September 26, 2007

Old School in a New Media World

I’m old. Or at least old school.

When someone on my team asks me to look at a document they’ve written, I usually print it out and then mark it up old-fashioned style with a red pen – reminiscent of my days as a copy editor at Network World in the early 90’s. When I hand my co-worker back a hard copy with my notes in the margin, they look at me like I just walked out of the caveman exhibit at the Natural History Museum.

At dinner the other night, I was joking around with my 15-year-old daughter, Sheighlin, and I said, “Don’t get all up in my grill.” Just trying to show her that the old man could still bring it in this funky world we now live in. She had a look of terror on her face that would have rivaled a young Jamie Lee Curtis from the first Halloween movie (see, even my pop references are old). My other daughter, Ariana, then leaned over to me and said, “Dad, don’t ever say that again. That expression is sooo yesterday.” She shook her head dismissively and sighed heavily. My wife merely laughed and said, “Honey, even I know that.”

Half the time, I can’t even read the text messages I get from my two girls as I’ve never quite mastered the truncated, thumb-based lexicon of texting. When I have to ask the high school kid stocking the shelves at the local grocery to help me translate a text message, well, let’s just say it’s not the highlight of my day.

OK, so you get the idea. I can be out of touch sometimes. No big deal, right? I’m college educated. I can learn. I can be hip and cool. (Sheighlin, stop laughing.)

That’s why when the director of New Media here at Cisco, Jeanette Gibson, sent me a meeting invite to discuss how we could leverage Second Life at C-Scape, I eagerly accepted it. We met yesterday, and Jeanette started probing me on several things. It became apparent to her about two minutes into the discussion about islands, avatars, teleporting and flying dragons that I was having a pretty successful audition for the new season of Lost.

“OK, let’s try this another way,” she said with a smile that one typically reserves for that strange cousin who shows up at the family reunion with one eyebrow shaved off and black fingernail polish. She then spent the next hour walking – and at times flying – me through this virtual world.

It was captivating and very intriguing as it got me thinking about the myriad ways we could leverage this social networking model to increase our reach into the influencer community and develop new ways to engage. With nine million registered users and some of the biggest companies in world making big investments of time and resource in this space, it seems to have the feel of the future to it.

But my question to you is do you see value in this model? Have you explored Second Life and the other virtual worlds out there? Is this simply a passing fad or just the tip of the iceberg in terms of future collaborative strategies?

And most importantly, if I get proficient in Second Life, will it let me play the hip/cool card with Sheigh and Ari?

Posted by Skip MacAskill at 11:22 AM Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

September 13, 2007

Creating a Strategic Asset

Many people across our industry believe that the role of an effective Analyst Relations function is to get the industry analysts to say and write nice things about their company and its products.

I don’t subscribe to that philosophy.

Hey, don’t get me wrong – having analysts opine (that was for you, Jim) on the fabulousness of your products and technologies is a good thing, and it’s definitely an expected deliverable from my program here at Cisco. [Disclaimer added for my supervisor’s benefit.] But, that’s the hoped-for result of my team’s efforts; not its role.

Another thing I’ve never subscribed to is the saying that the ends justify the means. If my objective was to get analysts to wax eloquent on the virtues and brilliance of Cisco, there are any number of ways and shortcuts – most a bit unsavory – that we could pursue to achieve that result. But that would belie the very nature of AR, which is inherently about relationship building, trust and honesty.

I see our responsibility in AR as twofold.

First, we have a responsibility to inform the analyst community about our products, technologies, customers, markets, strategies and overall corporate direction. It’s critical that the analysts have a clear understanding of our offerings and strategies as well as accurate product data and technology information when doing their research and analysis for their clients. While the analysts will not always agree with a direction we taken or support our product and technology strategies, it’s important that they at least understand why we’ve gone down a certain path and have the correct context to put our activity in perspective.

The other half of our job is to take the analyst feedback, input, views and criticisms we receive and bring it back into the organization so we can validate or challenge our messaging, positioning, roadmaps and strategies. When used effectively, analysts can be a critical piece of a company’s strategic planning process. The earlier you get them engaged in a development effort – whether it’s for a new product, positioning around an industry-level issue, or messaging for a key campaign – the more they can help you craft something that will be successful and impactful.

This approach allows us to utilize the influencer community as a corporate strategic asset; and not simply as an extension of the media. Additionally, if we execute both aspects of the job effectively, then we put ourselves into a good position to have nice things said and written about us.

And while that may not be the role of my Analyst Relations program, it’s sure nice when it happens!

Posted by Skip MacAskill at 10:53 AM Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

September 05, 2007

Productivity via Collaboration

I attended our Financial Analyst Conference earlier today, and while there were several interesting themes that emerged, I was most intrigued by the discussions around how companies will achieve productivity gains in the future. To no surprise of long-time followers of Cisco, we believe that collaboration will be at the heart of that winning formula.

In his opening keynote, our chairman and CEO, John Chambers, indicated this was the most excited he’s been in a decade because Phase II of the Internet evolution is about to take off. That’s good news not only for companies that will be able to enable new, innovative business models and processes, but also for governments in developing nations who’ll be able to achieve true country transformations. And the bottom line for both will be measurable gains in productivity.

The combination of capital expenditure with business process change and innovation will lead to those productivity gains, according to Chambers. That innovation wave will be driven by collaboration, which will manifest itself in things like video. If there is a killer application out there, it’s video – and we’re not necessarily talking about that solely from an entertainment perspective, but as a way to change the way we work. One aspect of that play for us is our TelePresence high-definition video platform, which enables business transformation and aligns very nicely with the portfolio of Web 2.0 tools that are emerging across the industry.

Another aspect of productivity discussed at FAC was globalisation (after three years of living in Great Britain, I’m permitted to randomly replace my zeds with esses). An effective globalisation strategy will allow companies to tap into new talent pools; find new areas of growth; and scale their innovation efforts, thus increasing their overall productivity and expanding their business.

And companies – as well as countries – can use collaboration to drive that business or socio-economic model transformation. What’s at stake for these organizations as they head down this path? What are they risking? And how do they ultimately measure the effectiveness of their strategy shift?

Each situation will have its own unique wrinkles, but the one common thread that will be pervasive is the cultural and behavior changes required. We’re in the 7th year of that journey at Cisco, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned it’s that you can’t change human behaviour (see, I can also randomly add the letter ‘u’ to words, as well) by merely implementing a process.

Posted by Skip MacAskill at 07:11 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)