Author’s note: This marks the first installment of the ’5 Ideas’ series, which covers practical and common sense approaches to achieving efficiencies in business, technology, and more. The ideas and opinions expressed here are those of Ronald Lewis alone and are not to be considered expert advice

1. Detach the workforce: In a nutshell, the benefits of teleworking is still a pipe dream in American business. Why? It’s quite simple: We fear losing control of our workforce. It’s all about having physical oversight, which is largely non-existant when a majority of the workforce are remote workers. However, this is 2006, not 1950. It’s time to fully embrace the telework model, rather than speak about it. While it’s true that we’ve made great effort in the last decade, it still isn’t good enough.

We are now living in the Internet age, where employees can be engaged via instant messaging, e-mail, groupware tools, and more. If managers are so desperate to ‘micro manage,’ then consider PC cameras for ‘scheduled monitoring,’ although such a thing is downright silly.

Imagine the benefits: Increased employee morale and loyalty, greater productivity, and greatly reduced real-estate liabilities. Just these three benefits alone are reasons enough to deploy more remote workers. The technology is here, and readily available. For a good example, consider the open source software development model. It’s telework at its finest.

2. Trim the fat (in management): American businesses are experts at cutting their workforce — the meat and potatoes of any operation. Ford just recently announced their accelerated ‘Way Forward’ plan, but what about the ‘drag’ in management? Talk about being inefficient! A million hands in the cookie jar, are a million reasons for trouble. It shouldn’t take a village to execute important decisions in business.

By creating a leaner management team, companies become more agile and responsive in their respective market and/or industry. That’s a great advantage in a highly competitive world.

3. Be open: Let’s face it: American businesses are poor communicators, especially the further you climb the company’s ladder. CEOs are probably the most inaccessible of the bunch. Hey, let’s cut the malarkey, will ya, and get down to knocking down the roadblocks — once and for all. American businesses should focus on the human aspects of the operation, and engage everyone with an open door policy.

4. ‘Flexforce’: The traditional 9-5 regimen is boring and lacks innovation with regard to scheduling resources. Shouldn’t the workforce feel like partners, rather than laborers? Instituting a tiered time system for groups of people (based upon senority, of course) will promote an entrepreneurial spirit, which will enable a healthier workforce — and bottom line.

5. Compassion: There isn’t a greater gift than showing your workforce you care about their well being and success. Communicate your appreciation often via e-mail, bulletins, intranets, etc. Praise the achievers, and encourage the imperfect. It’s a simple recipe to prevent workforce defection.

Today, I discovered that my interview with Southwest Airline’s Vice President of Public Relations, Linda Rutherford, ranks #1 on Google.com out of 191,000+ links, even above Southwest’s own web sites!

This is yet another strong endorsement for the Interviews podcast.

* 2:30 am EST 10-03-06: There are now more than 10,300 references to this story on Google

* 11:28 am EST 9-26-06: Thanks to the amazing endorsement by the digg community, my story reached the front pages of both digg.com and newsvine.com last night (9-25-06). There’s been a lot of interest, and I hope this story helps with protecting the integrity and future of these great communities.

On Sunday morning (9-24-06), I would awake to the alarming news of a concerted online assault to thwart my ambitions in the Web 2.0 world. This story marks the beginning of what will become a “domino effect” in the blogosphere and media. Rest assured, this is big news, and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

The fallout — and “malicious attack” — began 25 days ago with my efforts to build awareness of an interview I conducted with Kevin Rose, founder and chief architect of popular “user-content driven” web site, Digg. Considering it was Kevin Rose, I decided to submit this interview to the digg community, as I believed they’d find a lot of interesting tidbits and relevant information.

To my surprise, the submission was largely ignored, and remained so for almost a month, garnering only 16 “diggs” (a “digg” is a vote for a story). Confused, I enlisted the help of my friend, “Balm”, to submit a re-released version of the original interview (this was to avoid submitting an actual duplicate to the site).

Prior to engaging Balm’s support, I decided to approach the community via e-mail for their support in “digging” this new interview. (Keep in mind that I obtained the addresses directly from the profiles of the users I found.) I received an overwhemingly positive response, along with kudos for the interview, as well as great consultation regarding my confusion over the community’s response to my initial submission.

