Significant and well timed message: essence of being found

Had a Spanish radio interview last Friday ... Not the most significant national medium maybe, but a well marketed and targeted one. A small 1 hour program on the subject of voice dubbing very popular in the dubbing industry in Spain (downloaded more than listened to "live": live radio becoming podcasts, but that is a different topic).

I was terrified... they were interested in dubbing for games. Lots of things to say of course but that was precisely what I was more afraid of... what if I say the wrong things? Will I say too much? I could not really mention the most interesting things (at least the ones that are the most interesting for me): where and how I engage with my clients, how exactly we sell our services, even things from the process that are exclusive or client proprietary...

The difficulty today is that continuous innovation puts us in a situation where nobody can really teach us what is the right way of doing things.

If we take the example of marketing for instance, what was right twenty years ago is not right anymore, mass marketing can easily mean millions in expense and zero return.

Its not the medium anymore, not even the quality of the content. It's about significant Appealingness combined with good Timing (in the given moment that your clients are looking for your product or service).

To make it more complicated: what you said, what you submitted to the cloud can be tracked.

Still saying something is better than saying nothing. There are indeed messages I wouldn't repeat. Spelling mistakes in tweets, concepts I did understand wrong in the past, technical errors, many, many things that could have been stated more clearly or in a different way.

Still you need to try to say what you have to say...as long as the message reaches a level where you will not be too ashamed of the concepts you are sharing.

Outsourcing the right way

Outsourcing for the right reason: interesting conversation with a small business owner. Not that his business has any apparent connection with outsourcing, globalization, or localization but... he has very interesting ideas.

The conversation started with topics like Chinese imports, drop of general consumer goods prices, etc... And then came BP on the radio in the background of the cafeteria. My interlocutor started to talk about BP and outsourcing. More specifically he mentioned "BP's disaster is due, not because of outsourcing, but because they outsourced to save the wrong bucks: for me this is the reason of the overall worldwide crisis".

Not that I completely agree, I earn my living thanks to outsourcing after all. But there are interesting logics to follow in this statement.

The reason why companies decide to outsource could sometimes not exactly be the right reason. Often, outsourcing comes from a need or willingness to save money but forgetting many other factors: "let's change the production chain from here to there, or from internal to external, or from this vendor to the other...only because it is cheaper this way".
Not because we can then concentrate on our core tasks, not because we will try to do things better in this particular area...not because we need to focus here instead of there...simply because it is cheaper.

And companies fail when they do this.
If quality is dropped: they fail. If costumers receive worse service: they fail. If the security of assets is jeopardized, they fail. And unfortunately this happens a lot.

The service business is to keep adding more and more value to your costumers. Each day, each week, each month, each year. Contract after contract if you prefer. This is what the service business is about.

Outsourcing needs to be considered as an investment to grow, to allow you to be better at what you do. All with a clear goal: aim to be the only possible option for your clients.

Why I still need MS Outlook

I get tons of emails (sounds familiar?). Some are relevant, some are not, some require me to take action, some are just for my information, some are simply reference that I better archive.

My objective when I end my day is to have an empty inbox. Some may argue that it is not possible... well it is difficult indeed and requires lots of discipline and methodology. (I'm a GTD fanatic ;-) go for it if you don´t know what it is).

The first thing to mention is that my inbox is not driving my day. My todo list is. This is pretty important.

I try to schedule a few times a day (this varies) where I go into my inbox and organize mail and the possible tasks.

The 2 minute rule is key here: If an action requires less than 2 minutes, I just go ahead, do it and get it out of the way.

Truth: If you send me an email requiring an immediate action.. Skype me if it's really really urgent :-) I can take sometime to respond, but honestly, I do not believe that people who actually let there inbox drive their next action be more responsive or efficient. They might have the illusion that they are quicker to respond, and it could happen in occasions, but I really believe that letting urgency driving your day is not the way to go (or simply the way to survive).

My todo list (I now use toodledo and still like it, although I recommend to simply use the task management from your PIM first... tasks in the cloud setup does work better for me now for a number of reasons) is filled in with tasks, categories, contexts, roles).

For reminders and things that can be scheduled: I use the calendar... I normally do not schedule the tasks within the task list, but in the calendar.

Back on track to the original idea of this post: Why I need Outlook still: I use gmail as my central repository, BUT, the way gmail is setup and displays, does not allow me to quickly reorganize and filter stuff (I know anything can do with filters and searches inside gmail, it is still not that efficient for me). With Outlook, I can, with a simple click, organize emails, by account (yes I use different accounts in my inbox by just displaying the corresponding field), by sender, by subject... and then classify that information. Outlook lets me do this very quickly, almost intuitively. I really want to spend as little time as possible on my inbox and as much time as possible DOING things.

Tweet

The Virtual Coffee Break: Is it mandatory to always meet in person?

The good thing about being involved in different projects is that you see all type of people in your working activity. Being part of several organizations (professional and volunteer) gives you the benefit of this diverse vision coming from different perspectives.

One of the most recurrent topics in the informal discussions are the doubts, from certain type of professionals, on the ability to work efficiently remotely or virtually. For someone like me who works with clients and vendors from all over the world, in projects of different types, it is funny to hear things like:

- I prefer phone calls to emails

- There is no way a team can work together without actually being located together

- Please take the car to visit me, I don't manage to communicate properly if I can't see your face

Those of us who work with content and content localization work virtually everyday.

I won't deny that there are benefits in co-location. But there are also lots of benefits in not being co-located. Who will deny that working at a crowded office could be one of the most counterproductive experiences? Interruptions, unnecessary meetings, more interruptions... When working remotely, interruptions happen at agreed times, you agree on a schedule, you organize the ideas that you need to communicate and set clear goals, isn't that a powerful benefit?

Most of the time, the urge to co-locate people you collaborate with comes from:

- lack of confidence in the other person

- need to control

- fear that people won't work on your projects, is not committed to your project

but also

- failure to communicate clearly

- lack of clear goals

I see this specially in regular scheduled meetings ("we need to meet every 2 weeks....")

It always depends on the circumstances, but many times, a short Conf.Call or even videocall will make the trick.

Actually we could even prepare informal virtual coffee breaks... Could be an idea for those who argue that the best ideas happen during breaks :-)