ka-POW-er!

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After seven years of providing IT consulting services under the “fusion IT” moniker, we’ve rebranded our business.

Rebrands are difficult and potentially confusing. So why would we take such an extreme measure? We have a number compelling reasons:

• The word “fusion” no longer adequately explains our mission. (And it’s become overused.)
• Information Technology (“I.T.”) is not well understood, especially in the context of Small- to Medium-sized businesses.
• In most cases, I.T. spending is “dead money”. Hard-earned money does little more than to keep things running, when instead, it should be making businesses more effective.
• Finally, our vision for the Creative Economy extends beyond Information Technology and we will offer new services to reflect that fact.

In short, we do not want the limitations of I.T. to limit our services or your success. Technology can and should do so much more!

ka-POW-er! has one goal in mind: Helping Your Business Be Awesomer.

Where traditional I.T. providers are focused on activities, time and costs, ka-POW-er! is focused on results.

Where traditional I.T. providers make more money by spending more time, ka-POW-er! makes more money by making you more successful.

Where traditional I.T. is an expense, ka-POW-er! means investing to realize improvements, progress, growth, and joy. (Yes, we think technology should bring joy.)

We are excited about our new direction, and more importantly, the big results we expect to see for our clients.

If you have a moment, take a look around our website, heading either to the Home Page or straight to “About“. Let us know what you think.

A broken-down jail at 235% capacity. Summer heat. No air conditioning. Accused murderers awaiting trial alongside thieves and the disorderly.

How does a jail superintendent manage such a potentially explosive situation? According to this WBUR report, with fans. Lots of them. But the key is popsicles.

The superintendent explains,

“We had a staff meeting and it was unbearably hot up here, and besides fans we were thinking, ‘What could we ever do to make sure that the population know that we know how hot it was?’”

Three-cent popsicles are distributed after lunch and dinner. On one especially hot day, when the temperature reached 100 degrees F., popsicles were passed out once more at 10 P.M.

Do the popsicles really make a difference?

“Oh, sure they do, it’s a nice gesture — it says that ‘We care that you’re hot’, cool you down for a few minutes, you know,” says one inmate. “They don’t have to do this… They treat you like human beings.”

Lest you think the superintendent has gone soft, treating the inmates like human beings, keeps them safer, which in turn, keeps the corrections officers safer. But the message of “We know. We care” is not lost on the inmates.

Without comparing workplaces to jails, there are a number of parallels for managers. Every business faces hardships; inadequate staffing, facilities budget constraints, extreme schedule demands, or outdated computers and software. Many times these are issues which managers cannot control. It is vital, however, to communicate to your teams that you understand things are not ideal. That you understand the impact on people’s jobs and their work lives.

This essential truth is highlighted in numerous case studies featured in The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer.

Amabile and Kramer researched what they term “Inner Work Life”  - “the conditions that foster positive emotions, strong internal motivation, and favorable perceptions of colleagues and the work itself.”

In their studies, small thoughtful gestures made all the difference in a number of difficult situations. In one instance, a software engineer came into work during her vacation week and put in 58 hours on a time-sensitive project shortly after a number of coworkers were fired. Some of the key events that led to a successful outcome were a supervising manager checking in on the team and bringing expensive bottled water and a Vice President showing up with pizza. These simple acts did not even come close to financially compensating the team for their extra work, but the message was clear; the project was important and management, all the way up the org. chart, understood the value of the team’s work on an important project.

Don’t forget to be human. Show courtesy, respect, and appreciation. And, it should go without saying, treat your employees better than inmates.

Twitter has become (for me at least) as important a news source as my RSS feeds and over the past few months, re-tweeting has almost completely replaced my blogging. There’s no need to forward a link to myself, then later write a blog post. I simply re-tweet and the information is instantly re-broadcast. The problem is that Twitter is both very temporary and cluttered, and I’m sure much of the great information and many inspirational blurbs I find and re-tweet are going to waste.

So I had an idea – what if I could send my tweets to my blog? Not just to a widget in the sidebar, but integrated with my blog posts. Well, there appears to be a WordPress Plugin called Twitter Tools to make it happen, and I’m going to give it a try. Now all the tweets, along with their inspiration will have a more permanent home.

In this excellent post, Seth Godin grabs us by the shoulders and asks, “Are you making something?”

In his usually astute way, he notices a major problem with the way makers and knowledge workers work.

…we’re often using precisely the same device to do our work as we are to distract ourselves from our work.

He offers a simple, but bold solution: don’t use your computer for anything except making. Use something else, perhaps an iPad, for shopping, gaming, social networking.

As a technology professional, I can think of a number of ways to accomplish the same result, though Seth’s suggestion has at its core a very important concept: setting boundaries. Unless we have a certain amount of focus and discipline, not popular words in our culture, our effectiveness will dwindle to zero.

While Seth’s solution is perfectly valid, consider these other ways to protect your effectiveness:

• If you are using a Mac, (and if you seek simplicity and effectiveness you should be) set up another User account for specific tasks
• Disable anything on your computer that has a badge in the dock, an audio alert, or a pop-up notification (Growl is the enemy)
• Silence your Smartphone and/or iPad and keep them out of sight
• Use timers such as Minuteur or Pester
• More and more applications are now offering “full-screen mode”. Use it.
• Consider having separate physical locations for work and play even it’s opposite ends of your desk or office
• Learn how to use Mac OS X “Spaces” to maintain focus
• Coordinate uninterruptible times with your boss and colleagues
• Wear headphones or have some other visual clue that you are not to be interrupted

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. Add your own below in the comments.

