Wet Werken Naar Vermogen (WWNV) – Nederland heeft de komende jaren elkaar hard nodig

De WWNV, Wet Werk Naar Vermogen, komt eraan in 2013.  De minima in Nederland zal hard getroffen worden en er zal meer armoede komen. Helaas zijn de bezuinigingen nodig, want ik wil ook niet dat mijn kinderen opgezadeld worden met de schulden van mijn generatie. Dit betekent niet dat ik vind dat we zo op een ‘sociale’ manier met elkaar om moeten gaan in een verzorgingsstaat. Echter begrijp ik wel dat de overheid, net als veel corporates, wel zo moet acteren. Tot harde bezuinigingen overgaan, zoals Philips bijvoorbeeld ook dit jaar heeft besloten om 500 miljoen te besparen, is goed financieel management. Dat moet zij doen om haar continuïteit te waarborgen, dat moet Nederland ook doen om niet te gaan lijken op de Zuid-Europese landen. En de gevolgen die daardoor ontstaan, waaronder crisis, moet leiden tot nieuwe markt initiatieven om deze op te lossen …

Op welk zorgstelsel kunnen wij nog rekenen?
Bij Philips wordt dan rekening gehouden met de gevolgen voor de ontslagen medewerkers en wordt er met de vakbonden onderhandeld over een sociaal plan. Net als bij veel andere corporates, zal waarschijnlijk een bedrag tussen 15.000 – 25.000 Euro worden vrijgemaakt om ontslagen medewerkers op te vangen en hen waar mogelijk aan werk te helpen. Tot nu toe kon Philips, net als elk Nederlands bedrijf, rekenen op al het goede van ons zorgstelsel. Nu de schatkisten van ons zorgstelsel duidelijk minder gevuld zijn, merken Nederlanders die net ontslagen zijn dat ze al sinds 2010 minder hulp krijgen van het UWV. En nu de overheid, dus ook vanuit begrijpbare redenen, moet inkrimpen in zowel banen als uitgaven, op welk zorgstelsel kunnen getroffenen dan nog rekenen?

Cleanup Estonia
Bij Nederland Werkt Mee geloven wij dat wij op elkaar moeten kunnen rekenen, waar wij onze verantwoording nemen om onze vrienden, familie en buurtgenoten helpen. Terug naar hoe het vroeger was? Misschien wel een klein beetje … We leven in een maatschappij met instituties (overheden, banken, corporates) waarbij geld vaak de sterkste drijfveer is. Wij zijn van mening dat met veel minder geld ook heel veel bereikt kan worden, maar dan moeten wij als normale burgers elkaar gaan helpen. Zie maar hoe de burgers van Estland samen hun bossen in 1 dag schoonmaakten met een budget van 500.000 Euro, terwijl hun overheid daarvoor ruim 2 jaar nodig zou hebben met meer dan 22 miljoen Euro.

Doelstellingen Nederland Werkt Mee in 2012
Wij van Nederland Werkt Mee werden geïnspireerd en wij gaan dat ook doen met de werkloosheid! Wij geloven dat een leven zonder werk geen leven is en dat we beter verdienen dan wat ‘het systeem’ ons nu en in de komende jaren te bieden heeft. We willen daarom in 2012 met een sociaal innovatie programma het volgende bereiken:

• minimaal 10.000 werklozen aan werk helpen, maar ons doel ligt op 50.000!
• een nationaal initatief met TV, sociale media, gamification & offline communities opzetten
• 100% bekendheid onder alle Nederlanders
• 2-3% Nederlanders activeren om elkaar te helpen, bij het vinden van werk
• vernieuwd gedrag onder Nederlanders om lokale relaties te verstevigen en daardoor natuurlijk elkaar te helpen

Want als wij dat niet doen, dan zullen wij in de komende jaren juist het tegengestelde bereiken van de millenniumdoelen! We zijn met z’n allen zo goed bezig om anderen in het buitenland te helpen, in 2012 willen wij onszelf onder de aandacht brengen. De laatste keer dat wij elkaar hielpen was met ‘Open het Dorp’ met Mies Bouwman.

Mijn inspiratiebronnen
Dit is mijn eerste blog over Nederland Werkt Mee en in de komende maanden zullen er nog meer volgen, waaronder waar wij van start gaan en hoe we het willen doen. Ondertussen wil ik op persoonlijke titel deze blog wel opdragen aan twee mensen waar ik absoluut mijn inspiratie heb opgedaan:

• de Nudge.nl organisatie van Jan van Betten om met elkaar bottom up onze maatschappij duurzamer te maken
• de oproep van ‘@Karmakees‘ Kees Klomp om in 2012 bewuster te leven en meer aan social entrepreneurship te doen

Gevonden worden voordat je gezocht wordt

Online gevonden worden, voordat we gezocht worden! Dat is voor mij het zakelijke doel van social media. De essentie ligt in het feit dat je online eigenlijk moet doen, wat je normaal offline ook doet om te netwerken. Door inhoud en dialoog creëer je vertrouwen en door eerst te geven (zaaien), zullen referrals komen (business gegund krijgen). Bij elk netwerk club geldt het principe van zaaien & oogsten als het fundament om relaties te bouwen. In het algemeen gaat om waardevolle contact- / actiemomenten die we met elkaar hebben. En bij het bouwen van relaties gaat niets boven de klik die je met elkaar offline moet hebben, dus de lunch, borrel en diners! Het is echter het gebrek aan goede contactmomenten tussen deze offline momenten, dat zo jammer is voor het opbouwen van een goede relatie.

Maar een email spreekt vaak niet meer zoveel tot onze verbeelding, maar Tweets, Facebook messages en blogs vaak nog wel. Waarom? Omdat mails toch vaak iets hebben van een continue stroom van todo’s en moeilijk terug te vinden zijn omdat de volgende dozijn alweer staat te wachten. En een email is 1 op 1, terwijl in social media we openlijk met anderen kunnen communiceren. Het is eigenlijk heel simpel, hoe vaak zien we nog ketting mails & brieven? Dat is toch voorbij? Een goede video werkt in dat opzicht veel beter, zie maar het succesvoorbeeld van Lady Gaga. Maar jammer dat de meeste mensen veelal door personal branding motieven vaak alleen denken aan zenden, terwijl het luisteren en het reageren veel effectiever is.

