My Blog
May 18, 2012
Employee reactions to #domosocial have been interesting, inspiring and educational. We’ve been getting some straight, honest feedback. In addition to chatter in the office, and on Twitter, we asked employees to tell us during the launch meeting and in a survey what they think – positive, negative, and anything in between. And they’ve been giving it all to us.
There’s a significant camp of folks here who are excited about the experiment. They are jazzed to be part of something that hasn’t been done before. Others are excited to learn new things. One of my favorite stories is about a new employee who had never used Twitter. Jumping right in, he sent his first tweet to his zero followers. No audience, but who cares. He sent it. And that was the point. A rock star in my book. If you’re going to learn this stuff, you have to start somewhere.
At the other end of the experience spectrum, we have some social gurus who I knew were great at their day jobs, but their social prowess was lurking in the shadows. One of our employees, for example, started her own kickstarter called “Tipping Bucket” – a crowd-funding platform for local non-profits. She’s regularly invited to keynote on community building. I love it. Awesome. And she’s really engaged too.
Other folks are clearly not happy that we’re making this program a companywide initiative. Worries about privacy, the arrival of the Borg, ex-girlfriend stalkers, and coercion into the latest marketing scheme are some of the actual comments and feelings from people who have worries and doubts. We’ve even heard from people outside Domo who echoed some employee sentiment that this experiment isn’t the right way for people to learn about social. We also heard that we’re not good at social. Well, there’s one thing I can say with certainty: We’ll be a heck of a lot better when we are done.
But I don’t want to lose track of the purpose of this experiment, which is to get people using and learning new technologies and platforms, and discovering some new things along the way so we can develop better products and help us lead the industry in the consumerization of IT. The experiment isn’t going to work unless we get everyone on board. And while we’re measuring a whole bunch of metrics, the metric I’ll care most about is how many light bulbs went off in our heads and how we used that learning to improve our product.
I am really excited about this experiment, and I’d also be lying if I didn’t share that I have a little CEO angst. I’m encouraging an entire company to start putting themselves (and by default, Domo) out there. So going through our Social Media Guidelines was an important part of our launch meeting. There was some honest feedback on those too.
A few people shared that they had issues with the “might not want to challenge your boss publicly” guideline as it strikes counter to the social way. I totally understand their point of view, but I look at social with a business lens. If employees don’t trust their CEO or their company, why should customers? In the business world, the social stage isn’t the right forum for showing dissent with your boss. Just ask the Marine who made a very public comment about the Commander in Chief and was dismissed. Sure, that Marine could have his extremely negative personal opinions about the President, but sharing them with the entire world was not appropriate. Wrong place. In terms of someone challenging me, I’m all for it and want people to bring independent thinking to Domo. I want people to challenge what we are doing and bring new ideas. These are exactly the people I want working here. But my preference is to have those conversations inside the company, not on a world stage.
During the #domosocial launch meeting, I called out one employee who had publicly challenged me a couple of times on Twitter. In reality, the challenges were no big deal – but I wanted to make everyone aware that there are better forums for these exchanges. In good fun, I made him an example and pardoned him for his egregious ways with an Ex Post Facto Award (about the only Latin I remember from school). He was a great sport, took the message to heart and now we’re DM BFFs. But more importantly, the rest of the company better understands how to mesh being a flat, transparent organization while still presenting a unified front as a business.
All in all, one of the best analogies I’ve heard so far is that participating in social is like being on stage at the world’s biggest trade show with millions of customers and prospects in the audience. I think this analogy is one of the best filters to guide your online behavior regardless of your role within a company.
With the first full week of this experiment well underway, we’re seeing some interesting data. Stay tuned – we’ll be posting our first infographic very soon that shows some surprising growth. I also have a post in the works on conversations that are happening in the office that I’ve certainly never heard at any office I’ve been around before.
The good news just keeps coming. I have a feeling some of the surprising stuff is still to come. I am constantly bracing myself for massive negative backlash but I am hopeful we just keep growing and learning.
Josh
May 17, 2012
I’ve had a boatload of conversations with customers and prospects about their needs for a business intelligence solution. While every company’s needs are unique, there’s a common theme in each conversation: business users and IT professionals view BI differently. Both views are important – but they have very different expectations.
