Photo Credit: elephantjournal.com

I had to share this piece from my new fave email, The LAUNCH Ticker. Since this is the second post in a row where I focus exclusively on this great newsletter, I will try to generate my own thoughts next time. But this is worth sharing.

I’ve inadvertently* worked in a turnaround setting before and I can see how important this stuff is. I’ve never worked for management with this level of understanding of people when I’ve been in a turnaround setting and it has always shown in the outcome.

Clearly there’s much more to restoring Yahoo!’s fortunes than a free phone, but demonstrating true emotional intelligence within the leadership of a turnaround should not be underestimated.

@marissamayer giving all $yhoo employees in U.S. newest $aapl, Smsg, HTC or Nokia phone; also paying for data/voice; no more Blackberry support; 12k employees in 25 countries – Link 1:44PM
@jason: I give MM a lot of credit for realizing exactly how demoralized the Y! team was, and doing a bunch of small things to make “life” better for them. Every week I spend my Sunday going through weekly reports from my teams at Mahalo, where they answer five simple questions about their week. We use a system called 15Five.com for this (awesome company that launced at the LAUNCH Festival). Every week there are items about parking spots, the soap in the bathrooms, the rug, the temperature and coffee. These things seem meaningless, but I’ve found as a manager if you focus on some these issues it shows folks that you care. MM buying everyone a phone and giving them free food shows that she gets it. She gets that working 10 hours a day at a dying company sucks, and that a free burger and being able to show your friends the iPhone 5 and say “got it for free!” is material to people’s happiness. Now, that doesn’t get you to the finish line, but at least it gives her the high ground when she says “we need to hit this date for Y! mail to not suck!” A+ to Marissa on her performance as CEO to date. Now show me the product!

*there’s probably space for an entire post about how one could “inadvertently” be in a turnaround situation, but suffice it to say that some companies in that situation use lots of smoke and mirrors to avoid an honest assessment of their fortunes, and my own interview skills have benefitted from my experience.

@johnbattelle: $aapl products no longer easy for him or wife to use; cites fails in Lion, crappy productivity apps, ‘other’ storage prob on iPhone 4 – Link 9:09AM
@jason: I think iCloud is really confusing for folks, and I had Lion crash my machine (required a new install). I’m not sure if these issues are a trend yet, but JBat tends to find these trends early. I wonder if Apple is getting a little less diligent or if they just haven’t made products this complicated on the cloud/software side before? – 4:36PM

Just this week, Andrew and I discussed how we would look at alternatives to Apple on our next tech upgrade cycles. As our kids start using iPods and other devices, we find it too complicated to manage via iCloud. I wish we could send some of the great online customer experience people over to Cuppertino to focus solely on sorting this out. Device experience is clearly a different skillset to online experience (including the online via pc and online via mobile device challenge).

Love to hear of any tips for managing iCloud across a family. And if you don’t subscribe to @jason’s LAUNCH Ticker, I suggest you give it a try.

Today is Leap Day. It’s an unusual and special day which to the cynics of the world is no different from any other. But this additional day in the calendar gives us:

• ever elusive extra time
• a signal to think about what is unique
• opportunity for editorial and marketing specials (we consciously opted out at Oola)
• a reminder to appreciate how the universe is in charge and we learn more about it each year as scientists do their thing.

Regular readers will be aware of my small business journey already. But this week marks the end of my fourth month in business. It marks the change of seasons from summer to autumn, which in Australia officially begins March 1. And it marks my realisation that I have to grab the reigns and embrace scale. The theoretical argument is passing into reality. Reality that costs time, money, courage, and perseverance.

Here’s my personal guide to identifying the need for change.

1. Something doesn’t feel right.

You can’t argue with instinct. If your getting the feeling that something’s not right, go with it and figure out what’s actually not right. Whether good ol’ Myers Briggs scores you as Sensing or Intuitive, you have this ability. Trust it.  This is the best time to act if you can embrace this first signal since you have the most control over your options.

2. Your To Do list is overwhelming.

Even the most efficient among us only get 24 hours in each day. And around eight of those need to be spent on sleeping. If you’re feeling like there are too many tasks that either take you too long or someone else could do better than you, evaluate the importance of your time and pay for some help. It might take you a bit of time to research the right partner in technology, design, PR, social media or otherwise, but the time will be returned to you when all of a sudden you’re getting better results in a fraction of the time.

3. You’ve developed a hypothesis, slept on it and tested it.

Once you suspect there’s something that needs improving, allow yourself a day to think about it, but don’t use that as an excuse to bury a potential problem. I’ve seen this in larger organisations where it’s often easier to hide than deal with an issue. In a small business, it can be devastating. Test your hypothesis right away. In the olden days (say 3 years ago), we would conduct market research or surveys or similar. Today, you can identify a cohort and reach them directly through a simple and inexpensive Google or Facebook ad, send them an email from your database, or create a simple online survey run from your website. Whether the challenge is your market or your passion, once you’ve confirmed your hypothesis, act now!

