Presentation design services was building up to a great business last year. The segment comprised not just professional presentation design firms, but also a variety of trainers, speakers and suppliers of inputs such as images, charting & data analysis tools. The growth was fueled by entrepreneurs and big companies alike. I’m sure this segment has been affected, like all others, by the downturn. In the current environment, it would be hard to get even a couple of thousand $ approved for a discretionary service. So Scott Schwertly/ Ethos 3’s new website slidemagnet.com is very timely. It promises to “empower presenters . . . [and to provide] tips, tricks, hacks, etc for the entrepreneur with a shoestring budget or the Marketing Director who is unable to receive corporate buy-in regarding presentation services.”

I’ve browsed the site a couple of times now. There are some good resources there already, including video interviews and tips on finding images, dress, delivery etc. Scott promises that he will be adding lots of cool - and relevant - stuff in the coming months.

Here’s a suggestion for you: send the link to your colleagues who deliver the most monotonous presentations. You may be rewarded by a much more engaging experience the next time you attend their presentation.

What’s that?? The most boring presenter is who?? Oh yeah, I believe you CAN send it your boss!

We added a couple of features last week to improve your experience and help you get more from Insightory.

One, we added some logos/ “badges” that you can use to promote your documents on your blog or website. These will automatically link back to your profile on Insightory.

The second feature is an “alert” that will notify you when documents related to your area of interest are posted on the website. The alerts follow the 4 categories we have been using to classify documents on the website for a while now i.e. Function, Industry, Context and Geography.

Some users have asked for alerts based on specific tags, so that will be something we’ll take up at a later stage.

Both these preferences can be managed from the login panel on the home page.

As always, we welcome any feedback and suggestions on other features that are important to you.

There are dozens of books, articles and entire consulting firms that offer a formula for “permanent corporate greatness” (or should it just be “permanence”?) Adam Hartung distinguishes himself from the pack in three significant ways. One, he looks at non-technology companies and industries as well. He relates many examples from traditional industries e.g. Dow, Pizza Hut and even Singer (of sewing machine fame!), in addition to the more familiar examples from tech companies like IBM, Microsoft, Xerox etc.

Second, he devotes fully half the book to “if corporate mortality is a reality, what can you do about it?” He details out a series of actions that leaders can take, and the pitfalls associated with each.

Third, he doesn’t shy away from saying that this is not easy, it can take multiple years, and your plans may very well fail. To become a “Phoenix Principle Organization” requires more than a change of strategy, or even a change of mindset. There are some hard actions to be taken, including changing the behaviors, structures and even cost relationships. Anyone who has ever tried to convince a senior executive to shut down a multi-million dollar business will understand how hard this is (I have some scars from one such battle).

There are several other things in the book that I heartily agree with - such as the fact that sports analogies are at best simplistic and most likely very inaccurate. Hartung also takes issue with prominent thinkers (such as Collins, Hamel, Prahald etc) who advocate focus and core competence.

All in all, a very useful read for senior executives. If you haven’t run a business - however small - or had significant interactions with those that have, you may find it difficult to relate to Hartung’s concepts. This is not a pop management book.

Guest Post by Peter Froberg. Check out his blog at freemium.eu.

Is freemium the future of knowledge-based companies?

In the last couple of years a lot of web companies have adopted a freemium business model - where you give away a free service and make money from selling premium features. On LinkedIn you can create and view profiles for free, yet if you want certain more advanced features, you have to pay.

For many IT businesses, freemium has replaced advertising and direct payment.

Can the same thing happen for companies dealing with knowledge bases and cultural values?

Free products have been around for a long time. Like the fruit salesman that offers you a small piece of an apple, in order to sell a bag of apples. Freemium is different because you give away a quality product that people can use and only make money from complimentary products. Only a few amongst the “free costumers” will end up buying something. It is like giving away 100 apples and selling 5 apple peelers. If you were actually giving away apples, this would not be profitable.

The reason freemium can work is virtually free digital duplication and distribution. The thing LinkedIn is giving away is not an apple but a digital service. Which can be duplicated at virtually no cost. So once the product is developed, it costs me close to the same to have 1 million or 10 million users.

Because of the low cost of widely distributing a free product, LinkedIn can be profitable with fewer than 10% of the users paying for premium products. Variations of this model can be found from the open source software industry in companies like ning.com.

This model is made possible by the ever declining price of IT. So it is natural that the IT industry is the first to use this possibility. Yet this is not the only industry where the product can be duplicated digitally.

We have all seen the effects that digital music has had on the music industry. It has caused piracy and thus a long line of legal initiatives trying to stop this.

Yet the free cost of sharing music can also be leveraged for profit. Nine Inch Nails released their latest album as a free download, then to sell a range of complimentary products. The public results of this experiment are proof enough of the success inherent in the model.

