Smoked Salmon Vodka

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Keith

For our Foodie Friday Fun this week, let’s start with a movie. Oh sure, there have been plenty of foodie movies over the years (Big Night is my favorite) but I want to start with the 1982 Michael Keaton classic Night Shift. I know – not really a foodie movie but in it Keaton offers up a food-oriented line that I thought of yesterday:

What if you mix the mayonnaise in the can, WITH the tunafish? Or… hold it! Chuck! I got it! Take LIVE tuna fish, and FEED ‘em mayonnaise! Oh this is great.

What prompted the thought was someone mentioning that they’d recently tried smoked salmon vodka.  My immediate response probably mirrored yours: YECH!  Then I thought about it for a second.  How often have you gone to a nice wedding or similar function and there’s been chilled vodka put out alongside the platter of salmon?  The two really do go together when you step back and think about it.  Or take the idea of making doughnuts in a muffin tin.  They’re not muffins and they’re certainly not doughnuts  but is there a way to get the texture and flavor of a donut in the easier to make form of a muffin?  There is, and someone figured out exactly how.  Which is the business point.

Tuna and mayonnaise, salmon and vodka – normal combinations presented in a different way of thinking (I’d tweak the tuna notion a bit but he’s on the right track).  Often in business we’re presented with ideas that seem ridiculous on the first pass but when you stop thinking “bad idea” and start thinking “interesting notion – what does it need to be a great idea” you just might end up with a better mousetrap.

Pushing ourselves to think differently is the only way we grow our businesses   People get bored quickly these days and if you’re not innovating you get left behind.  While I’m not sure that smoked salmon vodka is going to be my drink of choice, the thinking behind it is very much what I like to order up.  You?

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Embracing Number Crunching

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Keith

Great piece in this morning’s USAToday on how NFL teams are building analytics departments to take advantage of all the data they get.

The new NFL logo went into use at the 2008 draft.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This isn’t about their digital properties either. Instead, they are used in the draft (what better way to compare hundreds of college kids than with test results?), game-management (play-calling tendencies, personnel match-ups, etc.), and in managing their rosters – the salary cap, free agent players, etc. What does this have to do with your business?

If you saw Moneyball, you probably recall the reluctance the scouts had in accepting the data being used to analyze players.  There’s a tendency in all businesses, particularly among those of us who have decades of experience, to believe our own impressions more often than we believe the impartial numbers that might be available.  An NFL coach might think that a running back can’t block, but when the numbers show that the missed block only come on plays where the  safety blitzes, the right answer isn’t a better blocker – it’s to get the tackle to give the running back blocking help when they see a blitz.

Your business isn’t that different.  You get reams of data on an hourly basis that explain what is or isn’t working.  It’s overwhelming  and because it is the data is often ignored (“I can’t react to everything every minute of the day”).  As I’ve said to clients, it’s not so much what’s happening in the moment but the trend over a bunch of moments that’s important. Ignoring those trends can be fatal, especially if they’re being subordinated to the often blurry vision each manager has.

That said, I’m among the first to say that numbers don’t show everything.  Leadership on the field, for example, isn’t really quantifiable (no numbers available from what goes on in the huddle, folks).   Still, confirming one’s own impressions against impartial measures from ongoing business activities is an important check and balance.

If you’re running a business and you’re not involved in analytics of some sort, you’re running that business blindfolded.  If you’re don’t have full-time people supporting your data efforts, there are outside folks like me who can help.  As the NFL shows, even the top dogs need to learn a few new tricks.

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Playing In A Different Mode

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Keith

We haven’t done music here on the screed in a while so how about we take on modal music? For those of you without the benefit of music theory classes, modes are types of musical scales that create very specific sounds. Not much of an explanation, but if you play a “C” major scale (all the white keys on a piano) while playing in the key of “D” rather than using a typical “D” scale, you’re playing modally.  If you know the Metallica song “Sandman” you’re hearing modal music.  Same thing with Led Zep‘s “Dancing Days.”  To your ear they’re not exactly in a major key or a minor key and they create a very specific sound, and no, it’s not just heavy metal bands that use it.

Interesting, but what’s it doing here on a business blog?

As I see it, we should all think about playing modally in our businesses.  Ask yourself what happens if you continue to play a certain way but do so in a different environment:   a “C” scale in the key of “D” has a business equivalent of transforming content cross-platform for example.  It can also involve how one creates a specific feeling that might not be as straightforward as, say, a major or minor scale.  In other words, maybe we need to spend less time thinking linearly and a lot more time thinking modally.

