Def. Where the level of management oversight has grown so large as to reach fully-diminished returns.
Often seen in large companies where review processes, in an effort to minimize risk, keep any new initiatives from reaching the marketplace. This phenomenon is commonly manifested in the form of a good idea being put on hold for six months waiting for “management buy-in” only to watch a more nimble competitor launch a similar product.
There are several visible side-effects of Peak Oversight:
After a competitor launched the product, and thus freeing the Peak Oversight company from any first-mover risk, the company is now free to copy the competitor’s product and play catch-up in the market.
Those in management who saw this coming, but only kept the product from launching, are promoted for their insight into the competitive landscape.
The people with the really innovative ideas and ability to execute on them leave the company.
My brother and business partner John Sampson mentioned the other day that he was pretty amazed that more people haven’t gotten into the Apple TV. It is a great product — especially with the second generation software upgrade. So, when is Apple going to open up an App Store for the Apple TV? I would love to download games and productivity apps for my 52″ LCD. Doubly so if Apple built some innovate iPhone interfaces — tilt, accelerometer, screen, location input, address book social graph, etc. — to drive them.
So, I just realized how many messages I have been missing on Twitter since the crew there removed the Track feature. I know that the lack of the track feature was really having an impact on the value of the service (see my previous post on The Ideal Twitter Setup and tracking your Twitter username) but I was still surprised at some of the things I was missing when I started looking into it on Summize — the only service that Twitter has not killed XMPP access to at the current time.
Instead of missing more Tweets, I decided to create a Yahoo! Pipe (my first one — very cool stuff guys!) using Summize to replace Twitter’s Track function:
Just go to the page above, enter your Twitter username and you are all set. The results from the Pipe can be put into your favorite RSS reader, emailed to you or sent to your phone so you get the Tweets in near-real-time. Enjoy!
Everyone loves me. Everyone loves my business and products. What’s more, everyone loves everything that I do. I. Am. Awesome.
So, aside from sounding like Barney (wwNPHd) from How I Met Your Mother, the above is an example of someone’s ego defense mechanisms completely insulating their id. While this state of delusion can make the world a nice place to inhabit — being completely id driven is how children live after all — it can be disastrous for a business.
Every company must deal with Brewster’s Law of Online Community Management:
“In every online community there lurks a small but vocal minority of attention-seekers. These folks are ready to pounce on any change, brand it as a Sign of the Coming Apocalypse, and announce their intentions to leave in a loud, angry huff. The only problem? They never actually leave….”
While these people definitely exist, there are many more users that criticize because they actually want the product to get better. How do you determine which type of user has given the suggestion and fairly judge the idea?
I propose that we start “Turning Oranges into Apples”. In other words, flip the negative feedback you receive 180 degrees before adding it to your potential To Do list. Criticism for not having a feature is converted into positive feedback for having the feature in place. Instead of “I hate that you don’t have [XYZ] on the site” you list “I really loved that you added [XYZ] to the site.”
Turning Oranges into Apples does three things for you:
It separates the negative emotion of the critique from the idea itself.
It truly lets you “compare apples to apples” as the old saying goes. The benefit of the feature can be judged against other ideas without bias. Which keeps you from over/under-prioritizing a feature based on the way it was presented.
It protects your collective team id — which makes life nicer and keeps everyone from thinking all of your users are [insert favorite explicative(s) here] idiots.
Since having an engaged audience is becoming more critical to business success every day, anything that we can do to improve the process should be very valuable. Do you have any other life-hacks for dealing with user feedback? Please share them in the comments.
MyBlogLog Sr. Engineer (and my brother) John Sampson was pictured on TechCrunch’s Live From Google Campfire One. John stepped up and attended the event after I hurt my back a few days ago. Thanks for going John!
I love Twitter. It is an absolutely fantastic service. However, once you get into using the service, it is easy to become overwhelmed with the amount of information coming to you. This is compounded if you pump the messages of all those you are following to your mobile phone. And if you don’t push the messages to your phone, you will often miss out on much of the value that the near real-time Tweets gives you. So, what do you do?
After asking a lot of Twitter black belts, I have come up with a simple setup that works great for me.:
“Follow” everyone that you are remotely interested in hearing from. The more the merrier.
Turn “Notifications” on for the 8-10 (or so) people that you really care about. Personally, I receive notifications for several close friends that live in my area since I may want to join them if they Tweet about being at a location near me.
Use Twitter’s “Track” feature. I was missing this one for a while and it has really helped me out since adding it. By submitting a “track topic” message to Twitter, you will receive all notifications for the topic you enter even if you are not following the person that sends the message. This is great for following mentions of your business or other areas of interest, but there is an even better use. If you track your Twitter username (e.g. “track toddsampson” for me) you will get notifications for all messages that mention @username. You will never miss a message that is to or about you!
Always send notifications to your mobile phone. Yes, it is easy to switch to IM — and this may be preferable on occasion — but you have to remember to switch back to the mobile before leaving the computer. After forgetting too many times, I now just stick with the phone. (Note: It would be great if Twitter would check to see if you are Away/Offline on IM and automatically re-route to the mobile; but the service isn’t there yet.)
When you are at your computer, you can follow the full flow of conversations — as time permits. When you are away, you are still in the loop. It’s the best of both worlds.
I am beginning to think there is no way to avoid it. Every time we launch a new product feature at MyBlogLog, someone (usually multiple someones) tells me the new feature will kill another company. In the past month I have heard, “This new feature is…”
a Digg killer.
a Technorati killer.
a FriendFeed killer.
a Socialthing killer.
a MySpace killer.
a Facebook killer.
and a dozen more I am forgetting.
Aside from thinking the person telling me this is on crack, I usually have a few additional thoughts. First, there is enough killing in the world already; we don’t need to add to it. Second, as people around Yahoo! are painfully aware, I am a natural born startup guy. I truly respect every person that lets the entrepreneurial spirit grab them and follows through to start a company. I want them to succeed. (I think that any startup team I have spoken with will attest to the fact that I will do anything I can to help them. Please feel free to ping me if there is anything I can do for your startup.) Third, part of being an entrepreneur is knowing that your new startup is going to change direction several hundred times on the way to its final destination. Just because there are similarities in a current feature set does not mean the companies are heading in a similar direction. (MyBlogLog started as outgoing click tracking!) Third, if the services are similar, there is plenty of room for competition. Fourth, if we have created a new feature, it has next to nothing to do with competing with existing services. We do try to learn from what others are doing. But if we add a feature, it is because it is the right thing to do for our users.
In the end, I don’t want any feature we build to kill another company. I just want the feature to be killer.
Most people, especially me, seem to slow down on the number of posts they publish when interesting things are happening in their lives. The drop in posts over the last month while I was snowboarding in Lake Tahoe; attending Graphing Social Patterns, eTech, and SxSW conferences; and launchingtonsofcoolshitonMyBlogLog are a prime example. When things drop back to normal I write more about whatever is on my mind; which often isn’t half as interesting as the events, feelings, and ideas I have during the really exciting times.
It seems to me that the really great bloggers (and successful self-promoters) do the opposite of this interest to post inversion pattern. The more interesting things are in their lives, the more these people take the time to share their excitement and good fortune with others.
Note to self: Take the time to stop and smell the roses. Then take extra time to share those moments and the ideas they drive with others that may be interested.
Image via Wikipedia
