News
Avoid Knee-Jerk Rejection
Anyone who has had a teenager knows how quick they are to rebel, they’re notorious for it. But most people have that rebellious streak. In fact, some of us use this as a protection mechanism. We see situations that remind us of trouble and we automatically avoid. We see it in spam, and it’s straight to the discard folder without reading. Investors do the same thing. Everyone’s been burned and when you use a phrases in your business plan that remind investors of that incident, your business plan becomes an easy discard. If you want to get past first cull, you need to avoid these knee-jerk rejections.
Achieving High Performing Teams
Everyone wants a High Performing Team, and the easiest way to get one is to re-define whatever you’re doing and call it a High Performing Team. It looks great on a report and you get your bonus for having achieved something important without doing anything more than re-naming nothing. But what if you actually want the benefits of a High Performing Team? What actually makes a High Performing Team different from any other group of people working together?
Death by First Customer
The first time Sue saw a young black man he was robbing a store and it created a very powerful memory. The first time Sue met an older white man he was a kindly old gentleman who helped her find her mother and sue remembered this kindness. As an adult, Sue found herself witnessing an older white man trying to get a small girl into his car and a young black man came to help and poor Sue was very confused. How often do you find yourself blindsided by unexpected events in your business because the experience you trust just doesn’t seem to fit anymore?
Sucker for the Jedi Mind trick
“These are not the droids you’re looking for”. We all remember this scene from Star Wars, and most of us remember how Jabba the Hutt laughed it off when Luke tried it on him. Jabba declared this trick only works on weak minds. We all like to think we have strong minds like Jabba the Hutt, but how often do you fall for the Jedi Mind trick in daily life? When people tell you the conclusion, do you accept it or do you ask to see the data and puzzle it out for yourself?
Real Social Enterprise
Today’s consumers seem to be much more concerned with the ethical behaviour of your business and “Social Enterprise” is becoming the new must have buzzword. Everyone is trying to claim that whatever they are doing is Social Enterprise, but everything can’t be Social Enterprise. I find it most useful to understand the difference as a continuum with six clear levels, but what’s the difference and which is best for your business? More and more clients are asking me for help understanding how to use social causes to market their business or to develop a robust Social Enterprise model. Understanding the emerging Social Enterprise space will help you evaluate market movements and how to respond.
Writing the Perfect Business Plan
I have heard investors talk about my business plans, years later, as being so good they form the benchmark of what they look for, but it wasn’t always that way. Working for a VC firm, I found most business plans written so badly that showing them to the investment committee would doom any hope of investment. Writing a good business plan involves three key concepts; Be clear about what the point is, Stop thinking about what you want to tell people and start thinking about what they want to hear, Organise your writing so that the reader can see at a glance exactly what you’re on about, but can also easily see all your references.
Are you a Boss, a Mommy, or a Leader?
There are three models of being in charge; you can either be a Boss, or a Mommy, or a Leader. There are many theories of leadership and power but I think this simple idea of three basic models of being in charge is a very practical way to look at what really happens on the company floor. When you’re in charge, you need simple frameworks to manage real situations in real time, not long and complex academic theories. Basically, the Boss tells people what to do, the Mommy does it for them, and the Leader makes people want to do it.
Seeing the Investor as Customer
Most people understand that knowing what customers want is essential to marketing your product, but when it comes to seeking investment they fail to view the investor as the customer and they fail to consider what the investor wants. Stop thinking about what you want to tell the investor and start thinking what someone would have to tell you to get you to invest your money in their business. Understanding the investor as the customer and understanding what the customer wants can help you secure investment.
Shaping your investment pitch
There are three stages to getting investment into your company and most people come unstuck by failing to consider the three as components of a whole. I want to explain how using more of a Kaisen approach can help you improve your success rate when seeking investment.
Is McClelland Ruining Your Business
Is McClelland ruining your business? There are many business theories out there, some good, some not so good; some have become entrenched, some forgotten. McClelland put forward a major business theory that has become entrenched as accepted practice by default, but when people actually look at his theory, most people, even people who have been unwittingly using it, quickly realise how damaging it would be to their business.
When You're Strange
Can “strange” people save your business or are you better off to stick to what has always worked? The NZ Herald recently published an interesting article about hiring “strange” or different people (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11384257), but is it right for your business? Different stages of business management require different types of people and different types of skills. Fortunately, there are some very simple rules to help you understand when you need “strange” or different people in your business.
