Category Archives: Consulting

June 18, 2013 · 9:02 am

Learning From Cheetahs

Every once in a while I find something in the world of science that teaches me something about business. Such was the case the other day as I read an article about cheetahs in the N.Y. Times. No, this isn’t going to be some clever pun about cheetahs never winning (sorry) but about how many businesses can learn something from the cheetah’s hunting tactics.

Cheetah

(Photo credit: fatedsnowfox)

As the article said:

Anyone who has watched a cheetah run down an antelope knows that these cats are impressively fast. But it turns out that speed is not the secret to their prodigious hunting skills: a novel study of how cheetahs chase prey in the wild shows that it is their agility — their skill at leaping sideways, changing directions abruptly and slowing down quickly — that gives those antelope such bad odds.

Cheetahs don’t actually go very fast when they’re hunting,” said Alan M. Wilson, a professor at the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London who studied cheetahs in Botswana and published a paper about them on Wednesday in the journal Nature. “The hunt is much more about maneuvering, about acceleration, about ducking and diving to capture the prey.”

How many times have you read something urging businesses to “fail fast?”  I think that’s a misnomer – it’s not about failing; it’s about learning and having the cheetah-like agility to change direction.  Just as cheetahs don’t go full-out fast when hunting (they’re capable of running 65 MPH – they might hunt at 35 MPH), maybe those of us in business need to learn to slow down a tad so we can turn.  I think it’s also about being able to see the landscape more clearly as you’re moving more slowly.  As you know if you’ve ever looked sideways out of a car going 60, things are pretty blurry when you’re moving fast.

There’s an expression in racing – slow down to go fast.  I like that a lot better than “haste makes waste.”  Given the pace of change, it’s important to have the capability to run like the cheetah.  It’s equally important to know when that speed is something to sacrifice in order to have a successful hunt.  You agree?

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June 7, 2013 · 9:03 am

Bad Golf And Worse Food

It’s Foodie Friday and I know you’ve been wondering where I’ve been. Sorry about the infrequent posts this week.  I’ve written before about the golf outing I go on every year and I’m in Myrtle Beach with the crew celebrating our friendship and playing an awful lot of (bad) golf. CalabashWe come to Myrtle for the golf and fellowship – we definitely don’t come for the food. In 19 years of visiting we’ve found a few (and only a few) decent restaurants and so we’ve taken to cooking for ourselves a lot. While our food definitely tops out at the “advanced amateur” level, it beats most of what we’d pay for here. That said, the restaurants – a mixture of national chains, Calabash seafood joints, and sports bars – don’t make it worth the effort of money we’d spend on dinner for 12.

Why I bring this up is that they seem to do a good business which raised the question in my mind of standards. We’re not food snobs – most of us enjoy simple food prepared well using high quality ingredients and we’re not looking for fancy sauces or molecular gastronomy techniques.  The standard to which we hold professionals is very different (apparently) from the one most of the folks visiting here seem to have.

The business question is this.  I don’t think the cooks are less skilled nor the service staff any less capable.  I do think that they’re playing to the bar set by their clientele and that’s a trap for any business.  We need to be focused on “best” and not on”this will get us by.”  Many folks like fried seafood buffets (a specialty around here) but using old oil for frying or frozen, imported fish rather than changing the oil regularly and fresh local catch is meeting the low expectations that come either from not knowing any better (McDonald’s is fine until you taste Fatburger or In & Out) or from a business that doesn’t focus on repeat customers.  Very few businesses are afforded that luxury.

Since golf is delayed by a tropical storm passing through (good planning  I know), we’ll be cooking another meal here.  That’s some restaurant’s loss (and given this group it’s a substantial loss).  Our job in business is to make eating out at our place a more attractive proposition than staying home.  The higher we set our own bars the more likely we are to do that.

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June 3, 2013 · 8:40 am

Social And Small Business

I’ve mentioned before that I keep a “blog this” file which contains articles that piqued a thought.  I went through the file over the weekend and came across a press release from the folks at Constant Contact.  They do a study about the state of small businesses and the ways they connect with and grow their audiences.  Results include responses from respondents across a range of business-to-business and business-to-consumer industries.  wkL_ccWhat piqued my interest was this:

While small business interest in, and appreciation for, social media is on the rise, small business owners continue to lack confidence in their social media skills.  More than half (54 percent) chose social media marketing as the marketing activity they need the most help with, which might explain why their frequency of use with social media is not where it needs to be.  Only 13 percent of survey respondents post to Twitter daily and ten percent post weekly to LinkedIn.

Aside from the obvious point that clearly I need to make my phone number and email address more prominent (I can help – call me, you guys!) that research shows me that these folks are being smarter than others.  They recognize that value of the various platforms and aren’t shooting the messengers due to their inability to capitalize on what those platforms offer.

Social is a conversation.  If you’re only engaging on an irregular basis (once a week) and only a fraction are even engaging that often, it’s not going to work.

The study is unclear with respect to how they’re defining social media marketing.  The owners were asked “which social media platform is the most effective for their organization” and that’s kind of nebulous.  Is it paid advertising and the “effectiveness” is measured by responses?  Or is it some other engagement metric?  One hopes the respondents can answer how they’re defining “effective” but I suspect they can’t.

Social media is not like any other form.  It requires commitment and resources far beyond what many folks have experienced buying print, TV, radio, or even display ads.  Doing it badly can do more than be ineffective – it can hurt your business (no one likes to be ignored!).  Can we agree on that?

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