Opinion

Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful…What is likely is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.

—Warren E. Buffett (discussing when to buy)

I was at the HR Technology conference last week in Chicago, and I want to share with you a few thoughts about the tenor and mood of the vendors and attendees at that show.  If you off-the-cuff think everyone was walking around with a gun to their heads, you’d be wrong, full stop.

First and foremost, yes, people were incredibly willing to talk about the economy and the state of the nation in both financial and political terms.  That’s unavoidable.  We’re well into reality-land these days, and the question of whether or not things are going to get tighter isn’t a question anymore.  People were voicing their concerns to me in the plain light of day, which I found to be refreshing.  People weren’t holding their cards close to their vests; they were openly discussing how to weather the storm and trying to get their heads around how long it might last.  I think people realize that everyone is sailing in the same uncertain waters.

Some folks told me that they’re cancelling or deferring their remaining 2008 HRIT/ERP projects and putting 2009 in a holding pattern to see how things shake out.  I think it’s safe to say a lot of people are fearful, and when fear happens, the standard corporate organizational response is to flow into pure cost conservatism and horde.  I know firsthand, because I’ve seen it in spades in my former life.

But what impressed me the most is how many said that this is the time that they’re moving forward, in some cases very aggressively.  More people than not simply smiled and said that yes, times are rough and we have to hunker down, but we are in a fantastic place of leverage.  We can invest at bargain prices, squeeze software vendors for incredible deals, and at the end of this financial weirdness, come out of it ahead.  Ahead as a company, of course, but more importantly ahead of our competition, which is letting their fear compromise their strategic vision outright.

And let me tell you, this wasn’t one or two people with this outlook.  More people than I ever expected said they are investing now so they can reap the benefits on the back end of this financial storm rather than waiting it out and hoping necessary projects begin again sometime down the line.

Sometime down the line.

While some companies will wait for “sometime” to become “the right time,” other companies will carry forward and implement their next-generation of HRIT/ERP software applications.  And these folks not only will get a deal of their lifetimes, but they’ll also have strategic momentum when things open back up.  Their competitors will be just coming up for air, and meanwhile the more shewd organizations will be in full stride.

What are your thoughts?  Which way are you leaning as you look to close out 2008 and move into 2009?  Would love your thoughts in the comments or via email directly.

What is the cost of a fumbled upgrade?  For J. Crew it was $3MM in unanticipated costs which, according to J. Crew, contributed to their recently announced earnings miss of 4 cents a share.   How did Wall Street respond?  Typical overcorrection seems to be the response with shares trading 15% down in after hour activity.

Ben Worthen highlighted J. Crew’s stumble in his business technology blog in the Wall Street Journal, mentioning that J. Crew isn’t the first company to blame poor earnings results on technology.

There was a wave of businesses blaming poor results on tech-projects-gone-bad in the early part of the decade. We haven’t seen it much lately, though.

One difference: Nike, Hershey and others that had problems in the past went out of their way to blame the tech vendor. J. Crew never once tried to pass the buck. The company didn’t respond to our requests for comment, which also means we don’t know which company sold the offending technology. You can search the Web for “J. Crew” and “systems” and find the names of several companies J. Crew buys software from, but there’s not enough evidence for us to point a finger.

What strikes a chord in me in the report is that Worthen assumes that the poor upgrade is the result of “offending technology.”  Our experience however, leads me to be much more suspicious of the implementation/upgrade approach, executive sponsorship, project budget and timeline constraints, and ultimately the implementation team itself.  All too often we see companies approach an upgrade as a routine activity that can be performed easily by their staff (all while their staff stays on top of their regular day-to-day responsibilities).   Supplemental staff is reluctantly brought in via simple commodity broker staffing firms that can only provide bodies and not real experience from both a people and process standpoint.

Obviously, this doesn’t fly too often.

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One of my favorite new business blogs is Deal Architect by Vinnie Mirchandani.  It’s become a daily read for me.  But here’s the thing: I follow over 100 feeds.  I don’t go to any website regularly, even personal favorites like Daring Fireball or kottke.org.  I live my digital life, in large part, in a feed reader (Google Reader for me, but there are many of them out there), and clicking away to a website — especially for the sake of clicking and little else — is a total interrupt to my workflow.

So Vinnie, if you’re reading that, can you please switch to full RSS feeds?  Your subscribers will thank you.

Dell, in a brilliant display of PR savvy, has tried to trademark “cloud computing”.  Per The Standard:

After witnessing countless corporate attempts to patent common practices or trademark common terms, and seeing the resulting PR fallout, one would think that companies would just stop trying. Dell, however, seems to think that it should be able to trademark the term “cloud computing,” a phrase that entered the tech lexicon many years ago to describe software processing that takes place on a distributed network, such as the Internet.

This was first noticed by Sam Johnston on Google Groups.  Sam is a member of the cloud computing group.

Here is the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) record of the application.  The status at the time of this post is live.