Authenticiteit door inhoud en dialoog

• Door online consistent mee te doen aan relevante dialogen, dus je hoeft niet gelijk je eigen blog te starten. Dit kan in Linkedin groepen, maar eigenlijk overal. Zoek gewoon op Google op de woorden die ook andere mensen gebruiken om te zoeken en ga dan waar je kan reageren. Zo wordt je gevonden voordat je gezocht wordt …
• Door wel een eigen blog te starten, zodat je mensen online meer diepgang biedt. Als je dan namelijk reacties schrijft op andere nieuwsberichten, forums en groepen, dan kan je met een link naar je eigen blog voor meer diepgang zorgen. Je zult hiermee ook zien dat het het gedeelte van je traffic via referral sites zal toenemen. Dit verkeer is dus relevanter dan direct traffic.
• Gebruik Twitter om je authenticiteit te versterken, door mensen te laten zien waar jij deze periode over praat, aan werkt of over nadenkt. Twitter laat dus je ‘top of mind’ zien. Twitter is handig om bij reacties (@Twitternaam op Twitter) achter je naam neer te zetten, zodat mensen je makkelijk kunnen volgen en bereiken. Voor mij is Twitter persoonlijk een meer interactief netwerk tool dan Linkedin, Linkedin is wat meer gesloten, terwijl in Twitterland in principe iedereen open staat voor contact.
• YouTube, Slideshare en Prezi maken het leuker. Blogs en reacties blijven vaak teksten, zonder multi media kan dit alles erg saai overkomen. Door korte video’s op te nemen, zul je zien dat het bezoek aan je website veel langer duurt. – Laat zien met wie je praat. Dus gebruik veel foto’s van mensen die met je praten, dat is meer waard dan een stuk tekst zonder reacties. En als je geen reacties krijgt, ga daar dan om vragen. Een spreker zonder publiek is toch geen gezicht?

Hoe zaai je?

• Ten eerste door goede reacties te geven, de schrijver van de blog / nieuwsartikel krijgt ze niet zo vaak en zal dit enorm waarderen. Mijn tip is om in je reacties dus altijd links op te nemen naar je eigen relevante blogs, presentaties of video’s.
• Storytelling, een zeer effectief element in communicatie. Goede blogs, video’s en presentaties kunnen hier een sterke bijdrage aan leveren.
• Door gericht te luisteren en mensen gericht aandacht te geven. Dit kun je doen door een reactie op een Linkedin discussie in een groep of een mention op Twitter te doen. Deze omgevingen zijn al vaak persoonlijker dan een blog of nieuwssite waar je niet vaak op komt.
• Probeer de eerste te zijn die geeft, dat werkt altijd goed in elke relatie. Als je vaak reacties achterlaat, is de kans dat op jouw blogs een reactie komt ook groter. Je kunt mensen dan ook bewust vragen om een reactie en uit wederkerigheid krijg je de gunst terug. Het gekke is dat dit veel makkelijker is dan te bedenken waarover je moet Twitteren of moet bloggen. Feedback geven is makkelijker dan zelf een verhaal te houden voor een publiek.

Waarom is social media effectief?

• Feedback krijgen op onze verhalen is iets wat wij offline heel normaal vinden. Echter online zijn wij op dat vlak asocialer, aangezien online slechts 15-20% van ons blogt en reviews schrijft of andere vormen van feedback geeft. Hier is wel een interessante hefboom, omdat een grote deel van de rest (dus 80-85%) over het algemeen wel vaak de inhoud van de groep die schrijft wel gebruikt in de zoektocht naar kennis en om besluiten te nemen. Offline is vaak 51% nodig om 49% mee te krijgen, maar online overtuigt dus 15-20% van de groep al de rest.
• Als we het over zaaien hebben, dan is alles wat we digitaal doen een digitaal zaadje. In het verhaal van Hans en Grietje werden hun zaadjes / broodkruimels opgegeten en konden ze hun weg niet meer terugvinden. Echter online blijven onze zaadjes / kruimels continue aanwezig, waardoor er altijd een kans is dat ze vindbaar, verspreidbaar en manipuleerbaar zijn. Het is de essentie om gevonden te worden, voordat we gezocht worden.
• Social media is over het algemeen asynchroon, we kunnen gesprekken voeren zonder op hetzelfde tijdstip bij elkaar te zijn. Bekijk maar eens hoe moeilijk het is om in deze dagen uberhaupt een afspraak te maken. En met het zicht op vergrijzing, zal de workforce alleen maar meer en harder moeten werken, waardoor het steeds moeilijker wordt om een face-to-face ontmoeting te hebben.
• Online kun je veel effectiever de relevantie bepalen die je in potentie hebt met mensen. Linkedin is een goed startpunt, maar blogs, tweets, video’s, presentaties en dialoog vullen het beeld perfect aan.
• Online kun je ook mensen gelijk benaderen. De Linkedin Inmail is een zeer effectief middel om mensen buiten je netwerk toch aan te kunnen schrijven. Het kost je misschien wel een paar Euro, maar offline kost het je vaak een veelvoud. Bedenk maar eens hoe makkelijk het is om een interessante spreker op een evenement te kunnen spreken, als je al uberhaupt tijd had om naar het evenement toe te gaan. Zie maar eens met wie ik bijvoorbeeld een afspraak kon krijgen, door te starten met een Inmail.

Maar het metafoor is eigenlijk hetzelfde aan het twijfelen of je wel in de stad wil wonen en niet liever van de rust geniet op het platteland … en waar je zaken wil doen

The essence of social media marketing – to be social!

I’ve just recently been invited to join to to a group on Linkedin called Internet World – future of social media. Although I’ve registetered myself to many marketing groups on Linkedin, this was the first time I was invited. The organizer of the group, Endaf Kerfoot, got my name from one of his partners / colleagues from the Netherlands, apparently from my presentation on the IAM / MarCom event last June about Web3.0. Me being a-guy-who-likes-to-help-others of course joined and have chosen to really help Endaf to setup up social media marketing for the Future of Social Media brand.

Internet users are spoiled – we have to go into the social comfortzones
!This blog will be the first in a serie to help Endaf to create some attention for the “Future of social media” brand, and is there a better way than to start at the basics? I think many marketeers do not see that the essence of social media marketing is to be social. Although it’s seems obvious, it’s actually not easy, because we people have issues to see things when they’re not obvious. @Kevinrommen on Twitter – someone I’ve met recently on Twitter and in real life – used the analogy that business should see their websites as an accountmanager.

I agree with that! People need to understand that it’s still all about people, especially on the social media. And with the web many things have become easier for us, so we’re getting spoiled all over the place (just think how difficult is was 10 years ago to get news or a holiday booked?). This makes it actually harder for a marketeer to get the customer to his accountmanager, so it’s time to go to your customer into his online comfortzones like Facebook, blogs, Twitter, Linkedin.

