Endless Knots

Why BP Crashed and Killed the Gulf

Harvard Business Review Blogs carries our post today on the role BP's organizational structure may have played in causing the horror show in the gulf. See "Why BP Crashed and Killed the Gulf." I wrote about this briefly here shortly after the explosion on April 20.

Nohria new dean at Harvard Business School

Harvard University President Drew Faust just announced that Nitin Nohria, an insightful academic who early on recognized the importance of networks to global business strategy, is the new dean of HBS. "He's an outstanding scholar, teacher, and mentor, with a global outlook and an instinct for collaboration across traditional boundaries," Faust said.

From the announcement* on the B-school's site:

A scholar of leadership and organizational change, Nohria has previously been the School's senior associate dean for faculty development and chair of its organizational behavior unit. Current co-chair of the HBS Leadership Initiative and a member of the HBS faculty since 1988, he will take up his new role on July 1.

Congrats, Nitin. Very happy for you, the institution, and for networks.

Hello Lipnack

I think this might be the first email I've received that begins like this:

Hello Lipnack,

Hello My name is Michael.  I am the new Regional Account Manager with [excellent company] servicing your area.  At one time, your organization was a customer of ours.  [Excellent co] has recently made changes to reflect the current business climate.

We would love to learn more about your business today, the future goals of your organization, and how we can help.

Please feel free to call me directly or reply to this email with the best time to reach to you to schedule a conversation.

Kind Regards,

Michael

If I do respond, do I say, "Hello, Michael - this is Lipnack?"

Inc. goes virtual - for a second

Those following the field know that Inc. magazine carried out an experiment in February: it sent everyone home to experience working virtually. Thanks to Virginia Adamson at Volvo IT, I just read Inc. Senior Writer Max Chafkin's very good article about it, "The Case, and the Plan, for the Virtual Company."

I've complained before about how thin most of the material about virtual working really is with the endless lists of "ten ways to" and "three things that you should do..."

Chafkin's article is thoughtful, extraordinarily well written for material in this field (admittedly dominated by techies not writers), and provocative. The set of things he comes up with are very important:

1. Crunch the numbers to figure out the savings and expenses associated with stashing everyone at home.
2. [For]Get the tech. He makes the argument so clearly. It really doesn't matter. Spend your time doing your work, not in training with new collaboration technology. While many people have advised us to change our old motto "90% people, 10% technology" to "80-20," I might go in the other direction after reading this: 95% people, 5% tech.
3. Settle in. Great stories about the tension of working at home. Reminds me of a family classic when our girls were little (we've worked at home since the dawn of internet time). Adorable little girls come into office to ask question/get a hug/aka interrupt. Immediate need met, I say, "Would you like to leave yourself or should I escort you out?" The older of the two says, "'Scort me out." She, btw, is now working two days a week from home with little people nearby who have quite limited vocabulary at the moment.
4. Master your emoticons and everything else about working online. Self-explanatory. Everyone interviewed for the piece, both within Inc. and outside, which is one of the great gifts of this story, struggled with isolation and loneliness even while benefiting from the ability to concentrate. This allows me to throw in another motto: "Isolate to concentrate; congregate to collaborate," which of course can be done at a distance or in-person.
5. Explain yourself. The publishing world, or at least a blogger at Columbia School of Journalism, interpreted Inc.'s experiment as the opening shot in its shutting down.
6. Consider your culture. Here's my beef with the piece, Mr. Chafkin. I don't agree that "going virtual means moving away from a culture of collaboration by a group of competent generalists and toward one based on specialists who are cheap, efficient, and good at meeting deadlines." Snope. Not at all. It's not the content/expertise of the collaborators that matters; it's the way they collaborate. Yes, you can limit virtual working to brain-picking for specific expertise; it's very effective. But the big mushies of collaboration can and do still take place virtually. In fact, generalists benefit from virtual working as they generally surf more. I have no data to back this up but think about it. The most interesting stuff I've picked up today has been on Facebook News Feed. I would not be seeing it if someone were looking over my shoulder. And, please, before you think I'm saying FB should replace real news...I'm not. Just an anecdote about how we spend "idle" time.

