TBEX Conference at the Double Tree, Dublin

This is the first week of my 4-year PhD study program and it’s been pretty hectic.

I am affiliated to the School of Business at NUI Maynooth and am focusing on my chosen area of study, namely ‘The Role of Social Media in Sustainable Business Development’ (although the extended title of my proposal is far more officious sounding and (probably overly) wordy!).

I’ll reflect back on the first class I took, on Tuesday, (Organising and Managing Doctoral Research) in a later post but right now I want to focus on the TBEX conference that I’m attending today and tomorrow at the Double Tree Hotel in central Dublin.

The TBEX conference is promoted as “the world’s largest gathering of travel bloggers, writers, and new media content creators” and it is held periodically in different locations worldwide.

My supervisor, Professor Brian Donnellan advised me to attend and managed to obtain a registration pass for me through Dublin City Council (where Ms. Sarah Moloney was very helpful!), which I was glad about because the normal admittance fee for the two day event is US $997 – way out of a poor PhD student‘s price range!

I don’t know much about travel blogging, despite having travelled a fair bit over the last 25 years (and lived in 8 different countries) but Social Media is an important companion to blogging in general (in terms of promoting new (or old) blog posts) while conversely, blogging itself could be classified as Social Media activity insofar as user-generated content is the main output of both these internet-based phenomena. They are complimentary, co-dependent and synergistic (in my opinion).

The opening morning of TBEX kicked off with a keynote address by Californian ‘hotelier, author and speaker‘ Chip Conley in the large conference room. Unfortunately I only caught about the last 30 minutes of his speech (because of rain-congested Dublin city traffic delays) but he made some excellent observations related to travel blogging (and especially festival-going), spiced up with many humorous asides and genuine engagement with the audience. Many attendees found his words to be quite inspring and took to Twitter immediately to voice their approval – see here.

Afterwards, I attended two presentations in the morning session, both with a Social Media slant. I’ll describe them briefly below.

The first presentation was given by Ian Cleary of RazorSocial (who I could best physically describe as Aidan Gillen with fair hair) in the Munster Room.

21 Tools and Technology Tips to Dramatically Grow Your Following Online

Ian expertly schooled us on his “21 Tool and Technology Tips to Dramatically Grow Your Following Online” which are now available on SlideShare. His suggestions were very detailed and specific, and contained lots of useful recommendations replete with plentiful URLs to assist the intrepid travel blogger in getting his or her content ‘out there’. An example would be Triberr, a content sharing community which I overheard some of the experienced traveller audience discussing in a positive manner.

Curiously though, I thought Ian’s 21st tip should have been the 1st on the list – namely ‘Automate the sharing of content’ – a practice which I believe is the foundation of successful Social Media activity for firms and individuals alike.

After a quick cup of tea I ventured upstairs to enter (slightly tardily) a talk given by (self confessed geek) Mike Sowden (blog: Fevered Mutterings) which was entitled “All The World’s A Status Update: Using Social Media To Tell Good Stories” and focused on the story telling aspect of Social Media.

I was particularly impressed by Mike’s novel and innovative suggestions to bloggers in relation to how they should (or could) release their new content to multiple platforms. The normal procedure is to promote a new post to all those connected Social Media platforms that any given blogger might use, at the same time, so that content consumers might get an identical update on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc. synchronously.

Mike Sowden’s Innovative Ideas For Blogging / Social Media Storytelling

However, Mike, being a comic book devotee has been inspired by an approach that was taken when American firm Marvel released their Civil War series in 2006.

Instead of a traditional linear story release, Marvel decide to interweave the Civil War narrative arc into a number of their stand-alone character stories (e.g. Fantastic Four, Wolverine, Ironman etc.) which had the effect of requiring the reader to familiarise himself or herself with different threads of the story across multiple publications, thereby showcasing what these existing titles had to offer while progressing the Civil War saga in itself. A very clever (and somewhat manipulative) marketing strategy it might be argued.

