Monthly Archives: December 2014

December 26, 2014 · 11:38 am

Sous Vide

Image via jetcitygastrophysics.com

It’s a special Foodie Friday for me. I received a holiday gift of an immersion circulator yesterday. It just might be a catalyst of large changes in how I cook. It also got me thinking about the business point which is our focus today.
What one does with an immersion circulator is to cook using the “sous vide” method. You French scholars out there will recognize that the term means “under vacuum.”  You place whatever you’re cooking into a plastic bag, extract the air, and seal it. That can be as fancy as one of those Foodsaver devices or as simple as a zip lock bag.  Either way, what happens next is the magic and where my gift comes in.

The bag (or bags) is placed in a water bath.  The immersion circulator holds the water at a steady temperature which is the desired end temperature of the food.  So, for example, you might want a steak cooked to 140 degrees.  That’s how you set the circulator.  The food never gets warmer than the water it’s in, so the method is pretty foolproof.  It cooks to an even temperature all the way through – no overcooked parts, no raw parts.  Because it’s in a sealed environment no moisture is lost either. When you’re ready to eat, most cooks will take the product out of the bag and, in the case of most proteins, put them briefly in a very hot pan to sear them.  Other than that it’s really “set it and forget it”.  Which is the business point.

Sous vide cooking doesn’t require much attention.  That is dangerous.  Chef Thomas Keller wrote “Eliminate the need to pay attention and you eliminate the craft” in his book on Sous Vide.  I agree, and we need to be mindful of the same thing in business.  Part of what we do is to set up processes that work extremely efficiently without a lot of hands-on from managers.  That’s dangerous.  First, no process is foolproof (in sous vide a bag could rip or, if cooked way too long, the food can become mushy).  Second, as Keller says, the hands-on part is the craft of business.  While data extraction, as an example, might be automated and hands-off, what we do with it is very much the craft.

I’m excited about trying my new toy this weekend.  As in business, I’ll do so mindful that while the process may be “foolproof” the designers might never have met a fool such as me and pay a lot of attention.  Make sense?

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December 23, 2014 · 10:59 am

Why Me?

As we’re getting to the end of the year the pace slows down a bit and we get a chance to think a little. Oh sure – I know we all apply as much mental effort as we can to our daily tasks but the pace often dictates that we move quickly and there isn’t a great deal of time available for reflection. There is today so I’m doing so.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is the value of delegation. I found out many years ago that as the task list grew so too did the need to involve others in completing it. That required delegation. It’s a lesson that has served me well in my life as a consultant since often my role isn’t to do but to strategize and to recommend courses of action. I delegate (ok, more like beg) the client’s team to do the work much of the time.

Many managers delegate with a statement of what’s required and dismiss the staff member with the task and a deadline. They forget to answer a couple of questions. The first is “why me?”. It’s important for the person to whom you’re assigning the task to know that they weren’t some random choice to complete it. Hopefully you chose them due to specific knowledge they possess or a skill set that makes them the best person for the job. They should know that. It gives them an underpinning of confidence as well as a clue as to how the task is to be done.  You wouldn’t ask the accountant to write a marketing plan nor would you ask the marketing person to do a financial statement.  It’s not just their areas of responsibility that are different.  It’s their mindsets and their skill sets.  Let them know.

The second question you need to answer is about context.  How does what you’re asking fit into the broader business?  What does the desired outcome of the task have to do with what other people are doing and how does it move the business forward?  This helps the person understand that what you’re asking isn’t “busy work” nor is it random.  If you can’t answer those questions, by the way, you might need to rethink either the task or the person to whom you’re assigning it.

It’s easy to get subordinates to do things when you’re the boss.  It’s less easy to get them to do them in a way that helps them grow.  It’s even harder to have them develop themselves and the overall business.  Answering “why me” is a good start.  Make sense?

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December 22, 2014 · 2:05 pm

The Crack In The Wall

How good is your memory?  Remember way back in 2008 when the biggest social network site was seeing 75.9 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S.?  It was taking in a lot of money too – upwards of $470 million back in the days when digital advertising was still relatively new.  Big user base, solid revenue performance – what could possibly go wrong?

Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Fr...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Except that things did.  By 2011 MySpace‘s revenues dropped close to $184 million and their user base was down to 34.8 million.  What happened?  At the time, this was Business Week’s take:

It turns out that fast-moving technology, fickle user behavior, and swirling public perception are an extremely volatile mix. Add in the sense of arrogance that comes when hundreds of millions of people around the world are living on your platform, and social networks appear to be a very peculiar business—one in which companies might serially rise, fall, and disappear.

Why do I bring this up?  A report came out the other day from the Magid folks.  It found that the portion of 13- to 17-year-old social-media users in the U.S. on Facebook slipped to 88 percent this year from 94 percent in 2013 and 95 percent in 2012.  This comes on the heels of

New research conducted by the GlobalWebIndex (GWI) shows that while Facebook remains the most popular social network, it now has to face the challenge of keeping users interested. Among its teenage netizens, 54 percent cited that their “log in” habits have dropped due to a lack of interest. Of users who belong to the age range of 16 to 19, 64 percent now use the site less.

Now if you own a house, you’ve probably had the experience of noticing a crack in a wall that might not have been there the day before.  Most of the time it’s just the house doing a little settling.  Sometimes, however, it portends a serious problem.  I’m not sure which this is in Facebook’s case.  I suspect it’s more serious than one might think.  Why?

Another little factoid that came out of the data.  Teens don’t see Facebook as safe.  They have concerns that the service may not be trustworthy. When just 9 percent of those surveyed described the website as “safe” or “trustworthy, they have a problem, one they’re doing almost nothing to address.

I’m sure back in 2009 the MySpace folks didn’t lose much sleep worrying about small usage declines.  I don’t expect the Facebook folks are now even as they’ve stopped talking about teen usage on analyst calls.   A little settling or a massive structural problem?  What do you think?

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