Learn how to take your textile invention from idea to reality.

Original post by tom@tomrichard.com (Tom Richard)

Developing positive and open relationships at work depends on the way we talk–and listen.

Original post by tom@tomrichard.com (Tom Richard)

Here’s how franchises can offer you a jumpstart toward owning your own business in 2008.

Original post by tom@tomrichard.com (Tom Richard)

Transforming resolutions into results comes with being realistic.

Original post by tom@tomrichard.com (Tom Richard)

Letting go is a resolution that will save you time, money and heartache in the long run.

Original post by tom@tomrichard.com (Tom Richard)

The end of the year could be the right time to transition to outsourced payroll.

Original post by tom@tomrichard.com (Tom Richard)

Last friday, I blogged about a marketing decision made at Microsoft about a decade ago.  You may have thought that screed was a bit off-topic for this blog, but there was method in my madness.  I wanted to illustrate an important point about the proper role of Marketing inside a B2B organization.

Over the past year, I’ve tried to make the point that Marketing’s sole purpose is to generate leads and that every activity that doesn’t involve generating leads simply adds to the cost of sales without any corresponding benefit.  Whenever I’ve made this point, sundry Marketing folk have responded with a list of supposedly useful tasks that Marketing is supposed to perform, like “generating market requirements” and “defining new product features.”

While there may be some Marketing groups somewhere that can actually perform such functions, it’s my observation that most of the time Marketing is the least qualified to make product design decisions.  The reason is simple.  Marketing folk are neither close enough to the customer to understand what they really want, nor are they close enough to the technical aspects of a product to understand either what’s feasible or what’s wise to implement.

When it comes to understanding what customers want, companies should look to the Sales team.  They’re the ones that hear the straight skinny every day.  They know where customers are feeling pain.  Conversely, when it comes to understanding what will actually work, the best resource is the Engineering team.  They understand the technical issues and know what will (and won’t) create big problems later down the line.

Needless to say, there’s a natural conflict between these two perspectives, which is why Engineering teams and Sales teams frequently don’t see eye-to-eye.  However, there are many ways to lessen that conflict, like getting the engineers in the same room with customers to hash things out.  (Engineers love this kind of interaction, by the way.)

By contrast, because Marketing almost always has an imperfect understanding (at best) of both the customer’s perspective and the technical perspective, the kind of “product requirements” that they create are almost always off-base or confused.  A stock figure in Engineering humor (like Dilbert) is the clueless Marketing geek who thinks he’s a great technologist.  The archetype resonates because, unfortunately, it’s often true.

In the case of Microsoft, the decision to make the operating system permeable to outside applications was a case where I strongly suspect that a decision was made for Marketing reasons.  That decision, while profitable in the short term for Microsoft, has created repercussions that are costing businesses billions of dollars every year.

Because I know, due to my background, how operating system programmers think, I have to believe that the operating system programmers at Microsoft warned Microsoft’s management that the company was creating a Frankenstein — and that those warnings were ignored.  Thus the Microsoft example simply becomes a perfect example of the meddling of Marketing in an area of business (product design) where they don’t belong.

Here’s the nub: Marketing in a B2B firm has only one function, which is lead generation.  Anything that lies outside that function (like defining new products) is either a waste of time or (worse) a recipe for disaster.

Original post by Geoffrey James

Learn how some companies are offering employee volunteer programs that are motivating and retaining current employees, and attracting new ones.

Original post by tom@tomrichard.com (Tom Richard)

Answer: Because you’re smarter than the silly folk who take today off.

Back when I worked in cubicle-land, I never could understand why people took vacation days the week between Christmas and New Years. I realize that they’re trying to use the two holidays to get an extended vacation, but it’s still a waste of good vacation days, because being at work during the holiday week is pretty much like a free vacation.

The place where I last worked (for about six years) was, under normal conditions, full of stressed-out managers, screaming executives, and fearful employees. A normal U.S. office workplace, in other words. Over the holiday week, though, this hotbed of high pressure was actually pleasant and fun.

