business

The Rapture for the Disconnected

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

As all my regular readers know, I get obsessed with things, which finds its way into my blog posts. I’d like to share my latest obsession, Ed Zitron’s comments about how terrible leaders in the business world are what he calls Business Idiots.

The Business Idiot is going to sound familiar to a lot of people – and you, my regular readers, are almost certain to have met these people. People who are completely outside of (and unfamiliar with) actual productive work, focused on things like “growth” and “market share” but not doing things, and absolutely out of touch with reality. They may be lauded by the business press for their genius, but what we don’t have any proof they actually know how to do anything. They probably have business majors and have never not been in some kind of management.

They don’t actually do anything, but want to enter the world of vibes and powerpoints and that’s it. They move things around and get press, money, and venture capital. Any actual useful product, anything for community, is at best a side effect.

Business Idiots, worse, are aspirational for people. Their goal is to get away from people doing actual work as soon as possible so you can enter the airy world of management. It’s like some kind of Rapture for the Disconnected.

You’re probably nodding, if only in your head. You’ve dealt with people like this. You might even be trapped in a Business Idiot job and hate it. We’ve all been there.

I got Zitron’s post and am going to be chewing this one over for awhile – and for several blog posts doubtlessly. Beyond bringing it to your attention, I wanted to note the importance of being good at something. That’s a good reminder of why these Business Idiots are dangerous – the contrast.

I work in IT, in medicine and academia, as a Project Manager. Now the best Project Managers are people who’ve done something else before being a Project Manager. You were good at something and you can in turn apply that to managing things. I used to code, still mess around a bit and do websites, as well as my art under a pen name and other project. I get doing something and still do, and thus I can be old and crotchety and complain about web frameworks.

I also work with a variety of doctors, nurses, researchers, and so on who moved into management, leadership, and so forth. Some of them still practice their previous profession, but all of them knew how to do something and the results it had for other people. As I put it to a friend, when you work with someone who has reached into a human torso or handled deadly chemicals, you pay attention to them.

That old joke about people getting overpromoted to management ignores the problem of management that never knew how to do anything. I’ll take the people who have done surgery, written code, or had to ask the safest way to handle acid, thanks. They get results and they get who they work for and what their co-workers are like.

And yes, I’ve dealt with people promoted over the heads. But upon reflection I’d rather deal with the formerly competent who may be so again, who get how things run, than those that never did. It’s also a reminder to value real leaders.

The Business Idiot reminds me of distant royalty – inbred, pampered, only knowing how to lead their lives moving people around like chess pieces. We have, unsurprisingly, re-created royalty, and as royalty does, it’s pretty inbred – only this time it’s mental. Well, for now.

It’s also not just Business. But that’s for later discussions.

I think Zitron’s definition is something that needs to get out there, become part of the lingo. Business Idiots. We have name for the people running huge companies and more that make horrible decisions to the applause of a sycophantic press. Because naming it is the start of addressing it – and if you look at the state of economics and government, we’ve got issues.

Now prepare for more posts on this subject over the next few months. You’ve been warned.

Steven Savage

The Social Self As A Business

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

To mark this post historically, this was posted the day Tumblr decided to cut out some adult content (it’s hard to tell exactly what they meant, it got weird)  This was quickly followed by an algorithm that clearly was terrible not doing it’s job, and leaving people to discuss leaving.  When you can’t exactly spell out a vision for what you want to do, that vision seems to be “stop some nudity”, and your system is bad, yeah people are going to leave.

This doesn’t entirely surprise me, an old hand at watching internet companies shoot themselves in the food.  I’ve seen sites and services appear and vanish, sometimes quite sadly.  This has led me to an important but unpleasant truth.

You have to run your social media presence like a business.

What do I mean by this?  Simple

  1. Social media is vital to our lives (for some of us more than others)
  2. Social media companies rise, fall, and change.
  3. To reach your social media goals, you have to consider your vision, make a plan, and have expenses – just like a business.

For me, a writer, this is more vital – but also as my writing is a hobby, it’s almost more effort.  I mean it’s hard to disentangle my audience, my fellow authors, and my sarcastic video game posts.

But it still comes down to this – business decisions affect social media, social media is connected to our lives, so we have to run that part of it like a business.

No, I don’t like it.

I don’t like knowing something may vanish the next week because of a merger.  I don’t like seeing people leave a site due to some weird policy change.  I dislike wondering who’s harvesting my data.  It’s tiring and it’s exhausting, and annoying, not to mention a bit dehumanizing.

But this is where we are now, when business decisions affect where you post recipes and if you repeat an Overwatch meme about Hanzo’s shirts.

Maybe in time we can build more humanized platforms.  Maybe we can get others to evolve.  But until them your social media life has to be run like a business, especially if you have any large groups, complex plans, side businesses, media presence, etc.

If it helps, what I do is actually review my social plans once a month – who’s planned what, do I want to host an event, etc.  I’ve had to work my social media reviews into that, along with my marketing reviews for my books.  It helps, but it’s annoying.

And again, I don’t like it either.

Steven Savage

Steve Says He Was Wrong About Wal-Mart

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Some time ago I wrote a post that Wal-Mart might end up turning into a hip company, using technology to improve the consumer experience and perhaps be less hated.

Then I worried their reputation could affect this transition.

I’d like to report that now, no, I do not expect Wal-Mart to get it together, to be hip, to be particularly high-tech, or to just plain suck less.  I withdraw my statements.  I think I was wrong.

Three things made it very apparent to me that you’re not going to be a Happy Wal-Mart Geek moving them into the 21st century (or the 20th).

First, Wal-Mart’s heavy investment in their grocery business. That’s perhaps a logical move for them, but not a sign of them going high-tech.  This is a case of taking advantage of a pretty easy market using their usual methodology.

So in one way, they’re going a simple route.

Of course simple route or not, Wal-Mart is doing pretty dismal in its stocking and hiring, impacting the customer experience with long lines and empty shelves.  Though this report is filled with anecdotes, it does call out several important points, the most relevant one being:

In the past five years, the world’s largest retailer added 455 U.S. Wal-Mart stores, a 13 percent increase, according to filings and the company’s website. In the same period, its total U.S. workforce, which includes Sam’s Club employees, dropped by about 20,000, or 1.4 percent. Wal-Mart employs about 1.4 million U.S. workers.

Yes.  There are more Wal-Marts – but Wal-Mart employes less people.  This shows in the service, which wasn’t exactly hot anyway.

This is not a sign of a company willing to spend money to improve.  Or at least not get worse.  This has the distinct stink of number-crunching and bottom-lining – find out how bad you can be and still make a lot of money.

This isn’t the sign of a company that’s going to have a sudden technical awakening and re-invent itself.

Finally, yes, Wal-mart has been experimenting with delivery and services.  The latest consideration (not implemented, but considered) is to involve customers in the delivery process.  You get a discount if you help deliver stuff.

Now services that let people make some cash delivering things, sharing resources, etc. do exist.  But considering Wal-Mart’s record this is not a forward-thinking idea in my opinion; this is another case of “how do we cut costs.”  It also looks like a potential disaster or boondoggle if done at all, and concern over legal and other issues could kill it.

But it’s not innovative.

So, I’m going to withdraw my previous statements.  I don’t think Wal-Mart will surprise us by one day going geeky.  I don’t think they’ll move with the times.  I think they’re stuck semi-permanently in cutting costs and scrounging for opportunities, and at best playing catch-up.  There’s no room here for innovation.

Sorry.  Looks like all we’ll be doing is criticizing them.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.