David Jacobson's External Insights

Small Business Debt Collection

One of the most frustrating things for a business is debt collection. Debt collection can get very personal, especially for small businesses.

The ACCC has issued a summary of the limits placed on collectors by the Trade Practices Act particularly in relation to undue harassment and coercion.

And by the way, the maximum penalty for a breach is $1.1 million!

UPDATE 15/02/05: The ACCC and ASIC have released their joint draft debt collection guideline for public consultation.

The draft guideline details the provisions of the federal consumer protection legislation most relevant to the debt collection industry, including prohibitions against misleading and deceptive conduct, harassment and coercion, and unconscionable conduct.

Creative Commons Licence launched In Australia

I attended the launch today at QUT during the Open Content Licensing Conference of  Australia's version of the Creative Commons licence.

The Creative Commons system lets copyright owners (whether text, film, paintings, photos or other media) determine in advance whether their copyright works are available for use by others and on what terms. They can generate their own licence (using a pro forma without the need for lawyers) so that potential users do not need to ask for permission each time.

It does not change copyright law. It may not suit successful businesses or artists who earn significant revenue from their inventions. But if a creator or author is happy for others to "remix" or "sample" their work, then a Creative Commons licence will help.

How do you know what has been licensed under Creative Commons? The item will have a logo on it or if you're looking for something you can use freely, look here.

I've written up my thoughts on today's program at  Technology and IP Business

UPDATE: For a fair summary of the debate on the limits of copyright law , read this book review (Via Kim Weatherall).

Corporate Blogs

There has been a lot of discussion about the value of blogs as a means of businesses communicating with their shareholders and customers. See here and here.

Recent articles in Fortune (Want Truth in Advertising? Try a Blog) and IR Web (Why Corporate Boards Should Blog) are worth reading to understand how critical feedback from blogs can be a valuable business advantage.

And this blog? I hope it's contributing to a conversation about business, technology and the law with an Australian perspective: it's  an australian blawg (or is it an australian business blog?)      .

UPDATE: Here's the book proposal for The Red Couch on corporate blogs (an interesting read itself).

Protecting Confidential Information

While it's obvious to say that you can't stop employees from leaving your business with what's in their head, electronic discovery has been used recently to catch departing employees with evidence of their plans to use confidential information in their new business.

In 2 recent examples, one in Australia and one in Canada, ex-employers have issued proceedings to restrain ex-employees from using confidential information obtained from their old employer.

In Amcor's case (pdf) (most of which was kept confidential from the public, except for Stock Exchange releases), Amcor took on senior managers who were leaving to set up their own consultancy in the same field as Amcor's manufacturing. Amcor 's lawyers were able to obtain orders allowing them to search the employees' homes and seize evidence including computers.
The action was settled but not before evidence of  alleged cartel behaviour was obtained, thereby involving the ACCC.

In the Canadian CIBC case (via Rob Hyndman) Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is suing six former employees who joined Genuity Capital Markets, alleging they took confidential information and  planned to recruit colleagues for the rival brokerage while they were still working for the bank. (see The Globe and Mail report).

In both cases the plaintiff's lawyers looked for the electronic evidence.  In CIBC's case this included Blackberry messages, shocking the Canadian financial community.

Customer Service

Nail Customer Service from HBS Working Knowledge reminds us that "customer service is what the customer perceives and remembers."

More quotes:

Customers' negative perception of service is primarily formed by their worst experiences, not by the average.

Customer service is the starting point and ending point for any effective account relationship. The key to success is clear thinking about what it feels like to walk in the customer's shoes.

The article gives some good examples of what to do and what not to do.

This all probably explains the recent trend of post-service surveys by car service centres. First they ask do you mind if we ring you in a few days? Then they ring you and ask if everything was OK. All this is designed not just to check your perceptions but also to reinforce their interest in you as a customer.

Customer service is even more critical in business to business relationships where businesses are constantly reducing/reviewing their suppliers.

Mind Mapping benefits

I've previously mentioned mind mapping as a tool for recording your own ideas or ideas from a group  here and here.

Dave Pollard has written an article on his use of mind mapping in project management.

I liked these quotes:

recently I've started playing with mind maps as a personal 'thinking out loud' tool, to organize my thoughts and think creatively all by myself. I've always learned best by writing, synthesizing and distilling books and other voluminous materials down to their essence: the message, the meaning, and the necessary actions. So perhaps this 'learning by writing down' style is the reason I find mind maps useful.

I always found developing sequences of PowerPoint slides with bullets on them, which is mind mapping in a rudimentary way, useful for organizing my thoughts for presentations. Now I've learned that they're boring for the audience, so I use them to organize my thoughts but then transform them into a story, and show only graphics on my slides. With mind maps, I can dispense with PowerPoint entirely.

He also links to this article on the topic from Innovation Tools.

Making mergers work

From McKinsey Quarterly comes this collection of articles on making sure the return is obtained on the merger deal.

"...the real work begins after the deal is signed, because a merger is only as good as its implementation. Without rigorous postmerger management, key employees leave, customer service suffers, supply chains loosen up, and overlapping products and divisions aren’t pruned rationally."

James Hardie settlement and the front page test

Without going into the legalities, the settlement by James Hardie of its long term funding of claims by asbestos sufferers, shows that decisions made on a strict legal basis aren't always good decisions.

It's always worth subjecting a proposed decision to the "Courier Mail test": "how would I feel if that appeared on the front page of the (insert name of leading local paper)"?

In James Hardie's case, its original decision to not provide further funding simply did not stand up to the public's perception of the company's obligations.

Project Management and Lean Thinking

For anyone involved in creating or running projects, I recommend Reforming Project Management.

The blog has tips on leading projects, running meetings and lean thinking.

Hal Macomber's comments  encouraged me to read Lean Thinking by Womack and Jones.

Starting with the Toyota model, it is based on 5 principles:

"All businesses must define the "value" that they produce as the product that best suits customer needs. The leaders must then identify and clarify the "value stream," the nexus of actions to bring the product through problems solving, information management, and physical transformation tasks. Next, "lean enterprise" lines up suppliers with this value stream. "Flow" traces the product across departments. "Pull" then activates the flow as the business re-orients towards the pull of the customer's needs. Finally, with the company reengineered towards its core value in a flow process, the business re-orients towards "perfection," rooting out all the remaining muda (Japanese for "waste") in the system."

What does all that mean in practice?

Womack and Jones say that the traditional "batch and queue" method of production is wasteful. By changing to continuous flow , labor productivity is increased, production throughput times are reduced, inventories are reduced, errors are reduced and time to market is reduced and customers get what they want.

Lean Thinkers practice "kaikaku" (radical improvement) as opposed to "kaizen" (continuous incremental improvement).

Worth reading.