Recently vacuum cleaner I use at home stopped working and I had to go and buy a new one. I bought a new one which has a glass case for collecting dust instead of a cloth one I had before. When I started using new one, I could immediately see how much dust it has picked up within my house and I was impressed by the product. This is when I realized transparency to results builds trust and confidence.
Transparency in organizations is hard to achieve. Transparency into organization can be achieved by using appropriate tools or management techniques.
Communication plays a key role in bringing transparency. In a small company or team, everyone knows what the other person is doing. But as the company or team grows, they get into silos and focused on their team success. This starts building walls among teams and transparency is lost. There is more secrecy of each other’s work and trust is replaced by doubt.
Management needs to remove the barriers and make efforts to bring transparency. A good communication strategy and consistency can help improve transparency.
What tools and systems do you in place to improve transparency and keep teams aligned to company’s success? Even within your organization how much transparency do you have? Is it easy to go on to intranet and find who is doing what?
Wherever you are working, if you don’t have transparency you start wondering whether you are in right place or not. Write down what areas you wish there is more transparency and what you can do to improve it.
New internet technologies have made it easier to get feedback. When you write or publish any of your content, you can see its impact in real time. Following are a few examples
- You upload a video on youtube.com and you can track how are are viewing the video and their comments
- You upload a photo on Flickr.com and you can see how may are viewing the photo
- You publish a blog or article. You can see how many hits your post is getting and comments.
- You publish content and provide feeds. You can track how many are reading content through feeds.
- You write an e-mail and send it out. Sometimes you get instantaneous responses or mostly within 1 day if there are reactions to your e-mail.
- You create product links on your website and you can see who is clicking on what link.
Compared to old methods where you write an article, a book or a letter and wait for a long time before you see its impact. How do you react to such instantaneous feedback?
- First of all, it is great to see your work paying off with a few people showing interest in it.
- Second, it is great if you people leave comments. Positive comments gives a boost to your motivation. Negative comments let you know what to improve on.
- Third, if people get inspired by what you do, to attempt a change in their own work, it is a big compliment to you. You feel you are able to make a difference. It brings a sense of purpose to everything you do.
- Fourth, you are able to establish a virtual network of people who share similar interests in a period where it has become difficult to maintain personal contact and relationships
I am impressed by the opportunities being created by technology. I hope this feedback mechanism helps people to bring positive change in themselves and in the society when possible. While the same technology may be used in a wrong way, ultimately it is people who decide what happens with feedback.
What are you doing with instant feedback?
I have not really explored Youtube till now, though it has been around for quite sometime and has gained lot of popularity. Only recently I started using Youtube and started liking it. One of the primary reasons for liking it is: I managed to located videos of some of my favorite songs. When I got to listen/watch videos of Boney M (which I could not find on Netflix or other websites even to buy), it created a great impression on me. As I continued to explore I could dig up music videos that I always wanted to watch.
Navigation is quite easy in Youtube. Ability to create quicklists, playlists, search content by tags, recommended videos based on what you are watching etc are nice features that made the experience enjoyable too. I am sure I will find out more interesting materials that add to my professional and personal interests.
As I checked around, I realized that youtube has opened up opportunities for many people to explore their passions. People with unique talents are following the tagline of “Broadcast yourself” and they are enjoying it.
If you are not using Youtube, it is time you went there.
With a mobile device in hand, I always look for ways to take advantage of the mobile devices. I went on a search for useful mobile applications. I installed Google Mobile which allows access to GMail, Google Maps, Search and News. I use Google Maps every weekday. I use it to check traffic and decide if it is a right time to get on road.
Other Mobile Application I found cool is Yahoo on Go. Y! Go has good user interface that has equivalent of My Yahoo.
These are the main apps I found useful besides accessing e-mail, calendar, tasks etc on Mobile device. If I come across any more useful applications, I will post here.
I was reading what is new in Office 2007 Beta and noticed a link that said I can try out beta without installing. Typically you have to either download software or get a CD and overwrite your existing version to check out new features. This time Microsoft made it easier. As I followed the instructions, I was able to login using Citrix to a hosted machine and check out Office 2007 features.
I played around with each of the applications for sometime. Selection of Menu options has been changed completely in Office 2007. In Outlook 2007, RSS Feed Reader is included. Viewing schedule and To Do List is easier.
If you are interested in trying it out, go to following link
You can definitely save time with some of the usability features that are coming up in internet browsers.
1. Firefox browser became very popular especially with multiple tabs in a single browser. If you are using Firefox you must have found his useful. This reduces clutter and you can quickly navigate between different sites. (http://www.firefox.com/)
2. Yahoo Toolbar: This Tab interface has become popular and you can introduce the same functionality in Internet explorer 6.0 if you install Yahoo Toolbar. (http://toolbar.yahoo.com/ )
3. Microsoft is coming up Internet Explorer 7. I have installed Beta and found the Tab interface quite useful. This is still in beta and available only one a specific operating system and service pack. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx . You can view new features available on Internet Explorer 7 on this site.
Key time management words in the above are: Reduced Clutter, All tasks in one Window.
If you already not using tab interface with browser, do it now.
During my hunt for best practices in most of the things I do, I come across very good articles on various websites. Most of the time some newsletters are my sources. I had created a forum to share good articles. There are more than 150 articles posted on this forum over years and I still continue to use some ideas from the articles posted here
A recent article I found was very apt to my thinking. This was a book excerpt on Sustainable Software Development. Click here to read the article.
This article focused on continuous improvement in software development. I will try to find time to read the full book.
It has been more than a year since I first saw self service check out counter in a grocery shop I frequently visit. I was impressed by design of the check out counters. You can scan items you bought yourself and pay and go out without having to wait for someone to do this.
Voice activated instructions and prompts were very well designed. It also requires that most of the systems are in place for this to work smoothly. All items need to be in inventory and should be scannable or easily identified. It is not easy to build this without necessary infrastructure.
Immediately after this I remember reading one online review in which the author was very critical of the new system. I felt the author was very biased.
Self Service System was not popular in initial days. Grocery shop had to assign one person to monitor any glitches and be ready to resolve problems. For some days, they also tried to train new users by introducing the features. It is only after sometime that it has been accepted as one more convenience provided by the shop.
Self service kiosks make customer feel fully in control and makes it easier to do business. I have seen more and more self service options come up in different stores and I welcome this.
Ever since I saw the self check-out counter I always used that and never had to go back to regular check out counter.
Since everything on internet becomes a self service option, experience at Self Service Kiosks at Grocery stores looks natural to me.
