Hello – Anyone home?
Where is everyone? TMTD used to be one of my favourite blogs – it had posts that were relevant, and participation was high if not always comfortable. Now it is comfortable, less relevant (the blog used to be ahead of me, now I seem to be ahead of the blog), and there is little feedback. The town square has become less a collection of voices and ideas and more a platform to shout your stuff in a one way dialogue – not because people cant answer back – but perhaps because they have no wish to. Why is that – did they get bored, were they discouraged, have they run out of things to say? The sad thing is that when the blog was very active it gave me a stronger feel of what TMTD was about and who the people were. More recently there seems to be a stronger HR/talent development focus to the website and even the blog, is this because these are areas of “expertiseâ€? of the bloggers, or is this more the focusing of the TMTD core business (is this the TMTD core business)?
In the past months I’ve been monitoring the blog from a bit of a distance. I decided to stop playing on the TMTD playground some time back. I guess it just got a bit too hot and I decided to focus my energies elsewhere. Occasionally I’ve chipped in and added my two pennies, but kept my counsel on a lot of the posts that really did merit some response because I was tired of rocking the boat, but perhaps it is time to rock the boat again and move out of the safe peaceful place. It amused me that the most responses recently came from Aiden’s post on staying ahead. I think Michael hit the nail on the head. As a business, I want what is relevant to my business now, I have bills to pay today. So yes, I want to be thinking ahead and keeping an eye on the horizon, but my priority is on making sure today’s business keeps moving forward.
One of the biggest buzzwords in business today, and it is a direct result of the connection economy, is “partnership�. Companies no longer seek suppliers, they seek partners. A partnership suggests more than merely a transaction, it is about working with each other in such a way that your business becomes an extension of the other’s. It becomes crucial that both parties succeed, and it requires a level of trust. It is “working with�, not “working for�.
Your challenge as a consultancy is to make your message understood in such a way that people will take your hand and let you guide them to the future. If you leave it to the business to do it themselves, you risk not having them go there, and a reputation for being a waste of money. It makes no difference whether it was because you failed to carry the message appropriately (or the correct message for that matter), or they failed to implement the message appropriately. If you’ve worked with a company that chose to ignore the map you sold them – their perception will be that it was wasted.
I have not seen much happening in the ThinkSync community. There was the initial flurry of activity, but that seems to have fizzled out. What was the original objective of that, has its relevance changed?
Oh and the new layout – the jury is still out – but puleeez fix the response feeds. Aiden’s post, for example, still reads 0 responses. I counted 3.
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Bronwyn,
I’m not sure what you mean by “no-one is at home”. We had 47 posts in January, and have had 20 posts in Feb by today (17 Feb). That’s more than one a day. I’m not sure our audience can assimilate more than that…
Sure, its slower than last year, but its not like we’ve disappeared or anything (see more on next comment).
In terms of the formatting of the site, the comments thingy is a bug in the latest version of WordPress. We’re on it.
Bronwyn,
TmTd’s internal discussions have never been (and may never be) a great place for an outsider to “play”. Much of what we do relies on relationship, and where that relationship does not exist, its difficult to make internal commentary. But, as you know, we always welcome it, and engage with it anyway.
Its great to know that reading our blog does make a difference. You used to feel behind us, but now that you’ve been reading our blog regularly, you feel you’ve caught up. That’s great news! And a real vindication of our work!
OK, that’s said half ironically. Yes, the blog has suffered a bit in the past three months. December is easy to explain – summer holidays (yes, we are largely southern hemisphere based). But we have not been idle. In the past few weeks, we have radically changed our company structure, started 4 new businesses and have 3 more in the pipeline. We have doubled our team size in the last quarter.
There is always a price to pay when one spends energy in one area. By focusing internally, to build competencies, capabilities and capacity, we knew we’d need to take our focus off of resource development for a moment. Its nice to know that people are watching closely enough to notice.
