As all my faithful readers know, this blog has essentially been on hiatus since late August where I promised all sorts of wonderful things would be occurring with this site and the Vann Group world. Needless to say, we’ve been extremely slow in finalizing our activities and initiatives. While many are not yet complete, we are at the point where I feel comfortable informally announcing them publicly.

To begin, I am pleased to announce that NextUp Careers, our career portal for reliability engineers and predictive maintenance professionals has finally launched. It took a year plus to finally get to launch and was extremely painful and stressful but also an exhilarating and fun experience. NextUp will prove to be an interesting case study because its an entirely different approach to the traditional job board. There have been some incredible lessons learned throughout this that I will share in the coming weeks.

I am also pleased to formally announce the launch of Hire EQ. Hire EQ is an outsourced recruiting solution designed to meet the unique hiring needs of small/mid-size businesses. We believe that Hire EQ is the first model of its kind as recruitment process outsourcing has always been a service that only corporate America could take advantage of. There are a lot of exciting elements to Hire EQ but the part that I’m really excited about is the addition of David Pollard to our team. Dave is a long-time friend and client. He is also the owner of Talent Fusion, one of the top RPO companies in the country and an innovator in the recruitment space. Having Dave drive Hire EQ is a huge benefit for us and it speaks to how disruptive we believe Hire EQ will be.

I am also pleased to announce that within the next couple of weeks we will be announcing the formal launch of Joe Strategy. Joe Strategy is a strategy focused blog that will provide insights on best practices, planning tools and general insights and analysis. The site will be geared towards small/mid-size businesses and professional service providers. The latter is a different audience for us, but we are focusing on them because the vast majority of professional service providers are small/mid-size businesses and as we can attest from first hand knowledge, the world of professional service providers is changing drastically and the disruptions will continue.

When we formally launch Joe Strategy, we will be releasing our white paper entitled “The Crowd, the Cloud and the Demise of Professional Services as We Know It”. We’ve received some great feedback from our reviewers on it, and I hope that it will make many think about the impact of technology on professional knowledge advisers/providers.

This blog will also be active. Whereas Joe Strategy posts will be focused on strategy, this blog will continue to revolve around general business topics and insight. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be blogging about my start up lessons learned.

I know I’m on blog hiatus, but couldn’t resist this great little post from Seth Godin entitled “”we don’t compare ourselves to other airport restaurants“  Not much to say about it, as the post speaks for itself.  But I think the beauty of it is the last line “who or what are  you comparing yourself to?”  In our fast paced world where commodization is king and business models are being turned upside down, this is an incredibly provocative question to ask yourself.  Here at the Vann Group, we established a BHAG to be “the Bain Capital of the small business world” so we are indirectly comparing and measuring ourselves against Bain – a lofty model considering what they have accomplished.

So, let me know who/what you are comparing yourself to and why?

My last post, entitled “Discipine, or the lack thereof” was a self chastising about my inability to stay disciplined to updating this blog.  I promised to get better and hold myself to a strict schedule.  I, of course failed, as its been five weeks since my last post!  Rather than self delude myself any further, or lie to all of you who do read my posts, I am announcing that this blog is on hiatus until September.

There are several reasons for this – everything from summer vacation to a lack of focus/insight on interesting topics.  However, the primary reason is that I am extremely busy with several projects that will hopefully be winding down or transitioning to a different phase upon the end of this month.  Despite the lingering effects of the Great Recession, we at the Vann Group have been busier than ever this year working on lots of exciting opportunities.  Over the coming months, I will be sharings some of these with you as soon as I can.

One project that I am working on started out as a blog post, but has become a full blown White Paper.  The working title is “The Cloud, Crowd and the Demise of Professional Services as We Know it”.  Its a depressing but insightful look at what the future holds for traditional service providers and creatives.  For a quick understanding of the Cloud & Crowd, I suggest you check out this article entitled “Cloud Based Computing Spawns Cloud Based Marketing“that appeared in Friday’s Mass High Tech.  It is written by Richard Banfield of Fresh Tilled Soil and features a great new start up from Chris Merrill called Web-o-Matic.  It’s a great read and will be an excellent primer for the White Paper.

Until then, enjoy your summer and see you after Labor Day.

