It’s been a short week here, as we spent Monday playing in the Hockey Players in Business golf outing, and I’m out of the office today (more on that next week). As it relates to HPIB, if you’ve ever played any level of hockey (even street hockey, per the organization’s founder), you’re welcome to join up for $50 annually. HPIB was founded here in Cleveland and now has 32 chapters around the country. It’s a great networking group, and I’d highly recommend you consider it.
In any case, I thought the short week would leave me short of content, but I was able to dig through the inbox last night and put together a handful of good stuff, including dairy herd management (really), personality tests, petting your dogs, and more. Enjoy!
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Herd Management
No clue why I have an article from Dairy Herd Management, but it actually applies to just about any business, cows or otherwise. It’s a list of five questions to ask before you invest in new technology. In speaking with a couple of prospects this week (one law firm, one healthcare non-profit), all five of these topics were discussed; What issues are you hoping to solve, what are your skills and interests, do you have reliable internet access, is there service infrastructure (from the vendor/provider or consultants), and how are your finances.
In the case of the law firm, they were moved to an outdated case management solution by a provider who didn’t know what they were doing, and were also told to move everything to the cloud (at a cost of $40K annually). Employees are inefficient and management is beside themselves with the cost.
In the case of the non-profit, their CTO is now faced with the loss of a systems administrator and tier one support resource. This is on top of the fact that they’re facing ‘technical debt’ for not having kept up with proper IT spend. So, the CTO needs to determine what he wants to focus on, and whether they should hire another internal resource or outsource the work. And, they need to spend some money!
Just because you’re not milking cows for a living doesn’t mean you don’t have the same technology concerns as the farmer down the road.
Personality Tests
I’ve never taken a Meyers Briggs test so I don’t know where I’d fall in (I can venture a guess), but we at Ashton are big on DISC and Six Working Geniuses assessments. They tell us how our teammates best communicate, and how they prefer to work. If you know your Meyers Briggs profile, now you can find out what the best paying job is for for you.
The Dark Web
I’ve had a few pieces in the past about the dark web and everything that’s available on it. Now comes a piece about how to actually browse the dark web. If you decide to do something illegal, you didn’t get this from me.
Petting Your Dogs
You’ve probably seen mention in this newsletter about our fox red Labrador retrievers. Combined they weigh 200 lbs. (120 and 80) but they’re both big lap dogs. Whenever we leave the house, we give them some extra attention and tell them when we’re going to be home. And new research says that extra attention as you walk out the door is beneficial for reducing their separation anxiety.
Dial Up
For those of you old enough to remember (or those of you who still receive internet CDs in the mail), you’ll be sad to hear that AOL is ditching their dial-up internet service at the end of September. One article says that it’s been 34 years since AOL rolled out the service, but I would’ve guessed it was even a few years before that.
That’s all for this week. The Indians continue to play pretty good ball and remain in contention, while the Browns are on to preseason game number two. Lots of excitement around a fifth round QB who had an ok game against second and third teamers… We’ll see how long that lasts. Rumor has it they’re playing in Philadelphia this weekend. After 40 years (45, if you consider the gap when there was no team), we finally gave up our season tickets. I’ll need to find something else to complain about this fall…
Two weeks back, I had brief mention about the upcoming collaboration between Oreos and Reeses. Now, the WSJ has a deep dive into the inner workings of those collaborations and how they finally came to fruition.
Have a great weekend.
Abbey