We need to be social in the social comfotzones
Before we go lookup our customers in their online social comfortzones, we you stand still for a moment and try to understand what we should be trying to do in those social comfortzones. I’m convinced that the most important word of social media marketing is ‘social’. If we’re not social there there is no place for us in the social comfortzones. So what is social all about? The definition of ‘social’ :

• A noun in The Free dictionary:
  • “a party of people assembled to promote sociability and communal activity“
• An adjective in the Cambridge dictionary:
  • “relating to activities in which you meet and spend time with other people and which happen during the time when you are not working“

The word ‘social’ is similar online as well as offline, but do we ‘act’ social online like we do offline? We should, because according to the words of Steven Covey we keep our same pardigm. But we actually don’t, many of us don’t really behave social when we’re online, so why is that? According to Stephen Covey it’s because we do not know the environment well enough to understand how we can apply our paradigm in the right way. For all the readers, assess yourself on how social you are offline, because if you’re not – then I’d suggest you don’t even try to act social online. Personally I know that I score quite high on the ‘social’ scale, if someone else thinks differently, DO LET ME KNOW!

How do I act social?

I guess Marc Zuckerberg - CEO of Facebook - knows how to be social at a party

What kind of behaviour fits ‘social’. Let’s see, if I go to a party then I’m doing something social right? Well, it matches with the definitions given above. So what do I do when I’m going to a party? Let’s analyze this from a case that is similar to online: I’ve just moved to a new city and some guys at work tell me to come to this party to have fun. This is what I think I would do:

• I like to have fun – that’s a goal right?
• How do I get my fun at a party? Let’s take the booz for granted
  • I would like to have a great time with some people. So how do I do that?
• First I have to be there and just be present
  • So I have to get there
  • In the best case I can find someone who knows the scene to tag along witt
    • Or else I’m just on my own – even more exciting and challenging
• So I’ve arrived, then what?
  • Of course I’ll head for the bar to make sure that I have something in my hands. Even better, I’ll make sure I’ll have 2 drinks – possibly one to share
  • And after having observed the crowd for 10-15 minutes – hopelessly waiting for someone to approach – I’ve finished both drinks.
  • So I have to go to the bar again and this time I’ve got enough courage to ask someone who looks interesting if he/she wants a drink. So I
    • Poke / nod or do something else that is socially sensible to someone and introduce myself
    • And I would ask that person something to drink
  • The result can go both ways, either my offer is rejected or accepted. Probably after a few times someone thinks I’m interesting enough to accept my drink.
• Now comes the hard part – somehow I have to avoid some inconvenient silences and get a chat going on. By that time I just hope I’ve had enough to drink to make a few jokes that will smooth the chat.
  • So I’m trying to connect with people by conversing with them.
  • For me a good part of this is listening. To quote Paul Arden from his book “Whatever you think, think the opposite“:
    • “In an interview it’s better to listen carefully to what the interviewers have to say than put on a show of your own brilliance. That way they will be interested in you without you saying a word“
  • There’s a big chance the first chats will end within ten minutes, but also a chance that my jokes do find a good spot to land.
• By then the party is well on the way.
  • If I’ve had luck, I’ve found some people to hangout and dance with.
  • If I didn’t have luck, well I’d probably had enough drinks to convince myself that there’s nothing wrong with dancing by myself
• Eventually there’s an end to the party. Knowing myself I had the pleasure of practicing my dancing skills by myself. So I’m left with a dilemma:
  • Was the party worth my time? Wouldn’t I have been better off going online chatting with my friends back home? Or wouldn’t I have more satisfaction from my favorite TV shows?
  • Or do I think that I want to have a social life and I’ll try again next week? Or even tomorrow?

A simple test to see how social we are online

How social are we online?

If you kind of agree with the things I do to be social, then do this test with me:

• If you join a Linkedin group, do you spend at least half of the time checking out other people’s discussions / news?
• Or do you directly head to create your own discussion and to promote your own blog / news article?
• How often do you give a good reply on blogs / news items that were relevant for your interests? Is it more than 5 out of 10 times?

I bet many of you will find yourself answering:

• You spend less than 20% of the time checking out others.
• Most of the times that you come to a group, you think about:
  • getting your question to be answered (give me!)
  • to get people read your message / blog / news (personal branding)
• It’s probably less than 2 out of 10 times.

Now let me show you how I will interpret you if I would see you do this at a party

• You come to the party and start talk / dance / drink or what ever to pull attention to you, you don’t spend a lot of time to observe the crowd.
• You walk up to people and:
  • Ask them if they want to give / buy you a drink
  • Talk a lot about yourself and don’t really listen to their story
• And when you do listen to someone, because he / she has an interesting story, you just leave without giving any reaction.

So do you think you’re social enough online? Who ever thinks their equally or even more social online than in the real world, then please please please give a comment. I’d love to learn how you have found the way to change this asocial habit when you’re online.

But if you’ve come to the conclusion that this asocial behavior fits your behavior online, then probably you’re like 90% of the people online. This kind of behavior is actually very common when we don’t have face-to-face contact with other people, just think of how often you or your friends change behavior once you step in the car (swearing, picking our noses, checking out other people).

Why do I choose to be more social online?
If I do not pay attention I’m the asocial guy doing all of the above. But lately I have come to understand that social media does represent the offline world. Although we do not see people face to face, we’re still talking about people who try to form communities. Understanding this I’ve changed my ways and spend more time giving other people attention online than asking them to help me. And you know what? I do get positive reactions and requests from people to connect with them. Is it worth my time? I do believe that helping others is never a waste of time. But by giving first and not asking something directly, I’m investing in an image of the guy that often gives decent answers on the web. The goal would be the reaction of people thinking ‘That’s Ha Vo again, where did I see him before?’ – being found before I was searched for.

The future of social media is social business – Facebook will be bigger than Google and Amazon!

In the past two months I’ve been intensively researching the growth of social networks and have analyzed many researches and I’ve come to the conclusion that the social web is actually like our normal offline world. Just associate the social web like a digital topography of our planet. Just think of Facebook like Rio de Janeiro or New York and Orkut like New Delhi or Bejing. But they just has the potential to be X000% more efficient than it’s real counterpart.

