Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

For those who have been frequent readers of this blog, you will understand that I have a number books on the go at any one time.

This makes for eclectic reading, and generally slower progress than would otherwise be the case.

1)  Binary Review

… however I pretty much flew through this one, given it was aligned with our primary core value of “Customers First”, and the other ones as well.

The Book	What we thought
“I love you more than my Dog” by Jeanne Bliss	Just where we are headed

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This may be the first time you have read an article posted on our “Behind the Scenes” blog – or you might be a regular reader.

Whatever is the case for you, you will have formed some kind of impression about our company, and the type of B2B software services we provide.

As such, we’d like you to tell us what you think of us, as this will help us to continue to develop and enhance the services we provide – now into our 2nd decade of service.

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As noted previously, we have recently appointed our General Manager for Discerning, Developing and Delivering what the Customer Wants.

As part of the process of getting our new GM up to speed in understanding who our customers are (and what keeps them awake at night), we are investing significantly in touring around Australia to meet with a diverse sample of our clients.  Others will be talked to via phone, Skype or WebEx – whilst we hope to visit clients in other countries later in the year.

On the plane out of Brisbane yesterday afternoon, I had the chance to read this article “Specialise yourself right out of a job” from the AFR.

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Food for thought, this morning, when I trundled along to a breakfast event hosted by the AMI, featuring Dr Don E Schultz of Agora fame, and author of a number of books (none of which, it would seem, we have previously added to our shopping cart).

Don’s main thesis is that:

1)  The “modern” approach to marketing emerged in parallel with the industrial age of society, and hence is based on similar principles (e.g. a Taylorist view of the world – which leads into a “command and control” focus internally, and a top-down mentality in terms of push-based marketing to “consumers” (how I hate that term).

2)  Given that we’re progressing from this Industrial Age into what’s been termed by a number of people as a “Customer Age”, Don’s view is that marketing also needs a transformation.

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Some time ago, Paul Klaptocz wrote this (restricted) review of a book “Four Steps to Epiphany”, written by Steve Blank.

Out of interest, I watched through this hour-long lecture by the author, given at Stanford - in which he summarises a range of guest lectures over the year.

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I posted, early in January, about where our bus is headed (you might refer to this as our Vision).  I have progressively refined this, since then, to improve the clarity of this core message.

For those who are interested, I have also started posting more details about some aspects of this Vision – as falling under any of these core headings.  Posts that have preceded this one are:
1)  I posted about my vision for growing clients (and revenues) 20x.

A key prerequisite for this to happen is that our team of employees also grows (in numbers – but more importantly in competency).

Based on the experience we have gained in the past 10 years, we think that our growth in client numbers can be achieved with an increase in staff numbers of only about 3-4x our current levels.

In “Good to Great”, Jim Collins calls this “getting the right people on the bus” … and then “into the right seats”.

We have some work to do in the next couple of years in this respect, as follows:

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This post is an incomplete work-in-progress (current issue posted on 4th January).  Check back later for updates! read more »