Kate Phizackerley Means Business

Not sure how I missed it before, but there's a new acronym people are using:

GRC = Governance, Risk management and Compliance

It may come in handy here too since I discuss all of those topics.

I'm quiet here because most of my efforts are directed at building an online Ancient Egypt magazine, which we are calling Egyptological Online. As part of the project, I have included an "how we built Egyptological" blog. There are four reasons for that:

1. As part of our project governance we have identified the need for strong supporting documentation.  Publication encourages documentation which is written to a high standard.
   
2. Our project is a community magazine and is written on open source software (WordPress).  Publication is consistent with that philosophy.
   
3. Despite the proliferation of magazine-style themes for WordPress, most are designed only to support a river of posts more like a blog.  Support for editions isn't available in most themes.  We suspect that we will be approached and asked how we have built the magazine and whether we could help somebody launch a magazine on another topic.  Publication of or development notes means we can direct people to the blog rather than answer dozens of questions.
   
4. Content equals traffic.  Search engines love links and traffic.  Unless a matter is confidential, it makes sense to publish it.

The latest post is a practical example of how we have approached risk assessment.  (A warning though.  As this post was written (February 15th, 2010), Egyptological is still very much under development.  There are still a lot of test posts rather than final content and the design is still only 60% complete.  That shouldn't detract you from reading a good example of risk assessment in practice, but please don't expect to see a finished site.  If you are reading this sometime later, then the site should hopefully be finished!)

10 years ago I said the skill people needed when entering the business market was design ability. The new PC publishing packages had placed content publication into the hands of all but most lacked the design skills to differentiate their message.

That remains the case. Those instinctively capable of putting together the best visual presentation or advert are natural winners. It's something seen every week on TV's Apprentice.

I was wrong in part, however. Since few people possess great design skills, incumbents protected themselves by making design a specialist, backroom activity. In that way assistance could be hired but bounds set so those assistants couldn't out-compete existing leaders. The change I predicted will happen and is continuing to happen, but more slowly As the next generation takes over, I believe that those with superior design and presentation skills will have a material advantage.

Since the 50's the marketing psychologists have dominated. It perhaps reached it's zenith in the 90's in a world of spin, house-staging by realtors, and supermarkets using the choice of background music and even olfactory clues to influence buying behaviour.

I see a new skill set coming to the fore and supplanting marketing psychology. It's the skill right now I'd recommend to those entering business in the way I recommended design skills a decade ago. What is that skill? Anthropology.

There's been talk of tribes, or more properly neo-tribes, within marketing for a couple of years now It was popularised by Seth Godin but the ideas had been circulating well before Seth's book, Tribes. I've instinctively been using those skills. My News from the Valley of the Kings blog has encouraged reader contributions and comment and, rather than merely being a single voice (mine), has taken on some attributes of a neo-tribe. A friend and I are intending to take the concept further and build a whole online magazine supported by a tribe.  (See http://egyptological.wordpress.com/)  It seems totally natural. As editors we'll set some boundaries (essentially defining quality threshold s) to maintain community cohesion and enrol volunteer support. Within that platform it'll evolve flexibly around the dynamics of the tribe.

In a business sense, flexible evolution of products, brands and projects is the stuff of nightmares in cultures where the emphasis has been on control. Allowing the customer base to participate in, and even direct, the evolution of commercial offerings is challenging. It appears to be unwanted, and hard to control, democratisation.

In a commercial setting it cannot be, of course. That evolution must be shaped. Understanding and controlling, or at least influencing, the evolution requires the application of anthropological principles and theories, what I would dub neo-anthropology.

There is more, of course. Right now the hot new thinking is about creating and unleashing the power of tribes. But what happens once your competitors have built tribes? How should your tribe compete with them?

America will be seeing such a battle on TV in the next year when Simon Cowell brings X Factor to American screens to compete against the incumbent American Idol. I predict the winner is clear. Reality TV competitions succeed by fostering viewer engagement in a tribal effect. Simply put, X Factor deepens that level of engagement. In the UK, X Factor has become that must-know show for social engagement. While screened, a very common opening social gambit when networking were questions like, "Do you hate Jedward?" (Jedward referred to twins taking part in the 2009 season.)

