In today’s business, we have little actual influence in how the marketplace grows or what other business sectors do. We do, however, have complete control over what our mentality is, the level of service we offer, and how much innovation we introduce into our area of business.

One of the fundamental dangers many organizations face today is complacency. Even small, fast start-ups can quickly become complacent as they grow and begin to adopt more and more of the “established” business practices, the same practices that complacent, established businesses are practicing.

Bill Taylor, with HarvardBusiness.org explains:

When it comes to creating the future, the only thing more worrisome than the prospect of too much change may be too little change — especially in an economy where there are too many competitors chasing too few customers with products and services that look too much alike. Now is the time to rethink long-held strategic assumptions inside your company, to challenge decades of conventional wisdom in your industry, and to push yourself to learn, grow, and innovate.

What can the established companies looking for something to re-light the fire of innovation do? What can small start-ups do to prevent them from becoming like the boring giants in their field? A recent article in HarvardBusiness.org discussed 9 questions change agents should ask themselves. The questions are especially important for entrepreneurs and for business managers looking to develop an advantage over the competition.

1. Do you see opportunities the competition doesn’t see?
IDEO’s Tom Kelly likes to quote French novelist Marcel Proust, who famously said, “The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.” Do you believe that what you offer is truly better than what the rest of the competition has to offer? Take a close look at your mission statement and your actual business practices. Do they clearly set you apart from what else is available in the marketplace?

2. Do you have new ideas about where to look for new ideas?
Ideas that are routine in one industry can be revolutionary when they migrate to another industry, especially when they challenge the prevailing assumptions that have come to define so many industries. Do you see that “next thing” that will be a hit to your customers and clients? Do you have a clear direction for your organization in the next 2, 5, and 10 years or are you simply just expecting things to be the same they have always been before? Do you see where the next great opportunity will be for your organization? Are you always looking for and making new contacts that may generate future business opportunities or partnerships?

3. Are you the most of anything?
You can’t be “pretty good” at everything anymore. You have to be the most of something: the most affordable, the most accessible, the most elegant, the most colorful, the most transparent. The marketplace today is saturated. So many areas of business have too many competitors competing for the same number of customers. If you are currently not the best at any one thing it’s best that your organization “re-think” who you are and focus on establishing yourselves as the premier provider of something. The new wave of organizational marketing is establishing yourself as the best at (something). Once you have done this, the customers will follow.

4. If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would miss you and why?
Simple yet profound. If you can establish yourself in a way that if you’re gone tomorrow your customers would clearly be missing something important in their lives, you’re set. They will keep you in business. It’s a little like the opposite effect of a monopoly. Just like monopolies are stopped because they create an over-dependence on one single company, you can establish the same dependence on your level of service…and it’s not illegal.

5. Have you figured out how your organization’s history can help to shape its future?
The essence of creativity, Psychologist Jerome Bruner argues, is “figuring out how to use what you already know in order to go beyond what you already think.” The most creative leaders rediscover and reinterpret what’s come before as a way to develop a line of sight into what comes next. Do you and your organization’s employees/workers know what the organization stands for, where it came from, and where it’s going?

6. Can your customers live without you?
If they can, they probably will. Are you just offering the sprinkles in your customer’s ice cream? Or are you the ice cream shop that offers the service and products that satisfy your customer’s needs? If what you offer is just a nice thing for your customers to have, there will probably come a time when they will do without your services. Re-invent your organization and its offerings so that you become the meat and potatoes to your clients.

7. Do you treat different customers differently?
If your goal is to become indispensable to your customers, then almost by definition you won’t appeal to all customers. Look for your best clients and make sure that their needs are met. Once you’ve solidified these clients, move on to developing new clients that use your services and develop them into your star clients.

8. Are you getting the best contributions from the most people?
These days, the most powerful contributions come from the most unexpected places — the “hidden genius” inside your company, the “collective genius” of customers, suppliers, and other smart people who surround your company. Does your organization allow for these hidden gems in your organization to be discovered? Is your organization open to ideas from the inside? Do you recruit from the inside when searching for talent to fill new positions? Remember, your existing employees know your business, services, and the environment of your organization better than anyone else on the inside. Tapping talent from the inside gives the individual in the new position an even greater chance of becoming successful in meeting the needs of the position.

9. Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?
Great leaders can never stop learning. How do you push yourself as an individual to keep growing and evolving — so that your company can do the same? Part of being a game changer in business is to keep yourself on top of the innovation. If you’re not leading the innovation, you’re likely not part of the core group that will survive in today’s marketplace.

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There’s been a lot of changes recently to Internet security done mostly by browsers to improve the online safety of Web users. Even though I have a security background, I have some serious issues with the stance browsers and other technology companies have been taking in improving Internet security. My major concern is that not enough is being done to educate end-users.

I understand that there has always been an epic battle between businesses, tech people, and end-users, in regards to educating the everyday computer user. I know it has been a losing battle and understand that companies often resort to “well, if the user is going to be dumb, then I’ll just do everything I can to prevent them from making a mistake”. This mentality is, in an of itself, a mistake. Non-educated users are prone to finding innovative ways to make mistakes, regardless of the safeguards we put in place, despite the amount of preventive security that is put in place.

If you’ve ever seen a site that looks like this, you’ve been “saved” by a browser’s attempt to block “bad” sites. The problem with this is that your safety net, as a user, is dependent entirely upon a browser‘s ability to scan millions of sites and be able to differentiate between those that are good and those that are bad.