My visions of how the online word will change in the coming 3-5 years (2012-2015)
It’s all about the growth and the productiveness and of the social web. In my opinion the social web will evolve as follows:

• The social web will continue to grow, with more and more Web 2.0 platforms that serve millions of users with specific preferences and niches.
  • We will continuously have the urge to discover more social available resources within those different environments.
  • Probably programmable web will have more than 10.000 Web API’s registered.
  • In the age group until 50, we’ll all have at least 5 Web 2.0 platforms we’ll frequently use.
• There will be solutions to the annoying issue ‘do I really need another account’
  • OpenID will not be enough, it’s too limited and will not evolve fast enough to support standardized interfaces to transfer richn datasets that can be found in the different environments.
  • Websites will often offer authentication support for multiple popular Web 2.0 frameworks. So instead of AddThis.com we’ll have AuthenticateMe.com as a broker service to multiple Web 2.0 frameworks.
• The online social networks will become a surrounding where we gather everything we need / want, much more like the neighborhoods we live in.
  • It’s all about getting more ‘relevant stuff’ in the same amount of time.
  • Besides the ´fun´ and ´social´stuff, we will also include professional related tools and applications.
  • All social networks understand that they have to facilitate an open application environment, like currently Facebook does. Or else they’ll just see users flocking away to other SNs that offer more convenience and facilities.
  • Users between 18 – 40 will be spending on average more than 20 hours weekly on social media. Research shows that currently it’s more than 10 hours weekly.
• Enterprises will understand that SNs offer a every efficient way to push their propositions into the right comfort zone; the right community – the right preferences – the right place – the right time!
  • Social Networks are sticky on mobile. This means users will always carry their apps with them and they expect to be served with as relevant stuff as possible!
  • No more need to advertise, it’s about getting the specific e-commerce spots in the right apps to serve the right crowd, at the right time.
  • Endusers will get better deals, as marketing costs will diminish as offerings are so rightly targeted that the conversionrates will be at least 3-4 times higher than merchants are used to.

Consequences for the giants like Google & Yahoo, Amazon & Ebay & Expedia
The big giants will more and more offer their services through SNs, but that’s where they’ll lose their current leverage. The way people act in social communities can be so much more efficient for ecommerce and ebusiness, that merchants might not need central ‘hubs’ anymore like the current giants.

• Top 5 most visited websites, people are spending more and more time in Social Media.
• Search egines will structurally feel more loss in ad revenues, forcing them to start charging money for their online services.
• But they will redefine themselves and offer specific functions within their API’s that are usefull for social business / commerce and charge money for them. This will of course make them more unattractive – creating a downward spiral: less effective & more costs.
• But the question is – is advanced search really necessary if merchants can connect their e-commerce / e-business webservices directly to the social apps inside the Social Media landscape?

Consequences for online marketing techniques
In contrast to today, social media will make push marketing more attractive. It’s like the art that shopmanagers of  leading supermarket chains possess, how do I position the right product in the right comfort zone to stimulate sales? Like in the offline world, we know where to find shops and restaurants, but what determines where we’ll buy our groceries or have our favorite meals?

• Social media marketing will have overuled bannering & SEO marketing
  • These marketing campaigns do not generate enough return for their investment
  • Online advertising revenue will further drop, opposed to predictions from many researches by many major consulting firms
  • Return on social media marketing campaigns will become easier and easier
• Retail marketeers and shop managers will understand better how they should sell online, than the online marketing agencies who can’t see the similarity between the web and offline business.
• Why the big social networks that are fast enough to adopt social business and social commerce models will really start earning big money and will show why they are worth billions, even more than they’re worth today.

Social commerce will have unique potential to benefit it’s members
Social networks will have such great power as they possess most of the spending time of users online. They might of course decide to go the Microsoft path (first everything is ‘free’ and then you start to pay big money), but I think they won’t. The application evironment will stay open, but probably social networks will understand that their power can be enforced if they will also become ‘dealbrokers’ for their members.

• In the offline world we’ve seen this so often, big organizations can always negotiate special discounts / privileges for their members. So why wouldn’t a SN like Facebook do that for a crowd > 500 MLN people?
  • Just think … what airlines wouldn’t want to give a special discount to a group of millions of people?
• Social media will have have their own commerce API’s and will restrict apps to offer their commerce only through their APIs.
  • With this power SNs can even charge commission over the real sales, instead of pay / clicks.
  • Just imagine billions of business done through the commerce API of
• SNs will understand that better deals will even give them more buying power
  • Just consider the current iBood concept, quite a succes. Now imagine Facebook doing that for their hundreds of millions of users.

Personally I feel that Facebook can become 10 times the value it is today if they see this role they can play to further benefit their users. I mean, their current ads just suck, don’t they? If they would just start with a special deal for travel arrangements, I bet they can kill the likes of Expedia instantly! I think that’s why Amazon is already making deals with Facebook, but who’s got the leverage? If I was KLM, I would already start to talk with Facebook

And about Google, I think they CxO’s do see that this is a threat and that’s why they’re buying / offering all the tools / features that a social network might need. But I still don’t see Orkut beating Facebook.

My vision is not for visionairs but for normal people – we just need more time
Often when I tell my stories I often hear that my ideas are so ‘far away’. Personally I think it’s just a matter of understanding the power of the different Web 2.0 players. It’s like our education, we all have to learn stuff that we don’t really understand how to apply it in our lives. But the idea is that afterwards we have it in our ‘toolkit’ to allow us to apply it later on when we want to generate value for society.

It’s a matter of time before Enterprise 2.0, Health 2.0, Charity 2.0 etc. will also become more real with better results. Then mashups of Web 2.0 platforms will become more common and our society will exponentially function more efficient! If all the European countries that face the ‘ageing population’ issue would just recognize this and start really stimulating 2.0 projects to solve social issues!

A role for Componence in this bright future
@Componence I’ll lead my team to develop the components that will be used by Enterprises who want to create more valuable mashups with social networks. We’ll make it easier for all SME and Enterprises to reap the benefits of popular social media (Web 2.0 & social networks) with the components in our Chameleonsuite.

We won’t be like Dapper, Yahoo Pipes or Gnip. No, we’ll cover the complete technology stack with a backend that will fit an Enterprise SOA into a frontend that will cross all widgets, gadegts, apps platforms! We’re gonna be so cool

• It’s all about saving time and convenience, the tools / facilities / offers that are close to us will easily get our attention.

Charity 2.0 – let’s replicate Kiva’s success for other charity organizations

Kiva is the example for Charity 2.0, as it has more funding than projects. The cool thing about Kiva, it’s all online, it’s about real people, 100% of money donated to projects really  go to those projects and it has incorporated many Web 2.0 concepts. This is what they say about themselves:

“Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.”

Kiva numbers – how successful are they really?
Kiva keeps it all very transparent, as you can always find the latest statistics on a special page on their website. Just today the following numbers were shown:

With this example you can see that the lenders on average loan $ 143.85 – that’s a lot more than many of us do for charity. But I do believe that we all would give to charity easier if it was really easy and transparent. Kiva has done that and the results just show for it.

