Maurilio Amorim

Category: business

  • Why Google Is Failling in Social Media

    I have been puzzled about Google’s inability to do well in the social media space. I have watched them take over Blogger and instead of making it better and more relevant, they managed to lose market share. There were another string of failures like Dogeball, Jaiku, Lively, Buzz and Wave. Even Orkut, the largest social network in Brazil, is now losing the Brazilians to Facebook. I have seen several of my friends migrate from Orkut recently. It wasn’t until a recent article in FastCompany profiling Larry Page, Google’s CEO, that I got a clue into the search giant’s ineptitude at social media. As it turns out, Larry does not use social media. Now it all makes perfect sense.

    Why Google is failing in social media

    Organizational culture is driven from the top. It makes sense that what the leadership values, their passion and interests get researched, funded and developed. It’s interesting to me that such a large and entrepreneurial business as Google where workers are given free time to work on pet projects, still manages to fail in what has become the hottest and fastest growing sector of the internet. Interestingly the founders of Twitter and Foursquare are former Google employees. But it wasn’t until they left their jobs at the Googleplex that they were able to create their social software that has changed the way we communicate.

    The implications here are many. But for me there are two critical ones. First, as a leader of my group, I will determine the culture and the emotional intelligence of my entire organization. Consciously or subconsciously I will hire, fund and develop people who share some of my value and interests. Secondly, those who are passionate about something other than what their organization’s DNA will be frustrated in their jobs until they find a place that aligns more closely with their passion.

    As Google seems to be proving to us, not even free time to work on any project,  a massive budget, and brilliant people can create products outside the core interests of the organizational leaders. My assumption based on personal experience is that bottom up movement can only occur when there’s strong buy in from the top.

    Have you ever been in a situation where you tried to convince your superior to try something new? How did it workout?

  • Partnership as a Business Model

    Years ago I decided to make a major shift in my business. We moved from being a vendor of services and resources to our clients to becoming strategic partners. If we cannot be a strategic partner, we’ll most likely decline the work, specially if it’s an involved and complicated project.  This shift in strategy has had a very positive impact in our effectiveness, quality and  profitability.

    Lingua DMS TWR

    Yesterday The A Group unveiled to 28 different countries in Europe and north Africa a very large and dynamic online tool for TWR.org, the largest Christian broadcaster in the world. This online tool gathers media content from users world wide in 160 different countries and 200 different languages and organizes, re-purposes, and makes information available to multiple devices, i.e. phone, website, and download. The successful launch happened because of our strategic partnership and how the A Group team and TWR’s team worked together during the discovery and development phases. Here’s how I see strategic partnerships:

    Alignment. There are shared values on both teams. You cannot be a strategic partner with someone or an organization you don’t share common ground.

    Openness. You cannot partner with someone where open communication is not an option. Push back from both teams is critical in bringing a complicated project into completion.

    Respect. I often say we are not hired monkeys that just execute tasks. Without mutual respect from both teams, partnerships are disastrous. I have walked away from deals where I felt our expertise and experienced were not going to be leveraged or respected. In the past those projects seldom succeeded and when they did, the pain factor was not worth the money.

    How’s your work environment? Do you have more partnerships or do you feel more like a working “monkey”?

  • My Travel Fashion Strategy

    I travel a lot. A whole lot. People are always asking me how do I go for a week with just one carry on. How do you decide on what to take on a trip? While none of us want to take extra stuff, we certainly don’t want to be caught with less stuff than what we need. Over the years I have come up with a traveling fashion strategy.

    fashion packing for a business trip

    Pick a color palette. When I’m traveling for business, my color palette is usually black and one or two accent colors for shirts. This way I make sure that every shirt, socks and pants match each other. If you have a spill or pull a button or hole then it could ruin your one good outfit you had planed. When I go on vacation or to the tropics, I usually pick a navy or tan color scheme. Right now I’m on my way to Europe with my black color-scheme.