So...turns out that most of the Inc-ers wanted back to the office. (I failed to mention that they have 10,000 absolutely gorgeous square feet in downtown Manhattan. But then again, Inc. has always had great offices - I remember going to the waterfront in Boston when they were located here in '90s.) My read on this: of course. It was an experiment, not meant to last, with coming back together to reflect built into the test. Were Inc. to seriously go virtual, it would make a plan to address the tough stuff, to build a space-and-time spanning culture, to promote norms and perks that make it easier for people, and, most importantly, it would hire differently. Everyone in the experiment had been hired into a bricks-and-mortar position. Make that same position virtual and different people would apply.

I could argue a few more points but, geez, Inc., good for you. And really good for you, Max Chafkin. Very enlightening piece.

"Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead"--The Atlantic

Seriously. Move over Harvard Business School and crank up "Sugar Magnolia." A compelling case made by Joshua Green in this month's Atlantic, positing that the Dead had a bead on viral marketing (he calls them "social networkers") long before Big Business even knew what it was. Seriously. The Dead as great business brains. That, of course, is why we still love them, right?

Are nonprofits less efficient?

A friend is having problems being paid for services rendered to a nonprofit. Conclusion? Don't work for nonprofits, right?

In my experience, ta-da: wrong.

Having submitted invoices to many entities over the years -- everything from mega-corporations to city governments to tiny nonprofits -- the record holder for difficulty in being paid belongs to the big companies.

Back in the late 1980s, when Digital Equipment Corporation was the major employer in the cosmos (exaggeration, merely the universe), we were having problems being paid. So I decided to do a flow chart of the process. It took 19 separate signoffs. Other consultants started calling me for advice on how to be paid by DEC.

I guess that explains why Digital went out of business. Howevuh...while some companies are very efficient, I've found it equally difficult with other big firms. The invoice submission process is a fine art (or really bad art) with ridiculous quirks that make slow nonprofits look like comets in comparison. The most ridiculous? Having to send paper copies of invoices -- you know, that stuff over in the pile in your paperless office -- to global enterprises. And then being told the paper copy, sent by overnight delivery service, was never received because Accounts Payable "never heard of" the person who signed for it in their Receiving Dept.

Meanwhile, I hope my friend is paid soon.

Clicking on collaboration -- Bloomberg BusinessWeek TV

BusinessWeek TV, which, like its print publication, is now owned by Bloomberg, has posted "Collaboration with Confidence Across Companies" (you have to register to view it), the webcast that Jeff Stamps (online expert) and Bill Hills and I (live talent) participated in on Dec 3 and which I mentioned here. Cisco sponsors these shows; this one includes an intro from Cisco VP of Global Operations, Kevin Harrington.

These things are so much fun to do. Like "Boosting Productivity with Virtual Collaboration," which I participated in last February (and, which, like this one, was set in motion by producer Alex Cohen), took place at the NASDAQ studio in Times Square.

Let me walk you through the experience.

Studio wall that we look at from our "anchor desks"

Looking out of NASDAQ studio onto the street

Where we sit, with Times Square just outside

 

Bill Hills, the other panelist, and moi just before show begins

 

Jim Ellis, the host, with his teleprompter behind him

David Coffin, show's producer, in "green room" after show

Olivia Basu, Linda Kuehn, Marissa Ferrao from BusinessWeek staff

Took a long walk across town after the show; Christmas Tree just up at Rockefeller Center

Collaboration with Confidence Across Companies--Live BusinessWeek TV Video Webcast

Once again, delighted to  appear on a BusinessWeek TV/Cisco live video webcast, "Collaboration with Confidence Across Companies," tomorrow, Thurs, December 3, 2009 at 11am PT, 2pm ET, 7pm GMT.

Our panel, moderated again by Jim Ellis of BusinessWeek, includes Bill Hills, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Collaboration Age Associates and me (both live), and Jeff Stamps, Chief Scientist at NetAge, who will provide expert advice online.

Register here. And please ask lots of questions.

Here's the promo material from BusinessWeek:

Benefit from rich, reliable and secure collaboration across town or across the globe.

