Made by cows

This image that I spotted on the excellent Delicious Industries site the other day definitely made me chuckle. It is amusing, well-designed, memorable, and frankly just really cool. Certainly all qualities that can often be lacking in advertising today. I gather the copy writer and artist were trying to emphasize the wholesomeness and adherence to the dairy company’s commitment to quality and freshness. Other images in the series of spots illustrate the cow driving a farm tractor and churning the butter (although I imagine the lack of opposable thumbs would make that feat kind of tricky).

But after thinking about the images a bit more, I think there is a larger, more general message as well. That is without the cows who provide the essential raw materials for the dairy’s products, then well, there are no products. Sure, farmers look after the cows health and well-being, engineers design systems and machinery to efficiently collect the raw milk and then process it accordingly, and a small army of marketers, salespeople, logistics pros, accountants, HR folks, and all kinds of others move in and around the process making sure the raw milk turns in to end products, the products are packaged, sold, shipped, counted up, paid for, and that the people involved in the process are also paid, trained, and otherwise looked after.

More and more companies, and consequently increasingly numbers of jobs don’t actually involve making anything tangible like butter or cheese. So the intangible end products and services then must have intangible raw materials as well. The ideas, insights, and eureka moments that can improve, alter, redefine, or reinvent the product or process or simply the way that the all the support people in the organization go about their work, these are the new raw materials, the raw milk if you will of the new enterprise. In the butter making business, acquiring the raw milk really isn’t the hard part, sure capital and some expertise is required, but for the most part the getting the right cows pretty much guarantees a steady supply of raw materials. After a while the business success and survival depends almost totally on what happens after the raw materials arrive. The super stars of the organization often were the ones farthest remove from where the raw milk was produced and came in the door.

Now success, and the people that might be the most valuable contributors to that success are the ones that provide the raw materials. The ideas. The breakthroughs. It used to be a pretty lousy position to be in, to be strapped to a milking machine a few times a day. Now, if you are someone that can consistently produce the raw materials of the enterprise, you are in a really prime position.

So which one are you? A cow, or someone who looks after the cows?

Relief Pitcher or Management Consultant

You know what a pretty cool job is? Relief pitcher in the Major Leagues.  Sure you need a good arm, but after that, pretty much anything goes - see the former great Rich Garces.  

Another really good job is 'Management Consultant'. About the same physical fitness requirements as relief pitching, but definitely a great gig if you have the background and the smarts.  Now I know you can't chuck it 95 MPH  but maybe you could cut it as a consultant - try this little case study out and see if you can come up with the resolution.

The client is a small, but steadily growing precision manufacturer of specialty components for the computer storage industry. They are privately held, profitable, and have about 175 employees (a number that has grown from about 100 in the last 18 months), and have one central location for all manufacturing, operations, customer support, and administration. 

The CEO of the client company was having trouble understanding why after several years of success and incremental growth, recently the organization's results in some key metrics were slipping.  Shipments to customers were more frequently late, error rates in the production department were up, and internal complaints and rumblings about lack of communication and misunderstanding were on the increase.  The company had not made any significant changes in leadership, product and service mix, or basic corporate strategy. There had been some increased hiring to try and meet the growing customer demand, but internal discussions with line managers and HR seemed to indicate the vast majority of new hires were adjusting well and fitting in. In fact, the recent spell of success and growth had spurred the company to build an addition to the main facility, increasing production and shipping space by 50%, and improving employee cafe and break room areas.

The CEO was at a real loss to explain why, after their solid history of success, the assembly of a experienced leadership and management team, and careful and seemingly well executed growth strategy that results were slipping. He called in some help, in the form of an experienced and well-regarded management consultant to lend a fresh set of eyes and ears to the situation and to try and get to the bottom of the issues. Surely there was some kind of flaw in the operational strategy, perhaps the sales and marketing plans needed revision, or the supply chain management team needed to press suppliers for better performance or contract terms. Surely it had to be some complex, sophisticated, and 'need an Ivy-league MBA' brain kind of problem that needed to be discovered.

Interviews with line managers, production workers, finance, and others uncovered a set of mixed signals.  Sure there have always been odd issues of communication between production and shipping, or engineering and sales, but it did seem to most everyone that the instances of miscommunication and incorrect information were starting to increase.  For a small company, that prided themselves on a 'family' environment, where many of the employees had been with the firm since its inception, this was troubling, but no one could really identify the root causes.  Sure, the company was growing, but the new employees were not considered the problem, and the expanded and upgraded facilities should be making the entire production process more efficient and easier.