As applied to Social Media and blogging, Mike believes that a similar approach (see photo above) might engender greater sharing and engagement among readers as a story builds and propagates itself in a self perpetuating fashion across multiple platforms.

It’s a cute theory which in some ways reminds me of the (far more basic) ‘role playing books’ that we used to read in the 1980s (for example, the Lone Wolf series) in which we had a certain amount of automony (although leading to a limited number of conclusions – which would not be the case in blogging) in deciding which way the (our) story would progress at a number of key points (e.g. choose path A through the forest or path B to the castle, etc.)

I have a feeling that my forthcoming research into Social Media might benefit from keeping the enlightening ideas that Mike unveiled today in mind. I look forward to more stimulating presentations at the second day of the conference tomorrow.

‘Moneyball’ – Hindsight Is A Wonderful Thing

Exposing The Myth Of Billy Beane

Yesterday I watched the engrossing movie ‘Moneyball’ starring Brad Pitt which tells the story of Billy Beane, the General Manager (GM) of the Oakland Athletics baseball team.

This movie was based on a book of the same name by well-known American writer, Michael Lewis.

Around 2001, Billy Beane introduced a new (statistically based) method of player selection and on-field tactics entitled sabermetrics to the California-based team, despite significant resistance from inside the organization (e.g. half the scouts left in the first year).

Sabermetrics challenged traditional methods and mind-sets in baseball and was credited with improving the team’s performance, spurring them on to a record 20 game winning streak as well as higher win percentages and consistent appearances in the play-off positions since then.

Billy Beane was / is hailed as a visionary ‘change agent’ for daring to challenge the embedded practices of baseball management, and several other teams in the national league have since adopted sabermetrics, mostly with successful results.

However, having watched the movie (although I haven’t yet read Lewis’s book) and having read a number of academic articles (e.g. Wolfe, Wright & Smart, 2006) which give credit to Billy Beane for his success with change management as applied to the Oakland Athletics, I have my own (and contrary) take on the situation.

I think it’s possible that Billy Beane got lucky with his adoption of sabermetrics and subsequent hero status, and if I use the evidence of the movie (accepting that 1. there is bound to be some fictionalization, 2. no one can really know what goes on in Billy Beane’s mind, except himself), here’s why:

1. At the beginning of the movie Billy begs the Athletics owner for more money prior to the new season so as to compete with the richer teams in the league – at this point it is clear that Billy has no intention of changing his management style or the methods of the organization, should he secure the extra funding.

2. Billy is refused extra investment for players and meets with Cleveland Indians‘ boss Mark Shapiro in a desperate attempt to buy and trade for new players but makes very little progress.

3. Through a coincidental meeting with Peter Brand (a part-fictionalized character) Billy takes a massive gamble (a ‘Hail Mary pass‘) in trusting the young economics graduate to implement the sabermetrics program at Oakland. At this point he has nothing to lose as he has very little money and is struggling to procure new players. However, there doesn’t seem to be anything planned or preconceived about this new strategy. It is totally emergent. He is merely ‘taking a punt’. It strikes me as a case of Micawberism -‘something will turn up’ – for Beane – who appears to be almost at his wit’s end (indeed something does turn up, by pure coincidence – sabermetrics).

4. Beane is a strong character in the movie (and, we must assume, in real life) with lots of energy and leadership skills so he rides roughshod over the objections of the traditional selectors and scouts to push on with the sabermetrics revolution. Many leave, as mentioned above. However, this does not mean that he is correct in his new strategy – he could not know it would work without first trying it. And he tries it in desperation.

(Note: I am not doubting the validity or success to date of sabermetrics, although the jury is out on the long term sustainability of using it; especially because competitive advantage may be eroded over time as other teams adopt and imitate the strategy.)

