“We live in times of constant change.” I know this but it was the headline of a newsletter for Physician’s this month. The topics are about Change Management, because, let’s face it, healthcare is in a state of flux despite the fight doctors are putting up to maintain status quo. IN fact, so much is changing for healthcare – HIPAA, HITECH, EHR/EMR, ACA, Medicare, payment cuts, etc. – that many doctors are either becoming specialists or getting out of medicine.

Other industries have faced change before – newspapers, music, banks, grocery stores, even pharmacies. (How many pharmacies are just drug stores?). GE in the days of Jack Welsh went through enormous change.

Pharma is going through change because R&D is too expensive. That mitigates everything since the research pipeline is anemic. Drugs cost between $250 million and $1 billion to go to market. The payback may take years.

The telecom industry is going through flux too. TDM-to-IP transformation, USF, CAF, E-rate, inter-carrier comp, cloud, broadband, Net Neutrality, security, taxes, cellular, digital divide, etc.

“Over 70% of change initiative fail.”

“In 1995, John Kotter published research that revealed only 30 percent of change programs are successful. In 2008, a McKinsey & Company survey of business executives indicates that the percent of change programs that are a success today is still 30%.” Read more here on change management.

What can be done?

It requires leadership, culture and a Big WHY. All three are necessary. I’m not sure which is the chicken or the egg, but I would suggest that the WHY is most important – and that it is communicated to employees and customers. And that the leader(s) live it.

The other thing to remember is that “Change is never a static linear process.” There will be starts, stops, failures, small wins, re-boots. Have patience. Keep your eye on the prize – the WHY.

There is no map.

A couple of interesting articles geared toward healthcare but they are quick reads that you will get something out of as your organization shifts, pivots, changes too.

There seems to be a lot of info about unified communications (UC) being pumped out weekly. That could be due to the large number of companies that are depending on it – from the PBX vendors (Avaya, ShoreTel, Cisco) to the HPBX service providers (Cloud Comm Alliance members) to the CPE makers (Polycom, Yealink, Edgewater).

From a blog from Edgewater:

“Metaswitch sponsored study of the SMB market. The 850 SMB owners and decision makers surveyed reported that, to date, only about 20% of companies have adopted IP Communications. For those companies who have made the switch to IP, about 60% use Hosted PBX. About 80% of the market is still using TDM phone systems so we are really just at the beginning of the adoption curve. As service providers really begin to penetrate the SMB market, I expect our best customers to be selling 100,000 seats a month or more.”

Some of the news coming out is in the form of case studies like this one on Virgin Media in CW: “Virgin Media claims to have cut its travel and expenses costs by 20% after introducing technology allowing employees to communicate and collaborate more effectively from the office or on the move.” IN Enterprise deals, it is this kind of evidence that can sway the jury.

AVST presented at EDUCAUSE, the foremost community of IT leaders and professionals committed to advancing higher education via technology: “A top 10 initiative at this year’s conference is discussion and identification of ways for higher education institutions to develop campus IT architectures that respond to changing conditions and new opportunities. University IT personnel are challenged with mobility demands from staff and students, and they are tasked with the inevitable transition of moving select UC components to the cloud.”

And of course the obligatory analyst prediction: Global Unified Communications Market Is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of 15.7% from 2012 to 2018. BAH!

This press release seems needless until you need it to prove to the next big customer that you indeed deploy UC to 500 offices.

What a great question: What’s a customer worth?

That is a title of a blog post from Seth Godin.

“A customer at the local supermarket or at the corner Fedex Print shop might spend $10,000 or even $25,000 over the course of a few years. That’s why marketers are so willing to spend so much time and money on coupons, promos and ads getting people to start doing business with us.”

In a Citi bank prezo from 8×8, there is a slide of Customer Lifetime Economics. These are some important numbers for valuations.

LVC determines how much you can spend to acquire a customer profitably. It should also be a guide to your entire staff that this isn’t just a customer but your salary. Adjust policy and attitude accordingly.

I read Nicholas Bates blog daily. This struck me: “it is worth finding something to work at, to strive at, to graft at, in order to discover this particular pleasure deep expertise brings.” [Read the full post here]

After reading Victoria’s essay on INC, I was going to ruminate how today everyone seems to strive for that perfect life, focused so heavily on goals. I see it on Facebook where the people are fanatical about their diet/food or their exercise. (And in some respects this is their religion and they have an expectation that others should join it.)

Victoria writes, “What differentiates the top 1 percent of the population from the remaining 99 percent is the simple dichotomy of thought process. Those that chose mediocrity do so due to lack of self-belief, or simply a lack of desire to even begin to contemplate their end goals.” I think everyone wants to be in the 1% for the money but not for the life of a 1%-er. For example, this hedge fund manager who quit because he was missing out on life. That money is great but it can’t buy happiness. Cliche perhaps but I know quite a few people with big bucks who are horrible to be around or are just plain miserable. One doesn’t know who his real friends are because everyone wants something from him. Would trade for that???

I understand being goal oriented. It pays to map out the road so you know where you are heading. Victoria makes 2 really good points.

One, “Change is not a question of ability; it is a question of will.” Then you can talk about fear, lizard brain, comfort zone, etc. But here second point is the power behind the will. “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche. Ask Simon Sinek, it starts with why.

I thought Tom Peters used a lot of slides, but there are 1260 slides here by Ryan Allis, founder of iContact,Hive and Connect. It is the lessons he learned in his 20s. 1200+ slides!!! About goals, life, business. I got to about 40 and quit. I will get through it, just not today.

Hackers are attacking your medical info instead of your credit card info, according to this report. Three things I have to say about that:

One, they have already hacked every credit card system and retail operation that they can. They have billions of credit card data.

Two, I guess medical info will be used for identity fraud (probably by people who are looking to enter the country illegally.)

Three, medical systems are probably easier to hack right now. Older systems and not nearly the level of security that we see in banking. So there is a big opportunity to sell security.