This is a ridiculous attempt to trademark a colloquialism and obviously should be killed.

In fact, Owen Smigelski, a trademark attorney commenting on on The Standard’s article, explains the trademark’s process and likely fate:

I’m a trademark attorney, and Dell has done more than just “try” to use the trademark. The application was published for opposition, no one lodged any complaints, and now the trademark will proceed to registration (once Dell submits examples of its trademark use). The mark can later be disputed once it is registered by anyone who believes they will be harmed by the registration of the trademark by Dell. Examining Attorneys at the USPTO usually catch phrases that are generally used by the public, thus I am surprised they let this one through with approval.

Here’s a direct link to check the status of the application: http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77139082

One of the most difficult things to do is to walk away from an opportunity.  Even though you know in your heart it’s the right thing to do, it is always difficult.

A few weeks ago we made a tough decision that only recently demonstrated that it was the right course of action.

One of our trusted partners brought us in early to a consulting opportunity.  We continuously ask to be brought in early versus at the last minute so we can add value throughout the process, and in this case our partner obliged.  We were very pleased to eventually earn a verbal approval from the customer.  Soon thereafter, however, we found the customer’s legal counsel exceptionally challenging to work with in attempting to negotiate a contract.  (I am sure no one else has ever experienced this problem!)

After awhile we began questioning whether we were being too difficult or maybe just not flexible enough. After some internal discussion, we ultimately determined that we were being fair and rational, but we were also slowing the transaction down too much for our partner.  We made the difficult decision that to avoid harming them and even though they brought us the business, we would walk away (with our partner’s blessing), allowing our competition to take the deal so that our partner could close the business.

As you can imagine, we had a few interesting meetings that week.

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Three-and-a-half years ago, when we started MiPro Consulting, one of the first things we did was define a set of core values. Before our name, before our logo, before even our mission statement, we defined a set of values that would serve as a guide, or compass, for where we took MiPro Consulting. Over the past few months we have been highlighting a core values in our employee news letter. In March I wrote about our first core value, PEOPLE. In the spirit of getting to know MiPro, I now share it with you.

People. Our first core value. Sometimes I am asked why our second core value Customers isn’t our first. I love that question!

When we started MiPro Consulting we spent a lot of time discussing not only what we were going to do but why were going to do it. The most consistent theme in those early days was to build a work place that was fun, passionate, and engaging. We knew that to be successful we needed to create and maintain a work environment that attracted the very best and the very brightest in the industry. (By the way, when I look at the team we have, it is clear to me that the formula is working!).

In professional services your product is your people. If you don’t have great people then you really don’t have much value that you can offer to your customer. So that is why People come first at MiPro.

Our recipe is pretty simple.

1. Create a GREAT work environment.
2. Use that environment to attract GREAT people.
3. Encourage your GREAT people to do GREAT things for their customers.
4. Doing GREAT things for customers yields more business.
5. Repeat step one over and over and over.
6. Never forget step one.

These are my thoughts on MiPro core value number one — PEOPLE. I would love to hear your thoughts.

-Chris Bishop
President, MiPro Consulting

It’s Friday and there’s no better time to look at real examples of management speak gone awry.  BBC News has a list of 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate, and some of the better ones score a seriously impressive nonsense/ridiculous rating.  See them after the jump.

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Bear with me, because this might seem kittens-and-moonbeams, right out of the self-help aisle at Borders.  It’s not.

Recently, Fortune ran a piece asking all sorts of industry luminaries about the best advice they ever got — from their mentors, their bosses, their parents, whomever.  The entire article is worth reading, but what stuck with us in particular is Indra Nooyi’s blurb about always trying to assume positive intent.  It stuck so much that I hear it nearly every day.

Why?

If it sounds a bit too much Tony Robbins for you, hold on.  Take a second and think about it.  It’s deeper than you might think, because it requires conscious effort to break ingrained behaviors.

Assuming positive intent (or “APIing it,” as it’s known around here) is harder than it sounds — actually, much harder.  You have to think about it almost all the time at first.  It means that whatever life throws at you, especially as it relates to dealing with other humans, everyone would be better served if we all assumed that everyone is motivated by positive intent, instead of the other way around.

Which means we can’t just up and react.  Which means that we need a filter, at first, that we apply to discussions and events before reacting.  Which means that most of us have to re-wire ourselves away from what we’ve become used to.

Small or large, business life in general can be a battleground, and that stigma is well-deserved in many regards.  But to let that stigma create a blanket reaction tendency is a bad thing.  It’s cynicism hardening the otherwise eager intellect.

Next time you have a conflict at the office, client site or when someone acts a bit out of the boundaries of decorum, take a moment and try to remember to assume positive intent.  I don’t care if you have to take a deep breath, think of a grassy field, whatever.  Think before you react, and remember that maybe, just maybe, that person is acting out of positive intent, but just not in the way you would.

This may not cure all interpersonal or political business conflicts, but it’s a great place to start.

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