5. At this point in proceedings Beane is totally committed to sabermetrics and even though the new season results are initially disappointing, he must push on with his plans. There is no turning back now even though success is not ‘inevitable’ (how can it be? no one can tell the future). In another meeting with the owner (who is serendipitously, and conveniently liberal in how much free reign he gives the GM), Billy assures him that results will improve. But what else is he supposed to say? That they won’t? His job and his future are at stake and his 12 year daughter is on his mind – she is worried about him. Could we really have expected him to resign from his well-paid job halfway through the season when he is already on a ‘hiding to nothing’?

6. Eventually the results improve and the afore-mentioned winning streak materializes in line with what sabermetrics would claim to predict over a longer series of games. (Again, I am not doubting the effectiveness of sabermetrics – but nor am I asserting it. Such an assertion is beyond the scope of this essay and beyond my capabilities). However, because sabermetrics has ‘done its job’ (at least in the short-term), Billy is now ‘in the clear’ – in fact, according to one academic review, he is a “strategically oriented, analytical chief people officer who is comfortable in the role of change agent” (Pace, 2006).

I dispute that Beane is anything of the sort. Although he undoubtedly possesses knowledge (especially about baseball), energy, good instincts and strong leadership skills, he did not formally study management and I sincerely doubt that he was even aware of the nature and complexities of strategic change management until after the event; notwithstanding the fact that my interpretation is based on what I have seen in the movie, read in several academic reviews and does not include a reading of Lewis’s book or a chance to interview Beane in person (unfortunately).

Beane did not appear to follow any recognized model of change management (e.g. Kotter’s ‘8 Steps of Leading Change‘) when he took action. In fact, he seemed to have navigated the entire process ‘on the hoof’ reacting to whatever effect he was having on entities in the moment as events transpired (e.g. when he fired scouting director Grady Fuson, after Fuson provoked an argument, or when he eventually persuaded the team coach, Art Howe, under duress, to put out the line-up he wanted, despite the fact that Howe was able to field his own team selection for a series of games after sabermetrics was introduced!).

In conclusion, I would posit that theorists and practitioners of change management do themselves a disservice by overly crediting Billy Beane (as genuine, charismatic and interesting a man as he might be) with his visionary status as a change agent.

Instead, the father of sabermetrics (Bill James) or the man who really brought its rigorous analysis to Oakland (Peter Brand in the movie version and, apparently, Paul DePodesta in reality) might deserve the academic and sporting plaudits.

Compass Group Ireland – sustainability policy.

I have chosen Compass Group Ireland as the company whose sustainability policy I would like to highlight during this semester’s module MN315: The Sustainable Enterprize.

Their ‘Being Responsible’ link can be found here.

Group Managing Director, Ian Sarson introduces us to the company’s commitment to ‘responsible business’, and presents ‘The Five Pillars of Corporate Responsibility‘ as their method of managing these key issues.

In brief, the ‘Five Pillars’ focus on People (employees), Sustainable Sourcing, Wellness and Nutrition, the Environment, and the wider Community.

Boss Metrics!

I made an appearance on video last Friday (21st Sep.) after our MN219: Social Media class with lecturer, Conor Lynch, from SocialMedia.ie

Boss Metrics is a new social media analytics tool that we will be using during this module to monitor, assess and report the impact of our social media promotion for a local company.

Looking forward to it!

Adam

Organizations as Psychic Prisons

The Organizational Theorist Gareth Morgan first published his book ‘Images of Organization’ in 1986, in which, through the prism of eight metaphors, he attempts to describe the nature and complexities of organizations. A metaphor is a “figure of speech which makes an implied comparison between things which are not literally alike” (Webster, 1961). Morgan also uses the related literary devices of allegory and analogy to illustrate his theories. One such powerful metaphor is that of ‘The Psychic Prison’.

