Category Archives: Consulting

December 29, 2014 · 11:12 am

Top Posts Of 2014 – #3

As has become my tradition, I review and republish the posts I wrote and you all read the most during the previous year.  The post below touches on a theme we visit fairly often here on the screed – staying focused on the things that will move our businesses forward.  It was the third most read post this past year.   Enjoy!

In the movie “Up”, every so often the dogs interrupt themselves mid-sentence because a squirrel – or even the thought of a squirrel – appears. They stop the conversation or whatever else it is they’re doing to chase that distraction.

Squirrel

(Photo credit: likeaduck)

We don’t call them squirrels in business. They’re more like bright shiny objects or the next new thing. Sure, we call them something else altogether – market opportunities for one. In some cases, they really are. Most of the time, however, they’re just a squirrel that’s dashed across the business plan and provided a major distraction.

Consumers can be fickle.  For example, the typical mobile app is used fewer than 10 times before deletion and over a quarter of people use an app once after downloading.  If you’re working to monetize one of those apps, you have a very limited window in general.  Most businesses aren’t living in that fickle a world unless they choose to be there.  They do that by chasing squirrels.

So how does one distinguish between a legitimate opportunity and a shiny object/squirrel?  As always, it’s a combination of things; some consumer-focused, some business-focused.  With respect to the latter, any new business extension will require resources of some sort, even if it’s the shifting of existing support to the new thing.  Resources are finite in most businesses.  Do you have them?

Ask yourself if customers care.  We can point to any number of examples of being too early for the market.  GO had a mobile operating system and mobile, pen-based computers long before the iPad or iPhone.  NextNewNetworks was doing video long before there was broadband to support streaming.  WebTV was another.  In those and other cases consumers couldn’t understand what was in it for them.  After all, selling is about providing value.  How does the squirrel you’re considering do that?  Does it really provide sustainable growth or just a brief pop in revenues (and maybe not in profits)?

Looking over the horizon is the hardest part of any good business person’s job.  The great ones learn to stay focused on what’s in front of them while taking that peek while ignoring the squirrels.  Can you do that?

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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 19, 2014 · 11:11 am

Learning From Portmanteaus

Foodie Friday, and today we’ll start with a word that may be new to some of you: portmanteau. A portmanteau is a combination of the most recognizable parts of two words. We have many of them in the food world and use them to label a host of new things – utensils, dishes, even fruits. You probably use them all the time without knowing what they’re called.

Ever ordered a cheeseburger? Portmanteau – cheese and hamburger. Ever used a spork? A spoon and a fork. Cronuts, frappuccinos, Clamato, even Tex-Mex all qualify, as do pluots, tangelos, and turduckens. So stop petting your labradoodle (see what I did there?) and think about what those food creations can show us in the broader business sense.

Many of these things were evolutionary.  Adding cheese to a hamburger or putting some tines on a spoon (or was it enlarging and rounding the center of a fork?) was something I’d call part of a gradual change and more of an adaptation than an invention.  We do that a lot in business and it’s a smart way to address the ongoing needs of your current customer base.  The flip side of that is revolutionary change, something that’s entirely new and probably unexpected – the cronut falls into that category.  When we create revolutionary change we run the risk of alienating all of those who love what we’re doing but it’s probably the best way to attract a customer base that has ignored us thus far.  In my mind, great businesses do both types of change – evolutionary and revolutionary – because stasis isn’t an option and consumers are always looking for new and better.

Some food portmanteaus are just bad marketing.  The P’zone – a pizza calzone – is a freaking calzone and neither revolutionary nor evolutionary.  Tofurky (tofu and turkey)?  Really?  If you’re foregoing meat, why label a product as if it is the very thing the customer is avoiding?  That said, those things represent the notion that we constantly need to innovate.  The most successful companies often do nothing more than execute a new twist on an existing product or service better than their competitors.  It might be revolutionary, it might be evolutionary and it might be called a portmanteau.  I call it good business.  You?

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