Dick Snyder just emailed me about the new Goog-411 service….I’ve already stored the number in my phone. Watch the video and check out their website Goog-411
Here’s an example of how it works: You’re driving along in your car and need to call a client but don’t know the number or can’t take your eyes off the road to look it up. Hit the speed dial you have programmed for “Information”. In a few seconds, a voice says, “Google. State Business Name, City & State.” You say, “ABC Construction, Syracuse, New York.” The voice replies with the name and street address of ABC Construction then says it will connect you and gives options to get more information. If you want the number dialed for you, just remain silent and it rings through to ABC Construction. This is nationwide and it is absolutely free! It may work in some parts of Canada, also.
While I personally don’t agree with many of the tactics used by credit card companies, I do give the leadership credit for being creative in finding new opportunities to make money.
Their new tactic, used to combat The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 (see below), is to bring back annual fees that may be as much as $100 per year depending on the individuals previous payment record.
And the current administration thought they had the bankers beat at their own game.
The bankers approach is to targeting all customers. Those with high risk, low risk or carry no balances. The rational is that a bank makes no money on customers that don’t carry a balance or pay in full.
Brilliant thinking.
The bankers know pay-in-full consumers won’t cancel their accounts because they fear being labeled a possible credit risk . They understand that during the recession over 90% of small businesses use their credit cards to finance their business operations to purchase inventory, travel, and to pay bills. They too won’t cancel. High risk candidates need the card or risk losing credit all together.
Ironically, terminating a card for generating fees might also negatively impact your credit score.
If you want to read more on the story, check out. Newtelegram.com This is not the complete story. I could not find any site carrying the entire story I read in my local paper.
The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 which is intended to halt abusive practices by credit-card issuers that keep consumers mired in debt. When it goes into effect in February, it will:
restrict interest-rate increases during the first year;
restrict rate increases on existing balances;
increase notice for rate increases on future purchases;
preserve the ability to pay off on the old terms;
place limits on fees and penalty interest;
require fair application of payments;
provide sensible due dates and time to pay;
protect young consumers;
restrict issuance fees on fee harvester cards
require enhanced disclosures.
SOURCE: Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports
When you think you’re pushed the limits when it comes to empowerment and motivation, think again. Human behavior is easily swayed if the surroundings help them achieve their own personal desires. In the case of these videos, to be entertained, to be challenged, to explore, to learn be surprised. Can you think of one change you could make this week in your own workspace that could create such remarkable shifts?
Turning a meeting into an experience.
Converting a customer facing time into a fun situation.
Making a routine job interesting
Modifying a traditional product or packaging into an additional benefit
You get the point….
Think about it. Some great videos at www.thefuntheory.com www.davidgoldsmith.com
United Breaks Guitar video goes viral on YouTube with 3.5 million hits.
The issue with this video is more complex than just damaged guitars; it’s that the industry is still in the Stone Age when it comes to operating everything but the planes.
First, the airline industry could easily borrow technologies from other industries to cut the handing of baggage in half by employees. The problem is very much tied to baggage handlers being unionized. There is very little incentive to replace people with equipment and yet if UPS and FedEx worked in the same manner as the airlines do, you’d get your packages a week later.
The solution is baggage that is tagged at the gate and then transferred via RFID (or some other technology) to the plane and then in some situations directly into the hull. This would require sophisticated technologies and cooperation between manufacturers and firms that manufacture robotics and conveyor systems.
The benefits would be huge. FOD (foreign object debris) would be drastically reduced for airlines. Payroll would decrease and so would Workers Comp expenses from bag-related injuries. Passengers would get their baggage to the plane without damage, as well as receive the baggage at the other end. Tracking and total weight can be accessed at any time for CG, the weighting of a plane. The list is endless.
One may argue that the airlines are not doing well, and I’d argue that the airlines are in this position due to poor investment in technology, poor contracts with unions, and poor orientation to the future. Some of this tied to, in the US, the government’s handing of the industry including air traffic control systems that should have been updated long ago.
The good news is that if innovation curves are any indication of the future, the airline industry will be forced over the course of the next 50 years, to either make significant technological changes to keep pace or find itself prey to industries that will, such as improvements in holographic and digital meetings that eliminate the need for business travel. In other words, business travel, which provides a huge source of income for airlines, will be reduced and/or other modes of transportation will gain traction.
A bullet train from Boston to Washington DC or from San Francisco to San Diego and many other traffic lanes could reduce air passengers.
I showed up at the Arrowwood Resort & Conference Center in Okaboji, Iowa this summer for business, and like most guests, I spent just a few minutes at the front counter checking in. A few hours later, when I visited the counter again, Paula, the Front Desk Supervisor, responded to me by name as if I had been visiting the hotel for years. I shook the moment off all the while thinking, how did she remember my name.
Later that night, as I once again visited the front desk to ask about a good place to eat, I hear Paula respond to each person who walks up the counter by using their first or last name. I asked if these were regulars? “No, I just can remember names.”
She then went on to tell me a story where a guest had walked up the counter and like she always did, she used the persons name. “Hello Casey.” The lady stopped dead in her tracks and asked how did she know her name. Paula said that she remembered Casey from a previous stay at the hotel, and she pays very close attention to people’s names. Casey, in awe, said she’d not been in the hotel for S I X years!
I’ve heard of hotels that arm employees with ear pieces to make sure they can give each other the heads up on guests’ names so that they and their coworkers can address guests in the same way. Others post pictures on the walls of VIPs so that on one is overlooked.
If you have face-to-face contact with customers, what does your organization so to make customers feel special? Paula has a rare talent, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t develop a system that accomplishes the same result. Maybe you can put in place a call routing software program that picks up a VIP based on their phone number, or you can distribute pictures of incoming guests’ faces on cards bearing their names before major functions. If you can’t see a solution for all guests, define your VIPs and target them first.
If you want to go for the gusto and have everyone be recognized, your systems are going to have to be much more complex and may require a unique identifier that a customer carries on their key chain or a facial recognition software so that no one is missed.
Strategy means different things to different people, which becomes a problem when we try to communicate with each other about what we’re trying to do as leaders, managers, and decision makers. The lack of a standard definition creates a gap that divides us and leaves room open for errors that are all too preventable. The original Greek translation comes from two words:
stratos: army
ago: to lead, to guide to move
A more modern translation would be for leadership to guide or move an “army” of employees, volunteers, soldiers, or any other group of people in a systematic and conscious direction. Knowing that you’re most likely not going to remember a Greek definition, think of strategy as where you are going.
Oftentimes people attach different meanings to the term, strategy, (such as the steps you take to get from Point A to Point B) but if we agree on one simple definition that gives us some flexibility, at least we’re all talking a similar language and understanding what others mean. Strategy is the objective or outcome or destination you desire whether you’re talking about a strategic plan, a project’s conclusion, the location of your next vacation getaway, or any other such outcome.
Several years ago I read The End of Work by Jeremy Rifkin. In his book, Rifkin outlined a future filled with too many people and too little work to be done. The premise was that we’d be so technologically advanced that there would be little work left for people to do, resulting in a shift in how we spend our daily lives.
In as much as we’re still very far off from this prediction, there still lies the truth that in the United States we are going to be facing a different challenge along the same line of thinking. It’s not that were going to run out of work but given the transformational change of “hands-on business functions,” there will be a type of End of Work. This will be a type of work that fulfills the needs of those who want to work with their hands and don’t have the same inclination to spend time being schooled.
An example is the farmer who no longer uses horses to plow his fields but who uses a GPS-guided machine in which he can actually watch TV while the equipment does the work. Even the painter will work differently due to increased efficiency of painting tools and/or paints that last 5 years longer due to nanotechnology. The machinist will be replaced by a robotic system.
It’s these people, with this propensity to lean towards truly hands-on jobs that I started thinking about while working with Mike, my painter, a couple of years ago. We met somewhat by chance while I touched up the paint on my home and Mike and his son were in a car driving down our street looking for some work. We spoke for a few minutes and they ended up quoting a price to paint the entire exterior of our home.
As you might have guessed the price was right and from what I heard it appeared they had worked with some pretty reputable firms. After about 20 minutes, I agreed to the terms and they promised they would start the very next morning.
Yes, I did have the thought they might not show, and they might do a poor job since they were traveling around handing out fliers.
I was happy with my decision. Mike Sr. and Mike Jr. showed up the very next morning at 9 AM as promised ready to work. They were professional in their demeanor and in the quality of their work.
What I witnessed were two guys who loved working with their hands. Mike Sr. had been painting most of his life and possessed a sort of pride I wished many office employees and managers would have. Mike Jr. was the apple that didn’t fall far from the tree. Often I’d see him step back from his work, look at what he’d done from two or three different angles and then proceed. Even his business card defines his philosophy. It says, “Picture Perfect,” and his interpretation is that when he’s done with a job, you’d want to take a picture of it.
The truth is, Mike and Mike love working with their hands.
I thought about the pair along with all the other craftsman, mechanics, and stone workers I know, and I realized we will have a challenge different than the one discussed in public. The challenge is one that is not about further educating our population so that people can have jobs. It’s about giving people choices so they can make a living at a reasonable pay scale and still be who they want to be. It’s not about jobs being shipped off shore given that many of those jobs are at low paying wages that most likely will be eliminated in their future as automation envelopes the economies that have chosen to be the next outsourcing country.
It’s about people.
What do we do with Mike Sr. and Mike Jr.? What does the individual who has no interest in working in an office do? What is their future?
Quite honestly, I’m not sure that manual labor or manufacturing will change not because of “evil” executives but because technology will replace manual tasks as it’s the nature of automation to remove people to drive down costs, increase efficiency, and improve products and service experiences. There’s no stopping it.
Just imagine having no computers in your accounting department, and you get a sense of what I mean. No computers? You may have 74 people to do the work of just a dozen. No computers may mean that JIT and inventory replenishment grind to a halt.
Here’s my long shot.
What’s on my mind.
Mike and Mike will continue to exist; it’s just that we need to:
1. Channel other activities that can create the same stimulation in our culture. Mike needs to swing a hammer at home.
2. Give opportunities to those that can work with their hands to do the same, utilizing tools such as virtual reality systems. I know the heavy equipment operator loves the power of the machine even though he or she is using levers and not their hands to accomplish the same task.
3. Leverage the feeling of accomplishment in other areas such as taking the creative hands-on feel and translating it to outdoor activities on a global scale where these individuals find themselves working in South America, Central America, or other parts of the world where technology and hands on co-exist for now.
4. We need to balance life work so that those that would prefer the other can do it on their own time.
Nothing brilliant in the above. I’d just like you to be thinking about the ramifications of losing our hands-on worker who’s not interested in the corporate life style to be productive. Yes, they will learn to use the current technologies to do their work. More importantly, we need to insure that they don’t get lost. This is a challenge that can be overcome if we not only address the need for continuous learning but address the issue of choice. Otherwise, our oversight is going to run over the US workforce like a steam roller.
Watch out for the sales women at Timberland. Some of these people are so good at what they do that if you’ve got $50 in your pocket, they will surely find a way for you to spend it in their store.
Here’s the story.
As the president of New York State National Speakers Association, one of my duties is to be present at all statewide gatherings. On this one specific date I had both a meeting with a client about an hour south of Syracuse and then a NYNSA Pow Wow up toward the Great Lakes about 2.5 hours northwest. Smack right in the middle is a discount store facility with over 105 stores (95% occupancy) including Nike, Timberland and Aeropostale.
