If you’ve been following my activities over the past few days, you know that I recently launched a customer feedback site related to the Sirius/XM merger. As this site begins to gain traction, I wanted to give everyone some additional background as I believe it helps put the issue in context.

On November 13th, 2008 Sirius and XM Radio combined their channel lineup and eliminated what the two companies described as “redundant programming”. Unfortunately, these changes were released with very little communication and no apparent input from the listing audience. Personally, I subscribed to XM for nearly 4 years and switched to Sirius 2 years ago because the programming was significantly better (for my tastes).

When the post-merger programming went live a couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were dumbfounded. We knew nothing of the programming changes yet many of our favorite channels had either disappered or the playlists had been significantly altered without any warning. To say the least, we were appalled at the gross lack of communication by the new Sirius/XM and many others share our sentiments. If you do a Twitter or Google search for “Sirius sucks” you’ll see what happens when a company fails to listen to its customers in this age of socially-connected consumers.

It all boils down to communications. The majority of listeners are upset because the Sirius and XM pre-merger communications emphasized GREATER choice and the “best of both” company’s programming. Yet what we’ve seen is a significant reduction in programming variety because the management team wanted to cut costs. Look, I’m a business owner and I understand the need to lower costs but the method Sirius/XM chose was inappropriate and outright foolish. With stock prices hovering at less than a quarter, now is not the time to be gambling with major changes that could disrupt the user base during an unsteady economy.

My position and motivation is quite simple. Sirius/XM must make a concerted effort to rectify the problem by gathering input from its customers and taking action. Once the votes are tallied, I will send the results along with comments gathered by the listeners in a certified letter to the Sirius/XM board of directors.

You can visit my Sirius/XM listener-feedback site at: http://voiceofthelistener.com

I’ve been working professionally since I turned 18 and I’ve recently had some time to reflect on my fifteen year journey with all of its twists and turns. Up until now I had been conflicted because I’ve always viewed myself as an entrepreneur down to the DNA-level but didn’t understand how I tolerated 12 years of working for a large corporation if this were truly the case.

What I began to realize is that my employer of 12 years, RadioShack, was not your typical Fortune 500 firm.

RadioShack, or rather Tandy Corporation, was founded by an unorthodox and rebellious entrepreneur, Charles Tandy. Charles ran his company under a culture that embraced unbridled  entrepreneurialism. In fact, the most decorated veterans of Tandy’s company were those who broke all the rules. This unique culture remained entrenched within the Tandy/RadioShack organization well past Charles’ death in 1978. But when management recognized serious flaws in the company’s strategic plan in early 2004, the less-structured environment that attracted the entrepreneurial spirit began to fade. Within months, outside consulting firms such as McKinsey, Bain, and Accenture were brought in to re-structure the organization and install new management throughout. While this evolution was probably necessary in order to position RadioShack to compete within a new retail landscape, the effect was total alienation to folks like me who had enjoyed the freedom of truly leading our own operation.

What I’ve discovered is I do indeed thrive in less-structured environments. And while I absolutely love the thrill of running my own companies, I now know that I am still fit to work for other firms−even large corporations, provided they offer the type of environment that enables me to thrive.

So how are you wired? Have you discovered the optimal working environment and cultures that bring out your strengths?

For several years now I used the domain, onkels.org as my primary family and personal blog site. A few months ago I purchased daveonkels.com to serve as my go-forward blog homestead. While deeply entrenched in the process of launching Nectar, I didn’t have time to establish my new blog so I opted to create a placeholder lifestream in its place. With little effort, this temporary site consistently ranked in upper portion of Google’s page one search results. That is, until I made the decision to run a Google AdWords campaign using my own name as the keywords. My logic for doing such a thing was simple. I was curious to see how much an AdWords campaign would cost on a monthly basis because my partners and I were considering offering this to our Nectar customers as a add-on product. 

Within a day of launching the AdWords campaign, daveonkels.com dropped to page two, then three, then eleven, and ultimately disappering from Google’s organic search results all-together. As you might imagine, I was both perplexed and frustrated. Why would Google essentially punish me for running a paid AdWords campaign on their own network? I did a considerable amount of research and found others who cited similar stories but in their situations when they stopped the AdWords campaigns, their organic listings reappeared within a few days. In my case, daveonkels.com has returned to the organic listings, but on a paltry page eight rather than its original page one listing. Considering inbound links exist from every social network site I utilize such as LinkedIn, Vimeo, Facebook, etc, it’s hard to believe this ranking is even remotely reasonable.

I’m not one to roll over easily, so I quickly launched my personal blog, wrote several in-depth posts, conducted further SEO optimization, and leveraged information from Google’s webmaster tools. Unfortunately, even after working hard to reverse the situation, my ranking has not improved and I’m left wondering what I did to deserve the cold shoulder by Google. I’m confident that the situation will sort itself out eventually but not without leaving me quite jaded towards Google and its ranking methodologies.

For the past four years I’ve been actively using David Allen’s GTD personal organization principles in my life. The system is spectacular if you employ it correctly and stick with it. There are literally a ton of resources detailing GTD so I’m not going to dive into that subject. If you’re unfamiliar with David Allen or his GTD principles feel free to read the informative Wikipedia entry on the subject. Instead, what I wanted to discuss is my continued habit of bouncing from one method of collecting tasks to another. Possibly it’s a byproduct of my ADD tendencies or it could be my infatuation with software applications and technology that leads me down this path. I’ve used just about everything you can think of to collect my tasks and ideas.

Here’s a small rundown:

iGTD, kGTD, Toodledo, Remember the Milk, OmniFocus, Vitalist, Ta-DaList, Nozbe, GTDTracks, Gubb, Jott, Moleskine notebooks

The reality is that each of these applications and tools offer their own unique benefits but for one reason or another, I get tired of using them and move onto something new. The process is rather painful as I have to figure out a way to port over hundreds of tasks and notes into a new system. Needless to say, not the best use of my time. About six months ago I transferred my information into Cultured Code’s Things.app for Mac OS X. The application (even in its beta form) was the easiest and most fluid for entering tasks which is a ‘must-have’ for me. The tagging process helps track down actions by context or project and the recent introduction of a global search function really makes this application resonate with me.

But there’s one catch. This is a desktop application and although I spend most of my day on my Macbook Pro, more often than not, new tasks arrive when I’m away from my desk. If there’s one thing that will destroy your GTD workflow, it’s not being able to capture your tasks as they come up. So what gives me hope that Things will be my ‘permanent’ GTD tool is the Things iPhone application, aptly named Things Touch. My iPhone stays with me virtually night and day so it makes the perfect GTD inbox and enables me to review my tasks anywhere. While there are still times when I fail to capture new tasks, I can honestly say it’s no longer the fault of my collection tools. Instead, this is simply a lack a discipline that I seek to improve every day.