Informal Learning Flow is a content hub started by Jay Cross that collects and organizes the best information on the web around informal learning. We hope this will help you find good stuff, learn and stay current.

105 Articles match "customers","hierarchy"

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Should Honesty Be the Policy in Your Office?
How would you feel if your boss "friended" your best customer without alerting you — just as you declined friending them to avoid blurring personal and professional boundaries? Transparency doesn't magically make organizations more egalitarian and flat; it makes the asymmetries of power and hierarchy more visible. Would I lie to you? Probably not, but forgive me for preserving the option.
HarvardBusiness.org - Wednesday, March 17, 2010
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Amazon Fires Its Colorado Associates
farmer friend told me that the goats to keep are female goats: when one doe headbutts another, the recipient then turns to the next in the hierarchy and headbutts them. Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. I just got interesting email from Amazon: the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers [...] We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway.
OReilly Radar - Monday, March 8, 2010
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PKM: a node in the learning network
Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy , or, in other words, digital networks enable multiple connections, so organizational communications are no longer just vertical. Somebody else, outside the hierarchy, is only one click away, and perhaps easier to deal with and a better source of information and knowledge. This is becoming obvious in the business world and frameworks such as Social CRM (customer relationship management) Too often we think of learning as school, training as something that is delivered, and complex problems as solvable with enough effort and resources. We are
Learning and Working on the Web - Sunday, March 7, 2010
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  • Four Customer Experience Lessons from Target's ClearRx
    Among my favorite examples of great customer experience is Target's ClearRx pharmacy system . I've seen numerous attempts at customer experience improvement fail because of a company's unwillingness to dig in and really do what it takes to deliver. Another reason, essential for successful customer experience delivery, was... Introduced 4 years ago, it provided a radical departure from the standard design of pill bottles, setting Target apart from their competition. ClearRx sports an excellent design, with clear typography, smart color coding, and flat surfaces for easier
    HarvardBusiness.org - Monday, June 1, 2009
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  • Why Microsoft Had to Destroy Word
    When we think of companies associated with great customer experience, Microsoft is rarely the first to come to mind. As they think about delivering great customer experiences, we show them how they need a component analogous to voice for how they interact with their customers. They capture a core set of ideas (usually around 5-7) that merge a company's brand values with opportunities for better serving customers. However, with the release of Office 2007, Microsoft demonstrated newfound commitment to delivering software that delights. In his excellent presentation
    HarvardBusiness.org - Friday, June 19, 2009
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  • The DNA of Organizational Hierarchy
    The DNA of Hierarchy The factors imply (or rely on) the stability and predictability of an organization’s activities and structure –  in other words, it is assumed that the markets and customers don’t change too much and that therefore the work doesn’t change too much. And even more reinforcing of hierarchy, it assumes that the superior jobs (on the org chart) carry a greater capability to define, understand and resolve problems. ( Re-published from October 2002 … browsing through old stuff, it’s interesting what comes up .
    Wirearchy - Wednesday, August 26, 2009
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  • The Collective Intelligence of the (Connected) Organizational Crowd - Take 2
    Organizations have cultures , and can even be said to have personalities that flow from or are representative of that culture, as individuals in the organization act outwards towards customer, suppliers, vendors and other external stakeholders. By and large, the people in today’s organizational structures charged with the accountability for leading to results, still like and know how to use the power of hierarchy … and let’s please remember that regardless of the relatively rapid changes in the fields of leadership development (viz. I am taking the liberty of re-publishing this piece, which I first wrote in January 2007.  It
    Wirearchy - Thursday, February 5, 2009
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  • Why the Recording Industry Really Stopped Suing Its Customers
    So they've stopped suing customers . But for anyone who's ever worked in a corporation, with its hierarchy, politics, and rewards for immediate results knows that calling the established practices (and therefore your bosses) wrongheaded usually leads to working in a cubicle in the satellite office in Reseda . The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has announced that they're going to stop suing people for pirating music on P2P networks . For people under 30 years old, this has been the cause of much rejoicing.
    HarvardBusiness.org - Monday, December 22, 2008
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  • Crowdsourcing and Customer, Employee and Stakeholder Engagement
    With a nod to the definitions above, the practice of crowdsourcing can be useful for tapping into the attitudes, opinions and beliefs of the “crowd” represented by an organization’s employees, customers and other stakeholders. blogs, Twitter, wikis and various widgets (like IM interfaces that help people connect, converse, swap ways of doing things and gather feedback from colleagues and customers). About three months ago Beth Kanter wrote about the Crowdsourcing of Vision at the Smithsonian Museum . In a comment I suggested that crowdsourcing for visioning
    Wirearchy - Wednesday, August 12, 2009
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  • NSFW: Cherchez la fame – or why the media’s obsession with Twitter campaigns will make customer service smell French
    Time was, companies knew how to keep track of their important customers. If you’re a business, all of this makes perfect sense: high paying customers are the ones who keep you in business, and celebrities are the ones who guarantee positive mentions in the press. The average customer simply didn’t have the value, the cachet or the audience to cause more than the tiniest PR blip. First, they set up loyalty programs: computerised systems that tracked the monetary value of everyone who shopped in their stores or flew on their planes or ate at their restaurant. When
    TechCrunch - Sunday, February 28, 2010
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  • The 10 Questions Every Change Agent Must Answer
    Indeed, when it comes to creating the future, the only thing more worrisome than the prospect of too much change may be too little change--especially in an economy where there are too many competitors chasing too few customers with products and services that look too much alike. Companies used to be comfortable in the middle of the road--that's where all the customers were. As leaders, we have no control over how fast markets grow or how wisely banks lend. But we do control our own mindsets and "animal spirits"--the phrase coined by John Maynard Keynes in the depth of the Great
    HarvardBusiness.org - Thursday, June 18, 2009
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  • On Twitter and in the Workplace, It's Power to the Connectors
    Formal hierarchies with clear reporting relationships gave people their position and their power. Organization structure in vanguard companies involves multi-directional responsibilities, with an increasing emphasis on horizontal relationships rather than vertical reporting as the center of action that shapes daily tasks and one's portfolio of projects, in order to focus on serving customers and society. Connectors have always been more promotable, even in traditional hierarchies. In the World According to Twitter , giving away access to information rewards the giver by building followers.
    HarvardBusiness.org - Monday, November 16, 2009
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  • Overcoming the Obstacles To Social Business
    Still, we are seeing signs of progress in the form of new efficiencies, more direct ways to connect with customers, and ways to make products and services better. And this could cause a culture shock to the system of an organization structured upon decades of tradition, hierarchy, middle management and incentives. Comcast's Frank Eliason was a customer service manager who began engaging (and, more importantly, helping) While social media often commands favorable media attention, the less often told story is that successful initiatives are rare to come by and that there still a number of organizational roadblocks that managers need to overcome in order to make progress.
    HarvardBusiness.org - Monday, November 9, 2009
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