Andrew da Silva

Anil Manon is Vice President, IBM Marketing Strategy and Worldwide Marketing Management — what a mouthful! He is responsible for IBM’s Brand Strategy which includes Industrial Design, Content and Corporate Identity. Responsible for IBM’s Worldwide Market Intelligence, he conducts and coordinates all forecasting, customer and market research within IBM.

Still quite active in academia, he is involved in the Yale Center and sits on the board of the Zyman Institute. (source)

In 2006, Anil Menon was a distinguished speaker at Duke University where he presented life lessons and career insights from his academia experience and his current career at IBM.

Anil has everything of a great speaker; he is funny, a good storyteller and charismatic. I was going to exhaustingly list his lessons and insights, but I won’t. The presentation is an hour long, you should be able to spare that time.

On a side note, it is really a shame that Anil Menon isn’t more present and known on the Internet. Aside from a couple of marketing blogs reviewing his presentations, newspapers haven’t interviewed him and his speeches aren’t offered online, except for Duke’s.

It’s incredible how Duke’s Distinguished Speakers Series has an awesome selection of executives. I’ll try to present more of them in the upcoming weeks.

Sort of a retrospective on my journey at TD Meloche Monnex, here's a short list of lessons I've learned or experience throughout the past five years.

Be honest.

Build a trusting relationship with your boss. When something goes bad or someone is being a jerk, report it. You won't be a snitch, it will only free your mind and help the company grow by weeding out negative energy.

Be mobile, available to travel/move.

As part of our performance review, the company asks us if we'ld like to transfer to a new location. Our choices are Alberta, Ontario and the maritimes. Have I had the time or the knowledge, I would probably have tried to go to Alberta and St-John for, respectively, their exploding economy and the culture.

When a good leader leaves, the team shouldn't die.

Since I'm leaving soon, I'll be reviewing schedules, documentation and pending projects. Ensuring new staff will not be left in the dark and will have the latest information to work with.

Take as little credit as possible.

When you complete a project, don't go yapping to everyone about it. To the contrary, outline everyone who helped. I've always tried to report people who helped me, even in the smallest ways. In the end, other people will take care of giving you credit for work well-done.

Don't point fingers, or burn bridges.

If a project fails or errors occur, don't start pointing fingers. As a leader, take the lead and try to find solutions. Always keep in mind people you meet today can open you doors in the future! For example, in the past year I've met people from high school and one even works at TD Meloche Monnex now.

Hire people that are smarter than you.

The main purpose is to motivate yourself and other team members. Personally, I've been blessed with three driven and knowledgeable colleagues. Even if sometimes we'ld criticize each others' work, it'ld be as a constructive habbit and done in a respectful way.

Be a team player, but be the best in the team.

Relating to the previous lesson learned, having competition in a team is great! As long as you keep it positive and respectful — don't burn bridges. But be on top of your game, people will remember you when it's time for promotions or when you ask them for favors.

Know what makes a business succeed.

Our slogan used to be "Where insurance is a science, and service an art". Now that we're part of the TD Bank Group, that slogan is pretty much a given. From personal experiences, TD has a great history of customer service. So always represent the core values of the company you work for, otherwise your days may be counted.

Do the work better than anyone has ever done it.

Always try to set new standards, may it be qualitatively or quantitatively. For example, a new layout for the documentation or decreasing the time it takes to do certain tasks.

Be the first to volunteer for the hard/new work.

Everyone will raise the hand if you ask them to accomplish a routine task. What will separate you from the robots is if you try new things or tackle difficult tasks. Not only will it help the meeting move along, but you'll soon be the go-to person when problems occur. Just keep in mind to involve other team members, develop their skills, think long term.

This weekend I had the chance to listen to a bunch of lectures from various universities.

First up is "The Changing Rules of Journalism" by Bob Cauthorn at UC Berkeley. He talks about the death of paper media and why most web versions of newspaper suck. These are the notes I took from a designer point-of-view.

To watch the full presentation click this iTunes U link.

Best Practices

Show newer or different content from the paper version

LCN is a local news station, their website show the same content that is presented on TV.

CNN on the other hand lists newer or different content.

Paper version should be more succinct

Local newspapers love to make multiple-pages investigations, you need to read the 5-8 pages to finally get the conclusion or the good stuff.

Offer a lot of content

LCN offers the latest 5 news and 5 popular news, good luck finding more.

CNN offers at least 20 news on the first fold of it's website, now that's news!

Reference Newspaper Websites

According to Bob Cauthorn, the following websites or newspapers should be references on how to present news:

• The Guardian
• The Times India
• The Wallstreet Journal

I would add these two primarily for the amount of news found on the front page and their lightness on the eyes:

• CNN
• Le Devoir

Final Word

A comment Bob Cauthorn makes during is presentation is that journalists shouldn't have blogs to comment news. Personally I couldn't agree more, what new content do they bring beside demagogy and disinformation or spinning of the news?

The only exception I can think of is Anderson Cooper because it is not heavily advertised on CNN's front page and his posts are actual stories - news - rather than comments.

How about you guys, what's your favorite news source?