I woke up this morning to hear that Mark Hurd – HP’s Toxic CEO resigns after a sexual harassment investigation.

[I] “realised there were instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP“

Guess what Mark – you never did!

I suppose there’s a sense of vindication here, I always believed that Mark Hurd was not only the living contradiction of everything HP’s corporate values stood for, he was also the shining example of everything wrong with corporate America.

I would be jumping for joy if it wasn’t for the very real pain he caused for thousands of people, employees, former employees, families of employees, and local economies.

I’ve written everything I wanted to say about him in the following articles;

• HP Pay Cuts – an unfair act of economic opportunism and greed.
• Mark Hurd contributes another 6000 unemployed to the global recession!
• Mark Hurd, could he be America’s most toxic CEO?
• Mark Hurd and HP, economic opportunism and greed, one year on.

So, I’m pleased, really pleased, that he is gone, but, given that his predecessor, Carly Fiorina, was, and still is, an idiot, and, given the seemingly nefarious nature of big Corporate America, things don’t bode well for a successor.

Recommended Reading on this subject

Thanks to our friend at FuckYouMarkHurd.com, I noticed this book [note: affiliate link - I just like how they display ok.] which looks interesting. Sound’s like this could be the closest thing to being a “fly on the wall” witnessing all the shenanigans and sleazy going’s on behind the closed doors of HP’s boardroom over the past decade.

Anthony Bianco gets to heart of the ethical morass at HP that ended up damning the entire board that created it. Almost every American has an interest in how the country’s greatest corporations are run, and the character of the people entrusted with them. The story of Hewlett-Packard reflects power struggles that shape corporate America and is an alarming morality tale for our times.

I’m going to enjoy reading this one.

The 2010 Australian Election has me thinking that there’s no way I’m simply voting above the line this time around. Leaving it up to the major parties is not what I consider a democratic, or responsible option. The problem though is how to determine who to vote for, below the line, before you’re confronted by the ballot slip in the cardboard booth on voting day. Until now that is.

Did you know that ALP and Democrat voters helped elect Steven Fielding of the Family First Party to the Senate in 2004?

This is one of the more interesting sites I’ve discovered in the course of the Australian 2010 election, and perhaps a shining example of how the internet is changing democracy.

Have a look at the Sydney Morning Herald article here then visit www.belowtheline.org.au

What I found very interesting was where the major parties have set ‘your’ preferences should you take the easy option and vote above the line. There’s no way that aligns with my preference at all.

Just imagine the impact we could have in the Australian 2010 election if we all voted below the line using this system? I bet the outcome would be a significantly better parliament, more robust and purposeful debate, and I’d be surprised if we didn’t rid ourselves of some of the factions that have developed over time as a result of party defined preferences.

If there ever was a time in Australian politics where we need a shake up of all the seats in the house of representatives it would have to be now. While it’s obvious that one of the two major parties will prevail I think that a new mix in the house will ensure that Government is about the Parliament as a whole, rather than the partisan stalemates we typically deal with.

I’m voting below the line, www.belowtheline.org.au makes it crazy not to.

Australian Labor – Let’s move Australia forward, a slogan, one of the many we’re being bombarded with by both the current Government and the Opposition in the race to the Federal Election in August. A six week race full of meaningless platitudes, treating voters like imbeciles, rhetoric, and unfounded promises, which, if you consider what democracy means, would only be deliverable if we were electing a dictator, which we’re not.

Interestingly enough the NSW Labor Party’s slogan includes “A New Direction” which I presume must also be forward. The question is; forward to what?

An article in today’s Daily Telegraph entitled Kristina Keneally’s rail land grab gives a stark indication of what the reality of life under the Labor Party of Australia is like. As far as I’m concerned Federal Labour, State Labour, it’s the same bunch of vipers running the show. When you read the article you see that people are being removed from their land without choice, paid a pittance in terms of the real value of the land acquired, and then the NSW Labor Government intends to sell off any excess land to developers.

Given the history of the NSW Government under The Labor Party does anything smell fishy here?

The fact that this land grab is actually happening right now is made even more questionable in terms of Kristina Keneally’s earlier comments (March 12 2010) reported here.

“Compulsory acquisition might be part of the future,” she told Sky News.
“We won’t rule that in or out. But it would have to be done with appropriate guidelines, appropriate safeguards, appropriate rules around it.”

I don’t know about you but I’m looking for truth, integrity, and strong, committed, leadership from politicians – wishful thinking I know – so, if you are taxing me in any way, if you are taking two days pay of the five days a week I work, then you’d better act with integrity and in congruence with the message under which you were elected.

The point of all this is that I can’t make any distinction between State and Federal Labor, in fact is so much easier to see similarities. When I consider what it means to Move Australia Forward with Labor I can only determine what that means by looking back into the very recent past. Sorry, that seems like a direction I’d rather not take.

The red pill or the blue pill question in The Matrix, a movie I really enjoy (the 1st one that is) represents, for me, the question, or continual enquiry, do you choose to see the world how you have been conditioned to think it is, or do you choose to see it how it actually is?

This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Morpheus – The Matrix (1999)

For some time now I’ve had a bit of an identity crisis when it comes to this site, my personal blog. What is the underlying theme of my writing, should I write about business, my philosophy on life, both, or what?

I’ve begun writing business related articles on my company website, so that pretty much frees me up to write here about the way I see the world. Given the choice I would take the red pill.

How about you?

With today’s calling of the Australian federal election it’s an auspicious time to question the status quo. Over the next six weeks we’ll be subjected to election promises, mainstream media bias, fear campaigns, and to a large extent a lack of real integrity that will result in a shuffling of chairs and positions in a parliament largely made up of the same people.

The people who chose to take the red pill will be questioning the real intentions of candidates and parties, squirming about the obvious contradiction between democracy and the fact that we really only get two parties to chose from, and enquiring who will be wielding the actual influence on a the government, it’s members, or policys, and where these influences come from.

The people who choose to take the blue pill, and its a fair choice, will make their decision in accordance with the way they see the world, and more likely get the result they usually get.

I just get a strong sense that all is not what it seems, always have.

Kevin Rudd found out the hard way this week that democracy moves in tough ways, particularly here in Australia. My opinion is that, regardless of what we think of the brutality of Rudd’s sacking, the Labor party factions saw the writing on the wall and made the move that the electorate would have given the chance. This was about Labour staying in power.

Personally I felt for Kevin Rudd the man, I could only imagine what would have been going through his mind when he found himself at home after a day like that. But, this is politics, and it’s a tough world. In my opinion Kevin Rudd may have been the first Prime Minister to be given such harsh treatment in his first term of office, but it demonstrates that in this day of rapid and immediate communications, independent (for now) of government control, and the government/corporate sponsored news media, the tide of public opinion and support, can and will continue to change much more immediately than any time in our history, this is a good thing, and so it should.

I’ve been considering my political position lately not because I want to, frankly i’d rather get on with running our business and spend the rest of the time with my family, and surfing, but I’m sure I’m not alone when I state that I’m tired of the same old two party preferred system where we have a Government too cowardly to admit that the efforts of the previous administration actually contributed positively to their management of the economic crisis, and an opposition who believe their role in life is to oppose everything. I’m suspicious of the Liberal, Labour and Green parties, and believe that politics in general has become too much about allegiances to the party, corporate lobbyists, religious and environmental fundamentalists, combined with the servicing of enormous debt where, if you followed the money trail it would show Australia as being beholden to a small number of private interests, and tax payers footing the massive interest payments that come with it. Yesterday’s events were about a Government that had lost it’s way – I contend that our political system has lost it’s way.

I don’t consider myself on the right or the left, I no sooner buy into the rob from the rich and give to the poor philosophy than I do the illusion the the free market economy will create trickle down wealth to the benefit of all society. I guess I’m a progressive in that regard. But I’m also a tax payer, in the top tax bracket and my political enquiry is what do I get for that? You can be assured that if you are going to demand more than a third of my salary I’m going to expect results that benefit all Australians whether I voted for you or not, and if you don’t deliver those results you should have a bad day at the office just like Kevin Rudd did yesterday.

How I built my Twitter following is a subject that I really hadn’t considered in detail until a friend, and former colleague, asked me this question.

I thought you might be a good person to ask how to go about building an audience for your blogs etc? I saw that you’ve got around 10,000 followers on Twitter! How did you get that many?

As far as this blog goes I get about 150 visitors a day, most of which is a result of the HP articles I wrote some time ago, I haven’t written to become a successful blogger, more just to write about things that I’m interested in without too much regard to staying within a defined niche or deriving any income from this site. It’s not going to become a Huffington Post.

My business has a new site in development now (should be live by April 10) Articles and blogs on that one will be much more tightly focused on successful performance marketing on the internet.

The thing is that I never really set out to build a Twitter following, I embraced twitter for what it is, and that’s a conversation – see my thoughts in my previous article called Social Media, blowing the winds of change . I wanted to participate in that conversation, I wanted to follow the three E’s of Social Media as best I could.

The three E’s of Social Media are; be Educational, Enlightening, Entertaining.

In addition to that I made up my mind to be myself, not anonymous, and not try and sell anything – I think social networking is about reputation. Opportunities for business come from your reputation, not simply tweeting your affiliate links to thousands of people who are more likely to get pissed off than buy anything form you.

The most significant assumption to make when building your twitter following is the fact, and this is just an estimate, that 80% of the people you follow will follow you back, so it goes without saying then that growing your following is a simple as following others. People with substantial Twitter followings are typically using some form of automation to assit with managing their Twitter experience (I’d bet it’s one of those they’re either doing it, or they’re lying things) so in all likelihood they will follow you back automatically.

Kind of ironic really isn’t it – it’s not really a following so much as participation. So how do we work out who to follow?

At the outset of my Twitter experience I was influenced by two people, Peter Shankman, and Chris Brogan, both of whom delivered key note speeches at Affiliate Summit in New York when I was there in 2009. It made sense to me then to find out who they were following and follow them too – additionally I followed anyone and everyone who appeared in the course of my business activity, my reading, research, and fun.

I should mention about here that my preferred tool for monitoring the conversation on Twitter, and for that matter Facebook and Linked In, is Tweet Deck, it’s free, it’s probably the most popular Twitter browser I know of and it does what they say it does. Using the Twitter interface itself is pretty limited by comparison.

I quickly realised that manually building a Twitter following is tedious, a distraction from core business, but building that Twitter following is totally necessary if the quality and scope of the “conversation” is to improve. Time to outsource the task, enter Twitter Counter. I’ve used Twitter Counter’s featured user service several times now, to great effect. You can see my opinion of the service in the testimonials at the bottom of this page. Yes, you have to pay for it, but let me just say that, in my experience, it’s money well spent.

There’s a couple of things I want to do when I’m building my Twitter following. I want to follow people who follow me, I think that’s polite, and I want to send them a welcome message. I don’t as a rule un-follow people if they un-follow me and I also follow a number of people who don’t reciprocate, usually they have good reasons for that – like they’re the president of the USA or something. You can imagine how hard this would all get without some form of automation.

In addition to that and, perhaps, the most significant development in my efforts to build a Twitter following has been the ability to follow people who are participating in those conversations that interest me, and do it automatically. There are many great tools available that allow you to manage your tweets, lists, direct messages etc. but the only one I’ve found so for that allows you to follow people automatically by keyword is Buzzom Premium (affiliate link). This gives me the ability to tap into conversations and build a following of people who are like minded, or involved in the debate about a particular subject. That to me is invaluable. It grows your following in a more defined set of conversations.

I’ll write a more detailed review of Buzzom Premium as soon as I get time but below is an example of what I mean.

You can see here what I’m into at the moment. Twitter accounts mentioned in tweets are prefaced by @ and specific threads are prefaced by hash tags #. Buzzom Premium allows me to have up to eight of these at a time, which forces me to stay focused on specific topics and change them when my interests change. That way my Twitter following is growing automatically and on topic, and I can focus on tweeting and the three E’s.

I hope that’s given you some inspiration as to how you can do that yourself. I’d like to close by saying if you have a moral issue with automation it’s understandable. If your intention is to automatically grow a huge following and hammer them with affiliate links or sales pitches you’re just spamming, but, if you follow the three E’s and your tweets are Educational, Enlightening, or Entertaining then I’m sure your experience will be a good one.

The Scribe SEO WordPress plugin appealed to me immediately. Let’s face it, optimizing copy for SEO has to be about as exciting as an episode of the Kardashian’s – painful, and excruciatingly boring.

I have a reasonably good handle on SEO copywriting, but, with a business hell bent on world domination, a 20 month old son, and great surf beaches just down the road from my house, and home office, when I finally do get some time to write the last thing I want to do is spend hours on SEO copywriting.

The Scribe SEO plugin turns the job into a five minute, easy, task. Seriously!

It took me while to find and settle on the Thesis WordPress theme. Finally I had something stable, easily customized, that didn’t break every time there was an update, and that’s set up well for SEO optimization, at least as a platform.

The missing link, of course, is the SEO optimization of the content itself. That’s where the Scribe SEO WordPress plugin becomes a perfect companion to Thesis

How does it work?

Easy. First I write my post, with a general idea of keywords and subject matter but really quite freely and without regard to SEO.

Then, I make sure the Scribe Content Optimizer gives my Title Tag, Meta Description, and Content the green light, meaning simply that they’ve been done, then I click the analyze button.

The Scribe plugin then gives a report that looks something like…

…as you can see I did pretty well myself but with a couple of minor adjustments I get…

The Scribe SEO WordPress plugin also provides me with a set of tags I can simply cut and paste into my post and I’m done. All of this SEO Copywriting has taken me approximately ten minutes. How good is that?

If you’re like me and you know that SEO copywriting is something that has to be done, but you don’t want to spend half your life doing it, then the Scribe SEO WordPress plugin is something you should seriously consider. I’m glad I did.

UPDATE: I Googled the phrase “scribe SEO plugin” (without the quotations) at 9:30am the morning after I published the article (less than 12 hours) and found my post on the 1st page. I’m searching from Australia, if that makes a difference.

