Shame, shame, shame. I realize Social Media is the new black in the art of PR, but how irritating is this? Tammy Erickson, our in-house workforce guru, published a post today on women’s progress in the workplace on her Harvard Business School discussion leader blog. Her first comment was from Ms. Kimberly Rosenberg who lavishes her with praise then notso deftly segues into how she is using Microsoft Office Live for Small Business (no hyperlinks intended) to increase her productivity.

I sleuthed around online on Ms. Rosenberg, and it appears she has left virtually the same comment on at least 4 other blogs in the past few weeks. Ewwww.

http://www.blissfullydomestic.com/2008/04/an-organized-ho.html

http://experts.internetbasedmoms.com/aurelia/finding-balance-as-a-wahm

http://www.entrepremusings.com/index.php/2008/04/24/why-arent-there-more-rich-women-entrepreneurs/

http://empowerwomennow.com/news-women-entrepreneurs/index.php/how-to-get-your-partner-from-zero-to-hero-in-your-business/

Microsoft Office Live for Small Business product management– what are you thinking? So blatant an attempt to hawk your wares? Buy an ad. There are right ways and wrong ways to engage the blogosphere. Please start feeding any number of the excellent social media blogs that will instruct you on how to do this right. If Ms. Rosenberg works for a PR agency, send her to social media school. Or send her to start doing some homework here (Chris Brogan) and here (Brian Solis).

The smoking gun:

It’s that time again, the hallowed Enterprise 2.0 conference is revving up for early June. I was pleased to work on the agenda this year with Steve Wylie, the conference organizer, along with other members of the advisory board. The conference is in its second year and promises to reflect the maturation that occurred in the space over the past 12 months. Although many first-time attendees to the conference will be new to Enterprise 2.0, the concepts and themes have evolved and been refined over the past 12 months. Three out of the four largest enterprise vendors are big sponsors this year (IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle.) I’m personally hoping we see relevant, interesting developments from these large vendors this year.

We are introducing two new ideas to the conference this year which I’m particularly excited about. The first is Stowe Boyd’s Launch Pad where four (whittled down from a larger number by votes) audience-chosen startups will have an opportunity to demo their products and compete for a winning spot for the best launch pad product/service. As there is such a torrent of new products coming onto the scene, this is a great attempt to filter out the most useful based on collective crowd selection. We are considering doing something very similar regarding sessions for September’s Office 2.0 conference based on the SXSW’s panel-picker software.

The second event, or maybe unevent I should say, is called Enterprise2Open. Modeled after “barcamps and unconferences,” this will be a half-day’s worth of unstructured Q&A and sharing hosted by Ross Mayfield. The unstructured, open-type of event has been popular for some time in the development community, but we thought we’d attempt to try it out this year with a non-technical audience. The format provides a no-hassle, informative forum to ask any and all of your burning questions related to Enterprise 2.0 and get answers from peers and folks in the community who may have experienced the same issues. You may want to consider getting your questions and topics suggested in advance by posting them to the Enterprise2Open wiki. You can actually be a presenter yourself, if you bring your own soap box. Just get yourself on the self-organized agenda. The entire session will run in the afternoon on Tuesday, June 11 from 1-4pm. nGenera is sponsoring the event, so I’ll be there with a few of my colleagues and customers.

Speaking of customers, Rob Carter, CIO of Federal Express is giving the opening keynote. A group of us were in Memphis at Fedex’s central distribution facility in March where we heard Rob talk on 2.0 adoption. Rob sees himself as an evangelist himself for 2.0 in the enterprise. I’m really pleased he accepted the offer to keynote on Tuesday morning. One of the conference themes this year is accelerating user adoption. Having notable icons from the F500 executive board room will go far to lower the barriers of trial and experimentation with 2.0 alternatives.

I’ll be at the conference from Sunday to Wednesday. I hope to see many of you there. Please drop me a note or a comment here to let me know if you’re attending. Many thanks to all the folks on the panels I helped arrange.

Photo credits: Jeckman on flickr and Alex Dunne on flickr.

Clay Shirky gave a speech at a Web 2.0 conference a few weeks ago that made an entertaining connection between societal transformations in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 19th century, there was a sudden shift from rural to urban life that was so wrenching that scores of people needed to drink heavily to cope - gin as the critical technology for the industrial revolution. Only after the “collective bender” did people wake up and build the “institutional structures” we associate with the industrial revolution today - he lists libraries, museums, democracy, broad education.