For me, a great way to take a break from more than 6 hours of driving was to stop in and browse around.
For those who know me personally, I can shop all day. Shopping does not mean buying, it just means I spend time finding the right item before I buy anything. As I did on this day, I enjoy walking the stores.
Then I came across the Timberland Store managed by Jamie and staffed by Katie and Sarah.
The store had exactly what I was looking to purchase. Soft cargo pants. I found one pair that fit me after reviewing the shoe selection and then they mentioned to me if I purchased $50, I would be given a $10 discount. Sounded good since these pants were a perfect fit and comfortable.
Minutes later I found myself adding a $2.00 pair of strings for my shoes just to make it over the $50 mark. Then I realized, the guy next to me was buying 5 pairs of shoes. He had come in looking for two pairs, but by the time these woman were done with him, he had 5.
These ladies were on their game. With so little traffic they saw every prospect as a sale: and not just a $20 sale but a $50 sale. Given the state of the US economy, no-pressure, likable, sales strategies obviously work, since one employee mentioned, “They (corporate) make us get the $50.”
However, telling the staff and making it happen are two distinctly different achievements. The manager and the staff worked together so well that each helped the other find stock to fit sizes when someone needed shoes or a color or a style. There appeared to be no territorial behavior. They knew exactly what to say to close the sale and not once did I feel like they were overselling me.
They were impressive!!
In fact I’m wearing the pants and a shirt bought on that trip which reminded me of the story. What a great purchase.
Are you taking advantage of every opportunity that walks through your door?
So often human nature takes the stance that in order to improve, one’s abilities must be 10 times better or a hundred times better to make a difference. It’s just not the case.
My journeys, both in business and life, have taught me that often the little changes make the most significant impact, while big growth spurts are a rarity.
Take the experience I had at the David Leadbetter Golf Clinic in Florida. While working at a convention, I had the opportunity to sign up for some extra activities, if my plans permitted. I could not create the time to take the 140 MPH NASCAR drive with an experienced driver, so I opted for the David Leadbetter golf lessons that were right outside the Omni Hotel in Orlando.
Having only about 1 hour to spare, I left the conference “war room” and walked up the hill to the facilities were by now over 100 people were getting lessons. These people were intent on improving their game.
I, on the other hand, am an infrequent player. To me, I can easily play 9 holes of golf at a resort while traveling, however, when you take me on the back nine, I start to feel like I should be playing POLO IN MY GOLF CART versus continuing on. I just get bored.
So to me, one hour was good enough, and it also forced the school to give me the best type of lesson I would need as they had 3 groups. The putt, the short ball, and the drive. They put me in the drive section, exactly where I wanted to be.
I picked up a club, pulled a pile of balls off the perfectly-stacked pyramid of about 72 balls stacked for this space, and started to hit.
My first ball slid right pretty far into the next groups area, so I unbuttoned my business shirt, removed my tie, and rolled up my sleeves. This would make all the difference. I no longer sliced to my far right. An improvement.
My next swing was similar, but my slight change of grip pulled it on target a little more. I assumed that my shoes and pants were causing my inability to “grab the ground.”
For the next 20 minutes, I hit ball after ball trying to control its direction by taking back the club slower. By twisting my grip. By keeping my head down. Things started to become consistent. I even tried to listen in to the other lessons hoping that I would pick up a tip or two before it was my turn.
My turn. The instructor asked, “Tell me about your game.” I replied, “I don’t have one. I play about once or twice a year.” I almost felt as if he was disgusted with my response, like I’d punched him in the stomach.
Maybe that’s because The David Leadbetter Schools are some of the best in the world. Experts fly in by helicopter just to take lessons with these instructors and many are coached to become top in the field. Two are the Greg Norman designed courses and ChampionsGate; both have been listed as Golf Magazine’s “10 Most Distinctive Places to Play.” This is real golf country.
Maybe I should have said that I don’t get enough time to play or something a little less harsh.
He then asked me to take a swing without the ball followed by another. Then again, with a ball. I tried with all my powers to make this one go exactly straight down the fairway. It didn’t exactly go as planned.
He asked for one more. Again, the same.
He then gave me my first piece of advice. Take my right thumb on my grip and move it counter clockwise so that the thumb pointed to my shoulder. Realize we are talking a half an inch. What I learned that in doing so, the head of my club rotates so that the head comes around flat after the swing.
The first ball went much straighter than the first two. We practiced this for about 10 balls.
Then the second piece of advice. After I hit continue on so that my right knee twists inward almost touching my left knee without lifting up the heal. Again we practiced with a few balls and as you might have guessed, it worked.
It worked not because he gave me this life-changing sermon or that he altered my entire way of playing golf. It worked because of minute changes. Simple things that make huge differences.
Granted, the guy’s an expert, and if you saw him drive a ball, you’d know it. His expert advice opened up a new perspective and approach to my golf game.
The same holds true in the work environment. Taking the time to work with your employees is one thing. Taking the time to “improve their swing” is another. It means:
1. You’ve got to be an expert in the first place. Too often, managers feel as if they are experts and teach the wrong people the wrong skills or they do what they do intuitively and don’t really know how to transfer these skills.
You’ve met the incredible sales person that can’t manage.
2. Taking the time to make small changes first if possible. Don’t always look for the Big Bertha. Sometime it’s the smaller changes that have largest and most remembered impact.
3. Understand the need for time. Once a skill is taught, it must be practiced. Seeing someone do something is one thing; doing it themselves is another.
4. Reserve massive overhauls for when you truly have the time to make sure the lessons are done right. The failure to take this time insures two things. One, that you will be frustrated later on, and two, your employee will also.
In the end, my one hour of instruction will change the way I play golf. Will I spend the day doing it? That’s going to need the massive overhaul of my personality.
If you fly, you know that if an aircraft is late, there’s a good chance that you’re going to miss your connection or be late for something else in your day. It’s the reason the government and outside companies monitor the on-time arrival of airlines.
Here’s a simple solution. You might apply this thinking to your own business.
Let me give you the background first. During each college semester, I make 4 to 5 trips to NYC to teach two courses at NYU. In each case, I couldn’t tell you if the plane left the actual gate early or late. But I can tell you that on all 5 flights, the plane arrived before the scheduled time. I felt, and I believe others did, too, that we got a bonus of time by reaching our destination early. Although it’s a mental game, it’s mentally real.
What if the airlines added a buffer, say 10 minutes to every aircraft’s ETA. A 9AM arrival time is now stated as 9:10AM. The airline publishes the times and the passengers and travelers work around the numbers.
Now here’s what’s going to happen.
The plane leaves on time, or late, no one cares unless it screws up their next step. With the buffer the aircraft then either arrives early….WOW or on time.
Consider the implications. I travel a lot and very infrequently do I make a call to my ground transportation about a flight based upon 10 minutes either way. I don’t spend that much time on the length of time compared to the price and the route. I hate getting stuck in certain airports. Here the buyer is more interested in on-time arrivals for the purposes of their next meeting (personal or business) than they are for actual flight time.
Then travel agencies could give options differently. “You can take the 6 AM through DC into Miami arriving at 11:20 or the 7:40 AM arriving at 2.” With an overall edit to the system, everyone would be on par with similar flight systems and layovers.
Airline management, their unions, and the technology being used today have made limited progress in improving the system. They still load bags onto planes by hand. And it appears there is nothing coming down the pipe line that would radically improve the situation, so why not try a simpler fix. Besides the airlines have cut back on routes so modeling of new traffic patterns most likely would not be a terrific challenge.
When I hear managers say that the new vision of their firm is to get customers to like them better or that the new vision is to create better relationships, I’m always concerned for them. While I understand what they’re trying to do, I also see how they’re headed in the wrong direction. You can’t substitute your role of managing well with the position of wanting to be liked. Business relationships don’t give back the returns you think they will, and if you don’t adjust your focus, you’re going to be disappointed at best and even suffer worse consequences.
Earning new customers involves much more than building relationships and getting people to like your firm. Widen your focus to how the firm deals with your customers from start to finish, well before your employees even enter the picture. Customers may hear through the grapevine that your company doesn’t deliver on time or that orders are always screwed up. How well will your “relationship” vision work now?
On the flip side if you throw out the “management guru” philosophies of getting in touch with your customers and first work on the processes that make the customer feel welcome from the get go, the relationship builds automatically. For example, your firm supplies industrial washers and dryers for hotels and institutions or you create video production tapes for corporate distribution. One sale is $75,000 a pop and the other is $5000-$10,000, yet they are very much the same. All day long 365 days a year you ship washer and dryers or create Quicklime, Real Windows, CD and VCR production. You’ve heard some news that some customers may be unhappy with the products you’ve been delivering and that the opinion in the market is that you don’t deliver as promised.
Would your first reaction be to start implementing a customer-relations-building initiative? Maybe you would even start to make phone calls to clients and ask them why they have been disappointed with the product. Both might be good ideas, but you’re already barking up the wrong tree. Customers don’t always know how your company works, so they can’t give valuable feedback on how to solve a problem. Also, just because you’ve made contact with a customer doesn’t mean that they will like you, it could mean that they now have an employee’s name to attach to their problem…that’s all.
A better approach is to build quality into your product/s. Customers walk away happy when everything happens correctly.
A customer’s individual experience with your firm means more to them than how much business you process in a year. Just because you ship 500 washers a year or 300 presentation tapes a year does not mean anything to the one person that is laying down the money to improve their business. The higher the ticket item, the more you have to remind yourself of this point. Perhaps many of your customers think for months, should they or shouldn’t they buy. The discussion is typically sealed when the buyer feels that parting with the money will give them a return of something more than what they spent. The washer may make them $37,000 net per year and the tape may bring them $100,000 worth of new business if all goes well. They want to feel as secure upon purchasing as they do on the day that their purchase arrives and for months after.
To do this start at the beginning. The sales people or the materials of the firm should show them the process. You sign and we start. Delivery is in 4 weeks. With everything in between defined. The check arrives and you send them an even more complete package to get them involved to the extent they want to be. For the washer, you help confirm they know layout and the tools needed for on-site delivery. For the tape firm you schedule a meeting with all the proper people and have an outline of how you can build a winning product.
Don’t ask the customer what they want!! Have a formula of questions that draws out what you need.
Make sure everyone is present and consider recording the sales call for future reference.
Throw in additional value. That could be a booklet about tools to increase productivity or to improve marketing.
Even to the very end you keep the process going as it is designed. Don’t deviate or cut corners if the process works. You may have given your pitch 2000 times, but the customer has only heard it once.
Get the entire company behind you. If you’re dealing with items that have options or customization, a production expert might walk the buyer through a few paces so that the customer feels that your team understands them. You want the process to win over the customer.
It’s like when you return to your hotel room after dinner and find a chocolate on your pillow. How happy do you feel just before you bit down on your treat? Hate to break it to you, but patrons in 1200 other rooms had a chocolate on their pillows, also. The staff didn’t select only you to get a special piece.
Again, this is not to downplay the relationship-building process, but to put it in perspective. You do a bad job, customers don’t return. If you build a process that builds relationships, customers feel excited to work with a firm that’s responsive and delivers products or services as ordered.
Why is it that when people hear about a corporate bankruptcy, they become authorities on how it could have been avoided? It’s always easy to say you know better than someone else. Especially when you’re parked safely on the sidelines or looking at the situation in hindsight. But do you really know what you would do if put in the same position?
