Paul Jacobson

Here is a thought for the likes of Standard Bank and FNB (the two banks I use at the moment): add tagging functionality to your Internet banking services to improve their usefulness.

My thinking is that it would be great to have the ability to add descriptive tags to line items in my bank statements/transaction listings. My bookkeeper often has to check with me what various transactions are for and it would be really handy to be able to go in and tag various line items with references or even add descriptions to items.

Just a thought …

Technorati Tags:
internet banking, tagging, descriptions, utility

Well, it has taken long enough for the trend to catch on here too (although I am not sure this is really a first, just the most publicised).  Llewellyn Kriel, a journalist who (previously) worked for the Sowetan (a Johncom/Avusa paper) has been fired because of a blog post he published on Thought Leader about how the Sowetan was no longer hiring staff when the existing staff are overwhelmed by their workload.  The post highlights apparent mismanagement at the paper and deteriorating quality levels, culminating in a crisis for a paper he holds in high regard himself.  He also published an apology for some of the comments he made a couple days later.

That didn’t go down well at all with management and Llewellyn was fired yesterday:

I was found guilty of gross misconduct for bringing the Sowetan’s name into disrepute by criticising it in a blog and for making public confidential company information. That’s how the Sowetan sees it.

Which is a pity because it reinforces the view that it is a sub-standard newspaper. And it certainly is not. Today’s (Friday’s) edition is a massive 72 pages and you don’t get that size of tabloid if you’re a crappy paper. I was very proud to work at the Sowetan and prouder to have called some of the fine people there my colleagues.

This is hardly something new and this particular instance is pretty similar to when former Google employee, Mark Jen, was fired from Google after grousing about his pay a couple years ago.  There is arguably a difference between Llewellyn’s and Mark’s cases because Llewellyn didn’t seem to be revealing any confidential information per se but rather highlighting a growing tragedy at what I understand is one of South Africa’s better papers.

The whole thing is taking shape as a freedom of expression issue although, as Arthur Goldstuck pointed out, Sowetan fired Llewellyn for disclosing confidential information and not for exercising his right to freedom of expression.  It is difficult to really test this from the outside but on a reading Llelwellyn’s initial post, I don’t really see where the confidential information is.  Surely blogging about a growing internal crisis can hardly constitute confidential information, as embarrassing as it is to the paper’s management.  Confidential information is usually the kind of top secret stuff you wouldn’t want your competitors to see for fear of them taking advantage of that to undermine your business.  This includes things like pricing structures, customer lists, contract renewal dates and the secret recipe for Coke (the liquid kind).

Vincent makes a good point in his post on the story (actually, he makes a few good points).  The one point is pretty ironic because a sister paper, The Times, has made a pretty big show of promoting blogging (I am a contributing blogger to The Times) and yet when someone blogs about the internal challenges facing one of the papers in the group on an outside platform (the competitor’s no less – I wonder if the result would have been different if Llewellyn had published the post on a blog of his own?) they are fired on the basis of disclosure of confidential information.  Another irony is that the Sunday Times made a huge deal out of its expose of the health minister a short while ago and how the paper was exercising its right to freedom of expression for the public benefit.  How is this fundamentally different?  We could debate whether talking about internal mismanagement at a large paper is a matter for the public interest but this is still going too far, surely? 

Vincent argues that this is a complex issue and he may be right.  I am tempted to launch into a new tirade about blogging and freedom of expression but I have done that a number of times already.  At the moment this is more like a typical case of an employer who is missing an opportunity to take advantage of an employee’s passion for the paper.  The Sowetan could have used this as another opportunity to really listen to its employees and make important changes to how the paper is run, for the benefit of the paper itself and its readers.  It apparently had a number of opportunities already which it ignored.  Unfortunately people in management often have their own agendas and pride which tends to get in the way of doing the right thing.  It takes a real leader to acknowledge when his/her way is not the best way and to really listen to what the minions think.

Update:
There are a couple more perspectives on this story (and links to perspectives) on the following blogs:

• Matthew Buckland
• Colin Daniels
• Gregor Rohrig

It seems that those in the press who have commented on this story tend to be a lot more cagey about their thoughts on this issue.  I am not sure if this is due to their concern that they could find themselves in a similar position (on both sides of the fence) or not.  Then again, I may be particularly insensitive to these complexities they speak of.  For me the question to ask is whether there really was confidential information disclosed in Llewellyn’s post.

Was this leaked "confidential information" the revelation of an email that was distributed halting new hires?  Was it the statements that people working at the paper had taken pay cuts between 20% and 50% when they became full time staff?  Or perhaps the allegations that the paper is so badly managed and staff so demoralised that they are virtually queuing to walk out the door?

Does extreme embarrassment constitute a basis for confidentiality?  Maybe it is the criticism of the education minister and her department and the concern that people leaving school simply are not equipped to enter the workforce and string a sentence together?  This would certainly be worth talking about if it turned out to be true, especially if there was some political influence coming through there.

Perhaps the focus should be on how the Sowetan chose to fire its employee rather than taking his post as a warning sign to take a good hard look at conditions at the paper and to do something about it.