This is one of the reasons I started Domo. Traditional BI solutions completely ignore the user experience. Domo goes beyond traditional BI, putting business information directly in the hands of end users, in the way they want to consume it.
Check out the following Domo infographic to see how business and IT professionals view BI differently.
May 11, 2012
Being a top salesperson isn’t cheap. I like that.
If you’ve followed my startup rules, you might remember this one (JJSR 8) — Find salespeople who love to spend money: watches, cars, houses. The more they spend, the better your prospects.
But you have to set them up for success, too. That means making sure they’re spending most of their time actually selling and not filing reports or digging for data, which as you can see from the Domo infographic below, is a more common problem than you might think.
Josh
May 8, 2012
When I was at Omniture, we were better than big tech companies when it came to understanding social and the cutting-edge technology trends – definitely better than every Utah tech company, but not as savvy as the VC-backed startups in Silicon Valley. At Domo, we’ve made an effort to attract the right folks and certainly have pockets of bleeding-edge technologists and highly social Domosapiens. I want to ensure we are every bit as adept at understanding and leveraging social and new technology trends across the entire company as any other smoking-hot startup.
That’s why I’m really excited about about what’s going down at Domo today. I called a company meeting that is starting in less than an hour. It was scheduled as a regular company update – but that premise was mere subterfuge, we’re totally sleuthing it and using the meeting to launch a new eight-week program called the #domosocial experiment. So far, this program is unbeknownst to everyone except the five people working on the launch. For Domo employees following me on Twitter or following this blog, consider this your advance notice and a VIP invitation.
At Domo, we are at the forefront of changing the way people run their businesses through the consumerization of the enterprise. It is therefore incumbent upon us to know new technologies as intimately as possible. Accordingly, the #domosocial experiment is a new program we’ve created to drive 100% employee adoption of social media throughout the enterprise. The program is designed to get everyone here engaged with and learning from consumer and social technologies. We believe this will help us develop a better product, understand the viral nature of web offerings more effectively, assist in getting the Domo brand out there and enable better customer conversations.
I’ve always loved experimenting with new technology. Through the process, I’ve discovered new ideas for products and learned what makes for a great user experience…To the point of user experience, a couple of my favorite apps include Flipboard and Pinterest. They both nail simplicity, are highly functional, and, like many social apps, can challenge the way we think about enterprise technology. I signed up for Twitter years ago, but haven’t really been active until recently. I’ve learned a boat load in the short time I’ve been blogging and leveraging social to drive the business. I can’t wait to see our transformation as we get the entire company on board. Of course, I‘m hoping this effort fosters more transparency and collaboration amongst colleagues – but it’s primarily designed to open minds and get people trying new things, while creating a positive impact on Domo.
Since this is social, we’re going real-time, baby. We’re taking this experience to a whole new level by showing the entire world what we are doing. This is the first live case study of its kind. It will probably lead to some embarrassing moments, but we are hoping it will be that much more instructive if we share everything… warts and all. To that end, we expect we’ll have some dissenters…and haters…and we’ll share some of that feedback too. We’ll be tracking and sharing key metrics that show how we are doing – how we’re increasing our reach, what social apps are the most popular within our company, who are the most prolific users of social, and so on. Hopefully we will see a dramatic increase in tweets, followers and product savviness.
I’m kind of excited about this because I think we are doing something that has never happened in business before…anywhere!! It’s only possible because of the combination of technology and company size and attention and interest people hopefully have in our business. With respect to the processes and rigor of the Harvard Business Review, I’ve seen case studies before and I’ve seen transparency, but I don’t think this combination of transparency and real-time feedback and openness has ever been attempted. I mean this is Eddie Murphy RAW. The fact it’s of interest to most companies right now makes it that much more exciting! I hope our openness and honesty inspires many other companies to attempt a similar initiative.
Follow us on www.domo.com/social. There you’ll see our live case study – updates of what’s happening, experiences of employees, and some of the tools and materials we’ve used to get this project underway. You’ll also see the experiment’s impact and progress via a #domosocial infographic that will go live on the site once we’ve collected our initial metrics.
I don’t want to give away anymore before our company meeting. But I will end by saying we are taking this seriously. If we reach our goal, then we are going to take an extra holiday this year and reward the team in other ways as well. For new employees, social savvy will be a pre-requisite. For current employees, it will be a condition of employment. We are instituting a social IQ test into our hiring process. We mean business.
