Monthly Archives: February 2013

February 15, 2013 · 12:18 pm

The Saying Vs. Doing Conundrum

Foodie Friday! Today I want to build on something discovered by the folks at The Hartman Group.

English: A common variety of gorp (trail mix) ...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

They have a site called HartmanSalt (which is not a site about ways to increase your blood pressure). They conduct regular surveys about food and food consumption.  I was checking out something on snacking which triggered a business thought.

As the results show, Americans love to snack.  We consume 2.3 snacks per day on average.  This tends to happen later in the day and generally at home.  What triggered the business thought were the next two data points.  57% of the respondents in the survey said it is important or very important  for the food and/or beverages to be healthy.  However the two most often mentioned snack foods are chips and soda. What we say doesn’t always align with what we do and that’s an important thing to remember in business.

That dichotomy is one of the things we find in focus groups – the things in which people express interest are not necessarily the things they’ll buy. Having done a few of them as a part of designing and building web sites, how users tell you they’ll use something and what they actually do as you observe them can be very different.   It’s a point we see in management all the time.  How managers say they behave and how they actually do are often out of sync.  No manager, for example, will tell you that they mistreat employees and they say that they always are there for their staffs.  Ask the folks on the other end if that’s true.

I’ve had friends who couldn’t understand why they were fat.  They said they ate carefully and watched their portions.  When they started keeping a food log (and there are some great apps for that!) they found out that what they said vs. what they did was showing up in their larger pant size.  It’s something all of us in business need to think about – are we listening to what people say or are we verifying it against what they really do?  How are we handling the conundrum the difference between the two?  That solution is often the key to success.

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February 14, 2013 · 1:35 pm

Flying Into The Merger Wind

I see that American Airlines and USAir announced their long-rumored merger this morning. I’ve flown over a million miles on American so I know it quite well. Over the years I’ve flown USAir from time to time but it I’m certainly not as familiar with it. Why do I bring this up?

departing LAX

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve been through several corporate mergers. I was with ABC when CapCities bought it and then again when Disney bought CapCities. I was at CBS when Viacom bought it. From those experiences I learned a couple of things that I think have broader implications even if your company isn’t getting bought.

Mergers fail.  A lot.  In fact, studies indicate that somewhere between 50% and 85% of mergers come up short.  I suppose that part of it has to do with the reason for the merger in the first place.  If a company is buying another to eliminate a competitor  the mission is accomplished no matter what happens to the acquired company.  Part of it may be the enthusiasm for the merger blinding those involved to the potential pitfalls or wacky financing.  But I think it’s primarily for another reason.

Simply put, culture.  Think for a second about new immigrants to this country.  They may not speak the language.  They are unaware of our customs.  They might not even know our laws.  All of those things create resentment – look at the news and you can find many examples of it.  It’s not that they’re bad people – their culture is different.

It’s no different when corporate cultures meet.  There are almost always differences in management styles.  How employees feel about the companies vary as much as do their benefits.  Lost in the shuffle is the fact that one company is not buying another – you’re acquiring people!  Those people may have been trained to have a different focus and how they measure success might not align exactly with your expectations.  As with the immigrant example, helping them to learn the culture and to speak the language is an imperative.

I’ll be watching this merger with interest.   I’m wondering if and how the cultural changes will manifest themselves to the flying public.  If the managers are smart , the next year will be spent making sure everyone is on the same page and understands the cross-cultural changes.  If they aren’t, like the vast majority of mergers, this one will fail.

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February 13, 2013 · 1:56 pm

Mobile Data And Changing Habits

Let’s begin the day with a factoid:  last year’s mobile data traffic was nearly twelve times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000.  That nugget comes from the Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2012–2017 which you can read by clicking the link.  Some of what it has to say – as with the growth of smartphone use, for example – isn’t all that surprising.  A few other points is kind of eye-opening:

  • Mobile network connection speeds more than doubled in 2012.
  • Android is now higher than iPhone levels of data use.
  • Mobile video traffic exceeded 50 percent for the first time in 2012.
  • By the end of 2013, the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the number of people on earth, and by 2017 there will be nearly 1.4 mobile devices per capita.
  • Nonsmartphone usage increased 35 percent to 6.8 MB per month in 2012, compared to 5.0 MB per month in 2011. Basic handsets still make up the vast majority of handsets on the network (82 percent).

That last one is a little scary since it shows that there is still a lot of growth left.   Here’s the thing – a lot of this traffic was on cellular networks (as opposed to wi-fi), which is obviously why the telephone guys are upgrading like crazy.  I think the growth is as much about device growth as it is about the services and quality of the content available on them, and it’s this last little bit that I think will continue to drive things.  We tend to think of mobile devices as “second screen” but to me this study is evidence that they’re becoming a primary screen with respect to some content.  That primary usage builds habits, and one wonders when those habits will be reflected in viewing to what are currently primary screens.

Another nugget: the average smartphone will generate 2.7 GB of traffic per month in 2017, an 8-fold increase over the 2012 average of 342 MB per month.  How does that jibe with the bandwidth plans the carriers are selling?  If they’re refusing to sell an “unlimited” plan or throttling speeds over 2GB, how will consumers react?

We can see all of this happening already.  YouTube, for example, gets lots of views and while those views don’t eclipse the numbers that a major TV or cable network can deliver, they certainly are bigger than some of the second and third tier nets.  YouTube is not generally available in homes but is ubiquitous on mobile devices.  As YouTube behaves more like a cable content aggregator, one will see those numbers grow.  That’s what’s driving the numbers Cisco is predicting.  Is it driving you?

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