As you could probably guess from the title of this post, Shirky then claims that the sitcom is the 20th century equivilent of gin. Underlying this argument is that shortly after WW II a whole whack of people suddenly found themselves with a lot of free time - something they’d never had to manage before. In turn, they panicked and watched sitcoms for 50 years or so. He then goes on to effectively argue that, as a society, we are coming out of the collective “bender” - of 200 Billion hours a year watching TV in the U.S. alone - to use that “free time” for something more productive. The age of participation.

I don’t want to go too much further into his details then that, but rather stay at this level and focus on whatis becoming one of the more interesting questions of the day. (more…)

I entered the full-time workforce 30 years ago this spring dubbed, Im told, the experiment. Many of my new colleagues werent at all sure that a young woman was an appropriate addition to the then very senior, very male world of management consulting.

I was by no means alone as I entered the professional workforce in the 1970s women were joining in significant numbers. Nor has my progress over the years been solely or perhaps even largely my own many individuals, including many senior men, helped pave the way.Today, when we reflect on womens role in business, there is a lot to feel good about:

• Women's wages have risen in all states over the past 20 years.


• Salaries of college-educated, full-time female employees in their 20s have surpassed the same-aged males in major cities like Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis, Dallas and New York. In New York City, these women earned 17 percent more than their male counterparts; in Dallas, this gap jumped to 20 percent.


• In technology, female CIOs, chief technology officers, vice presidents and directors earned 1.4 percent more than male IT executives.


• Female entrepreneurship has been growing at twice the national average since 1997. One in every 11 adult women in the U.S. owns a business.


• 58% of all U.S. college graduates are women, and the imbalance is growing. Almost half of all graduate degrees are earned by women and lines will soon cross. Expectations are that the education gap will widen.


• Over half (50.6%) of all managerial, professional and related positions are held by women. This is a higher percent than women represent in the workforce overall (46%).


• 15% of all Fortune 500 corporate officer positions are held by women (2007) as are 15% of all Fortune 500 corporate board seats.

How do you feel about this? Pleased with the progress? Frustrated?

There are valid arguments for frustration:

• The average full-time woman worker does not make as much as the average man in any state. At the present rate of progress, it will take 50 years to close the wage gap nationwide.


• Thirty-seven percent of professional women are leaving the workforce fewer than half are ever returning to full time jobs.


• Today, some of the best and brightest undergraduates matter-of-factly opt for stay-at-home motherhood over a career. Forty-three percent of women between the ages of 21-25 say they would prefer to be home with children full time.

What is going on?

No big mystery research has long shown that many of the norms of our industrial-age organizational cultures are unwelcoming to women and make it more difficult for women to succeed.

However, recent research has highlighted two factors that I believe are very encouraging for the future:

1. The same factors that make the workplace difficult for women make it almost equally so for men.

2. The same factors that make the workplace difficult for women discourage many of the behaviors companies are desperately trying to create today: collaboration, innovation, commitment.

Why is this good news? Because these insights should give every sensible corporation the will to change, based not only on a desire to make the workplace attractive to women, but also to make it more conducive to men and to the behaviors we are striving to achieve. Reshaping our view of work, creating what my colleagues and I call a next generation enterprise, is important for women, for men for innovation for team work.

And, the progress women have made gives us a substantial voice in the change. Remember, over 50% of all managerial positions today are held by women and 15% of executive roles.

We are at a tipping point.

So, no time to rest on any laurels. The next challenge looms ahead to reshape corporations to make them better places for our daughters and our sons and ourselves. You battle-scarred veterans women and men who have opened the doors of opportunity, have given todays young women the confidence that they can achieve whatever they choose. Now, lets give us all humane workplaces that are worthy of being chosen.

Ill be speaking at the Business and Professional Womens National Employer Summit, Women in the Workplace: Our Next Challenge on June 20, 2008 in Washington, DC. Id love to see you then. For more information, go to: http:/ /www.bpwusa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=4750.

Check out all the mash ups, and the original of course, at Dilbert.com.

In my last post about testing I said that ICM / SPM systems should be tested in phases; the reason for this is that discovering issues late in the development life-cycle could add unexpected delays and ultimately make the budget run over-budget.

Creating Test Scenarios for a Sales Performance Management System

I believe the most important aspect of testing is the test scenario preparation. I briefly mentioned how creating good test scenarios was particularly difficult with an ICM application because of the volume of test cases it will typically generate. This is unavoidable, but proper planning is required to ensure that tests are not testing the same conditions twice (wasting time) and that all conditions are being tested (not cutting corners).

...

Creating Test Data
The test data is the data that will be "staged" to test the scenarios. Typically, an order or a combination of orders will be required to test different scenarios. These orders should be created in the appropriate format to be staged and it should be documented which orders test which scenarios. Because of the different testing phases and because test data is often altered or corrupted during testing, it is important for the test data files to be kept together and be readily available to be re-staged when required.