Introducing Plato’s ‘Cave’ allegory, where confined prisoners cannot conceptualize the outside world, the author contends that people can become “imprisoned in” organizations through conscious and unconscious processes which have been created during formative phases and varied human experiences in their lives. The implications of these phenomena for organizations and the repercussions for individuals can be serious and profound; leading to negative outcomes for society as a whole and these issues require in-depth research, description and management for progressive development of both organizations and people.

For example, the phenomenon of groupthink in organizations is of crucial significance. It occurs when organizational, social and cultural traps develop in groups, fostering a sense of “assumed consensus” (even in the face of contradictory evidence), alienating dissenting opinions, retarding problem-solving, inhibiting the expression of doubts and suppressing the conception, discussion and action of alternate options. Decision-making becomes skewed in such a scenario and can lead to negative, unethical or disastrous results. A prime example of groupthink is the recent financial crisis in Ireland where banking institutions and the Department of Finance believed in the “efficiency of financial markets” (Nyberg Report, 2011) to regulate themselves which ultimately proved detrimental to the entire nation.

The origin of ‘The Psychic Prison’ phenomenon is traced to the human unconscious. Morgan describes a (non-exhaustive) list of psychological factors which contribute to the differing nature of relationships that people have with organizations, including theories of sexuality, family dynamics, mortality, anxiety and other,  more obtuse hypotheses (such as ‘artefacts’, ‘archetypes’ and ‘shadows’) which have been propounded by renowned experts including Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. He concludes his dissertation by highlighting several strengths and limitations of the metaphor and praises the window of “critical thinking and awareness” of organizational issues that it opens while acknowledging that its complexity does not make it conducive to providing any “easy answers and solutions to problems” for managers.

References

Department of Finance (2011). Commission of Investigation into the Banking Sector, Misjudging Risk: Causes of the Systemic Banking Crisis In Ireland (Nyberg Report). [online] Available at: <http://www.bankinginquiry.gov.ie/Documents/Misjuding%20Risk%20-%20Causes%20of%20the%20Systemic%20Banking%20Crisis%20in%20Ireland.pdf&gt; [Accessed 31 Mar. 2012].

Morgan, G. (1997). Images of Organization. 2^nd edition. London, UK: Sage Publications Ltd.

Webster’s (1966). Webster’s Dictionary. 3^rd edition. Springfield, Massachusetts, USA: Merriam-Webster.

Caribbean Creative

During late 2010, in my first semester at NUI Maynooth as a mature student studying Business & Management, I was given an assignment entitled ‘Interview with an Entrepreneur’ for the module MN107: Innovations: Ideas That Changed The World.

I submitted the following piece wherein I studied the career of Andy Manley, visionary artist and founder of ‘Caribbean Creative‘ assisted by interviews with him conducted through the medium of Skype.

Interview with Entrepreneur

The Psychic Prison Metaphor

The Management at Phoenix Restaurant

Linda Brophy is the General Manager at the Phoenix Restaurant. Linda started her career in the catering industry as a Chef, attending DIT, Cathal Brugha Street to study Professional Cookery for 3 years.

Linda Brophy - General Manager at the Phoenix Restaurant

After qualifying she worked in various restaurants around the country which involved “long hours, split shifts and no life” before settling into industrial catering. Linda started working for Compass Catering in 1999 as a Chef and soon fell into a Supervisor’s role. It was from here that she became interested in Management and slowly moved up the ladder to her current position as General Manager.

Linda has now been working with Compass Group Ireland for 13 years; 12 years in the corporate giant, Microsoft and the past year here at NUI Maynooth. She has thoroughly enjoyed the working experience on-campus and the following statement sums it up in her own words:

“Life in Maynooth has been great, very different to the corporate world that I have been involved with for so long, but so much fun. The students are young, energetic and full of life. We are adapting everyday here to make sure we can give them the best food and service at competitive prices. Our first year on campus has gone well, but we still have lots to give. Watch out for next year’s new additions to the Phoenix. It will only get better!”