Because the rest of the world was on vacation, no work was going to get done, so more than half the offices were empty. People wandered in a 10am and left at 2:30, after taking a 2 hour lunch. Everyone was relaxed, happy and conversational. There were stacks of free Christmas cookies by the coffee-maker. You could have real conversations. It was as good as a vacation day, but as far as salary was concerned, you “worked,” so you got paid.

The way I see it, the purpose of a vacation day is to get away from the insanity of work and take a mental break. Why would anyone want to take a mental break from a (temporarily) relaxed workplace full of happy, friendly people?

The only downside was that, when everyone returned to work on January 2nd, it was back to the tension of the daily grind, which seemed all the more wearing in contrast to the fun times the week before.

But then, I’m probably not telling you anything that you don’t already know.

So, if you’re working today — I salute you! Have a Christmas cookie on me.

Original post by Geoffrey James

Have you heard about the Storm worm? It’s a particularly nasty computer virus that’s been popping up all year. What’s different about this virus is that it has a business model and is actually making money for the people who created it. And those people are using that money to pay for research and development into creating new, and more toxic computer viruses.

The new breed of computer virus can mine your system for identity data and keystroke data. If your machine gets infected, there’s now a good chance that you’ll be a victim of identity theft. That can mean years of frustration, credit problems and hassles with banks and credit card companies. And don’t forget — if your data is compromised, then the bad guys have all your customer contact data. And they can SPAM your customers from YOUR computer.

Viruses are a particular problem for sales pros because they’re more likely to use a portable computer as their primary machine. And those portable computers are more likely to be used in public places, using public wireless networks, which are one of the ways that new machines get infected. Furthermore, sales pros often have wide email networks and thus are more likely to open an infected email by accident.

If you’re a sales pro, then, you’ll probably be irritated to know that computer viruses remain a major threat to everyone’s data security because of a Marketing decision. Yes, that’s right. The reason that today’s computers and today’s computer networks are so easily infected stems back to a decision made at Microsoft, for marketing reasons.

In other words, we’re all being screwed by Microsoft Marketing. Let me explain.

Most people don’t know it, but it’s entirely possible to build computer systems that can’t be infected by viruses. In fact, the original computers were specifically programmed so that no application (like a browser or word processor) could make permanent changes in any other application or in the operating system.

In the timesharing systems of the 1970’s - the precursors of the Internet - there was no way for an application to crash the operating system, or to make any changes in the operating system that could impact another program. Those systems often ran for YEARS without every crashing - while simultaneously supporting hundreds of users and applications on every system.

Since the problem of “computer viruses” was solved decades ago, why are we still worrying about viruses and security problems? I’ll tell you.

At some point during the development of the Windows operating system, a discussion took place at Microsoft about the next version of their operating system. Microsoft (which had plenty of trained operating system programs who knew the score) could have implemented Windows using the same security features that had been in place in the timesharing world for decades.

Instead, they decided to do the opposite - to blur the distinction between applications and the operating system. They did this for marketing reasons. They wanted to leverage their dominant market position in operating systems to sell more applications and figured it would be easier to do so if the operating system embraced their applications.

It worked, of course, as evidenced by Microsoft’s dominant position in personal productivity applications and browsers. However, as the result of that marketing decision, the world is stuck with computers that are inherently insecure.

On a Windows machine, virtually any website can alter the operating system to make it do whatever the website wants it to do. The only defenses are “after the fact” fallbacks like firewalls and virus scanners. And unlike the architectural security that was built into early operating systems, “after the fact” security can always be thwarted.

So if your computer crashes because of a virus, or infects your company network, or suddenly routes porn SPAM from your computer to your most valued customers - you know who to thank: the marketing folk at Microsoft who put their firm’s ability to make money ahead of your right to have a computer that works reliably and keeps your data safe.

Original post by Geoffrey James