Yes, you read that right - the guys at Valuecruncher report that shares in the once-mighty GM (”What’s good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa.”) have hit a 53 year low. And even that price looks dodgy, given the outlook for US big car and sports utility sales.  You can play with Valuecruncher’s assumptions (they have a nice online model for you to use) and see if you agree.

How can a company with the resources that GM has, its ability to buy whatever talent, technology and business concept it needs, how can it have fallen to this? The only systemic problems are its own culture and modus operandi.  Everything else can be fixed.  Can the culture?

Reading Mark Di Somma’s closing question on Branding Big:

Who does your brand reflect – the company you are today, or the entity you have the potential to be?

I knew what the answer must be.  My closing line in my set-piece talk on strategic thinking is:

Think and act for greatness!

Timidity may see you survive, but greatness goes to the bold.

One lesson I learned from “doing business” with Māori  in New Zealand was that you will usually be appreciated for showing respect for people’s culture and social manners, some more from having a few words in their language (a lot more if you can hold a conversation, which I can’t), but it’s more important that you should be true to yourself, honest, straight-dealing and not treat other people as stereotypes.

I’ve had a modicum of success doing business in Asia by applying the same approach.  Comprising many nations, often with several (or many) ethnic groupings, Asia has a rich variety of cultures.  Each one is different.  One thing we never did was treat “Asians” as if they are one homogeneous group. What I found was that, as in any society, people form a wide spectrum of individual characteristics, albeit with a central grouping around stereotypical societal characteristics.  What I also never did was assume that Japanese are like Koreans are like Chinese (or Malays, Indonesians, Indians, Saudis, Turks, etc.).

Unfortunately many Europeans and North Americans do fall into this trap.  I remember getting very incensed by one guest lecturer (at a Wharton programme no less, where normally the faculty is excellent) spouting utter claptrap about doing business with “South Americans” (who she said are all excitable, morally conservative, like bright colours, and only do business through familial networks) and “Asians” (who she said are all reserved, prefer to work with trusted long-term partners, and have little respect for contracts). Some maybe, but all 4 billion? Incredible!

Notwithstanding all that, I also buy the idea that a true global brand has a single global persona. However, if you are marketing a global brand, or even a regional one, in Asia, or elsewhere for that matter, how do you achieve this while respecting local differences (without  massive duplication of costs and blurred messages)? The answer lies in having a genuinely transnational market offer, backed with genuinely transnational promotion.

Business Pundit pointed me to a report in Chicago University’s Journal of Consumer Research on East Asian businesses which have created successful pan-East Asian campaigns with a common market offer:

Authors Julien Cayla (University of New South Wales) and Giana M. Eckhardt  (Suffolk University) examine how marketers of Asian brands are creating an imaginary Asia that is not identifiable by country or region. “Cultural referents from cities of influence such as Tokyo, Shanghai, and Seoul are combined together to produce brand images that are clearly Asian, but not from a particular nation,” write the authors.

The researchers analyzed marketing strategies and advertising campaigns of Asian brands such as Tiger Beer and Zuji, a travel website. They found that images in the print, ad, and online advertising represent an Asia that is “global, urban, and multicultural.” In the case of the travel website Zuji, the researchers found that the consortium of major airlines “has no home country, is designed to be clearly Asian and modern, uses a Hong Kong-born globally popular actor as the brand’s model, uses green and blue for the logo to appeal to the Thai, its name is derived from Mandarin, follows the spatial practices of feng shui, uses an East Asian style of calligraphy, and uses the tagline “Your Travel Guru,” which is most readily associated with India.”

Such cultural mixing, according to the authors, demonstrates that Asian corporations are redefining globalization. “Whereas Western Marketers still sell Asian brands through the idea of an exotic, feminine Asia, Asian marketers create campaigns with a more contemporary, modern, and urban vision of Asia,” write the authors.

In other words, you can make a universal offer with a universal promotional campaign, albeit in multiple languages. The trick is to always treat people as individuals while doing so. Fulfilling common needs and aspirations is not the same as treating people as stereotypes.

Yesterday I wrote about the possible challenges for owners of established midsize businesses who want to exit their investment.  In an  occasional series, I’ll cover how to address those challenges.  I’ll be drawing on my experience of being involved as a CEO, owner, director and/or adviser of mid-size businesses undergoing or thinking about ownership change, as well as having been involved in pre- and post-deal situations on the buyer side (mid-size and large size).