Dynamic Systems
What can theoretical physics teach us about managing a business? It seems like a stretch until you realise that some fundamental business concepts are organized as analogies to the physics. The problem is that they got it wrong when they made the analogy and the error creates serious problems for business.
Building Market Share on FaceBook
Social networks promise easy access to huge numbers of people but is it worth the time? That depends on your objectives and your discipline, but it’s not hard. There are three simple things to manage; Image, interest, and time.
A Data Centre is Not a Cloud
Apple recently announced that they are moving us to a new paradigm of computing in the Cloud and they have built a massive data centre to host it. I think they’ve missed an important point; a data centre is not a cloud. The concept of the cloud is much like the concept of a network, and there are several reasons why this is important.
Deliver Information not Articles
Doctors don’t want journal articles, they want information. Of course we want links to the articles that support the information, but it’s the information we want. Unfortunately the medical literature is built on a paper paradigm, but today people access the medical literature by searching the web rather than browsing paper copies. We need to restructure the way medical literature is presented to deliver information with links to supporting articles.
Data Modelling for EMRs
If we’re going to have electronic health records, we obviously want a single information source. The problem is that you can’t do it with a single database. In order to succeed, we need a federated system of interoperable databases. Governments need to stop funding big database projects and start funding interoperable standards committees.
Health Insurance Reform Made Easy
If you want to sabotage any attempt to reform the health insurance system, simply start an initiative to reform health insurance! This seems to be an oxymoron: why should trying to reform health insurance sabotage health insurance reform? The problem is that health insurance reform is such a big and complicated project that it will inevitably become embroiled in a long and complicated legal discussion resulting in several thousand pages of suggestions that cannot be implemented. But health insurance reform is desperately needed, so what can you do instead?
Why A Centralised EMR Can't Work
If we’re going to have personalized medicine, or even a functional health IT infrastructure, then the most fundamental infrastructure component we need is a single, reliable source for information that all parties with a legitimate need can access. The apparent obvious way to achieve this is to have a centralized electronic medical record, so why won’t this work and what can we do that will work?
What an EMR Must Do
If we’re going to have personalized medicine, you will need an electronic medical record EMR that your doctors can access anywhere in the world where you may be. What are the constraints and requirements of such a system? Is it really possible and how can you deliver the speed, accuracy, security, and reliability of the data?
No Diseases - Just Syndromes
There is no such disease as cancer because there are hundreds of diseases called cancer. Similarly, heart disease, diabetes, etc, are all collections of large numbers of diseases which have been grouped together by a primitive understanding of physiology and a limited access to potential treatments. These collections are known as Syndromes. In a similar fashion, we now understand infectious diseases as ecosystems. Each individual disease in the syndrome group, or ecosystem interaction, must be managed differently. Medicine, as it has been practiced, cannot begin to cope with this and a radical new approach is needed. This is what Personalized Medicine is being introduced to address.
Electronic Medical Record Security
The current debate over the need for security in electronic medical records (EMRs) is a waste of time and I have no patience for it! The problem is that everyone agrees that security of EMRs is important. The real question is exactly what are the security needs of EMRs and how do we effectively address them? It frightens me that so few people are actually discussing this. I would propose 2 simple questions to transform the discussion on EMR security into a productive discussion:
1. What are the differences in security issues of electronic medical records vs. banking records?
2. What are the differences in security issues in a “Protect” vs. “Serve” the record owner model?
Personalized Medicine is more than Personal Medicine
Personal medicine is the practice of a single physician working with a single patient. Personalized Medicine is a radical new concept in health care that is very different from personal medicine (although it might include it). The key is that Personalized Medicine revolves around the consumer and may not even involve a physician.
Personalized Medicine is Not About Genomics; It's About You
Some people, particularly in the USA, make the naive assumption that personalized medicine is about genomics. It is not. Personalized medicine is about you, the health care consumer. Most of personalized medicine can be practiced without any genomics. New Zealand is already practicing many aspects of personalized medicine and this is largely responsible for why New Zealand delivers better health care at a fraction of the cost of the USA.
Oh No, Now I've Got Cyberchondra!
The 27 November 2008 issue of the New Zealand Herald carries an article about cyberchondria, a new twist on the old ailment of hypochondria. It’s a serious problem, but the proposed solutions are worse than the disease. In fact, if the American Medical Association gets its way on the matter, you won’t be allowed to access any medical information unless it is delivered directly, and in person, by a physician.
What is Personalized Medicine
Officers at the United States National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health have suggested that Personalized Medicine could save up to three million lives per year in the USA alone and could represent a trillion dollar market opportunity. What is personalized medicine and where will those dollars be spent?