An amazing trackrecord – with help of online social networks
Kiva has different integrations with different e-mail address books, but a very strong integration with features of Facebook. The result is a staggering trackrecord of the growth of the cumulative loans of Kiva:

The growth is just unbelievable, from 1 -> 68 MLN in just 27 months – WOW!!!! That just shows how many people are willing to help others help themselves.

Let’s replicate this for other charity organizations!
Helping out Charity gives anyone a good feeling, the core reason why I believe the same concept should also work for other charity organizations. I’ve already started to talk with Treesfortravel, an organization that allows people to compensate their CO2 footprint.  But it can be done bigger, we can even create a SAAS / ASP platform that would allow any charity organization – of course we need to do validations / moderation – to apply for an account.

In the Netherlands alone you have > 1000 charity organizations. And I know many of those organizations are not meeting ends with their budgets. They keep part-time staff, who usually are not paid very well. I personally believe that if these organizations would have an internet platform like Kiva, they could at least get an average 10.000 Euro per year out of it. So 1000 charity organizations would generate about 10 MLN Euro per year, less than 1 Euro per Dutch inhabitant. I think I’m on the low side of the estimation, 2,5 Euro per person might be better, resulting in 25 MLN Euro per year for charity 2.0.

A rough plan – step by step with big thinking
Of course we would start with 1 charity organization and we’ll use Chameleon technology to implement it. We make sure that the application can be ported to most of the big communities like Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, iGoogle & Hyves. And the application would be heavily integrated with the API’s of those communities to facilitate different features like:

• login with existing community account – instead of creating a new one
• easily invite friends with address books and friend lists – no more manual typing e-mail addresses
• posting to walls of your own account / friends accounts
• take  application along into Facebook / Linkedin / Hyves
• taking widgets/gadgets into iGoogle / Facebook / MS Vista / Mac OSX
• Localization of others in your neighborhood

And we’ll be buidling it on the Amazon cloud, to make sure that possible traffic can easily be processed.

Getting startup investments
According to my estimations we need between 200 – 300K Euro in a 2 year period to setup the platform. This is money we don’t have immediately, so we’ll start small. Treesfortravel said they only have a 3-5K’s this year, but would hope to pay back more if coming years allow them to spend more budget online.

Our idea has just 29 votes - the second place.

But there is another way to get 20K, the contest of the ASN Bank – a Dutch social responsible bank – to generate ideas ‘For the world of tomorrow’ . This is the right place to promote this idea, and we’re already on the 2nd position.

Most of the other projects – described in Dutch – are oriented at a much smaller scale, usually targeting to setup 1 specific project at 1 certain location.

Our idea could benefit all the other ideas that have been contributed. So that’s why I personally believe we should be able to win this contest.

The catch of this blog – please vote for my idea
I think with 1000 votes, we might be safe and win the contest. So please help me push this idea, because I think my concept will help other charity organizations with their charity 2.0 ambitions. And if they succeed, then many more people are helped. So please vote for me and take the next steps:

1. Register (it’s in Dutch – but still very easy)
- http://www.voordewereldvanmorgen.nl/site
- only fill in the required fields
2. Click on the first link in the confirmation e-mail that you will get in your mailbox
- the confirmation page will open in your browser
3. Click on the red ‘ Bevestig’ button on the confirmation page
4. Go to the page of my idea – http://www.voordewereldvanmorgen.nl/site/project/442
5. Vote for me by clicking on the thumb icon
6. Scroll down and become my fan
7. Give yourself a pad on your shoulder – you’ve done a good deed today

So thnx in advance for your support and if you’ve read this blog and you do not feel like supporting me, then please at least comment me the reason why you don’t feel like helping people who help others?

And if anyone feels like investing in the idea, then give me a shout in Linkedin.

Marketing 2.0 – Social network marketing – don’t start with your community until you’ve proven that you deserve one!

At Componence I’ve been thinking about social network marketing A LOT lately. The ideas are popping up in my head. The enthusiastic reaction of so many people give me confidence that we’re heading to a bright new direaction with Componence. I’ve even made different business minded presentations about mashups and social network marketing with Chameleon. I mean, if we as a technical solution company can convince marketeers, then our social network marketing ideas must be really good

Let someone else say it
“E-Marketer’s CEO Geoff Ramsey gets at the essence of the issue with his commentary: “If you’re going to build a community, don’t center it around your product, but rather on something deeply relevant to a particular consumer group,” Ramsey said. He also suggested keeping fans of your brand pages happy by giving them a lot of content and letting them share the love with others.” If you want to know more about the article, then read the full article about Social media can be a marketing platform: It starts with brand evangelism

I agree – but proof first that your message is powerful enough
I personally agree with this point. But I think before you think you can have your own community, there are a few steps you can try before spending a lot of development costs on a community that might not pull enough members. I mean, why not test if your message is powerful enough to get the potential community members to come out of hiding from their comfort zones?

I mean, a community is till often the end of many e-commerce / business concepts, with a lot of business models before it. It’s like becoming the CEO of the company you love, it wouldn’t be so wise to just go to the shareholders and tell them that you’ll be their next successful CEO right?

1. Organize a sweepstake contest – to generate sales leads
Create a sweepstake social network marketing campaign that can lead to viral social network marketing campaign. But keep it real! Make sure that

• core message about the action is about true feelings when people think about travelling
• the prizes in the sweepstakes are direct related to travel or can generate
• the response of the client is valuable for sales this year

How can you determine a succes? Well, it should generate more leads than your last leadgeneration campaign, for less costs. And if your contenst was really about your core USPs, then the response – the user generated content – will contain better sales information. So if you’re lucky, you will have:

• less costs
• less printed promotion sent out – less trees cut down
• more leads – let your target group spread the word
• better sales information
• if you’re really smart, the sales information can also be used to create better online content around it
• hopefully a better conversion rate

Wouldn’t your Marketing Director be more happy to grant you more budget to go forward with you community ambition if the above works out? And if it doesn’t work out then there are two options:

• You just or your marketing / advertising agency didn’t pinpoint the USP’s of the concept good enough, then you or they should be replaced
• Or the message is not strong enough and you can save yourself the pain of investing hundreds of thousands in a community that would probably not work any way

2. Easy to share – NO MANUAL E-MAIL TYPING!
Make sure that the campaign is so cool that there is a nice chance of ‘spread around’. And make it REALLY EASY TO SHARE. And then get people to vote about it and let the best responses win.