Your exit might be many years away, but it’s never too soon to start planning for it. These are some questions I’d be exploring with you:

1. Why are you selling?
2. What exactly does your business offer the world?
3. What are your goals and dreams - inside the business, outside the business and after the business?
4. How attractive is your business, and what’s wrong with it?
5. Who are your key people, customers, suppliers and partners, and are you vulnerable to their departure?
6. How do you make yourself unnecessary to the business?
7. Which buyer types should you target?
8. Who would want to buy it and why; who should, but doesn’t, and why not?
9. Should you sell gradually or all at once?
10. Should you sell to family and/or staff?
11. What can you do to improve your business attractiveness?
12. What should you do to be ready for sale?
13. How to you manage the sale process?
14. What’s in a good sale agreement for you, and for your buyer?
15. How do you ensure a successful transfer?
16. How much should you be involved after the deal is done?

The best way to have a great business to sell is to have a great business. Actions you’d do to prepare your business for sale are often actions you should do anyway. The answers to these questions and the ensuing discussion will help you formulate a business plan with successful exit in mind.  I’ll be addressing each of them over the next few weeks.

PS. I have other questions when looking at raising capital for expansion and when looking at an acquisition, but those are for another time.

The veteran activist shareholder Carl Icahn has finally started to write on his own personal weblog.  An early February launch was followed by several months of silence, which perplexed many (including yours truly).  However, the wait is over, with The Icahn Report posting several previously prepared invectives on boards, CEOs and poison pills, to mention a few.  It’s all classic Icahn, and worth reading, even if it is very USA-centric. Enjoy.

“If every company uses the same commodity information tools, they will have commodity productivity levels.“ That’s a quote from Alan Kay, a leading pioneer of what might be called 4G computing - eg. networked personal computers and object-oriented programming. He was talking to John Sviokla, who has written a thought-provoking short article “Commoditized Technology and Commoditized Results.”

There is a real dilemma. Do I use these feature-rich off-the-shelf solutions, which may keep me on a par with my competitors, or do I build something unique (and by implication slower to implement, much more expensive, and more likely to fail)? IT’s reputation for cost-overruns, under-delivery, late delivery and failed projects) even with packaged solutions) has meant that many firms do not allow their IT organisations much influence on true business strategy and development. Many firms spend most or all of their IT money on running fast to stay still, and begrudge even that.

There is plenty of blame to share around. Many business executives do not understand the difference between competitive advantage and competitive necessity. Sviokla himself shows this confusion, despite his article’s title:

For example, I was talking with the CIO of a multi-billion dollar military contractor… He reported … that … the typical engineer spent 30% of their time looking for information, and that 30% of their expenses were engineering salaries, which meant that 9% of their entire cost base was spent searching for information. Putting Google in would not help this problem because the firm’s data is not made up of web pages and typical documents. Despite this huge cost, they did not have a single person dedicated to creating customized search tools to drive increased productivity of their engineers.

It sounds like a prima facie case to make an IT investment, but this is a common productivity problem, not a source of long term competitive advantage. If they invest, they may reduce their costs and/or increase their time to do other things, but then so can anyone else.

Long-term competitive advantage comes from doing things or having things that other people will find hard to replicate. That usually means hard-to-get know-how, hard-to-replicate processes, hard-to-subvert relationships (brands, sales, channels, supply channels, etc.) or hard-to-obtain scarce resources (minerals, access rights, networks). Even new-age weightless businesses which started out with bright product/service ideas like Google, Ebay and TradeMe now owe a lot of their competitive advantage from having built hard-to-subvert relationships.

Business executives need to ask themselves the hard questions. What strategic difference will this IT project really make, versus other uses of our business investment budget? Is it a source of genuine competitive advantage, or a productivity advantage which may be duplicated eventually, or just catch-up, or even (and this one is really scary) not actually necessary at all?

Just one word of warning. Don’t fool yourselves that your so-called hard-to-replicate processes, know-how, relationships, and resources are really long term competitive advantages. I know one large international firm which fell for its own hype. They bet their business (and nearly lost it) on building a unique solution to a common requirement. Some of their core business processes were revolutionary in the 80s, and needed a home-built system which had outlived any technology or skills to run or maintain it. However, the old guard believed (wrongly) that they couldn’t get similar functionality from standard packages today. They argued that these systems were so fundamental to the firm’s processes that a massive bespoke redevelopment was justified, despite several advisers telling them otherwise. They wasted 5 years, many millions of dollars, and hobbled their ability to undertake any acquisitions at a time when their industry was undergoing massive consolidation. The company finally scrapped the project, heads rolled, and the firm adopted a system from one of its few acquisitions.

