Monthly Archives: July 2016

July 19, 2016 · 11:31 am

Playing It Backward

I spend a fair amount of time working with startup companies. By definition, these businesses have a lot of planning and building to do. What problem are we solving? How will we make a product or service that accomplishes that solution? What will that cost and what’s the financial plan? How do we gain enough traction to scale? It often seems overwhelming, even to someone with my years of experience. When I can see that there is a fair amount of frustration on my clients’ faces, I’ll usually ask if they know how great golfers think about how to attack a hole.

Stay with me here – this isn’t yet another excuse to talk about golf here on the screed. Great golfers will play a hole backward. They start by thinking about where the pin is on the green (front, middle, back, left, center, or right) using the pin sheet every caddie and player carries. That sheet gives them the location – how many feet on from the front, how many feet from one edge. That allows them to figure out the best angle for the approach shot, which then dictates where they want to land the tee shot. Backward.

I think great business people often play their businesses backward. Some might call it starting with the end in mind but I think it’s more than that. For example, I think it’s a better and more accurate method if you begin with what number of customers get you to sustained profitability and go backward to find out how you’ll scale to that number (I generally use 10x growth per year) than to begin with where you think you might be now and guess at growth rates. The former gives you targets that will get you where you want to go and an ability to formulate marketing and other budgets to support that growth. The latter is reacting to where you might find yourself without a clear path or guidance for budgeting.

I try to play most decisions backward. Where is the pin (my goal)? Where is the best place from which to attack it and how do I get to that place? Execution then becomes simpler – I’m only focused on the next shot – the next task – because I know I have a plan. Do you?

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July 18, 2016 · 11:02 am

How Facts Can Be Fiction

I was discussing some numbers with someone the other day. It was clear from the conversation that she was taking every bit of data as gospel. I tried to explain a few important things to keep in mind when working with data and as I thought about it perhaps my thinking could be helpful to some of you out there in screed-land.

We all want as much certainty in our business lives as we can get. Part of that is wanting all of our numbers to be facts. They’re not. You may be familiar with the term “sampling error.” Basically, it means that the data is off because the sample from which the data is drawn is not representative of whatever it is you’re trying to measure. While you might think that, for example, your analytics measure everyone, they don’t. Most of the data we read uses some sampling. Sometimes it’s a timing issue – financial data, in particular, can be skewed based on where we might be in a business calendar or where those who pay us are in theirs.

The point is that there are error rates involved with many of these “facts” because these facts are really just estimates.  TV ratings, for example, are probably the most widely known estimates and multi-billion dollar businesses involving networks, agencies, and marketers revolve around numbers everyone knows are not particularly accurate. There are error rates.

Here is the advice I give people. Figure out what questions you’re trying to answer and then find as many different sources of data as you can. If possible, see if you can get multiple people to interpret those data sets. In theory, they should all come up with the same answers. It’s critically important that you NOT tell them what position you’re trying to support (can you find me some information that says we should do XYZ). That is a recipe for disaster because it encourages people only to look at data or interpretations of data that supports what you or they already think is true. That is turning “facts”, which are already often on shaky ground, into a larger fiction, and that’s not what we’re after, is it?

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July 15, 2016 · 12:25 pm

Do You Respect The Traditions? Then Change Them!

By Alice.jessica.north

This Foodie Friday I want us to reflect on a quote I read. It comes from Chef Massimo Bottura who runs a restaurant currently ranked as the world’s best. He did and interview with the folks at Business Insider and one thing he said particularly resonated with me:

Most of the time I ask myself, “Is the tradition really respecting the ingredients?” If it’s not, then I have to change the recipe. In the beginning, it was difficult to do, but after we showed people we could evolve the traditions by taking a different approach, everyone accepted it with open arms.

I think that statement has broader application beyond the kitchen. We have many traditions in our business lives. Some of them are relatively innocuous such as our daily routine and some of them are quite important such as what is the nature of our business. It’s in these latter traditions that we find ourselves often not “respecting the ingredients” by ignoring the changes occurring around us.

Let me give you an example. When I was with the NHL over a decade ago we began discussing the streaming of local games. At the time we had some technical concerns ranging from bandwidth both on our end and consumers’ along with others. Those technical issues are long gone, and the NHL has been successfully streaming lives games to consumers since 2006, but only to consumers out of the local market where the game is airing. It has taken a decade for the local television deals to evolve to permit in-market streaming. That “ingredient” – the local television contract – was no longer “in season” and was being overly respected. The recipe had to change and it finally has, as this article shows. Bravo!

That’s one example. You can probably cite several in your business area where the recipes need change so that the traditions evolve and become relevant to the modern world. We can change things up while preserving the integrity of the tradition and the best things about why it became a tradition in the first place. Circumstances change. We need to as well.

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