Example: www.weareplaystation.com

• - Slogan is “This is living”
• Can you capture the PlayStation® spirit on your camera?
• How? By uploading images / photos … and just a description
• Sharing options –> 5 communities –> Type emails manually –> No address books
• Available only at the website

I personally would do it differently

• Slogan is “This is living” – Show us how Playstation expands your living and brings it more energy, fun and excitement.
• How? By uploading images / photos … and –> YouTube movies –> Picasa / Flickr series –> A network of friends / family who enjoy living Playstation together
• Sharing options –> 10 communities –> No manual e-mail typing –> MSN / Gmail / Yahoo / Facebook / MySpace / LastFM addressbooks
• Also available as apps in communities –> Facebook app –> Open Social app in MySpace / Orkut

And the prizes … I would give prices that were related more with ‘This is living’ rather than a camera, games or money. How are about a roundtrip of Living in Japan, the home of Playstation?

3. Connect to sales offices
And when it comes to give out the prizes, connect it to the sales offices. The winners might get a lot for free, but the others might be easy to convert with special discounts only that day … or give out coupons.

Example: www.weareplaystation.com

• I don’t think there is a connection to sales offices
• I would organize the announcement of prizes to the local retail
• And give attendees at least coupouns with discounts on Playstation merchandising

4. Follow up and show your appreciation for the response
Eventually if the response is good enough, the user generated content might deserve a follow-up. Let’s say if the user generated content is about favorite locations, then booking agents might write their own reports / specials about it.

5. Show your added value – keep the relationship
If the previous step can lead to something valuable for travelers, they might want to come back to the website where they can find the special information / services. And involve them again …

6. Can you get into their comfortzone?
And if you are really successful in binding the relationships to your values and you can keep the interaction. Then make sure that users of your website can be taken as an app / widget along into their comfort zones (Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle, iPhone, desktop, ..) You can do this my making mashups wiht popular web systems that are already used frequently by your target group

7. And if you’re really successful – then create your own community
This community should definitely show more service and more value, that can be generated by the power of stakeholders who have an commercial interest in the community. So combine user generated content with professional feedback, more sweepstake contests … I personally think e-mail marketing will be replaced by social marketing campaigns. For me e-mail is still a lot of spam, even the newsletters I’ve registered to. But if a friend sends me a message … I’ll look at it, even if it is spam. And if he/she does it too often … I’ll say something about it and it will probably be less.

Of course the above is a lot of talk, I’ll try it myself at Componence and will share real numbers after the summer, once we’ve done a few of these projects. In the meanwhile: be true, be smart and let the social networks do a lot of marketing work for you

Other related articles / content:

• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/twitter/4963780/Facebook-Twitter-and-blogs-more-popular-than-email-report-says.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_marketing
• http://www.foliomag.com/2009/keys-using-social-media-marketing-platform
• http://www.slideshare.net/mstrickland/how-to-do-social-media-right-in-2009
• http://www.slideshare.net/socialmediasquad/social-media-marketing-by-the-numbers
• http://delicious.com/popular/Socialmarketing
• http://www.social-marketing.org/relatedsites.html
• Social media marketing group in Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=66325

1 year summary of Enterprise 2.0

In my opinion the 2.0 trend is about:
- the technologies (AJAX, Webservices, widgets, gadgets) allowed internet users to:
– enjoy the ease of use of web applications in browsers
– to create their own desktops (iGoogle) and communities (Facebook)
– to create mashups (a location based content table and Google maps is most used)
- the valuation of such a trend has some pillars:
– there is a value in a network
— and if the network is open enough, new value (actions / ideas / collaboration) will be generated
– the power of virals
— if something is cool / hot / funny is introduced to a social network
— there is a chance that millions of people will see / enjoy it – without any marketing
– you need people who normally don’t have time / knowledge to contact each other to participate
— so new nodes / connections are introduced to the network
— increasing the chance of new ideas / collaboration etc.

Web 2.0 – that’s the fun / social stuff – goes faster than Enterprise
- sharing (Flickrs etc., Delicious, YouTube, Twitter, Blogs)
- staying in touch with friends / acquaintances with just a click a way (Facebook, PerfSpot, MySpace)
- social games that pull millions of people from social networks to play along (MafiaWars)
- collaboration – wikipedia

Enterprise 2.0 – the same Web 2.0 ideas introduced – mainly to improve collaboration
- collaboration (Blogs, Confluence, BaseCamp, Jira, SalesFroce, ZohoCRM)
- staying in touch (Linkedin, Xing)
- mashups: integrating Google maps with your CRM client list

And ECM
- it provides and manages the content – not really 2.0
– in Web 2.0 – you do not control the content, it’s user Generated
- enterprises should find 2.0 ways to get their content used more in social networks
– this would enlarge the lifecycle and value of the content
– a thought that you can creat your own social network around content – small chance
— works better if your content can be taken into iGoogle / Linkedin / Slideshare
- so ECM is in my opinion not really Web 2.0
– I mean, how many organizations really like the WebCMS module of Documentum?
— I’ve seen many projects moving away from it
– because it’s not userfriendly enough to get people to use it
— that’s the key of 2.0 – getting more people on board

2.0 business case is often hard
- but it surely needs to be lead by pioneers with support of management (top-down)
– it makes no sense if new ideas that are generated will take months / years to get approval
– then there is no use the form new ideas
- highlight positive cases of good results of 2.0
– when for instance people who normally would never meet, have launched a very successful idea and the execution generated great ROI
– create workshops or presentations about internal wikis, issue tracking tools
— do this regularly, managers must take the lead
- people need to be stimulated to change their way of working
– allow people to work more from home, check their progress through the tool, not based on their availability at the office
– this also saves some C02 by the way

Health 2.0 – will my children micro blog about their health, to pay less for their health insurance while getting better healthcare?

Quite some while ago I saw a episode of CSI where Twitter was used to validate alibis and past movements to solve a murder case. But I have not yet seen an episode of House or Medical Investigation, two quite popular american medical ´detectives´ shows, using Twitter. I guess that shows how slow the healthcare branch moves towards online social media. So maybe they should? Isn’t the urgency high enough? What can be more urgent than saving lives?

If you know me well enough, you know that Iwant to see if paths towards certain goals can be made more clear. So this Health 2.0 blog is NOT about the generic approaches and its theories. On the contrary, I’ll try to show ways of reasoning that will the numbers to make a path towards Health 2.0 with a successful more tangible.

Getting into Health 2.0
Since last years end I’ve been challenged by one of my client to show that Componence can really be a partner for them in their Health 2.0 ambitions. It has been quite a journey since then and after having met many people (Egbert van Gelder, Satya Kaliki and Bas van Eijdhoven) and read many articles / blogs (especially the blog of Martijn Hulst), I strongly believe that Enterprise 2.0 can be made very tangbile in Healthcare. But even then it seems that there are a lot of non-enterprise factors that make progress in the healthcare industry actually quite hard.