More controversially, is it possible to subvert your competitors' tribes? Suppose a radio station has built itself around a tribal following - as many radio stations have. The tribe may have an expected style of both music and commentary. In traditional marketing, a competing radio station would attempt to offer something alternative. But what if a competitor's tribe could be manipulated, maybe to change the socio-economic background of the tribe to emphasise a less affluent membership? For instance could the base be manipulated towards school students and away from young wage earners?

I believe unleashing and manipulating the power of tribes will be the differentiator in marketing over the next couple of decades.

I've just be browsing some articles in the CodeBreakers-Journal.   (As a mathematician by education, and with a background in IT, I occasionally like to see what's going on in the field of crypography.)   I came across the following quote by Bruce Schneier:

If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you don’t understand the problems and you don’t understand the technology

 That's so accurate; and so often I see clients who believe that technology is the answer to their security needs. Mohammed Fadel Mokbel, the author of the paper I was reading, went on to say:

... the most important and perilous factor in computer/internet security is the human integration with the technology   

That neatly explains why technology so often fails to deliver the level of security organisations expect.  I remember auditing one firm which proudly told clients it's offices were protected by pass cards so that only authorised staff could access work areas.  True.  During the day.  In the evening, however, once the managemenr team had gone home, the cleaners propped all the security doors open with buckets to create one vast open space.  By then the security guard on the front door had gone home and it was also pretty easy to get in via the front door - just catch the eye of any of the cleaners and look like you belonged there.  Essentially security during the evenings was non-existent.  Management of cleaners is a dull affair and is often passed well down the food chain to somebody has no clue about security.  (It shouldn't be, of course.  Office managers need to vary their hours and be in the office at a wide range of times.)  Technology is no defence again human ignorance, nor from managers who don't make staff understand why the technology matters.

A second problem is that technology is added on top of processes which are inherently insecure.  That doesn't work.  Security needs to be embedded into the process design and the process design integrated into the technology.  One of my pet hates is consultants who perform process reviews but don't have a background in IT and systems - and indeed don't have a background in organisation effectiveness in terms of human dynamics.  Process design requires a true multi-disciplinary approach.

Perhaps the underlying issue is managers who believe their security is fixed because they bought some technology "to take care of everything".  They know that's the case because the salesman told them it would.  Ignorance is the single biggest cause of security holes.

I'm surprised how few business and professionals use Squidoo.  It's now ranked #95 of the top US sites with 9.0m US visitors each month according to Quantcast.  It's a great site for getting something one-off noticed.  For instance, although I write mostly about business and Egypt, I have a seasonal Squidoo lens about gingerbread houses which is getting 800 unique visitors a week.  Not massive in FTSE / NASDAQ terms, but for an owner-managed-business that's worthwhile.  For any author, it's flattering to have that sort of readership.  If you are interested in seeing more, these are my top Squidoo pages, or join Squidoo.  I just wish my lens about twilight birthday cakes and parties would do better - more about that later!

The alternative is HubPages.  Newer than Squidoo, it's ranked #93 with 9.2m American visitors each month.  I've been less active on HubPages than Squidoo and my most successful hub (great sax solos) has less traffic in total than my top Squidoo lens is getting in a week.  Both sites are supported by adverts but HubPages has a generally lower ad-burden than Squidoo so may seem more attractive to business.  However, on Squidoo it's possible to turn adverts off.  As a marketeer, I don't do that often (although I do set some lenses to be charitable, donating all of my income to charity), but my lens about my father's art (PT Phiz) has all of the adverts removed.  That's a format which would suit a business.  Hubpages also limits outbound links to 2 per domain; Squidoo's limit of 9 is more reasonable.  For those reasons, I think Squidoo suits buisiness and professionals better than Squidoo.

The key, in both cases is promition - SEO if that's the term you prefer to use.  That's the issue with my Twilight birthday lens - Google doesn't like it.  Some topics need little promotion, but if you wanted to promote a product it may need some work.  It could suit an artist, though, who wants a suit to describe her work but doesn't want the overhead of a dedicated web site.  Of course, any Squidoo lenses of Hubpages hubs you create will have an SEO advantage on your other sites if you link them from the lens / hub

Neither Squidoo nor HubPages is perfect.  Neither is an answer to all problems.  But they can have a role to play.

It's hard to overstress the importance of titles.  Get the title wrong and people might not read your written material.

In keeping, I've made a minor change to the title of this blog.  It is now "Kate Phizackerley Means Business".  I think that is stronger than the previous title.