Category: Business

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Business

On Leadership in the Face of a Pandemic

An abandoned construction site with a large pipe tagged with 'Great Depression 2.0'

We are going through a collective trauma right now.

Unemployment is skyrocketing.

Companies are scaling back and laying off whole offices.

Thousands are dead, and we’re just scraping the surface.

The companies that are in the enviable position to not only feel stable, but to continue to hire in this economy should expect employees to have a dip in productivity right now, adjust their expectations, and communicate that as okay to their teams.

What’s not okay is putting an employee on a “Performance Improvement Plan” (aka “PIP”) in the middle of a global pandemic.

When people are under shelter-in-place orders, and having to weigh the safety of simply going out for groceries while also worrying about loved ones in other states. The last thing they need is “leaders” dangling their job security over their heads as well.

Moments of crisis tend to reveal who people really are. Do you want to be a leader, or do you just want power?

Take a moment and think before you react.

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Business General

Reflections – Part 1

Sitting backstage at ActiveCampaign's Activate Conference

Surrender
Surrender
But don’t give yourself away.

In Mid-2018, five years after joining ActiveCampaign as employee number 10, I was running a team of 15 people as the company’s product manager for mobile.

The past five years had felt like a blur. We had recently hit several company milestones, and I had hit several career ones. We had just launched our first iPhone app, and I was preparing to present at the company’s first-ever Activate conference, where I would announce two more mobile apps.

Cheap Trick’s ‘Surrender’ was booming through the event hall as I snuck backstage to catch my breath and reflect.

My job had changed a ton, as had the company, and there was so much to be proud of, but I was miserable. 

I wasn’t sleeping. I was tired and sore all the time, some days to the point where I couldn’t walk. To make matters worse, I was two months away from getting married and majorly behind on planning. I had been pouring so much of my time and energy into the job that I had entirely neglected myself. 

I had given up all of my individual creative pursuits and hobbies, shut down my previously vibrant LLC, quit boards, and community groups I was passionate about, and almost entirely disappeared from my friend circles. Long overdue doctor’s appointments were put off as well as surgeries, and I had been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Hypothyroidism. Still, I hadn’t been following up with my doctors to take care of it properly.

Quite simply, I was far from the best version of myself: I was suffering from a serious case of burnout. 

After consulting with leadership and my fiancé, I concluded that it was time for a change.

Six weeks before my wedding, I announced I would be leaving the company.

I didn’t have much of a plan, but I knew what I had to do: Extend our honeymoon, book a ton of doctor’s appointments, and take care of myself.

To be continued…

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Business General Technology

Low Hanging Fruits: Apple in 2016 and Beyond

Between the Apple Watch, the iPhone 6S, the new Apple TV, and Apple Music, by all accounts, 2015 was a banner year for Apple Inc.

Apple is a company of patterns and progression. As a former retail employee, we often knew what was coming next, not due to any insider knowledge, but just due to an understanding of how Apple works.

Of course, we’ll also get new iPads (spring), iPhones (fall), and Macs (throughout) at some point, but I figured those are foregone conclusions.  Sometimes the company will throw a curveball, but based on the way things are going, here are some things I expect to see from Apple in 2016 and beyond.

Beats by Apple

The first product Beats launched after the Apple purchase was the Beats Solo 2 Wireless Headphones, but it was clearly well into development before the purchase took place. Shortly after that launch, Apple began releasing new colors of everything to match their iOS devices.

The Beats Pill+, however, is different; it seems it’s the first true hardware child of this merger. It still has the look of the Beats brand but taken to another level of polish that feels quite Apple-like. This polish should be unsurprising since Apple ended the company’s relationship with Ammunition, the design agency responsible for their headphones and the original Beats Pill. There should be little doubt that this product was, at least partially worked on in house by Apple’s teams. Right down to the Lighting port. Little surprise that it’s only available in black and white (for now.)

I expect this trend to continue with new headphone designs in 2016.

Lightning Everywhere

Lighting ports are not just for iOS devices anymore. Almost as an afterthought, Apple launched new peripherals before the end of the year. The Magic Mouse 2, Magic Trackpad 2, and Magic Keyboard. Each of these devices is equipped with an internal rechargeable battery and charges via USB via Lightning cables.  However, these were not the first new devices to pull this trick. The new Beats Pill+ speaker launched quietly a few weeks earlier with this feature already in place.