Careful analysis of the transcribed interviews compared to the statistics for shipments, defects, and complaints suggested that the problem started to present about 6 months ago, just about the time the plant expansion was completed.  But the expanded facility was seen as a great step forward, in particular everyone from shipping and engineering raved about the new space, with its modern design, improved lighting, and the new and well-stocked coffee and break room area that was much closer to their offices than the 'main' coffee and break room near the front of the facility. The consultant had much to ponder in preparation for the follow-up meeting with the CEO.

So did you get the answer?

Once the facility expanded, and the second coffee and break room was set up, it effectively reduced informal and spontaneous communication in the company by almost 40%. The increase in missed shipments, errors, and customer complaints could all be traced back to the installation of the second coffee room.

The consultant recommended they remove the second coffee room, observe informal communication return to its normal levels, and watch the metrics improve.  In the real company this case is based on, that is exactly what they did and that is exactly what happened.

Sure, every employee wants coffee and pop close to their office, but it just might make sense to make them walk for a bit to get their caffeine fix.  It definitely would have helped Rich Garces.

Stand out by following all the rules

Disclaimer - I am not a recruiter, career coach, resume writer, and claim no expertise of any kind on the job search process.  

But something that I see and read quite a bit about that is related to the job search process makes me wonder. It is the seemingly standard resume advice that more or less goes like this:

1. Recruiters and HR staff will examine your resume for less than one minute before making a screening decision. I have even heard this is more like 30 seconds.

2. You should have a cover letter, but there is a pretty high likelihood no one will read it.

3. But in case someone reads it, it better offer a compelling reason for the Recruiter to read your resume. Except of course if the Recruiter follows the process that many of them seem to adopt, that is to head straight to the resume before reading the cover letter. So mostly the cover letter is intended to convince someone to do something they have already done.  

It would be funny if the cover letter said something like: 'Thanks for reading my resume, you must have been impressed since you are now reading this cover letter.  Let me tell you a bit more about how fabulous I am.'

4. But here is the one 'truism' that for some reason bothers me the most - the common advice to not do anything different, unusual, or out of the ordinary on the resume itself. No images, logos, strange or different colors or fonts.  No cutting-edge design at all that might distract or annoy the hiring pro. Keep the the typical formula, plain white paper, two pages max, 10pt Times New Roman font, nice clean bullet points of your major accomplishments, etc.

In other words, make sure your resume looks exactly like every other one in the pile or in the recruiter's overstuffed e-mail inbox.

The Evil HR Lady wrote about this issue, referring to a online service called Vizual Resume that offers a collection of interesting and different templates for the creation of more distinctive resumes. Other similar services like VisualCV also offer options to create more visually appealing, engaging, and perhaps more compelling documents and testaments to someone's skills, background, and capabilities. And there is at least one iPhone App for resume building and transmitting.

Is the advice to genericize all the design elements of the resume the best to give and for job seekers to follow? In an incredibly difficult job market, where competition for positions in many fields and regions is historically high? Whatever you do candidate, don't do anything to make your resume stand out from anyone elses.

Sure, playing it safe with format, design, or interactive elements won't rule a candidate out in a competitive search process, but it won't make anyone's qualifications stand out from the rest either.

Am I way off the track on this? Maybe some real recruiting pros can set me straight as to why the standard advice seems to have the effect of making it all the more difficult to get noticed.

Why has the technical revolution that has impacted and dramatically changed almost every aspect of the workplace had such a difficult time disrupting the classic resume?

New Geographies

I am a huge fan of maps.  I used to spend hours reading maps, studying the pages in my Atlas, yet ironically I get lost all the time, and most people that know me well say I have a terrible sense of direction.

And they would be right, I do have a terrible sense of direction.

Map making and map reading are sadly becoming kind of a lost art I think, particularly since the rise of online services like Mapquest and Google Maps, and more recently with the widespread availability decreasing cost of GPS technology.  No need to really understand the environment all that much when you can easily get turn by turn directions from the internet, and dashboard GPS systems can soothingly talk you through your journeys. It is my hope that these 'talking' GPS systems can get smarter though, offering up some insight along the way.  'This is the last Dunkin' Donuts you will pass before your highway entrance in 1.3 miles, so if you want a coffee, you better stop now'.

It is an improvement I suppose, and a comfort for the many of us that are geographically challenged.  These capabilities save time, provide assurance, and largely take the risk out of getting from Point A to Point B.