Affiliate links were used in this post.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell first interested me when I was considering what exactly it is that makes something “go viral” or what it is when society suddenly changes direction. Obviously viral marketing is something we are keenly interested in with our business where we specialise in making our Customers business opportunities become reality.

The Tipping Point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behaviour crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.
from The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell

The book is obviously well researched but at the same time an easy read with interesting anecdotal evidence, studies and situations that are easily related to and, therefore, fascinating. I knocked it over in a couple of days.

The Tipping Point discusses trends in the same context as a virus or epidemic. We’re introduced to the world of Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen, concepts like the Stickiness Factor, the power of 150 and the power of Context. We find out why, or more importantly how, crime waves that have rocked a city for a decade suddenly stop, how unfashionable shoes suddenly reemerge as hip, and why teenagers still smoke.

I’m not sure that I’ve come away from reading this with any defined or tangible course of action but, at CogentAds we often discuss what kind of people we need to be in order to succeed, and even more the kind of people we need to employ going forward. Looking at scenarios in the book I’m inspired by some of the personality types, behaviours and subtle approaches marketing people take to identifying niche trends and then, in sometimes unexpected ways, get these trends into the mainstream.

Ultimately the Tipping Point makes it clear that small things can, and do, make a big difference. It’s inspiring and thought provoking. Good for stimulating your business strategy thinking. I recommend reading it.

Affiliate links were used in this post.

Mark Hurd’s tenure as HP’s CEO continues to raise a passionate response. It’s almost one year since I wrote my original post about HP under Mark Hurd called HP Pay Cuts – an unfair act of economic opportunism and greed so with that, and approximately 1300 comments later, I think its fitting to round out the conversation with a look at HP’s SEC filing for 2009.

I have no intention of continuing to write about HP or Mark Hurd from this point on, all I’ve wanted to say has been said in previous articles, and I want to write about more interesting subjects. The HP, Mark Hurd situation is not an isolated issue, it’s symptomatic of a bigger problem with Corporations in general, and it will take a lot more than a few blogs from me to make any difference.

Lets have a look at the salient points of the SEC filing.

• Mark Hurd, Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President (the guy that makes the decisions, approves them and, supposedly, keeps them honest, all rolled into one), earned total compensation of $32, 332, 527 in 2009. When you look at it further it’s interesting to note this includes over $400,000 for 401k company matching, personal use of HP’s corporate jet, and security. Update: Also check out
• Catherine Lesjak, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, earned total compensation of $7,585,775, including over $200,000 in 401k matching, security, and personal use of the HP Corporate Jet.
• Ann Livermore, Executive Vice President, HP Enterprise Business, took home $13,424,406 in including around $184,000 in 401k matching, security and personal use of the corporate jet.
• R. Todd Bradley, Executive Vice President, Personal Systems Group, $12,538,329 in his personal coffers including about $248,000 in 401k matching, relocation expenses, personal use of the company jet, and security.
• Vyomesh I. Joshi, Executive Vice President, Imaging and Printing Group, a package of $11,644,691 including $183,000 odd of 401k matching, security services and use of the corporate jet.

Update: Mark Hurd also cashed in aproximately $11m in share options during 2009, check out Yahoo Finance HPQ Insider Transactions for the specifics. (thanks to a comenter on this post).

There we have it, Mark Hurd and four other people in HP took home $75,525,728 in 2009. Admittedly it was significantly less than the previous year, but if you consider the circumstances, and what they stooped to to "earn" it, it’s still questionable, which ever way you slice and dice it.

I invite you to read the SEC filing, it makes interesting reading in terms of the executive compensation in HP’s peer group of companies, and the "performance" based compensation scheme.

When I look at it I can’t see any real top line "performance" at all, just, in my opinion, a company that’s exploiting it’s employees, compromising Customer service through its best shoring program, and that has sold out on it’s corporate values, all for the sake of putting shareholders first.

I think it’s only a matter of time before people more significant than me start asking Mark Hurd hard questions about real growth, rather than the illusion caused by acquiring and consuming other companies. In the meantime we, as consumers and/or employees can vote with the two most tangible things we have, our labor, and our chequebooks.

I have been kicking this around for some time and I think I have finally narrowed it down to an explanation intelligible to all. “An Easily Understandable Explanation of Derivative Markets”

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit . She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.

She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). Word gets around about Heidi’s “drink now, pay later” marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi’s bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit.

By providing her customers’ freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi’s gross sales volume increases massively. A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS , ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naive investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics.

Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses.

One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi’s bar. He so informs Heidi.

Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank’s liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.

The suppliers of Heidi’s bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the Government. The executives are granted multi-million dollar bonuses and celebrate with a company paid junket to Las Vegas.

The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers.

Now, do you understand?