• If you’re going to the trouble to use paper with lines, why not print on them?  I’m not sure what psychologists tell us about people who can’t be bothered to write on the lines but to me this appears as if you’re in a rush and kind of scatter-brained.
• Why is the punctuation so absurdly bad?  Comma faults everywhere, some grammatical issues – where’s the proofreader?
• The thing starts out with a “From the Desk of..” in the same “handwritten” font as the rest of the document.  I don’t know about you, but whenever I’ve had stationary printed, I want it to look printed and different from what I write on it, and I don’t write “From the Desk of” on my own notes.

The above are the “mechanical” things that call into question the merits of doing business with this person.  The letter contains a number of substantive things too: a claim he can get me in a car that gets better mileage (doubtful given that the current car is one of the top MPG cars); the fact that I’m eligible to terminate my lease or financing earlier than I realize (well, since the thing is neither leased nor financed, I guess so – but shouldn’t you have known that since you’ve done more than just buy a list?), and the fact that he wants to get me in the Special Payment Reduction Program (gee, I’m not making payments so unless you’re going to pay me…).

Trying to make a mass-produced document appear personalized isn’t a bad idea but this is a horrible effort.  Sending me what might be mistaken for a hostage note or a thank you note from my daughter’s third grade class isn’t going to make me want to do business with you.  Being a smart professional, doing your research, and speaking to me in a way that shows me you’re someone worthy of my time and maybe my money (both in short supply for most folks) is a better start.

Am I being too harsh here?

I’m pretty sure I’m not getting a ring from the team to thank me for my part in their victory. But as I reflected on the behavior, I realized that we might just behave the same way in business too.

Back when we wore ties, I could always count on my boss showing up wearing a particular red one when there was a big meeting.  Sartorial splendor, I came to find out, had nothing to do with it – the tie assured a good result.  When you have regularly-scheduled meetings, don’t most people sit in the same place?  Comfort and familiarity might be why but maybe there are a few who think they’re messing with the feng shui by changing places.  You might have friends who won’t change their socks while in the midst of something that’s going well.  Heck, one of the Giants’ owners left blue and white nail polish on his toes (his kids put it there) during the playoff run so as to not mess with karma.

Here’s the thing – the good luck charms might get you in a positive mindset, but as John Milton wrote, “luck is the residue of design,” and as Samuel Goldwyn added “the harder I work the luckier I get.”   Great talent is a start, but unless we plan well and keep at it, that talent only gets us so far.  You’d be shocked how long and hard many “overnight” successes worked.

I’ll pull out the cushion again the next time the G-men are in the game but I’ll keep working hard on my business and that of my clients in the interim.

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As I think you might know, my feeling about cooking is that it’s more like jazz while baking is more Baroque music- far more structured and precise.  Given that, the way I see recipes might differ from how you see them and how that perspective carries into business.  Let’s see.

A recipe is a guide, not an edict.  I look at them as outlines of the dish, but it’s up to me as the cook to insert the flavors I want to present.  For example, if I’m making chili for Sunday’s game, I know that most of the folks who will be at the party enjoy fairly hot food so I might change the spice mix accordingly.  Cooking veal cutlets for 20 can be expensive but turkey cutlets in the same recipe can be just as tasty.  With a vegan and a vegetarian as members of the household here, I often modify recipes to accommodate their eating styles too.  I have a sense of the destination and the recipe is the map, but there are often many routes to get to where I’m trying to go.

Business is the same.  There are some basic road maps – take in more than you spend, treat customers and employees well – but every business is different.  Sticking to the recipe isn’t always possible, and sometimes the road we wish to take is closed, but with a good understanding of fundamental techniques and enough knowledge of the building blocks (ingredients), one can cope with changing market conditions and take advantage of opportunities (I was going to make snapper but look at the fresh grouper on sale!) that might arise.

So as you’re whipping up that pot of gumbo, maybe try thickening it with okra instead of your usual file powder.  If you’re not having much luck using SEM for online commerce, maybe social media can be more efficient.  It’s jazz – learn to improvise – oh, and Go Big Blue!

What got me thinking was this piece on Slate:

Before we get carried away analyzing What Florida Means, let us calculate how close to the GOP nomination that each candidate actually is. The nominee needs 1,114 pledged delegates. Here’s the progress towards that number, based on CNN’s count of pledged delegates.