Yet it is not only music that can be duplicated digitally. Knowledge and culture can also be copied in text, audio, video or images.

As businesses within other industries realise this, the question is: Will they use freemium to leverage the possibilities of a digital world for profit?

Andrea Sittig-Rolf has a new book, which describes how to leverage others to do your selling. Others may call them “insiders” or even “influencers”, but term she uses (”ambassadors”) seems especially appropriate since they are doing this for you, and not (directly) for themselves. These are people you deliberately acquire, cultivate and teach to act/ influence on your behalf.

She  offers several anecdotes on how she and others have “used” ambassadors to further mutual business goals. She does well to point out that this is a long-term process. Further, there isn’t a point in expending a lot of effort in this direction if you don’t have some expertise in your area, and if you aren’t targeting the right customer.

Overall, a useful book for those (like me!) to whom this doesn’t come naturally. At ~150 pages, with several work-sheets and check-lists, it won’t take too long to read. One area that needs to covered in more detail is - (how) does all this change in the world of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc? Is there any significant value to having a LinkedIn recommendation or a Twitter following? Are there sufficient examples of people that have leveraged these into real-world introductions and revenues?

In the last few weeks, there has been a LOT of discussion on LinkedIn Answers regarding the proposed (hoped-for?) bailout of the Big 3 US auto manufacturers. I spent a lot of time thinking about the issue myself. For people like me, this isn’t an easy black-or-white decision. If the smallest of the Big 3 - i.e. Chrysler - fails, we’ll have tens of thousands of people whose jobs may be threatened. Several thousand (at least) will surely be lost . . . which means that all these families will have to worry about food, mortgages, education, healthcare . . . possibly for several years. And these aren’t just direct employees - this would affect supplies, service providers, local communities and even charities.

On the other hand, what business does the government/ taxpayers have in the financial situation of private companies? I grew up in India at a time when many industries were nationalized . . . they cranked out poor quality products in quantities that had little to do with customer demand, and with non-existent support/ service. Can we afford that to happen here? And more importantly, why single out the auto industry? The IT industry is suffering too. Why not bail out all the Web 2.0 companies that are now going bust?

In the end, I came down firmly against the bailout. But I also wanted to know what my colleagues & friends thought about it too. So I did a small poll on LinkedIn. The results showed that my thinking is aligned with my network’s - 81% against, 18% for. End of discussion.

Is Congress listening?

Last month I was speaking at a seminar on “Change Management & Communication” & an attendee asked, “What do you do when you spend months trying to rally the organization (around the downturn) & the CEO himself just quits?”

My response (”It’s time for you to look for another job too”) may have sounded flip, but I was pretty serious. Some in the audience didn’t quite agree. One suggestion was “This would be the time to show leadership and step up . . .” There may be something in that, though I can’t quite imagine how middle or even senior managers can make a difference in an otherwise leader-less organization.

I was reminded of this issue a short while ago when I read about Jerry Yang resigning his job as CEO of Yahoo. He may very well have been asked to leave (a la Steve Jobs), but for now things look pretty bad for Yahoo. I can’t imagine what the employees are feeling right now. Or the senior managers and communications staff who must have spent months - years - trying to convince their best employees that Yahoo is still a great place to work.

I’m sure the Board will do its duty and find a replacement. But how will any manager be ever again able to look an employee in the eye and tell him/ her why (s)he shouldn’t walk over to that little competitor in Mountain View?

When I wrote my Aug 18 blog post on “World-changing events”, somewhere at the back of my mind was the thought that we’re probably done for the year. There won’t be - can’t be - any more major events for the rest of the year.

How wrong I was! In some ways, that was just the beginning. An entire industry (investment banking) has all but disappeared since then, taking with it legendary names like Lehman Bros, Bear Sterns and even Goldman Sachs. Well over a trillion dollars has been wiped out from US stock markets . . . the global number may well be three of four times that. At least one country (Iceland) has gone bankrupt (ok, it is a small country with fewer people than most cities, but it is a COUNTRY). The “central front” on terrorism (or at least the perception of it) has shifted further east (into Pakistan). Piracy - which most of us thought was something that happened in the medieval period - has come back. Finland (I mean - Finland) is grappling with gun-related violence. GE - undoubtedly the most written-about company of all time - has needed a capital infusion from Warren Buffet. I could go on . . .

It is more than enough to make you want to stop everything. What is the point? What is the point of economics when you can’t predict major disasters like this? Of political and social studies when they hardly make an impact? And - in our industry - of management research & best practices when they seem completely irrelevant?

I don’t have the answers, but I don’t think this is the time to stop. We need to take these new realities into account and move forward - perhaps even more aggressively. New economics must - will - take into account the role of greater regulation, of greater state involvement. New management theories must - will - take into account the fact that there aren’t any best companies - so studying best practises in too much detail is a waste of time. I suspect that the new models that emerge will be more situational in nature. X can work, but so can Y. It all depends on the environment, the situation. All you can - have to - do is keep trying. Something will work, as long as you don’t get tired and give up.