However you look at it, this is not going to be the last case of its kind.  We are going to see more cases of employees fired for blogging.  What will be interesting to watch will be the trends we see developing.  They will tell us whether this social media mindset some of us have been talking about has taken root or not.

Tags: llewellyn kriel, kriel, llewellyn, sowetan, fired for blogging, fired, blogging, criticism, avusa, johncom, politics, freedom of expression, confidential information, missed opportunities

This is a quick post.  Take a look at this post titled "10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job".  Worth reading and pretty entertaining at the same time.

Tags: 10 reasons, don’t get a job, why get a job, employment, job, disadvantages

One of the big questions people ask themselves when the desire to start their own business strikes is how to gain the necessary expertise and skills to be able to hang their shingle and start doing some business.  Pamela Slim, one of my favourite authors and bloggers in this space, has a great post titled "How to get experience and credibility when you are just starting your biz" where she gives a few pointers on not only how to gain that expertise but also how to gain some very necessary credibility.

One of her suggestions to help you gain experience is to volunteer at an organisation that does the kind of work you want to do.  This may pose a challenge if you are still working a regular job until you make the move but if you are creative about it, there are ways to still put in that extra work and gain that valuable experience.  Of course if your trust fund is there to keep you going, it may be time to leave your job and really get stuck into that volunteer work.

When it comes to building your confidence (this will quite possibly be one of your most important achievements), you have a few catalysts to help you build your confidence to the point where you feel more comfortable about stappping out there.  One option is to find youself a mentor who can help you see how much you already know and learn what you don’t yet know.  Other great sources of support include other bloggers who have been where you are (I found other bloggers to be a tremendous help when I was getting ready to jump and really appreciated their efforts to share their experiences) and small business networks where you will encounter other people in the same position as you and those who have taken the step and are at various stages down the road.  One excellent network is Business Warriors.  I have mentioned this network before and highly recommend it.

A very important thing will obviously be taking on new clients and here Pamela has a couple more suggestions.  One suggestion is to define your niche and work hard at that niche.  A niche, as Pamela explains it, "is the specific segment of people that you will target for your marketing efforts" and while it may seem a little counterintuitive, focussing on a niche is often the most effective way to develop an effective business.  Although you may be tempted to cast your net as wide as you can, it can be a little overwhelming trying to market to all those people so try narrow your market down a little.  One of the questions I ask myself when I consider new markets is whether I will enjoy working in those markets and doing work for those clients.  A big motivation for starting my own business was to rediscover my enjoyment of my work and transform my experience of my work into a good one.  There is no point leaving a job which you don’t enjoy only to create a business you don’t enjoy, and have the added stress of making it to the end of the month.

Of course blogging is another great way to get the word out about your products/services and how you do what you do.  I had a client come to me because he has seen how I approach my profession on my blog and wants to work with me because of my philosophy.  I certainly didn’t expect that and then again, your blog will say a lot about you and your work ethic.  It could really pay off.  At the very least, blogging about your business tells people what you do and how you do it.  People like to know that stuff.

Make an effort to look for opportunities to explore your new business.  The more you can learn about it the better.  At the same time don’t fall prey to "analysis paralysis".  At some point you need to just get started and do something.  You will learn so much by actually doing what you have been thinking about.  Along the way you will learn what works and modify what doesn’t and you will discover a lot about yourself in the process.

Pamela Slim has a great post titled ‘5 ways to get out of "job" mentality when starting a business‘ which is recommended reading for anyone starting a business or anyone who has moved into their own business after being employed.  This distinction may seem a bit artificial but I have learned that it is important to remember that starting your own business doesn’t automatically wash away the legacy of being employed.

I have been running my own practice for over a year now and I often become aware of a lingering "job" mentality which I see as an important challenge to meet if I am to truly succeed as an entrepreneur.  Anyway, here are Pamela’s five ways to escape that mentality:

1. Start with "What kind of work am I meant to do?", not "What kind of business should I start?"
2. Forget about permanence.
3. Operate in a state of confident ignorance.
4. Blow away your traditional thoughts of salary expectations.
5. Be very open to firing yourself.

It is important to remember that being employed in a job brings with it a certain mentality.  As an employee become accustomed to security of the job (as much as we could have) and a sense of permanence that is only disrupted if we lose our jobs or if we change our jobs in some way.  Being an entrepreneur means removing the foundation of employment that has supported us for so long and the sense of security that support brought with it and learning to fly (and fall) with increasing frequency.  As Pamela puts it:

When you start your own business, it is tempting to look at it as you would an employee job.  You may believe that there is one definitive business that will bring you health, happiness, wealth, fame and a really hot babe by your side.  Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.

The process of becoming a true, serial, (good) crazy entrepreneur is to view the world as a series of experiments.  Instead of a subject matter expert, you want to become an expert in experimentation.  And you want to plan on failing, falling on your face a few times, if for nothing else than to have a great story to tell your adoring stockholders and fans when you finally ring the bell at the opening of the New York Stock Exchange.  Part of what makes Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad success so great is his self-admitted hubris and failure at his first start-up business.

So start working on those ways to escape that "job" mentality today and truly express yourself as the entrepreneur you know you are!

Tags: job, mindset, entrepreneur, rich dad, pamela slim