What Could We Have Done Differently After 9/11?

After getting involved in a cracking debate initiated by Alan Stevens regarding the achievements or not of Tony Blair, I wonder what would be on most people's agenda if they could turn back time?

I reference this to the 10th anniversary of 9/11 tomorrow when nearly 3,000 innocent people so dramatically lost their lives. We can debate ad nauseum as to why such an attack took place in the first place but the beyond the incredible human tragedy that followed it triggered into action the most profound chain of events which took the 'free world' into conflict with two Sovereign Nations.

I would hasten to guess that many, like myself, had never heard of Osama bin Ladin and Al Q'aeda or that Afghanistan was the home to terrorist training grounds and plots against the West before 9/11. But within hours of the tragedies in the United States we became fully aware of this intelligence.

The Conspiracy Theorists might make you believe this has been a very convenient story that was trooped out rather too quickly for comfort in the wake of the atrocities. However, it seemed that such terrorist acts and the bodies behind it had been long suspected. In my mind at the time, and even today, this justified our decision to invade Afghanistan. Whether the result we have got was worth it is very debatable. Historians would have advised that not even the modern armies of the British Empire or the Soviet Union had achieved annexation of Afghanistan where only Alexander the Great had done so. Yet still we went in and fought people that in the early 80s we had actively supported (even armed and trained bin Ladin himself) in the Mujahideen's struggle against the Russians (such is the duplicitous nature of politics).

Today we have achieved no more than driving the Taliban into territories we cannot enter, lost a great deal of lives and have set up a corrupt and largely undemocratic Government. The end game is no closer, whatever that may have been.

Then there was Iraq. At the time, I felt strongly that Saddam was a spent force - a menace to himself and his people but safely annexed in his territory. Everyone knew he was not a supporter of bin Ladin and that he was not behind 9/11. More importantly, weapons inspector teams were on the ground and no WMDs could be found. All the evidence pointed to Iraq being nothing more than a dead state rather than a modern day threat to world peace, let alone be the 'Axis of Evil' that Bush described.

So, with the benefit of hindsight, what would we have done differently now that we know that the reasons for invasion were not what were used? Would the world have stopped the Bush/Blair Agenda? Would the army have done what it was asked?

Famously, US Marines in Iraq were asked by a reporter why they were there after the invasion. The answers were, 'Because of 9/11'. How let down must those forces have been when they knew Iraq had nothing to do with the atrocities of 9/11.

Our own Intelligence Agencies warned Blair that to invade would heighten the tension between the West and Fanatics and cause greater danger - yet still we went on. Could this have been the trigger for 7/7 in London?

So what would or should we have done differently? Was the chain of subsequent events that lead us to do actually the right course of action? Is the world a safer place because of what we have done or not? Do we feel comfortable that our Leaders then and now act in the interests of World Peace or just to ensure that we have the best access to the world's greatest practical asset - oil?

If we can tackle these questions today, perhaps we can then predict who is going to win the Rugby World Cup next.

Heads in the Cloud

Talking up the game is not unusual in sales and marketing - heck, we are all guilty of over calling success whether be the development of our kids or making a slightly 'exaggerated' claim on the success of a product.

The Cloud is not unusual on that front. I love the way that Microsoft says that it has been in The Cloud for many years with such things as Hotmail and LiveMeeting. Such statements are, indeed, true but these are not chargeable services, even though I remember the time when Microsoft acquired PlaceWare and bundled part of the Meeting technology for free when we charged for it. That is the crucial difference here for the likes of Microsoft. This time around, they have to make money out of the Cloud.

It's fine giving a free email service - people accept it's free and worth every penny in that if it goes down then they should not get uppity. But in the world of Business to Business Cloud software and services, there is a rather big problem if the service goes down as not only are people more dependent on the services but they are paying for it.

