Lessons in Management: McDonald’s During the 1970’s

Posted by Jesse Kliza in Business, Leadership, Management

Late last week I had the privilege of talking with someone that opened and ran numerous McDonald’s in the 1970′s.Two things he said really stuck out to me.  One speaks of his own innovative management practices and the other of the leadership of McDonald’s CEO at that time (Fred Turner).

He told me about one McDonald’s he ran in particular, and how he had problems in that area with many of the younger employees.  He came up with a hiring strategy in which he would hire half younger/teenage employees, and half nannies.  What he found was that the nannies would naturally organize, and manage the younger employees.  He said it was so successful that he rarely had to deal with disputes, or really run the store himself.  He would come out of his office, and the nannies that were working would immediately tell him to relax, and assure him that they had everything under control!

What an innovative management strategy!

He also told me something that Fred Turner said to him, and the other 48 managers at the time that were out in the field, growing the McDonald’s business, and opening stores all over the world.  He told them: “When you guys are out in the field, you are the CEO. You make the decisions, and you’ll be right 75% of the time.  And that’s the best rate in the industry.”

Fred empowered his employees to make decisions and he encouraged and inspired them to be the best.

I love hearing stories like these.

The Company-Customer Pact

Posted by Jesse Kliza in Business, Customer Service, Leadership, Marketing

At the Customer Service is the New Marketing summit yesterday, they handed out this great Customer-Company pact to all attendees:

It’s excellent, and I support it whole heartedly! Definitely check it out.

Politweets: Great example of Twitter’s “Track” feature!

Posted by Jesse Kliza in Collaboration

One thing that I failed to mention in my last post, which is an extremely useful feature of Twitter that has enabled me to find many of the people that I currently follow is the “Track” feature.

You can simply type “track X”, or “track X Y Z” and twitter will automatically send you anything that anyone says that includes that word or combination of words.

Politweets is a great, and recent example of this awesome feature in use. It tracks what people are saying about all of the presidential candidates, and presents the comments side by side in a nicely designed interface.

Steve O’Hear gives a great overview of this over at ZDNet, as does Josh Catone at Read/WriteWeb who also gives some other great examples of the power of the Twitter “Track” feature.

Just one more reason to start using Twitter!

Have you come across any other extremely useful Twitter mashups? I’d love to check them out.

What’s so great about Twitter?

Posted by Jesse Kliza in Business, Collaboration

I’ve been telling a lot of people about twitter lately, so I thought I’d broach the topic as to what makes Twitter so great.

For me, Twitter has been WAY more effective in helping me find and connect with individuals with similar interests than anything else. More effective than if I had actually been looking for them.

That’s part of the beauty of Twitter. It happens organically. I am constantly finding more people to follow that “speak my language”, and/or are interested in the same things I am.

There is minimal effort involved in the beginning, but once you start following a few people, you tend to just naturally find additional people to follow that add value. One thing I would suggest is to browse who other people are following, and check them out as well. I’ve found lots of great new people to follow this way.

I was definitely a naysayer at first, but this article was what caused me to give Twitter a second look and actually try it out:

Ten Questions with Chris Brogan – http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/09/ten-questions-w.html

Also, if there is one person I would suggest you follow to start, follow Chris Brogan. Check out his blog as well. Fantastic stuff. Definitely one of my favorite reads online.

Here’s an additional link to a good post about how twitter improved Truemors:

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/10/how-twitter-mad.html

And a post with a link to a research report by Forrester on “microblogging” (PAID):

http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2007/10/i-just-dont-get.html

Of course, you can follow me on Twitter as well at: http://twitter.com/kliza23

RivalMap – Time to start managing your competitive information!

Posted by Jesse Kliza in Business, Collaboration, Management

Last week RivalSoft launched RivalMap, a collaborative web based solution for managing competitive information.

I’ve used Competitious on and off over the past year, and it’s a great tool. Though, as stated in this Competitious blog post,”Competitious is a great way to quickly list your competition, and start finding news and traffic stats about them, but RivalMap is focused on what happens next.”