Expect this to continue throughout Apple’s product lines and pop up in some surprising places we haven’t thought of yet, like new Beats headphones.  Most of their products today include Micro-USB charging, no doubt Apple will do everything it can to phase that out over the next year.

Refined Apple Watch

To some, this may be a foregone conclusion, but there are those who have their doubts. While how much of a success the Apple Watch has been is up for debate, make no mistake, this is no iPod Hi-Fi.  Apple is committed to the Apple Watch and, by association, the fashion world.

Apple Watch users tend to tell people how much they love theirs (myself included); however many of us like it for different reasons. When people ask about why we love the Watch, it’s hard to point to one thing. It’s a platform without a killer app, which makes it hard to sell. Expect Apple to work on changing that both through marketing and continued iteration.

I anticipate that by the roll-out spring fashion lines, Apple will announce a revised Apple Watch. It won’t be radically different, but it will be noticeably more responsive for third-party apps and will likely contain new sensors to track health and fitness.

Smarter Maps

Apple took a beating when it launched new Maps in iOS 6 without transit directions. Now Apple has a lot of trust to regain in this field. If the company wishes to succeed in this area, it needs to iterate rapidly. The company’s health and fitness focus will likely help it here as well as its ‘proactive’ initiatives. Something we could see is “smart” time estimations on walks from place to place based on our own pacing.

Another area of focus could include bike directions in Apple Maps, which will be especially handy for Apple Watch users who will be able to accurately navigate to their destination via haptics alone without looking at their screen.

New Transit Innovations

Apple wants to be much more involved in how you get from place to place. Sure, we’ve all heard rumors about a car, but if that is coming, it’s not going to be in the short term.

The expansion of ApplePay, and with it, NFC chips, raises some interesting possibilities about how you get around town. Chicago, Tokyo, London, and other cities already use some form of radio frequencies for mass transit payment systems. All of which have moved towards NFC as their technological solution. With New York City also planning to switch to a similar system, this is good news for all involved.

I expect that Apple will start making deals that allow the company to make future iPhones and Apple Watches work as your monthly transit pass, furthering its strategic goal of replacing our wallets with digital solutions.

I do not expect all of these things to happen in 2016, but I do believe they’re all inevitable. I look forward to what the future has in store.

Categories
Business Technology

Questions and Answers About ‘Tile’

The other day I came across this new crowdfunded gadget: Tile.

The idea behind it is one I’ve wished existed for many years. Long and short: It’s a tiny little Bluetooth powered location tracker that you place on your keys, luggage, bag, bike, etc. The benefits of this are great, and their video does an excellent job of selling it.

I’m intrigued that it will prevent me from ever misplacing my keys in my own home again. However, as with any advancement in technology: “With great power comes great responsibility.” This product raises some technical and privacy questions. The company’s FAQ seemed to exist mainly to satisfy angry Android customers, so I fired off an email to their ‘contact’ address, and here are the results.

You have your introductory price, but what will the second year cost me? / Will you offer a recycling discount for sending you our old Tiles?

Tile replacements are likely to be discounted for customers, but since we are still in development phase the final cost is not yet determined. Replacement Tiles will come with a return envelope with postage paid. All Tiles are recycled or refurbished depending on condition.

Tile requires no battery charging or battery replacement hassles, ever. It’s all about ease of use and being cost effective as compared fo similar solutions. You could buy enough Tiles to last you three years before you would match the cost of buying other solutions that require constant charging and are quite bigger, and not waterproof.

If I buy a Tile, when does the year start? At manufacturing, order, or do I “activate” it somehow? If I buy two tiles now, can I hold off “activating” the second one until my first one dies? Will it hold a charge until this hypothetical activation?

A Tile’s year of use starts when you take possession of it. Withholding use of a Tile does not prevent a drain on the battery. Use them for a year and then replace. Easy. Also, Tiles are registered via the Tile app.

What kind of access to my tile data do you have? Could the NSA, in theory, demand access to your servers and see my Tile’s location history? Or, with your permission, use another Tile to locate my Tile like your video shows with the bike?

