Category Archives: Standards And Practices

Getting out there

July 11, 2015 6:33 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I was chatting about work and life the other day over tea at Starbucks.  The conversation drifted in the direction of business networking.  Not the computer kind of network but the personal type of network.  The type that’s hard for me.

Networking really hasn’t changed at all since the first business office was set up.  Having a wide circle of friends and acquaintances always pays off.  Although we may live in an interconnected world of instantaneous communications we still have to initiate contact with other people in order for it to work.

I don’t mean just send emails back and forth or maybe even have a phone conversation but actually “talk” to the other person.  Whether that person is a client, a colleague or even a competitor at another company.  Being more than just a contact card in an email directory is important.  It means that you’re an actual human being that the other person might think of when it comes time to ask for a job, a business opportunity or an introduction to someone else.

Initiating contact doesn’t have to be a big production involving flowers or lunch or whatever.  You can just initiate contact by asking the other person how they’re doing during the course of your regular work exchange.  Do some “industry gossip”.  Talk about that other third company that has nothing to do with you or speculate on the future of your field.  Ask about their goals and plans.

The main thing is that you become a known quantity, that you have a personality, and that you’re a factor in their life.  Not a giant factor but a factor.  You’ll never expect them to break down and cry on your shoulder and you should not expect them to lend you money but at the very least if things go bad you can send out resumes to them, you can ask them if they know about any open bids, you can query them about some job applicant that they may know.

This is the way that the business world works, folks.  It always has and always will be this way.

Posted in: business, career, friends, goals, jobs, opportunities, plans, relationships, social networks, standards and practices, work

The roots of corruption

June 5, 2015 7:06 AM , Leave a Comment ,

One of the big news stories currently being discussed is the investigation into charges of corruption at the world soccer federation (FIFA).  Several high-ranking members of that organization have been arrested and the head of FIFA has been forced to resign as a consequence of the controversy.  Not just minor little thefts or petty little bribes but mind-boggling huge bribes and corrupt practices that go beyond the pale.

Ordinary people like myself have to wonder at the culture that engendered and possibly even encouraged this type of corrupt practices to flourish.  How could this have happened?  Where were the safeguards and monitors that should have prevented this?  Even the basic tenets of standards and good practices seem to be missing here.

A blog that I recently read sheds some light on this.  Two of the points raised in this blog seem to be pertinent here.

Firstly, there seems to have been a culture within FIFA that not only tolerated but almost encouraged the corrupt practices that took place within the organization.  Bribery seems to have been expected not only by the perpetrators but also by the members of FIFA who seem to have accepted handing out bribes to officials as part of the costs of doing business with FIFA.

Secondly, a slow or even non-existent judicial process that sought to either stifle or shut down any sort of investigation and punishment of corruption with regards to these officials.  Corruption at FIFA has been a sort of open secret for years yet no one around the world and certainly not within FIFA sought to do anything about it due to the fact that no sanctions would ever be taken at all.

A third point that wasn’t in the blog but I feel also contributed to this problem is FIFA’s success.  Being the world’s largest sport federation and creating such a wildly popular sporting event such as the world cup I think gave FIFA officials the sense that they could do no wrong and that they were above the law.  Over time their excesses have grown and grown to the point that they have become inexcusable and impossible to overlook.

One has to wonder about other large institutions like governments, businesses, and non-governmental organizations and ponder which of these may be hiding corrupt practices behind a veneer or infallibility or success.

How can reformers or critics point out these excesses without fear of reprisal and with the hope that change will take place? How can those within an organization spot these corrupt practices as they take place and take steps to curtail them before they bloom?

 

Posted in: business, current events, ideas, life in general, speculation, sports, standards and practices, thought

Does SPAM still work?

February 9, 2015 6:32 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been online now for over a quarter century.  I was there when the vote was taken to allow commercial traffic onto the internet.  I even remember some of the early and primitive websites that first popped up and nowadays would hardly qualify as a website.

All through this time I had email accounts and for a good portion of that time I’ve had to deal with SPAM.  That unwanted and now largely ignored mass communication method made possible by the ability of the internet to send “free” and “unlimited” numbers of electronic mail messages to recipients all around the world.

This form of advertising is now on the decline but still serious and pervasive enough to bother a great number of people all around the world.  Most countries now have anti-spamming legislation which makes this type of communication increasingly the purview of criminals seeking to infect the computers of unwary people with malware or peddling illegal items.