So please consider this the official tip-off of the #domosocial experiment. Tune in frequently. We hope you follow along!
May 3, 2012
I’m a big believer in Friday nights and weekends being sacred time for family and fun (see #JJSR 35). Especially during the startup phase, work like a dog during the week, but make sure to carve out time for what matters most. Unfortunately, that model breaks down if too much of the work week is spent doing lame stuff…like looking for information or waiting for reports.
As it turns out, wasting time searching for data is a common problem. In fact, the average information worker spends nearly nine hours each week just looking for information. That’s almost two hours a day!
What would you do if the information you needed was readily available, giving you back part of that two hours every day? Check out this Domo infographic to see some of the most common – and surprising – answers.
Josh
May 1, 2012
One of my biggest frustrations as CEO of a public company — and one of the principle reasons I started Domo — was how hard it was (ok, impossible) to get all the data I needed when I needed it. In fact, it was usually easier to know what was going on outside the company than it was to really know what was happening on the inside. We were the best in the business at web analytics and I could check my stock price whenever I wanted, but ask me how many employees we had or what our cash balance was and it took two or three days.
Turns out, I wasn’t alone in feeling that our business intelligence was lacking. Not by a long shot. And if you listen to Gartner, it sounds even worse: 70 to 80 percent of business intelligence projects ultimately fail.
Now, that stat obviously falls in the “grain of salt” category. Do 80 percent of BI projects really implode, causing big financial losses and a rash of firings? Probably not.
Surely that failure rate has something to do with high expectations and aggressive timelines. But still, it illustrates an important fact: Whether grounded in reality or not, there is a prevailing perception that traditional BI is broken. Why that is depends on who you ask. But I’d like to suggest three leading reasons why business intelligence is broken, as well as three ways to fix it.
While I’m more of a Jay-Z/Kanye West man myself, I’m going to channel a little Mick Jagger to help me highlight the issues. Nobody sings about wanting more, getting less or riding clouds quite like the Stones.
Problem #1: Can’t get no satisfaction. Unless you’re a data analyst or an Excel geek, you’re probably not getting much satisfaction — or value — from your BI system. The user experience in most business intelligence solutions is lacking, to say the least, relying heavily on tables and text or a patchwork of disconnected charts and graphs. And don’t even get me started on the timeliness of most of that data. Regularly scheduled reports are great for regularly scheduled meetings (which I hate and never do by the way), but like most executives, I don’t have a 9-to-5 schedule. And when the inspiration comes, it comes. If I have a flash of insight and want to see our latest sales numbers at 3 a.m., don’t make me wake up my sales VP to get that information. Which I have done. Just last week.
The Fix: Make the experience more engaging. Think of it this way: the data doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do with the data. This means putting intuitive, timely, self-service tools and dashboards in the hands of business leaders. It’s time for BI implementations to stop relying on dull, uninspired pivot tables and start presenting data in compelling visuals that are easy to understand, delivered in real time and loaded with insight.
Problem #2: You can’t always get what you want. Too many organizations define BI success according to the amount of information they can stuff into one data warehouse. But the reality is that no company will ever get 100 percent of relevant data in a single box. In fact, an executive at one Fortune 50 company, with whom I was recently talking, said his company was more advanced than anyone in business intelligence, and they had practically every BI system available. Yet despite all that investment, only 85 percent of the data they wanted was housed within their data warehouse. The single box model just doesn’t work. Business moves too quickly and markets change too often to capture it all.
The Fix: Aggregate, don’t migrate. Given: there will always be critical data that doesn’t make it into the central warehouse. Rather than force the migration of data into a single bottomless pit, it’s time for companies to embrace solutions that can seamlessly provide a window into various information sources, without actually moving or copying the data.
Problem #3: Get off of your cloud. Or I should say, find a better cloud. Cloud-based business intelligence is loaded with promise and has the potential to deliver lower-cost solutions that are more accessible, especially for business users. But in almost every case, today’s cloud solutions want to force customers into their own flavor of vanilla. It’s kind of like waiting in the lunch line. You start to get a little excited when you think about all the choices and what you might pick. But when you get to the front of the line, the lunch lady just hands you a tray of whatever she decides you’re going to get. That’s the current state of cloud BI. It’s like “Here are the five apps we work with and the three dashboards you can choose from. And no, you can’t have Jell-O.” Not good enough.
The Fix: Expect more from the cloud. I ran one of the world’s largest cloud companies for 14 years. Suffice it to say, I know a little bit about what can and can’t be done. And there’s no reason cloud-based business intelligence solutions can’t deliver the kind of experience, flexibility and value that CEOs and other executives and managers expect. I think InfoWord said it well: “The use of BI in the cloud is a game-changer. Through the use of cloud computing, BI is finally affordable and available.” But…you have to expect more, know what you want, and most of all, choose wisely.
Can I get an “Amen?”
(…and if you actually just said the word “amen” out loud, then you might want to talk with my team over at Domo. There’s a good chance they can help.)
April 25, 2012
When I was CEO of a public company, one of the things that amazed me was that in spite of how much data was generated, it was impossible to sort through it all and truly harness the power of that data. That’s why I started Domo – to help other executives leverage their data. Make your data work for you. Get it in real time. Turn it into profitability.
Just how much data is being generated? Can your data make you more competitive? What are the best practices to get your data working for you? Check out our infographic on the data EXPLOSION.
Josh
April 5, 2012
Manual reporting is expensive, not to mention frustrating. It can cost a typical company $79K per year and that’s conservative, IMHO. For other companies, it can cost much, much more.
Check out our infographic on the cost of manual reporting and see if you can relate.
Josh
April 4, 2012
Don’t spend money until you have to, but when the time comes, do it up right.
This is a rule I have always lived by since starting my first business.
Before then, I lived by a different rule. My pre-business mantra was don’t buy it unless you absolutely have to, and when you feel like you absolutely have to, then buy the most inexpensive form of whatever it is that you need.
I probably need to include a little bit of background for this to make sense. When my dad was only 14, he kicked his dad out of the house for being a mean drunk. That meant my dad also had to get an after-school, full-time job to help support his family. So he worked at a gas station. He also had a job cleaning out the spittoons in the bar where his mom was a waitress. The point is that my dad values a buck and he shared those values with my five younger siblings and me.
My father’s actual career was serving as a military pilot, and then serving several stints as a pilot who was either striking or flying at Continental Airlines. We always had food. My parents always made sure we felt like we had nice Christmases and birthdays, but we certainly weren’t rolling in it. I had heard my dad say over and over again that no pair of shoes should ever cost more than 25 dollars. We were middle class, but with ups and downs. Our financial pressure and stress came mostly from the financial uncertainty and drastic changes of the airline.
I saw how hard my dad worked. And while he was a trained pilot, he’d often say that he’d shovel manure all day if that was what it took to provide for his family. The last thing I was going to do was cause more pressure by asking for expensive things, even though I knew dad would give me the shirt off his back and get us kids anything we wanted. My mom was always willing to do anything to ensure we were comfortable and would fit in at school. They were awesome that way, but I understood the consequences. Even with six kids my mom would get jobs at delis or department stores so we could have nice clothes. They both killed it and we were happy, but the financial pressure was real, as it always has been for most families.
As the oldest, I felt an extra sense of responsibility towards my family. Because my father flew either in the airlines or as the commanding officer in his Marine Corps C-130 squadron, he was on the road a decent amount of time. He always told me, “You are the oldest. You are the man of the house when I’m gone.” I took it to heart. As I began to learn about personal finance, I took an interest in understanding all of the bills and credit card statements that came to the house. I quickly identified the required payments per month plus extra allocations matched to interest rates to get us out of debt in the earliest possible way. Then I would present the information and my proposed plan to my dad.
When we moved to Houston the summer before my senior year of high school, my dad had just gotten his job back with Continental and my parents decided to build a house in the cheapest housing market in the country. They were so excited—we all were. Believe it or not, I had saved up $30,000 at that point from some acting that I had done. In fact, one commercial for Kellogg’s Honey Smacks paid me $50,000 for three days work. (I’ve been asked a million times to show it, so here it is… check it out and if sales of Honey Smacks go up, I’ll know I still look good next to Diggem’ The Frog!) But anyhow, I had some money and I volunteered to give it to my parents so they could put in a family pool. We all absolutely LOVED it. That was my first experience with understanding that money, when used correctly, can be extremely rewarding. I was never prouder to that point in my life.
