A recent issue of the Wall Street Journal has a wonderful article comparing to two different corporate cultures being nurtured by two different Internet companies - Facebook and Zappos. Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg says his company is nurturing a culture designed to attract entrepreneurs, even though he knows that many of these creative people will leave the firm later. Zappos' CEO Tony Hsieh says his firm wants a culture of committed, engaged employees - people who buy into Zappos' mission and plan to stay.

Continue reading "A Tale of Two Corporate Cultures" »

Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments ()

Billionaire fund manager Raj Rajaratnam and a bevy of other highly placed Wall Streeters have just been arrested on charges of profiting from inside information in their trades of securities over several years. Under financial regulations, insider trading is prohibited because it gives an unfair advantage to people who have information not available to public investors. In the days of paper-based financial reports and a news cycle that was measured in hours, if not days, this might have made sense. But today, news travels at Twitter speed, and the wisdom of the online crowd might itself be a much better policing mechanism than a thousand pages of difficult-to-read legal jargon.

Continue reading "CONTRARIAN IDEA: Let's Legalize Insider Trading" »

Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments ()

My first job out of the Air Force was as an economist for an independent oil company. We were based in New York City at 50 Rockefeller Plaza, which is the building that backs up onto Radio City Music Hall. I spent a little over a year in a shared office on the fourteenth floor at 50 Rock, before being promoted and transferred to Houston. Our office had a great view over the roof of Radio City, and we became a prime destination for lunchtime meetings and get-togethers during spring and summer, because on clear days we could usually spot several of the Rockettes out on the roof, tanning their legs.

For the last two days I've been sitting inside Radio City, observing and recording my impressions of HSM's World Business Forum as a member of the IBM-sponsored "Bloggers Hub." Radio City's atmosphere is electric, its setting majestic, and its historical pedigree authenticated by rows of now pointless public phone booths in the washrooms. But no sunning Rockettes were spotted. Instead, for the last two days we have been shining the light on business ethics, strategies, corporate culture, innovation, and employment practices.

Continue reading "No Rockettes at Radio City This Week" »

Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments ()

It seemed to me that the message brought to us by the several international business leaders during HSM's "International Insights" segment of the World Business Forum provided an interesting counter-position to the heavily pessimistic views of both Jeffrey Sachs and David Rubenstein, yesterday afternoon. The other bloggers and people I talked with all agreed, that it seemed these business people, when they were talking about the future as it looks now, were fairly optimistic about their own prospects for growth. They each acknowledged the challenging environment, and the fact that margins are still under pressure, and the economy is still sluggish, but they each also felt that the worst was now behind us, and prospects are decent. Not super, but decent.

Continue reading "WBF, Day Two: Hamel Promotes Network-Based Management Technology" »

Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments ()

The first afternoon at the World Business Forum, our after-lunch speaker was David Rubenstein, billionaire investor and founder of the Carlyle Group, former Carter advisor and generally very bright guy. His rapidly delivered speech was like a ticker-tape coming almost too fast to read, fact and stat, fact and stat, stat stat stat stat. Recession is way worse than most people think. Taxes will increase substantially following recovery. Government will continue too involved with business for a long time. NYC will no longer be the world's financial capital. The dollar will cease to be the world's primary reserve currency. On the other hand, he says, a downturn like this creates great investment opportunities, and lots of room for innovation. His was a rapid, bleak, but fairly balanced presentation. Sobering, disturbing, worrisome, and factual.

Jeffrey Sachs, on the other hand, gave what can only be described as a disappointingly shallow and politicized analysis of the world's problems in his "Economics for a Crowded Planet" talk.

Continue reading "Hellfire and Brimstone on a Tuesday Afternoon" »

Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments ()

There were three principle speakers the first morning of the World Business Forum - Bill George, Bill Conraty, and Patrick Lencioni, and they perfectly illustrate the generation-gap problem that afflicts discussions of management and technology these days.

The consensus around the Bloggers Hub was that Lencioni gave by far the best presentation, as a stand-up presenter. George had good material, although he didn't have the energy or style that Lencioni had. But Conraty was not so good, either in terms of style (a somewhat plain and boring PPT presentation) or substance (he seemed to miss the ball on CEO pay and on social media, for instance).

Continue reading "Generation Gap: The First Morning at World Business Forum" »

Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments ()

I participated in a panel discussion in Atlanta today, talking about the employment situation now and in the future. How has the current crisis changed the employment climate? Will unemployment persist? Will the lost jobs come back?

While unemployment is always painful, one thing I have noticed personally about this recession is that many of the people I know who have had their positions cut are not exactly idle. That is, they are looking for full-time positions, but at the same time they are making ends meet by doing a variety of part-time or free-lance projects. It's much more common in this crisis than in previous ones to find laid-off professional people working "virtually" from home, at least temporarily, while trying to land a more permanent position.

Continue reading "How Real Are the Unemployment Figures?" »

Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments ()

The people who've tried to define customer loyalty have usually approached it from one of two different directions - attitudinal and behavioral. Although each of these directions is valid, they have different implications and lead to very different prescriptions for businesses. (This is analogous, but I don't think it is precisely aligned, with Estaban Kolsky's distinction between "emotional" and "intellectual" loyalty.)

Continue reading "Customer Loyalty: Is It an Attitude? Or a Behavior?" »

Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments ()

Let's grant that behavioral loyalty is what pays the bills, but that attitudinal loyalty is also important, especially when it can be used as an indicator of higher behavioral loyalty. I think that's the general, if not unanimous, conclusion of the discussion on this topic.

And when it is positioned as a straight yes-or-no proposition, the concept of customer loyalty, as a behavior, is relatively easy. A magazine subscriber who elects to renew her subscription at the end of the first year is engaging in loyal behavior.

Continue reading "Is Lifetime Value a More Useful Metric than Loyalty?" »

Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments ()