Ten Reasons Why I Hate Blogging - Part One

I am not a person who is enveloped by the ubiquity of social media. I am on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but I tend to treat them as ‘read-only’ most of the time, using them to catch up on the latest news when I have the time to do so, but rarely choosing to post anything.

Relevance – this is what I struggle with. I try to think about the reader of my potential output of social media and think – is it relevant for them? Is it appropriate?

More often than not, this perpetual self-analysis and self-deprecation tends to lead to convincing myself not to bother.

Blogging, on the other hand, is a different matter. I understand that this has many important uses – a fountain of knowledge for some, or an aide memoire for another.

But again, the relevance question always comes back to haunt me – does anyone ACTUALLY care what I think?

I am not yet convinced, but if you, like me, are currently being “persuaded” to write more blogs, here are five things that I find difficult which serve as reasons for hating the process:

1.    Starting The Blog

This is always the first stumbling block for me. How should I start? The pressure to engage your audience whilst being witty, intelligent and articulate and at the same time drawing your readers in for the long haul is always the first big obstacle to my blogging.

2.    A Clear Message
 
Those of you who know me, and those of you who have battled through my blog this far, will know that my writing style is somewhat circumlocutionary!  Therefore, finding a clear message which readers can take away, with a warm feeling of being informed and inspired, is not something that comes easily to me. I also often find that this contributes to the first reason why I hate blogging – it’s hard to come up with a charismatic audience-gripping intro when you aren’t sure what you’re going to be talking about!

3.    Losing Momentum

So after getting your readers hooked with an opening paragraph worthy of a Royal Variety performance (see reason 1), the next big problem is keeping that momentum going whilst staying “on message” (see reason 2). I personally find this very hard, not being a natural writer; I tend to proceed by leading the interlocutor on a long and winding ramble into the wilderness of ambiguity, not knowing whether they are coming or going. Much like you are experiencing now, I imagine!

4.    Being Judged

Being naturally self-conscious, I am always concerned with blogs that the three people who do eventually happen upon my less-than-scintillating explosion into the blogosphere will be the ‘Simon Cowells’ of social media. Going through the process is painful enough, but the thought of it being read and slated (privately or publicly) by a ‘Blogging Baron’ is normally the icing on the Blog-hating Belgian Bun.

5.    The Big Finish

So – you’ve made it this far. Knocked them out of the park with your charismatic intro, a message that’s as clear a mud which you’ve stuck to like glue with all the momentum of a concrete elephant (mixed metaphors, anyone?) and dazzled the critics so far.

Now to round it off with a simple, concise yet informative conclusion that will resonate with readers and get tongues wagging around the globe.

I have to say that of the first five items, this is the most difficult for me. Concise is, as you now know, not normally in my vocabulary (why use a sentence when a paragraph will do just as well?) It’s also hard to conclude something without repeating yourself and sounding like you’re just filling up the word count. On top of the fact that most of your readers have probably now got more interest in the advert for Game of Thrones that is now scrolling across the foot of this blog site, it really is very difficult to round things off well.

I hope you (both?) enjoyed reading this little ray of sunshine of mine. If you enjoyed it, then please come back for the second half of this two-part thriller: “10 Reasons Why I Hate Blogging – Part 2” (innovative name).

I hope this too will help to spread the message that blogging is not for everyone!

Written by Sam Massey, DSCallards

How About Deleting All Your Business Reports Now?

Well how about it?  What would happen if you deleted every business report you had in the company and started again?

I can feel the pain from here. But if your disaster recovery did not work after a hard drive failure this is where you would be.

And once that “all is lost” feeling faded into the acceptance of the “ok, let’s start again” feeling, then this is now a spring cleaning project. Let’s be honest you had been wanting to do this for ages haven’t you?

It’s a bit like living in a house that is not quite right, and you secretly wish it would burn down so that you could claim the insurance and rebuild. The bedroom would be bigger, the kitchen could extend out the back, you could move the bathroom a little further down the hall, etc…

But this only works if you have a couple of hours warning to get out all of the important things like the photo albums and the memorabilia, the guitars, the kids toys and the jewellery, etc… Oh, and the wife, kids and dogs!

But thinking back when we had all of these reports, people were either never using half of them, or they would not trust their results because somebody else had a report that had different figures.

So all this work over the years was an asset, that to be honest was costing a fortune to maintain, and secretly nobody trusted … or even used. At the same time, when figures did not match across even the simplest sales reports … managers were embarrassed in meetings, and in turn their figures were not trusted.
Heated discussions on why my spreadsheet was right and yours must be wrong.

Any boat owner will tell you that the second best day of their boat-owning life is the day they buy their boat.

The best day is the day they sell it. Boats just take a lot of management. You have to clean them, fuel them, fix them, and use them, and if you have a boat in the driveway that you never use, you just feel guilty. Guilty for not using something you spend so much time and money on.

I recently read the story of a CEO of a large Fortune 500 company asking his IT department to delete every report in their report repository except 12 reports, which he listed on a small piece of paper.

I was going to ask why, but there was a bit of me totally understood.  The actual reason was because he had been relying on historic reports that were proved to be incorrect when analysed in a board meeting.  At first he was embarrassed … and then he was angry.

So he went back to the IT department and asked for this to be resolved.

“We will need to hire 3-4 more report designers to handle that request”, came the reply. When he asked why, he was told that the company had over 800 reports in their reporting repository and it would take that number of people to check them through.

So he requested that all of the reports be archived off (as near to being deleted as was possible). Then the 12 reports he used on a daily basis were to be rebuilt.  Finally for the next 3 months, any reports that were requested were to be built afresh and fully documented. Figures were to be matched across all the reports and signed off before they were turned live to the business.

Ok, this took 3 months to get to 45 accurate, tested and trusted business reports. But it indicated that the other 750 were now not needed and as suspected by the CEO, were at best not really wanted … and at worst, were bringing back incorrect information.

At the same time the CEO introduced a new policy.  They put the report stakeholder's name in the footer of every report, and a full description of the reports purpose and where the data came from. That way, if someone requested a report they thought could be satisfied with an existing report, they knew who to call to consolidate the new report.

With an executive mandate from the CEO, the other executives were more willing to compromise and use and trust the same reports.

So feel free again … start deleting. Enjoy the freedom and liberation it gives you!

Now spend time trusting the information and use this to make business decisions that can truly make change …

For more information visit www.crystalreports.co.uk

Written by Ray Kemp, Technical Director, DSCallards