It does also come down to whether people understand and care what that difference makes. We have all been brought up on being in corporations where glib messages are sent out that email is offline or a server is down and we tut and get on with it. When that happens in the Cloud, many more companies at the same time may share the same outage and suddenly it becomes a serious issue. If you sell on-premise software as well as Cloud based, you can easily turn to your customer and tell them the virtues of having hybrid environments or warning them off the Cloud. That's fine if you get paid both ways. But true Cloud people don't have that life raft - they get measured on success on only their Cloud service being available nearly all of the time.

 I still have this issue about tree-hugging by the Vendors of on-premise software who are now offering Cloud versions. Not only are the salespeople less knowledgeable about the benefits in the Cloud but they are equivocal because they do not live or die by the results of their expert advice. I think this will decrease the traction of Cloud version software for traditional vendors as they will not instil passion in their salesforce, their channel players and their end users. There is always a safety net if something doesn't quite hang together. The other issue, is that most of these people have not been in SaaS based businesses before so they do not understand what impact selling monthly recurring services has on cash flow, P&L and how you incentivise salespeople. It isn't a question of holding a transformation workshop, it's about giving the practical tools to help. It's about sharing the migration experience and if both parties don't model their businesses the same way how can they truly help or advise one another?

The likes of Salesforce.com and NetSuite never thought that way when they evangelised their Cloud services. It was live or die, win or lose. Get paid or not. It instills total commitment and belief not only in the attributes of their product and service but in the benefits brought by the Cloud. They didn't try to bite off more than they could chew or do mass conversions - they stepped their way to success by persuasion, trials and proof of concepts and then they referenced like crazy. Today, these are some of the fastest prowling, most profitable software companies in the world, but it didn't start that way and that's part of the issue. To a person, vendor salespeople are telling key channel players that whatever effort they make in Cloud it has to produce an ROI in the first year to get any vendor funding help. Then don't be surprised if the channel player turns off.

 

So I think traditional software vendors are holding themselves back by using the same tactics, channel and salespeople to sell their Cloud products. They need to embrace the challenge even competing within their own installed base to truly gain traction and success. They need to have people who not only can demo and talk the story but to use it and live it.

Only then will they get success. Applying old methods to the new world will not work as fast and may even lead to failure. These vendors need fresh blood, fresh methods and people who understand the new world.

Until then, they risk Clouding their own story. 

Eavesy on the Eye

Balancing the disappointing news this morning that I had not won the Euromillions lottery as expected was the fact that finally the DUNNY share price at Empire Avenue has broken through the 30 Eave barrier.

It's a vindication of the CEO's strategy and the fact that two people purchased 600 shares each last night after tight negotiations and reciprocal deals. The 30 Eave barrier had been a physical barrier which now the share has broken through analysts say that there is no reason why it cannot go further quickly. Equally, it could go down just as fast.

But the advantage of DUNNY is this. It is not subject to the vagaries of the overall market, it is not dependent on commodity prices like gold or oil and it is not even subject to battering by debt concerns or economic crisis. This is a true share of the virtual world where only my constant twittering, blogging and other things I have no idea about can affect how it performs. And has long as I have air in my lungs, I will be full of hot air to spout - or whatever analogy applies for writing.

To the shareholders who have made this possible - keep the faith, there is more to come. And to those who haven't bought the share - wipe the tears from your eyes and get your cheque books out as there is more in this sucker yet.

Buy DUNNY - you know it makes sense.

When PR Goes Wrong

So you are in the middle of the desert and you look into your viewing scope on your tank. At first there is nothing there, then eerily several cows start to lumber towards you threateningly. Do you ignore it and look for solid targets that resemble tanks or do you fire?

Well if you had kept up to date with your daily reading of the Telegraph or Twitter, as an experienced tank commander you might have noticed that BAE Systems latest technology is to 'cloak' the infra red signature of a tank so that it appears as a cow on a scanning device.

Now I have never been in the army, far less been in charge of the weapons system on a tank, but armed with BAE's press release I might now know that if I was in the heat of a battle and several cows advanced at me threateningly I might actually guess that they were tanks.

