I read with great interest Eric’s post of January 31, 2012 entitled Do things when you should … not when you have to. I agree with what he wrote, and it really got me going about something I’ve been mulling over in my head for several weeks: An educated and knowledgeable client is better than an ignorant one – especially if you want to help them do things at the right time.

I have a day job, but I do consult with small businesses and nonprofits on a regular basis. When I started consulting, I would do most of the work and not show anyone how to do for themselves or why I did what I did.

While I understand some clients want and need someone to just do for them, I found I really liked teaching, and those to whom I took the time to explain things responded quite well. After consulting gigs where I taught the client in more of a mentoring-like setting, I found the experience exhilarating. Teaching allowed me to have a positive impact in someone else’s efforts by giving them confidence they could maneuver around marketing technologies.

Even better, those people now had the knowledge to make better and informed decisions about strategy and tactics in their online efforts. This actually makes my work a lot easier.

Recently, I was helping the owners of a restaurant in a touristy part of Texas. They wanted to get some social media going, but had no idea where to start. For our first meeting, I put together a presentation which introduced concepts and gave suggestions on where to begin their efforts. After they digested the information and were ready to proceed, we met again. This time, I sat behind them at their computer as we walked through setting up accounts on social sites, claimed their name and location on those sites and even set up “check in” discounts.

While I know it may have been overwhelming at first, they soon got the idea and by the end of the afternoon they were claiming their spaces and setting up deals without much input from me. We’ll need to meet again to go over more advanced concepts, but I knew I did well when they emailed me the next day with the great news that several customers had already checked in and took advantage of their 10% off deals. That gave me (and I’m sure them, too) a great sense of accomplishment.

By taking a teaching/mentoring approach, my clients have become smarter. They have the confidence to move forward, to work online for their business as well as they do offline. They are learning how to “adapt and overcome” to the constant change of the online landscape.

To get back to Eric’s idea: How do we get clients to do things when they should rather than when they have to? We teach them. If we’re going to expect our clients to make those timely decisions, we have to equip them to do so. We have to give them the background knowledge to be able to look at what’s going on around them and be able to ask the smart questions. We have to develop trust with them and establish that we are the experts in whatever field we consult on – and if we can do that before the first time the client calls, all the better.

“How do I do that?” you may be asking yourself. Here’s your tip on doing something when you should: If you just asked yourself that question, then follow Eric’s (and my) lead, start a web site and start sharing some of your knowledge. Go! Do it now! If you want some advice on how to do it, ask in the comments and I’ll show you where you can get information to get going. Read the post I linked to in the preceding paragraph and see how someone else established credibility in their field to the betterment of their business.

As you take on the role of coach/mentor/teacher, both you and your clients will benefit.

Elmer Boutin is a Marketing Technologist and has worked in web marketing for almost 15 years. His first experience was as a free-lancer doing web sites for local businesses such as car dealerships and an art gallery. Later, he ran an online rental property referral web site aimed at assisting military people find homes before they moved. He’s currently Webmaster at a Texas-based decorative surfaces manufacturer. You can read more articles by Elmer at http://www.crossingmarketingandit.com.

Image Credit: education By Sean MacEntee on flickr

The research project was undertaken to try to get a feel for how people perceive online graduate degrees.  Our initial approach to the survey was to attempt to understand and compare the perceptions of people who’ve earned graduate degrees online versus those that have earned them via the ‘traditional’ method of attending classes on campus.

During the survey (using an online survey – details below), we collected some good data from the people that had earned an online graduate degree but our survey results those that hadn’t earned a degree online was skewed and therefore discarded.  Note: We plan to redo the survey for the group of people who’ve not earned a graduate degree online.

The presentation, titled “Perceived Value and Usefulness of Online Graduate Degree Programs” seemed to be well received by those that attended our session.    You can view the slides from the presentation below or jump over to Slideshare to view/download the slides.  My apologies to all those out there who hate powerpoint as much as I do.

To perform the survey, Kevin and I created a survey on SurveyMonkey.com and asked our colleagues and acquaintances to help spread the word.  We shared the survey link on twitter and facebook and asked our friends to do the same.

I won’t go through the actual questions here (you can see them in the slides) but some of the results are worth noting:

• 47.4% of the respondents strongly agreed that the rigor of an online graduate program was similar to that of a ‘traditional’ program
• 67.9% of the respondents strongly agreed that flexibility was important to them in their program selection process
• 55.4% of the respondents strongly agreed that accreditation was important to them in their program selection process
• Flexibility was ranked as the most important aspect in the decision making process
• Location was ranked as the least important aspect in the decision making process

You can see more results in the slides.