There are a lot of reasons why companies get in financial trouble. Some firms die because they deserve it. They’re mismanaged or they have products that stink. Others are good companies that make one mistake and pay a hefty price. Perhaps they don’t adapt to a market change quickly enough. Or maybe they tried to grow too quickly and ran out of cash. With so many elements to juggle, pinning down the “why” is not always easy for the outsider to determine.
Spiegel filed Chapter 11 in 2003. Spiegel was started in 1865. It’s parent to Lifestyle, Eddie Bauer, and Newport News. Its first catalog was produced in 1905. In nearly 140 years, Spiegel managed to do a lot of things right. When it hit a rocky patch, Joe Blow from down the street knew he could have done better. Really?
Look at the photo-film industry. Kodak offers good quality products. It was kicked in the face with the K-Mart bankruptcy, but managed to sustain the blow. Over the past 5 years, Kodak has made major adjustments to its product line to insure future success. Fuji Photo Film was a heavy competitor on price. The growing use of digital cameras threatened all film companies. Yet Kodak and Fuji were operating while Polaroid filed for bankruptcy.
On the surface, it was easy to see that Polaroid wasn’t adapting to the changing market fast enough. It didn’t offer competitive products. It didn’t market as well as other leaders. But WHY did executives at Polaroid make the decisions that they did? WHY would they “white-knuckle” their niche of instant imaging when one-hour photo processing and digital cameras were eroding their market share? What was going on behind the scenes that ultimately forced Polaroid to file Chapter 11?
Enough about everyone else. Your time is better spent focusing on how you can avoid damaging mistakes. Here are some tips:
1. Be an information gatherer. Start internally and look outward. What are your key deliverables? Are you defining what you really do? For example, are you a trucking firm or in the business of logistics? Canon says they’re in optics. Kodak says they’re in “memories.” That’s a selling proposition, but what do they do? Learn markets, talk to experts, and then make up your own mind.
2. Improve your management skills. Quality. Think BASF: “We don’t make the products you use, we make the products you use better.” Improve yourself to keep pace. Take courses to learn new tools. Read books in addition to magazines and papers. Look at trends and where you’re weak. Focus on one or two areas and not 50. You’ll be stronger for it.
3. Envision a realistic destiny. Make sure the picture you paint is one you can truly believe in. Most executives, owners, and managers can’t do this. If you’re one of them, watch out. This is an area where you can’t be wishy washy. Know where you’re going before you set out on the trip.
4. Be the driver. You can collect data and insight from others, but the direction comes from you. Your role as a leader is to lead, not get “group think” to the point that your company is crippled. As you move forward, you’ll gain new knowledge that might steer you in slightly different directions. Flexibility and adaptability are good. But make sure that you’re leading, not reacting.
You can’t fix a firm from the sidelines no more than you can play a game from the bleachers. When you see what’s happening in the world around you, don’t waste your time on second-guessing. Take what you can as a lesson and focus on your own firm. What you learn will bring solutions and strategies. You and your firm will be stronger for it.
I’ve lived through so many good and bad business experiences, so you’d think I would find it more and more challenging to be surprised.
And yet, there’s a new “jack-in-the-box” always around the next corner. While visiting The Breakers, a 5-star resort in Florida, a bellman forgot to pack two pieces of my luggage in the trunk of the limo that transported me to the airport. Of course, I didn’t discover the oversight until I was being dropped off at the airport. The moment of realization was an unpleasant one, because the mistake meant that I would not make it home that evening. The direct result of the hotel. When I returned to spend another night, the hotel did not take responsibility for the error and still charged me for the evening. When another hotel patron overheard my situation at the front desk, she suggested a solution. She had to leave early and her room would be vacant for the night. Perhaps they could give her room to me since she’d paid for the night and couldn’t get a refund. The front desk would not hear of the change, and yet they said they would sell the room and charge for it should someone else request a room.
What a surprise since just a few hours earlier, as speaker at an event, I was considered a VIP at the hotel. You would think that a business with an upscale clientele and “brand” would have staff that would know how to offer superior customer service!
On the flip side, I did receive customer service when I arrived home–in this scenario, I was an “average Joe” buying a new TV from a large retail chain. You can’t get much more anonymous than that.
When I arrived home from Florida, I called Best Buy to find out about our TV on order. Sydney, the woman who answered the phone, not only remembered me from a couple of days earlier. She remembered my name. I would assume that Best Buy has quite a few calls in a given day and as a Sales Operator, there must be many responsibilities to handle. The fact remains….she remembered a 30-second call from the day before where I asked to be transferred to Sarah, another incredible employee. Sarah was not scheduled to work that day, so she took care of connecting me with the manager, Sydney. That’s it.
I was impressed that when I spoke with Sydney, she knew who I was by recognizing my VOICE, even before I had a chance to state my name!
Out of this world!
Funny, I’d never put Best Buy in the 5-star league and yet, they out performed The Breakers.
When you purchase a green car, is the car really green? Or is it just the engine? When I see a green car, I see a work in progress. Tires still use rubber and oil, and cast iron and metals come from metal fabrication. Fabrics and leathers, some which require formaldehyde and other chemicals in their production, are used. So green may not really be green. The perception is green, or at least GREENER.
Take the GE locomotive. Was GE trying to produce more efficient, lighter and more powerful products before the push for green? You bet. So then pushing harder is just a marketing tactic to suggest that Ecomagination is driving green.
I admit that the green movement has prompted more individuals to try harder to live, work, and produce in more ecologically-friendly ways. Awareness over the past few years has driven consumers to buy products from firms that have been working on creating sustainable products. And now you see how firms capitalize on the trend; when firms start moving to green, they promote and promote and promote themselves as going green.
Let’s say a wood manufacturer in the US switches from oil stains to water-base stains. The firm’s products are greener and can be promoted as more eco friendly than competitors’ products in the US, even though in Europe, using water-base stains is more common. (Apparently water-base stains are not typically as brilliant as oil.)
Attracting market share based on ecological awareness only works if green is “in,” and we’ve seen that with hybrid cars. Toyota says it took several years to sell 500,000 hybrid cars, yet once the green wave struck, it only took 2 years to sell the next 500,000. However, with economic challenges, Priuses are no longer in high demand; they are sitting on lots across the US only because a typical hybrid takes 3.5 years to make a return on the additional costs. When gasoline in the US averaged less than $2.00 per gallon, the payback was even longer. Toyota can smile again as gasoline prices rise.
So green might have a little more of a challenge to overcome if the product or service is pricier.
What this means is, go green, but don’t expect your buyers in a challanged economy to make the green choice as readily in the past. If you were to spend $100,000 going green, take 50% and change to green, and use the rest to increase productivity and reduce utility and labor costs. You might say that going green would then be a double benefit that will not only be green, but even more sustainable since the cost of going green comes in different forms.
I know someone who spent a good deal of his summer lounging by a pool, vacationing with friends, and overall just kicking back and enjoying life. Oh yeah, he was a manager, too. How did he have time to manage his employees and amass so much leisure time, too, you may ask. He didn’t. He chose hanging out over working hard, but he had a good reason.
As he explained to his superior, a regional manager for the firm, the “economy” was bad in the area. He was even generous enough with his time to take the regional manager, who was unfamiliar with the ins and outs of this particular city, on a joy ride through its worst slum…boarded up windows and gang-sign graffiti offered “proof” that the man with a tan couldn’t be blamed for his office’s poor sales.
The vast majority of the beautiful city was running quite smoothly, but the regional manager didn’t get that tour. He was shuffled straight to the airport before he got a sniff of the truth that his local subordinate opted to darken his tan rather than increase his office’s sales.
Yes, I realize the economy has hit most of us in one way or another. Some of us have gotten pummeled worse than others, too. And while sales have taken a hit in many industries, I hope that you’re able to separate reality from perception.
Be careful not to discount your ability to perform on the job because the economy is suffering. There have always been and will always be those who bend with the times and create opportunity.
Also, be fair with yourself. The same assets you brought to your job are those that can help you now. Don’t forget that you have those strengths and you might just need to change your perception of reality to begin to utilize those strengths today.
Companies like ebay and Amazon.com have to adjust to the economy and the current market conditions to continue to realize healthy profits; and adjust is what they do. So where are you adjusting what you do to continue to thrive in today’s business environment?
It’s not just about persistence it’s about changing tactics to bring in new business.
On the program Hell’s Kitchen, the restaurant undergoing a business makeover gave away food as a way to announce the reopening of the restaurant. Their marketing tactic was successful, and the next day the restaurant was full.
If you suspect that the economy has become your crutch, toss it aside and take responsibility to walk on your own two feet again. Adjust strategy and tactics, get creative with marketing and sales, and find ways to revive assets that have been nearly dormant since the downturn started.
Someone’s always doing well…it might as well be you.
When thinking about disaster recovery, you want to develop a plan so that in the event that everything goes haywire, your organization can be back up and running as soon as possible…that is, if there are no more disasters.
The management team of a company executed a practice run of disaster recovery plan. But the process ran into a couple of snags. First, the assistant to the man who was supposed to execute the practice run was informed on his way to the office that his brother-in-law died. Then the two back-up personnel, leaving from two different airports, each ran into 3-hour delays.
In essence, the key people running the disaster-recovery plan ran into disasters of their own.
Consider how during the last big disasters, 9-11 and New Orleans, transportation and telecommunications shut down. Those obstacles were tough enough to work around. Now add in the human element including that some team members will not wait around to save your company’s neck. They might want to be home taking care of family or heading for the hills.
This means that you want to automate the process as much as possible and not leave the success of the program in human hands; human interaction should be reduced, even eliminated so that what needs to be done can be done with the greatest probability of success.
It’s not nice to think of disasters occuring on such grand scale, but during the execution of most true disaster plans, the ripple effect of a flaw in the design can prove to be more challenging to deal with than those designing the backups are capable of solving.
Last year after knee surgery my orthopedic surgeon suggested I try biking as a recovery exercise. I reluctantly tried a short ride around my home and after a few weeks I found I was hooked. I valued the time I had alone riding out doors on some back country roads. The entire experience was something I looked forward to doing so much, that I was riding an off-road bike, on the road, on some very very hilly roads, over 20 miles per day.
At one point, my wife and business partner, Lorrie, suggested I pick up a “real road bike”. After reviewing some bikes online, I ended up falling in love with one bike after another, until I ended up “making a commitment to” a hand-made bike created out of Spain called an Orbea Orca. It has a carbon fiber frame that suits winners of the Tour de France.
My “Love” carried a hefty sticker price for a casual biker like myself. I would need to find a handsome discount to justify the purchase.
As the season was winding to an end, I started to look online and I found retailers selling the bike on ebay, some used, some new. Since I’m around 6′2″, I needed a bike around 57 cm, the limiting factor for me, and I searched for the bike I thought would give me a great ride.
I looked for weeks knowing that deals on previously-owned bikes would be pretty good, and thought I might even score a great deal on a new bike since a 2008 would still be a 2008 to a retailer in 2009.
Then I found the bike in the color and the shape I wanted from a racer that had fallen on a bike partially through the season and only used his new bike for about 2 months. His asking price was less than half the price and with every single component I wanted.
Since that time, when I look for any item on ebay, my drop-down menu lists the Orbea Orca 57 cm, and I often just take a scan of the product that’s being sold. Since I’ve purchased my bike, I’ve seen only two bikes that were starting at $3500, and all others that were being sold near list price. I felt like I was lucky and smart to purchase when I did.
