Competitive Advantage

At Boardroom Metrics we've embraced social media. We use it to profile our people, find people, find work.

It works and it's free / really cheap.

So it's always refreshing to still hear lots of people - and organizations - say that social media is a waste of time.

That point of view used to bother us. We used to try to fix it.

Now, our advice is 'go with it'. Ignore social media, don't learn about it, don't put any effort into trying it.

Leave the competitive advantage to others. Abandon that particular opportunity to differentiate. Make it one more easy tactic for your competitors (they could be people, or companies) to win the hearts and minds of your target audience.

Social media doesn't work. It can't be measured. There is no ROI.

Yes, go with that thought.

Please!

What's Your Snow?

I was talking to Andrew yesterday about the demise of RIM. I was telling him how it makes me angry because it was so obvious that it was coming. But everyone covered it up.

Andrew was telling one of his dad's great sayings - "that when the snow melts, all the shit rises to the surface".

It's a great line. In RIM's case there was lots of snow. Like covering up declining North American market share with 'overall smart phone growth', or 'growth in other parts of the world', or 'but they will never lose the enterprise space'.

Frigging DUH!!??

How smart do you have to be to understand that if you're getting killed in your home market - and your enterprise customers are 'testing' iPhones, hanging success on 'undeveloped' markets and business customers  is downright stupid??


Yet that snow covered that shit for the last 2 years.

Surprise!!!

So what's your snow? Where's the white, fluffy stuff straight out of a Warren Miller ski movie in your business? Where's your Waterloo(!)?

At the end of our conversation I told Andrew his COO role has a new accountability - snow removal. He is officially in charge of spotting - and melting - all of the white, fluffy, killer snow that's covering the crap in our business.

The future depends on it.