Joel's Mutterings

Switching it up

Out of adversity springs opportunity.

We can choose to wallow in the fact of whatever is going wrong today or we can choose to see the opportunity to create positive change.

One needs not look far to hear that Zappos is out there changing things up in the online retail space. If you have not heard of Zappos, best know for selling shoes (and now other clothing), you clearly have not done much online. With a unique approach to both marketing and interaction with their clients this is a company that is not waiting for change but has clearly taken on leading change. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh recently told Business Week, “If we get the culture right, most of the other stuff, like the brand and the customer service, will just happen. With most companies, as they grow the culture goes downhill. We want the culture to grow stronger and stronger as we grow.” Culture is so critical to the company that there is a standing offer of $2000 for any new employees who after the week long training program does want to stay and ops to leave.

Hotels have a much more mature business model but are clearly looking for any opportunity to create an edge in a business where a room not rented is revenue opportunity lost forever. Chris Brogan in this post suggest that Hotels who generally use traditional marketing and a wait for the client to call approach might need to get more aggressive in engaging their potential customers.

Showing that even a giant pharmaceutical company can change things up, Pfizer early last year launched PfizerWorks which allows some of it’s employees to outsource tasks both overseas to India and in some cases to small Columbus (Ohio)-based firm called Pearl Interactive Network. Pearl employs mostly people with physical disabilities who help with such administrative tasks as organizing a marketing team’s research documents on a shared server. As large companies contract employee are forced to take on more diverse tasks and the ability to outsource certain tasks may make the critical difference between success and failure.

The annual review is often dreaded by manager and employees alike and while this a critical part of management doctrine few would deny there is room for change. Accenture looked popular growth of social networking in developing their Performance Multiplier system in which, among other things, employees post status updates, photos, and two or three weekly goals that can be viewed by fellow staffers. Might there be other less social and more functional lessons to be learned from the Facebooks and Friendfeeds of the world?

Is there more opportunity to create positive change as we transition in and out of this trough of business despair?

Is this an opportunity to create change for ourselves and our businesses?

How can we identify those unique opportunities and cease this moment and create change for the better?

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Continuum from Google to Zappos (snarkmarket.com)
• Twitter Drives Traffic, Sales: A Case Study (radar.oreilly.com)
• Make Your Company Just Like Zappos for $39.95 Per Month (mashable.com)
• How-To: Leveraging 2009’s Top Digital Trends (marketingvox.com)

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