As before, the community again ignored this new submission (9-20-06). I began analyzing the reasoning behind the community’s response, and arrived at the following conclusions:

1. I was not a “popular” community user
2. My name didn’t carry much weight in the community
3. To date, I’ve never had a story “promoted” to the front page

Given the above, and my frustration with this seemingly odd response, I began seeking ideas from those who originally “digged” the interview. They were also kind enough to help digg the latest submission. After realizing this wasn’t going anywhere, digg user da5idblacksun stepped forward and submitted his own story (“Awesome Interview with Kevin Rose”, 9-23-06), which linked to his own blog entry about the interview.

Thanks to the efforts of da5idblacksun, and other digg users, we were finally gaining traction. Within hours, we were slated to make the front page. Everything looked promising to finally share a great interview with the community. Not so fast! After reaching more than 30 “diggs” in under 12 hours (enough votes to get a story promoted to the front page), I realized that something was wrong. My immediate thought: “Someone is ‘burying’ this story”. (“Burying” results in the decline of a story’s potential visibility. It was buried quite deep — more than 13 pages — even though the story was ‘promoted’.)

On late Sunday morning (9-24-06), I would receive confirmation of my suspicion, but on a much grander scale: My podcast’s host provider, Gabcast, informed me that on Saturday night (9-23-06) that a direct, and malicious “agent-based” attack was launched on Kevin’s interview for several hours, resulting in a whopping 1 terabyte in bandwidth consumption! That’s 1,000 gigabytes of WAN traffic!

Suddenly, I realized I had a much larger issue on my hands. This was, without a doubt, a concerted, malicious effort to undermine this interview. Who had the capacity to launch such an attack, both within the digg community, and on the Internet? Who would have access to the network resources necessary to consume so much bandwidth, in so little time?

As you can see, my efforts — all pure and well-intended — to engage the community in supporting my interview with Kevin Rose ruffled a few feathers. I did no wrongdoing to receive this type of backlash, which is the most extreme case to date of the abuse of sites such as digg, Newsvine, Netscape, etc.

As I mentioned before, this is only the beginning of my campaign to raise awareness of this alarming case in the Web 2.0 world. It raises many questions about the fairness and integrity of these user-driven communities, which hinges upon the purpose, intent, and morale of its users. I love digg, but not those responsible for this.

The actions of the anonymous are beyond extreme, and must be addressed accordingly. The floodgates are now open. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for further updates.

Last Sunday (9-17-06), I witnessed an amazing, inspiring, and poignant moment in my life. The place of discovery and spiritual nourishment, is non other than Renaissance Unity (formerly Church of Today). On my own accord, I joined this wonderful unity church several years ago, and after being away for so long, I’m once again receiving its powerful blessings.

As an individual, my life has always been touched by the great teachings of this place. It’s easy to become consumed with emotion, because there’s positive energy in every direction you turn. There’s nothing forceful or fearful about this place. It’s a place where all are welcomed to listen and receive the spirit of self, life, and the universe. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

Sunday’s guest speaker was the amazing Richard Maraj. His story weighed heavily upon not only my heart, but that of the entire church. I was inspired by his display of strength and courage. Words cannot describe this amazing gentleman, and so, I invite everyone to share my experience on this powerful and amazing day of self-awareness, healing, and so much more:

Video: Windows Media | QuickTime
Audio: MP3 | Windows Media

I strongly encourage you to view the video — the impact of his speaking is magnified ten-fold. Also, don’t forget to check out these other great videos courtesy of the church.

I’d like to share with everyone some great wisdom I came across this evening. Whether or not the story is true, it’s a damn good story to share. These are words to be reminded of when:

1. You do good deeds from the heart
2. You love and live from the heart
3. You treat others with selflessness, respect, kindness, and consideration
4. You’ve given your all to something you’re passionate about — be it love, a career, etc.
5. You feel at fault for circumstances beyond your control
6. You’ve been misled, lied to, etc.
7. Insert what applies to your life here

—

A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20.00 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, “Who would like this $20 bill?” Hands started going up.

He said, “I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this.” He proceeded to crumple the $20 dollar bill up. He then asked, “Who still wants it?” Still the hands were up in the air.

Well, he replied, “What if I do this?” And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty. “Now, who still wants it?”

Still the hands went into the air.

“My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20. Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value. Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to those who DO LOVE you. The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know, but by WHO WE ARE. You are special – Don’t EVER forget it.