May 2007
Failure is your key to success.
Failure is a critical process that people must go through before they can see success. Without understanding failure, you can never hope to understand success.
Tac Anderson points out the following:
...innovation requires multiple failures before you find the right solution. This flies in the face of Corporate America. New Media tools provide a perfect platform for this type of innovation. It has the ability to bring together a diverse group of people that may be geographically dispersed and because New Media tools are digital this allows for them to fail cheap.Please read his entire post. In order to be successful, you have to understand that sometimes, failure is the best option.
Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher’s Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
The “brilliance” of Microsoft
It only took Microsoft five years to come up with this one. This is incredibly helpful.
When building the new Vista operating system, Microsoft knew that there would be program incompatibilities that can cause some odd video problems. These video problems can manifest themselves in strange ways. In order to accomodate these problems, Microsoft displays a message that allows you to open the application in a "safe" window. It then allows you to do what you need to do and switch back.
Here is a screen shot of the error message. (click to enlarge)
What impresses me more than anything is the fact that the incompatibility is with Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Brilliant Idiots.
I still think you need to wait before installing Vista because there are all sorts of unadvertised "features" like this.
What impresses me more than anything is the fact that the incompatibility is with Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Brilliant Idiots.
I still think you need to wait before installing Vista because there are all sorts of unadvertised "features" like this.
Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher’s Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
Are you concerned about SOX compliance?
Sarbanes-Oxley has been a concern of many companies since its inception. Large companies and small have had to worry about compliance with the hopes that fraud and manipulation of financial statements in publicly traded companies might be prevented. Smaller companies now have a little reprieve.Eric Ogren at ComputerWorld talks a little abut this in his article Stitching the SOX. He says:
The Securities and Exchange Commission agreed to ease the pain and suffering of smaller companies in complying with SOX section 404 for reporting internal financial controls.
Read his entire posting and let me know what you think. Do you agree with his assessment?
Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher’s Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
e-Discovery… a special report
ECM Industry Watch has put out a report on e-discovery. Most organization are ill-prepared for the new e-discovery rules.
It is critical that organizations be ready... you never know what might come up.
Go to ECM Industry Watch to download the report on the new implemented about six months ago e-discovery rules.
So, how are you doing in your business to prepare?
Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher’s Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher’s Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
Succession Planning: A Lesson from “The Office”
Last night I enjoyed another episode of The Office. As usual it was filled to overflowing with HR nightmares and management disasters. At one point, Michael tells his employees that the winner of the day’s activities would become the new manager of the Scranton Branch. These activities included an egg walk, a hot dog eating contest, Sumo Wrestling and walking over hot coals. Needless to say, the most appropriate strategy to finding out if someone is “hungry
Email can Cost you an Interview
I was recently looking at resumes for several positions and found the most disturbing evidence about the type of people we were looking at. I was impressed with the resume enough to contact the person for an interview. Then I looked at their email. . hotsexymama@..... I couldn’t believe it. Why would a professional organization want this type of a “handle
Agent of Change
What do you want to do?
So often we think that we want to make a change. We take the time to develop new processes and new ways of doing things. We spend money to buy new tools. We start implementing these new ideas.
Then, we don't ever look at it again. We forget that made a change. We forget that we have new tools. We just simply fail at implementing our new solutions.
Why? Well the reason is the question... We talk so much about wanting to make a change, but we never talk about why we want to make a change. Sometimes we try to make change because it is the cool thing to do and not because we have a valid business reason for the change.
Before you consider making a change, ask the question why. Don't assume that what you want to do will make a difference until you understand why.
In fact, you should also ask why you do things the way you do them now as well. That may change your ideas about making change.
What and why are the two most important questions.
Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher’s Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher’s Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
21st century tools for document collaboration
How do you collaborate now? Do you email documents back and forth and hope that you know what the current version of the document is? Or, do you store your document on a Sharepoint Server and work on it that way?
Well, there are a lot of tools out there. I have seen email, network locations, Sharepoint servers... I have even seen newsgroups be used. In all reality, these are old world tools. These tools don't provide collaboration so much as they provide a place where people can edit the document in succession. Of course, MS Word has a little tool that lets you track changes. It even has a tool that allows you to compare changes in a document. Boy, this can be a big pain... you still have to figure out what the most recent version of the document is. Enter a wiki. A wiki has been around for over a decade, but is just now starting to take hold. Over a year ago, Information Week has an article on Using a Wiki For Business where they defined a wiki as the following:Wiki.org defines wiki as "the simplest online database that could possibly work." Inspired by Apple's HyperCard programming environment, the first wiki software was created in 1995 by Ward Cunningham as a way to manage the Portland Pattern Repository's site content. Named after wiki-wiki, the Hawaiian word for quick, wikis are essentially Web pages that anyone or at least anyone with permission can create or edit. (Information Week)
There are many ways to look at document management, but not often do we look at document collaboration. A wiki is a great way for document collaboration. Want to see a wiki in action? Go to Wikipedia - The Free Online Encyclopedia.
Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher’s Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
You are responsible for your own spam
Maybe I am a little jaded. In my last post about Spam doubling, it occurred to me that we are responsible for the spam we receive.
I mentioned in that post that in order to view the article by the New York Times, you need to register for the site. I pointed out that you need to use a dummy account. They say they will never use your email address for anything other than what you authorize, but I must be too untrusting.
Here is a tip. Get a Hotmail or Gmail account. Use it only for signing up for things on the web. That way, your personal email box won't be flooded with newsletters, offers for prescription drugs or the best stock tips in the world.
Of course, you also won't win the online lotteries or have a chance to help a wealthy estranged king from Nigeria in relocating his wealth so that you can reap the reward, either.
Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher’s Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher’s Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