Tile is still in the development phase, so we have many areas to address in our product plan, including a privacy policy. That said, like many devices and product features available today, our objective is to offer an unique and helpful experience to improve the lives of our customers. We have no intention of acting improperly, or without transparency, with any information that results from the operation of our product.

There you have it. While I’m not thrilled by the number of companies going live without privacy policies set in place, I respect that they answered the question at all. For now, I’ve decided to purchase a Tile. We’ll see how I feel about it when year 2 rolls around.

Categories
Business Technology

3 Reasons Klout’s Algorithm Is Bogus

Labeling itself “The Standard for Influence,” Klout has worked to become a relevant influence-measurement tool for businesses and individuals.

While every marketer would love a way to quantify social media influence, is there really any substance behind Klout’s numbers? Does a high (or low) Klout score really have an impact on whether you can influence others’ behavior — or is Klout simply an imprecise measurement of one’s social media prowess? Here are three reasons Klout’s algorithm is probably more alchemy than science.

Measuring the Wrong Things

A pie chart graphic from Klout.com


One of the main problems of Klout is that it relies on third-party APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to get data from the networks it scans — and those APIs have limits. A good example of where this falls short is that Klout has no way to monitor click-through rates. The service has no way of knowing what volume of traffic flows through the items a member posts, or if these posts actually lead to any action offline. How can a service claim to monitor influence adequately with such a huge blind spot?

Another issue is what Klout actually tracks and how it tracks it. With Twitter, scores are determined by monitoring things like follower counts, mentions, and retweets. However, it doesn’t give credit very well for those using Twitter’s native retweet system. When a member retweets something, Klout gives credit back to the original account, even if another user’s retweet exposed it to a larger audience.

Some Twitter members don’t like this and have devised ways to game Klout’s handling of this metric. These individuals choose to use the older manual “RT @name” style retweets instead of the native Twitter system. This way, when the post is retweeted by their audiences, they get the score boost and increased visibility instead of the original user. This is essentially a way of stealing influence, and Klout’s algorithm (as it is today) encourages it.

An Ever-Shifting House of Cards

Image credit: Peter Roberts

In February of last year, an infographic made the rounds on the web highlighting a Justin Bieber Twitter spam account with an astoundingly high Klout score. This illustrated some major flaws with Klout and served to embarrass the company briefly.

To combat the loss of confidence in its service, Klout has attempted to iterate and improve its scoring dramatically over the past year. However, it has often done this without notice or explanation. It was not uncommon for members to log in and find that their scores had plummeted by tens of points without explanation. These changes, while aimed at improving the service, essentially stomped all over Klout’s credibility and gave the company a boy-who-cried-wolf reputation with each new algorithm upgrade.

Perhaps most damning is the way Klout has de-emphasized and removed certain metrics in its latest redesign. For example, the latest revision has removed things like user classifications and score analysis. The company has even hidden the ability to track changes to certain metrics over time. If Klout felt more confident in its algorithm, it would expose more of this data, not less.

Topical Misunderstanding

Klout’s system of topics are, in many cases, baffling. For example, having one tweet including the words “Paparazzi” and “Matt Damon” retweeted by someone Klout deems of greater influence can get you labeled as influential on those topics. This can happen despite that tweet being the only time you ever mention those topics. It doesn’t matter if you have many other tweets pertaining to broader topics, such as politics or technology, that achieve a broader reach.

It appears that Klout matches its “topics” to keywords used in social media posts alone, instead of using actual, objective, topics. It also appears that Klout’s algorithm is not smart enough to understand and classify posts based on context—without the usage of such keywords directly. These are some of the flaws of automation. Algorithms cannot understand things like sarcasm and tone, and they have an especially hard time with nuances of language and meaning that only humans would pick up.

At the end of the day, Klout is trying to quantify something as inherently subjective as influence. But while some metrics can be helpful to understand audience reach, influence cannot be distilled into a single number. While Klout’s promise is tantalizing for marketers, it will always need to rely on a certain amount of assumption and fabrication to seem legit, thus leading its value to be questionable at best, and bogus at worst.