Category Archives: Helpful Hints

March 3, 2014 · 12:18 pm

That Won’t Work

Since Mondays are days of new beginnings (“does the work week actually ever end?” you ask), let’s begin with some thinking on starts.

Not just start-ups, since there are starts everywhere in business. A project, a deal, a meeting – they all represent new beginnings.  As we start whatever those journeys may be, we need a few things. Most important, we know to have some sense of where we’re heading and how: objectives and strategies in business-speak.  We need to understand that there may be detours along the way that will require us to adjust some things – maybe a delivery date, maybe tactic, maybe even the entire place to which we’re heading.

Where many businesspeople get into trouble is when they maintain a firm determination to get to wherever it was they set out disregarding the detours.  That’s silly.  So is the opposite – seeing all of the possibilities and refusing to firm up one’s focus.  If the purpose of the enterprise or project can’t be expressed clearly and definitively, there’s a problem.

As a leader, your job is to define the mission, assemble the team to accomplish it, instill confidence, and provide whatever resources your team requires to get to the destination.  If you project an attitude of determination and success, your team will as well.  If you’re unclear or scared, your odds of success drop dramatically.  You don’t need to have all the answers; you do need to believe that the answers are within the team’s grasp.

One of the hardest things you need to be able to do is to say “Stop the car – we’re lost.”   Telling the team “that won’t work” feels like a loss since it’s an admission that something has gone wrong.  Not true.  “That won’t work” can mean the situation has changed or that you’ve learned enough from what you’ve done so far to recognize adjustments are required.

The leaders and businesses that fail are the ones afraid to admit something won’t work out loud and then to adjust.  Great leaders see the need and explain it to their team clearly.  Which will you do?

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February 28, 2014 · 9:46 am

Pickles And Pizza

At last it’s Foodie Friday Fun time.  Today I want to contemplate pickles and pizza and how they relate to your business.  I’m a fan of each of those foods although I will admit to being rather fussy about the latter.  That stuff they serve in a pan in Chicago isn’t pizza.  It’s good, but it’s not pizza.  I’m careful when I choose to eat one – thin crust, great sauce, and whatever I choose to put on it needs to be fresh and/or of high quality.  I’m less fussy about pickles although I don’t really care for sweet ones.

Since you’re already wondering about the business point it’s this.  Even if you got your perfect pizza and a jar of your favorite pickles, you probably wouldn’t put the pickles on the pizza.  I’m told that in some parts of the country people do but pickles are probably not the first pizza topping that comes to mind.  Business is like that.

We do our best to find the best ingredients – great staff, a fabulous product or service, a superior business model – but we don’t often think about if they’ll go together.  Moreover, there is a tendency that once you realize that you have pickles and pizza to panic.  Maybe even to start over.   I think that’s a mistake in many cases.  Am I advocating a pickle pizza?  No.  I do think, however, we need to broaden our thinking.  Pizza is basically a grilled cheese sandwich with the tomato soup in which they’re often dunked already on the sandwich.  You’d eat a pickle with that, right?

We can also think about the pickle.  One can pickle any vegetable pretty easily – pickling liquid is just a spiced brine, after all.  Why pickled cukes?  Maybe peppers – you have those on pizza all the time.  Or cabbage – kimchi is a pickle and I have seen that on pizza.  That’s how we need to think in business.  How can I change whatever frame of reference has my business not performing optimally?

Business isn’t about looking at pickles and pizza and throwing your hands up in disgust.  It’s about rethinking each piece  – dough, sauce, seasoning, pickle – and finding a way to make it work.  How can I make things or people or markets that just don’t seem to fit work together to make something in which the flavors mesh and everything is balanced?  That’s how I see it.  You?

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February 24, 2014 · 9:41 am

Rain Delays

I’m a fan of motor sports and yesterday was one of the biggest events in racing: The Daytona 500.

English: Cars coming the the line to start the...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Say what you like about NASCAR beginning their season with their Super Bowl, but the race generally lives up to its “Great American Race” nickname. Yesterday the rain came to Daytona and stopped the race a bit after it had started. In 21012, the race got delayed until Monday, so rain in Florida is not that unusual a circumstance (despite what the Florida Tourism folks would have you believe). Which of course got me thinking about rain delays.

When rain hits a live sporting event, many people are affected.  The broadcasters who have to fill the time with interesting programming so they don’t lose their audience.  The athletes who have to maintain their mental focus and stay physically loose until they can get back into competition.  The facility which has to handle an influx of fans who have nothing to do but eat and drink while they wait and expect the concession stands to be able to handle the increased traffic without a hitch.  I was always amazed during my years in sports broadcasting how well the producers and crew had prepared for the rain.  Not just the programming they had ready but also how the crew had the proper rain equipment to function without a hitch.  Which is the business point.

Every business faces rain delays.  Clients who ask you to come to a meeting to do a deal but whose lawyers suddenly have a bunch of new issues.  Vendors who didn’t get a shipment of product in from overseas and who, therefore, can’t replenish your inventory.  Then there are the literal rain delays that cause construction to be behind schedule.  The analyst who is very good but who takes FOREVER to get you critical numbers (better known as a human rain delay).

We can’t control the weather.  We can only control our preparation and how we deal with it.  Champions are the ones who keep their focus and proceed as if the rain had never happened.   Are you ready for that?

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