David Jacobson's External Insights

Information Sharing

In a further twist on the personal v organisation approach to knowledge management, Knowledge Jolt discusses the information snowflake and knowledge sharing.

Competitive Intelligence

Competitive intelligence enables you to obtain better information about customers or potential customers, competitors, other parties, particular issues or industries.

It has been defined as "a systematic and ethical program for gathering, analysing, and managing external information that can affect your company's plans, decisions and operations."

In this article in the Australian Financial Review, Mark Lawson argues that most managers still favour a 'gut feeling' means of intelligence-gathering over a systematic approach.

Sabrina Pacifici has compiled a collection of Competitive Intelligence Resources and a presentation on the topic.

Business Continuity Management

According to Centre for Australian Financial Institutions (CAFI) more than 30 percent of Australian financial institutions are not adequately prepared for a major disruption to their IT systems.

Dr Sarath Delpachitra and Glen Van der Vyver said while 78% of Financial Institutions had a high level commitment to business continuity management (BCM) and regard it as an extension of risk management and corporate governance practice, only 70% of those surveyed had a business continuity plan (BCP) in their work place. This meant 30% of financial institutions surveyed were yet to develop crisis management plans

Mr Van der Vyver said when it came to outsourcing, 75% of the financial institutions expected their outsourcing partners to comply with BCM guidelines but only 50 per cent of this number actually verified that their outsoucees had BCPs.

Download APRA's draft BCM Prudential Standard.

Powerpoints

I've previously linked to That's Not What I Meant which discusses the limitations of Powerpoint.

On the other hand, beyond bullets offers methods for making Powerpoint effective, focusing on images and design based on concepts.

Alternative Contract

This Fast Company article discusses the State of Grace Document. What is it?

It seems to be a plain English document which records emotions and intent in a relationship. Fast Company says British Petroleum and Astra Zeneca Pharmaceutical use it for employment contracts.

It is discussed here and an example given here.

Stupid Idea?

Business Pundit quotes this extract from a Fortune article on the History of Management Hooey:

You might suppose, if you'd never been anywhere near an actual business, that managers aren't susceptible to idiotic fads. Surely businesspeople are too disciplined, too unwavering in the eternal pursuit of shareholder value. But obviously that's nonsense. Managers are mere humans, and what's most eternal in a big company is the incredible difficulty of achieving consistent profit and growth. When a plausible idea for achieving them shows up, you can't blame managers for swarming all over it. T-groups? Conglomeration? Quality circles? Hey, what if it works, and my competitors use it—and I don't? That's how fads happen.

Is bank growth through mergers over?

In this article (free registration required) McKinseys argue (in the US context) that new growth and productivity initiatives will replace megadeals as the cornerstone of most banks’ strategies to create value.

Storytelling

Storytelling can be a powerful learning technique. As shown by Steve Denning it can be a springboard for a range of activities including decision making.

The Story Blog is a collection of stories that can be used in presentations.

Convergence

A client was telling me this morning about the need for people who can understand the legal, technical and business sides of converging technologies.

This message is echoed in this post from Michael O'Reilly.

The key quotes:

"There are major efforts underway to bring together the television entertainment system, computer management, communications and broadband Internet to offer a multifaceted and richer consumer experience. Many small entrepreneurs and large companies alike are pursuing this vision. The vision is not new, but the thing I observed that has gained greater traction is providers increasingly building their solutions around broadband access. There are efforts to offer broadband delivered movies, concerts and other content from sources other than cable or DBS, such as Yahoo, and Netflix. More effort is being placed in using "TiVo-like" functionality and distributed intelligence to allow the user to order up a queue of content and have it delivered as you move through your choices (a-la Netflix rentals). Of course, products are looking to allow DVD copying as well. Also, the capability to pull content from your computer using WiFi and other standards is gaining ground. The progress I see is simpler interfaces and more elegant boxes that make for an easier (yet more powerful) experience for the consumer.

What does stand out, however, is how critical getting copyright and DRM issues solved in a manner that protects content but allows these developments to flourish. Clearly, the multiple standards combined with restrictive protection schemes can damper the possibilities. All this convergence will also raise interesting legal questions about how to classify certain kinds of offerings that integrate seamlessly what used to be separate and distinct services for regulatory purposes. "

Separately, Tim O'Reilly has published this article in which he identifies "three deep, long-term trends:

The commoditization of software

Network-enabled collaboration

Software customizability (software as a service)

."

Employee Weblogs Part 2

Further to my recent post, I note that a Case Study on blogging has been published in Harvard Business Review called "A Blogger In Their Midst" which is a (fictional) "case study" about a CEO who is perplexed by a blogger known as Glove Girl. who's spilling secrets, drawing bigger crowds at industry events and happens to be on his payroll.