The Death of the Channel?

So, I am channel surfing the "modern" way... via the channel guide grid. As I do so, I end up stumbling into a channel with the schedule:

The 700 Club religious program at 7.
The Jerry Springer show at 8.
A hunting show at 9.
Some random 90's sit com at 10.

At first this seemed peculiar. Then I considered several options. I'm only hypothesizing, but one reasonable explanation is that this "channel" has lost all cohesion as a brand because it really doesn't intend to be viewed as a channel that holds your attention. One can nimbly schedule content in each half-hour block to compete with other channels' offerings, forgoing any attempt at a channel brand identity. In the new paradigm of on-demand tivo and content that is often discovered by a Search function moreso than channel surfing... this may be the next step beyond the virtual programming blocks like Adult Swim we saw surface a few years ago.

Perhaps to some in "the industry" they know this and can confirm it. But to me looking in from simply a technologist's perspetive, if it isn't the strategy, it certainly makes sense that it can now BECOME the strategy.

How to lose audience by thinking you're "oh so clever" in 3...2...1...

Here's how you can simultaneously show you are incompetent, untrustworthy, show no attention to detail, and have no business speaking to or referring others on important matters... all at the same time! Ready? <Click the jump link>

Brother, can you spare a Yuan?

I’ve seen this argument a lot lately. We’re in a pretty bad spot when even the apologists for debt and the security of the dollar are basing their case on the technicality of, "well, people need the dollar because people use the dollar.” Or worse, “in a world of bad alternatives, the dollar is the best one." It really doesn't take a lot for that to change.

What is satisfaction? Invite your customers to spy on you.

In the news recently. A couple who wanted to have their wedding at a ritzy five-star hotel found out in a not-so-pleasant way... it isn't going to happen. The hotel's wedding planner sent an email to her boss and accidentally cc'd the couple saying, "I know this probably doesn't sound very nice, but I am trying to put this wedding off as I don't think they are the type of people that we would want to have at Stoke Park."

I will avoid debating the rights of a private establishment to refuse service to whomever they choose. I'll also ignore the fact the bride in question is adult glamour model Pauline Bailey.

There’s another customer service lesson here besides remembering to watch the cc line in those emails. The lesson is: think positively about your customers and pretend like they’re eavesdropping on everything you say about them.

Not-so-super man?

For those who don’t follow comics, the movie character Iron Man comes from a long tradition of comic stories about a billionaire playboy who moonlights as a superhero. This hedonist-with-a-heart has played well for some time. It is no surprise Iron Man enjoys high popularity in today’s society. But now publishers are altering other, even more iconic characters in order to “relate” to modern audiences. This is not a crisis. But does it really serve us and our social dialog, or does it just further promote our propensity to live in bubbles of isolation?

Plan as though you'll live forever...

Many of us have seen the saying, "plan for tomorrow, but live for today."

After pondering what bothered me about that saying, I finally landed on a replacement thought...

"Plan as though you'll live forever. Live as if it is your first day on earth."

The Power of Coming Right Out and Saying It

This post and its excellent title really spoke to me. It helped me bolt together a few loose observations I’ve had laying around for awhile.

“Pioneering” versus “Wallowing in Risk”

I have difficulty faulting people who take risks that initially test the limits of what humans can do. However, people need to be honest with themselves. “Pioneering” is different from people who simply take outrageous personal risks.

Why Impact is More Important than Effect

 

This is a quirk in my writing which may be useful for others to understand. In business communications, I usually use the word “impact” instead of the word “effect”. Why?

Wherefore Art Thou, Counselors?

When I read the many articles like this floating around, my first question is no longer about the student loan bubble. My first question is no longer about the employment crisis. I’ve seen plenty of coverage on those topics. My first question is about the apparent career counseling crisis. This is an area in which we’ve invested relatively little and we’re now paying for it, in spades.

A Testament to the Age of No Excuses

My dear grandmother passed away earlier this month at the age of 94.

What strikes me is not how she died, but how long she simply didn’t find the time to die.

Is the US now inflating a Lower Education bubble?