They say any publicity is good publicity but sometimes is it not better to just shut up? The great advantage of the Klingon Cloaking device in Star Trek is that Captain Kirk never new it was there. If it looked like a cow floating in space at warp speed then he might just have guessed that there were Klingons actually off the starboard bow after all.

Is it me or should the PR man be fired? 

There may be trouble ahead

As the FTSE continues its merry plummet and shareholders and pensioners alike look at their investments draining away, and as average wage rises among workers struggle to get anywhere near the inflation target levels let alone the actual rate of inflation, spare a thought for the company directors of these companies.

As Corporate profits fail to impress and futures look very uncertain, there has been an average rise in bonuses across FTSE 250 companies of 187% over the last 10 years while the average long term incentive scheme has risen 700%.

Some would argue that too much of the profits are being creamed off by directors but this is not a new phenomenon. I would argue that there has certainly been a growth in the wealth of 'Portfolio' non-executive directors who just put their names to companies, do the odd lunch and collect fat checks and nice equity plans. Shareholders and pension plan holders like most of us may rightly ask, 'What the hell is going on?' as it is unclear what value we are all getting for such increases in bonuses. But it seems to be the vogue and glib line that. 'If you don't pay the big bucks then you don't get the talent'.

For those of us in business, this is tosh. There are a handful of executives out there who seem to have the knack of turning under performing situations into vast growth in wealth, usually by leveraging someone else's money. Private Equity are the drivers here but that has nothing to do with general purpose company running. The average across the FTSE 250 companies show that profit growth is nothing like the growth in bonuses. And people earn them, as we all know.

Picking on the banking sector, the share price performance over the last 10 years has been pitiful but the incredible bonuses paid have been mindblowing. At the end of the cycle the whole thing went pop and banks literally survived only by our unwilling cooperation by pledging our tax money for the future. This might be allowable if it was a one off situation but the whole thing has been primed to go the same way again. Nobody seemed to realise that the underlying problem was debt and how we trade it. We are finding out that Gordon Brown, that Mensa genius, had no idea either.

But it isn't just banks, even if they are the most idiotic of the culprits after the financial crisis pleaded for a total reform of their modus operandi. Regular companies are at it too. Shareholders should certainly be concerned - but what of the employees?

Surveys about a year ago showed that the average salaries amongst bosses now exceeded the average of their general staff by 10 times in the UK while in the US it's closer 20 times. That is an unsustainable and dangerous gap. There is no such gap in talent and capability and it could be argued that the average value to the company is much more even. But it's dangerous as it seems bosses are immune to the market vagaries and performance. In fact, the worse a company does, the more it will pay its bosses for failure or to get new ones in.

What message does that send staff? What message does it send shareholders? It's incompetence on a growth curve. In too many situations whether a company director or in sport management, it pays to fail spectacularly and quickly. For that you get heaps of money in severance, far more than you could earn in bonuses over the long term for success and you get to do it all over again. It seems the more you fail, the more people will pay you.

It's a cycle we need to break. I don't think general staff will sit about too much longer bearing the brunt of failure with their jobs and wages while fat bosses earn massive bonuses for mediocre performance and failure.We learned very little at all from the financial crisis and it papered over a mentality in company boardrooms that is distinctly unhealthy in modern business.

What happened to only getting paid commensurately for success? Seems to have gone out with the bail outs.

Breast is Best

Well at least I have your attention and, no, this is not some politically incorrect debate by drooling males over which female limbs or organs are better than another.

This is about the Government and NHS dogma over breast feeding. My second child is now 6 weeks old and one of the best strategies my wife and I have on sharing duties of care is to supplement the young child's intake of breast milk with formula, namely SMA. We also have the same strategy still with my 17 month old son who drinks the SMA 2 follow on milk. In fact, my daughter is progressing so well that my wife couldn't possibly keep up with her and so she has 'Hungry' version of the milk.

