Category Archives: Reality checks

November 11, 2013 · 10:11 am

Veteran’s Day And Business

Often when a national holiday approaches I’ll go back over my posts to see what I’ve written about the day in the past.  I’ve written about Veteran’s Day, which we celebrate today, here, here, and here.

Joseph Ambrose, an 86-year-old World War I vet...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Feel free to go back and read them but I noticed a common theme that I want to repeat and  pretty big omission that I want to correct.

In each of those posts I thank our men and women who served to protect and defend this country.  I do again.  “My war” would have been Vietnam just as my Dad’s was WWII.  He served when his time came because he was needed; I didn’t since the war was winding down and the draft was ending.  Putting the politics aside is almost impossible when discussing the differences between those two conflicts but the service given by those who went is indistinguishable.

I also draw an inelegant analogy between those folks selfless service to us and how businesses ought to be dedicated to serving their customers.  I also touch upon the teamwork needed to succeed.  A long time ago Fast Company published an article which cited an interesting study:

After World War II, the US military commissioned S.L.A. Marshall, a Harvard historian, to do a remarkable study. The question he was asked to research was, literally, why are men willing to die in war? Marshall was allowed to advance and test a variety of explanations. Patriotism – people would die for their country. Or family – men would fight and die to protect their wives and children. The answer that finally emerged was small-group integrity. In a group of people where each is truly committed to the others, no one will be the first to run. So they all stand and fight together.

You know I’m a big proponent of teamwork and believe it’s critical to business success.  The article goes on to talk about managerial courage and how it’s tested and that brings up the omission I want to correct.  Too many of us talk about business as war from time to time, just as we do comparing sports to combat.  We need to stop that.  I used to say that the best part of what I did was that when I screwed up nobody died.  Protecting one’s country for a lousy salary and risking a life can in no way be compared to playing a game for a lot of money or running a business for an obscene amount.

So to my Dad, my other family members, schoolmates, and the millions who stepped forward when their time came to serve I say thank you.  We voted last week – you made that possible.  Think about that as you conduct your business the rest of this week and you serve customers. clients, and commercial causes, hopefully as well as the Vets served us.

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October 16, 2013 · 8:44 am

The Early Warning System Is Going Off

There’s always a scene in movies about some epic disaster during which an early warning system goes off.  A young scientist believes a comet will hit the Earth but the older scientists tell him he’s nuts.  A tsunami monitor goes off when there are calm seas and the woman watching it disregards the information.  You know the drill.  As the audience, we know that disaster is coming but those who have the information are blissfully unaware until disaster strikes.millennials-broadcast

I thought of that as I read a couple of articles the other day.  The first is from the good folks at Poynter who reported on some research the NY Times did.  Quite an eye-catching headline:

Thirty-four percent of millennials surveyed watch mostly online video or no broadcast television, new research from The New York Times says.

Now granted, the study was among 4,000 current users of online video so one could argue, like the woman watching the calm sea, that the sample is skewed.  The again, given the high percentage of young folks that are online video watchers, I’d listen.  After all, cord cutting is no longer dismissed as the rantings of some early adopter lunatics.  There are numbers that prove it’s for real, especially since we’re not talking about “cord-nevers” – young people who never had cable TV – just a broadband connection for streaming.  As one report had it:

While 3.2 million new U.S. households were set up in the last three years, the paid-TV industry only added 250,000 subscriptions in that same period.

Not so good.  And if that’s not a loud enough alarm, here comes the near-miss fireball from out of the sky that gets everyone’s attention, courtesy of our neighbors in the Great White North:

The Canadian government will soon require cable and satellite television providers to make it easier for customers to buy only the channels they want rather than pay for bundles, the country’s industry minister said on Sunday.

“We don’t think it’s right for Canadians to have to pay for bundled television channels that they don’t watch. We want to unbundle television channels and allow Canadians to pick and pay the specific television channels that they want”

Sound familiar?  It should, since it’s the same fight that’s been brewing here for several years and which intensifies each time your cable or satellite bill goes up.  Cable executive are rightly scared that their penetration into the household base will fall, making subscriber revenues drop and ad sales impossible.

Young people tuning out in droves.  The fundamental business model under attack.  Have we reached the end of the TV world?  Not yet.  But in my mind the early warning systems are howling.  What do you think?

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October 15, 2013 · 9:01 am

Better

Ready for a two-fer TunesDay? Today I have two songs that deal with the same issue – our approach to the world and, therefore, how we’re likely to approach business as well. The first is from The Kinks, who are probably better known for Van Halen‘s interpretation of one of their songs (You Really Got Me) then they are for creating some of the most innovative music of the late 60’s and the 70’s and 80’s.  The second one is from The Boss, mostly because it hits on the same theme, I love his music, and its my screed!

First The Kinks:

If you’re ever feeling a little down, this might just be the uplift you need.  I don’t know of a more positive song.  The core of it is contained in these lines:

Be an optimist instead,
And somehow happiness will find you.
Forget what happened yesterday,
I know that better things are on the way.

And that’s really the business point as well.  Unsuccessful people tend to look externally, in my opinion.  The market is bad, a competitor cut prices, a key employee just left, what can we do?  There are always things out of one’s control that are the root of the problems the business is having. As the song points out, a positive attitude lets happiness – which in business is often measured by success – find you.

The Boss weighs in:

What’s so interesting about this song – one of Bruce‘s most positive – is that it was written when his life was kind of confused.  He had dissolved the E Street Band and left New Jersey to live in California.  He had gotten divorced and had changed the style of his music and none of this was well-received by his legion of fans (me among them!).  In the midst of that time, this:

These are better days baby
These are better days it’s true
These are better days
There’s better days shining through

Maybe it’s a lost soul trying to convince himself that everything is fine or maybe it’s a man who faces each day sounding a positive note on whatever may come.   It’s the same point Ray Davies is making in our first song – being an optimist at heart leads one further along in life and in business because, as Bruce puts it “it’s a sad man my friend who’s livin’ in his own skin/And can’t stand the company.”

Make sense?  Oh – extra credit:  In September 2010, Ray Davies released “See My Friends”, an album of reworked classic Kinks songs, which contains a duet of ‘Better Things’ with Bruce Springsteen.  The streams converge!

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