Health 2.0 can be very tangible!
I’ve compared networking technologies before; military operations use top of the nodge networking / communication because they need it to ensure optimal effectiveness of the soliders in the fields. Soldies need to have as much as information as they can get, to make the best decisions, within the shortest times … to save their own lives as well of their men.

In many theories of Enterprise 2.0 the possible gains are hard to put into metrics, which is a key factor in non successful ROI calculations for Enterprise 2.0 projects. But with Health 2.0 it can be quite easy in my opinion:

• It’s about saving lives – how much is 1 life worth?
• It’s about preventing medication/treatment mistakes – how many costs can be saved by improve medication guarding?
• It’s about decreasing the amount of illness days – wouldn’t the aging society of the old economies benefit from this?
• It’s about improving the efficiency of Healthcare with the patients active involvement.
• It’s about decreasing insurance costs for healthcare, probably the most expensive personal insurance we all need.

Dutch Health 2.0 – no chance with poor communication / ambition?
In the current phase, The Netherlands is busy to setup a national EPD (Electronical Patient Dossier), a place  where all stake holders can access the same information about a patients health situation. But as Egbert told me, it’s just information and the regulation of who can access it. Without any services …

Yeah, so if you start a national project like that, of course there will be many problems and resistance by the people. I mean, when Bush pushed several legistlations to allow federal agencies to intrude into private data of many, the ambition was clear: prevention of 9-11. But what is the ambition / goal of such a EPD?  On the website of the Ministry national healthcare we can find:

“Het is belangrijk dat zorgverleners veilig en betrouwbaar relevante medische gegevens met elkaar kunnen delen. Dat maakt de kans op medische fouten kleiner en ondersteunt de samenwerking tussen artsen beter.”

roughly translated as:

“It is important that care providers can share relevant medical data with each other in a safe and trusted manor. That makes the chance of medical data smaller and supports the collaboration between doctors better.”

I mean, really, any student could have formulated such a sentence. There is not Web 2.0 ambition in it anywhere, it’s plainly Web 1.0 with a central digital information facility where stake holders can read / write. I mean, in a country where it’s people already are complaining about too much regulations, the government should show a clearer benefit than just some words like ‘important‘, ‘chance of‘ and ‘collaboration‘.

Minister Klink should have more balls
Minister Klink is the person who prevented a group of failing hospitals to go bankrupt and saved it with an organized take over. I mean, hospitals are not banks right? Clearly failing companies must go bankrupt, just look at the automotive giants in the US.

As I’ve blogged before, Enterprise 2.0 can only become a success if such projects / visions are lead by leaders who understands and really do 2.0 stuff. So it’s quite logical that with a leader like Minister Ab Klink, who probably went directly from University, through Science, into Politics, healthcare in the Netherlands will not have a 2.0 vision. Just look at his Linkedin profile, it’s really not up-to-date. Probably he read somewhere that everyone is on Linkedin, but failed to understand that a profile is useless unless you really make it complete and do something with it. See … probably he has no clue about what 2.0 is!

I mean, he doesn’t even have a blog. I personally would, especially if I saw how many blogs write about me (over 200.000 results on ‘Ab Klink Blog‘. I mean, a perfect chance to market my self ! Ok, I should stop now, I really did not have the intention to bash Ab Klink when I started this blog. Back to my point … he should have more balls to name numbers that will support his ambition, like:

• From 2011 – it will be publicly visible how often / good the central facilities have been used by the cares supplier, as it will be mandatory to use such systems from the end of 2010.
  • How many consults were there in general vs how many e-consults have been given?
  • How many times did it lead to activity in the EPD?
  • What is the rating for the e-consults / normal consults / availability / communication / after care of this health care supplier?
• By 2012 – every care supplier who makes mistakes, that could have been prevented by appropriate usage of the central systems like the EPD, needs to face consequences
  • Will get on a public list of doctors who had mistakes that could have been prevented.
  • After 2 warnings will get a XXXXX fine, up to XXXXXX Euro
  • Can loose their license if it keeps on happening
• By 2013 – 40% of regular consults will be e-consults, supported through a mandatory online appointment system.
  • Increasing the capacity of total consultations with 10%, health care suppliers can see their income increase accordingly.
  • Decreasing the length of waiting lists with 20%, that should result into additional preventing of fatalities.
• By 2014 – we will have decreased the amount of fatalities by wrong medication with 80%!
  • saving XXX fatalities
  • saving XXXX medical mishabs
  • saving XXXXXXXX Euro’s per year on wrong medication / procedures to correct mistakes
• By 2015 – saving each person in Holland XXX Euro per year on insurance money
  • Saving Holland with XXX MLN Euro’s per year for the whole population
  • While at the same time providing better healthcare.

It always starts with yourself
As I do believe in the possibilities and benefits of Health 2.0, I will start myself (and convince BT to help me) to micro blogging about my soon to be here newborn about his / her health situation. And I will try to push this facility to the doctors who will treat my baby.

And from a professional point of view, I will lead Componence to produce a new Health 2.0 productline for the future portals of hospitals. With such actions I hope that Componence will help many societies to improve their healthcare in order to save lives and improve the experiences of their patients.

A personal note to Mr. Ab Klink
Mr. Klink, if you’ll ever read this blog, please do respond or start your own weblog to show us how you’ve intended it all in your scientific mindset. And if you’re not weary of criticism, do invite me through Linkedin to help you in your process to really do Web 2.0. I mean, just look at what Obama 2.0 brought And if you really want to save some money, don’t give out subsidies for thinktanks that will just write reports that lack the path to execution.

There are many professionals in the Netherlands who would gladly provide the advice for free, saving some taxpayer’s money with it. I mean it’s for our healthcare, including our children! Just send me a message and I’ll organize something for you.

2009 – a crisis always brings urgency to unite and innovate

It’s time to let the old year in the past and to look at the new year. Listening to the sounds of the crisis upon us, the disastrous stories about of the great automotive industry, the surreal amounts of money that are necessary to ‘save’ the economy, the continuous climate change    … it would almost make you depressed and think that the world has come to an end. That would be such a waste, a crisis like this will give learning and innovation possibilities that will make us all better.

WAKE UP EVERYONE!!!
We are humans, we are the dominating on this planet. We’re not talking about an asteroied crashing into earth or something like that (some even say that such an event created earth). This whole financial system is an invention of ourselves, so we can also fix it! And it’s not the first financial crisis, though it’s one of the toughest, mankind always came on top. All the industries that are now suffering, some will even perish … so what … that’s just another side effect of a competitive market driven economy. If the service or product that a company delivers is not good enough to be bought, then there is just no space for you in the market.