As Seth says, “Go, make something. We need it!”

Read Seth’s entire post.

[And be sure to check out Part I here: To Technology! The Cause of and Solution to All of Life’s Problems.]

Take a look at this comical chart that measures your computer skills based on your e-mail address*. It’s funny because there is a grain of truth to it, as most people use one of these services or those of their home Internet Service Provider (ISP). Unfortunately, many freelancers, sole proprietors, and small business also fit into this category.

So what’s wrong with using your home ISP/Yahoo/AOL/Hotmail/Gmail account for business? Two things.

First, you are forfeiting a  branding opportunity, whether it is your ”personal brand” or your company’s brand. Second, and closely tied to your brand, is trust. If you do not have your own domain name (something.com or .org or .net) for your e-Mail (and website!), your business seems temporary or amateur.

Quoting Nine Essential Trust Indicators for Your SMB Web Site:

It’s a lot easier to trust someone who has clearly invested in their business over someone who simply stumbled across a free Yahoo or Gmail account… It’s a very simple trust cue that packs a big punch.

In other words, people are less likely to bring you their business. More bluntly, you are turning away money.

Chances are, getting a domain name for your business is one of those things you’ve thought about, but put off because of the hassle. Perhaps you couldn’t find a domain that you liked. Perhaps you bought a domain and got overwhelmed by all the choices and technicalities at the domain name “registrar”. Maybe changing your e-mail address seemed like a huge headache.

Whatever your reason, it’s time you gave the issue some serious thought.

fusion IT has helped numerous professionals and business set up new domains (along with their web sites and e-mail accounts) and we have overcome every possible obstacle. We can confidently guide you through any domain name, web site, and/or e-mail transition. And we are streamlining the process to keep it simple and affordable. Contact us today for fixed price domain name registration (or transition) packages. (Contact info is in the footer.)

(*Unfortunately, the chart leaves out Internet provider address such as @comcast.net or verizon.net, which we, if forced, would have to rank below Gmail.)

“Here is Edward Bear coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.” -A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

It struck me last night following the AICP screening that there are a lot of miserable people in advertising. The thing is, they have little time to think about it because they are so overworked. They are squeezed by their clients. They are squeezed by their managers who are squeezed by their parent companies who are squeezed by their shareholders. Why? Because everyone is focused on costs and efficiency in the pursuit of profitability.

For the love of Pete, people, it’s time to wake UP! We’re not making widgets in a factory!

Ideas, branding insight, strategy and the myriad of services provided by Advertising Agencies are not commodities, and should not be priced as such. These services are valuable to our clients, reinforcing their brands, their connections with customers, and ultimately communicating their value to their clients. They are professional services. They are not off-shorable. When we do our jobs well, people happily purchase our clients’ products. And our clients are profitable as a result.

Our compensation needs to reflect not how much time we spent on a project, but our results, so that we can be profitable as well. Only then can we stop bumping our heads for a moment and focus on reinvesting some of those profits into our talent and our cultures.

——-

Small Business Trends has a great article detailing all the various challenges in choosing the perfect name for your business.

The article covers legal aspects, domain names (which factor into your e-mail addresses) as well as Twitter and social media. Because so many .com domains are taken, you will likely have to get a little creative, perhaps using a company slogan.

It’s an iterative process fraught with setbacks. And you only have one chance to get it right! Be sure to work with a branding specialist, or at least a handful of brand-savvy colleagues.

It’s no secret that I am a big fan of 37signals, and it made my day when this TED Video was posted. 37signals’ Jason Fried explains the sad irony that people do not find their offices to be the place where they actually get work done. He blames both managers and meetings – two involuntary forces that interrupt work. Creative people (including engineers and developers) need blocks of uninterrupted time.

Managers, you owe it to yourselves and your employees to watch Jason’s presentation and rethink the way you manage.

Derek Sivers offers some excellent advice on hiring a programmer, though three of the first four steps can be applied to almost any creative endeavor in which you are hiring outside expertise. Those steps are:

• Reduce your big idea to “Version 1.0”. What is the “bare minimum that would make you happy, and people would find useful.”
• Write a simple overview of what it does.
• Break it up into milestones. (Approximately a day’s work)

It’s sobering to think about how many projects I’ve come across which only communicate a few vague adjectives such as “cool” or “cutting edge” to the designers and programmers. If nothing else, start with Derek’s advice.

This Harvard Business Review post by Mavericks at Work author, Bill Taylor, gives us something to think about over the weekend.

It’s a question posed by ad legend Roy Spence of GSD&M:  If your company went out of business tomorrow, would anybody really miss you and why?

Your employees? Your clients? Your Vendors? Are you making the sort of impact on them that a year later, their lives and businesses would still be impacted? Taylor states:

“If your customers can live without you, eventually they will.”

How can you differentiate your business from your competitors? How can you create emotional connections around your brand? How can you create an experience for your clients? How can you forge better relationships with the people who bring you business?

If you think your small business doesn’t need this level of planning and strategy? Think again.