| Sam Young Newsletter |
Issue 143, January 2008
Hi guys,
Need to make some changes? Then read about the Stages of Change below.
Trendwatchers are taking a punt that ecommerce is going to be The Next Big Thing.
Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.
| Stages of Change |
What do we do when we get news of change? Our normal human dealing-with-things-cycle is to work through five stages:
- Dismiss it. Change isn't happening to us. It will never get off the ground. No way will they get that legislation through. You have heard it all before; the 'head in the sand' approach to change.
- Oppose it. Let's get up a petition! We will fight them in the landing zones, we will fight them on the beaches. We will never surrender. Change is WRONG, and we will prove it is against the will of the people.
- Live with it. Sod it, they are going to inflict this on us anyway, we are tired of ignoring it and fighting it and getting nowhere, so we will just have to deal with it, like an unwelcome relative staying in the spare room.
- Adopt it. Well, actually, this isn't as bad as I thought, now I come to think of it. Hmmm....
- Sell it. Dunno why people were so worried about this happening; this is GREAT. Everyone ought to do this, as it works sooooo well, and we are all really happy and fulfilled and the universe is a bright and shiny place :-)
Sound familiar? This is a common language version of the "Five Stages of Grief" by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book "On Death and Dying"; denial, anger, bargaining, depression & acceptance. I have worked through those five phases myself; the process varies from situation to situation with some stages very short, others longer. However, it is something that all of experience, and none of us can avoid.
We cannot avoid it because any large scale change is a trip into the unknown. We are not the best at dealing with uncertainty, and, in general, our opposition to change is driven by fear.
We can cope better with change by having a good relationship and trust with those creating the change, having input into the process, with open communication and on-going dialogue throughout the change process. If we feel that we can affect the outcomes, we are far more likely to buy-in to the change, support it and be productive.
There are in fact six methods that organisations can employ to ensure changes are adopted. They are:
- Participation: have the people involve themselves in the change process, in creating the change and in deciding how the change happens. This is the best way forward, as all are involved. However, it takes time, and therefore is high cost.
- Communication and education: explain clearly WHY the organisation needs to change, so people can see the aims and so buy-in.
- Facilitation and support: Explain that change is coming regardless and help people deal with it on a one-to-one basis.
- Negotiation: quid pro quo; we give you something you want, you give us something we want.
- Manipulation and co-optation: stretch the truth, tell half truths, do anything to get staff to accept that this change is a fait accompli.
- Coercion: threaten closure, sale or bankruptcy if the change doesn't happen; this is the old army technique - "if you don't do it, you're dead".
I think most of us would prefer to have an organisation develop a change programme using a combination of the first three methods. In the past, particularly under heavy unionisation, many organisations used the last two, perhaps with a pinch of four thrown in.
It is a key management role to estimate what impact a change will likely have on employee behaviour patterns, work processes, technological requirements, and motivation. Managers must assess what employee reactions will be and craft a change programme that will provide support as workers go through the five stage process.
| The Next Big Thing |
Sometimes, the Next Big Thing can be right under your nose, and be told to you by Trendwatchers (http://www.trendwatching.com/).
They say "Consider the online riches to be reaped in 2008 from ecommerce. Sure, it's been around for years and years, but prepare for a forceful 'sequel'. After all, never before have so many consumers been willing to overcome security threats, still shockingly bad (or boring) design, and delivery screw-ups.
"In other words, 2008 should be a goldmine for smart etailers, who, if they get their act together, could make billions and billions of dollars, euros, pounds, yen, kroner, lira and rand that are impatiently waiting to be spent by web-savvy consumers around the world. So in the next 12 months, spend blood, sweat and tears on improving your ecommerce presence; the pay-off will be immediate, and far more substantial than investing in Web 2.0 me-toos!
"We'll let the numbers do (some of) the talking:
- Some recent US holiday spending numbers: online retail spending hit a record USD$733m on 'Cyber Monday', the Monday after Thanksgiving which usually represents the first significant spike in online holiday spending in the US. The spend figure increased by 21% on last year and was an 84% jump from the average daily online spending totals during the preceding four weeks, according to ComScore. More than USD 10.7bn has been spent online during the holiday season, covering the first 26 days of November 2007, a 17% increase on the same period last year. All in all, ecommerce in the US is expected to reap sales of USD 259 billion this year, representing an 18% gain over 2006.
- Forrester estimates that in the US, almost USD 400 billion of store sales — or 16% of total retail sales — are directly influenced by the web as consumers research products online and purchase them offline. This will expand at a 17% compounded annual growth rate over the next five years, resulting in more than USD 1 trillion of store sales by 2012.
