trying to also become a conversation destination (something you are not) you should focus on further developing a destination within which more and more communities can be built in better, more effective and creative ways.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts and any comments you may have provided.

Let’s Talk Dollars and Sense

The internet has been all a-buzz with the recent move that made skittles.com a twitter search for “#skittles”. (Sorry friends it’s just their facebook page now). Many in social media and pr professions as well as others promoted this as a great idea, very cutting edge and a savvy use of social media.

Ridiculous.

Can we please all agree that it’s not just about buzz? Now don’t misunderstand me, if you can get people talking about your products, services or websites that’s a great thing. But it should never just be about talking. You want people to talk about you in a way that causes them to pay you for something or encourage others to do so.

There’s more bad here too. Sure lots of quality people were having good conversations about the move and about the brand, but the site itself was inundated with garbage, twitter spam, profanity and racial slurs. Go far enough back in the twitter search and you’ll see the mess.

Sure, a lot of us talked about skittles yesterday and today, but that’s probably all that happened: we talked. How many people do you know of that heard about the move? I’d venture to say quite a few, right? Now out of those people, how many mentioned that they picked up a bag of skittles? For me it was zero (and that’s out of a few dozen).

So this “campaign” was successful if the goal in it’s entirety was to get people to talk about skittles. The PR firm agency.com got paid to do what they were asked to do: create buzz. Good for them. I am left wondering, however, what the business case for this decision was (it exists somewhere right? tell me it does.), and if the campaign will meet those expectations.

How about this for a skittles campaign:

Give people a week to create a video featuring skittles and start announcing it a month in advance. It could be funny, dramatic, lame, who cares, the key element being it has to feature a bag of skittles. This would require anyone making a video to actually purchase a bag of skittles and that would contribute dollars to the bottom line. Have those video’s uploaded to YouTube and tagged with skittles, posted with links on twitter or submitted directly via the skittles.com website. Aggregate those videos to skittles.com and allow people to vote for the best for a prize. Any prize. One thousand dollars, an iPod, a one-year supply of skittles. Result: skittles gets paid…oh…and creates buzz.

In my imagination the campaign I just outlined would have done more for skittles sales in one week than they would normally do in a couple months. And it would have cost them a whole lot less. Unfortunately we’ll never know because all skittles wanted was to be talked about. Well, it worked, the echo chamber was buzzing.

Prove me wrong. Show me the sales numbers. Tell me how they did more than just create buzz. If this was a good idea, help me to understand how and why. I’ll never pretend to know and understand everything, I promise you that. Besides, if you think I feel strongly against it, go check out what Charlie O’Donnell had to say about it.

Geez, all this talk about skittles is making me hungry for sweets…I wonder if we have any M&M’s.

Donate Now

Just received an email from 12 for 12K about some awesome offers if you donate before the end of February. Some great opportunities, don’t miss a chance at these!

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Hi guys,

As February draws to a close, there are some great offers being made by 12for12k supporters and partners.

Sarah Robinson has a list of excellent offers for anyone that donates $25.00 or more:

http://www.themaverickmom.com/uncategorized/support-stop-silence-win-great-swag/

John Haydon is offering 3 months of social media coaching and consulting ($750 value) for anyone that donates $25.00:

http://www.corporatedollar.org/2009/02/enter-win-months-free-social-media-coaching-supporting-12for12korg/

April Tara has two great offers. Her first is to have a customized Twitter background (worth $50) to anyone that donates $20.00 to the February cause. Additionally, if we make our target of $12,000 (admittedly a push at this late stage), she will also offer a full blog customization service.

These are some great offers – check out the links or message me to find out how to redeem.

Finally, today’s the last day of voting for the tagline contest I mentioned earlier in the week. At the minute I’m ahead by just 1% – the voting closes at 11.59pm CST.

If it’s okay, I’ll send one last message out later this afternoon to try and boost the votes and win the Wii for the Sick Kids Hospital Toronto.

