Da Facto: AOL Layoffs

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

AOL Layoffs

Posts are going to be a bit slow for a couple of weeks. AOL laid off about 80% of my business unit (the access business) and I was, as they say, impacted. When you stop doing marketing, you don't need folks in Marketing Analysis. If anyone has a need for business analysts, please contact me. A number of my staff are looking for work.

My resume is here.

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Recomended Books

Thinking, Fast and Slow My Phd was in Behavioral Economics and Kahneman co-invented the field. This books sums up Kahneman's observations over an almost 50 year career. Amazing, though not for the uninitiated, overveiw of how people actually make decisions. Competing on Analytics This is a great read if your organization is just starting to realize the importance of analytics as a competitive advantage.

Visual Display of Quantitative Information This is a classic book on displaying, well, quantitative data. If you want people to pay attention to your results, you need to present your analyses well.

The Pyrimid Principle Another classic book on how to communicate complex ideas in a business environment. Not cheap but very worthwhile. The author is a former McKinsey consultant who had a major impact on how the Firm conducts its written communication with clients.

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The Fifth Discipline The Fifth Discipline is all about systems thinking. I use the phrase "Business Dynamics" from this book a couple of times a week. The notion is that your business is made up of some core systems and that the behaviors of those systems can be represented with some basic building blocks. By understanding how these building blocks interact, you can radically improve your understanding of the systems that drive your business performance.

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Business Process Management: Practical Guidelines to Successful Implementations A basic understanding of business process is critical in most corporate settings and serves as the cornerstone for process improvement. Here is a link to an Amazon search for other bookson business processes.

Loyalty Myths Loyalty is a good thing, right? How about the loyalty of an unprofitable customer? The book lays out a number of fallacies about loyalty and can help you develop an educated perspective if loyalty is a good thing for your company.

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The book links go through my Amazon Associates account. All proceeds to go for my kids education, buy them soldering irons, lathes, drill presses, that kind of thing.