During the presentation, we wanted to get some discussion started with the attendees around the results and distance education in general. We were in luck…the group had a lot of things to say about the topic and our survey.

From the standpoint of the attendees, distance education (aka online education) is the future of higher education. There were plenty of attendees telling us that their universities and colleges had begun to transition many courses and programs to be offered either as a hybrid delivery method (e.g., a combination of an online & in-class) and/or as fully online delivery.

Additionally, these university and college administrators and professors were confidant that the next few years would see even more programs and courses transition online – since that’s what the traditional and non-traditional students are demanding.

Regarding our research, there were quite a few good suggestions and discussions that might lead to additional research avenues.  From these suggestions and discussions, a few key areas that Kevin and I may look at in the future are:

• How does someone with a ‘traditional’ degree (i.e., on-campus) perceive an online degree (this is the 2nd part of our initial research that we discarded)?
• The concept of the ‘traditional’ student is changing (or already has changed).  Some have reported that 60% of on-campus students living in the dorm are taking at least 1 online course per semester. How does that change the traditional vs non-traditional student perception?
• Are online programs becoming more popular because of their flexibility or because they are perceived to be easier (a good portion of our survey respondents believed that rigor is comparable)?

There are more avenues for research that came out of the discussions at the conference.

Kevin and I are planning on working up this survey into a paper as well as diving into more research in the area in the near future.

I was lucky enough to get to present at the conference (more on that in a future post!) and got to spend some time talking to university and college educators from around the northern part of Texas.

I was surprised to find most of the universities and colleges were offering their programs online to traditional and non-traditional students regardless of whether that student was on-campus (dorm, etc) or off-campus.  In addition, it was surprising to hear that at some universities that around 60% of students living in dorms where taking at least one course online. There were even a few people telling me of entire programs offered online regardless of the location of the students.

Back in 2001, I started my MBA at The University of Texas at Dallas. I lived close to campus but really (really) wanted to take some online courses to make it more flexible for me to work on my courses.  Because I was an ‘on-campus’ student, I couldn’t take online courses….I would have had to transfer to their ‘online MBA’ to take online courses.   I always thought that segregation was strange…but it seems that there’s no longer a segregation between on-campus students and off-campus students…and I think that’s a good thing.

One of the things that became very clear to me while at the NetNet conference was that universities are really interested in moving more courses and programs online.  Perhaps this is a cost saving measure – or maybe there’s just that much demand for online courses these days…regardless…the future of higher ed (and perhaps, high school?) is online.

Does online education mean fully online with no face-to-face interaction?  I’m not sure. For some courses and/or programs, perhaps it does.

In my doctorate, I’ve not met a single professor from Dakota State University and I’ve only met one other doctoral candidate face-to-face…in face, I just met him last week at the conference even though I’ve ‘known’ him virtually for 4 years.

The future of education is online.

What does that mean for social interaction?  Is an education really only the things you learn from a book and/or from a professor or does it also include the social interaction that occurs during class and throughout campus?   Using aspects of social media, can that social interaction be recreated or simulated?  How well does knowledge really flow in online courses?

All interesting questions I think….some of them are being looked at by one of my doctoral candidate cohorts…more on that research in later posts too

What’s your thoughts on the future of education being completely online? For it…against it?  Would love your thoughts.

Image Credit: DEANZ Panel on the Future of Distance Learning By Choconancy1 on flickr

• Culture Trumps Strategy, Every Time by Nilofer Merchant on The Conversation – Harvard Business Review

  Quote: After working on strategy for 20 years, I can say this: culture will trump strategy, every time. The best strategic idea means nothing in isolation. If the strategy conflicts with how a group of people already believe, behave or make decisions it will fail. Conversely, a culturally robust team can turn a so-so strategy into a winner. The “how” matters in how we get performance. Yes, it does.

• The Entrepreneur’s Journey – The Black Sheep by Neil Shepherd on Troy Claus’ Marketing and Branding the Right Way

  Quote: Don’t allow yourself to be spoon fed in this life, or wear rose colored glasses. You can’t expect someone to teach you, and you can’t expect success to be handed to you. You must take the initiative and strive to learn on your own.