Today is July 3rd; my last post on this site was June 12 – three weeks ago today.  To have a successful blog, one needs to post at least once a week and ideally twice.   I know this, yet still I have not upheld my responsibility to post.  Why?  Discipline of course.  When I’m in the zone, posting a couple of times a week is a commitment but not a problem to do so. I have the discipine to do that. However, when I am overwhelmed by other obligations, blogging gets pushed down the list, until the point where I realize its been three weeks since I typed anything of substance.  Why?  Because I lack the discipline to stay commited to the task because something more pressing pops up – usually responding to a client.

One of the keys to being succesful in business is staying disciplined, particularly when it comes to the activities that are critical to growing your business.  And, I have to say that blogging has become a success driver for our marketing.  Therefore, I have committed to myself that I will provide at least one blog a week of substance (debatable I’m sure) to the Vann Group blog.  To ensure that I stay disciplined and on target, I have plugged two hours a week into my schedule strictly for the purpose of blogging.  Here is hoping I can keep myself disciplined!

With that behind me, I did want to provide a quick review of my spanking brand new iPhone 3GS.  Its been a week since I traded in m Blackberry for the iPhone, making my conversion from the dark side complete as I am now fully operating my life on Apple products.  No one can ever convince me to go back to a Windows based computer.  One week into it, I can’t say the same about the iPhone.

There is a lot to like becuase for all intents and purposes its like carrying a handheld computer.  Surfing the web is easy, as is updating my Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts.  I’ve also got into some other apps as I’m now tracking my diet and am using the Wine Enthusiast Guide for wine shopping. Oh, and I can do my banking right through the phone and can call overseas for free using Skype.  I also like the way email is presented and I’m getting used to the keyboard.

On the negative side, the email is not in the same league as Blackberry – its harder to navigate between email accounts and the push technology can’t compete.  I’m an email junky so this is discouraging.  Also, in as much as I’m getting used to the keyboard, I miss the feel of keys.  The lack of keys also makes it impossible to dial/type without looking at the keyboard.  A real problem for anyone who might dial/type while driving or appearing like your engaged in a meeting rather than texting.

Overall, I’m at an 8.5 on the phone, which is about where I was with the Blackberry.  Bottom line, its all aobut which experience is more important to you – email or the web.  If I get used to the email, I’ll never to back to Blackberry, but if I can’t, my iPhone might be available on EBay.

As a student of history, I found this quite interesting and reasonably reassuring. This is a video from Dent Asset Management that provides a historical context of our current economic crisis.  Context is always helpful for a crisis and I think this helps put our challenges in perspective.  Somebody famous once said “we shall overcome” and I gotta believe that’s the case!  Enjoy the video and have a good weekend.

Its an age old question – is the glass half full, or half empty?  Conventional wisdom has held that an optimist believes the glass to be half full.  A pessimist believes otherwise.  Personally, I have always considered myself a realist, one who recognizes the glass has being neither  half full or half empty – it has water in it.  Its up to you to determine what it should be.

With that being said, far more important than the perception of the glass of water is what you want to accomplish with the water.   If you want to empty the glass, the opportunity is there because half the water is gone – the challenge is how do you get the rest of the water out?  Alternatively, if you want to fill the glass, the opportunity is there because the glass is already filled halfway – the challenge is figuring out how to get it full.

Personally, I’m trying like hell to fill the glass.   How about you?

Since the whole bailout process began, I have had the opportunity to engage in countless conversations about the fate of the auto industry.  The message I’ve primarily heard – “let em fail” is a non-starter and in my mind too simplistic a world view.  Now that bankruptcy has occurred, there is no reason to get into a discussion about that theory.  If you want to let me know why that was the best course of action, please post your thoughts.

Rather, I’ve been quite intrigued with the conversations I’ve had lately about the composition of the new “owners” of General Motors – the US & Canadian governments, the bondholders and THE UAW!  I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard the term “socialism” tossed around during these discussions and people bemoan the end of capitalism.  Needless to say, its been interesting to hear the various views on the topic.

Personally, I am very excited about the reconstituted of General Motors.  Rather than being an affront to capitalism and the onset of socialism, I believe that this only illustrates that capitalism is coming back stronger than ever.  There are two reasons why I believe this bankruptcy and new ownership is an indication of capitalism at its best:

1. What the union and the government have done is no different than what any capitalist would do.  Creditors can force companies into bankruptcy – happens all the time.  When it happens, secured creditors more often than not convert a chunk of their liabilities into equity.
2. It is not uncommon for creditors or stockholders to hold companies accountable or take action that adversely impacts management while theoretically benefiting the company (or their interests).  Banks and bondholders put covenants into their agreements to ensure companies maintain certain standards of performance.  Likewise, stockholders have proxy votes to get board seats so they can control the direction of the company. The government had covenants built into its loans and exercised them.  is this any different than what anyone with leverage would do?