I never owned a car until after I was engaged to get married. When I was a student at BYU and needed to get somewhere, I either bummed a ride from my buddies or used the public buses. When dating, I always picked activities that we could walk to or I would borrow a car from a friend.
When we started my first company, we started in my basement apartment and my co-founder’s studio apartment. Finally we moved into an office space and crammed six people into about 100 square feet. It smelled, but it was awesome. When it was time to get a bigger space, we almost didn’t move because the new space seemed too nice. However, when we reached 30 people, we still had one unisex bathroom. We also had one printer and the whole product team had to yell “Printing!” beforehand. Everyone had to save his or her work because the breaker would inevitably trip. But the office was nice-looking. In retrospect, it was probably the minimum we could have gotten away with while still closing customers. People need to see a little bit of success to trust that you know what you are doing. It made people think we were more successful than we deserved, and that helped us get to the next level.
I then bought a nicer car to look a little more like the CEO. I decided to get a used Audi A8 for $26,000. Before the Audi, I drove a Maxima. I loved my Maxima; it was really fast. But when I hired my VP Sales (who ended up taking us from $6 million in sales to $400 million in sales), he later told me that if I had been driving a Maxima, he would have never taken the job, no way, no how. He would have inferred that we were not successful. I guess if we were Facebook and I was driving the Maxima, he might have taken the job, but we weren’t. We were trying to make a buck and trying to compete against 80 VC-backed competitors. I’m glad I bought that Audi and did it up right.
We are now moving into a new office at Domo because we no longer fit where we are and we’re not all under one roof. We are not picking the nicest office park, but we fit. When we move in, I’m not replacing the carpet. I WANT the stains on the carpet. We haven’t made it yet as a company. When we do, then I’ll get the carpet replaced. Until then, it will serve as a great reminder that we need to keep being scrappy. But we do have amazing employees, and I paid for the best people because that is an area I cannot afford to go cheap — and we’ve done it up right.
Josh
April 3, 2012
Hi Everyone:
This whole putting-yourself-out-there-publicly thing is quite nerve wracking. And while I really don’t like most components of self-marketing, the results have their advantages. When I was a 13 year old, I learned through auditioning for movies, plays and commercials how to hide my complete discomfort being in front of people. The secret was to convince myself that everyone really was my friend and wanted to hear from me. Then in today’s day and age where all sorts of forums exist for people to complain about your personal or professional style, efforts, or results – there always seems to be a small flow of negativity from haters. I won’t lie — criticism hurts. So I’ve learned that you just have to ignore it.
I’ve also learned that while there can be some negatives of putting yourself out there, embracing your public persona has tremendous advantages. I’ve definitely noticed that employees are much prouder of where they work and have a little more swagger when you are able to nurture good buzz for the company. Recent studies like this one also show that CEOs who create good social buzz make it easier to attract great customers — so I’m really excited to see if, amongst its multitude of benefits, we can also take this social thing to the bank.
So why this website? My favorite lessons learned over the years have been from others who have been willing to share their experiences. I love hearing the fantastic moves and the regrettable mistakes of others so I can leverage them or avoid them. And, while I don’t mind making my own mistakes, there’s no need to experience everything first hand.
When I was attending Brigham Young University, numerous entrepreneurs came in and shared their experiences. I held on to their every word. So interesting. So fascinating. An entrepreneur named John Knab told me to write my ideas down in a journal and that led me to starting my first business. Another entrepreneur, Jonathan Coon, told us students to read every magazine we could find to become smart about business and the markets in general, and I still devour dozens every month.
When I was back in those classrooms, I always told myself, that as I had experiences, I would take the time to share them and return the favor just as others had shared their experiences with me. I’ve spoken to other entrepreneurs at countless events. Someday I’ll probably finish a book I started several years ago. (I might need to wait until the statute of limitations expires on all of the crazy things we did to entertain ourselves while working 20-hour days.) In the meantime, to bridge the gap, I give unto the world my blog. I hope it’s a net-positive experience for all of us. If it’s egregiously obnoxious, horribly boring, or overly pretentious, I commit to considering penance via that barbed-chain cilice worn by the albino monk from Da Vinci Code. Ouch. Happy reading.
Josh
