Monthly Archives: October 2013

October 14, 2013 · 9:29 am

Columbus

It’s Columbus Day here in the US.  While in many places (generally those with large Italian populations) the day is celebrated in a larger public way, it goes unnoticed in many communities.  Too bad since I think we need to pay a lot more attention to the things Columbus teaches us about business.  First, a little history.

Christopher Columbus, the subject of the book,...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cristoforo Colombo was born in Genoa and is generally credited as having “discovered” America.  We know, of course, that he wasn’t the first European to set foot on this continent (that would have been Leif Ericson) though he certainly did it more publicly and more often than anyone else and he succeeded in bringing the Americas to the attention of the European powers.  He’d been a sailor nearly his entire life.  Though he lacked much formal education he read a great deal including some very sophisticated (for the time) books about astronomy, geography, and history written in multiple languages.  Through them and his world experience at sea, he came up with the notion that the distance between Europe and Japan would be considerably shorter if one went West rather than East.  The Americas were a kind of happy accident that turned up en route.

To be able to make that voyage, Columbus had to raise a great deal of money and spent almost a decade after he developed his theory finding investors.  That was made difficult because many of those advising the investors were dead certain Columbus was wrong and passed on the opportunity.  Any of this sound familiar?

A curious mind hungers for information and actively seeks it out.  That leads to innovative thinking that’s years ahead of anyone else’s.  From that thinking a business plan is developed and it takes a long time to get others to believe in the notion (and to put their money where their belief is).  The plan, once it moves forward, encounters an unplanned opportunity (he wasn’t looking for natives in the various Caribbean islands when he started!) and pivots to take advantage of it.   I suspect you could use those few sentences to describe any number of successful businesses or products.  That would make them all pretty good things for us to celebrate this Columbus Day as business folks, wouldn’t you agree?

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October 11, 2013 · 1:15 pm

No Good Deed…

English: McDonalds' sign in Harlem.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Foodie Friday fun time, and this week it’s fast food. Oh, sorry – Quick Service Restaurants. No, this isn’t going to be a polemic on the horrors of what’s served in many of these places. Instead, I’d like to focus for a moment on what the category leader has announced and some of the responses to it.

I find it instructive and you might as well. You might be aware the McDonald’s is going to give away books as toys with their Happy Meals which are targeted to kids.  The books will replace the usual toy and I think giving away 20,000,000 books instead of a like number of toys is a good thing.  However, that’s where much of the positive energy stops.  As USA Today reported:

…this new series of four kids books is hardly comprised of Caldecott Medal winners. Rather, the four books are based on McDonald’s own animated animals, including a goat, ant, dodo bird and, yes, a dinosaur.

Now McDonald’s had given out books at least 15 times previously but this is the first time the books have been created by their ad agency.  The cynics would say that since the books try to tell the kids about healthy eating from characters associated with the McDonald’s brand, kids might think McDonald’s is healthy food.  NY Times food writer Mark Bittman asked this:

If McDonald’s wanted to be on the right side of history, it would announce something like this: ‘Starting tomorrow, we’re not offering soda with Happy Meals except by specific request. And starting Jan. 1, at every McDonald’s, we’ll be offering a small burger with a big salad for the price of a burger and fries to anyone who asks for it; we’re also adding a chopped salad McWrap. We challenge our competitors to follow us in making fast food as healthful as it is affordable, and we dare our critics to say we’re not changing.

What’s the business point?  We can’t say one thing and appear to do another.  Simple, right?  Maybe to say, but we have to examine the entirety of our activities – both marketing-based and otherwise – to make sure that our words and our actions are aligned.  There are many people who look at everything companies do with a cynical eye and they have the tools and platforms to make their feelings known.  Anything associated with making money is subject to that skeptical review and the above is a good demonstration of how our good intentions can be undercut.

Does that make sense?

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October 10, 2013 · 10:19 am

I Wonder…

When I talk about meeting new people or potential new hires, I always look for two things which are related to one another. The first is how curious that person is while the second is how they translate the results of that curiosity into cogent thinking. I suppose when I’m hiring I push this second point a little and try to get at how that thinking translated into action (and results). Both of these things come down to that person’s ability to wonder.

The Thinking Man sculpture at Musée Rodin in Paris

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s nice to respect the thinking that got a business or individual to where they are.  For some businesses, continuing to move forward on the basis of the usual patterns of thought can work.  For many, however, it won’t.  Markets change as do market conditions.  More importantly, the technological changes of the last decade and a half have ripped apart and rebuilt almost everything we thought we knew about how to interact with those markets.

The best way to approach business today is with a strong sense of curiosity.  We need to use one phrase a lot:  “I wonder…”  I wonder what would happen if we skipped a trade show and used the money to throw a golf outing.  I wonder what would happen to our sales if we took money out of TV and put it into search and I wonder if the drop in our unaided brand awareness is a big deal.  We need to maintain a mindset I try to foster in brainstorming sessions.  No idea is a”bad” idea.  Maybe some aren’t feasible as expressed but perhaps lurking inside that idea is a nugget of innovative thinking brought about by wondering about a topic.

Ask questions.  It’s a great social media strategy, by the way, since your audience is probably wondering about some of the topics that might help your business grow.  As an aside, it’s an important mindset for us to maintain as people – and citizens – as well.

If you can find a minute or two today, start wondering.  Ask questions.  Don’t dismiss the answers you get out of hand no matter how unfeasible or silly they might seem.  Start a sentence with “I wonder…” and see where it leads.  If you get a chance, tell me how you made out, because I wonder what you think!

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