The Contrarian

108032 Resource 102302 102466 102466 1132174000728 1132174457894 Controlled Gaming the System

What system? Any system. It's amazing what people will do to circumvent the truth (even when it's not cold and hard).

On the occasion of Peter Drucker's death last week, I re-read an <A title="Drucker interview" href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.08/drucker.html">interview that was published by Wired, titled The Contrarian</A>, and Drucker made a point that now, finally, hit home and made great sense. Talking about the new level playing field between large business and medium size business he said: <HR> It used to be that nobody had any information. But as you go more international, as the economy becomes global, the access to good information becomes crucial. If you are a medium-sized company, then the CEO still knows every customer and still knows the industry. You can't know that in the US$10 billion company; you get reports. Reports tell you what your subordinates want you to know. <HR> I've witnessed this before myself, really large companies where the CEO, in fact the whole C Level, was cloistered on the top floor where they constantly hankered for reports, reports and more reports. Obviously some reports are necessary, but management by report becomes a gameable system very quickly, as Drucker pointed out. Interaction with your marketplace, meaning your customers, your employees, your partners, your prospects and vendors is not gameable. Real customers are going to tell you the real story. There is no substitute for customer interaction in business. We can think about the current state of the internet in the same way. Everyone has a website, mostly brochure-ware, as it has come to be known. Now the movement is afoot to optimize the website for search engines. There are of course firms dedicated to this idea. It is known by various names, but Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, appears to be the most popular. Some SEO might be called for, it certainly can't hurt. But to make a regular habit out of it is more like gaming the search engine system than not. As Andy Seidl of <A href="http://www.myst-technology.com/">MyST Technology Partners</A>, <A title=blogsite href="http://blogsite.com/">or here</A>, puts it, "you're in an arms race and you can't win." The search engines are determined to find the most relevant content for each search and the website trick and massaging that you might attempt will be found out and the algorithm changed. Again, the answer is interaction. You can no longer take a static approach to marketing and the marketplace. No matter how often you spiff up the website, no matter how many print advertisements you place, no matter in what publications they appear, it is all still static marketing. You need to be able to open up your company and its knowledge resources to prospects and customers and make it dynamic. People want to hear your story, so tell it. Your own corporate weblog is an outstanding way to do this. It's the antithesis of the static website and the one shot print ad. It's a compelling forum that puts a face and a creative imagination on your company. It differentiates you. Downside? Well, like I said it's not static. It does take effort and time. But you don't have to write your doctoral thesis. Just some interesting snippets of life in your company's fast lane. Above all, do not attempt to game the system by using the weblog as a bald faced marketing spin machine. It's ok to talk about what you do, but you have to make that interesting to the average reader as well. In a world of one trillion in your face advertisements a day, a conversation about your business seems human, above all. 9 application/xml false corporate weblog search engine optimization seo weblog The Contrarian Peter Drucker Interview http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.08/drucker.html Blogsite.com Stop the arms race http://blogsite.com/ MyST Technology Partners The folks behind blogsite.com http://www.myst-technology.com/ Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; T312461; YPC 3.0.1; (R1 1.5); .NET CLR 1.1.4322) 69.218.156.212 69.218.156.212 tfoydel false true false false true 205861 false false true false false false true 102302 blog blogsite/SightLines/web