Unfortunately, browsers will never be able to catch all bad sites, some are going to get through and users will be defenseless. At some point, we will need to weight which losing battle we will want to fight. So far educating users has not been a popular choice of action, however, there are some changes in the horizon.

I came across a new Web site by Verisign, Phish or No Phish, which quizzes users on which sites are phishing Web sites, and which are real Web sites. It then promotes the use of EV (Extended Validation) SSL Certificates (the green bar on the browser) to identity secure domain names. I like that the approach taken was to educate the end-user on the reality of bad online and how to spot those sites that are bad. I also thought that the Verisign quiz was biased towards having users miss more questions than normal so that they can then show how bad the problem really is. Again, I have a security background and admit that I did not get 100% of the phishing sites on the quiz.

The problem, really, is that most phishing Web sites come from non-standard domain names for the company being copied. Verisign, on the otherhand, user man-in-the-middle (same domain name on both screenshots) for all but one of their quiz questions. Hate to break it to Verisign, but very little of the phishing sites out there operate this way. Most are coming from the garbage domain names. In any case, the overall, the positive effect here is that more emphasis is being placed on educating users.

As technology professionals we can only do so much. Eventually, our users will be left on their own and will have to stand on their own two legs, the question, then, is “will they do the right thing?” I certainly hope that we see more of this from technology companies.

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I read an article recently regarding employee recognition and incentive programs in the workplace and what employers can do to keep employees happy and products. I have to say, the suggestions by the HRTools author were lacking in real substance to really keep top talent interested in working for the company long term.

I understand that for organizations currently not employing ANY incentive or recognition program for employees everyone has to start somewhere. Too often, however, companies wanting to implement recognition programs or incentives, do so improperly or poorly. The result being that the incentive or recognition does not have a positive effect on employees and many times, has a negative effect on employees and employee morale.

These programs, incentives, and awards have their right place at work and can be extremely useful in showing your employees appreciation, recognition, and has great power to continually motivate employees to maximize their efficiency in their line of work and become a more productive professional.

HRTools recently discussed the usefulness of these programs and stated that:

Recognition programs and positive reinforcement are needed in every organization.

Creating a balance of formal and informal recognition programs is a recommended practice and is an effective way to keep employees motivated and happy.

There is a great fallacy in that ANY recognition and incentive will keep employees motivated and happy. I think some HR experts and the managers who truly believe this are living in a fantasy business world that doesn’t exist. Here are the suggestions to keeping employees “happy”, according to the article:

Service awards based on tenure—This type of reward is pretty common in lots of companies.

Employee of the Month/Quarter/Year awards.

Performance-linked bonuses.

Monetary awards for money-saving suggestions that improve the company’s products, services or processes—oftentimes these suggestions can save a company millions of dollars; therefore, you want to make sure that the award is reflective of the cost savings for the company.

Annual trips or conference invitations based on outstanding performance.

At first glance, I admit, we may think that these suggestions are great, and that they do actually fulfill the implied result of keeping employees happy and motivated. As we really begin thinking about this, however, I think that we come to the realization that these suggestions may only be successful if they are used to call-center atmosphere where they are regularly abused and neglected. Or if they are used to hard-labor with task-masters over them who berate employees and squeeze out every single drop of productivity from employees until near the point of exhaustion.

Here’s why:

Service awards based on tenure - Awards based on tenure are nearly useless now-a-days. Research by the U.S. Bureau of Labor & Statistics (1979) has shown that employees currently are changing jobs about 10 times in their career. Since the data is old, it is thought that currently that number is probably higher than previously stated in the study. Rewards for employees at their 5- and 10-year mark have little value since most employees may not have plans to be in that specific position in 5 or 10 years.

Employee of the Month/Quarter/Year - This is another ineffective program that will either polarizes your outstanding employees and your mediocre-performing employees. Think about it, if you are truly rewarding your best employees, you may have a handful of excellent employees who will always win the award. This will not motivate the mediocre employees because despite all of their effort, they will won’t match the best performing employees for some time. At the same time, if you spread out the reward so that when the mediocre employee who shows a little improvement gets rewarded, the top-performing employees will no longer be excited about maintaining their top performance since others who don’t perform that high level are also rewarded.

Performance-linked bonuses - Now we’re getting somewhere, as long as the bonuses are not linked to group performance. Group performance-based incentives will reward mediocre when generally the bulk of the work done will be completed by the top-performing employees.

Monetary awards for money-saving suggestions - This idea sounds great, until the employee realizes that they just received a $1000 bonus for saving the company hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. Most of the time, when the employees sees the bonus compared to the amount he just saved the company, he’ll feel like he got the short-end of the stick.

Annual trips or conference invitations - This is another suggestion that, again, sounds great until you begin to think of the implications it has on the group of employees. What will everyone think when you have one or two employees who always get the company trip at the end of the year? What implications does that have on the entire team at the company? On the surface, it’s a good suggestion but one that will, in the end, only manage to hurt your employee base more than it will help.

The next time you’re thinking about implementing an incentive program for employees, think of the real implications that it will have on your employees in the entire company, and determine if the incentive program is really just “throwing peanuts” at your employees or if your program is really targeted to drive your employees to become better, smarter, more successful, efficient, and motivated at driving the company forward.

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