I should say however that some countries do still allow spam and that some forms of emails that are annoying may be thought of as spam even though they are not technically spam.  It is this category that I want to discuss.

Why do business people, rational people I’m sure, think that this shotgun approach to advertising will work?  Sending out untargeted, unwanted, and somewhat random emails out into a general population that most certainly did not ask for this sort of attention is prone to incur the wrath of the recipient.  So why do it?

I think it is fairly clear that the general population has gained a level of technical sophistication in the last decade.  Certainly the terms: virus, spam, and scam, are not unknown to most people.  I have to imagine that most people will react negatively to the arrival of such emails to their inbox.  So with that thought in mind, is it really a worthwhile exercise to engage in this practice anymore?

I mean at best most people will do what I do, which is ignore these emails completely.  Those people who are really annoyed may take hostile action such as tracking down those responsible and reporting those responsible to their internet providers.

Further in the last few years online advertising has embraced social media and grown in sophistication that allows advertisers to more selectively target their message to the “right” audience.

So with so much going against it and with much better ways to spend their advertising dollars, why do people still persist in this practice?

Posted in: business, computers, internet, sales, standards and practices

do your homework

September 30, 2014 6:18 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I find that when people complain about things at work going badly or not turning out the way that they expected it’s due to a lack of focus on fundamentals.

One production guy that used to work with me always complained that he was constantly behind and that he didn’t understand certain procedures or how the rest of the company did things.  I pointed out that he never took the time to do the extra reading and work necessary to keep up.

No matter what industry or specialty you are in one thing that is for certain is that things won’t stay the same.  Someone, somewhere will introduce changes, improvements, or just make what you do obsolete.  If you don’t put in the extra effort you will find yourself slowly losing ground till one day you’re totally out of touch.

Most people don’t get to that point of course but they do slack off from time to time and find themselves behind the curve.

Not only does this apply to work and business but I have found that it applies equally will to other facets of life such as books, movies, music, and culture in general.

We should all strive to keep up to date and spend extra time keeping up.  Now obviously everyone is different and we all have different priorities so you may want to keep an eye on one thing or a few things and let others slip from time to time.

Cancel one night out with friends or a night watching TV and catch up on your vital reading, research something you’re not too good at and see how others are doing it.  Find out something about current trends and what’s going on.  If you’re an artist or an athlete or do something physical take some time off and work on some of the fundamentals of your craft.

The main point is though that life doesn’t sit still and neither should you.

Posted in: business, standards and practices, work

In-house or out, it’s still you

February 10, 2014 7:30 AM , 1 Comment ,

The trend towards moving functions to overseas companies for content and services has pretty much waxed and is now on the wane.  Our company has tried this route for a while now and the results have been mixed at best.

I will admit that at first the price rates that were quoted to us were pretty impressive and almost blinded us to everything else.  But then we came to grips with the realities involved with this lower price.  Some things that we found were service that was iffy, personnel that we could in no way vet nor even be sure actually existed (one company used bogus resumes to boost their image), delivery timelines that due to the location of their offices were hard to predict and would often be in the middle of the night for us.  Any type of live communication would have to be held early in the morning before work or late at night after hours.

We would spend an inordinate amount of time on QC (quality control) making sure that the standards of the product and the final deliverables were up to the quality levels that we set.  In one instance we had to totally scrap the content that they provided and had to redo the project in-house at the last-minute using our own people working late into the night to meet a next day deadline.

When we complained about this, the offshore provider merely shrugged and said that the deliverables “seemed fine to him”.  To me that is just beyond the pale.  How anyone, let alone a supposedly professional company would let a product out the door without doing any sort of editing is baffling.  This provider didn’t even have a clue as to what QC was.

The thing that companies that use offshore providers must remember is that whether the product is good or bad, on time or late, that it’s going to be their reputation that will be on the line with the customer.  You are not just being paid to do a job but trusted by a client to take on a task for their success and if you fail to deliver what you promise then you, not the offshore provider, will suffer the repercussions.  You will be known as someone who is unreliable and that does not come through when called upon to do these type of jobs.

Despite all of these problems we’ve continued on with “offshoring”.  We’ve had to implement stringent quality assurance guidelines that our current provider knows are unbreakable.  If they fail to meet these standards then they lose our business.

May seem overly harsh but we are paying for a service and though we may not be paying top dollar, we still expect that service to be done and to be done properly.  Nothing less will do.

Posted in: business, standards and practices