I’ve reached again the half million views on my pictures during the first half of this year (in June), with some days with more than 7’000 views… From January to August, exactly 622’310 views on pictures and videos on visuals.didierbeck.com. About 80% of the traffic is going on Saint Barth pictures (what for a surprise !).

Not bad for an amateur as I in this area ;-)

The Gustavia harbor is almost empty…

Take care all on the island!

We are finished with our “stroll week”. Each day about 6-8 hours on foot, a looonnngggg time we haven’t done that ;-) Fantastic landscape, varying a lot each day, as the weather!

That’s a real break, different from St Barth, but still a cool break. Today, first time with a kind of real Internet connection ;-)

As I didn’t want to transport my 3+ kg Canon EOS 5D MarkII with its lens during the 6+ hours walk per day, I have bought a Canon S90, just before going on holiday. As a Canon-fan, I had mainly the choice between a G11 or a S90, both with almost the same technical and optical characteristics, excepted that the G11 is still quite big. Some pictures below (RAW + DxO post-prod, but with a small netbook ;-). More on the Canon S90 later. But generally speaking I’m super happy with it!

Now, back to the “big one”!

Quite a big program, this time in France, and more precisely in Brittany. All in all 2’400km with the car and some km on foot.

Different stops planed:

1. Lamotte Beuvron, in the French Centre region, the capital of the Tarte Tatin, at the … Villa Tatin.

   

2. Lannion, in the north-western France, Brittany.

   

3. From there, we will have a 6-days stroll through the Côte de Granit Rose, till Port-Blanc:
   • Lannion – Trebeurden
   • Trebeurden – Kerenoc
   • Kerenoc – Ploumanac’h
   • Ploumanac’h – Trestel
   • Trestel – La Pointe du Château / Port-Blanc

   

4. We will stay 4 days at Combrit Saint Marine, further on in Brittany (between Quimper and Concarneau) at the Ferme Saint Vennec.

   

5. Then we will be at the Château de Chanteloire during 2 days, which is located in Chouzy-sur-Cisse in the middle of the Châteaux of the Loire Valley region.

   

So quite a long journey with the car, but hopefully we should see and visit some interesting places!

Netflix thinks that “as they grow, they have to minimize rules”. Different approach as what we all know, experience, read. And … Netflix is definitely not a startup anymore! I would like to share with you a document from Netflix I found on SlideShare about their culture and some quite innovative management ideas they have put in place. Feed for thoughts ;-)

Netflix – the company

Sources: Wikipedia, Netflix Shareholder communication

• Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) is an online DVD and Blu-ray Disc rental service, offering flat rate rental-by-mail and online streaming to customers in the United States.
• Established in 1997 and headquartered in Los Gatos, California, it has amassed a collection of 100,000 titles and approximately 13 million subscribers.
• The company has more than 55 million discs and, on average, ships 1.9 million DVDs to customers each day.
• More than 90% of subscribers have evangelized Netflix. More than 70% of subscribers had an existing subscriber recommend Netflix.
• Number of employees (2009): 2’000+

Netflix reference guide on freedom & responsibility culture

Source: Netflix presentation on SlideShare

Worth an entire read, as the presentation is meant for reading, more than presenting ;-)

Some abstracts:

Their nine values

Great workplace is stunning colleagues:

Great workplace is not day-care, espresso, health benefits, sushi lunches, nice offices, or big compensation,
and we only do those that are efficient at attracting stunning colleagues

The keeper test managers use:

“Which of my people,
if they told me they were leaving in two months
for a similar job at a peer company,
would I fight hard to keep at Netflix?

Hard work- not directly relevant

• It’s about effectiveness – not effort – even though effectiveness is harder to assess than effort

• We don’t measure people by how many evenings or weekends they are in their cube

• We do try to measure people by how much, how quickly and how well they get work done – especially under deadline

Our model is to increase employee freedom as we grow,

rather than limit it, to continue to attract and nourish
innovative people, so we have better chance of long-term continued success

Seems like 3 bad options

1. Stay creative by staying small

2. Try to avoid rules as you grow, suffer chaos

3. Use process as you grow to drive efficient execution of current model, but cripple creativity, innovation, flexibility, and ability to thrive when market inevitably shifts

A fourth option:

• Avoid Chaos as you grow with Ever More High Performance People – not with Rules

• Then you can continue to run informally with self-discipline and avoid chaos

• The run informally part is what enables and attracts creativity

With the Right People,

Instead of a Culture of Process Adherence,
Culture of Freedom and Responsibility,
Innovation and Self-Discipline

Mostly, Though, Rapid Recovery is
the Right Model

• Just fix problems quickly

– High performers make very few errors

• We’re in a creative-inventive market, not a safety-critical market like medicine or nuclear power

• You may have heard preventing error is cheaper than fixing it

– Yes, in manufacturing or medicine, but…

– Not so in creative environments

“Good” vs “Bad” Processes

• “Good” processes help talented people get more done

– Web site push every two weeks rather than random

– Spend within budget each quarter so don’t have to coordinate every spending decision across departments

– Regularly scheduled strategy and context meetings

• “Bad” processes try to prevent recoverable mistakes

– Get pre-approvals for $5k spending

– 3 people to sign off on banner ad creative

– Permission needed to hang a poster on a wall

– Multi-level approval process for projects

– Get 10 people to interview each candidate

Vacation policy and tracking

Until 2004 we had the standard model of N days per year

We’re all working online some nights and weekends, responding to emails at odd hours, and taking an afternoon now and then for personal time.