Product serial numbering schemes don’t usually occupy much head space in the typical brand and marketing team, but there’s every reason to give them more thought. Serial numbers are often critical in identifying and solving customer service issues. The military invented a system of phonetic spelling (initially Able, Baker, Charlie; later Alpha, Bravo, Charlie) because it’s easy to mis-say and mis-hear spelt out letters on poor telephone or wireless links (and not just when someone’s shelling you). Reading out a string of apparently random numbers and letters to a service rep is even more fraught.

Marketing writer Seth Godin has come up with some practical suggestions for improving serial numbers: don’t have letters O , I, l, and numbers 0, 1; make letters case-interchangeable A/a; etc., etc.. One more innovative idea is to substitute words for numbers. That got me thinking: you can make serial numbers part of your brand personality.

Let me illustrate. Compile a list of four-letter words - ideally ones that relate to your brand. Make sure they can be used in combination with each other. Your serial number is made up of any three words, and words can be used more than once. Say we have just 3 such words in our list: A=baby, B=blue, C=eyes. I get 27 combinations:

• AAA = baby baby baby
• AAB = baby baby blue
• AAC = baby baby eyes
• ABA = baby blue baby
• ABB = baby blue blue
• ABC = baby blue eyes
• ACA etc.

Saying “baby baby blue” rather than AAB is a lot simpler and more fun for customers and service staff to read, say and hear. A list of just 100 words will give you 1 million 3-word combinations. Online data entry forms can handle this kind of thing very easily so it won’t create work and should reduce serial number errors (the same idea applies to check digits too). And while we’re at it, what about your product naming and numbering systems, accounr numbers, invoice numbers, etc.?

Word-based numbering systems won’t work with every brand or product, and maybe only in markets with a common language, but why not get your team to play with the idea? You could develop a whole new, complementary aspect of your brand personality. You could even end up creating a new cachet for your product, as cool serial numbers attract interest and make the product more personalised.

This idea may or may not add to your brand, but it might at least start people putting more brand and design thinking into your numbering systems.

These are two subjects not normally seen together in a headline, but my intrepid exploration in recent weeks of the establishments recommended by the UK’s Good Pub Guide has, of necessity, also involved an investigation of their gentlemen’s facilities. These pubs usually have toilets better kept than most, but they still suffer that bane of the public loo, the electric hand dryer - noisy, unreliable, and either scalds you or doesn’t dry. But salvation is at hand(!), thanks to the maestros of design at Dyson. They’ve clearly thought about what the hand dryer is supposed to do, where it needs to operate, and the benefits for both the user (such as me) and the operator (the pub landlord).

For the user, the Dyson Airblade is faster (just 10 seconds), safer (ambient temperature air), cleaner (no touch operation, microbially-filtered air) and quieter (less noise in operation and only operates while your hands pass through the air stream).

For the landlord, the Dyson Airbade is elegant, quieter (not disturbing the pub atmosphere) and its annual running costs are less than one quarter those of the other air dryers (thanks to its lower power usage).

Not only great functionality (as I can attest), but an easy sell as well. Now that’s good design.

Why is Ford not as successful as Toyota these days? Harvard’s Professor John Quelch reckons it’s because Ford has been too timid to be a genuine global brand:

Over 20 years ago, Harvard professor Theodore Levitt praised Japanese manufacturers for their focus on “what every consumer in the world is seeking: world-class modernity at affordable prices.” Either because they didn’t understand regional differences in consumer preferences or out of self-confidence, Toyota, Nissan, and Honda sold standard products under a single brand umbrella.

For decades, Ford adapted its manufacturing platforms, features, and model names from one country to another. The results: added manufacturing and supply chain costs that strained consumers’ willingness to pay; a balkanized bureaucracy in which regional managers exaggerate the need for local adaptations to defend their turf; and a deteriorating market share, financial performance, and stock price.