This same situation is happening for businesses in need of newer technologies.
If you’ve laid off employees this past year, you’re going to be hard pressed to rehire before you offer your current employees overtime or you look for ways to improve productivity through processes or technology.
This means you’ve got to start looking at firms that are either discounting their products or better yet, companies going out of business. A sustainable furniture company that purchases furniture from businesses to resell just purchased the furniture once belonging to a lobbying company in Washington DC, and picked up 150 Herman Miller $1400 chairs for mostly likely pennies on the dollar.
One suggestion I have to firms is to start looking for bankruptcies or firms that need to unload some of their equipment or hardware. They may need to dump what you may need to acquire to increase productivity. With cheap airfare and hotels rates, you can do this relatively inexpensively.
If you’re looking to wait, and it’s a balancing act, remember that at some point if the firm is still in business they’d feel that selling their items is not worth the price just as I believe as the economy eroded bikers said, “I’ll just keep my bike a few more years.” That decision ultimately halts supply.
Don’t wait too long or at least don’t stop looking, because if you could pick up $500,000 worth of tools for 10 cents on the dollar or $50,000. Then you’ll be prepared now and as business booms once again.
If you’ve ever done any weightlifting, you know that the typical progression flows like this…your endurance and strength improves as you continue to lift more and more weight week after week. Your first week’s 10-pound weights are replaced by your second week’s 15-pounders, and by week five, you’re pumping 25 pounds or more. If the progression continued, you’d eventually lift 700 pounds, but of course, that doesn’t happen. At some point, your ability to increase the pounds you lift maxes out.
If your goal is to get in shape and improve health, that’s no problem. But if you’re working out hoping to transport appliances or tow vehicles, you realize pretty darn quickly that you’re going to need some outside assistance, such as a lever, lift, crane or hydraulics, if you’re going to achieve substantial gains.
The same holds true in business and organizations.
Before you get all gung ho about new initiatives, run a common sense assessment of your organization’s assets to see if everyone has what they need to reach those lofty goals.
Arm your staff with the tools employees need to be successful.
Groups often make the mistake of believing that just by working together (and especially if they have a successful track record of having worked together in the past), they can solve challenges, take advantage of opportunities, and achieve success. However, just as the well-intentioned and disciplined weight lifter eventually hits a ceiling, your team might need some fresh supplies to soar to new heights.
The areas I’m talking about are new knowledge. new technologies, fresh sets of eyes, new approaches to strategy and tactics, and reformulated group dynamics. Without them, you can still grow and possibly do quite well. But if you want to make significant jumps or differences, you have to consider some upgrades.
Upgrades are not just for computers. People need upgrades, too.
You’ll find some answers by asking yourself and then your staff questions along these lines:
What technological upgrades, such as software programs, do you think would make your job easier, would enable you to make fewer mistakes, would empower you to do your job more independently, and would assist you in providing superior customer service?
What common problems seem to continually appear that you think a new system, standard procedure, piece of equipment, etc. would prevent, solve, or eliminate altogether?
What relationships–with vendors, customers, complementary businesses/organizations–could be strengthened or developed to make our organization more competitive in the marketplace?
You can also uncover weaknesses that hinder growth and development by surveying the customers you service, the vendors you buy from, the partnerships you’ve developed, and the staff you employ from the top management team to the front line.
Your role is to maximize the potential of your organization’s assets.
When leading your team, be on the lookout for weaknesses and keep filling the gaps in order to maximize potential and enable your people to make significant gains.
If you know me, you know that I’m all about developing the right strategy up front before doing anything else. What you might not know is that I’m also realistic about opportunity, and it’s important for any decision maker to understand that good things come from calculated strategy and sometimes also randomly. However, the random part of the equation is still controllable. If you’re in management, you need to put yourself in environments and situations that enable you to develop opportunities to grow and develop your organization.
I’m going to show you how to get in front of the right people, but first let’s quickly learn the three scenarios that often hinder business growth.
1. The management team has become so focused on internal roles that they’ve forgotten that a major function of management is to be out in the field creating partnerships, looking for opportunities, developing new products/services and selling the business.
2. The management team is in the field too much, and they forget the business causing the business to have trouble getting business done. It may be that too much golf or too much selling steers the “ship” off course.
3. Management has just forgotten how the business was first built and the power they have over making business growth and transformation work.
Often you can make a great impact by taking small steps that build your business…even without much effort.
One of the most common comments made to me in our consulting work is that is that if “I” just got out “there,” “I” could grow this firm at a phenomenal pace. So do it. Getting out, getting visible, and making contact with others doesn’t have to be a monumental drain of energy.
Let me show you how easy it is if you just become active.
I think I slept most of the flight down to Florida as the gentleman next to me worked diligently on a set of presentation slides and confidential papers. I knew this because as I rolled side to side every so often I’d open my eyes and see him continually turning page after page and scanning pieces of materials.
About two hours into the flight, I had about enough rest. I asked the flight attendant for some water and then turned to the gentleman next to me as if to offer USAir’s services.
Immediately after the attendant walked away, I asked him what he did for a living, and we struck up as small conversation about the management of nuclear reactors and how safe and efficient they are as a utility.
We discussed how his firm was one of the largest management firms in the world and how long it would take for the US to convert to new facilities and catch up with the rest of the world.
The man I met quite randomly was Michael Wallace, President of the Constellation Generation Group, part of Constellation Energy.
Its website defined Constellation as management company that, “Owns and operates a national fleet of generating plants and fuel processing facilities diversified by fuel, geographic location, and technology. [Their] balanced portfolio includes nuclear, coal, natural gas, oil, and renewable and alternative fuels that include solar, geothermal, hydro and biomass.”
Now the name may not be familiar to you; I know it wasn’t to me at the time. We talked for some time and near the end of the flight, Michael and I exchanged cards and agreed to talk at a future date.
This part of the story alone is an example of opportunities all around you if you open your eyes. Yet there’s more…
The next day I opened up the newspaper and was stunned by its lead article. FPL Group a Florida company plans to acquire Constellation Energy for $11 Billion US. Constellation is the owner of Nine Mile Point and and this deal would generate the United States’ largest power-generating company and the third largest nuclear operator company.
My meeting with Michael on the plane happened in January 2006, and the deal was expected to be closed in the fourth quarter of that same year after approvals by state and federal agencies along with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Michael Wallace is my target market. Should I need to interview an executive for a book or article, should he need a consultant to help with a project or challenge, a contact like this could become a win/win for both parties.
Lorrie has joked that if ever business started going down hill, she’d put me on a series of planes so I’d come back with business.
For the executive, getting out and meeting people is mandatory for the way we do business today.
Here are 3 points to remember.
1. Executives that get out in the field can open up doors faster than any other person in the firm. Bill Marriott closed a deal worth several million per year for the long beach facilities after he heard that Jeff Neeleman from Jet Blue was looking to use a competitor. He made the call and the deal was closed.
2. Executives that work the room and work the business can offer solutions that others in the firm may not have the knowledge on hand to do. I once worked with an executive that turned to a prospect and said, “It’s under wraps right now that we are expanding our facility in the coming year. We will be ready to take on your business and would be willing to work a deal to bring you on board early.”
3. Executives have history that others don’t have. Let’s say a big volume prospect is teetering. Those with history can tell stories of how there were successful in the past that others in the firm may not know. While working with a Texas firm on strategy, the key management team was amazed to hear how often the two founders, who saw the “whole picture” more often than anybody else, had one success story after another that no one else knew.
4. Executives have power just in their title. Picture meeting the CEO of any company and you already see a decision maker. On the flip side, when an executive is out working with clients, prospects and employees transform business change more rapidly just because of the role the executive plays in the organization.
When all is said and done, business growth AND development happens both strategically and randomly. You need to be ready to seize opportunities in both ways to insure that your goals are met. Seldom do I hear from successful company executives, “I need to spend more time behind my desk and less time developing business.” I do hear the opposite almost every time a business is in the decline.
Arepo eht fo Motnahp is the answer…spelled backwards. Thought I would make it a little tougher to figure out what is the answer just in case you looked.
The reason for the test is to see what you’re perception is of reality and how often without data, decisions that appear to be winners are not. Just because intuition or outside references such as media impact what you think, there’s still something said about knowing the truth.
What’s the truth about your finances; are you really doing well? Do you get stats weekly, monthly, or yearly that insure you’re on target, or are you slightly behind the information curve? Do you have a digital dashboard that gives you specific information that can guide your next decision or are you winging it? BTW a digital dashboard is a quick summary of what’s going on in your organization. It might be revenue, profits, inventory turns, number of new accounts, number of sales calls, leads, production numbers, etc. It includes anything that is relevant to you getting a snapshot of reality.
A funny thing happens when the numbers are in front of you, and you take them seriously. Low numbers often make people react by thinking about improving the position. Good numbers confirm you’re on target. Great numbers allow you to think beyond expectations and that you can do more. (Of course, your personality factors into the equation, too.)
I know for me the numbers push me at whatever level. I always want to do a better job and each set of numbers makes me think about the future.
A business woman I met named Tiffany told me that her business is doing well despite the economy due to both location and product offering. The only problem Tiffany has is that her marketing manager hasn’t for years performed up to expectation.
At one point, Tiffany started looking for a replacement over a year ago when the economy was bustling. However, she found that hiring some one with the talent she wanted would mean paying anywhere from $80,000 to $120,000 more than she could afford.
Now that the economy has changed, her marketing manager stands out like a sore thumb and Tiffany’s patience has run thin. Her challenge is how does she make the change without spooking the employee or even others within her organization?
Here’s an approach you might use.
Set up a phone line directly to your home or to a separate cell phone number where you can receive calls without anyone in the organization knowing what you’re doing. Then set up an email account that’s not connected with the company. This could be a gmail, yahoo, or earthlink account. Then start marketing in online sites. In 2009, you can expect people of high caliber to be searching all sources for a job.
*You also could act like a head hunter and call someone at a competitor since you really don’t know what’s going on in their business and they might be falling on tough times.
In the ad, forward all information to these private contact points so you have a buffer where you can review resume’s or screen calls without announcing it to your staff. Once the desired talent is found, do a simple phone interview to start to weed out those marketing more than they really possess and schedule an introductory phone interview. I always love phone interviews as a start, because you’re less limited by looks and can focus first on qualifications.
Next set up a meeting at a restaurant to discuss what you’re offering. The distance allows you to see how the individual works in an open setting. I personally hate when people don’t say please or thank you to restaurant staff. The way one treats their waiter is often a great indicator of how they’ll treat subordinate staff within your organization. If they’re not respectful during your restaurant meeting, take their actions seriously into consideration.
Then finally, when you’ve closed in on your decision to hire, you can introduce the prospective employee to your organization.
This is not unlike how a head hunter might work. They check out prospects, notify someone discretely, arrange a private meeting, and then announce the recruit.
The upside for people who want to hire new talent during this economy is that there are smart, talented people out there who have been displaced and need work. They’re more willing to work for a reduced pay just to get the paycheck. Now’s the time to swap out your non produces in this hirers’ market.
There were two feet of snow on the ground in Syracuse last February, and the last thing I expected was to be visited by a local painter. This is typically a sale done in the fall or in the spring as home owners inspect their weather-beaten homes.
