Monthly Archives: March 2014

March 18, 2014 · 8:50 am

Big Shot

For our TunesDay selection this week, I want to present a song that I suspect a number of people are feeling this morning after St. Patrick‘s Day.

Billy Joel

It’s from Billy Joel who I consider to be one of the top three American songwriters of the last 35 – 40 years (along with Dylan and Springsteen). It’s called “Big Shot” and it has a lot to do with the morning after as well as some thoughts about the night before. Give it a listen:

I’ll be the first to tell you that music videos from the 1970’s weren’t quite what they are now and this one was no exception.  That said, his tale of the morning after the night on the town resonates in a number of ways.  I realize that Billy is not writing about business – the song is alleged to have been written about either (pick one) himself, Mick Jagger, or Bianca Jagger.  There is one thing, however, I take from the song that has nothing to do with midnight misbehavior and everything to do with business:  being a big shot.

Too many people confuse what they do with who they are.  As Billy writes:

They were all impressed with your Halston dress
And the people that you knew at Elaine’s
And the story of your latest success
Kept ’em so entertained

There is a fine line between having the confidence one needs to be successful in business and the other side of that line which is arrogance.  Great leaders listen a lot more than they speak and when they have the information they need, they act.  Great leaders recognize that while the vision may be theirs it probably took the hard work of a devoted team to make that vision a reality.  When success comes, staying humble might be hard but it’s the only way that success leaves everyone that sees it feeling good.  While I suppose that being a rich jerk has its pluses, success (and money) often doesn’t last.  The people you see on the way down will remember how you were on the way up.

The song ends with this thought:

Well, it’s no big sin to stick your two cents in
If you know when to leave it alone
But you went over the line
You couldn’t see it was time to go home

I’ve seen people in high positions who overestimate their capabilities and are out of touch with reality.  They think their two cents are gospel.  The Greeks had a word for it: hubris.  I have one too: stupidity.  Staying humble doesn’t make you weak just as having a big job doesn’t make you a big shot.   That’s my take – what’s yours?

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March 17, 2014 · 9:57 am

St. Patrick And Your Business

photo credit: Lawrence OP via photopin cc

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! This is one of the two days of the year (the other being New Year’s Eve) I like to call “amateur night.” People who rarely drink to excess seem to do so and the streets and trains are filled with people who were over served. All this in honor of the patron saint of Ireland.   As you can see from the statue, nearly every representation of him makes reference to his banishing the snakes from a country where they apparently never lived.

Patrick had the right idea even if the facts are a bit murky and that’s our business point today.  While different religions view snakes in different ways, a snake does get the blame in the Old Testament for tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden, thereby earning a reputation as a symbol of evil and plotting.  We see those kind of snakes all the time in business.  You know the ones I mean.

They might be the kind who pat you on the back and smile while they’re looking for a soft spot into which they’ll stick the knife.  Maybe they’re the ones who spread fear, uncertainty and doubt to create non-existent problems while presenting themselves as the only ones who can solve those problems.  Or maybe they’re just the people who come to work each day and are incapable of making decisions while keeping their conscience fully turned on.  They’re snakes and they need to go!

There are also systematic snakes.  The gremlins that inhabit all machines so they fail at exactly the wrong time and for which we have no back-up plan.  The process that ties up way too many people to produce way too little return on that time investment.  You probably know of quite a few of these in your business.  Why not take up St. Pat’s staff and drive all the snakes away?  Today is as good a day as any, before you have a sip of the green beer, isn’t it?

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March 14, 2014 · 8:52 am

Doing Your Mies

Beth via Flickr

I realized as I thought about our Foodie Friday topic for this week that I’ve neglected to write about the most basic, and important, step in cooking. Turns out that it’s a pretty important business subject too. That step is doing one’s mise en place. It’s a French term that means “to put in place” and sounds like “meez  en plahse”. No professional kitchen would dream of opening for the evening without the mise having been done. No other business should either.

Doing your mise means you cut up your onions, mice your garlic, and get all the other ingredients for your dish ready before you start to cook.  It has the added benefit of showing you right away if you have all the components necessary to make your recipe or if you need to rethink your plan.  It means you heat up the pan or turn on the grill so it’s hot before you begin.  When I’m cooking a number of dishes, I do all of the mise at once.  That step allows me to cook the dishes without worrying if my timing will be upset by having to slice or dice some forgotten element. It’s the only way that a restaurant kitchen can crank out dozens of dishes in a reasonable time period.  After all, can you imagine how long you’d be sitting if the cooks had to dice onions or search for a carrot in the middle of the evening rush?

You should be doing mise in the office as well.  Starting the day by taking the time to mentally prepare yourself and your staff for the day’s tasks may seem like an unnecessary waste of time but it helps avoid a lot of crisis situations.  A manager’s job is to make sure his team has what they need to do their jobs and doing the mise by walking around first thing is a good step in that direction.  Diving right in to email is like turning on the stove before you’ve brought the protein up to room temp first and making sure you have the sauce components ready to go.  The pieces of the day won’t go together nearly as well.  Most people’s minds are clear first thing in the morning.  That’s the time to prep.

Everyone knows “Ready, Fire, Aim” is a bad idea in business and in the kitchen.  Doing your mise is both “ready” and “aim”.   It assures that the great product you have in mind is what you produce in the end.  Make sense?

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