We must fix it ourselves
In times like these help is not easy to get help. We all just have to look at ourselves and reach deep to get the best out of it.  Although  the comparison is fiction, anyone who has watched movies like Independence day or Deep impact or Armageddon understands how a big crisis can only be solved if people join forces to solve the problems. The bigger the problem, the better the solution … only intense collaboration will get you there. Just image … if there would be an alien force coming to destroy earth … would mankind still quarrel about religion and money? When there is a necessity, mankind usually does find a way.

We have done it before
At Componence we did it before, that’s why we got so far. Collaborative innovation, I think it’s called, but actually nothing new. I’m lucky that at Componence there is a sound mentality to collaborate and innovate. Many of my fellow Componence team mates might not see it, but we actually change and learn continously. I mean, we’ve been doing Enterprise 2.0 before anyone of us had even heard about the trend. And it’s definitely working for us, 2008 was one of the years that Componence achieved the most improvements with a very tight budget. A new strategy, stronger and new units and a productline that has never been so innovative.

Urgency is needed, especially when things still look fine
Although the words of crisis are all around us and reach us continously through all types of media, most of us are not really feeling the urgency to do things differently. Why? Because things aren’t really changing for us. As long as we all get paid and have our jobs, the crisis is not really hitting us right? The Netherlands are a decent country, here personel is not asked to take salary cuts like in India or in Ukraine. Of course no company wants to resort to such actions, but would it be better to have a company go down or see more colleagues get fired? No, of course not, urgency is needed to prevent the worse .

That will my mission for this year… to make my people, especially my seniors, rise to the occation. Because regretting that we should have worked harder or have been more pro-active will be useless once it’s too late!

Contemplating, understanding and learning from 2008

On a yearly base I look back what I have achieved, mistakes I’ve made and what I have learned. Of course such reconsideration also finds its way into my mind during the year, on this day I think it’s adequate to make it a part of my blog. Taking the time for it allows me to take energy from my results, criticize myself to make sure that some mistakes will not be made again and to find understanding to improve myself for the year to come. Before going into details of 2008, it´s quite certain that I cannot remember a year with so many controversy in positive and negative perceptions.

A good start
The year 2008 started off great! A combination of a profitable 2007, a new commercial director and a great 3 year forecast allowed me to convince myself to purchase a brand new Audi A5. And as the first quarter past the great growth in our services turnover and our success in setting up the new office in Lviv, Ukraine I allowed myself to take a big step in delegating my operational activities to others. In doing so I started to seriously think of the necessities to make my wedding the best day of my life, just to be followed with an amazing honeymoon that I could just imagine in my dreams.

As positive as I could be
My state of mind at that time had never been better. The wedding preparations were going well, BT got a new job at BCG, our Indian unit was progressing nicely, my operational work was delegated well and I was allowed time to focus on the big picture for Componence. The Web 2.0 trend became reality in Enterprise 2.0 for Componence. And on top of all my vision, my stories allowed me to convince professionals from abroad to help me deliver the next level of our strategy; making our solutions available for so many more people across many more different technologies. Yes, my course was clear, I was making steps to the next level in life and with me Componence.

Ignoring the signs of the start of the crisis
In the positive rush I simply ignored the signs that 2009 would be a turnaround for Componence. It started with the acquisition of BEA Systems by Oracle combined with the absence of any software license deal in the first quarter. My vision and insights were blurred by the trust I had in the results of the work of many fellow team members at Componence. The turnover growth and profit in Q1 didn’t make it easier to uncover the luring financial threats that were upon Componence.

But things turned into worse as the whole world plunged into a credit and financial crisis where trillions of dollars were lost. Banks, the organizations that always are so good in criticizing enterpreneurs at taking too much risks, were now making losses that are unimaginable for any normal human being. And the worst was unevitable, banks went bankrupt and the trust in the financial system was lost. And so the real economy got hit, many say that it will be the biggest crisis all of us have ever seen. Now everyone is trying to survive, the companies who will come through this crisis will probably proof to be strong enough for any crisis. It’s not just any crisis that can take out Lehman brothers and might take out General Motors, Chrysler and Ford.

Drastic actions needed
After my honeymoon, the facts of the crisis piled up and I knew I had to take drastic actions to have a chance to get through this crisis. I knew it was time to take the responsibility as a CEO, starting with myself to propose a cut of 25% of the salary of the board of directors. But that would not be enough, our prospects to grow hard were slashed, more serious costs needed to be cut. A lot of hard talks followed, leading to some lay offs in our Dutch unit, the closure of our unit in Kiev and the departure of the founding directors of Componence. But cutting costs was not enough, more capital was needed and luckily investors were found amongst friends of Componence. Despite of such actions, the crisis still poses a big threat, so costs still need to be tuned where ever possible.

My biggest lessons of 2008
In a year with so much controversy, many lessons can be learned, but here are my top 3:

• Hard work is meaningless without real results.
  I have created an environment where my managers easily get opportunities to grow their professional ambition and skills. The opportunities and pre-requisities are given with trust in good results. But somehow when the results clearly lack, my managers have not shown the urgency that is required to get back in control. More concrete metrics and better no-nonsense evaluations are probably tools I should use better to make my managers deliver urgent results.
• Rules help to structurize as long as the necessary endresults are not blurred.
  In preparing the organizational improvements I’ve let myself to be advised by many external consultants to deliver many new rules and processes that will help Componence to rise to the next level. In doing so, many colleagues allowed themselves to fill their time to just follow rules and to resolve conflicts with arguments like ‘he should do that, that’s not my responsibility’ or ‘this was the plan / agreement’. I guess the same thing has happened with the bank traders who caused the crisis and created the sub-prime products, they were just working within rules, it’s not their fault that their financial deals did not result into good results in a long term perspective …
• I am the CEO of Componence
  As I have easily developed myself in a free environment, I trusted that my managers would do the same. In taking freedom, I have always been result driven and always listened to my former CEO’s. Regretfully 2008 showed me that some team members are not result-oriented enough for the compensations and freedom they have received. In this time of crisis I cannot stand aside and wait for them to see the urgency, I will have to enforce it with more control and consequences.

The lessons above are related to my professional life, but the success of my personal life is intwined with the success of Componence. Without the succes of Componence my family and I will lose so many of the freedom and the possibilities we have now and I would be working for the bank and other creditors until I’m a grandfather. I will do everything to give BT and my coming child the quality of life we want to have. I trust that many fellow colleagues at Componence will help me with it, because in the same way the succes of Componence is also good for their own private and professional possibilities.