Thanks again guys for all your continued support of the 12for12k Challenge.

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It’s Not You, It’s Me

I’m fine with any site or blog that requires that comments be approved before posting. Among other things it has the potential t0 help avoid comment garbage that adds unnecessary noise, and often vulgarity, to the conversation. What I would like, though, with a rejected comment is a rejection note.

For example, I wrote a comment on on the Hulu blog the other day on their post about terminating boxee’s access to their content. I felt my comment was well thought out albeit direct while still be reasonable and polite (of course I did, I wrote it). I hit submit and my comment drifted off into the bowels of the hulu blog’s administrative system for subjective review and approval. I’ve checked back a number of times over the last few days and it hasn’t shown up so I’m guessing I’ll never expect to see it and I have to let it go.

What I can’t let go of is the desire to know why it got rejected. See, I’m interested in joining the conversation, making my voice heard and being a face with a name that stands out in the crowd (did I get them all?). That happens through representing myself well online including in others’ blog comments. If I haven’t cut it and I’m being rejected, I’d like to know why. If I disagree for the reason for rejection, fine, that’s my prerogative just as it yours to reject my comment, but at least I know why. On the other hand, if there is something to be learned from having a comment rejected, I’d like to learn it. Maybe my comment can be refined, re-posted and approved. Whatever the reason for rejection, without knowing it I’m prone to making the same mistake again in the future.

So here’s what I’m asking for. If you reject comments, take a quick second for comments where the reasons for rejection might not be so obvious and give the commenter some feedback. And blogger, wordpress and others, please add a feature to your blogging tools that will allow the comment moderator the option to provide a quick few words of feedback when rejecting a comment and the submitter has left an email address. Our conversations would be better for it.

Hulu Canning Boxee

I fail to understand what this achieves for hulu and their partners. The advertising is integrated into the media, so I view it whether I watch it at hulu.com or via boxee. When I tell people why I canceled my cable and where/how I watch my TV now, the message is always a combination of hulu and boxee so it’s not as the hulu’s brand takes a hit. If anything it is enhanced because it’s basically my sole source of TV broadcasts.
Have these people not heard that iTunes now sells music DRM free today in spite of a history of the music industry trying to protect and control the distribution and consumption of its content?
When will they learn that the methods of distribution and consumption are now among the least significant factor. Rather they should be looking to every distribution channel possible (within reason) to reach as many people as they can.
It’s unfortunate that if this stands it renders boxee basically impotent in the near term for my purposes. Hulu on my appleTV is basically my only use for boxee. Now I need to go get a piece of hardware that can run an internet browser that I can hook up to my TV via HDMI.
Avner, I think what you and your team have created has great potential and I hope you find a way to help these old media companies see that their participation in…heck their endorsement of boxee is in their own best interests.

Originally posted as a comment by turbobrown on boxee blog using Disqus.

Teaching Outside the Lines

I have a friend who teaches English at an inner city high school. Most of his students are at or below the poverty line and his classroom and the school are often left wanting for supplies. His heart is to help teach these kids to see beyond their circumstances and to believe that what seems impossible is actually possible if they’ll drive hard enough after it.

He’s always looking for new and creative ways to teach his students along those lines and recently stumbled on an idea that is truly unique and inspiring. He has found that he gets his students’ best work when he personalizes their assignments. A recent assignment required the students to write an essay about a great dining experience they’ve had. The results he got back amazed and saddened him. It wasn’t the quality of their work, or lack thereof, that impacted him so strongly, but rather the content of it.

The large majority of his students wrote about fast food restaurants. They praised the juiciness of the chicken nuggets or the tastiness of their hamburgers.

While this is somewhat humorous it is also heavily disheartening. For many of these students their only, therefore their nicest, dining experiences have been fast food. Take a second to think of your nicest dining experience and then compare it to what these kids have been limited to. It’s astounding that what would be for us as a daily option of decent food such as Chili’s, Friday’s or Olive Garden would be by far the nicest meal that most of these kids would ever have had.