Not the case for College Pro Painters. An area supervisor stopped by to ask me if I would like a quote. Really. A quote in February. At first I was shocked and then amazed. So much so that I said sure, give me a price.
As you’d expect he immediately went into the pitch, I’ll send someone out to talk with you. I cut him off to say, “You guys can come and look at the house from the outside. You don’t need to see me to put together a quote. So when you are ready, call me and we’ll set something up.”
He handed me a hang tag and was on his way. For days after this experience I kept thinking College Pro. With so many consumers being concerned about just covering their mortgage payments, I would think that painting the exterior of the home is probably not even on the to-do list for many families, this summer. However, I have to believe that College Pro Painters’ jump on the competition helped them secure extra jobs in a market that offers slimmer pickings than the norm.
The next day, I experienced a similar sales push from someone in the document services industry, Avalon Document Services. A package arrived at my office. Along with my completed copy-service order, I received a dozen cookies and a hand-written letter outlining additional services that this regional copy center offers. The rep, Danielle, took the time to write the letter in her own hand instead of constructing the letter on her computer. Even if only a handful of customers say, “Huh, I didn’t know they did that,” and purchased additional services, think of how much money Danielle might have earned for her firm by making the extra personalized effort.
Here were two firms pounding the street to stand out and to secure business.
Bonuses must have an upside and a downside. Do a great job and win big enough to make you stay with the firm. Do a poor job and the bonus and salary structure should reinforce either changing jobs or rethinking/retooling your career. Easier said than done.
In the case of publicly-traded firms in the financial sector, all that was created was an upside. Sell and makes millions, even if what you sell is detrimental to the firm.
Get this. The APTA wants donations to help promote scholarships in the industry.
The American Public Transportation Foundation
Please “champion” the effort to ensure the future of our industry!
Dear Colleague:
We face a critical shortage of skilled and seasoned employees as thousands of workers from the “Baby boom” generation near retirement. We need to provide incentives to attract the best of the best of our emerging talent. Your 2009 Champion gift will help achieve that goal, which in turn will helpus plan for a healthy, vibrant workforce. As you know, The American Public Transportation Foundation provides scholarships for young professionals pursuing careers in public transportation. Your support will make our industry stand out from all the others. Our goal this month is to raise $5000.
….and yet when it comes to making our public transportation system stronger, they have been lacking in leadership. Industry leaders are no closer to improving the transportation system then they were years ago.
Here is a sampling of what I recommended to the industry at a keynote to APTA’s executives.
US public transportation needs four factors to achieve 10+ % ridership:
1. Universal payment system. (You should be able to use your card in NYC, San Francisco and Atlanta and your own community as a universal pass.) This little switch would enable users to keep only one card in their pocket and most likely try another service around the country.
2. Connectivity of community public transportation systems with other communities (County roads, bridges and infrastructures, link to the next infrastructure. The same is necessary in order to increase ridership. Currently the systems do not connect.) Currently you can’t travel from Seattle to San Diego or Atlanta to Boston without jumping to an Amtrak or another service. It’s like building a bridge only half way and then stopping in the middle of the gorge.
3. Singular transportation guides throughout the system. (There needs to be one universal travel guide so that like airline travel, no one needs to relearn how to use a system.) I know I personally dread trying to figure out the maps in each city. Airlines have one system and so should the public transportation sector.
4. Transportation authorities need to be established. (Today, road and mass transit are at odds over how to use funding. With a transit authority the objective of the organization is to serve the public transportation needs in the best manner possible.) Right now the road and highway industry is 10x more powerful than all the other services so when it comes to funding. They get 90% of the pie even if it’s not the best use of the money to move people in that region. 5. Lastly, the future of public transportation will never improve until the industry moves from viewing that there are two types of users to three. Currently there exists the lingo that there are people with CHOICE and those Without Choice. With choice means they can use alternative forms of transportation, however, if gas goes up $1 per gallon, they might move into the Without Choice category. Obviously these users have only one method to get to work, shopping, visiting the doctor, etc. The group I suggested the industry see in the future is the group with MEANS. These are the people who earn $1 million per year and use the NYC Metro to get to work in the morning. These are the people with political clout and financial capital who would insure that NYC never closes the metro system.
What this means to the industry is “density” must be defined differently. They may get 50 people on the train in a low-income neighborhood and 17 people from the high-income community. The difference is the high-income travelers will make sure that there is a system at all for two reasons. They will be aware of the product AND it’s self serving. Their kids use it every day. (For those that don’t know, the industry looks for density of population to determine service development.)
Courtesy of Vincent Callebaut Architecture in Paris are renditions of future living communities to be potentially built in Dubai. These “Lilypad” cities rise and fall with the tides. Interesting considering that experts estimate that water levels will sink coastal land.
The cities will be self sufficient, generate their own power from sun, water and wind while producing zero emissions. Each city will house 50,000 people, have gardens, walkways, and streets. Water will be caught in central lakes and then filtered.
Estimated completion date…..at least 90 years from now. If global warming does raise water levels we may see them sooner than we expect.
Here’s a great pictorial definition of Social Networking.
I post this because in it’s simplest form. This scenario works when everyone is somehow connected to someone. For example, a decision maker from a company called me asking that I present to 800 people. After some discussion, the two of us found that we had a connection to each other. The speaker who she hired last year is someone that I was working on a book with. What a coincidence.
On the flip side I have a problem with some of these social networking sites. They require work. I remember, not too long ago when I just had to keep track of my Facebook site. Now I have linkedin, ecademy, and more….it tires me to even write them all.
Each networking site offers the next best way to do business. Each one tries to make me open up my database to show connectivity. I have over 11,000 names in the database, and I bet, just like you, I don’t want to intrude on my friends and colleagues.
Besides, how many social networking sites are worth their time. Facebook connects me with a specific group of people and some social sites I’ve developed, such as a ning site for my NYU students (200+ members at this point).
Given that social networking is only a few years old, what will happen when we’ve accepted to be a part of twenty such networks? How can one manage all this and a have a life, too?
I personally believe that the entire model must change and will change for two reasons. One, there’s going to be an overkill point where too many social networks end up diluting the effectiveness of the entire group to a point where the time is not worth the effort. Second, people will start to be resentful of the endless solicitations: asking for input, to purchase services, to be connected. (I’ve not been able to turn off my FastPitchNetworking.com solicitations even though I don’t want to remove my name from the site….eventually I may have to.)
In the end, I like social networking in that the process links like-minded people with like-minded people. If you like doing needlepoint with one hand tied behind your back and only on Thursdays, great. There are others like you. Just remember, there’s only so much, in today’s technology, where being social is digital. Don’t forget to unplug and socialize with your friends down the street in person. Or, hop on a plane to visit one of your friends. Social networking is just a part of the “social” side that humans need.
In the post-internet boom, the world witnessed a transformation of working arrangements. Foreign employees of firms such as IBM were laid off only to find themselves returning back to their home counties to live once again. When business volume increased, employees who were still working knew that they had a friend who used to be in the business who now lived overseas. Given the cost of living difference, the past employee said, I’ll do the work in my home country and charge you a different rate. Due to the connective digital lines under the ocean, the work could be easily completed.
We’re now seeing a similar condition, only the employees who are either being asked to work from home or are being laid off live down the street. Just picture a similar scenario happening all over again, however slightly differently. Firms such as Nissan Motors are asking employees to work from home because their physical building is too costly to operate. With advancements in video, audio and virtual private networks, the same individual no longer will have a tangible office to return to. They are now part of the virtual workforce.
Those laid off will face a similar scenario to the post-internet boom. “Carol has been laid off and already knows our business. No need to re-hire her. Let’s see if she will do this job as a part-time, outsourced employee?” With the rise in unemployment rates and the likelihood that many people will be out of work for a long stretch of time, employees like Carol might jump at the chance to earn income once again, even as a part-timer home-based employee, forever changing working relationships and conditions.
The outsourced and virtual company is no more than a decade away. Add some holographic meeting space, and we’re going to see this type of dispersed work structure as more common, because of the recession…depression.
As the global recession spreads, so, too, will more decision makers move employees from physical offices into virtual work-at-home offices. The trend will mimic that of the post-internet boom in the early 2000’s.
A friend of mine sent this video to me. I thought is was both well done and interesting. I don’t believe everything the actor says, but many of the points he addresses are well said.
Watch the video with three thoughts in mind.
The /actor/presenter is in character making the entire point even stronger. Had he been wearing a suit or holding a beer what perceptions might you have had about the message? (When you’re presenting, are you this believable?)
The information delivered displays that the author has done some research or is aware of history.
The author does not only have beliefs but also offers solutions. It is this information that gets people thinking.
There is a call to action. One so simple that it’s hard to ignore yet most will not take action. This is the challenge all leaders have: to convert ideas to action. Sometimes asking for more will generate more activity than making a task so simple it will be ignored.
In many countries the will of the people is the reason that government acts out of fear of protest or accountability.
July 15, 2008
TODAY IN MANUFACTURING.NET “GM ANNOUNCES MAJOR SHAKEUP — Automaker will lay off salaried workers, cut truck production, suspend its dividend and borrow $2 billion to $3 billion to weather a severe downturn in the U.S. market.”
That was last year, and what I had to say about it then–see below – written July 2008–is even more relevant today.
To me, while Honda and Toyota appear to be selling cars, GM, Chrysler and Ford continually make announcements about restructuring, slow sales volume, economic challenges. In all these reports I fail to see anyone taking responsibility for being globally blind.
Or should I say American Blind. Blind to the truth that while the Detroit Three were ramping up large truck sales the rest of the world sees a much different picture. China and India with over 2+ billion people are on the verge of the transportation age where individuals could purchase cars as a middle class. Gas in all countries except the US, even prior to the rise in fuel costs, was significantly higher than the US. And while Americans were doing well, there should be a transition in the next decade to smaller vehicles just because those having children will be empty nesters along with a very large senior population. Mind you small is relative as American most likely will opt for a “larger” smaller vehicle.
All these signs, as powerful as they are to everyone today, should have been seen by those in management of the automakers.
Toyota saw the writing on the wall when they, over 10 years ago, committed to producing fuel efficient cars. Toyota, understood this as they announced one of the cheapest cars on the planet realizing that even though India and China are growing, the vast majority of the people who live on this planet still don’t own cars AND that the cars they will be able to afford will be smaller. TATA, an Indian firm, has been working on the introduction of a $2000 vehicle to target this market along with other developing markets.
Think Africa, think Malaysia, think Pakistan….
Even the poorest WORKING Americans earn more than 90% of the world’s population. I’ve heard numbers that if you earn over $20,000 US you are in the top 3% of the world so now picture car purchases in the near future.
The point to all this is that we’ve been a global world for a long time, not just in recent years. The ability to see beyond the four walls of the US should be on the minds of everyone who is Paid to Think™ in the US. Thinking about how in the near future, the inter-connectivity will exacerbate economic decisions. That those who still believe that by sticking one’s head in the ground or those who’s perceptions of others with different color skin and different beliefs are beneath themselves, so much so that their ignorance or lack of vision, will ultimately cause create bad decisions and eventually create other Big Threes.
There is a land of opportunity, just don’t be blind to the global possibilities.
My wife, Lorrie, just shared with me a story that I think is not only humorous but valuable.
When our sons shower, they leave the bathroom as if a hurricane’s ocean waves had hit the floor. Today, Lorrie asked both boys, “What happens in here when you guys take a shower that causes the floor to get so wet?”