Mitt Romney – 5.8 percent
Newt Gingrich – 2.2 percent
Ron Paul – 0.9 percent
Rick Santorum – 0.6 percent

In other words, 90% of the delegates haven’t been chosen and yet many pundits are saying a decision has been reached.  The business point?  If this was your business, you’d certainly not want to make any major decisions based on 10% of the data and yet just as in politics we see people doing just that.  You make a change to a web site and there’s no immediate traffic bump or you start a banner campaign that doesn’t generate immediate conversions so you rush to try the next thing.  Bad idea.

Other than predictions based on accurately weighted samples, drawing accurate conclusions on a small (10% in this case) sample of data  is hard at best and impossible at worst.  Business is more about imperfect information – where not everything is visible – than it is about having perfect information – as in chess, where one can see all the pieces.  Because of that, in my mind one needs to take as much time as possible under the given circumstance and wait to gather as much data as one can.  Emphasis on “as possible”, which might not always be the optimal time.

We’ll see how the Republican race plays out.  Unlike your business, they get another chance in four years if they mess it up this time around.  You might not be so lucky if you jump to conclusions.

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Some of my friends have them (if I do, I must have forgotten) and they also seem to react a bit more slowly to questions as well.  That’s why I clipped the article, which comes from Scientific American and deals with a study on older folks and reaction times.  As it turns out, the fact that we take longer to make decisions as we age has nothing to do with impaired mental ability.  It also raises a business point.

According to the article:

The researchers found little difference in accuracy between the younger and older subjects, although undergrads had significantly faster response times. But the older participants’ slower response times were not all the result of a decline in skills. In other tests, the older subjects were encouraged to decide faster, and their response times greatly decreased with hardly any loss of accuracy.

In other words, the older folks could decide faster if they cared to, but in the interest of accuracy they took their time.  We’re all heard that “haste makes waste” and yet in an age where a premium is put on reacting quickly the need for accuracy gets lost.  I’ve heard a dozen people encourage us to “fail quickly” or to release a product fast, get feedback, and fix it.  My question is this:  maybe we should behave more like the older folks in the study and choose to slow it down a bit in order to greatly increase our accuracy?  I agree it’s better to fail fast, but I think it’s way better not to fail at all.

In my 20′s, I thought I had to know everything so I wouldn’t seem young and inexperienced.  In my 50′s, I’m neither young nor inexperienced and I realize I don’t – and can’t – know everything.  I might not answer as quickly – it takes time to leaf through the mental library for an accurate answer – but I’ll bet the answers are better, more complete, and way more on target.

You?

What has me babbling like an Apple fanboy this morning?  A piece of research on TV‘s of course, and a thought about how some research points to the need to think out of the box.

Over the next few years, the main devices we use to access video in our homes – and I hate to call them TV’s any more – are going to become connected just like our other devices such as computers, tablets, and handheld units:

Driven by digital TVs, satellite STBs and OTT video game consoles, the connected device market will grow from 256.8M installed units in 2011 to 1.34B in 2016. According to NPD In-Stat, smart devices will have a global CAGR of 52.6% during the next 5 years led by 36.7M connected video gaming consoles.

There are the obvious implications for cable companies and other businesses that deliver the video as a program service aggregator, and there are lots of discussions about how the services are bundled and priced.  My thought today isn’t about that topic but about the nature of the programming.  Who is thinking differently about the nature of the content itself?  Nearly all TV (in the traditional sense of a video stream) is presented the same way as it was 50 years ago.  The advent of HD got producers thinking about how to use the better picture quality and different aspect ratio but much of that seemed to result in just more clutter.  Some cable operators have tried to layer interactivity on top of what the program producers do but I’m not aware of that really taking off.

So my question is this:  who is thinking differently?  Who is going to personify the Apple slogan and take the new possibilities of a more widely available technology, think about it differently, and transform our viewing experience?  It just might be Apple, although their first foray into the space – the AppleTV device – seemed more about advancing their economic agenda than it did to be about transforming everything.

I don’t have an answer, but I do see the opportunity.  A billion connected devices is quite a potential market if someone gets it right.  But unless that someone thinks differently about the nature of TV and the business models in place on distribution, the content may lag behind the opportunity.  What do you think?

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I’m sure you’ve all seen Animal House.  It’s one of my favorite movies and most of the guys (and it is mostly guys) I know quote from it fairly regularly.  One of the lines I find myself repeating way too often comes from Otter to Flounder, the hapless freshman who lends the frat his brother’s car only to see it destroyed:

Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You fucked up… you trusted us! Hey, make the best of it! Maybe we can help.

I thought about that this weekend listening to some of the news but it triggered a business thought as well.