In the southern hemisphere, the best time to do this is in the early part of a calendar year, so it was all carefully planned. “Normal operations” will resume soon. (Maybe your post will be the impetus to the team to get back to full steam blogging).
It will take another month or so, but we will then be able to reveal our new structure. We’re seriously excited about it, and know it will add immense value to our clients. So, keep watching this space.
Finally, TmTd has ALWAYS been about people. We track societal trends, and help our clients to attract, retain and get the best out of their talented staff and customers. Thta’s what we do. So, if there is an HR/talent focus, then we’re spot on. We track all sorts of trends that impact people, including technology, institutional and values shifts. That’s why this blog is quite eclectic.
I remember a while ago, Bronwyn, you berated us for NOT having a focus. Now you seem upset that we do. Maybe we just upset you, regardless of what we do…
Nice to hear from you again. Enjoy playing in our sandpit. Don’t forget that sometimes you’ll get sand in your eyes.
Bronwyn’s Back!
Hello again. Good question, ‘where are all the people?’ I can’t even find myself these days, let alone everyone else.
That aside, I just wanted to let you know where ThinkSync! went. It’s moved from wiki to doodle, to thingy, to what’s it, and now it can be found at http://www.tomorrowknowledge.biz It’s got a kewl new focus that’s recently been put to it. It’s fresh and new, and trying to engage people in a different space.
Oh and isn’t the ‘talent’ focus kewl? Some great conversations going. Wonder what we’ll talk about next? The current conversation I’m into, that I owe a response to is http://www.tmtd.biz/2005/10/07/poaching-talent/#comments (forgive me oh dragon)
Kewl, me done.
I told you that your post might spark a revival…. Four new posts and some additional comments in the 24 hours after it…
Thanks for kicking our butts into gear.
I’m the new kid on the block. I don’t “have a business”, but I have found this blog to be interesting and thought provoking. I keep my eyes and ears out for anything that could be a benefit to me, even if only peripherally, because anything can spark an idea or make me think, “Hmmm…”
I had decided early on to make this site a permanent part of my life, even though I’m not ‘into it’ as much as others are on the feedback side of it or in the original contribution part. But rest assured, I am reading.
BTW, I learned years ago from a webmaster who had a forum that there are always ‘lurkers’ who may never make themselves known, but will be reading. So, you never-fully- know what an impact you make on others.
Dragon,
Thanks for the feedback. In fact, we keep a close watch on the usage statistics on all our websites. For the record, we had 18,614 hits on this blog in January (about 600 per day), and have had 14,682 so far for February (860 per day).
There are currently 103 people registered to add comments or blog posts.
Good to see things have happened. I don’t particularly like getting sand in my eyes if it serves no purpose. That said, I remember now why I chose to watch from a distance.
It’s a pity really, cos I know that that some of those 600 people a day hitting your site, myself included, work for or represent potential clients. Their input would be invaluable for you as a business to understand what we need and what we are looking so that you can ensure that you are ahead of the rest.
The question re TMTDs core business was a confirmation, not a criticism. Thank you, it helped me to understand who and how you could interact with a company – it is the clarity I love so much.
I’m heading back to that quite that peaceful place again.
Bronwyn,
Thanks for playing again. It would be great to have you play some more. However, when you come onto our blog and post your critique/questions of our company in a fairly robust way, don’t be surprised if we come back strongly. Isn’t that the point?
If you wanted a soft, meek and mild response, you could have sent an email to me (its graeme@tomorrowtoday.biz, and I welcome any forms of input). But you chose a channel that not many companies make available – a public blog.
As to being a potential client, we like to work with clients that are not scared of quite direct and insightful input. Clients that want to pay for consultants to come and tell them only what they want to hear will be very disappointed with us.
I suggested during our previous interchanges that the next step for us (TomorrowToday in the form of Barrie and Graeme, and Bronwyn) would be to meet face to face. I still hold to that. Drop me an email and let me know when you’ll be in Joburg, or where you are normally, so we can meet up and work through some of the tension that clearly exists between us. This is not the right forum for that.