Well do not despair, help is at hand!

The Small Business Development Corporation (SBDC) has established a Dispute Resolution service.  This has arrived following the appointment of the Small Business Commissioner at the beginning of the year.

It is very economical (the first hearing is free – you can’t get much better value than that) and if the issue hasn’t been resolved then, an external mediation is set up and for just $125 you get the professional services and about 75 to 90% of issues are resolved after the first session.

Find out more about it here

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) have set up a web site devoted to it:  Scamwatch and there you will see just how many forms scams can take.  They include Investment Scams, Job & Employment scams, Banking and Online account scams, Mobile phone scams, Lottery and Competition scams and of course the infamous Money transfer or ‘Nigerian’ scam plus many others.

Curtin Business School are set on finding out how big a problem this is amongst Small and Medium Businesses and have a survey for you to complete.  But there is a sweetner in the deal: if you spend the time filling out the survey your name will go into the hat to win an Apple iPad (and that’s no scam!).

The survey will take 10 to 15 mins of your time. Follow this link to take the survey.

To read up on the back ground of this project and related topics follow this link at the Curtain Business School.

Businesses everywhere are scrambling to keep up with Social Media and learning how to use it to reach their target audience. Then there is the phenomenon of Mobile Phone Marketing with SMS ads and Apps and GPS positioning…

Here is an opportunity to become a lot more familiar to the playground of the 21st century – Social and Mobile Media Marketing.

In partnership with Central Eastern Business Association (CEBA) the Town is hosting a Free Forum with guest speaker Kylie Bartlett.  Also known as the Web Celeb, Kylie is a practised and experienced speaker on this subject with a knack for explaining things in everyday language.

At this forum you will learn

• how to choose the best digital tools that build your brand including App’s, Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and other social networks
• how to engage with customers where they like to spend time online
• how to create a Facebook presence that drives traffic, leads and sales into your business and lays the foundation for new customers
• how to manage and maintain your social media presence

For the time and location for this forum please down load the flier here.  Places are limited and you are required to book.  To Register Online follow these links to the Registration Form.

To learn a little more about the Mobile phenomenon look at this video produced by Google.

For more information about Kylie Bartlett click on her web site

On Thursday last (28th March) NBN Co released the Roll Out Plan for the next three years and commencing in December 2013 optic fibre will be installed here in Bassendean.  Over the following 12 months, 17,000 homes across nine suburbs including Ashfield, Eden Hill, Bayswater, Keira, Lockridge, S. Guildford, Guildford, Beechboro and Bassendean will be hooked up.   The NBN have an interactive map illustrating the area covered.  The rapidly expanding network will place Bassendean at the leading edge for the Perth Eastern Region.

So what does that mean and what difference will it make when we have access to optic fibre?  Well today the average Bassendean ADSL customer enjoys superfast broadband speeds of 12Mbps. If you are downloading an average compressed film it currently takes around 11 minutes.  With NBN optic fibre the speed will jump anywhere up to 100Mbps and the download time for the same movie will shrink to between 20 seconds to 1 minute!

The impact of such an increase in capacity for commerce is hard to fully comprehend.

The NBN provides the connectivity and it has been labelled as the infrastructure of innovation.  The innovation part of it comes from the capability and the content and it is people not pipes that will transform our economy.  Accordingly, the productivity, competitiveness, social and economic changes across our community will all see some changes. It is going to be huge but how huge will be determined to a large degree by how well we leverage the networks, collaborate, innovate, develop and market our resources, products and services.

If you are not too clear on the back ground to the NBN and how it will all work, iinet have a good frequently asked questions section on their web site.

Here at the Town we will make every effort to bring digital activity to all businesses.

Navitas operate a Job Readiness program for international students who have graduated from universities within Australia, to equip them with professional skills that ensure a successful transition to the workforce.  This is an opportunity for Australian businesses to become a host company with all insurances covered during the internship period and no fees involved. All that is required of your business is to provide a mentor for the intern and there is no obligation to hire the graduate upon completion of their internship.  Navitas will provide ongoing support throughout the placement.

If you are interested in discussing this further and joining the 200+ companies already supporting this initiative across Western Australia please contact Samantha Bonner, Internship Placement Coordinator on (08) 9314 9643 or email samantha.bonner@navitas.com.

Please click on this link for further information on becoming a host company.

Author Amy Gallo

This originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review Blog.

You’ve heard the horror stories: a job applicant gets turned down because his potential employer discovered his objectionable tweets, or saw pictures of his birthday party on Facebook. There is a lot of advice out there about keeping your online activity from hurting your career. But there’s a flip side. When handled correctly, social media can help you professionally. You can use it to enhance your personal brand, establish yourself as an expert in a field, or demonstrate fluency with all things digital. The key is to be proactive about managing your activity and image.