Modes aren’t just musical either.  There are modal verbs in English which we use when we want to express our intentions and attitudes, talk about necessity and possibility, or make offers, requests, or suggestions.  ”Can, may, will, would” and others are all examples.  They’re “helper” words.  ”Can you shut the door?” is a good example and points out that modals often bring confusion along with them.  I raise this because while we’re adjusting our musical modal thinking we can bring about the sort of confusing jumble that modal verbs can cause (in the previous example, you don’t know if the speaker is asking for someone to close the door of if they have the ability to do so).  When we start to do business in different ways, staying focused on clarity needs to go along with the effort.

You know it when a business is playing modally.  You take notice of their marketing because it sounds different and yet is very clear. The real question is how do we all get to that place?  Thoughts?

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Questioning The Questioners

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Keith

Today is one of those screeds in which I point out a problem but don’t offer a real solution. I apologize in advance. Maybe just ringing the alarm bell a bit is enough of a help but you’ll be the judge.

The questionnaire we used to select patients.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Like you, I read a lot articles published in trades. Most of what I see comes to me in the form of emailed articles and/or newsletters. There’s a lot of research cited in these pieces and many of them offer opinions with respect to a good course of action one should take to avoid a problem or improve performance. What I find interesting is how often I’ll finish the piece, look at the author’s bio, and realize that I just spent a couple of minutes reading a self-serving puff piece. For example, a nice article citing research on how content marketing can drive sales was offered by a guy who runs a content marketing company, which also commissioned the research.  Funny how often the research conducted by “independent” firms says great things about the company that commissioned it, isn’t it?

That’s the problem I offer up today.  It’s hard to know how meaningful research is when those who pay to have it done have a vested interest in the outcome.  We saw this during the last political season.  There were “Republican” polls that showed the presidential race one way, “Democratic” polls that had it the other way, and “independent” polls that were a mixed bag.  Usually, the party-sponsored polls had their guy winning, and you’re probably familiar that the only entity that called the race almost perfectly was Nate Silver of The New York Times who uses a “poll of polls” methodology that wiped out the inherent biases.

We need to question those who ask the questions.  That doesn’t mean ignore or even discount the research.  What it does mean is to think about what vested interest the sponsor of any research has in the outcome and look for places where a question can be phrased in such a way as to twist the outcome.  All reputable research will show you how the question was asked.  It’s up to you to consider the inherent bias before taking anything as gospel.  Even the blather put out in this space!

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Why I Won’t Be Using FTD Again

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Keith

I hope you all had a lovely Mother’s Day. My Mom is in Florida and I’m not so we celebrated the day separated by distance. In an attempt to bridge the geographic gap, I ordered some flowers for her last Friday from FTD. Frankly, I’m more of a “support local businesses” kind of guy but since FTD uses local florists to fill the orders and since I was in a time crunch on Friday, I used FTD’s site to place the order. Which I won’t be doing again.  Of course, there are a few lessons for any business in the midst of this.

Flower

(Photo credit: @Doug88888)

I asked that the flowers be delivered on Saturday.  It gave them 24 hours and hopefully would avoid the peak period of deliveries yesterday on Mother’s Day.  As Saturday night rolled around and I hadn’t received a phone call from Florida to let me know they arrived (my Mom always calls when we send her stuff), I began to get a little worried.  By mid-afternoon Sunday, we had already called her to wish her a great day but nothing had arrived (we asked).  Time to follow-up with FTD.

Lesson number one.  On what is one of your busiest days of the year, don’t turn off customer service.  When I called FTD’s line, I pushed “2″ to check on my order status and was told (more or less) that we’re not answering the phone today because it would be overwhelming so use the web site.  No humans.   Hello?  Learn from Butterball, who adds hundreds of reps to their turkey help line around Thanksgiving.

Lesson number two.  Using the web site, I clicked to “check order status.”  I found my order number and popped it in, expecting something like UPS‘ excellent tracking or Amazon‘s system.  Nope.  Within seconds, I had an email telling me “We have received your request to confirm that your gift was delivered.  When we receive confirmation of delivery, we will notify you via email.”  First, that’s NOT what I was seeking – I knew it hadn’t been delivered (my Mom is faster than your email!).  Second, I still don’t have a confirmation email on delivery and yes, thankfully, the flowers did get delivered two hours after I began trying to get an update (and a full 52 hours after they were ordered for next day delivery).