It's a small thing but it illustrates the 'Nanny State' going to the nth degree. The Government and the NHS have decreed that 'Breast is Best' and no one would disagree with that position about breast feeding. However, to promote it as rabid dogma is just stupid. In our case, if we followed that line solely,not only would our daughter fail to thrive but I could not share in feeding duties particularly at night when exhaustion for my wife is a huge threat.

What prompted me on this diatribe? Would you believe it is the trivial matter that in the thousands of pounds we have spent at Boots on various substances and accessories for our children, they don't issue rewards points for baby milk. This, we are assured, is not a Boots policy. This is a direct, Central Government and NHS decree and it is designed to stop mothers feeding their babies formula milk.

So to get this straight, Government and the NHS have interfered with the pricing of a major over the counter product to the point of discouraging its sales. Not on the grounds of safety but because it supports a dogmatic position which enforces the sole burden of feeding a baby on the mother not just for the first 4-6 months of its life, but for all of its requirements of milk. I know there are things like 'expressing' which may ease things but realistically this is probably an infringement of people's rights but also of EU Competition Law as the price of this milk is unnecessarily high.

As a father, it is great to be able to share in the duties of feeding and I am glad to give some respite to my wife at nights when she can do with the rest. It's still hard but at least it just gives a modicum of sharing. If we followed dogma on this, it would be my wife only and I just think that's both idiotic and unfair.

It's not about having the Boots points, it's about some common sense. I am no doctor or health worker but even I can see the sense of that.

Is doing nothing a strategy?

It's something I often hear in meetings, 'Sometimes, doing nothing is a strategy'.

It's right up there with, 'Sometimes, no decision is a decision.' Indeed, I was taught a whole series of selling strategies where our biggest competition was identified as 'doing nothing'. That was in the early days of SaaS at the turn of millennium when we were cutting our teeth selling what is today Microsoft LiveMeeting but was PlaceWare. Very often, SaaS identified new communication methods or collaboration tools which helped companies save time, costs, increase productivity and so increase their bottom line. When packaged in those terms, it was a wonder why people didn't bite your arm off. But in spite of some real benefits which not just saved money but increased teamwork and output, people turned it down in favour of the status quo.

Today, such tools are used widely across our industry as de facto standards of doing business. Teleconferencing, web collaboration, webinars, ad hoc meetings like Webex, Go To Meeting, LiveMeeting and others are all parts of the standard kit bag of the modern day company. Back then, it was bleeding edge stuff.

It took a lot of hard work, evangelising and daily use of the product to sell monthly seat intsalls but we saw that by getting a small sale, building adoption, internal reference selling and proving ROI continuously we eventually got larger seat sales and big renewals. By the end of the second year we had built up quarterly annuity sales of over $1m in Europe alone. A year later, Microsoft bought the company and bundled the product for free. Webex, our major contender, was bought by Cisco for $2.3bn and is still charged on a monthly fee basis today.

Some companies really understand SaaS sales, some don't. What is certainly true is that in order to sell it and adequately engage others to buy and sell it, it helps a great deal to have been there and sold SaaS before. Today, traditional vendors talk of resellers transforming their model yet the same company has themselves not transformed. In most cases, they don't use the product internally and they are not rewarded solely (some evenly partly) on the sales of the SaaS version of their product.

It makes them poor advisers to customers and resellers to start with. But in my opinion, it is a recipe to make sure that 'No decision' is once again the vendors' greatest competition and that is because for resellers and their channels, they are generating a 'doing nothing is a strategy' as a response.

By not evangelising and truly believing to the point of total dependency on the sale of the product, they are not committed to its success. That's a huge problem for those vendors who are trying to convince their users and channel of their SaaS or Cloud credentials. Nobody believes a doubter. Nobody believes anyone who hasn't got 'skin in the game'.

The strongest advice I can give to such software vendors is to put your money where your mouth is. Get true SaaS people in, change your model of reward and make the Cloud based product a separate division - even in competition with the old product - with separate P&L. That's the real world. And it's a real strategy. It's what you are asking your resellers to do.

Don't make 'No decision' the competition and don't make 'Doing nothing is a strategy' the reason why you don't succeed.


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