So far so good. I thought he was onto a promising theme, but no. Unfortunately, Quelch then lists his 5 characteristics of top global brands:

1. The same positioning worldwide. This provides a combination of functional product quality and innovation with emotional appeal. Think Coca-Cola and Disney.
2. A focus on a single product category. Think Nokia and Intel.
3. The company name is the brand name. All marketing dollars are concentrated on that one brand. Think GE and IBM.
4. Access to the global village. Consuming the brand equals membership in a global club. Think IBM’s “solutions for a small planet.”
5. Social responsibility. Consumers expect global brands to lead on corporate social responsibility, leveraging their technology to solve the world’s problems. Think Nestlé and clean water.

Hmmm.

1. Same positioning worldwide: Agreed. Also could have mentioned BMW, the BBC, et al.
2. Single product category: Disney? Films, theme parks, hotels, toys, clothing? All spin-offs of cartoon characters? GE? Power station equipment, trains, jet engines, appliances, financial services?
3. The company is the brand name: Agreed, but lots of sub-brands too (CocaCola has dozens).
4. Access to the global village: People buy Nokia or Toyota because they’re global? How about because they’re good products, well marketed at attractive prices?
5. Social responsibility: Good companies want to be good citizens, but this is a leap too far. Coke solving world problems? Puhleez!

1.5 out of 5. Not the standard of thinking I expect of a Harvard professor. See me after class.

You watch the TV news and someone is complaining yet again about how prices have gone up . It seems to be a staple item for a slow news day, anywhere. Britons, like Kiwis, Ozzies, Canadians and Americans, always doubt the official inflation figures. BBC News recently conducted a small study of three households whose principal shopper (the wife of course) all claimed that inflation was really 10-20% rather than the official UK figure of 3.4%. The official figure is an average, so you’d expect some variation at the individual household level. But to the shoppers’ surprise, their household inflation was only in the range 2-6%, even after recent price hikes in fuel, protein, etc..

Here are a few more of my UK factoids:

UK factoid No 4: Tesco, Britain’s leading supermarket, calculates that its average prices have fallen 30% in the last 10 years.

UK factoid No. 5: The proportion of UK household expenditure on food has dropped from about a third in the 1970s to about 15% today.

UK factoid No. 6: The average British woman is 4 cm taller and has an extra 16 cm round the waist, compared to 50 years ago, which indicates much greater food intake per person, and therefore an even greater price drop per calorie than the figures above.

And it’s not just food. The real price of just about everything has fallen - eg. food, clothes, cars, appliances, entertainment, communications, travel. The only major exception is housing. A lot of those savings have gone into bidding up house prices (for larger living spaces, second homes and investment). House prices confuse the issue. Most people already own a house, so they see rising house prices as a good thing - “I’m getting richer relative to the cost of stuff” - even if they have lived in the same place for decades and have no intention of selling up in the foreseeable future. Falling house prices are bad - “I’m getting poorer relative to the cost of stuff”.

So why, despite the contrary evidence, do people insist that inflation is higher than it is? Simply put, people forget benefit gains. They don’t notice gradual real price falls and they forget the big ones, even more so when they involve infrequent purchases. Those prices quickly become normalised. Conversely, they do notice price hikes. Most people really have no idea what inflation is and their ideas are screwed up anyway by housing market sentiment.

It’s important for businesses to understand this. Your customers will quickly forget those special deals you gave them, those extra services, your particular advantages for them. You need to remind them regularly, in the nicest possible way, of course. Remind them of your USP, your story, in newsletters, websites and presentations . Always show the full value of your quantity, term and payment discounts versus your standard price on your invoices.

Always remember - people forget.

Update: Ignore factoid 6, or rather my interpretation of it in this context.  I’m informed that calorific intake is actually slightly lower now, that the extra height is due to better prenatal and childhood health and that the extra girth is down to much less physical exercise.

Mike Riversdale draws a nice distinction between asking Why and How:

… “why” is past orientated and “how” is future orientated.

For instance, asking “Why do I do have an ‘open information’ principle?” will lead me to question my past actions, environment and experiences. However, if I ask, “How does having an ‘open information’ principle affect me?” leads me to talk about the future actions, behaviours and thoughts.

I’ll bear it in mind when I’m using my “6 honest serving men” - Messrs. What, Why, When, How, Where and Who (with their assistant Master Not). However while a useful distinction in the right context, this understates the usefulness of Mr Why, who is probably at his most powerful when determining what your total market offer is (and what it is not) and how you fulfil it (and how not). Ask yourself why (and why not).

Olof from TelstraClear has saved the day, getting all our accounts restored and working as soon as he got into work. Thanks, Olof, for your help and speed of action.