This webcast will provide best practices to help your company realize the full potential of collaborative technologies:

• Communicate efficiently and effectively in real-time.
• Exchange information securely across borders and time zones.
• Operate seamlessly with distant partners, suppliers and customers.

In this live discussion you will be able to participate in an interactive question and answer session with our industry experts - all from the comfort of your desktop.

Apple: "Do right" company, at least for this devoted fan, er, customer

I've never been good at hiding my enthusiasms. Thus more than one post here about Apple and the geniuses behind the bar. I've been addicted since the first Apple machine made its way into our house when our kids were little and, save a few years when incompatibility with client systems made its use secondary (those days are long in the past), I've been a happy collector of a long stream of machines.

Almost problem free until that dreaded night in September when my hard drive crashed. Crashed is not sufficiently descriptive. Obliterated three years of work, email, addresses, articles, essays, books, photos...shall I continue?

Did I panic? No, not exactly. I had Time Machine, the "infallible" backup utility that works with Apple's newest operating system, Snow Leopard. It had been running for over a year, the little clock spinning counterclockwise (not sure this makes sense, ultimately, but never mind that). All I had to do was reunite with my backup drive (which I was separated from due to wonderful circumstances).

My drive and I got back together shortly thereafter...and then the horrible reality emerged. Time Machine had not worked, not recorded anything, zippo, zero. I explained the glitch in detail in this post. Briefly, and horrifyingly, Time Machine doesn't** work when one's machine name has non-ASCII characters in it. Huh? Every machine has a name; in my case, the Apple salesperson assigned it when I bought this machine, calling it, brilliantly, "Jessica Lipnack's MacBook Pro 15-inch." That would have two such offending characters in it - the ' and the -. Unfortunately, and contrary to what one would think about Apple's good user support, Time Machine does not issue a warning for this situation; in fact, it appears that the backup system is working, clock spinning and all.

I won't review the many hassles since - except to say that two months and counting, I'm still trying to obtain fully usable files from the disk recovery company, Kroll OnTrack. They're trying, which I appreciate, but we're not there yet.

Apple, meanwhile, has done something quite remarkable. After many calls, escalations, hours on the help line, conversations with very senior technical people and people in customer service, I received a reimbursement from the company a couple of weeks ago. They've asked me not to reveal the precise amount, which I, as a business person, am honoring. Every customer situation is different and I have to agree with them. From my perspective, mine is particularly awful: A 25-year customer and unpaid evangelist for the company experiences horrendous consequences from a malfunctioning product, incalculable, really, in terms of what has slipped away.

Where does this leave me? Convinced that Apple listens, that it, in this case, has honestly owned up to a mistake, and heard that there ultimately is no way to completely fix what happened to me and my files.

What to do going forward? Time Machine is up and running now that I've changed my machine name; the little clock is spinning; I've checked that the files are there (my bad, Apple, for not double checking instead of taking it for granted that spinning meant working); and I'm waiting for the release of a Snow Leopard-compatible version of Carbonite, redundancy being the only remedy in the digital world.

Thanks, Apple. You done right by this woman.

**According to this note on the Apple site, the problem was fixed in the 10.5.2 OSX update.

I hope this is the last one, Verizon, but...

Have these people ever been online? And/or do they try what they recommend? They send a hot link that doesn't work then...well, just read this. Of course, I'd already tried what Vicki recommends, i.e. copying and pasting the link then, incredibly enough, even with her telling me how to do it, I did "depress the enter key." Depress(ing) is the right word at this point. Depressing to think this is coming from one of America's largest telecomms. Today's word(s) for the (un)wise, received mere moments after my reporting the broken link:

Dear J. Lipnack,

Thank you for your prompt response. I apologize for the misunderstanding. Accessing the link via the email will bring you to a page cannot be displayed error. Copy and paste this into the address field on your browser, then depress the 'Enter' key on your keypad.

Please advise if you experience further difficulty. If not, if I may be of assistance to you in the future, please let me know. We look forward to serving you.

Have a great weekend and thank you for using Verizon. We appreciate your business.

Sincerely,
Vicki
Verizon eCenter

And, dear readers, I'm going to give it a rest. Honestly, this should be turned over to the writers for Jon Stewart or to Ira Glass & Co. at This American Life. This American Life, indeed.