Too much of what we see in politics – and in business – relies on “you trusted us” with no remedy.  The news items had to do with many of the “discussions” on programs – pipeline builds, tax code changes, a few others – that promise job creation, economic growth or other tangible benefits.  While this isn’t a political blog the thought crossed my mind that those discussions would be far easier if those jobs, for example, were guaranteed.  Let’s take the Keystone pipeline – one side says there will be 20,000 jobs created; the other says there might not be any.  Putting aside the environmental issues for a second, wouldn’t it be an easier discussion if the side promising the jobs signed a document saying they would create 20,000 permanent jobs in the US no matter what number the new pipeline supported?  Give a warranty, which is a promise to support your product.  And that’s the business point.

A vendor who promises results needs to be specific about them and compensated only when they happen.  If I buy a widget that the vendor says will increase traffic or sales, I’d be looking to base a good portion of their compensation on those results being achieved, and I’d even be willing to pay MORE for the product if the results exceed our mutual expectations.  I certainly get asked to tie my pay as a consultant into measurable results when possible.

A warranty is a promise – the product will perform as represented.  Reputable people will stand behind what they promise.  Isn’t that where you want to stand as well?

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Of course, we don’t just use the smell test in the kitchen or the supermarket, and that’s the point today.

Last week, I wrote about Paula Deen and her announcement.  This isn’t going to be another post about that other than to say one problem I (and others) had is the fact that she made her “not a big deal” announcement while on a drug company‘s payroll.  In my mind, it doesn’t pass the smell test (and in fairness, she has since stated she’s donating all her drug company income to charity).

Let’s take Google, who also did something in the past week that fails my smell test.  Again, without a long explanation (you can get one here), they’ve altered the way you see search results and just might be favoring their own content over that of other entities.  For a company with a “don’t be evil” mantra, something doesn’t smell right.  I’m sure you can find a number of other things that smell fishy in your own lives.

Our customers, employees, and partners are constantly sniffing.  We do so as citizens – why did a politician vote a certain way and how does it tie to campaign donations?  We need to odor-check ourselves constantly if we’re to pass that test, and we can’t minimize the impact of even a vague whiff of something being off.  To ignore that is a big blind spot for any business.

What do you think (and please don’t tell me this stinks!)?

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I’ve known a bunch of snowmen in business.  These are people who look terrific under optimal conditions but who melt away as soon as conditions change.  You know the types.  They’re the people who are standing tall when the presentation went well or sales are flowing.  As soon as things get a little warm – business takes a downturn, the boss is angry about something – they get a lot smaller.  Maybe they even fade away completely.  They can’t deal with changing or sub-optimal conditions.

Contrast a snow person’s (why limit this to men!) behavior with that of the firefighters among us.  These are the people who, when things are turning bad, run to the problem.  They ask “how can I help?”, not “where can I hide?”.   The next time an alarm goes off in your business life, part of handling the crisis ought to be taking note of who melts, who waits to be rescued, and who rushes at the problem.  The last group is the keepers.

Snowmen are fun to build but a disaster to have around the office.  Give me firefighters every time.  You?

All of these came to mind as I read a new study from The Altimeter Group the other day.  Let’s see what you think.

According to the study, which is called “A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation:

Like a disease, social media proliferation will leave companies crippled unless they develop a strategy to manage now.  Some companies have opened a virtual Pandora’s box:  We found that global corporations are struggling to manage an average of 178 business-related social media accounts—a number likely to grow if unchecked.  Beyond coordination challenges, unchecked accounts and disparate customer interactions expose brands to a host of legal, compliance, and fragmented brand-perception risks.  Internally, few companies are prepared with proper roles, education, or clearly defined goals.  Externally, brands are confused by dozens of vendor options.

The document breaks down the company-owned 178 social media accounts mentioned above to include an average of 39.2 Twitter accounts, 31.9 blogs and 29.9 Facebook accounts. Forums and message boards were more popular than YouTube, with an average of 23.4 accounts per company, compared to YouTube’s 9.4.  You think YOU have digital overload!?!?

One issue I discuss with clients whenever we chat about social media is how to control, monitor, moderate where needed, and promote their efforts.  All of the above obviously takes resources of both time and money.  The Altimeter study shows that many of the companies surveyed didn’t know how they would respond to an increasing number of customer conversations.  I wonder how, with 178 personalities, they can respond coherently even when they do find the time.

This an issue you’re facing?  Let us all hear about how you’re solving it and let me know how I can be helpful.