To me, it appears that the forced bankruptcy and restructured ownership are very capitalistic tactics and let’s face it, if it was a bondholders and a consortium of banks leading the charge rather than the government and union, we would be cheering the move. That being said, what really excites me about this, and what I believe will be the ultimate demonstration of capitalism at work is the recognition that the union is in charge.

Think about this for a minute.  For the past X number of years, management has blamed the union for its troubles and the union has blamed poor management for the Company’s failures.  Now, the union gets the opportunity to prove it – they are running the company.  Even better from my perspective is that they have substantially all of their assets tied up in the the Company.

Consequently, the union has no choice but to make GM successful. If its fails,  it not only ruins the lives of hundreds of thousands of current and future retirees but it will effectively kill unions.  After all, if it can’t successfully execute  its labor friendly philosophies as management/ownership it will be case study #1 as to why unions are bad.  Every time a employees think about unionizing, ownership will point to the failure at GM & Chrysler and say “see what happens to companies when unions come – jobs get lost”.

Its going to be fun to see which way it goes.  If the union is successful, the company will likely be sold to the public and traded which will make the union and government a lot of money.  If it fails, it will be the death blow for any discussion about alternatives to capitalism.  Either way, capitalism wins.

Oscar Wilde once said “the only thing worse than not getting what you want is getting what you want“.  We are about to see this principle in action.

As of 7 am this morning, NextUp Careers is live and officially in Beta testing!  The site is far from fully functional, but we have the ability to post jobs using our very unique standardized process for creating industry specific jobs.  If, by chance you have a job you would like to post for the reliability engineering and predictive maintenance, please do so – posts are free for the month of June.  If you do, feedback on the process and the inputs/outputs are much appreciated.

And, if you don’t have a need for a reliability engineer or predictive maintenance technician, your feedback on the look and feel of the site would be much appreciated as well.

I haven’t had the chance to post much lately as we are on the final turn towards the Beta launch of NextUp Careers (hopefully for Monday), so its been a little crazy.  That’s too bad, because there has been some great potential topics for the blog out on the information super highway this past week.  Here are a couple of my favorites.

Newsweek is reporting in its article “All that’s Fit to Buy” that legendary entertainment impressario David Geffen is interested in buying the New York Times and converting it to a non-profit.  It could be an interesting approach, and as the article notes there is some precedent as the St. Petersburg Times is operated as a non-profit and is quite successful.  I’ve had a lot of interest in how the newspaper industry would be fixed as I wrote a post – “How to Save the Republican and Your Local Paper” a while back.  My recommendations were more tactical solutions for retaining a for-profit model, but the non-profit model, at first blush looks pretty interesting.  I’m not sure how that would apply to local papers, but it should be interesting to watch.

Over at the Keyhole, there is a brief post about Playboy Magazine.  Like many in the publishing industry, Playboy has fallen upon hard times and the post – “Not Your Dad’s Playboy” highlights some of Playboy’s strategies for solving its crisis. It appears Playboy is going to focus on two routes – increase prices and cut the number of issues.  I can’t decide whether or not this is a good strategy, but I’m inclined to think it is not.  Price increases in reductions are okay if you are going to do something to provide greater value, but without added value, my sense it all Playboy will accomplish in the long-term is to drive customers to cheaper alternatives and further compound their problems.

Over at Venture Beat, there was a great post yesterday by guest contributor David Shen (formerly of Yahoo).  The post “Solving the problems of early stage me-too product start ups” provides some great insight into how to launch a product/service in a competitive marketplace. This has got some really great ideas and I think I will probably revist this as a full post or White Paper at a later date.  Until that time, if your thinking about a start-up, give the post a read.

Lastly, check out this post on “Social Strategies for Exciting (and Boring) Brands” over at Groundswell.  The insights on boring brands is quite interesting, because let’s face it – most of us have boring brands.  The key to making boring brands work – get people to talk about their problems and leverage it.  The post has some thoughts on how to do it that I won’t get into.

That’s it for today’s post.  Hopefully, we’ll get the initial NextUp Careers launch behind us and it will be back to a normal post schedule next week.  Oh, and if your a reliabiity engineering or predictive maintenance professional and reading this post, don’t forget to check out the site!