Lesson number three.  I paid a service fee of $22 for the convenience of not having to find, to call, and to order from a local florist near my Mom.  I had, I think, reasonable expectations in return for that fee:  the flowers would be delivered as promised, on time, in good shape, and that there would be some sort of customer service to support me in the event of a problem.  Hey – we’re dealing with gifts for people’s mothers – buyers don’t want anything less than what they expect and these were definitely mixed results at best.

While digital technology has done a lot to kill local businesses (ask any small, local book or music store), there is nothing like the personal service one can get from using old-fashioned technology:  a phone and a human.  Until and unless companies like FTD figure out how to replicate that experience, I won’t be using them again.  You?

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Single Use Tools

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Keith

It’s Foodie Friday and on a Friday many weeks ago I wrote about how I generally have a disdain for single purpose kitchen tools, especially those that are solutions in search of a problem. I used an avocado slicer as an example but one could just as easily place things like dehydrators or those margarita machines I see everywhere on the list.  The tasks those tools accomplish – the problems they solve – are easily solved just as well by existing tools – an oven or a blender in the two aforementioned cases.

I figured in the interest of fairness to all the really useful singe purpose tools I should be fair and balanced (to coin a phrase) and admit that I do use certain single purpose tools on a regular basis.  Melon ballers, for example.  Oh, I know I could just chop the fruit into nice little chunks, but melon balls are so elegant.  Besides, while I suppose one could tourne melon slices with a paring knife the way one tournes a carrot to make it rounder, the melon baller is a faster, better solution to a real problem (even if it isn’t on the order of most serious problems).  The fact that you can core apples with it as well is a bonus!  Stick blenders are another one of my favorites.  Yes, one could use the stand blender but if you’ve ever scalded yourself transferring hot stuff into a blender you know why a stick blender is a smart solution.

As usual, there’s a business point.  I was talking the other day with a potential client about a business he’s in the midst of starting.  As he went on about it I asked about the problem he’s solving and why his solution is better than others who are attacking it.  That’s a question one can’t ask often enough even about an existing business.  It gets the business to the point of differentiation – we’re solving it less expensively, we’re solving it faster, we’re solving it with a more user-friendly environment – that becomes the platform for almost everything else we do in the business.

Great single-use tools found a cooking problem and solved them in a real way.  Bad single-use tools just take up a lot of space and are easily replaced,  The same can be said about bad businesses.   What are consumers saying about yours?

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Trusting The Translator

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Keith

If you’ve ever travelled to a country where your native language is not the main language spoken, you might have had a couple of the experiences I’m about to describe.

Sign replacement - geograph.org.uk - 1313161

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I used to travel internationally on business to places where English is not the first language and even though my business counterparts spoke reasonably good English I always found it helpful to have a translator available.  Of course there’s always the temptation - one to which I succumbed a couple of times – to pick up a few key phrases in the other language and assume that you can get by.  Big mistake, as are most of the digital ways one can change languages.

It doesn’t matter if you’re traveling on business or for pleasure.  Having someone around who can interpret is a big advantage.  Unless, of course, they’re not trustworthy.  It is an absolute imperative that you be able to trust that the translator is giving you an accurate interpretation   In fact, I’ve been in situations where it was assumed I didn’t speak the local language and what was being said was something that would never have been said to me in English (that only happened as a tourist, fortunately).  A translator who hides what’s being said can be a disaster.

The same can be said about the fool who learns a few phrases and has no clue about their use.  Anyone who really speaks the language will see right through that or, even worse, they’ll take advantage of the fact that you clearly don’t understand what the words mean even though you can pronounce them well.

I’ve run into both of these situations domestically as well and so have you.  You might have needed a translator to interpret technical information into English so you can make a business decision.  Maybe you’ve needed to make a choice about how to build a site or an app.  Your IT people, your designers, your coders – they all speak a language you don’t, and if they give you a bad translation, you’re doomed.  The same is true of accountants, lawyers, and others.

Then there are those people who ask questions containing some “foreign” words”   – CPM, CTR, CPC, bounces  - or other terms.  They ask questions as if they’ll understand the answer  but the very nature of their question proves they don’t have a clue about the topic.  If you answer them with more jargon – foreign words – you’re just making the misunderstanding worse.  Translating it all back into English for them – without embarrassing them of course – is the right course of action.

If you can’t trust your translator, you’re going to have a rough trip, whether it’s overseas or right here at home as your do business.  Hai capito?

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