But on the odd occasion when the Google Map is wrong, or the GPS can't grab a signal and we are back to having to resort to 'old' methods of navigating often are the most interesting and potentially valuable. I think we underestimate the benefit of finding our own way.

Shannon Rankin - see note below

I recently heard a very sound piece of advice that was given in the context of the introduction of a new workplace technology that would significantly impact the methods and work processes of a large number of employees. The advice was essentially:

'Don't tell the employees all of the detailed and wonderful new features of the technology, but rather get them started, give them a guide, and allow them to discover all of the potential and real benefits of the new tools.'

I think that was great advice, when a major change effort is underway or a new technology will force people to find a new direction from Point A to Point B, simply handing them the step by step directions and navigating for them will only be partially successful. Sure, most all of them will arrive at Point B, but will any of them have an opportunity for exploration? Will anyone drive off the main road and poke around a bit?  Will anyone be encouraged enough to chart a new path, one that may get them to Point B faster or having discovered some interesting and possibly valuable sights along the way?

And perhaps Point B is not the only, or best destination at all?  Sticking to the 'script' would almost never allow that kind of insight to be gained.

Whenever I have to go to an unfamiliar place I usually print off the Google Maps directions marking the way. I follow them step by step and almost always arrive where I need to be.  But the Google Map never encourages me to take a detour, stop and look around, or even to reevaluate if I should be going to my destination in the first place.

I think the next time I have to go somewhere new, I think I will try old fashioned way, grab a map from the gas station and have a go.  Of course if I get very badly lost I will have to fire up the GPS.  I could never ask someone for directions, I am a man after all.

Image Note: I came across the artwork of Shannon Rankin from a post on the Junkculture blog. This piece is from the 'Maps' series where the artist deconstructs maps to create new geographies, suggesting the potential for a broader landscape.

Find out more about Shannon's work here.

The Commodification of the Self

I did not invent the phrase in the title of this post, it comes from a piece by Shalom Auslander called 'Meet the Happy New Me, Same as the Crappy Old Me', in the March 2010 issue of GQ magazine, (only available online to subscribers).Flickr - David Clow

The article alternates between funny, insightful, depressing, and funny (again) as it depicts the author's own 'personal branding' journey from, in his words, 'miserable and pissed off' to 'shiny and happy'.

After a series of assignments undertaken as part of an online 'Personal Branding' class, ('Develop a personal catchphrase' and 'Create a logo for yourself'), Auslander asks the question, 'Why didn't anyone seem to think that the commodification of the self was a problem?'

I think it is a valid question.

Has the ridiculously crappy economy and the widespread and persistent unemployment rate conspired to make us all little mini-moguls? Are we all getting overly obsessed with staying on message, carefully constructing our own tiny ad campaigns, looking for just the right post to Retweet, LinkedIn group to join, and event to attend (or vicariously attend). Are we trying too consciously to craft little marketing plans?

Think about all the things we always said we hated, incessant commercials on tv and radio, rampant product placement in mainstream entertainment (quick, what is the 'official' beverage of American Idol? I am sure you know), internet pop-up ads, and maybe most importantly people that simply have to be the center of attention all the damn time.  At least in more traditonal entertainment and communication channels it is (mostly) easy to tell when you are being sold to.

When Simon takes a swig of his Coke, we know what is going on.

And I don't think I am confusing personal branding, which is more or less annoying, with individual entrepreneurship and initiative, which is inspiring.  They are not the same thing, but I can't help but get the feeling that in this age of openness, status updates ('Starbucks Quad Shot FTW!!!!'), and thousands if not millions of people having mostly the same idea, reading the same books, blogs, and advice that the good work (or lack thereof) is getting mixed up with the message.

Some of the people reading this post are really active on social networks like Twitter and Facebook.  I wonder if you thought about the list of the 50 or 100 or so people you interact with the most and relflect on how much do you know about the actual work they do, compared to what you know or perceive about their 'brand'?

I am guilty of all of this too.  It seems many people are to some extent and that is what makes the whole branding/packaging/selling of the self so frustrating. When every network for communication and transmission of information becomes a sales channel for companies and individuals at the same time, I suppose it is only to be expected that everyone is selling.  But selling Coke or iPods isn't the same as selling a person.  Product brands usually stand for just one thing, but people, at least the most interesting ones you know, are deep, multi-layered, and complicated. 

Maybe we need a TiVo equivalent for all these networks as well, so that we could fast forward though all the commercials and focus on the content.

And maybe I need some more coffee.