Giving Away Your Thoughts

One of the biggest arguments people make against company blogs is that it seems like the equivalent of giving away our intellectual advantage. If we tell people what we think and how we do things what is to keep them from simply doing it themselves? It's a valid question that is worth deeper examination. It's a question that goes to a deeper argument about giving away services or products in hope of selling additional or other services and products.

The argument against giving away knowledge makes a few assumptions that I don't believe are entirely valid. To be specific, the two assumptions I disagree with most are 1) people can completely grasp and execute the topics being discussed and 2) people have the time to do the work themselves. This isn't to say that most people who read this blog don't or can't understand what I'm talking about, it's that they probably don't see and understand the nuances that go beyond the high-level theory. Execution of an idea will bring up every exception, variance and incorrect assumption that cannot be covered in a one page article. It's one thing to talk about warehouse design but until you've done it 3, 20 or 50 times there are aspects you simply won't pick-up on.

There are people that grasp it, have done it in some form and could do it again. Here is where assumption 2 comes in. Those people already have a job that they are expected to perform at a certain level and that job has likely been already balanced to fill a 40 or more hour work week. It's hard to simply divert the attention of these people onto a new task. Their plate is already full.

Here's where the value of giving away the knowledge comes in handy though. If someone understands the value of a certain job and decides that they need it they typically go through some sort of RFP or interview process to decide who can best execute and meet their expectations. If you've been explaining your thoughts on the subject through a blog or newsletter then they have a way to become comfortable with you and your methodology. Especially if their internal experts look at it and approve of it. Assuming that prices are similar, or separated only by some level of tolerance, a company is going to contract someone they trust and feel comfortable with most of the time. In that perspective a blog becomes a means of relationship management and trust building.

Anyone with the time and desire to do what we do themselves can find the articles, whitepapers and processes online for free somewhere. Between Google, Wikipedia and the other millions and millions of websites it is possible to find anything that you want. You could do a search and find thousands of opinions contradicting mine on this topic if you wanted. It comes down to believability, trust and relationship. The same concepts that any strong business is built on. The same traits that most employees are held to. The same words that most people try to live by.

I wouldn't hold back information from a friend just so that I could try and sell him my services and make some extra money. I also don't think anyone who reads this blog would be dumb enough to stick around if I were simply selling my company and making everything we do sound impossible to execute without us. Good businessmen realize that there are always other options for people to hire, products to purchase and opinions on an issue. We want to help everyone that we can with their real estate issues and that may be by simply sharing our opinion on a topic, giving out some free advise or getting hired to do that thorough evaluation that we are good at.

Youth and Progress

This is a topic near and dear to me because it is something that I have to deal with on a regular basis. I'm young (only 24) and I've been out of school for two years next month. My youth is often seen as a detriment to many people when I first deal with them on a new project. The same is true for when I walk into a store to buy furniture, jewelry or any other expensive item. People see the youth and think that this kid can't possible help them improve themselves.

At the age of 24 I have more experience than many engineers 5 years older than me. I've been personally responsible for construction on a ground-up 822,000 SF distribution center. There were two project managers assigned to the project and I was in the second chair. I was responsible for budget, contractor selection, architectural design, installation inspection, final punch and most of the holes that go in between. Why was I put in that position a year after school? Because I had a manager that was willing to put me in a position to add to the project team. I was able to quickly prove that I belonged.

Am I saying that all 24 year olds should be running major projects on their own? Of course not. But at the same time, some people with 24 years of experience shouldn't be running major projects. My argument is that each and every person in an organization has a value to add that is not currently being utilized. Young people in an organization have the most value to add. It's the fear of allowing them to screw up the well oiled machine that often keeps that value from getting tapped.

Most people are surprised by the fact that your average Gen Y'er will only stay with a company a year or two before moving on to the next. Why is this a surprise? We have been brought up to know our worth and been given some of the most powerful tools available to help us perform. Why stick with a company that is holding us back simply because we're young? That doesn't make good business sense. If you are part of a business relationship where you are recommending clients to another business but they never return the favor are you going to keep recommending? Odds are you are going to start talking to their competitors about a better deal for your business. It's simple good business practice.