While we have our eye on the higher education debt bubble that just passed $1 Trillion, the average cost of K-12 private schooling is up 26% in just the last 4 years. And Americans are taking out a record amount in loans to pay for it.

"I feel" does not cut it in today's complex world

Recent conversations remind me of a troubling point. We're in an age dominated by people who begin arguments on virtually every topic with, "Well, I feel..."

This poisonous phrase increasingly passes for valid critical thinking. Such thinking is especially true in America.

“Markets and Economies are no longer synonymous”

In Customer Service: "Trust, but Verify”

When I advise teams, I make a point of how design principles change based on market, complexity, product flexibility, and customer profile. There is not a magic one-size-fits-all approach to support models (or to much else in life). Even so, I think this “trust” principle merits global consideration.

While a goal of “taking the customer at his word in all things” is admirable, it can actually create problems for the customer, your company, and your reputation. This is particularly true in technical or financial service support.

This isn’t a cynical view. Instead, we are simply taking into account the reality: People often do as they are incented to do. As third parties, we don’t always have a good view of those incentives. We shouldn’t judge, but we do need to verify key things are as they should be, particularly before taking important actions. Take one example I have seen over the years where customers are disincented from being entirely truthful: software warranty.

In the world of enterprise software, customer administrators are told in our warranty and documentation not to activate certain settings in certain combinations on certain hardware. If they miss or ignore these caveats, administrators may damage the capacity or stability of the product. They put themselves in configurations technical support cannot diagnose or support. Nevertheless, some administrators will consciously deploy unsupported configurations and either forget or hide them later on. This can invalidate technicians’ diagnostic tools and routines when problems later arise. Worse, it can cause our troubleshooting to further damage the customer’s systems and data.

A more robust approach is, "Trust, but verify." This is not just a good idea. It is essential in some service disciplines to ensure you have the information you need to render good service. It also helps eliminate situations where the customers are trying to get you to help them do something that... perhaps... they shouldn't be doing.

Black Swans and Rogue Antelopes

(This video clip has spot of bad language. Watch your play-back volume).

Check this out

News Flash: Just because something is implausible, that doesn't make it impossible.

Would you buy that out in the middle of a wide open savannah this lone antelope, bounding across hundreds of square miles of grass, decided to alter his pace and intentionally knock this man off his bike? While moving at full speed?

Most likely… no. You’re not going to believe it.

This extends to most of our systems, including business and the law. Our systems don’t like the implausible or the unexpected. In fact they are often designed to assume the expected has happened, even when it hasn’t.

This differs from a ‘Black Swan’ event. In Black Swan theory, it is assumed that something incredibly rare has happened. Exactly what has happened is fairly clear and believable... once it actually happens.

In our new case, there is a question of believability after-the-fact. So let’s give this a new name. Let’s call it a ‘Rogue Antelope’ event. ‘Rogue Antelopes’ are simply not planned for, not measured for, and are hotly disputed once they do happen.

Mature business efforts are in more of a ‘maintenance mode.’ In such projects, unusual things don’t often happen. If they do, there should be a well-developed set of metrics, measures and monitors that either capture a Rogue Antelope event or indirectly confirm it.

So. Why does this matter?

You need to believe a Rogue Antelope struck and have it relayed with enough fidelity that whatever you do to recover from it, you’re doing the RIGHT thing. More importantly, you need to understand this was a fluke, rather than suddenly diverting effort to protect against the repeat of a one-in-a-billion event.

You cannot spend all your time dreaming up every scenario and planning ahead for Rogue Antelopes. If you try, you’ll simply build an expensive, hopelessly complicated mess.

What you can do is: identify the environments or stages of a project where you might see a Rogue Antelope. Then, put a couple of your best people on those projects, at those times, in those environments. By ‘best people’, we mean people who:

  * Have a proven track record and have little motive to invent an antelope.
  * Are familiar enough with the context that when the antelope pops up, they will recognize it.
  * Can speak the language of your discipline well enough to accurately describe the antelope.
  * Are briefed that risk and inefficiency are ok to bake into some projects; this is such a project.

It isn’t important to predict the implausible during new ventures. However, it is important to put trustworthy people on point who can tell the difference between the implausible and a silly mistake.