RivalMap is definitely a much more robust and feature rich solution. It has a beautiful user interface, and it maintains the same level of excellent usability and simplicity amidst a great deal more features. Anyone familiar with Basecamp will be right at home with RivalMap, as it has a very similar look and feel.

The beauty of RivalMap is that is provides your team a central place for MANAGING competitive information, not just storing it. I’ve seen companies “manage” their competitive information by sending around emails of press releases to different people throughout the organization, or creating a wiki, or at the most sophisticated level, by setting up a project within their internal project management system where they post information about competitors. However, all of these approaches fall FAR short of what RivalMap allows you to do.

RivalMap serves as that central place for all competitive info, but it also provides you with the tools to actually organize, and manage competitive information and begin to formulate strategies to address competitive threats. It allows you to build comparison grids (company and product comparison), easily associate links to news articles, build out a full SWOT analysis, and lots more. It even lets you segment out the distinct verticals in which you compete, and track all the way down to your competitors’ individual customers!

The one thing I was disapointed to see missing was the ability for the software to search for, and suggest links and articles, that are related to ones competitors. This was a very nice feature of competitious. However, it was mentioned in the competitious blog that they are planning on adding a similar feature to RivalMap, and potentially integration with third-party information services.

I would also like to have the ability to have my google alerts and similar services automatically parsed, and applied to the appropriate competitor’s profile.

All in all, I’m VERY impressed.

Their website is also very good in terms of clearly stating the benefits and features of the product, and with a completely free account for up to 3 users, it’s a no brainer to at least try it out.

You can also check out the RivalMap blog, and there is a great discussion over at TechCrunch as well.

Keep up the great work RivalSoft!

Treb Ryan’s sweet tooth for Salesforce.com

Posted by Jesse Kliza in Business, SaaS

With just 3 hrs and 51 minutes remaining in the ebay auction for 3 Salesforce.com 1million subscriber chocolate bars, the current high bidder is….. Treb Ryan?

Treb, this one’s going down to the wire…and I’m a professional ebay “sniper”.

Kidding… I just thought this was pretty funny.

Game Changing Business Application Design…Anywhere?

Posted by Jesse Kliza in Business, Collaboration, SaaS

One of the things I’ve been thinking about more and more lately, is somehow enabling the next generation user experience for business software.

For far too long, business applications have been built for businesses, not for the people in the businesses that use them.

Rather than approaching the design with the goal of enabling the best, most enjoyable experience for the individual, many ISVs have kept their designs inside the box, and focused solely on the needs of the business.

I may be missing something (and I’m sure I’ve not seen nearly everything), but I’ve yet to see an application that really breaks the mold. One that presents data in a totally new way, or enables a totally new experience for the user. Or one that incorporates some level of fun and enjoyment in the mundane tasks of creating service tickets, accounts, invoices, activity notes, meetings…etc.

If we look at sites/apps such as facebook, twitter, youtube and others, the sites that’s user bases have grown virally at an incredible pace, the three words that immediately come to mind are: personal, networked, and addictive

Personal – All of the above sites present information to the user that is personal and important to the individual user. This is similar to dashboards we see in many business apps. However, that is one single place in the application that is personal. Some applications also provide themes, but not to the extent that some of the social networkings sites provide customization of the overall look.

Networked – All of the above are web based applications, that leverage their network of users to create their core value. This is something I’ve written about in the past, and now Salesforce is just beginning to take this to the next level with their new Salesforce-to-Salesforce capabilities.

Addictive – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube… they are all addictive. They have something that makes people want to use them. However, that something can be different for different people, but I venture to say that what ever that something is, it is a direct result of those applications leveraging the network of users as the underlying core value of their offering.

Aside from Salesforce’s recent moves, another great example that is more on the design side is Entellium, and their Rave CRM product. Paul Johnston, Entellium’s CEO talks about the “Gamer Influenced Design” approach here on his blog.

Phil Wainewright also talks about Rave, and the concept of gaming elements applied to business software here.

I’d love to hear what others think, and if you can point me in the direction of some applications that you think are truly breaking the mold, I’d greatly appreciate it.