It’s a shame that a common customer service task requires special intervention like this - and all telcos seem bad at it. Olof, like no doubt most other TelstraClear people, really wants to deliver great service. His company needs to build the tools so Olof and his colleagues can do so.

Another tale of how telcos do their best to infuriate customers who want to stay with them.

I’ve had an account and 5 users with TelstraClear, my NZ internet service provider, since the earliest days of Clearnet. All of our friends and family, our personal business contacts, banks, utilities, and many other people use them to get in touch with us. So they are very important to us. Two weeks ago TelstraClear was supposed to shift our account from cable broadband to dialup, while we were overseas. Today we lost access to all our usernames and email; which is doubly bad because I also had all my other emails from all my other accounts and domains forwarded to my TelstraClear user account.

I explained our situation to the call centre rep who processed our service request, and she promised to put a reminder in her system to personally check that the change had been actioned correctly. A botched service task is bad enough, so imagine how I felt finding that it hadn’t been done despite having been made that promise.

The web support contact system asked me to set up a new account when I tried to use it to contact TelstraClear today (presumably because my user name was not active). No joy that way. The latest insult: calling from the UK (at my cost of course), I am told that there is at least a 30 minute wait for calls to be answered. At international roaming rates, I don’t think so!

So if anyone from TelstraClear is reading this - get my account fixed pronto!

Meanwhile I can be contacted at Isambard, and I’ve reset all my emails and web stuff to go there (apart from my Clearnet accounts which I can’t get to).

Update: Fixed, thanks to Olof. 

There’s a big stink brewing in the beauty business. Dove, with its Campaign for Real Beauty, has a very popular ad which shows how a photograph of a, shall we say, normal-looking woman is transformed into an impossibly beautiful glamour queen. Now it seems that a freelance photography retoucher, working for a photographer, working for an ad agency, working for Unilever, Dove’s owner, boasted to a journalist that he’d retouched some of Dove’s photographs of ordinary women used in their wildly successful promotional campaigns. The retoucher says his remarks were taken out of context. The New Yorker magazine is adamant they were not. Dove will have to mount a massive recovery programme to avoid massive damage to its basic proposition. Expect some very public executions.

But the real question for me is why anyone associated with the Dove campaign would even contemplate having photographs retouched, for whatever reason, however well intentioned. It was a monumentally stupid mistake. It also illustrates that everyone working with your brand (staff, suppliers, distributors and subcontractors), everyone must understand what your brand stands for and, by implication, what to do and what not to do.

What damage might some well-intentioned idiot do to your brand?

Rod Oram has written an excellent overview of the challenges facing businesses in developed economies. He’s writing about New Zealand, but it could also apply to many companies in Australia, North America and Western Europe. In a nutshell, he argues that reducing bureaucracy and taxes, while improving infrastructure and education, are not enough, especially in countries with fully deployed labour. In the end, it all boils down to what businesses you invest in, and how those businesses perform and develop.

Oram’s closing paragraph says it all:

Here’s the acid test: what do you need to do in your business so you can reward yourself with at least an 80% increase in pay by 2018? When you achieve that, you will attract all the talent you need - some of it even from Australia.

I don’t think I’ve seen a single business plan or economic development proposal that, as a consequence of success over the next ten years, could afford to pay staff twice what they get today. Most plans assume no change in real terms, while some assume greater internationalisation which reduces average salaries.

If you’re in a business based on labour (no matter how professional), you’ve got a problem. If all you do is pass on someone else’s goods and services, you’ve got a problem. If you make me-too products and services, you’ve got a problem. If you’re creating smart new products and services that aren’t labour intensive, you’ve got a chance. What are you going to do with that opportunity?

New Zealand Trade & Enterprise has released the findings of several surveys on how overseas business people perceive NZ businesses, which present a picture of NZ business as ‘high in human values, but low in business acumen.’