    Find the right basics. I have been wearing ExOfficio underwear for years. They are virtually indestructible, anti-microbial (no smells), and dry in 2 minutes. According to their marketing copy you can go to 6 countries, 2 continents with 2 pairs of underwear. I have not tried that yet, but I can see how one could do that even while not being French. Good socks are also important. I usually buy them with a small percentage of spandex so they hold their shape and are easy to clean and dry if you didn’t pack enough. I usually pack one pair of dress as well as my running shoes and wear the casual ones on the plane. A transitional belt that can go business or casual, so I usually wear one on the plane with me. I also pack workout and running gear. But since they don’t wrinkle, I  roll and stuff them inside my running and dress shoes. (I wear a size 12/13 so there’s plenty of room inside my shoes)

    Smart pants. Depending on your line of work you can wear dark jeans for travel and pack a second, and potentially third, pair of dress slacks. For my European trip, I have brought two pairs of dark jeans and one black dress slacks for a more formal event. One of my jeans is silicone infused. It keeps it’s sheen and dark color from fading but it also resists spills, so I know they’ll look good even after a nasty brawl in a nightclub in Paris (Not that I would know that from personal experience, however).

    Defining Shirts. Most of the year, you can get by without wearing a coat, so your shirts will be the most impact-full element in your wardrobe. I brought several different kinds that would work with or without a coat and all of them go well with all my pants, belt and shoes.

    Sports coats. Whatever you do, please, please, please fight the urge to wear your sport coat with shorts and flip flops as you travel. I see men doing that all the time and it saddens me. Wear a t-shirt or casual shirt and your jacket on the plane, or learn to fold your blazer so it travel in your suitcase without wrinkling. (I’ll do a video on that soon). Currently, I’m wearing a black polished cotton casual coat on my trip and I have another, more formal one inside the suitcase.

    What’s your travel fashion strategy?

  • Are You Part of a Learning Organization?

    I have the privilege to work with some very dynamic organizations and one of the indicators of whether or not they continue to grow is their ability to learn–both from their mistakes as well as from others. My first consultation with a new client serves two distinct purposes: Is this a good fit? Is this a learning organization? I have been in situations where I knew that my company could add a lot of value to a client, but, unfortunately, they were not teachable and therefore, not a viable business relationship. Here’s what I look for in making my assessment of an organization’s teach-ability quotient.

    Learning organization

    Secure leadership. The leader sets the tone for the rest of the organization. If the person at the top is not a learner and willing to be taught, then he or she will create a culture of insecurity and excuses. In my experience that shows up first when the leader has an excuse or explanation for every suggestion I make. One of my favorite lines of all time was “even thought this is a large city, it’s about 3 years behind the rest of the country. We just can’t move too fast.” That was just ludicrous.

    Commitment to Excellence. We have played down excellence lately because the word has become synonymous with “extravagant.” But excellence compels us to do our very best in every area of ministry or business. If that’s not your focus, then why bother trying to get better?

    Healthy team dynamics. Dysfunctional teams are territorial and easily threatened by outsiders. They can’t learn because everyone is usually spending  most of their time trying to figure out how to protect their territory or launch a counter-attack at the “enemy” on the chair next to them. I know that they will eventually turn on me.

    What does a learning organization look like to you?

  • Getting Your Dream Job. Advice to Young Professionals

    “If you deliver on what you’re asked to do, even if you’re not passionate about it, you will earn the right to do thing you love.” That was part of my answer to the young man who asked me, “What advice would you give someone wanting to go into the church communication field?” As I reflect on that answer, I believe it applies to anyone starting out a new career.

    Career advice to young professional

    I remember talking with someone who confessed not being very good at his job because it wasn’t challenging and not at the level he wanted it to be. He did the minimum required because he felt under-utilized, doing work well below his skill and intelligence capacity. His boss had a different take, “he’s lazy,” said the man to me. “I had a lot of faith in him and wanted to give the kid more important work, but at the end of the day he couldn’t even execute the trivial stuff, so I didn’t give him more responsibilities.”

