I went to a meeting yesterday where they were talking about some of the changes in SharePoint 2010. Two things really stood out to me, and neither of them had much to do with SharePoint.

The first thing was when the presenter was describing how often company website structures model their business hierarchy instead of focusing on what the customer wants.

A gentleman towards the front of the room raised his hand and asked, “This is true, but how do we convince our management to structure our site differently?”

The second thing caught my attention when the presenter reached his, “what’s in it for me” section and talked about how long it would take to recoup your investment in SharePoint.

Why did someone have to ask how to convince his management that their site should focus on their customers?Why was the highlight of the presentation about how soon you could make your money back?

It could be that many businesses only care about profit. In essence, they pimp their products and services without ever really caring about their customers. As long as the are making money they are happy, even if their customers are quietly waiting for an opportunity to escape.

Why is it that so many companies have to be convinced to talk to their customers and actually listen to what they have to say? When I mentioned this as a solution to the website question there were chuckles throughout the room. It seems so simple, yet everyone recognized that this is a problem all too common.

Now let’s assume that the people attending the presentation were from companies who really wanted to connect better with their customers and employees within their business. Assume that they were looking for an effective way to organize information and collaborate on projects.

Everyone in that room already knew that SharePoint carries a hefty price tag. The issue at hand wasn’t whether they could afford it because they wouldn’t have wasted the time hearing about it otherwise. The issue was whether SharePoint is worth the price.

Red flags always go up when someone ends a presentation trying to justify price because it basically overshadows all of the benefits already presented.

Why not affirm the price at the beginning of the presentation and let the benefits justify the cost? If your customers decide it’s not worth it, you can always lower the price or make a better product.

I had an interesting conversation at work yesterday. A lot of news was coming out about the new Windows Phone 7 Series operating system and someone mentioned that they were surprised that we won’t start seeing the phones until around the end of this year.

“Doesn’t that give competitors a chance to copy what they are doing?”

I said that I didn’t think so and gave my reasoning, which caused another employee to accuse me of being an Apple commercial. Not exactly. My thoughts aren’t so much about Apple as they are about creativity and copycats.

No one can deny the impact the iPhone has had on the mobile phone market. Apple came in and set a new standard and soon afterward everyone tried to copy what they had done.

Companies began to say, “Now everyone is going to want touch phones. We’d better start making touch phones or we’ll be left behind.”

So what did they start doing? They started making touch phones. And what better way to push a touch phone to market quickly than to make an iPhone knock-off. After all, they seem to know what they’re doing.

Unfortunately, just because something looks like something else, doesn’t make it as good as something else. It’s like a guy who can’t get the hot girl, so he settles for a robot girl. She may look just as good, but the wiring is off.

Apple has put a lot of time, effort, and shall we say, love, into making the iPhone relevant. You can’t copy that unless you are willing to put in the time. Amazingly, Microsoft has done that.

They didn’t set out to copy the iPhone OS. They built their own thing from the ground up. Personally, I was glad to see it. Seth Godin talks about this concept a lot in his new book and I agree with him. There are too many companies making cheap and quick knockoffs instead of striving to make rare art.

After spending years in the museum observing, it looks like Microsoft finally decided to finally pick up a brush and start painting.

I just posted a review of Seth Godin’s new book on Amazon, but thought I would also post it here with a few extra thoughts.

I, like several others people, donated some money to a charity and was able to read an early release of this book. Seth is a brilliant and creative marketer. Why send your book to a bunch of critics who often have unpredictable taste when you can send it to your fans instead? 

It is no surprise that there are so many 4 and 5 star reviews for this book since most of these reviews are from people who received an early release of the book, just as I did, and are likely already fans of Seth. Plus, by requesting something in return—a donation to a charity—he was able to better ensure that these people would actually read the book since they had already had an investment in it. I checked the Amazon reviews of the book the day it was released, and already there were around 100 five-star reviews compared with a few four-stars, one three-star and one one-star.

Not only this, but these people are likely already Linchpins themselves and are going to be very receptive to this book because they already have a connection. It’s always exciting to read a book and say, “Wow, that’s me!” or “So that’s why I think that way.” I think this book does a decent job of encouraging people who are already Linchpins—people who are the glue that holds a society or company together by their creativity, adaptability and generous spirit—to continue to do what they are doing. I’m not sure that anyone else, other than someone teetering on the edge, would find the book near as riveting.

What I Liked

The first third of the book is really good. I flew through it and found it very inspirational. If you are already a Linchpin, you will probably love this part of the book. He tells you that you are a genius, discusses how American society has been built on cheap replaceable labor, and explains the mindset of Linchpins and why they are better able to survive and flourish during difficult times.

I thought he had some great examples of people who go out of their way to show generosity and integrity. It certainly made me take more notice of these types of people in the world around me and appreciate them more.

I also liked his reference to Steve Jobs saying, “Real artists ship.” It is great to see people who are able to fight through adversity and actually deliver a product or service rather than just wishing they could.