• The big when for IT is now by Mark McDonald on the Gartner Blog Network

  Quote: The big WHEN for IT is now and leaders are already taking advantage or planning to take advantage of lighter weight technologies and the opportunity to apply them in the context of growth, innovation and strategic relevance.

• Go and See by Wally Bock on Three Star Leadership Blog

  Quote: …reading is a wonderful way to learn, but you understand so much more when you supplement intellectual study with visiting the ground. No description of the battle can match the impact of walking 1000 yards in summer heat and realizing that almost every step would have been under fire

• Engineering vs. Liberal Arts: Who’s Right—Bill or Steve? by Vivek Wadhwa on TechCrunch

  Quote: My advice to my students—and to my own children—is to study what interests them the most; to excel in fields in which they have the most passion and ability; to change the world in their own way and on their own terms. Once they master their domain, they can find the path to entrepreneurship.

• The need for connection & engagement in education by Garr Reynolds on Presentation Zen

  Quote: Few people think that the formal education systems around the world are perfect. In fact, virtually everyone realizes that changes — even massive paradigm shifts — are needed

• Chasing Returns by Fred Wilson on A VC

  Quote: I do think we are seeing signs of excess in the markets we invest in and I do think we are seeing investors chasing returns in deals they don’t fully understand. That is a red flag. And I am choosing to observe it, pay attention to it, and share it with all of you.

• Founder Berners-Lee Sees Social Media Corrupting His Intent For The Web by by Frank Watson on SEWatch

  Quote: Web founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee warned “Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites represent “one of several threats” to the future of the world wide web,” the UK Guardian reported.

• Dating, Madoff, and Supply and Demand by James Altucher on The Altucher Confidential

  Quote: Everything we get in life has to do with supply and demand and how our psychology rides that balance between the two. When I was helping an investor of mine sell his healthcare company, we had to approach 20 potential acquirers, for 5 “second calls”, two actual meetings, and one final “yes” (and then three months of HELL, but that’s another story). But that means 19 “no’s” before getting to that one yes. But all of that was the function of creating our own supply and demand.

• What Sarbanes-Oxley, Lawyers, and Auditors Really Mean for IT: Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms

  Quote: A lot of IT folks routinely invoke a higher authority as justification of why we have to do something or a policy can’t be changed. This “higher authority” is usually included in one of 3 tried and true excuses.

• Why a Bad Memory’s Not Such a Bad Thing By Mark McGuinness on Lateral Action

  Quote: There seems to be a universal assumption that the ability to remember certain facts is essential to a good education, and that a ‘good memory’ is intrinsically a good thing. We revere people who can perform incredible feats of memory, and look down on those who are unable to regurgitate information that ‘everyone’ is expected to know.

• It Takes A Community To Build A Community by Tom Grant on Forrester Blogs

  Quote: You don’t build a community. You expand it.

• 5 Things to Know Before Buying Marketing Automation by Carlos Hidalgo on MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog

  Quote: If you are thinking of automating your marketing, here are 5 thing to know before buying marketing automation.  If you have already purchased it, don’t worry, it’s not too late. These 5 tips can help you too.

• The Enterprise Value of Social Software by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown – Harvard Business Review

  Quote: If executives are wary of cloud computing, they are flat-out skeptical of social software. When most non-IT executives hear “social software,” they stop listening at “social” and imagine internet-aided water cooler chatter. They fear the loss of worker productivity — digital technology provides a seemingly endless array of distractions in the workplace. Executives cannot help but lose sleep over the potential loss of confidentiality and expanded opportunity for airing personal grievances

• Cluetrain vs. Madison Avenue by Valeria Maltoni on Conversation Agent

  Quote: I’ll make it really simple for you to see the difference. Fundamentally, this is a conversation about putting the human being first or putting the brand/idea first

• The Journey of a Business Strategist CIO by Louie Ehrlich, Chevron on CIO Dashboard

  Quote: What’s the CIO’s world look like at that highest level? Most of our focus is external, on the market and our company’s customers. Our teams are business-oriented. We are true business peers in our relationships with other stakeholders. The most critical competencies we are applying pertain to market knowledge and external customer insight. The value that IT is creating at this level is competitive advantage, innovation, and better decisions, enabled through the application of rich business intelligence.

• Education as a platform by Marie Bjerede on O’Reilly Radar

  Quote: Any and every education reform design is going to fail for two reasons. The first is that the problem is not one that is solvable by “design” in the traditional engineering sense — the education system, including all its human elements, is too complex for that. The second is that the system as currently built contains feedback loops that damp out change.