    So the vicious cycle begins: you’re bored so you don’t perform and your lack of performance limits your opportunities. You see where this is going. I remember running a Summer Day Camp that was in bad financial shape when I took it over at the church I was working part time in my early 20’s. I had no business running a camp and, at the time, I didn’t know anything about it and had never seen myself in that position. However, that was my opportunity to show my boss that I could lead a team and grow a business. After 3 years, I grew the attendance 4 fold and the budget by 500% and brought in enough profit that at age 24, I became the Executive Pastor of the church and my boss moved his office off campus. I had earned the trust and confidence of the Senior Pastor and of the church board to do a job that, looking back, was way bigger than my experience and education.

    You might be stuck doing a job that you think it’s not a good fit or that under utilizes your gifts. Don’t make the mistake that many people make by doing the bare minimum while you wait for that great opportunity to come around. Chances are that it will not. Roll up your sleeves and get the job done. That is the fastest way to your dream career.

    Where are you in your career?

  • Rules for Successful Team Work

    My best projects have been a team effort. The coming together of two entities, units, or even individuals bring different sensitivities and perspectives that can make a good project, a great one. As I reflect on my successful as well as failed collaborations, I have come up with a few rules that must be in place before the proverbial “best of both worlds” can come to fruition. The difference between the this-was-great, and the it-was-a-total-disaster outcome is directly dependent on team dynamics and how closely I followed the following rules.

    Must Haves For Successful Team Work

    Strategic leader. No matter the scope of any collaborative project, it needs to have someone as the keeper of the vision. Who is the champion for the project? Who is going to keep the entire team focused on what’s important and needed? Without strong leadership, projects with multiple stakeholders can move away from its original intent and the entire outcome can be compromised.

    Implicit trust. Unless there’s trust among the team, the project will not succeed. Territorial and insecure people cannot collaborate. Eventually they will sabotage the project in an attempt to keep their turf or prove that they can do it better than other team members. Remove them from your team as soon as you have even a hint of their behavior.

    Shared Credit. There’s nothing that demoralizes a team faster than someone getting or taking credit for what should have been a team effort. The leader must make sure that the whole team gets recognized publicly and that each member gets praised privately for their contribution to the outcome–specially your star performers.

    Without these dynamics in place it’s virtually impossible to have a successful collaboration. After suffering through dysfunctional teams, I have learned to quickly assess the success ratio of a new team. If any of these elements are missing and I can’t fix it quickly, I will, and have, disband the group with no regrets.

    In your experience, what else is necessary to make a team work well together?

  • Strategy for Making Important Decisions

    Making decisions about your business or career can be a scary proposition to many of us. Some can make quick and effect decisions while others agonize over all the options and can’t commit to a course of action. Ultimately, they are afraid that there are better options just around the corner if they only do more research or wait another day. In my experience Leonard Ravenhill was right when he stated “The opportunity of a lifetime must be seized within the lifetime of the opportunity.”

    Making Important Decisions

    When we take too long to make critical decisions for our business or ministry, there’s always a price to pay. Too often the window of opportunity is no longer there: the price goes up, the competition beats us to the punch, the organization loses business because it’s under resourced. I must confess, I am much better at the big-picture decisions today than I used to be. Here’s how I handle the big stuff.

    Define your win. What do I want out of this deal? What impact does it have on my career, business or ministry? Based on the answer to these questions, you can set the priority you are going to give to this negotiation. This will help you not to waste a lot of time on things that are not critical in the long run.

    Set a date to make the decision. Without a deadline things linger and languish way too long. Give yourself a reasonable amount of time, but make it firm. “By this time next week, I will have this thing figured out.” Do yourself and your organization a favor and stick to it.

    Set your parameters. Based on your situation, ministry or business model, you need to decide your criteria for saying “yes” or “no” or set a maximum budget. If you don’t know where your boundaries are you cannot make a clear call. You don’t decide your walk-away number during negotiation–usually that’s too late and by then you are emotionally involved in the deal.