What the Experts Say

Facebook, Twitter and Linked In are just some of many social media sites where you can promote yourself on-line

It used to be that people were deemed to be experts based on their titles, years of experience, or length of their CVs. While those things are still important, especially in some circles, they’re no longer the only ways to show credibility. “Status is much more democratic now. Expertise can be noticed more easily,” says Soumitra Dutta, a professor in business and technology at INSEAD, author of “What’s Your Personal Social Media Strategy?” and co-author of Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work and World. Social media allows anyone to put their ideas out there and to gain respect, notoriety, and a following. “The opportunity to reach people directly is powerful, and still underexploited,” says Dorie Clark, a strategy consultant and author of the forthcoming book What’s Next?: The Art of Reinventing Your Personal Brand (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012). To make the most of social media to further your career, you need to make a conscious choice to use it for professional purposes, understand what your goals are, and then actively manage your digital footprint.

Put your professional self online

Most people have dipped their toes into some form of social media. If you’re already out there, it makes sense to think about how professional contacts, especially potential employers and current colleagues, will see you. “More and more we have to realize that there is no such thing as private space online,” says Clark. Dutta  concurs: “Privacy today is something you have to work hard at. You have to assume your actions are public by default.”

Commit to using social media for more than personal reasons. This doesn’t mean you have to start a whole new online persona. Some people are comfortable with the blurring of the professional and personal boundaries. Others find it difficult. Decide which social media channels you’ll use for what purposes. For example, Clark makes this distinction: She uses Twitter and LinkedIn for professional reasons and does her personal interacting on Facebook. Dutta says it’s a personal choice that each person needs to make. The key is to think about what people will see when they look you up in each space.

How it works

When it comes to advancing your career, there are three things social media is particularly suited for:

• Building your personal brand. “It gives you a great opportunity to brand yourself, especially to internal colleagues and external peers,” says Dutta. When people peruse your social media activity, they get a sense of what you’re about. The more you comment on or write about a certain area, the more likely you’ll be affiliated with it. Clark points out that social media has an “echo chamber effect” in which even a small amount of content can go a long way toward establishing you as an expert. It is a medium that doesn’t require credentials to prove your credibility. Dutta says that if you are passionate about a topic and argue your perspective in a compelling manner, you can begin to generate a following. Even if you aren’t trying to be labelled as an expert, contribute to discussions you find interesting, are related to your industry, or you simply want to be part of. “Social media can be a way to demonstrate your familiarity with a field,” says Clark. “If you blog or tweet about a topic it shows that you’re in the game.”

• Demonstrating your proficiency with all things digital. “It shows you’re up on digital trends, which are affecting every company,” says Clark. Employers are increasingly looking for this competency in potential employees. She also points out that this may be especially important for baby boomers: “If you’re over 50, companies are worried that you won’t be able to use social media and other digital tools.”

• Learning from your digital network. By design, social media is a conversation. When you post information, people like, comment on, or forward your thoughts. This means that not only can you put ideas out there but you can learn a lot as well. “You have to be open to a two-way dialogue and hearing other people’s points of view,” says Dutta. Becoming part of an online community is a great way to identify and follow trends in your areas of interest. You can also turn to your network with specific questions about your field or even a job search.

How to start

Once you’ve committed to using social media for professional purposes, it is easy to get started. Here are three things to do:

• Figure out what space you want to play in. Before you join the conversation, think about what topics you want to be associated with. “You need to ask yourself, what you want to be known for. What are you passionate about? What are your distinctive views?” says Dutta. Find the forums where other thought leaders are talking about that topic. While it is more manageable to focus on a particular subject or two, you can also dabble. “You can work hard to showcase you’re an expert in a certain area but participate in other conversations too,” says Clark. For example, if you’re in sales, you are likely to have a depth of knowledge in that area, but you can also show that you know something about marketing or finance.

• Establish a presence. Give people something to see when they look for you online. One of the easiest ways to do that is to set up a LinkedIn profile. Make sure it is robust: fill out the experience and specialties fields. Provide links to your other social media activity. Then, consider setting up a Twitter account if you don’t already have one. Clark suggests that you commit to posting to it once a day, even if it’s just a retweet.

• Generate content. To truly establish yourself as an expert, you need to create a following. Create content that people want to share. “If you want to drive home that you have expertise, post articles that show, don’t tell, you have expertise,” says Clark. If people find your opinions and perspective interesting, they will do a lot of the work for you. Clark says the goal is to build an army of ambassadors who pass on your content to others. “You lose credibility with people if you show you’re blowing your own horn. You need other people to blow the horn for you.”