So my friend was moved to do something about it. He first crafted his plan. The idea came to him to find a way to provide these kids with a dining experience at a nice restaurant unlike anything they had previously experienced. The goal of the experience would be to open their eyes to a world beyond their poverty and the possibilities that lied therein. He decided then that he would use the dining experience as a reward for achievements in his class. From there he began contacting a series of local fine dining establishments in hopes that they would cut him a break on their prices for the benefit of the students. (You can imagine that an inner city teacher’s salary isn’t going to pay for a classroom of kids to have a high-end meal.) He also sent out support letters to ask for friends and family to be a part of this effort by donating the funds necessary to allow these kids to have this experience.

As I talked with my friend about how his idea was coming together I found myself inspired by him. Here is a man who is so moved by the plight of those around him that he wants to find a way to teach and inspire them to achieve in a way that isn’t in the curriculum that is provided for him and wasn’t a part of his degree training. He also thought it would be a good idea to take some of his friends along so that his students could meet other people, professionals, and talk with them about what they do. He extended an invite to me and I quickly took him up on it. So next month I get to sit with this teacher and up to four of his students at dinner and I get the honor of being inspired by them.

It struck me that in much the same way he was using this dinner as an opportunity to teach them about life I had an opportunity in meeting them to hopefully do the same somehow. I thought about leaving them with something like a book, something that would be an easy read, but might inspire and challenge them to think (Seth Godin’s Tribes came to mind for example). I ran it by my friend and while he thought it would be a good idea to give them something, he didn’t think it likely a book would get read.

What do you think? What can I leave these students with that they might be able to go back to when the challenges of their life are discouraging them. Something that will remind them that if they continue to work hard and persevere, they will achieve great things. Leave me a comment with your idea.

The 12 for 12K Challenge

I came across The 12 for 12K Challenge this morning and wanted to share it with you. A group of folks have volunteered their time and resources to spread the word about one charity each month this year with the goal of raising $12,000 for the charity during their designated month. The concept is simple in that if 1200 people give $10 in a given month they’ll have reached their goal.

This month’s charity is Stop the Silence an organization that works with children worldwide who have been victims of sexual abuse. Money donated to Stop the Silence helps pay for medical and psychiatric treatment, social services, special education, and legal and judicial and incarceration costs.

I know times are tight for many in this economy, but I think we could all find a way to cut $10 of spending in our budgets each month in order to make a small difference in the lives of children in great need. Will you join me in giving ten dollars each month for the next eleven months?

Reforming Internal Corporate Communication

Potentially monetizing social networks in the process

Much of the current business use of twitter, and social networks in general, revolves around using it to communicate openly with customers. A great example of this is Scott Monty of Ford. While you rarely get the sense that Scott gets frustrated or angry you’ll often see him on the defense, especially these days as a result of the current economic climate and the state of the automotive industry. In spite of this, what I believe that you get from Scott is an honest, no spin insight into what’s happening at, and coming out of, Ford Motor Company these days. Another great example is Loic Le Meur a serial entrepreneur and founder of seesmic. Loic spends much of his time communicating with the users of seesmic and twhirl (a desktop client for social software, most commonly twitter) to hear about how they are using his company’s products, what features they would like to see and how the tools can be made better.

While I still believe there is much ground to be gained on this front of B2B and B2C corporate communication using social networks, I also thing it’s time to start moving into the next frontier: using social networks for internal corporate communications. It’s time for CEO’s, VP’s and managers (potentially even board members) to make themselves more openly available to their employees using the social media tools that some of these very same companies are using to engage their customers. And this is where monetizing the social media sites comes in. Why not allow a company to set up [mycompany].twitter.com as an internal corporate communications site with no outside access at a reasonable rate based on the number of users. Employees at all levels of the corporation would be able to socialize product decisions, discuss corporate strategy and provide feedback on work environments or business processes.

