patti wilson's blog

Learning from IBM...despite NY Times Glowing Article

IBM is in the throes of change in order to survive against global competition, and the message should be clear to us all. The New York Times article referred to IBM as a nimble giant that is running as fast as it can to move up the specialization food chain, re-organize into a global structure, and shed itself on low profit product lines.

The Valley Wag attributed the New York Times gentle handling of IBM to the ad dollars the company applies to full page print ads. Be that as it may, aren’t we all microcosm equivalents of the Big Blue macrocosm.  Geoffrey Moore, in Dealing with Darwin, talks about how a company must evolve or become extinct. As professionals, don’t we all?

The Times asked, “The unanswered question about I.B.M. is, Can the new, higher-margin business grow fast enough to offset the maturing of its traditional services business and rising competition from the Indian outsourcers?”

There may not be an answer at this point but the question, in some form or other, is one that needs to be addressed by every worker and company in the USA.  How IBM fares can be the mirror to us all. How can we collectively and individually change, re-tool, specialize and run faster to remain competitive?

Job Growth in the Western States

I have been following the quarterly job growth reports on the FDIC's website. They publish growth or decline in available jobs by state and then rank the states and regions.

No, California, at 22nd, is not at the top.The Rocky Mountain region leads the growth in employment with the top 4 states: Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, and Utah. The South with the exception of Louisiana is also showing solid employment while the heartland and northeast are fairly weak.

This information is consistent with the long predicted demographic movement of population from North to South and East to West. The real estate boom of the last decade has been fueled by the Baby Boomers reaching retirement age and seeking optional lifestyles in milder climates and low interest rates enabling investors to buy income property with refinance money.

The areas that appear to continue to flourish have either a compelling climatic, business, and/or economic story. Las Vegas continues to show strong growth due to the hospitality/entertainment industry draw, while Phoenix has climate, high tech and tourism. Arizona has a strong initiative with both UofA and Arizona State for bio-tech and bio-medical research. 

Idaho and Utah both have low cost of living compared to the other growth states in the West, together with natural resources (mining, hydro) and tourism. Oregon's economy has been a slump for years due to the downsizing of the timber/wood products industry but has slowly evolved into another small mecca for technology companies seeking an educated works force, inexpensive power resources and lower cost of living compared to California.

Is this a good reason to relocate? Sure, if you have no compelling Bay Area ties and can find equivalent employment there? As one client of mine said, as he put his Palo Alto, California million dollar bungalow up for sale, you can "live larger" elsewhere.

0.5 Hiring Process in a net 2.0 Economy

I just resumed coaching a long-time client. We have been through the dot.com wars together. I coached him through multiple promotions and positions at start-up companies. He left for business school when the bubble burst and weathered out the recession obtaining a solid ivy league education.

When he called shortly after joining an old-dog non-tech company, I wondered what he was thinking in making that career move. It appeared to be to him a very cool opportunity to make change happen by moving the product's delivery into digital distribution.

Unfortunately, my client is going crazy with way more work than he can handle. He got a fast-track promotion and is doing his old job plus the new one until he can hire his replacement. That happened last December.  Seems like the company has had a 50 year policy of not using any kind of recruiters, neither internally nor externally.  It's up to each manager to source, identify, attract, screen, interview and hire their direct reports. 

The catch 22 is that my client is spending every spare minute trying to make the revenue forecast and has no time to hire and bring on board the team that could help him make the numbers. Does sound familiar?

We planning strategy on how to change a "it's always worked this way" mindset to "OK, let's pay the 20%, engage a recruiter and get good people on-board yesterday".

How much are we talking in serious money here? Not much really, it's about 20 to 40K. I could do a treatise on the internal cost of lost revenues, blown morale, burned out employees and lowered productivity because of an unwillingness to hire a recruiter. I am sure they are figuring that this is a slippery slope and can add up astronomically with multiple hires. But this is not a black/white yes/no choice for any organization.

Using a search person selectively for a specific hiring intervention makes for a good ROI. It is difficult to get a 0.5 company to become a 2.0 company when they can't get past outmoded rules and procedures.

ITunes

The Making of Fame: One Tune at a Time
I just subscribed to Apple's ITunes, and found it incredibly addictive. I have always thought that buying an entire album was a waste of money except for artists that I deemed exceptional such as Beatles or for Broadway shows, symphonies, operas and ballets. But buying one song at a time and cherry picking among artists, albums...oh now that's too fun. Is it worth $.99? I think it is for the paranoid among us who fear the wrath of Big Musak, otherwise stick to peer to peer file sharing.

How will this change the landscape of the music business is the far more interesting question. For fledgling artists, I expect this will help level the playing field. Whereas the general public might not purchase an entire album, they would buy one great song that would launch a career. Would this lessen the stranglehold Big Musak has on the business? Eventually, yes. Will this evolve as more people shop online? Yes. I doubt if 20 years from now any retail stores will be in business selling music cds or dvd. What would be the point when is can all be downloaded? Rather like trying to find any stores selling sheet music. Yup, some still exist as anachronisms not as mainstream retail venues.

So what exactly will it mean to be a record label when no records exist now to label? Why wouldn't PR firms specializing in helping new artists get airtime on radio and TV music channels take the place of the record labels? At one time, there was considerable capital invested in the production and distribution of vinyl jacketed record albums: 45s, 33 1/3s, and 78s. We burn our own CDs and now we download digital music into devices for listening...where is the production and distribution costs associated with that? What's left in terms of costs and overhead: a website, good graphic designer, production studio to digitally record the master copy and that's it.

Why wouldn't this drive down the price of music, by pass the studio and labels as well as increase the remuneration to the artists? It won't because this industry sector has a powerful Washington lobby, a vise-like control of the business and the players and they have a vested interest in remaining rich and powerful.