eCommerce and

If you’ve spent any time reading though the eCommerce and Entrepreneurship blog, you’ve seen the difficulties the company engages in. These “journal entries” of sorts, are an opportunity for our employees to express what hardships they’ve gone through and what positive and negative outcomes come from their experiences. The blog is a legitimate forum for venting, learning, growing and sharing; aka an HR manager’s best friend. Everyone’s blog entries have enough of their personal stories laced through them that these entries become a useful means for HR to check out what lies just under the surface at the company. Under the surface is where you’ll find people’s motivations, perspectives and a look at how they view themselves in comparison to others. What better way for me is there to find out what is going on at our eCommerce business than to read the online commentaries detailing employee’s experiences?  Of course there are details and extreme circumstances that should not be displayed publicly and should be treated with the upmost confidentiality, but when it comes to the company’s everyday lifestyle, the blog is a great tool to use when figuring out where the Lifestyle Pillar meter should be rated.

Gordian Project’s eCommerce and Entrepreneurship blog of course has its intended strategic business purposes, but it is not there just so we can share with the world what mistakes we’ve made and what successes we’ve mastered.  The blog lets us look at ourselves to see how we’re doing, what frustrates us, how we can make our retail websites a better place for us to be productive and enjoy coming to work. If there is anything we can do to make our employees just “not hate coming work”, but look forward to going to work everyday, it will be better for the employees and better for the company. 

Take for example those who have been involved in our OutdoorPros Adventure Team, activities outside of the office have sparked relationships and growth inside of the office.  I’ll let some of the pictures speak for themselves:

But I know what you’re thinking…. “We’re here to run a business, not a daycare”. Of course I understand the extremes associated with letting employees be “happy”. I am not advising for a lack of structure that ends up with work becoming a video game palace and online shopping café, but rather, I’m promoting growth of employee ownership and self-investment in their everyday work. Making work enjoyable allows employees to build commitment in their intimate relationship with the company. Happy employees equal productive employees and if they’re unhappy, I guarantee it will end up on the company blog.

 

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As I was thinking of a topic for my blog, I remembered what a frustrating day I had on Friday and decided to blog about my frustration; however I began to wonder if being emotional while blogging would be beneficial, not only to me but to the company and our audience. As much as I want to vent and tell the world of the issues I had to deal with, I believe that there is a fine line between great, helpful, and useful content and just a lot of content [venting or whatever it may be on any given day].  While this line is fine it should be well defined.

There are two different approaches to blogging while under the influence of emotion. You can choose to simply vent or you can choose to find a solution as to the reason why you are venting. Blogging to merely expel stress will only provide you with the satisfaction of expressing your feelings, but can cause you to write things that you may regret later. This ultimately causes two problems: the feeling of satisfaction that you had when you hit publish likely dissipated quickly, and those “things” that you wrote will have a longer lasting impact than the feeling of satisfaction that you were blogging for in the first place!  

Healthy venting as I like to call it, is a simple concept based on practical reputation management practices, it allows you to depend on your emotions to tell you what to blog about but doesn’t allow your emotions to write your blog. For instance if you are asked to create a report that has you pulling hairs, you can blog about resources you found to make it easier to complete the report or about the lack of resources or suggestions for creating efficiencies that would ultimately save the organization dollars.  Instead of blogging about the ridiculous report you have to create and why you believe it’s unnecessary.

On the flip-side, The Reasoner wrote an article about this same issue, providing us with good reasons why emotional blogging may be a good thing. What do you think? Do you think blogging just to vent is a good idea?

 

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We will be observing Good Friday tomorrow so this week’s Variety is a day early.

• There has been so much talk about job losses, the unemployment rate, and company after company filing for bankruptcy that the job market has become a terrifying topic.  This article by the editors of HR World not only shines a ray of light on the topic but may just inspire those currently out of work to become entrepreneurs or seek opportunities in fields as abstract as tattooing. I listed my personal favorites to give you a taste of the article:
  • Journalist: Low pay and minimal creative freedom (at least in your early days) often deter great writers from pursuing careers in journalism, and many instead opt for law school or graduate programs. The life of an experienced journalist, however, is not so bad: Travel opportunities are just around the corner, whether you report on the weather, politics or style trends. Getting to see your name in print is not only rewarding, it's the optimum branding mechanism for when you want to develop your career and explore other avenues later in life. Journalists are also some of the most informed members of society, as their job requires them to be the first to know about economic changes, the law and even community scandals.  Do bloggers count?
    
  • Spy: A sexy spy might make a great Halloween costume, but unless you're seriously ready to dodge real (not plastic) bullets and are willing to sacrifice your identity for a mission no one will ever hear about, enlisting in the CIA to get your kicks isn't a good idea. Officers take a pledge of confidentiality that goes way beyond sharing trade secrets with competitors: Your entire identity is fake, and even if you manage to pull off a blockbuster-worthy performance on your next mission, you won't receive any recognition for it. In addition to jetting off to other parts of the world and keeping your life a secret from friends and family, spies can find themselves in extremely dangerous situations involving prison time, assassins or worse.  Another childhood dream smashed by reality…
    

• Seasoned bloggers have been gracious enough to write about their successes and failures in regards to the growth of their blogs and this article is no different.  Don’t get me wrong it’s a great article, but it actually provides a great segue for my next point.   This post, like many others, references the importance of starting a discussion rather than just presenting information.  Rand writes “Interesting is great, but controversial content - that which demands a response and interaction - can often achieve even greater success.”