What I Disliked

About midway through the book he began talking about your lizard brain and the resistance. Maybe I’m fueling the resistance by saying this, but I guess that is what keeps this from being a one-sided critique. Seth basically divides the brain into two parts, the lizard brain or limbic system, which is all about survival, fear, anger and resistance, and your creative brain or cerebrum, which is, as Seth puts it, the newest and most sophisticated part of our brain that is always overruled by the other parts.

Throughout the book, Seth encourages you to completely ignore your lizard brain and focus on the creative, artistic part instead. He makes it seem like one part of your brain is evil and the other part is heroic. If the cerebrum is so much more advanced and sophisticated, why is it so easily defeated?

I prefer to think in terms of each part of your brain having a purpose and dedicated function. Think of it like career specialties. A mechanic may be a brilliant mechanic who knows everything there is to know about cars, but ask him to do brain surgery and you are going to have some issues. It doesn’t mean he is stupid, it just means he is out of his specialty.

The same thing is true of your brain. Fear can be an extremely good motivator and when channeled in the right way, it can actually stimulate creativity. However, if allowed to completely take over it can be paralyzing. The same thing applies to the creative side of your brain. If all you do is sit around in brainstorming sessions, you may come up with some incredible ideas, but you’ll never actually accomplish anything.

The right boundaries and constraints actually fuel creativity. Have you ever been to a really good concert? Great bands are very creative, but they know when to use their creativity. Imagine going to a concert where everyone decided to show off all their skills at the same time. You might think it was interesting for about five minutes, but after a couple hours you would probably start throwing things.

Regardless of whether you agree with Seths thinking or not, toward the end of the book, he laments the NO FEAR motto as, “either disingenuous or stupid.” To be fair, I think he is talking about recognizing your fear and managing it, but after his tone earlier in the book it comes across almost contradictory.

Much of the latter parts of the book make it seem as if Seth is trying to be convincing, but either not certain of the best way to do it, or else uncertain of what he really thinks himself. For instance, in one place he says, “None of us knows the absolute truth, of course, but the goal is to approach a situation with the least possible bias.” Not ten pages later, he talks about people ignoring the truth by deciding to stay in their homes during a hurricane—easy to say in hindsight with the New Orleans tragedy, but what about before then?

He also tells a story of how no passengers wanted to ride home with him in a rental car instead of remaining on a delayed flight and assumes that most of the people wanted to have a reason to blame the airline for their situation instead of themselves. In reality, these people made a choice—just as he did—but it wasn’t the choice he wanted them to make so therefore they must be wrong. After all, he knew the truth of the situation and they didn’t.

Conclusion

I know it may not seem like it from this review, but I actually have a lot of respect for Seth and have found a lot of his writing to be very insightful and inspirational. If you are already a dedicated person and worker, you will probably find the first part of this book very encouraging. If your only reason for existence is to make a lot of money or just go to work, collect a paycheck, and go play, I doubt this book will change your outlook on life.

Seth does practice what he preaches. He’s been working on this book for over 10 years and he finally shipped! I think the timing may have been dictated more by the current state of our society rather than his understanding of how to communicate and inspire the remedy.

I love it when the United States Postal Service delivers mail in a plastic bag with “We Care” printed on it. I always have to laugh because it’s like they are trying to distract me from the fact that they just completely mutilated my mail.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” To be fair, they add an apology note below the caption, but it still seems out of place.

My personal favorite was the time I found tire tracks on my mail. But hey, at least they care. Good stuff.

I have to admit that I was looking forward to the announcement of the iPad. After Apple completely changed the way we think of mobile phones I was curious to see if they how they might reinvent the tablet. Unfortunately, I was greatly disappointed.

What is this better than?

Surfing the web?

Apple claims this is “the best way to experience the web.” Really? Um… where’s the Flash support? I realize that Flash is past its prime and the web is moving forward, but Flash is still a huge player and featured on a ton of sites. This is slightly annoying on my iPhone, but unforgivable on the iPad.

eReading?

So this thing is supposed to kill the Kindle? I do believe that eReaders are going to vanish from the marketplace—at least in their current form—in the next few years. I think people are interested in a device that does everything and eReaders are only good for reading books and doing some web surfing.

One thing the eReaders do have going for them currently is the eInk. It’s as easy on your eyes as printed pages of a paper book because it is not a backlit display. The iPad doesn’t have this technology. Apple claims their screen is pleasing to the eye, but I’m just not convinced.

Work?

Forget productivity. The iPad doesn’t allow multitasking. It’s basically an over-sized iPod touch. It lacks a USB port—are you kidding me?—so you can’t just connect a flash drive or external hard drive and drag and drop your files. If you want to transfer files, you’ll have to do it through iTunes or an App. 

And speaking of hard drives… the largest hard drive you can get for the thing is 64GB. And did I mention you can’t just hook up a USB drive for added space? I do think they’ll have an adapter you can buy, but how lame is that? I love the idea of have to carry an adapter around with so I can use my flash drive.

The iPad also lacks a camera so you can forget video conferencing via Skype or anything else unless you bring along a separate camera… and adapter. And since it is app-driven, I won’t be working in Photoshop anytime soon. I know they have an app for that, but seriously, it’s not even worth talking about. Plus, it’ll be a pain to transfer my files. I guess I could always just e-mail them to myself.