“Well…I have to walk across the floor to get my towel, ” one replied.
She then pointed to a towel hook right next to the curtain and said, “That’s what this hook is for: to hang your towel when you’re showering.”
The other brother asks, “Why didn’t anyone tell us?”
Just imagine Lorrie’s thoughts as she hears this statement. There are TWO towel hooks near the shower, one on the left side and one on the right. Both are so close to the shower that you ASSUME one can’t miss them.
Although the function of the hooks were seemingly obvious to us, since we came up with the ideas and installed the hooks, they were “invisible” to our sons.
And there’s no difference in business. Just because you gave someone Microsoft Access, a CRM program or WORD, does it mean they know how to use the tool or even notice that the tool is available to them. If you conjecture that software programs are by nature more complicated, then think of the little things you’ve done to make the world easier, and they, too, are not used– such as the salt near the door, the form for recording a process. Just because you’ve built it does not mean they even know it exists.
So next time you see “water on the floor,” take the time to find out what’s happening before you pass judgment.
I hate to say it, but in a given day I see more bad things happen than good things. For example, a sheet metal manufacturer that received my call because of a referral, who definitely has the facilities to do the work, just told me that my order, which he’s had in his hands for 5 days, has not been written up or placed in the system yet.
“We’ve just been busy working on a backlog of business.”
DON”T TELL ME THIS!!!
This guy worked hard to get the business. He spent time on the phone reviewing the project, worked up a quote, then reworked the quote to meet specific metal-cutting needs, then didn’t put the order in.
He could have easily said, “We have your order and we have a two-week production schedule. Does that work for you?” Or, “Your order did not specify a date you needed the order; is there a date you required the product?”
Give me something that sounds like the order is in house. In the computer or not, I now feel like our order is taking second fiddle, and yet I have no rush for the order. One week, two or three is fine with me.
Given the lack of urgency he’s displayed about my business, I won’t refer other business to this vendor. I might tell two or three others about my experience and caution them about how their project won’t be completed in a timely manner.
I’ve said this many times. “Firms lose more business out their back door than their front door.”
And all this is solvable. Paper, email or verbal orders are input within 24 hours of processing with an email confirmation of the delivery date. If no date is specified, manufacturing scheduling software that takes into consideration time and materials as well as other projects in house AND profitability creates a manufacturing date.
Any costs associated with installing a new methodology could probably be paid for with an extra order or two from a happy customer or a referral from a happy customer…which I am not!
When our kids were 4 and 5 years old, they went through a brief stage where they would argue over whose turn it was to select and watch the program airing on the family-room TV. Since we limited television time overall, we wanted to come up with a fair solution that took us parents out of the equation and allowed the kids to solve their own problem. So I created a tool to empower them to do just that. It was a daily chart reaching out over 6 months at a time. The chart would work in 30-minute intervals and the kids alternated days. They used to define who had control over the TV by their half-hour mark.
We also set up a few rules. Your time is your time. If you swap your times and you end up with a conflict, we will adhere to the chart to solve the challenge.
The results were amazing. No more arguments at all. None. They managed themselves. If you’ve got a busy household, systems and structure can rapidly create new time, harmony and balance.
Using charts, schedules, technology, and standard procedures, you can erase conflicts within your organization and provide the tools to empower your staff to work through their own challenges.
The head manager of the DSW store located at Union Square in NYC has a tough challenge. Her store is located in the heart of the fashion capital of the world and smack in the middle of a busy part of town. Her job is to sell value products while at the same time being hip. This is a double-edged sword.
She recently told me that last year, the buyers were off. They missed the trend and everyone was looking for a certain style. DSW does not always worry about the brand if at least they have an alternative in a particular style.
This year, the buyers hit the nail on the head when they purchased some wide-calf boots. The result: the boots were their number-one seller.
I can tell you from experience that the calf circumference of boots being sold is often too small for the majority of women who want to purchase knee-high boots. By opting to carry wide-calf boots for shoppers, this DSW store offered style and captured the current trend, too.
Yeah, everyone knows you need the “right people on the bus” and anyone who doesn’t should not be in a leadership role. The challenge with the statement is not getting the right people but more so, how to find the right people and to make the group work after selected.
A few pointers.
1. Hiring interviews should consist of a multi-step process, especially the higher your selection choice is within the firm.
2. Don’t only check references, check to see if they are winners in a myriad of environments. Multiple winners have a tendency to win over and over again and a single winner is like a one-song wonder. The candidate that has only one win should be observed to see if they have the capacity to win again or was it the environment and timing that made it happen.
3. The hire is only a fraction of the success of those “on the bus.” What’s more important is, do you have the mechanisms in place to help this person win. Do your business model, tools, and systems and structure give the new hire a high chance of success? If the candidate worked at a large company with supportive services where when they turned around in their seat and IT was there along with engineering, logistics, HR and other services, the same type of environment may be necessary for them to win again. Make sure that you deliver the other 75%.
4. To insure success, automate the mundane tasks and hire for intellect. The mundane takes away from the ability to THINK and often leads to fire fighting.
5. For those hired for management, make sure you understand their thinking process given that the person is being PAID TO THINK. Don’t just see what they’ve accomplished. Strive to understand their thinking so you can determine if they really have the smarts to make what you want achieved a reality. They must be able to work in a virtual world.
6. Make sure to kick people off the bus when they are not working out. Everyone says they do, but look around you. Are there still under performers working in your office? I rest my case.
7. Last, make sure your bus is going in the right direction. In the book Good to Great, 7 of the 11 companies in the book fell from grace within only a few years of the book being published. The conclusion was the bus driver and those on the bus crashed.
I received a phone call from a rep from Callbox Sales and marketing an international firm offering sales solutions. I took the call, spent 10 minutes on the phone, and scheduled a meeting for 2PM EST.
A positive sign for the employee from CallBox.
Within 2 hours an email confirmation arrived.
Hi
I hope everything is going well. I just would like to confirm your
appointment with our Senior Account Executive. She/He will call you on 13th
of March, 2009 at 2:00PM EST for a more thorough discussion about our
services and rates for your company.
At 2:30 in the afternoon, NOT 2:00, the Senior Account Executive called and without skipping a beat started into the sale asking me about how I can use the services. I reminded her that the call was for 2:00 and informed her that I had started another project since I did not hear from her.
She hesitated and replied, “Well, I was on another line and just finished.”
This from a company that focuses on making outbound telemarketing calls for companies to generate revenue. Do they not see the connection as to their performance and my perception of the business?
This to me is a sales issue; someone could have called. It’s also an operational issue; the mechanism was not in place for a call center company to miss a call.
A Director at Siemens, one of the few windmill manufacturers in the world that supplies those huge 144-foot fins unused on large-scale wind farms, recently told me that just as the finishing touches on a manufacturing plant were completed, their sales blew through the roof so much so that they already had overgrown the facility.
My first thought was is this connected to the problems related with India’s Suzion Energy’s troubles with stress fractures. One of Suzion’s several customers, Edison Mission Energy, has had stress fractures. In Edison’s case, over 1251 blades were recalled. If consider how the blades are 144 feet long and must be hoisted over two hundred feet in the air to be installed or removed, you can imagine that this is a costly problem for both manufacturer and customer.
The end result would be, since this is public news, that other prospects would most likely choose another vendor and contracts for production would be canceled. Add to this the down time associated with such a fiasco since no energy is being produced.
So I asked, “Was this related to the blade recalls from the Indian company?” He hadn’t heard anything about the troubled firm.
My thoughts are simple on this. Part of the role of management is to be aware of key issues related to your industry, markets or future.
In this case, this Director was not responsible for marketing, sales, or engineering, but he was responsible for Asset Management. His role is to search for or build new facilities to meet corporate initiatives. As part of his portfolio he might have 200 real estate assets he’s managing besides building new facilities. So it would be easy to say, he’s only responsible for the physical asset. And if he does this right, he’s done his job.
People who are Enterprise Thinkers and are Paid to Think, think beyond the normal and realize they must at least be aware of any happenings that pertain to their job and beyond, as well as what might impact their future. They see the 50,000 foot view and realize they are not hired to just build a plant but to build a plant that takes advantage of today’s business and the firm’s future.
In this case, when a major supplier has a recall, you’ve got to bet that other customers could be canceling orders and shifting suppliers, which is exactly what happened.
Here are a few ways he could be “Aware.”
Set up a Google Alert for the industry key words. I for example have the words “Paid to Think,” “Enterprise Thinking” and a host of other topics or phrases I’d like to get reports on regularly.
Another source is to subscribe to industry publications that would highlight such issues. In this case, this was a multi-million dollar facility that casts fins with fiberglass, balsa wood, and a binder. Yes, I too was surprised to find the balsa wood is in the fins.
Lastly, for a few dollars a month, he could hire researchers to keep him posted on any topics related to this project. There are PhDs in India, China, Ukraine, and Argentina that will work for very little as a resource.
Just being aware of what’s happening could easily have changed the future of Siemens’ project plants; even if they made the decision not to do anything, this would have been a result of being informed.
I was sitting next to a woman who complained that her friend, who was seated in front of us, never replies to her emails. I told her the solution was easy. Surprised she asked how could she get her friend to reply.
I said, stop sending her long emails. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the receiver shaking her head in agreement, and I never saw one email.
The rationale was simple. Short emails are more likely to get replied to than long emails because short emails set the stage for short replies. Long emails place a burden on the other person, especially if their contents are personal.
So picture a family environment. You send a long email about your entire week and the recipient feels obligated to reply back with some history of their life. They put the reply aside for later. Later becomes more than later and the reply is never going to happen.
Now sometimes you may want to send a long email and still want a reply. If so, at the end, do one of the following.
1. Say at the end, no need for a long reply…. just need the date and time of arrival.
2. No need to reply. This lessens the pressure of obligation and encourages others to send a simple reply.
3. Ask them to reply to the following items….I need the following three items.
By removing the burden, you give the recipient a way out. Realize that just because you wanted to type a disertation does not mean the other person has the time nor the desire. Besides, if you told them that your business is up 300%, your kids just got into Harvard, and you won the Nobel Prize, they might feel like what they say would be trivial and it would be best to trash the email.
The owner of an online business told me about his desire to create a “one-stop-shop” experience for visitors. The trouble with one-stop shopping is that the terminology-concept was derived out of the brick-and-mortar model, and as the web expands, one-stop shopping no longer applies as a singular consumer winner.
Say you want to purchase a few items for your living room. During your search you never leave your chair. The only quandary you have is are you willing to pay three different shipping fees from three different locations. If you could merge them to create one shipping fee, then most likely you would. If you can’t, then you have to make the choice if the shipping is worth the purchase. You might even try to find alternative sources that have a reduced rate to make up the difference.
The value in “one-stop shopping” still has a value, but it’s limited compared to a purchase from a brick-and-mortar establishment.
The same experience BI (before internet) involved driving from one location to another and then often back again. Often a few purchases could take hours. Then came the big boxes: Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Lowes, Target. These stores try to be one stop shops on a mega level saving the buyer driving time and providing discounted pricing through economies of scale.
This is where one-stop shopping really has it’s value for both large and small stores. A paint store might be a one-stop shop for all your interior needs, while a sewing store might have everything from sewing machines to needles, and fabric to thread. These stores leverage having everything in one place.
For the traditional one-stop shop, the few dollars becomes negligible in the scope of traveling around to save a few dollars.