The review was a short one but peaked my interest as it points out March’s main question presented in the book.  The question is a simple one…but has a very difficult answer.

This simple question is:

What is, or should be, the role of experience in creating intelligence, particularly in organizations?

Simple question right?

Now…I’ve always been of the mindset that experience is a good thing.  I’ve argued before that I’d normally hire someone with experience over education.  This book makes me rethink that approach in some ways. I’ll still hire for ability over experience any day though.

The book is a short one – only 120 pages of content in a 5″ by 8″ book.  While short, there’s quite a bit of ‘stuff’ in it.

As mentioned above, the main focus of this book is to question whether experience really is the best teacher.    In this book, March argues that experience can be a good teacher if that experience is used as a means to build context for stories and models of history.

The problems with ‘experience as teacher’ is that these experiences can be easily warped, misconstrued and interpreted in many ways.

March does agree that experience can be a good teacher, but isn’t always the best teacher.  Using experiences alone as a learning mechanism can lead a person / organization down the wrong path.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about this book was that there were no answers put forth by the author.  March realizes that the issue of experience as teacher is a difficult one and there is no ‘right’ answer on how to approach using experiences as learning method.

One caveat  before you run over to Amazon or your local bookseller, know that this book is a bit difficult to read.  It is written much like an academic paper and, as such, as a lot of academic language in it.    Not a bad thing…but it isn’t necessarily a book that you’ll breeze though.  You’ll have to work at reading this book.

That said, I like this book and have added it to my bookshelf to bring down and read again in the future.

While the book spends a little too much time in the realm of ‘celebrity worship’ (i.e., there are LOT of celebrities that have found ‘the element’ apparently), the book is still a very good read.

The basic premise is that every person has their own ‘Element’ that they fit the best into.  What is the element?  Basically, the Element is the location where a person’s passion, interests and natural abilities intersect.

The Element is something that a person has to find for themselves. Schools can’t teach a child to find their element.  In fact, many schools and parents do the opposite…they try to drive children into the ‘safe’ areas for careers and educational study.

The book contains a lot of stories of people that have found their ‘Element’.  Many of these stories are of people who’ve gone against the ‘normal’ educational route to become their own person.

That said, this book does not slam modern education and teachers. From all accounts, Sir Ken Robinson is very much pro-education and pro-teacher.  What the book does do well is provide examples and discussion around the current state of educational theory and what it is doing wrong.

What is current education theory and practice doing wrong?  Easy…we are teaching everyone the same thing and using standardized testing to examine what has been learned.  In my opinion, there’s nothing worse than killing the creativity of a child by forcing them to fit into an educational and cultural mold.

The book is an easy read and highly recommended to anyone interested in the ideas of creativity and passion and educational ideas.

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Current Status (May 2009)

• 39 hours complete
• 52 remaining (27 hours coursework, 25 hours dissertation)
• 43% complete.
• Coursework completion ~ mid-2010
• Dissertation completion ~2012.

I’m taking another six hours this summer…might be a beating but we’ll see.  The courses are:

• INFS 750 – Telecommunications Technology & Management – Starting May 18
• INFS 892 – Advanced Design Science Research Methods – Starting May 18

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• Danah Boyd’s Dissertation (socialmediatoday.com)
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By drawing students from the same social strata, subjecting them to the same system of rewards and punishment, and immersing them in the same theories, attitudes, prejudices, and practices, graduate schools of business produce an astounding level of uniformity among MBA recipients, a uniformity that is a danger to an organization.

-Ricardo Semler, The Seven Day Weekend. Page 144.

How true.

We’ve all seen the job postings out there that say “MBA from top school” or something similar. I’ve always wondered about the thought process behind that…if you only hire people with MBA’s from Stanford, Harvard, Chicago, etc aren’t you overlooking a good portion of society? By limiting the selection pool, aren’t you ultimately predetermining the type of person you hire?

By hiring only those people with certain pedigrees, an organization is predetermining their future by hiring only those people with the same backgrounds and outlook on business.

Why not take a chance and hire someone with an MBA from a bottom-tier university and see what type of outlook they bring to your organization? Or better yet, why not take a chance and interview someone as far removed from a top-tier MBA program as you can…they may bring a completely new outlook to your business.

[tags] organization, culture, Ricardo Semler, MBA [/tags]

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