Despite the grim news, I have a vague optimistism. Not sure where it comes from. Maybe I’m thinking we’ll have better energy policies around the world. Maybe I’m just being sadistic and thinking that the slowdown is great - fewer goods means lower consumption, which gives a breather to the environment. Maybe I can just buy some blue chip stocks real cheap - pretend I’m Warren Buffet. Or maybe I just like pain. Because pain makes you stop and re-consider what you’re doing. And that is something we do need, more than anything else.

Love them! Not the ones who make noise for the sake of it, but those that give independent reasoning rather than getting caught up with a “hype cycle”.

I came across three such people in the last few days. First one was Oren Harari. Most readers probably know Oren through his best-selling management books like “Leapfrogging the Competition” and “Break from the Pack”. After a conversation with Oren, I started browsing his blog. The post that caught my attention was “The Paradox of Diversity”. In this, he makes a bold statement: “Despite the claim of the multibillion dollar diversity industry that diversity yields higher performance and productivity, the evidence is anecdotal, highly questionable in its methodology, or not documented at all, even in corporations that spend big bucks on it. In fact, after reviewing the empirical literature, MIT’s Thomas Keane concluded, “The business case rhetoric for diversity is simply naïve and overdone.”" I look forward to sharing this with some Diversity and HR leaders for whom this is a sacred cow . . . they believe that at long as you’re “doing diversity”, you can’t go wrong!

The second contrarian was Arpit Kaushik. He states some telling “Truths about outsourcing”. I know every one of these to be true from my own experience. All too often, senior executives make the decision to outsource so that they can get rid of their headaches. The outsourcing providers are only too glad to oblige, and always have very compelling stories of process transformation, quality metrics, customer satisfaction and multi-million $ savings achieved. There is a piece in the middle that no one likes to talk about - it entails extensive vendor training, significant restructuring, complex technology and risk mitigation processes and hard-to-access talent. If those stories were told truthfully, a large number of outsourcing initiatives would be reconsidered, or just abandoned.

The third sceptic is Paul McCord. Paul is a sales training guru and another best-selling author. I just saw Paul’s blog on “social media hype”. I think there is more to be said on this topic - including which industries/ business functions will be truly transformed by social media, and which ones will be marginally affected. But I agree with his main point i.e. there is way too much hype, and it is created by those who profit from it.

Looking forward to highlighting more such views on Insightory!

It’s amazing how quickly things change. In the space of less than 2 months, we’ve had at least three world-changing events. The one everyone is talking about, of course, is the Olympics. Or more specifically, China’s role in staging the Games, in controlling their own citizens and in controlling media. Even if you dislike the totalitarian regime, you have to admit that they have pulled off a great show – made even more creditable because of the odds they had to contend with, and the amount of attention the world was giving them.  They have rightfully laid claim to being among the world’s leading nations in terms of management capabilities. Their style may be different, but they can get the job done! I’m curious if there are any good papers/ presentations contrasting the management styles of different Asian countries - China, Japan, India etc. Please let me know and we’ll try to post them on Insightory.

The second big change was Georgia. I don’t want to be facetious, but this really seems to be a case of “he-hit-me-first, no-he-did”. To assign blame is to take sides. Like most other conflicts - including those in a corporate setting - the only solution seems to be to get the two sides to talk and reach some form of compromise. Of course, when one side is much more powerful than the other (as is the case with Russia and Georgia), the compromise may be very lopsided, unless another powerful third party comes into the picture! Is this a return to the Cold War? I don’t think so - despite the jump in defense stocks. But for sure, we cannot take peace among major nations for granted. And that has a dramatic impact on everything from commodity prices to umemployment rates in Kansas!

The third world-changing event -almost overshadowed by the other two - was a regime change in Pakistan.While this is still a work-in-progress, it is certainly going to bring a lot of instability in an already unstable part of the world. While Musharraf was a brutal dictator, I cannot help but wonder if he wasn’t the best person to keep rogue elements in control. It’s a strange tradeoff between democracy and (some measure of) control. Saddam Hussein embodied that same tradeoff (caution: I’m not trying to suggest that Musharraf is like Hussein). Organizations experience the same leadership issues. In formative stages, and at moments of crisis it seems that tight, bull-headed (somewhat undemocratic) control is best. I know there is a lot of research around this - I will try to hunt it up and see if we can get it on the site.

What is point here? The future is really impossible to predict. Planning sessions should only be used to provide a direction. A project that stretches over multiple years has a very high chance of failure. And flexibility is the key. Especially flexibility of thought.

What are you doing to promote flexible thinking in your organization?