Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Why Your Boss is Programmed to Be a Dictator

I recently met a very interesting book author - Chetan Dhruve. He's written a book with a rather provocative title called "Why Your Boss is Programmed to Be a Dictator."


You can read a manifesto of the book on Change This.

In the book, Chetan proposes that corporations be structured like democratic nations with employees having the right to elect (yes ... elect!) their leaders. As a company-founder and owner, I had major issues with the concept. Three major problems are:

1. Adverse Selection: When you elect your leader as your boss, the most popular person will tend to get elected (the pretty office secretary may land up becoming the company president :).

2. Moral Hazard: Elected bosses will tend to avoid taking unpopular decisions and focus on actions that are popular (3-day workweeks and all-day body massages while you work :)

3. Speed: Democracies, while being efficient in the long-run, tend to be full of inefficiencies in the short-run. But we're all dead in the long run. Companies need to deliver results fast and be willing to change directions quickly.

The idea definitely has some potential and may even work in some industries and situations. One example that comes to mind is Ricardo Semler's Semco. For the foreseeable future though, the best way to avoid working for a dictator will be to start your own business.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

11 Reasons Why You Should Choose Ascendus Survey Software

Following are the major benefits of survey software from Ascendus:

1. Email Reminders Only to Delinquent Participants - Ascendus software allows you to send multiple email reminders only to those participants who have not completed their survey. This ensures adequate survey data without irritating those who have already completed their surveys.

2. Save and Return Later Feature - Ascendus software allows participants to save their responses and return later. This is useful in the case of a large survey with many questions wherein, if the participant is interrupted, he/ she can save the survey and return later to complete the survey.

3. Password Protected Surveys - Ascendus software allows you to set up a password protected survey thus preventing unauthorized people from corrupting survey results with random data.

4. Anonymous Surveys - Ascendus software allows you to track participation of participants in the survey without compromising their anonymity thus creating confidence among participants and allowing for honest feedback.

5. Telephone and Chat Support - Ascendus invariably provides live help desk services via chat (embedded inside the survey page itself) and telephone. While our official service level agreement is for responses within 1 business day, sos issues are resolved within minutes. This is vital to get higher completion rates for employee engagement surveys.

6. Daily Monitoring of Surveys and Sending of Status Reports - Ascendus personnel send out daily reports pertaining to the survey health. This includes statistics such as number of people who have completed surveys, number of people who have partially completed surveys etc. Our trained staff, because of their rich experience in administering surveys, are able to escalate issues with key stakeholders in the event of a survey showing poor growth in survey response rate.

7. Pictures Within Surveys - Ascendus surveys usually have appropriate pictures inserted into various sections (or dimensions of the survey.) This ensures that surveys have a higher engagement level and consequently higher participation rate.

8. Customized Report Generation - Ascendus personnel provide customized report generation services including generation of Word and PowerPoint reports that are packed with statistical analysis and charts.

9. Collaboration with Network Administrators - Ascendus personnel typically work with network administrators from client organizations to ensure that users are able to receive mails sent from the survey system and that users are able to access the survey URL from within their network.

10. Private Label and Client Branding - Ascendus provides private label surveys allowing client organizations to provide a branded experience thus building up their professional image with their end-clients or stakeholders.

11. Proven Satisfactory Performance - Over the last 7 years, Ascendus has always delivered. Our performance has been flawless and we've retained most of our clients. In fact, many clients who move on to other service providers because of cost considerations return back to us after realizing the vast difference in personalized service level.

Friday, August 1, 2008

The Environmental Impact of EBooks

Americans buy more than 3 billion books a year, using up 20 million trees. Erika Engelhaupt has written an excellent article that discusses the environmental impact of e-books. According to her, if you substituted 20 physical books and 2 newspapers daily with a electronic version of the same, you would save almost one tree. It was also surprising to learn that Americans consume an average 1500 lb of paper annually!

With regard to paper textbooks, she quotes a leading edge researcher - Greg Kozak - who found that "over its life cycle, a paper textbook created 4 times the greenhouse gas emissions of an e-book reader and several times more ozone-depleting substances and chemicals associated with acid rain. Conventional books also required more than 3 times more raw materials and 78 times more water consumption than e-books."

It will be interesting to see if e-books make a significant impact on improving the environment over the next 25 -50 years ...