• This article from the Silicon Alley Insider has sparked a great conversation and interaction from the community.  Joe Weisenthal questions “What has Eric really done for Google that wouldn't have happened with any moderately competent executive at the helm?  Or, put another way, is Eric really that good...or was he mostly in the right place at the right time?”  I love the comments that pieces like this receive!  I was going to pick a favorite but there were too many to share. 

• I would like to say “Thanks” to Aaron Wall for encountering the “Blue Screen of Death” and recuperating from the incident with a boatload of information on the recovery process.

• Sales goals aren’t easy to reach, especially in our current financial system, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good reason for not reaching your targets.  Geoffrey James lists reasons sales representatives give for not making their quotas, but what you will find is that the majority of so called “reasons” are actually excuses.

Happy Easter!

Several months ago, we, the staff of Gordian Project, set out to author a blog. Not that all of us immediately found the prospect as inviting as others, but we generally engage a team spirit; thus the eCommerce and Entrepreneurship Blog.

I understood the blog’s driving purpose to be sharing our personal experiences within our given area of discipline as it relates to all things eCommerce. After several months of participation, I thought I would review our blog.

Caveat: I’d never read a blog going into this project, nor had I any desire to. The actual thought of sitting around reading peoples random thoughts makes me feel a bit voyeuristic. After reading Wikipedia’s definition of voyeuristic, it certainly isn’t that. Still, to this day, I’ve had no desire to read blogs other than for the purpose of this review.

I’m not sure it counts as “reading” but the one key area I check out on our blog each month is the Authors section of the home page. The key here is to identify how many posts I have in relation to other staff. I’m not sure what about life turns everything into a competition. This post will launch me forward to eight posts, however, I know I’ve written a couple that haven’t yet made it past the cutting room floor so this number isn’t hard and fast. But going with eight puts me in a respectable position.

Vanessa’s an over achiever at 40, but in all fairness she administrates the blog. I doubt any of her posts have hit the cutting room floor. If light reading and interesting tidbits is your thing, Vanessa’s Variety for the Week delivers. She shares what’s going on around other blog spaces, here at the office, and perhaps her life more than any other contributor.

Matt is our Development Manager. We’re among the elders of the office so I’ve truly appreciated our friendship. I don’t read his posts. I don’t understand what he does beyond the fact that I know he can fix or improve just about any internal process. Any time I walk past his desk he has a monitor filled with gibberish. I simply figure I won’t understand his posts either. Nice picture of his son in his most recent post though.

You might also notice Zach has 11 posts as of today. I’d read his if you only have a few minutes each day. Scanning through his titles, (that counts as reading I don’t care what anyone says) I find his posts most on topic: They include Website Improvements: Test Basic Usability Before Advancing, Google Sitelinks: Capturing My Proverbial Moby Dick, and Google Search Engine Results Pages Illustrated.

As a partner of Gordian Project I have to say bang up job Brian! I particularly enjoyed your Soft Economy Priorities? Time to Paint Your Parking Spaces; that’s leadership.

I’d like to thank Josh for his most recent post, The iPhone 3G Saved My Life. It truly inspired me to write this post. All this time I’d banged my head against the desk trying to come up with another post showcasing the thrilling world of Supply Chain, when all I needed was an iPhone post. Below, the desk I bang my head on as taken with my iPhone.

 

Over time, you’ll notice that Elizabeth stopped contributing as often. I have mixed emotions on this one. Elizabeth so desired to be a mother and now she is enjoying that gift with her daughter, Kara, as a stay at home mom. Congratulations Liz! However, Elizabeth also worked in Supply Chain and guess what that means, I’ve had to cover Supply Chain blogging without her. Thanks Liz!

I’ve actually loved reading Ellen’s posts for the first time as I prepared for this post. Ellen has taken the reins of a department that everyone loves to hate, HR. She sifts through all the big issues like food programs and political sensitivity. What a fun department to be in. Blog post ideas just shoot across Ellen’s desk, I’m sure. Ellen also manages Accounts Payable but I’ve yet to see a post with any real hard numbers.

Ryan takes his job seriously. He’s building a career, a future. He’s a smart guy who understands this isn’t just a 9 to 5 but an opportunity for him to build a foundation for his future. He’s always learning and looking for how to add value to the company. His posts are read as a “Where’s Ryan?” I just hope he’s not building his resume based on Ryan’s Randomness for the Week of June 20th, 2008.

Tim, as partner, bang up job! Please don’t break your run on providing an image in every post. No one does it better than you.

Our blog was launched just prior to Simon’s moving on to launch his own business. Nice work getting in a post you can use as a business card.

Before you jump to any conclusions about why Emily posted her first and, to this day, last post May 19th 2008, I dare you to read it (Dealing with Difficult Customers: Best Practices for Addressing Customer Complaints). She is right now over there fighting the good fight. Without her and her team keeping those customers happy there’s no need for this eCommerce and Entrepreneurship blog.

And finally I’d like to say welcome to Arianna. She brings so much to the table: customer service experience, multilingual, eye for detail and now she’s a vital part of Supply Chain. FYI Arianna…I’m going to need at least one post a month.

So those are my “collective of experiences, thoughts, processes and updates from people that are not only actively working in ecommerce but are also zealous about the industry.”