Play by the rules

While social media has very few rules, most companies do. Before you begin tweeting about your work or start a blog showcasing your expertise, be sure to know your company’s policy on social media. “You may not be able to talk about certain industries or what you do for the company,” says Clark. Adds Dutta: “When you’re part of an organization, you are already ascribing to rules and values. In the online space, it’s important you don’t violate that,” If you are banned from mentioning your job or company, you can still accomplish the goal of demonstrating proficiency in social media by blogging about other things you care about, such as baseball or cooking. While not strictly professional, it might just cause a boss or recruiter to take notice?

Principles to remember

Do:

• Consider what potential employers or colleagues will see when they find you on social media — you don’t want them to see nothing
• Decide which social media channels you’ll use for professional purposes — it’s ok to mix personal and professional
• Create content that others can forward, retweet, or repost

Don’t:

• Say you’re an expert — show it by posting compelling content
• Limit your social media activity to one topic — participate in many conversations so you don’t get pigeonholed
• Inadvertently violate company policy — check what rules your employer has set around social media

Case study #1: What boundaries?

Dany Bourjolly Smith, the director of human capital management at Ross Technologies, an IT solutions firm based in Baltimore, first started using social media back in 2006. She had a basic LinkedIn profile but rarely posted any content related to her work. In 2007, while she was a recruiter at another firm, she needed to hit an ambitious hiring goal within six weeks. To succeed, she thought, “I have to fire every engine I can think of.” So she turned to social media to find candidates and was able to fill the positions within the deadline. Many recruiters use social media to find job seekers and build a pipeline of candidates but for Dany it’s more than a tool to do her job. “It is an opportunity to brand myself as an effective talent acquisition professional,” she says.

She is an avid user of Facebook, where she has over 1,700 friends, and her status updates are often a mix of personal and professional. Originally she used the updates to share many of the humorous things she saw and experienced reading thousands of resumes and interviewing hundreds of candidates. Her network responded well, asking questions and requesting more. She realized that inherent in those entertaining posts was valuable advice. She now prefaces some of her posts with “Recruiting Tip:” and offers tactics, strategies and guidance for people in her network who might be looking for a job. Dany sees her activity on Facebook as a way to further her personal brand, which she summarizes as “I connect people”. “Without social media, I might not have established myself as a thought leader,” she says. She may also not have gotten as far in her career. Her current employer, the founder of Ross Technologies, saw what she was doing on Facebook and recruited her. He gave her an offer she couldn’t refuse and the opportunity to run her own division.

Case study #2: Social media as a reference check

As the owner and managing partner of Avakian Consulting, Joel Gagne helps school districts and municipalities communicate with the public. It is important that potential clients see Joel as adept with various forms of social media. Therefore, he regularly publishes content that shows his familiarity with the medium as well as his expertise in communications and marketing in the public sector. “It’s about putting myself and the company in a position of being an expert,” says Joel. While he rarely attracts new clients through social media (most of his work comes through referrals), it elevates his profile with potential clients who seek him out. “It becomes an extension of our credentials,” he says. Joel sees his social media strategy as a three-legged stool, with the blog being the centre and Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube as each of the legs. In each of these spaces, he posts content about communicating effectively with public constituents. Joel says that his social media presence often serves as a reference check. Prospective customers learn more about what Joel does and they get a taste of what it’s like to work with him. “Potential clients get a better understanding about my business and whether there’s a fit,” he says. Clients are checking that he has a distinct perspective on or experience with the issues they care about.

Keep the faith. That’s what I said to a client who is going through a crisis of confidence. Over the summer he had put together the underpinnings of what on paper looked like a promising growth business. But — as is usually the case — the more he analyzes, the more he doubts; the more he shows the results of his analysis to senior leaders, the more questions they ask, and the more they doubt.

If you are doing something that hasn’t been done before, careful analysis will by definition highlight reasons to not proceed. Market demand can’t be validated. Experts dismiss technological assumptions. Partnership discussions stall. There is always something that causes this crisis of confidence. Harvard Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter has seen this so frequently that she coined Kanter’s Law: Everything can look like a failure in the middle. When you first formulate an idea, excitement peaks. But the more you study that idea, the more you realize the challenges that lie in front of you.

Innovators need a heavy dose of faith. They need to trust their intuition that they are working on a big idea. That faith need not be blind. For example, I combine well-grounded research that highlights patterns of successful innovation and my own field experience into a short checklist of factors that indicate whether or not an idea has potential (in a future post I’ll provide more color about using this checklist). I make sure there’s a good story behind the idea. Dissenters may poke holes in the story, but at least it’s there.