So next time you’re thinking of becoming the one-stop shop, think first. Does the one-stop shop on the net really do something for the consumer? For the one-stop shop in brick and mortar, if you can get the consumer in the door, there is an advantage.
Just make sure the cost of being a one-stop shop is worth the effort. In the case of the online business discussed in the beginning, it’s a senseless mission when there is no savings and there was a cost to deliver the services desired.
Does your memory sometimes fail you in parking lots? Here is a simple tip to find your car after a trip or for everyday events. After you park, take a quick picture of the location with your cell phone camera. I typically take a picture of the signage. If I feel this will only give me a partial clue, I also photograph the vehicle surrounded by its location: against a wall or column, about 8 cars from the end of an aisle. The combination helps me to easily find the car while I often hear people say, “Now where did I park the car?”
Here’s another story that publications and the media followed with much fan fair. The featured firm was to take over the private jet business with a low-cost alternative. Everyone perceived this to be a success story in the making.
Funny, little news when Eclipse files for bankruptcy. A good story is great to hear and one that is incredible to promote and yet when the story turns sour, it’s page 14. Not everything in business has to be positive to gain value.
Judge Approves Sale of Eclipse Aviation’s Assets to EclipseJet Aviation International, Inc.
ALBUQUERQUE, NM – January 20, 2009 – Today, Eclipse Aviation® announced that Judge Mary Walrath of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware approved the sale of its assets for a combination of cash, equity and debt under Section 363 of the United States Bankruptcy Code to EclipseJet Aviation International, Inc. pending administrative closure on several remaining items.
EclipseJet’s bid of $28 million in cash, plus promissory notes and equity for the assets of Eclipse Aviation was verbally approved by the judge. Eclipse® and EclipseJet will begin working toward the prompt closing of the final sales transaction. In the meantime, Eclipse expects to continue its current operations through the closing date.
EclipseJet is an affiliate of ETIRC Aviation, Eclipse’s largest shareholder, and a principal driver of the very light jet (VLJ) industry in Europe. ETIRC Aviation’s Chairman, Roel Pieper, became the acting CEO of Eclipse in July 2008 and has served as Eclipse’s Chairman since January 2008.
On November 25, 2008, Eclipse Aviation filed for Chapter 11 protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. Since then, Eclipse has continued operations with debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing. Today’s sale enables the Eclipse 500 Jet® to further solidify its position as the global standard for VLJs.
Henri Brunelle, the President of Bain Ultra, Quebec, Canada, wants to change the world.
Henri has a passion for making people happier through superior health. He believes that his spa and health-related products will reduce stress and make people feel better, especially if they have ailments.
You can tell through his French accent how serious he is about this.
His approach, somewhat traditional, is that via magazine, internet, and possibly online social networking, he could reach hundreds of millions. The challenge is, hundreds of millions is a huge number.
I offered a strategy one that is consistent with social networking. Don’t expect people to come to you if you don’t also go to them. Hence a two way street. Instead of trying to change the world, reach out to those with similar interests first, and share your value proposition and information so that you might make them into a stronger believer. A micro-step process.
The goal is to reach out to others so that they, in turn, reach out to others, too.
This is the how. His 150+ company employees each join one social site such as homespa.com where there are 42 members each with some interest to the topic. He then offers some type of value and gets to know the group. The group checks out his web site’s information and joins the “movement.” Instantaneously, Henri has reached 42 people. This same group might then tell their next group of 89 people or twitter to 2000 people about what Henri and his staff offer.
This little “give-before-you-get” strategy will give you access to 50,000 people that a web site, even with great traffic, won’t deliver.
Henri will see the same. Over time, some of the people who join his site will be active, while others won’t. However, if his true goal is to “change the world,” then he’s got to join the global community and let the message spread. It won’t happen by asking everyone to come to him.
You know the world is in trouble when a publisher decides to track layoffs. Few appeared to be tracking hires over the years except for economists and government!
When I awoke this morning I immediately noticed the sun shining through our windows and not a cloud in the sky. I knew today would be a beautiful day for a bike ride along a path that follows the old Erie Canal.
Like other rides, my goal was to bike in one direction for 30 minutes, then return to my starting point in less than 26 minutes. On a previous trek, I reached a barn, cattle, and some boys playing basketball on a cross road.I wanted to get at least this far today. To succeed, I must start with a faster pace in a lower gear.
I set off with my thoughts on the target.
The last time I rode this course I ran across four beavers, one opossum, one rabbit, two ducks, many birds and one snake. The most I’d ever seen in one trip.
Today however my mind was not completely on the trek but more on other challenges I was facing. I hoped my thoughts would not interfere with my speed; I sensed that I was less in tune with nature.
I biked at what I thought to be a faster pace than my last bike ride. As I approached the 30-minute mark, I believed that quite possibly I had not reached barn yet. I pedaled harder.
28:00, 29:00, 29:30, 29:50, 30…the watch gave chirped its command to stop.
I thought that I must have slowed down and not even realized it. How could I have not reached my goal? Didn’t I have enough carbs this morning? A little frustrated I took a drink and started back with the same zest that got me started. Then it struck me. I had no clue where I was and the scenery was different. I was at a place I’d never been.
I had actually kept my eyes so riveted to the road and my thoughts on my challenges that I blew by the old mark by over at least 1/2 a mile. I could not believe it. By taking my eyes off the extraneous and by not limiting myself to what I had seen, I had kept up the pace and overshot what I had expected to be a challenging goal.
On the ride back I had plenty of time to think about this SINGLE-MINDED FOCUS. How often have I let myself stop, because the scenery was familiar, and I had a goal in mind? If I had done this today, I’d most likely have done it before.
While this was going on, I was pedaling like mad to make sure I hit my starting mark on the way back. It was a slightly upward run compared to the first leg, and I was tired from the first 30 minutes.
As the minutes on my watch passed I knew I had to keep on pedaling hard. At 8 minutes I turned up the steam. At 5 minutes I felt that I may not make it so once again I pumped harder. At 4 minutes, no end in sight. At two minutes I became certain that the finish line was ahead, but could I do it in two? At one minute the entire part was an uphill grade. I put my legs into high gear and with 32 seconds to spare, I reached the end.
I had achieved both my marks—outbound distance and inbound return—and realized some life lessons.
If you focus on a goal, be careful you may achieve it.
With the right tools you can you’d be surprised at what you can achieve.
When you put your nose down, you may miss all the wonders around you.
An adventure/experience is what it is.
My table PC laptop lost its audio while I was traveling for work; this happened on Feb. 17. I put off arranging for repairs until I could return home and settle down in my office. I wanted to check the warranty expiration date….then I just forgot. On March 5, I discovered that the warranty had expired on Feb. 21! My guess is the repair will be on the mother board, so to restore audio capabilities, I could be paying out of pocket for a new board plus the cost of labor.
The lesson: check your warranty’s expiration date as soon as there’s a problem. The good intentions you have when you purchase an extended warranty are wasted if you don’t take advantage of the service!
As I entered the room, my son invited me to meet his new girl friend yet there was no one in the room. Ah, so 1900’s of me.
This is the year 2009 and my expectations were about to be shattered. His girl was not in the room but 25 minutes away by car and our introduction was via a webcam.
Internally I was laughing at the realization that our 14 year old was truly in the digital age. Skyping and texting the two had formed a virtual and in person relationship that enables the two to share even when they are not face to face. (They met in person and have since spent weekends together so it’s perfectly normal…and she’s a great girl.)
I absolutely loved the new experience.
Recommendation, try to keep as current as possible by watching how kids live, since our youth may be bringing the next generation of ideas to our business environments. In this case, our teens consider socializing via cam, text, and AIM as normal as by phone.
Bet you thought it was an easy quote to finish. Well, not only is the quote not finished, the original message is completely different than the quote often used to express the fact that opportunities are always opening.
Now here’s the entire quote as said by Alexander Graham Bell.
“When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”
Ouch! Such a different meaning!!!!
In the rapid strategizing tool REDEFINING, a key element of great strategy is to create a complete challenge statement. Here’s an example where the second half of the thought changes the meaning the message entirely.
US Republican Senator Charles Grassley said that he would feel better if AIG’s top managers were to take a page from Japan’s corporate management book. In Japan, failed execs apologize, step down, and oftentimes commit suicide. The suicide part of the equation hit a raw nerve with many. Grassley, unfortunately, misdirected his anger. The employees of AIG, who were to receive $165 million in bonuses, are receiving contractual bonuses, good or bad, like it or not, using funds supplied to the firm by congressmen (in the house and senate) who did not do their homework, or worse yet, ignored facts that were public knowledge back in May of 2008. This is the US Congress’ problem, not AIG’s. But our government is so used to spinning everything, that they can’t give us straight talk.
Now today, members of our US Congress, in a backlash for their own errors, want to tax individual bonuses for those working in firms that received $5 billion or more. This leadership back peddling does not exemplify leaders who are forward thinking and accurate in their execution, but leaders who believe that they know it all and then play politics when the house of cards falls.If mismanagement of taxpayer funds is the crime deserving punishment, then we should tell congressmen that they, too, should say they are sorry, give back their income, and then fall on their swords. Whether we’re talking about an annual income of one hundred thousand dollars or one million, the rationale should apply to everyone in America if the congressmen are as “American” as they espouse to be in the media.
Here’s the history.On May 8, 2008, AIG disclosed in an SEC filing their plan to pay bonuses. This information was available while congress deliberated about saving AIG. No smoke and mirrors.On Sept 16th,$85B was approved as a two-year loan to the institution.In doing so, congressmen made the assumption and the case that AIG needed the support to cover insurance obligations, without completely understanding the complexity of AIG as a corporation, and how some of the funds had to pay payables such as START.Congressmen did not do their homework; if they had, they would have realized that AIG had to continue repaying any obligations it had on its books, not only the programs that congressmen wanted supported.
Mirror this with TARP funding.In haste, congress approved the TARP package to help ailing firms to shore up the economy. In the end, the financial firms that received the funding have given out bonuses in the billions such as Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch’s distribution of over $36B in bonuses.That’s 173,000 employees without including JP Morgan Chase Citi Group and Bank of America.Don’t forget there are other bonuses that have not made the news.
The reason this unfolded as it did, is that the funding came from congress with no detailed plan as to how the funds should be spent, only the inference that the funds should be allocated to shoring up the housing market. This was a congressional error in leadership as both in the understanding that if you give a firm money it’s tough to ascertain what money goes where and how. Some funds go to operations, some to sales and marketing, some to conferences, some to salaries. Most Americans knew this, so why didn’t those in congress?
What’s even more ironic is the same congressmen also passed, along with President Obama, another trillion dollars worth of spending with 8700 earmarks.In many cases, the earmarks are far worse than the million-dollar bonuses. The only difference here is that theft, and there will be theft, will happen in small amounts all across the country as friends give out deals to friends, quotes are elevated and policy is changed to fit who ever the legislature favors. In my home town of Syracuse New York, our city council just witnessed a NO-BID $8+ million-dollar renovation project for Syracuse’s Hancock International Airport.To allow this to happen, the council also voted to change limits on other policies so that the vendor could take the project. They changed the law to fit the funding?!?!