The report summary is worth repeating in full:

• Business culture and values vary across countries, however global business values are shared. It is these global business values which the research showed New Zealand businesses are often lacking. This contributes to the general low awareness of New Zealand as a business partner.
• In short, New Zealand has a business culture that is perceived to be high in human values and low in business acumen.
• There is respect and admiration for the strength of New Zealand’s human values. These include:
  • an openness and directness that is unusual in international business, but which makes dealing with New Zealand businesses straightforward and agreeable
    a refreshing honesty which engenders rapid trust (although this can easily extend to naivety on New Zealand’s part)
  • resourcefulness, creativeness and flexibility – all perceived to be due to New Zealand’s geographic isolation, space and limited resources (eg. capital and government support)
  • wider cultural elements such as an harmonious relationship with Maori, respect for the land, environmental awareness, nuclear-free policy, female Prime Minister etc
    the success of the family and quality of life as the benchmark (sometimes at the expense of business success).
• New Zealand businesses can communicate in a business-like way, and there are New Zealand business success stories; but the perception is that many companies lack the hunger to be part of an international business community.
• Areas where New Zealand businesses show a lack of business acumen include:
  • low pro-activity and reluctance to follow up phone calls and/or contacts
    lack of preparation and research into a country’s culture and specific market characteristics eg. a ‘what can we sell’ approach, rather than asking ‘what does the market want?’
  • an overly-relaxed attitude towards business. “Give it a go” and “she’ll be right” are unwelcome and unsuccessful attitudes in global business
  • being unwilling to partner or collaborate to help their business go further
    a transactional approach to business and an unwillingness to establish and maintain relationships. While this issue is particularly strong in China and Japan, all five markets highlighted this as a shortcoming of New Zealand businesses.
• No country showed reluctance to do business with New Zealand, but there is a general feeling that New Zealand businesses need to come up to the mark to be taken seriously as a business partner.
• This does not mean that New Zealand should compromise its human values – they are part of the attraction of New Zealand – however it is essential that New Zealand businesses are able to demonstrate the basics of global business protocols if they are to be taken seriously.

In summary: nice, creative, naive and too laid back. Two words, guys and girls: SHARPEN UP!

(Spotted on NZ Angels)

Businesses sometimes stumble or even fail. It’s a risk of which every real entrepreneur is acutely aware. As I’ve written before: “By all means identify and manage your risks, but don’t be paralysed by them. If you’ve got an idea or a dream, En avant - get going!” But what do you do if you suffer a business failure. Business Pundit has some wise words for when it all goes pear-shaped:

Focus on the Positive Things that Were Accomplished
It doesn’t matter how long you were in business every business has had bright days. It could have been new contacts and partnerships. Patients for products that you know can work. Systems that you developed and implemented. Perhaps, it was the day or week you reached records sales.

Ask The Hard Questions
Why did it fail? Was it poor planning? Was there lack of knowledge of the market? Did it come down to personnel? Maybe it was the wrong sales strategy. Whatever it was, as an entrepreneur asking the hard questions will help get away from the blame game and addresses the facts, both good and bad.

Learn and Move On!
Entrepreneurs can be extremely strong-willed individuals. It’s because of that they experience success and reach their goals. However, the one thing that separates them from others, is that the fail, learn and move on. Often times it’s in the same type of business and same product: just a new approach.

Great advice. I’d add: listen to constructive criticism, and tune out the sneerers and those who demand perfect success every time, but never risk much themselves. They have little of value you need to hear. As the song says, “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.”

Business Week and Boston Consulting Group have named their 2008 Top 50 Innovative Companies. While it’s easy to quibble with the detail, what’s really interesting for me is the inclusion of companies known for innovation in process, business model and customer experience. Too many people (including some government agencies spending very large sums of money on economic development initiatives) only focus on product innovation. Product innovation is useless without a business to commercialise it, and a great business can buy in product innovation. Which would you rather own shares in - Toyota or Aston Martin? (I own Toyota shares). Actually, Toyota does a lot of product innovation, too - e.g. their hybrid programme.

I just realised that it’s been a year since we started En Avant. Although the initial entries are dated March, we actually went live on 14th April 2007. So, belatedly, I want to say thank you to all those readers, commentators and linkers who have joined me on my journey of exploration into this communication medium.

Someone suggested that I do a review of that first year. Gee, blogging about blogging - YAWN! But my friend insisted that people would be interested. Hmm. OK, but don’t blame me if this bores you rigid.

Anyway, what was I thinking of, when I started? Clearly there were some business reasons:

• Profile and positioning for the businesses I was involved with;
• Sending messages about what I hold to be important to current and potential staff, customers and business partners, in a more subtle medium than the usual preaching from the front style.

I think that worked. There was also the idea of building Brand Jim Donovan (and I’m not talking about ego-building here):

I’m trying to reach a general business leadership audience, as well as techbiz people, business commentators and other influencers. Why would y