Category Archives: Helpful Hints

August 8, 2012 · 9:47 am

Poison Ivy

One of the hazards of hitting a golf ball a little off line (OK, maybe more than a little) is a close encounter with poison ivy.

Poison Ivy

(Photo credit: Mark Sardella)

It’s everywhere on the course I play. When you keep the ball away from the weeds, it’s not a factor but when you chase one into the edges of the course, you often come home with an itchy reminder of a bad shot.  At some point over the last week I must have had a close encounter with some of it since I’ve now got a few seriously itchy patches on me. This, of course, got me thinking about business.

As you might be able to tell from the photo, the plant has attractive, innocuous little flowers.  As long as you don’t touch the leaves, the urushiol stays put and you don’t itch.  Unfortunately, the oil sticks to everything that touches the plant, and if you touch whatever it was (like a golf ball) later on, you’re probably going to have an allergic reaction that brings on the fits of scratching.  The oil doesn’t go away when the plants die either.  You can get just as bad a case touching a dormant or dead plant in winter as you can in the middle of summer.  The business point?

There are people out there who are just like poison ivy.  We bring them into our organizations because on the surface they seem harmless.  Maybe we notice that they resemble something against which we’d been warned (leaflets three, let it be!) but we’re distracted by something – finding a golf ball, making a hire, closing a deal.  Once we let them touch our business, however, they cause all sorts of harmful reactions and those reactions persist long after we’ve freed ourselves from contact with the plant or the poison.

We’ve all had close encounters with human versions of the plant.  Lieber and Stoller wrote about one – “you can look but you better not touch”.  These people do “come on like a rose” but we’re well-advised to stop, take a hard look, and keep our distances.  The short-term gain is rarely worth the long-term misery.

Want to add any thoughts about someone you’ve encountered like this?  Hit the comments.

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August 6, 2012 · 8:48 am

What I Learned By Getting Whupped

Yesterday was the final round of my golf club’s championship. I made it all the way to the final match during which I was beaten like a rented mule. I did announce that it was my birthday before we teed off but my opponent’s good wishes ended as soon as we hit the first shots.  I suppose it would be pretty understandable if I was upset, but I’m not. I’ve never made it this far in the competition and the loss wasn’t so much about my playing badly as it was about his playing well. Which is, of course, a business point.

These are a few of the things I learned both prior to and during the butt-kicking:

  • You can have butterflies as long as you can get them to fly in formation.  It’s amazing how much raw energy one can get from being nervous.  You might get it speaking publicly; I got it on the first tee.  My thing was to focus on it  and then to dismiss it.  Noting what’s going on isn’t the same as getting caught up in it.
  • Breaking large tasks down into small pieces really does work.  Thinking about having to win a lot of holes of golf to get to the final was kind of daunting.  Making one good swing to get to the next shot was relatively easy.  Getting revenues to double by the end of the fiscal year is hard; closing one more deal this week seems do-able.
  • Getting beaten isn’t the same as losing.  Avis made a pretty good business being number 2.  Very few categories only can support a single player.
  • Finally, I learned not to compound my mistakes.  It’s hard to hit out of deep rough 200 yards to the green and it’s a much better idea to take one’s medicine, pitch out, and try to knock it close from back in the fairway.  We often make mistakes in business but if we don’t compound them we might just make a surprise par and win the hole.

I realize playing for a club championship isn’t the PGA Tour but it was fun to get a taste of high-level competition.  Like business, it’s far more taxing mentally than it is physically, an ultimately the ability to focus mentally helps overcome the physical challenges.  Fore!

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August 3, 2012 · 8:43 am

Avocados And Your Business

Foodie Friday is here and today’s topic is an ad I came across while reading one of my favorite food magazines. I own many knives and I’m not opposed to buying more of them. Yes, I realize I only have two hands and it’s generally a bad idea to use more than one knife at a time, so another knife is not a priority. Still, I appreciate that each of the knives I own is of a particular sort and it’s generally a good idea to use a tool appropriate to the task. While a good chef’s knifecan handle almost anything (and our kitchen is equipped with them in several sizes), having a boning knife makes that task easier, just as a good slicing knife or a bread knife can cut meat or bread, respectively, better than can a general purpose blade.

That said, I laughed out loud when I saw an ad for an avocado knife. Seriously. A knife dedicated to cutting, pitting, and scooping avocados.  Of course, I saw a business point immediately.

This is a solution in search of a problem.  I’ve cut hundreds of avocados.  I generally use my smaller chef’s knife to remove the seed and a spoon to scoop out the flesh.  I’ve never had a problem or wished I had a better tool with which to do the job, unlike seeding a mango, for example.  We don’t just come across this mistake in the kitchen.  I’ve spoken with quite a few businesses who have thought that what they were developing was something really important but for which there wasn’t a need.  Or demand.  Or a market.

Obviously consumers aren’t always aware that they have a problem until the solution comes along.  Steve Jobs was a master of this approach.  People like Edison and Bell were as well.  However, for most of us, the identification of the problem – and the market for it – before creating a solution is a better way to spend our business days.  You get the point.  Me?  I suddenly have a hankering for guacamole.

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