Of course this comes with risks. Executives and management could open themselves up to extensive criticism, or employees who are too vocal could find themselves overlooked for promotions they deserve or worse. But it comes with positive opportunities as well. The corporation could give a voice to employees where they may never have had one before raising morale as a result. Legitimately good ideas or product feedback that previously would have never gone beyond cube-mates could reach the ears that could take it and make much need adjustments. Most importantly the corporation would be telling their employees that their voice matters.

It should happen, it needs to happen, it’s bound to happen. As a matter of fact it’s probably happening somewhere and the tidal wave of internal corporate communications reform is building, ready to wash out the old practices in much the same way the tidal wave of PR and advertising reform has changed the game of business-customer interaction.

The Business of Social Responsibility

Our economy today is faltering for so many reasons that many people smarter than I have analyzed  and explained, and I have no idea what the right decision is to stem the recession and prevent a depression. I do, however, believe that no amount of money can reverse the methods of doing business that caused this crisis in the first place, methods will most likely perpetuate themselves into the future. We’ve arrived here because corporations drive consumers to consume even more of what they don’t need so that their stockholders get richer. (I certainly believe that I and my fellow consumers share in the fault by buying into their empty messages.) This incessant driving has paid off making those at the top extremely wealthy, giving others incentive to follow in their footsteps. Without a fundamental change to this model we will find ourselves in this same position again in the future.

I believe that the necessary fundamental change is to restructure the way profits are distributed. What if every company, not out of any obligation but out of civic duty, comitted to donating some significant percentage of their profits year over year to charitable causes. I wonder how much different the board meetings would look and how businesses’ decision making processes would be changed if they knew that the impact of their decisions determined, for example, how many homes in some 3rd world country received fresh water that quarter. I know many organizations already participate in socially responsible activities and charitable giving and I’m all for that, but I’m talking about taking this to the next level. What if each of us sacrificed a little bit of affluence and comfort to insure that we were taking care of our neighbor. How could this be a bad thing?

In days when we are reading about a former executive doing what I consider to be the criminal activity of spending upwards of one million dollars to refurbish his executive office as his company disappeared from existence, I think we need to look at the brand of captilism we’ve become. We now live in a society where our kids grow up thinking it is better to have a multi-room multi-million dollar “crib” than it is to insure that their fellow man on any continent has three square meals and a safe place to rest. A society where we glorify the lives of do-nothing celebutantes instead of making hero’s out of the people who sacrifice and spend their lives doing things to make this world a better place. It’s time for us to change what we work for and value, and what those whoe come after us will work for and value.

Maybe it’s time to form a new stock exchange, a Benevolent Market, where only companies that commit to donating 25% or more of their profits to charitable organizations can be traded. I’d rather put my money in that kind of market and support companies with that kind of commitment to making this world a better place for all of its inhabitants. I wonder how much better you would feel as an employee in the standard issue grey cube of one of these corporations knowing that your work wasn’t just making your executives richer, but that it was also helping to fund the research that will eventually find the cure for AIDS. I wonder if books would be cooked in a way that guaranteed the mortgaging of a company’s future, Enron style, if that also meant that the corporation’s ability to help sustain an inner city hospital would go down with it.

I guess this probably smells like socialism, but the beauty is it’s self-imposed. Maybe the exchange would have some branch of the SEC to insure that the criteria of giving was met but otherwise businesses would be free to give to the charities of their choice. The day-to-day grind of business becomes about more than empire building,  it would be about the outcomes of what the chosen charities would be able to do with all the hard work that the employees put in to allow the company to earn more and therefore give more. It’s time to stem the tide of greed in our economy before the market is no longer able to correct itself of all the lies and deceptions that have forged stock prices. It’s time to start evaluating ways to enter into the business of social responsibility.

Is it possible?