- In the UK, online shopping sales exceeded GBP 4 billion a month for the first time in July 2007. On a 12-month basis, online sales are up 36% (source: Brand Republic).
- South Korea's ecommerce sales soared more than 26% in 2006, thanks to increased spending on children's goods, fashion and sports-related items. Combined ecommerce transactions reached 13.45 trillion won (USD 14.29 billion) (source: Yonhap)."
Food for thought, isn't it.
| Undeleting Digital Photos |
If you have somehow managed to delete your digital photos on your camera, before you shell out for any retrieval software, take a look at a freeware alternative from a German company called Convar.
Called PC Inspector Smart Recovery, in the opinion of Woody Leonhard of Office Secrets newsletter (http://www.windowssecrets.com/), "works almost every time, in my testing, although I did hit snags installing it on one specific Vista computer". The following restore procedure is his work.
To use PC Inspector:
- Don't DO ANYTHING with your camera. Don't remove the memory card. If you have removed the memory card, DON'T put it back in the camera (cameras sometimes write something to the card on insertion which may ruin your chances of getting your images back)
- Download PC Inspector Smart Recovery 4.5 from http://www.snapfiles.com/get/smartrecovery.html. The installer takes a while, so be patient:
- In Windows XP, double-click on the downloaded file to install the programme.
- In Vista, right-click the file and choose Run as Administrator.
-
- The memory card:
- If you don't have a card reader, attach the camera to your PC with the appropriate cable. In either case, if Windows pops up and offers to do something for you (such as copying the files into your PC), click the X button to close the AutoPlay dialogue box.
- If you have a card reader attached to your PC, take the affected memory card out of your camera, flip the write-protect "lock" tab so nothing can be written to the card, and put it in the card reader.
-
- Click Start | Programs (in Vista, it's All Programs) | PC Inspector Smart Recovery. The PC Inspector Smart Recovery main dialogue box will come up.
- In the left pane, choose the drive that contains your camera's memory card, or choose the camera itself. If you find this a bit challenging (because PC Inspector doesn't give you many details about the drives), first use Windows Explorer to find the correct drive letter.
- In the middle pane, choose the type of file you want to recover. Chances are good it's '.jpg'.
- In the right pane, navigate to a place where you would like to store the reconstituted files on your PC.
- Click Start. This will take a while, but you can watch the programme's progress by looking at the folder that's being filled with recovered photos.
- When it's done, click the X button to get out of the program, flip the "lock" write protection tab back to its normal position, and put the card back in your camera. You're ready to snap away.
Woody goes on to say that "sometimes PC Inspector refuses to install correctly (check the FAQ on the Convar site at http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/faq.htm?Language=1 for possible solutions). Sometimes it doesn't recognize all of the files on your camera's memory card. In those cases, it's time to haul out the big guns — and shell out a few kroners."
I hope that may get some of you out of a holiday hole!
| TLAs for SMEs |
Here are this newsletter's TLAs for you:
- SCART, Syndicat francais des Constructeurs d'Appareils Radio et Television. A SCART connector is a physical and electrical interconnection between two pieces of audio-visual equipment, such as a television set and a video cassette recorder (VCR).
Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.
| Tips, Short+Hot Keys |
In the last of our Alt and numbers series, we look at 6 & 7:
- Access "Switch between List, Details, Properties, and Preview views (click the arrow next to Views); use within the Open, File New Database and Export dialog boxes" Alt & 6
- Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook & Word "Switch between List, Details, Properties, and Preview views (click the arrow next to Views )" Alt & 6
- Access "Display the Tools menu; use within the Open, File New Database and Export dialog boxes" Alt & 7
- PowerPoint "Show the Tools menu (Tools button)" Alt & 7
- Excel, Outlook & Word "Display the Tools menu; use within the File Open or Insert File dialog boxes" Alt & 7
| Hot Linx |
If you have a PC with a now unremembered password, then Petter Nordahl-Hagen has a great little Linux password resetting application for you at http://home.eunet.no/%7Epnordahl/ntpasswd/
For a list of the top 50 most philanthropic people on our planet, check out http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/philanthropy_individual/
To see how the wealthy, design-conscious & austere can be tempted to spend their dosh, check out the preemininent premiumisation magazine online at http://www.monocle.com/
And if you are getting sick of multi-functionality in your phone, check out this YouTube clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIOIM6hHBk
Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here
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