After processing all the test data, all the test scenarios should be tested. That should cover the entire system, and in theory, after completing these steps, the system should have no outstanding defect.

Although this story happened a week ago, I thought it was a great example displaying todays interconnected world, where, nothing goes unnoticed. So when three managers at a local Tim Hortons in London Ontario decided to fire Nicole Lilliman - a single mother of four - for handing out one $0.16 timbit to a regular customers crying baby - the news exploded in the media.

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Highlighting some of the places that Wikinomics is appearing in the blogosphere.

The Connected Republic hasannounced a wiki discussion of Government 2.0,using seven principles that they have developed as a starting point.

The Cambrian House Idea’s Section has a post by DaveH who is looking for help on his newopen source loom project.

Gordon Crovitz of the Wall Street Journaldiscusses our Government 2.0 Project.

The South African Business Reportwritesabout Cape Town University’s application of Wikinomics principles.

Blogger Carl Dowse has posted an old video clip ofDon speaking on BBC Newsnight.

Blogger John Pana talks about thepre-internet use of Wikinomicsprinciples by Richardo Semler when he revolutionized Semco.

Charlie Huenermann, from Utah State University,questions the motivations of participants on open source projects.

RISMedia puts Wikinomics on their list oftop 25 bookscorporate America is reading.

Emma Wallace, Director of Social 8, a management consultancy specializing in Enterprise 2.0,recommends Wikinomicsas a tool to convince the uninitiated of the benefits of mass collaboration.

Have you ever looked at one of those strangely patterned posters with the hidden 3D picture inside? You know, the ones you stand in front of for five to ten minutes crossing and uncrossing your eyes to see the hidden tropical island, bunny, or house your friends are describing to you. Well, I was the fourth grader who could never quite pick out more than just blobs in the pattern. I still remember that day in eighth grade when I looked up at my English class wall and instead of little squiggles I saw a whale in the sea. It was a great day. (more…)

See the original at www.dilbert.com.

"Intention has a cost"

(Tyler Cowen)

Once in a while I review the statistics for this blog to find out which keywords people use to find me. Surprisingly, people often find this blog when looking for funny sales compensation jokes. Here is a good one for your enjoyment.

The Sales Manager and the Bear
A sales manager and an operation manager went bear hunting. While the operation manager stayed in the cabin, the sales manager went out looking for a bear. He soon found a huge bear, shot at it but only wounded it.

The enraged bear charged toward the sales manager, who started running for the cabin as fast as he could. He ran pretty fast but the bear was just a little faster and gained on him with every step. Just as he reached the open cabin door, he tripped and fell flat.

Too close behind to stop, the bear jumped over him and went rolling into the cabin. The sales manager jumped up, closed the cabin door and yelled to his friend inside, "You skin this one while I go and get another!"

Source: http://www.workjoke.com/projoke60.htm (Not all jokes here are politically correct)

I was having dinner last night with Nokias Business Capability Manager, Matthew Hanwell. We got to talking about blogging in the enterprise and Matt suggested that the real problem with blogging was the term blog. It sounds too geeky and doesnt convey the business value of the technology. Its a nomenclature issue; thoughts is a much better way to sell it, says Matt. Perhaps if we simply asked companies and employees if they wanted to share their thoughts or ideas online they would be more amenable to the idea of corporate blogging. Its a good point. What organization would want to hamper idea sharing? What employee would pass up the opportunity to share their thoughts?

I was doing some background research for an upcoming project on social networks and came across an interesting paragraph from a paper by renowned sociologist Mark Granovetter (The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited). The core of the argument (in the paragraph, not the paper) is that people develop strong social ties to those similar to themselves and since there are fewer individuals in the upper strata of society, those at the top have fewer close friends.

Peter Blau has suggested that since the class structure of modern societies is pyramidal, and since we may expect individuals at all levels to be inclined toward homophilythe tendency to choose as friends those similar to oneselfit follows that the lower one’s class stratum, the greater the relative frequency of strong ties. This happens because homophilous ties are more likely to be strong and low-status individuals are so numerous that it is easier for them to pick and choose as friends others similar to themselves. A literal interpretation of this comment would lead us to expect upper-status individuals to have large numbers of weak ties, since there are so few others of high status; it would further follow that many of these weak ties would then be to others of lower status, since the latter would be so numerous. This conclusion does not accord with ethnographic accounts of upper-class life that stress the importance of strong ties to other members of the upper class. But it does suggest why the upper class must invest so much in institutions such as private clubs, special schools, and social registers; the effort to maintain a network of homophilous strong ties is more difficult here than for lower strata.

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