Conclusion

I know that Apple is selling this thing below the previously rumored $1,000, but I’m going to take a long look at the competition—no, the iPad isn’t the only tablet on the planet—before I even think about buying this. And if the competition doesn’t have anything worthwhile, I’ll probably just wait for version 2.

I’ve been reading Seth Godin’s new book, Linchpin, which should be available on January 26th in the event that you are curious enough to take a look. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I donated some money to the Acumen Fund, and in response, Seth mailed me his book a few weeks early so I could write a review of it.

I have a confession to make, however. I’m a really slow reader—even of Godin’s books. And since, as a result, I may not be finished with the book in time for it’s release, I figured I would offer some glimpses as I go.

Tonight as I was reading I kept thinking of a linchpin I encountered today. It was lunchtime and my family and I decided to eat at a little place called, Trolley Dogs.

I didn’t notice anything too out of the ordinary at first other than a good variety of hot dogs for less money than you would spend on a meal at McDonald’s. As I’m looking at the menu, some guy standing next to us tells us that he spent hours creating it by hand.

The next thing I know, the guy is standing behind the counter wearing a weird-looking hot dog hat and describing the different ways he can make your hot dog. You would think that Superman just ran to his phone booth, except he hopped out as Hot Dog Man instead. 

He took our order and told me how wierd I was for ordering an Italian Sausage with krout—something about Italian mixed with German—and offered the correct pronunciation for giardiniera at my request.

During our meal, the guy, whose name is Joe and owns the place with his brother, continually checked on how we were doing, bussed tables, brought out a bowl of Goldfish crackers for my 2 year-old son and also made him a balloon animal.

When I was about to go and find a knife to cut up my son’s hot dog, he told me to sit down and had a hot dog brought out for him that was cut up to look like two octopuses. He told us that he was experimenting with some different combinations of toppings and hoped he could figure them out before he weighs 300 lbs.

Why is he a linchpin? Because he took lunch at a hot dog place and turned it into an experience; unscripted, from the heart, full of joy. How many people at other restaraunts do that? How about companies in general? How often have you dealt with someone behind a counter or on the phone who was just doing their job to collect a paycheck?

Who knows? Maybe you’re that person.

After lunch today, I think the world needs more people like Joe, and from what I’ve read, Seth’s book goes a long way toward inspiring us to answer the call.

My car broke down recently so I started looking around for a mechanic and came upon National Pride Auto. They had a decent website and made some good claims so I decided to give them a shot. Plus, they had a coupon on their website for free towing if your repairs cost more than $250.

Overall I was very pleased with the service. Everyone I spoke with was very friendly and they were able to fix it in a day. It turned out that they needed to replace the fuel pump, which ended up costing me $940. At least I qualified for the free towing… or did I?

I had this crazy idea that I would save a tree and just go to their website on my iPhone and show them the coupon. Unfortunately, when I tried to do this, the guy told me I needed to print it out.

Of course all my wife could tell me was, “I told you to print that off.” Thanks.

I guess I will think twice next time I try to save a tree.

I was glad to see that AT&T finally dropped their lawsuit against Verizon although I did find the whole thing pretty entertaining. It seemed to me that the suit felt a lot like when a basketball team loses a game and then whines about the refs. Let’s face it. You weren’t good enough. Accept it, move on, get better.

At least now AT&T is hitting back with some new commercials, but they still lack the punch of Verizon’s commercials. So you can surf the net and talk on the phone at the same time. Who wants to surf the net when it is the slooow Edge network?

I would be much more impressed if AT&T just updated their network.

Seth Godin posted a request on his blog for people interested in reading his new book, Linchpin. If we made a donation of $30 or more to the Acumen Fund, he would send us a copy of the book three weeks before they go on sale.

It sounded like a great deal to me. I got to help out a cool organization as well as read an interesting book from one of the great marketing minds of our time. I will be posting a review shortly after the first of the year.

The other day a coworker mentioned that he would buy an iPhone if he didn’t have to work with AT&T. He had a bad experience with them and doesn’t care how great the iPhone is if buying one means dealing with AT&T.

AT&T has obviously spent a ton of money on their image—polished logo, defined color scheme, consistent television and print advertising, a website, etc. They have worked really hard to make sure they look like they are the best at what they do.

So why isn’t my friend impressed? Didn’t he see the commercials? Hasn’t he seen the polished marketing promises? Doesn’t he like their logo?

Too many companies think looking good is all that really matters. As long as they look trustworthy then they must be trustworthy. As long as they look competent and friendly, then they must be competent and friendly.

The problem with this is that people bring their experiences into their perception of your brand. If I know nothing about your company, all of the polished marketing might have the desired effect on me. However, one negative experience can suddenly change that look completely because I will be reminded of that negative experience every time I see anything about your company.

A good image may bring in some new clients, but it takes having a good company to be able to keep them. Add these two elements together and you can have a great brand. The world is in need of more great brands.