Most importantly, I’m driven by a strong conviction: you can’t be certain if you have a good idea or a bad one until you get out of the office. At many corporations, admission to the senior ranks is gained by being right. Promotion-minded executives, therefore, want to remove all the risks from a plan before they proceed. But innovation is not an academic exercise. Patterns guide, but actions decide (catchy title, huh? It’s Day 15 of training in The Little Black Book of Innovation).

The best innovators have a bit of innovation bipolarity. In one breath they can tell you why they are going to change the world. In the next they’ll tell you about the three risks keeping them up at night and they’ll detail a run of experiments that will teach them about their critical assumptions.

You cannot find truth through analysis. You can only find truth through action. If you rest only on analysis to make decisions about innovation, you won’t do things that haven’t been done before. You will do incremental things. Maybe that’s what you are trying to do. But if you are truly trying to disrupt, if you are trying to break from the norm and create exciting breakthrough growth business, there has to be faith involved. Because no amount of analysis will prove to you that something truly innovative is worth doing.

Keep the faith. Try some things. Maybe some of those challenges can’t be overcome. But maybe you’ll learn something that helps you trip over an even bigger opportunity. After all, as Edison said, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Start sweating.

“SMEs just like any business are trying to cut costs but they also want to offer more flexibility to employees and customers. They need to invest in IT to deliver that,” said Graham Palmer, managing director of Intel UK.

“I.T. is one of the few areas of investment that can pretty much guarantee that flexibility and improvement in efficiency.

SMEs stuck in technology dark ages | IT PRO.

• Know your priorities. When deciding whether to stay and finish a task or put it aside until the next day, remember what your priorities are. If the task furthers your professional and personal goals, then it may be worth putting in the extra time.

• Agree on expectations at home. Discuss your work hours with the people closest to you—your partner, spouse, or friends—to be sure your expectations are aligned.

• Talk about it at work. Make it clear that you are willing to stay late if there is a legitimate reason, such as a client deadline. But emphasize that this should be the exception, not the rule.

This has been reproduced from a Management Tip sent through by Harvard Business Review.  You can read the rest of this article at Harvard Business Review here

“Recognise something’s happening. Understand it. Plan your way out of it. Move”.   I would appreciate receiving your comments and feedback.

ALL THE SYMPTOMS are there to see Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, Global Financial Crisis, customers with Locked Wallets and Purses, no Budgets and that’s just the obvious stuff.

Inside of businesses and organisations of all kinds, CEOs and senior managers are being asked to do more with less. Decision makers are only making the easy decisions, the ones they are forced to, the ones that impact the next quarter bottom line. Sales are hard to come by. The hard decisions are being shelved. And everyone is planning to cut staff if they have to.

Very few are looking to the future with vision and imagination. Most are looking at their feet, trying to work out what the very next step might be.  This is happening in small business, big business, non-profit and government.

Contraction is under way, and only the mining industry and agriculture are really looking good. And even they are beginning to wonder “for how long?”

Deeper still, the digital revolution is eroding and shifting the ground we all stand on.

The currents of change from the convergence of IT, telecommunications and content is confusing all parties – the telcos, the IT vendors and the media industry. Nobody quite knows where it is all heading. Tip in mobile devices, social media, the “cloud” and integration and it gets even more confusing.

Add information overload and no time to sit and think, and is it any wonder we see and hear shell-shocked, glazed eyed CEOs everywhere?

None of this is going to go away and it will impact us even harder in 2012.

Notwithstanding the occasional extras thrown into our lives from time to time that make things even more uncertain, like Iran, Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, Greece, China, the Euro, the stock market, US election, interest rate rises and falls, cyclones and drought.

Luckily we live on a big island in the southern hemisphere, some considerable distance away from a lot of this, but that doesn’t stop it unsettling people watching the continuous bad news stories and images on TV and the internet. And unsettled people play safe.

When disruption is as all-pervasive as this, there is only one thing to do.

Step 4: Head for higher ground.

That’s what everybody wants to do, head for higher ground. Somewhere safe, dry, defendable and where there is considerable competitive advantage derived from being able to see further and more clearly than others.

That begs two questions, where is the higher ground, and why is that Step 4?

The higher ground varies for each business category and industry sector.

Step 3: Plan your move carefully.

Step 3 is about defining this solid, defendable position for your business or organisation, which will offer you competitive advantage under these new conditions. Plan your move.

The customer has changed forever and has to be part of this strategic decision. Whether you sell phones, food, finance, services, cars, sugar or coal, shared value is the new condition for success and “value” means different things to different people.