4. Your challenge elicits Fear.

When an instinct escalates to fear, you’re getting to a point of no return. The more personal the challenge is – I’m in the wrong career vs I’m losing money on my marketing campaign – the quicker the fear comes. Failure is as much a part of life as success, just not as celebrated.

Learn. Live. Move forward.

I had a diving coach who used to tell me, “the only thing we fear is the unknown”. This could not be more true.

And the one thing to ignore when these triggers are firing:

The myriad of voices from other people.  

Let your network support you, encourage you, be a sounding board for you, but remember that they largely don’t have to live with your decision. As soon as we get to steps 1 and 2, we’re looking for external validation. It’s really easy to interpret everything around us as that validation. Find the facts that confirm your feelings.

I am ready to bring on some outside help on a contract, but regular basis to get things moving. It’s an important step, but one I’ve balked at despite the tasks I’m not so good at overwhelming those I enjoy. Despite having managed incredible change in large organisations for years, this change took me right back through the steps above as I identified my actual need and the solution.

Reading this by email, click here to share your thoughts on change in the comments.  

So this week we’ve had an update. And the new Kelly’s Digital Days will still be my personal blog and the forum for me to reflect on what I see going on in the digital world. My passion for paid content has not abated. My passion for the challenges faced by small business owners has exploded. And one of my earliest passions, for the arts, has been renewed. I’ve added the latter to this blog and will from time to time be sharing why art – visual, performing, installation, modern and traditional – is so important especially in our uber-connected always on world.

Thanks for reading and I hope you’ll continue to enjoy.

Although I shared this image on Twitter when I first saw it this morning, I keep thinking about this chart and the many insights it provides not just about how air travel into Australia is organised, but also about how the economy that drives Australia works.

Surprises for me:  more seats inbound from New Zealand than North East Asia combined and nearly as many seats inbound from the Middle East as the United States.

New Zealand is a small country.  There are nearly 4m inbound seats to Australia – even with a shared economic area, that must signal a higher than expected economic dependency.  It can’t all be tourism.

It’s commonly known that there’s a strong economic link between Australia and Asia.  The north-east Asia volumes must be growing as China continues to develop and becomes ever more prominent in the region.  Living in Australia, it feels that there’s a strong link to the US, but the data suggests that this link might be one way or not as strong as it seems based strictly on in-person interaction (which is ultimately required to do business).

My next question is whether the Asian links are so high because they include the lion’s share of leisure travel, or is there a proportionate distribution of leisure and business travel across all routes?

Check out the infographic on the Adioso blog and check out Adioso’s flight search service while you’re at it.

Image via Wikipedia

Today is Memorial Day in the US, my original home.  As I’ve aged, Memorial Day has taken on more and more importance to me.  Ironic since both of my grandfathers fought in World War II and my father was also in the Army, though lucky enough not to have seen combat.  I guess I now better understand the nature of the complex challenges facing the military and I certainly have more to live for with children of my own.

As a kid, recognising all those brave American service men and women who lost their lives for our country and to preserve our way of life was very much what Memorial Day stood for.  However, that sentiment was equalled by being the weekend that the pool opened and a summer of swimming and diving kicked off.

Living as an expat has really focusses the mind on what it means to be an American.  Being questioned about the strong patriotism Americans all have and challenged by the unfathomable knowledge of all the words of the national anthem, all of a sudden, it is very clear exactly why these symbols are so important and as natural as taking a breath.  Americans love America just like any other country loves their own heritage.  Memorial Day simply highlights one of the more challenging sacrifices that Americans are called to make to ensure the freedoms we hold dear are available to us.

When I was first out of school and working in my first full time job in DC, I had a friend whose father was an Army General.  I had never met an active duty member of the armed forces with such seniority.  I was honoured to be invited to their house on Fort Myer in Arlington one Memorial Day.  I was in awe of the conversation that night from the simple yet powerful words said to honour our troops before the meal to the many topics, political, military and otherwise, debated that evening.  I’m not sure we agreed, but we always respected both sides of the argument.  This evening shattered any stereotype I could ever hold of the military.

So today, I thought I’d share my reflection on an American holiday which is as important as ever with more and more young men and women paying the ultimate price in support of their country.  In our globalised world, this applies to both Americans and our Allies.  No matter the politics or the morality of war and military conflict, these are young people with hopes, dreams, and families.  Today is their day.

Crack open a cold beer, dive into a swimming pool, fire up the barbecue, celebrate the start of summer, and please say thank you to our troops.