Anna Szyszkowska is Linda’s “right hand woman” at Phoenix in the role of Assistant Manager. Anna moved from Poland to Ireland in September 2004 at the age of 18 and “from day one” she was working in the catering industry. As she recalls, she tried “every angle” in the business including cheffing, waitressing and bar work. In January 2006 she started working with Compass Group as a Supervisor, also at their Microsoft operation in Sandyford and subsequently got promoted to Assistant Manager under Linda who was the General Manager there at the time.

Anna Szyszkowska - Assistant Manager at the Phoenix Restaurant

In 2005, Anna enrolled at DIT, Cathal Brugha Street street on a 3 year part-time BA in Hotel and Restaurant Management. She graduated in 2008 with a distinction and a student excellence award.

Anna left Compass Group just after graduating college and worked as an Assistant Manager in Tenors Grill Room in Donnybrook (now closed). She remained there until January 2011 but then decided to go back to industrial catering because (in her own words) “the long hours and weekends in the restaurant were starting to bother” [her].

She returned to Compass as a supervisor of a small cafe situated at the Four Courts in Central Dublin, the Friary Cafe. In September 2011, she found an internal vacancy advertisement for a position at the Phoenix and decided to go for it because it was an opportunity to work with Linda again.

Anna is “very happy with the job” because she is “learning an awful lot”. She thinks that “every client base is different, the courts were very interesting” [but] “the college is completely different again so it keeps my job entertaining”.

Anna Szyszkowska busy working on the tills at Phoenix Restaurant

Aside from Linda and Anna there are no other management staff on-site at Phoenix.

The other staff include:

• Head Chef – Andrew Fitzgerald.
• Second Chef – Alan Kelleher.
• Other Chefs – Anton, Ryan & Denise (and they also serve the food at lunch time).
• In Linda’s words “These guys prepare all the food and treats on offer from the Phoenix”.

At Phoenix we can also find on duty:

• Jana – the beautiful Coffee Barrista in the Costa Cafe.
• Anne Marie and Catherine – the till operators who greet customers every day.
• Joan, Adelaide & Donal – the servers who, according to Linda, “might give you an extra scoop of chips if you are nice to them”.
• Daire & John – who keep the kitchen clean and the plates stocked up. They are not seen but are “crucial to the operation”.

In summary there are a total of 13 staff employed at Phoenix, expertly managed by Linda and Anna, providing an excellent array of services to the restaurant’s patrons.

My Personal Branding Plan

MN319 : E-Marketing                                                                                               SocialMedia.ie

Designs by Andrea LeBeau (part one)

A friend and former business partner of mine has started a new and exciting business in partnership with his talented wife Andrea. They are based in the US state of Illinois.

Andrea is originally from Hungary and a graduate of “fine art and painted oil on canvas”.

Their enterprise is eponymously titled ‘Andrea LeBeau’ (changed from the earlier version – ‘Designs by Andrea LeBeau’). The company website is located at this link.

They design and produce bespoke accessories specializing in shawls, wraps and scarves. The exclusive and individually-made products are created from premium quality organic fibres such as alpaca, polwarth, merino and yak wools, as well as bamboo fibre and bombyx silk.

Roses

At first they intended to sell their carefully crafted wares to customers on a one-to-one basis using direct market techniques through their website over the Internet.

However, they soon realised that a potentially more lucrative approach was to offer the products on a wholesale basis to boutiques, galleries and shops which can then sell to the consumer face-to-face.

To facilitate this strategy properly requires the small company to attend frequent trade, art and fashion shows and to exhibit the attractive products on personalized stalls. This can be an expensive activity in itself with registration fees ranging anywhere between $300 and $3,000 depending on the amount of attendees and commercial exposure possible at any given location.

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Posted in Business | Tagged accessories, Andrea LeBeau, bespoke, customer service, design, event, exclusive, fashion, fashion show, management, marketing, presentation, scarves, SocialMedia.ie, style, trade show | 9 Comments