Money isn’t the only value to consider, and you had better understand what “value” means to your customers and suppliers, before charging ahead assuming it means exactly the same thing to all of you.

Even the prestigious Professor Michael E Porter from Harvard has changed his views on the subject, so it’s time to understand what shared value means, in an interconnected world where customers can check things out. And do.

Step 2: Understand what is causing this disruption.

If you don’t understand it you won’t be able to manage it. If you don’t understand it you will not be able to plan.

If you are the key decision maker in your organisation and you don’t understand it, then join the captain of the Titanic.

You can’t put this off, no matter how much the phone calls, meetings, emails, business as usual and the next quarter bottom line demand your attention.

Unless you start understanding what is changing the environment you operate in…you will fail.

You will make the wrong decisions. You will hit the iceberg.

It is no longer just a case of one factor impacting you…it is a host of interconnected factors all impacting at once. See above.

Understand mobility. Understand collaboration. Understand connection. Especially understand integration, inside and outside your organisation. Understand the movement of power to the customer. Understand shared value.

Don’t trust your IT manager alone to deal with this. He/she only has some of the information and you have the final responsibility. Don’t hire a social media expert and think everything is under control, and they get it and you don’t. They aren’t social media experts at all.

Your GP understands it, each time the next patient walks in with reams of information from the internet and in many cases a far clearer view of what is ailing them than the doctor has.

Your local book shop understands it, as customers come in, browse the bookshelves, leave the store and order from the Book Depository for delivery in 6 days time.

Even Yellow Pages now understands it too late, with its customers deserting in droves for Google and SEO. And if they couldn’t get it right with all the money they had to throw at it…beware.

It’s not about Facebook and social media. It’s not about your web site and iPads. It’s about the whole interconnected environment. It’s about the relationship between everything you do inside your business and your customers, suppliers, competitors and the whole connected eco-system.

It’s not static. It is changing and evolving and you need to understand how and why.

This will not settle down for a long time. So doing nothing is not an option.

Do nothing and you will steadily slip backwards as the powerful underlying currents of digital change – more connection, more collaboration and more integration – drive things along.

Which brings me to Step 1. Recognise that something is happening.

Step 1: Recognise disruption for what it is. It is not a small thing that will quickly pass us by. It is the new condition in which we all have to operate.

Things aren’t going to settle down.

It doesn’t help to stand out of the way.  It is a good move in the short term, while you catch your breath and observe.

But quickly recognise and understand it is no longer business as usual. To state the obvious, revolutions are revolutionary. This one is gathering speed and the narrowing of converging technologies and content is increasing the turbulence like never before.

In the past 5 years I have spoken to many industry associations from all industry sectors, most of whom still do not recognise or acknowledge that permanent disruption is under way. They think it will go away. They think they are on top of it. Solution. Employ a social media person and update the website.

Most industry associations are good at training, HR, lobbying and policy but pathetically poor at understanding the impacts of the digital revolution.

Just visit their websites to see what I mean. It’s not about having a smart looking web site and a social media policy, it’s about helping association members address the much bigger issues of digital disruption that are impacting their businesses every day.

Look to government for help and you are no better off.  Business.gov.  An empty desert of vanilla flavoured content designed to help everyone and no one.

It’s not their fault. It’s what happens when content goes through legal, PR and managerial filters. It comes out cleaned.

“We built the Australian business portal”. Indeed. It ticks a box for whoever made the policy decision, but delivers no value to the 2 million Australian businesses wrestling with their digital options.

Ultimately, you can’t rely on government or your association to help with this.

The responsibility comes back to the CEO.  It’s the key decision maker in every business and organisation that has to get the steps right.

Recognise something’s happening. Understand it. Plan your way out of it. Move.

Things are connecting. Inside and outside. So make connected decisions.

And just because you are CEO of a multinational or a corporation doesn’t mean you are automatically going to get it right either. Or that the decision made for you in the USA, Japan or Europe, is the right one. This is a worldwide revolution.

Some players, like Apple, GE and Google are enjoying this. This is their time and they are strongly positioned to benefit from the new opportunities.

But as technology and content converges, there is a giant game of musical chairs being played at the top end of town and not enough chairs to sit on.

Doing nothing isn’t an option for anybody. But doing the right thing presents enormous opportunity.

And 2012 will be a good year for many.

In 2012, the time is right for all CEOs who take the four simple steps. They will be first to the high ground, out of the disruptive flood and rightly deserve the first mover advantage to defend, develop and grow on solid ground. So don’t ignore what’s happening. Get ready to move.

Reproduced with kind permission of John Sheridan of Digital Business Insights