We don’t track hours worked per day or per week, so why are we tracking days of vacation per year?

We should focus on what people get done, not how many hours or days worked.   Just as we don’t have an 9-5 day policy, we don’t need a vacation policy.

Summary of Freedom & Responsibility:

As We Grow, Minimize Rules.
Inhibit Chaos with Ever More High Performance People.
Flexibility is More Important than Efficiency in the Long Term

Appropriate context

The best managers figure out how to get great outcomes by setting the appropriate context, rather than by trying to control their people

Context, not control

Provide the insight and understanding to enable sound decisions

Setting the right context

Managers: When one of your talented people
does something dumb, don’t blame them.
Instead, ask yourself what context you failed to set.

Again, context vs. control

Managers: When you are tempted to “control” your people, ask yourself what context you could set instead

Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled

• Highly Aligned

– Strategy and goals are clear, specific, broadly understood

– Team interactions are on strategy and goals rather than tactics

– Requires large investment in management time to be transparent and articulate and perceptive and open

• Loosely Coupled

– Minimal cross-functional meetings except to get aligned on goals and strategy

– Trust between groups on tactics without previewing/approving each one – groups can move fast

– Leaders reaching out proactively for ad-hoc coordination and perspective as appropriate

– Occasional post-mortems on tactics necessary to increase alignment

Annual comp review

• Hiring is market-based at many firms, but at Netflix we also make the annual comp review market-based

– Applies same lens as hiring

• Essentially, rehiring each employee each year, for purposes of comp

– At annual comp review, manager has to answer the Three Tests for the personal market for each of their employees

Development

• We develop people by giving them the opportunity to develop themselves, by surrounding them with stunning colleagues and giving them big challenges to work on

– Mediocre colleagues or unchallenging work is what kills progress of a person’s skills

• Individuals should manage their own career paths, and not rely on a corporation for planning their careers

Innovation & execution

• Need a culture that supports rapid innovation and excellent execution

• Both required for continuous growth

• There is tension between these two goals; between creativity and discipline

Team work and high-performance people

• Need a culture that supports effective teamwork of high performance people

• High performance people and effective teamwork can be in tension also – stars have strong opinions

Cross-posted on the Innoveo Blog

Michel Michellod from Celent, an international strategy consultancy focused on the financial industry, has just posted a very interesting article which is very “aligned” with how we understand ourselves the current and coming insurance front-end challenges.

Some interesting strategic challenges highlighted in the post:

The direct channel requires an appropriate front end. […] This goal can be best achieved through the implementation of open and flexible front end systems facilitating interactions with potential customers, integrating modern communication tools for call center officers and allowing a high level of reactivity in terms of product, pricing and discount changes.

Communication with aggregators is key. […]  The second alternative consists in directing shoppers automatically onto the insurance online platform to perform the last step of the buying process (the effective purchase of the insurance product and its payment). This alternative requires an instantaneous transmission of customer and quote data by aggregators to insurers.

Insurers need to improve integration of affinity and bank channels. […] Insurers need to implement relevant portals allowing management and process of sophisticated insurance products.

Use brokers and agents in specific customer segments. […] I recommend insurers to implement sophisticated portals with rich functionality to provide point of differentiation.

Responding to multi-channel management. […] I believe insurers should prioritize sophisticated portals providing a single view of the customer based on service oriented architecture (SOA) with high level of automation.

As the insurance distribution landscape is changing fast and drastically, I expect this topic to be part of the European insurer’s top priorities in the coming years.

At Innoveo, we are exactly acting in this field and bringing a standard software product on the market – Innoveo Skye®– which allows insurance companies (life, non-life, health) to find an efficient, technology-proven and business-oriented answer to the different challenges raised by Celent.

Disclaimer: we were nominated by Celent as “Model Carrier” in 2007 for our effective usage of technology. See the report here.

Cross-posted on the Innoveo Blog

• Hublot was strongly exposed in all media during the last Football Word Cup in South Africa as the official and first Official TimeKeeper of the FIFA (presence on the boards of the 4th referee). On top, Maradona sported a Big Bang on each wrist, which is quite strange (ridiculous?), but for sure visible! See below.

• Hublot’s business is going very well. June was their best month ever, the last 9 months were the best ever. So it seems that they will close their best year ever ;-)
• All these good news are also impacting the traffic on their corporate website (which is, by the way, very good). The 100’000 unique visitors per day level was reached in June, month which has generated about 1,5 million visits!
• Also a cool generosity event organized with Usain Bolt at the new Hublot manufacture.

USAIN BOLT AT THE MANUFACTURE

The fastest man in the world ever received yet another honour on the 6th July in Nyon – for generosity. He took to the start line alongside 10 children – who were given a slight head start! A rapt public marvelled at his spectacular pace, though he allowed the children to beat him as Hublot had promised to donate 10,000 US dollars to the Usain Bolt Foundation for every child that crossed the finish line ahead of the "Lightning Bolt". It was a proud and highly motional moment for the young competitors, after which Usain devoted his time to the design of the watch that will bear his name in 2011.

I really like the way Hublot (and his CEO, Jean-Claude Biver) is marketing its products.
Super smart :-)

Post-production with DxO Optics Pro 6 Elite, which has a specific module for the combination Canon EOS 5D MarkII + the Canon EF 24-70mm L.

First pictures taken with it:

Some reviews found:

• The Digital Picture
• Fred Miranda
• photozone
• PhotographyReview

Canon website about this lens.

Nice view on the lake and mountains from our hotel

Direct view on the auditorium

Before the concert started

A video of “Papa was a rolling stone”