Technology and Organizations

I’ve spent two wonderful days with Allie and Jenny of Decker Communication. Seven Bay Area professionals (great group!) and I completed Decker’s “Communicate to Influence” program.  From watching the feedback DVD, I can see a huge difference in how I engage with my audience.  Content-wise, I’ve already reworked two of my base presentations and know I will be more persuasive as a result.  Worth every moment and dollar — thanks to all involved.

One tidbit you can use in your next conference call:  Put on your wireless headset (go get one…), tape pictures of people (doesn’t have to be the actual participants) onto chairs in your office/conference room, and speak to the people on the call as if they were there with you.

Big “a ha!” for me is that this is yet another reason to avoid what I call casual videoconferencing.  Sure, if you have access to Telepresence or Halo, use it.  You can do everything but share your lunch with that quality of video.  But, if it’s just a webcam, you’re better off avoiding the tyranny of your chair.  Stand up! Engage with your colleague or client just as if they were there with you.  Putting the picture in the chair lets you focus your attention in a way that will transfer from your mind to your voice.  Excellent example of making a combined technology-organization-people (TOP) work design.  Wish I’d thought of it….

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Ashley Vance’s BITS (Business * Innovation * Technology * Society) post in today’s New York Times describes how HP uses data for business value.  Both human innovation efforts and business functions are assessed to find value. On the research front:  “They analyze data like patents, published papers and customer interactions to find out where each researcher ranks in the organization.”  These same researchers have created business value by creating a tool that assesses Revenue Cost Optimization (RCO).  The tool takes into account supply chain and sales data.   Decisions based on this data change how inventories are managed.  Vance notes, “By using R.C.O. on a regular basis, H.P has cut the number of days it takes to ship computers by about one-third and has saved $300 million over the past three years.” We don’t know how much it cost to design RCO, or how much it costs to run it — but I suspect they are in the green.

This may be “medium data” (versus big data), but the same thinking applies.  There is value in an overall focus on Evidence Based Management.

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