How will you know that the person you just hired has any worth or not if you don't let them sink or swim at some point? Sure, people need to start at the bottom to some extent. Everyone needs to know the basics behind the job. I had to learn to stamp and fill out invoices before I was allowed to control a budget. I had to develop warehouse designs in collaboration with other managers before I was allowed to do it on my own. It's a matter of timing that changes the game. Why should an intelligent member of Generation Y sit stamping invoices for a year while people that they may be better than get the actual projects? Would any team in the NBA have left Michael Jordan or Lebron James on the bench for a year simply because he was a rookie? No, it wouldn't have helped the team.

When working out an employment strategy think about this. Over-training someone simply because they are young will never help your business. Teach them what they need in a reasonable amount of time and then see if they are worth what you pay them to do. Entry level jobs shouldn't exist just to put the rookie into. In the end, you will develop better, more loyal employees by adding responsibility regularly to any Generation Y'er. In a couple of years your company will thank you.


Technorati Tags: gen y, progress, hiring

Power of Intellectual Capital

As a consulting company, the value that we provide our customers is the gathered intellectual knowledge we have in our company. The solutions that we are able to bring to the table are developed based on the tools our employees have picked up and developed over the years. Sometimes we come up with a truly unique idea that is able to bring something new to the table, but those are often developed out of simple modifications to existing ideas.

One of the reasons that we maintain and update this blog so regularly is to provide an output for some of the knowledge we have that others may be able to use as well. We try and advertise this site to our current and previous clients in case there is additional value hear that they can use. We advertise it to our internal clients and business partners as a way of keeping them up to date on the latest methods we have and to remind them of things we can do they may have forgotten about. The third reason is to help establish ourselves as thought leaders in the industry.

It would be nice to be the size of the CBRE Consulting group or FTI. We eventually hope to get there and we believe that we are at least as good as them and probably better at most things we do. Our goal is to drive the industry towards constant improvement and create not only a company that is innovative and continually increasing the value we bring to the table but also to create an industry that continues to innovate and improve. We look out at the software industry and see the stagnation that came around because market giants became comfortable with their position. New companies like Google and Yahoo came along and is slowly eliminating the software industry as we knew it. Software as a Service is becoming more and more accepted and popular.

The way we push the giants in our industry is by letting them know where we are and letting their customers know where we are. We'll get our business if we do a great job of helping out clients, we'll continue on our growth curve. We want the industry to be forced to react to us because their clients require them to provide what we are providing. We don't want to hide behind proprietary services that no one else has. Everyone should know what we have and what we offer because we are more than happy to offer our services even to CBRE or FTI when they can't do what we can and their client demands it. That's how you become the industry leader, that's how you grow your business and develop a solid reputation.

Toyota helped to create a legacy with their Toyota Production System. They developed a better way to manufacture cars and tighten up their supply chain. Response time improved, inventory carrying costs went down and they were noticed by everyone within the manufacturing industry. Not just by auto manufacturers or vehicle manufacturers but by anyone who produced anything in a manufacturing environment. Everyone did not put the system in place but everyone knew about it and its benefits. We want to be Toyota. We want to be the company that changes the way people look at our industry.

The Business Services sector has a lot of room to improve. We offer value to any business in America whether they realize it or not. Our job is to find that value we can bring and extract it for our clients. We work with outside service providers ourselves and understand as well as anyone that not everything can be kept inside. No company can gather every type of intellectual capital they need to run their business to its fullest potential.

The biggest reason that companies decide not to use consulting companies is not that they are running a great operation but that the cost of extracting value is high even if the Return on Investment is under a year. How much are you willing to spend to save $10 million every year if you are a $100 million dollar company? $1 million? $5 million? $15 million? What is that capital worth? Why wouldn't you spend $10 million to save $10 million on a repeating basis? This is exactly the situation that many companies find themselves in but instead of making the decision they stick to the status quo. They've lived with it so far, why not continue and not spend the money.

It won't be long before someone figures out the way to bring down the cost of extracting value. A venture capital company will eventually come along that invests in saving other companies money. We'll be there to help them lead the way.


Technorati Tags: consulting, intellectual capital, blogging