As students, we’re told that internships are a great way to gain hands-on experience in our chosen fields and build professional networks to advance us in our careers.

As interns, we’re able to assist in the day-to-day functions of the places we intern at. This helps us hone our skills and figure out what we want to do within our field. It’s usually all about portfolio-building pieces, tangible contributions, and making connections.

One thing that isn’t brought up too often though, in my opinion, are the insights us interns are able to learn by observing the intangibles things of an internship – workplace dynamics, culture, and communication methods. These are things that we’re not necessarily told to look for, but should look for.

As my awesome internship experience at idfive comes to a close, I just wanted to share some of my observations that I hope to be helpful for any other future interns out there:

• Communication Is Key – The importance is obvious, especially in terms of project management, but after having the opportunity to sit-in on meetings, I learned that it’s even more important when it comes to client/agency relationships or collaborations with other vendors. Impressive professionalism and a happy client are the result of successful methods of communication.

• The Importance of Design with a capital “D” – The philosophy on how idfive runs their business. Design with a capital “D” emphasizes how good Design (note the capital D) should be relative to produce a beautiful solution. In observing the way idfive applied this philosophy to how they did their work, I found that not only is the end result of a project visually appealing and clean on the back-end (for a site), but the user experience is pretty darn good as well.

• Corporate Culture Is Everything – An amiable work environment fuels productivity. I’ve heard of the concept, seen jovial tweets between co-workers on Twitter exemplifying it, but have never truly experienced it until this semester. From chili cook-offs to “guac-offs,” every single person is as hard working as they are the first to share a funny story or their latest experience from a GroupOn at the lunch table. It definitely gave me insight into what kind of environment I’d like to be in in the future.

• The Value of GroupOn – From the stories I’ve heard about the restaurant deals, I don’t know why I didn’t jump on this bandwagon sooner. I’m a foodie and a college student, so the deals are pretty awesome!

Overall, my experience at idfive was an extremely enjoyable and beneficial one that not only taught me a lot about digital marketing, social media and design, but also gave me valuable insight that I know will help me later on in my career – all from observing the intangibles

The post An Intern’s Reflection: The Value of Intangibles appeared first on attentionscan.

By being open to using client resources to do some of the work, capacity, time-to-market, and project economies are created. Not to mention the amazing opportunity to build deeper-longer lasting relationships.

Collaborating can be tough, and the key is sticking and playing to each team’s core competencies.

Below is a framework for a white paper and conference presentation that I am working on with Sean. Have a read and please comment!

Why Collaborate?

• Speed to market & economies
• Increased Capacity
• Consensus building
• Build deeper relationships
• Leveraging the best resources for given tasks

Drawbacks of Collaboration?

• If unmanaged, inefficiencies and redundancy
• Relying on other organizations to hit your deadlines
• Consistency and keeping the thread

Approaching Collaboration Projects

• Iron Clad Project Management
• Kick-off meeting; face-to-face, all team members must attend. Start building relationships
• Develop a communications plan. Set tone of collegial, non-competitive, collaborative and positive experience
• Single point of contact for each major project resource entity
• Use technology to centralize documentation, timeline, discussion and deliverables
• Weekly (sometimes 2x/week) status meetings, and follow up status reports and meeting notes
• Identify and manage/mitigate project risk
• Project wrap-up meeting; in person – eat a meal together!

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One of the major principles of SixSigma is timing. You’ve all heard, “there is a time and a place” … well, that couldn’t be truer if you follow SixSigma. It makes sense, too. Think about it, if you have a manufacturing company that relies on parts supplied by multiple vendors, it is incredibly important that parts are delivered exactly when they are expected. If they are delivered too soon, then there might not be enough storage to house them, and if they are delivered too late, then the entire process is behind schedule and everyone is losing money – assembly starts later, people are sitting idle and eventually, customers receive their goods later than expected.

So, if timing is so important, why is Zappos breaking this major rule and still enjoy amazing success? Specifically, they tell their customers that shoes will be delivered in three or four days, but more often than not, they are delivered over night. Apparently, over delivering in this case has a positive effect on customer perceptions and experience.

I wonder if customers that are on the road and can’t be home for three to four days and plan the delivery of their Zappos shoes accordingly would continue to have the warm-and-fuzzies about the company if they are not home to accept the delivery.

I also wonder if Zappos would benefit from more or less customer good will if they delivered when they said they would.

Finally, I wonder what Zappos’ reaction would be if they received 800,000 pairs of shoes three days ahead of schedule. Would they be pleasantly surprised, as their customers with early delivery?

Sometimes, over delivering pays dividends and sometimes it doesn’t. In fact, over delivery can cause serious problems.

Know your customers and understand their pressures. Finding opportunities for over delivery that create happy customers is always gold. Zappo has done just that and to prove it, their sales are up from $70 million to $1 billion in just five years.

Keep your customers happy and the rest will follow. Go figure!

The post SixSigma and Zappos: Picking and Choosing and Capitalizing appeared first on attentionscan.