As you can see from previous posts I’ve been investigating how people work on the internet.

The main surprise is just how sophisticated the medium is becoming in allowing people to trade and make money (or perhaps I’ve missed). The ability to have  a website designed in Thailand, upload one’s own or others products (by becoming an affiliate), take payment via Paypal or Clickbank and have a cheque for all that you sell sent to your bank and all within a few days has posed some interesting questions on the future of work.

Let’s first deal with the Hype! An awful lot of people are currently trading on the web and some of them are doing very well. Indeed at a seminar in London last month a parade of such people told an audience of over 800 how they were making anywhere between $2000 a month on Twitter to $20,000 in one week on Facebook. The audience were given titbits of information on “How it was done” and then offered to purchase whole programmes of products where they could do the same by following the speaker’s step-by-step fast cash formula!.

Now, before we go any further, let me say that I have the greatest regard for the organisers and what they are doing to inform people about the possibilities of making meoney on the web. I did, however, fiund the American way of selling through hype, the promise of easy riches and the buy NOW part of the sale because of product scarcity rather galling.

The problems for work and the individuals, as far as I see it, are these:

• I suspect, that it’s going to be a very few in his audience that actually succeed! This may bring depression, feelings of failure and loss of a lot of redundancy money. (More than a few in the audience were seeking to plough their redundancy money into web based sales)
• Trading on the internet is likely to become a “bubble”. Like any other bubble people are believing, being told, that having a product on-line is a path to instant and easy riches. The reality is that those who realise those riches will be the early adopters such as those on the stage at Mark’s seminar, whilst the majority will find the marketplace so saturated, with other traders as well as FREE items, that there are just cents rather than dollars to be earned.

• Another possibility is that Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and possibly governments will find a way of monetising the trade for themselves more effectively and thus reduce the potential for huge incomes.

I later attended another seminar on making money from the web where some in the audience had been selling products on the web for up to five years and barely scraped together a living wage. A few seemed depressed and disheartened and quite possibly were making themselves unemployable in the long run!

Perhaps working solely on the web should carry a health warning?
 

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Increasing team productivity will be the mission critical task of most businesses over the next two years. See Here for more details on an event that you need to be attending.

Over this past month I’ve been researching how small business teams will work in the future.

This research has led me to attend a number of conferences where I’ve listened to highly successful “web-gurus” talk about how they are making $000s through on-line selling and affiliate marketing and using virtual teams.

There seems to be a number of common threads to all the talks:

• Small teams can provide exceptional products that are often better than equivalent and expensive products from larger businesses.
  This is true and I’ve even invested in two CD’s packed with useful information for under $10, including postage.

• Work such as marketing, web design, product production and delivery, customer contact and much more can be outsourced at a fraction of the current cost.
  Again very true and if there is one aspect to the future of business that will impact even large teams in multinational companies.
  

The final message that I heard from all of them is that individuals and small teams can make $000s without much effort. All you have to do is to buy the product package the “Guru” has developed for $000s and your journey to riches begins…100% money back if not satisfied…guaranteed!

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that people still find the “instant riches” message so attractive. The Lottery, advertisers and TV game shows all contribute to this perception.

Having spoken to and observed some of the “Gurus” telling everyone how easy it is to make money on the web and that it only takes an hour a day it’s interesting that they themselves seem to work very very very hard and very long hours.

Perhaps the learning point is that: Technology makes life easier but the effort that needs to be directed towards producing and maintaining a successful and sustainable outcome for clients changes.
Those that get rich will only do so through hard work, the rest continue to delude themselves.

A couple of days ago I was talking to a friend of mine, Chrissie Lightfoot, who has written a great blog titled The end of Lawyers on the changes to how the legal profession will be changing. The article is very revealing and Chrissie has made some excellent observations.

Her blog has caused some discussion with  friends who use the internet for business. It’s been agreed that now we can offer experts in India, China, Thailand and all over the world work that would normally be done very expensively such as marketing, research, print design, professional advice and even pay someone to write our blogs,  monitor the results and only pay for what we have had satisfactorily delivered at a fraction of the price. Why would we want to hire expensive people or firms locally?

The result must be that professional firms in Europe and the USA must consider that to survive they must identify Micro-niche products that can’t be easily replicated.

A couple of days ago I was talking to a friend of mine, Chrissie Lightfoot, who has written a great blog titled The end of Lawyers on the changes to how the legal profession will be changing. The article is very revealing and Chrissie has made some excellent observations.

Her blog has caused some discussion with  friends who use the internet for business. It’s been agreed that now we can offer experts in India, China, Thailand and all over the world work that would normally be done very expensively such as marketing, research, print design, professional advice and even pay someone to write our blogs,  monitor the results and only pay for what we have had satisfactorily delivered at a fraction of the price. Why would we want to hire expensive people of firms?

The result must be that professional firms in Europe and the USA must consider that to survive they must identify Micro-niche products that can’t be easily replicated.

The current dispute between British Airways and the cabin crews must pose concerns as to the ability of the airline to develop a positive working relationships in the future between the airline and its staff.

Whilst there is no doubt that British Airways is looking to cut costs and ensure that the airline is able to compete with its rivals one must consider that British Airways must either break the union or potentially become a shadow of its previous self.

The problem with either result is the potential ill feeling felt by both sides at the end of the dispute. A recovery of morale, trust and mutual support could take many years to achieve. During this time passengers may well opt to travel with rival carriers and thus leaving BA with the long-term potential of becoming the UK’s Pan Am!

The Airline would do well to start planning how they might achieve a recovery of morale, professional working and team-building prior to the end of the dispute. To spend time congratulating itself on any real or imaginary victory over the union could well be too late. 

Maria has left and after the story it’s probably a good time to look at her journey before a full post-mortem is held.

a) On arrival she alienated her team
b) She developed relationships at work that were not prepared to support her when times got difficult at work
c) She restructured her team for effect as opposed to focussing on long-term results
d) She introduced Quick wins that did not include her boss’s sought after results
e) She introduced employees that she had worked with in the past

That is not to say that everything she did was bad, it wasn’t. During her time she had some success with the introductions on a new process for hiring employees, she helped the Sales Director restructure his area and she increased productivity.

The problem was that the positive aspects of her work were not sufficiently large enough to outweigh the negatives and as a result the “perception” of her work was seen to be negative. It’s worth considering that negative aspects often have a greater impact than positives where considerations of capability at work are concerned.

So Maria’s job lasted around six months before she decided that her career would be better served by finding another position to move to. The question that we might all have is “Has she learnt from her mistakes or will they be repeated again?

Further info on job transitions can be found at:
http://assimilating-talent.com

In what is being seen as a definite demotion by the rest of the company Maria has agreed to lead a team in an administrative area. However her new team are not pleased to have been told that her appointment is to “troubleshoot” the team to increased productivity.