Lastly, since Rep. Barney Frank is very vocal about most of these policies, then he, too, must fall prey to telling the world he’s sorry , returning of funds, etc. Rep. Frank had his hand in the development of the policy that directed Fanny and Freddy to purchase additional home loans that spurred the housing boom, that created housing wealth, that allowed individuals to pull out “equity” to buy pools, furniture, vacations, and to invest in the market, that assisted in AIG’s growth and helped to allow Credit Default Swaps to work and CDO’s to be created. And even if some people argue that he didn’t have a hand in some of these problems, he played his part, and in doing so, accepted tax payer money as income and used tax payer money in an inappropriate manner. I don’t have to add, but I will, Rep. Frank pushed for TARP, the Stimulus package and the recently pork-filled “government continuation bill.”
Now add the new 90% SBA loan backing and the $300B in funding to stabilize the mortgage industry, and I believe Obama’s administration and congress are going to be condemning a lot of other executives and employees in years to come.Our own American three-ring circus.
The question is, will congress act in haste through the next 3 years and 9 months and in each judgment error they make will they act as irresponsibly as they are acting today? Congress might even want to have a conference outside ofWashington at a 5-star resort to discuss the issues.
This is all just mismanagement, and if it’s to ever stop, we need to require that those in congress slow down, spend more time thinking and less time in front of the cameras, and figure out what the best strategies are to take, including the TACTICS on how the policies should be executed. Remember, these people are PAID TO THINK and they are doing a poor job on both sides of the aisle.
I expect more from our youth than I’m seeing from our public servants. I’m expecting an “I’m sorry” and a return of their paychecks!
I love all news coverage given to the, soon to be dolled out bonuses of $165 Million to AIG employees. I love the coverage because this is actually old news. AIG’s management knew that they’d be handing out bonuses to employees as far back as last year. The reason, the bonus contracts were already signed and the ink dried. Besides, senior management had to use these numbers when creating projections as they when they requested TARP funds. (Bonuses may have been rolled into other expenses to defray comments or lending restrictions.)
Remember, they are financial institutions run by the very same people who were to be receiving the bonuses. This required the management to be very clandestine in developing tactics so that their expected bonus income would not be in jeopardy.
It’s the same tactic Merrill Lynch & Co. employees used when they issued $3.6 billion in bonuses. Keep quiet, have secret meetings, sign the checks and then see what Cuomo or any other government official can do to rescind the payments. Their belief was, distribute the money and then see how the game plays out.
So far the tactic’s worked for Merrill’s former employees. Bank of America won’t release the names of the recipients and the global public heard little about how or if the bonuses will be affected. AIG is using the same coaching handbook.
What’s even more disturbing is that Obama and Geithner only released this information today. Hours before payment, Before anything could be changed in the loan provisions for AIG. To believe that Obama or Geithner had no knowledge of the situation is the equivalent of a physician not knowing that the heart pumps blood. It’s the mechanics of how B of A, Chase, Merrill, Bear Sterns, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and all the other firms hired and fired their staff. Obama and Geithner had to have known this information otherwise Geithner is useless in his position and Obama is not connecting the dots. Government and AIG all participated in the charade.
So the next time you hear about the mismanagement of funds in either the stimulus package or the TARP funding, ask yourself the following questions. 1. How long ago was the information being released actually known about and by whom? 2. What decisions, both strategic and tactical, did those managing the process make to allow this to happen? 3. What would it have taken for those that are PAID TO THINK to have stopped the wasteful spending of taxpayer money from happening in the first place?
It’s my belief that those in government are PAID TO THINK. Their job is not to build the roads or work in the schools but to think things through all policy well enough so that the future is better than the present. This is not what’s happening at least for everyone who sitting on the side lines watching not just the $165 million convert to paychecks for a few, but the billions that have already traded hands.
This will happen again!
NOTE: (Over 70% of the worlds largest public companies do not have this bonus structure!)
I was hired to consult for the CEO of a regional building-construction firm. Together, we developed a strategy to clean up operations and grow sales.Regarding sales growth, my client had a very specific complaint about a vendor who was hindering progress.
The building-construction firm had an agreement with the manufacturer of built-in items.The agreement went like this; in order for my client to keep his status as a regional distributor of the building products (which totaled nearly a billion dollars a year), he would have to guarantee to meet vendor specified sales quotas.The vendor, in turn, would work as a partner by feeding back sales leads to the distributor.However, my client believed that many sales leads were not being forwarded to his firm, and he wanted fix the problem.
I assumed nothing.My first step was to test the process. I posed as a prospective customer and contacted the manufacturer. Stating that I was in the process of building a facility where at least 30,000 square feet of the building would need the vendor’s product, I requested information.From my estimations, I would be spending $300,000.
The salesperson asked some specifics and said that I would receive follow up information by mail.
Nothing arrived.
I called, again. They promised to mail out information to me, again.
Nothing arrived, again.
Two weeks later, the Northeast Regional Vice President of the vendor firm was to visit my client, their “valued” partner. I asked if I could be included in the meeting.
On the day of the meeting we met in the conference room where the CEO took the head seat, the vendor sat to his right, I sat to his left, and a few other high-ranking employees filled in around the table. As the conversation entered into the “how’s-business” phase, I stepped in, and the CEO pulled back. I quietly asked the vendor how his firm works their leads.
Vendor: “Well David, when a lead comes in via the net, phone, fax or mail, we place the information into our system and immediately forward the lead into the channel’s distributor so that the distributor can follow up on the business. Then from our office, we put together some literature and start the process moving so that the customer feels they are being serviced.
“It works pretty nicely and it’s why we are successful.”
(Again realize their revenue is in the billions of dollars.)
David: “If I were to call up and request a quote to fill a 30,000 square-foot facility with your product…how much is that worth?”
Vendor: “Depends on the product, but I’d guess between $250-$400,000.”
David: “Nice size project.”
Vendor: “It’s a very nice size project.”
David: “Then when I call, you take the call, you take down my information, name, address, type of product, and when the build out is to happen. Right?”
David: “Then you forward on to me some information while at the same time your regional firm would get the lead so that they could follow up.”
Vendor: “Yes.”
David: “So what if I were to tell you it doesn’t work?”
Vendor: “No, it’s nice process we’ve put in place.”
David: “No, it doesn’t work.”
Vendor: “Oh, it works very well. It’s how most firms in our industry work.” At this point he’s getting pretty cocky that he knows his business and everyone at the table sees the display.
David: “No, I’m telling you it does not work.”
David: “What I mean to say is I called your office, gave them the specs on a 30,000 square-foot facility and they sent me nothing. Also, my client received nothing at all in terms of a sales lead. I even called back a second time to try to get the materials and nothing happened then, either.” I then shut up as the vendor squirmed for at least 30 seconds, which seamed like 10 minutes. Vendor: “You caught me by surprise; do you think that was right?”
David: “You tell me?”
Vendor: “Well you could have told me we had a problem.”
David: “You have been told you have a problem, and you insist that the process works. This time, we needed to get your attention.”
At this point the vendor had a completely different stature and position in the room as we outlined several steps to insure that his firm didn’t drop the ball again. The steps included how emails should go to the vendor’s office and to my client’s office at the same time. There is no need to forward the information considering today’s technological options.
The lesson here is that even though you’ve planned out a process, you have to test it and be willing to improve upon it.Rather than stay married to the concept that something is working well, consider how you can constantly improve what you do using state-of-the-art technologies and methodologies.There’s really no room for overconfidence or sloppiness in today’s world…especially when everyone is fighting for a dwindling pool of prospective buyers.
While I personally don’t agree with many of the tactics used by credit card companies, I do give the leadership credit for being creative in finding new opportunities to make money.
Several years ago I read The End of Work by Jeremy Rifkin. In his book, Rifkin outlined a future filled with too many people and too little work to be done. The premise was that we’d be so technologically advanced that there would be little work left for people to do, resulting in a shift in how we spend our daily lives.
Take the experience I had at the David Leadbetter Golf Clinic in Florida. While working at a convention, I had the opportunity to sign up for some extra activities, if my plans permitted. I could not create the time to take the 140 MPH NASCAR drive with an experienced driver, so I opted for the David Leadbetter golf lessons that were right outside the Omni Hotel in Orlando.
If you fly, you know that if an aircraft is late, there’s a good chance that you’re going to miss your connection or be late for something else in your day. It’s the reason the government and outside companies monitor the on-time arrival of airlines.
When I hear managers say that the new vision of their firm is to get customers to like them better or that the new vision is to create better relationships, I’m always concerned for them. While I understand what they’re trying to do, I also see how they’re headed in the wrong direction. You can’t substitute your role of managing well with the position of wanting to be liked. Business relationships don’t give back the returns you think they will, and if you don’t adjust your focus, you’re going to be disappointed at best and even suffer worse consequences.
I’ve lived through so many good and bad business experiences, so you’d think I would find it more and more challenging to be surprised.
When you purchase a green car, is the car really green? Or is it just the engine? When I see a green car, I see a work in progress. Tires still use rubber and oil, and cast iron and metals come from metal fabrication. Fabrics and leathers, some which require formaldehyde and other chemicals in their production, are used. So green may not really be green. The perception is green, or at least GREENER.
If you suspect that the economy has become your crutch, toss it aside and take responsibility to walk on your own two feet again. Adjust strategy and tactics, get creative with marketing and sales, and find ways to revive assets that have been nearly dormant since the downturn started.
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Now that the economy has changed, her marketing manager stands out like a sore thumb and Tiffany’s patience has run thin. Her challenge is how does she make the change without spooking the employee or even others within her organization?
In the post-internet boom, the world witnessed a transformation of working arrangements. Foreign employees of firms such as IBM were laid off only to find themselves returning back to their home counties to live once again. When business volume increased, employees who were still working knew that they had a friend who used to be in the business who now lived overseas. Given the cost of living difference, the past employee said, I’ll do the work in my home country and charge you a different rate. Due to the connective digital lines under the ocean, the work could be easily completed.
To me, while Honda and Toyota appear to be selling cars, GM, Chrysler and Ford continually make announcements about restructuring, slow sales volume, economic challenges. In all these reports I fail to see anyone taking responsibility for being globally blind.
My wife, Lorrie, just shared with me a story that I think is not only humorous but valuable.
When our kids were 4 and 5 years old, they went through a brief stage where they would argue over whose turn it was to select and watch the program airing on the family-room TV. Since we limited television time overall, we wanted to come up with a fair solution that took us parents out of the equation and allowed the kids to solve their own problem. So I created a tool to empower them to do just that. It was a daily chart reaching out over 6 months at a time. The chart would work in 30-minute intervals and the kids alternated days. They used to define who had control over the TV by their half-hour mark.
Yeah, everyone knows you need the “right people on the bus” and anyone who doesn’t should not be in a leadership role. The challenge with the statement is not getting the right people but more so, how to find the right people and to make the group work after selected.
I received a phone call from a rep from Callbox Sales and marketing an international firm offering sales solutions. I took the call, spent 10 minutes on the phone, and scheduled a meeting for 2PM EST.
I was sitting next to a woman who complained that her friend, who was seated in front of us, never replies to her emails. I told her the solution was easy. Surprised she asked how could she get her friend to reply.
My table PC laptop lost its audio while I was traveling for work; this happened on Feb. 17. I put off arranging for repairs until I could return home and settle down in my office. I wanted to check the warranty expiration date….then I just forgot. On March 5, I discovered that the warranty had expired on Feb. 21! My guess is the repair will be on the mother board, so to restore audio capabilities, I could be paying out of pocket for a new board plus the cost of labor.
As I entered the room, my son invited me to meet his new girl friend yet there was no one in the room. Ah, so 1900’s of me.