    Gather all the facts you can. You will never know everything you need to know about anything. I don’t care what it is. I see people driving themselves and others crazy because they keep digging and digging trying to make sure they know every detail. All you need is enough information to feel comfortable to make a call.

    Pull the trigger and don’t look back. Once you make your decision, move on. If something better, cheaper, or shinier comes along tomorrow it won’t help you, so why bother with it. Focus on your next big decision and make peace with your choice.

    In my experience one can waste more time and a lot of money by pushing deadlines into the future because of not wanting to make the wrong choice. Interestingly a “non-decision” can cost you a lot more than even the non-ideal, but acceptable choice.

    How do you make career, business or ministry choices? Where do you think you get stuck the most?

  • 3 Things You Must know in Order for Your Business to Make It

    I love the entrepreneurial spirit. People who can see opportunities where most can’t and have the guts to jump out into and make it happen, are some of my favorites. In my experience, most business owners start their companies without all the “facts.” While some might have a well-thought out business plan, most only have an idea, a lot of passion and energy and enough gambling instinct to pull the trigger on and move forward. But while no amount of education or research can prepare you for the real world of business, here’s a few  things you must figure out if you’re going to make it whether you’re starting a free-lance business out of your home, a manufacturing facility, or a marketing agency.

    start up business rules

    Who is my ideal customer? My company became a lot  more profitable once we decided what our ideal customer looked like. We realized that some of our clients were not a good fit for us and we let them go so we could pursue those whom we could serve better.  A critical mistake early in most business is finding clients anywhere you can. Whatever comes your way, you are compelled to take because, after all, it pays the bills, right? Not always. By saying yes to a client or even a industry that’s not a good fit for your product or skills might lead you down a path you don’t want to go. I helped a friend through this dilemma who was getting several requests from small business in the food industry because he said yes to an acquaintance and undercharged for the project. He was busy with requests that were far too small of projects for his business model.

    What are my true operating costs? “I don’t think I can charge more than $50 per hour,” the man across the table said. “But how much does it truly cost you per hour to operate?” Unfortunately, he didn’t know the answer.  If you don’t know your true costs, you won’t be in business long.

    Is my business model sustainable? I know people who have been pouring their lives in a start up that cannot pay them much, sometimes nothing at all. I remember telling someone recently, “you don’t have a business; you have a hobby.” Unless you are able to pay for your work and continue to build the business, you don’t have a sustainable model. Volume, product quality, recognition are all irrelevant at this point. If you’re not charging enough, then up your prices. If you cannot compete in the marketplace because your prices are too hight, do something else.

    Have you ever started or thought about starting a business?

  • Signs It’s Time to Fire an Employee

    Firing people is never easy. I remember having to fire an employee a few weeks into my very first job. I was 20; he was 42. It was the right thing to do even though I felt sick to my stomach before, during and after the ordeal. Since then I have had to fire friends, foes and everything in between. I have even dismissed volunteers (yes, and that’s a subject for another post). But as I have matured over the years, I have come to the realization that sometimes letting someone go from a position they are ill-suited for is the best thing not only for the organization but for that person as well. While firing an employee is always a complex and often difficult process, there are signs that should help you decide that it is time to pull the trigger.

    Signs it's time to fire someone

    These are some of the indicators I look for that tell me it might be time for a team member to go:

    You have lost trust in them.

    They have lost faith in you.

    They cannot or will not perform to agreed expectations.

    They are trapped in a cycle where performance gets better after a bad review but deteriorates over time until the next review.

    They cannot make the philosophical shift necessary to go with you to the next level.

    They only reason they are still around is because you like them.

    They do not agree with your direction or vision.

    They are not loyal.

    They rather be somewhere else.

    You avoid being around them or giving them any new work.

    Other team members wonder why they are still employed.

    While this is not an exhaustive list, it has been a good indicator of an employee who is not in the right position or the right fit for the company. In my experience, prolonging someone departure hurts the organization, the entire team and ultimate the person who needs to move on.

    What did I forget on my list?