Do You Want This Guy On Your Team?

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There’s this guy who is looking for work. Actually, he’s being pushed out of his current organization. He’s basically been isolated from the rest of his team but they won’t fire him. The whole thing is really odd.

He made some comment or did something benign, but his boss thought her authority was being challenged. So now he’s kind of stuck. Looking for work.

This guy’s record is exceptional. He’s bounced around a few different organizations over the past few years, but he’s always performed remarkably no matter where he lands. (He even became the lead person in his role at one point.)

I haven’t worked with him directly and the things I hear aren’t always flattering, but I see what he does and I can’t believe he’s looking for work.

It’s quite possible all this person needs is the ‘right fit’. That fit might be a challenge to find, but it can’t be hard to figure out what the ‘wrong fit’ is (see employers, previous).

But imagine if your team was the right fit? He’s been great. And your team is probably doing pretty well. If you can mix the two together, can you imagine the success?

Yes, it might take a bit of hand-holding and a lot of communication, but wouldn’t that be worth it?

We all know that colleague who was super bright / ambitious / friendly but just didn’t fit in. It might have been the culture. It could have been the boss. It could have been both. Or something different altogether.

Things might have gotten bad before they left, but they eventually ended up leaving and finding something that was more their speed. They found their “right fit” and their success accelerated dramatically (and their teams benefited tremendously!).

Would you take a chance on Carlos Tevez?

 

Carlos Tevez: Welcome to Manchester

 

 
 

Does The Freemium Model Extend To Services?

Borrowing a quote from the Freemium entry on Wikipedia via Fred Wilson:

Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc., then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.

Fred uses the word “service” but if you look at the post the above quote comes from, service relates to a product or web service.

I’m wondering, if you’re a talented person with an entrepreneurial vision with limited coding / product-building experience / skills, can you instead shift the focus of the business model above from products to services?

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Meet with Ease

Frustrated by missed meetings, employees began voting down the ability to connect with prospects and clients. The frustration was easily understood – different timezones coupled with different calendar / reminder applications was creating havoc with everyone’s calendars.
 
By utilizing an online scheduling system, employees were able to shift their focus from integrating calendars to supporting the challenges customers and prospects were facing.
 
Utilizing a free* service called Tungle, support personnel provided their available times in the local timezone of the customer / prospect.
 
This system is providing a number of benefits:

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What Do I Need To Get Online?

Follow up on yesterday’s post, where do you start if you’re looking to get online?

Firstly, congratulations on making the big step – These are exciting times!

Next, listen to the Wall Street Journal. They have a good, albeit a bit confusing, article “A Web Presence Without A Website“. If you take out the confusing part (no website, but a blog site, etc.), the underlying goal is to get started somewhere.

Regardless of what you call it, you’ll have to start somewhere. My preference is to first walk through a single non-website/blog site activity:

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Your Online Presence Is Stale

Ok, you’ve taken the big leap. You have a presence on the Internet! Woo! Now what?

You’ll want to tell everyone that you have arrived. You have this great, terrific story and you want people to hear about it. They need to hear about it. Easy enough. You go out and sign up on:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Tumblr
  • LinkedIn
  • Meetup
  • Foursquare
  • Others1

Great! Now you start posting great content. About your products, your services, your ideas, your expertise. You might use some integration pieces to ensure this information flows out from your site to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Meetup, FourSquare, Others. Bang. The word is out. You are here. Come get some.

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