Category Archives: Thinking Aloud

May 18, 2012 · 9:37 am

The Farmer’s Market

It’s Friday and it’s the time of year when a lot of the Farmer’s Markets open up around here so I thought I’d use our Foodie Friday theme to talk about them a bit.

Farmers Market

(Photo credit: tamaradulva)

As a recent article explained, “farmers’ markets are hot business nowadays. The number of markets shot up 17 percent last year, and in a recent survey from Mintel market researchers, 52 percent of people said it’s more important to buy local produce than organic, which will likely drive the growth even more.”  There are a number of them in my town and the surrounding area, almost one each day of the week.   Most of the vendors are local farmers and the produce is generally pretty good.

There is, however, a dark side to many of these markets.  Some of the produce sold isn’t local even if it appears to be that way (there are no local tomatoes here in Connecticut in May, for example, unless they’re from a hot-house which means they’re less tasty).  There is loose labeling too – local, organic, pesticide-free, no-spray – many vague promises thrown around.  Which is the broader business point today.

We’re in the season of vague promises better known as an election year but we encounter lots of misleading or purposefully vague language from brands every day.  “Natural” or “Earth Friendly” or “Vegan” are meaningless because they’re not regulated, and companies are able to use these terms at will. It’s up to the consumer to differentiate marketing from reality and then to act by refusing to buy products that use misleading claims.

At the risk of stating the obvious, once a brand is outed as using misleading language, all sorts of bad things can and do happen, especially since the newer tools such a social media and the older tool known as a class-action lawsuit empower pissed off customers.  Frito-Lay was sued over the all-natural claims it has made for its Tostito and Sun Chips products.  Colgate had TV commercials for a Sanex bath gel banned for suggesting that it contains no man-made chemical ingredients.  The list gets longer every day.  Guess there’s no quota on stupidity.

We all know I’m big on reading the freaking label even though there aren’t any at the farmer’s market.  I ask a lot of questions instead.  But isn’t it a sad thing that we can’t really believe what we read even when labels are readily available?   What do you think?

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May 17, 2012 · 8:03 am

Outrunning The Bear

I expect most of you have heard the old joke about the campers and their encounter with a bear.

Haley the polar bear at the Memphis Zoo.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

However, on the off-chance you haven’t, the gist of it is that two campers cross paths with a bear.  As the angry bear begins charging out of the woods towards them, the first camper starts putting his sneakers on. The other camper screams, “It’s no use, we’ll never be able to outrun the bear!”  The first camper yells back, “I don’t need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you!”

A number of folks use that as a business analogy to say that in most business categories, we need only to beat our competition to survive.  I disagree.  By  thinking about surviving or “outlasting” the competition, the focus is on the short-term (we need to run only as fast as the other guys) rather than building for the long-term.  Focusing on the other guys as the standard might just mean you’re being dragged down rather than creating enough of a gap so as to make them non-entities.  After all, what is that bear protecting and what kind of opportunity does it present?

The auto industry is a great example.  For years, the US car companies built cars that were responses to what the other guy had to offer.  The standards of production in terms of fit and finish were OK.  It was pretty much a race to stay slightly ahead of one another.  Then the Japanese auto invasion hit and suddenly there was a different standard in terms of quality and innovation.  It was much higher as measured by independent firms such as J.D. Power.  The domestic manufacturers’ share of business dropped quite a bit – imports offered better quality and more car for the money.  Because they were focused on outrunning one another rather than the foreign bear, they almost got killed.  Had they been focused on an altogether different standard – the one that asks “how can we build something that’s great” who knows what might have been.

Let’s assume (hopefully correctly) that you or your company is really passionate about what you do.  You are delivering a great product or service and you have a path to profitability (or maybe you’re even well down that road).  What piece of that equation involves a standard set by others?
Stop trying to outrun the other guys and figure out why you’re running in the first place.  Maybe outrunning the bear isn’t the best strategy or the highest standard.  What do you think?
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May 14, 2012 · 10:13 am

Na Na Na Na

We do food on Friday here on the screed and I’m starting to think we ought to do golf on Mondays since now that it’s golf season I seem to find golf themes to start the week. I’m not sure if any of you watched The Players over the weekend but it contained a fascinating study in psychology. We talk a lot in golf about it being a mental game. Bob Jones, a golfing icon, summed it up perfectly:

MARANA, AZ - FEBRUARY 22: Kevin Na watches pl...

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course…the space between your ears.

There was no better example of this than Kevin Na during The Players.  It’s a great business lesson too.  For the uninitiated, The Players is often referred to as the fifth major.  Whether it is or not, it’s a big deal in the golf world and it draws a top field.  Kevin Na is a young (28) golfer who turned pro out of high school and won for the first time not long ago.  He was probably best known for carding a 16 on a hole last year (which he did with great grace and a smile, by the way).  What is unusual about him is that he struggles to start his golf swing.  There’s no way to describe it so I’ll show you:

It’s painful, and what’s even weirder is that once he did manage to swing he was playing well enough to be leading the tournament into the final round.  It’s a great example of how often our worst enemies lie within us, both on the golf course and in the office.  How many of us spend time negotiating against ourselves rather than the other party in a deal and deliver worse deal terms than we might otherwise have got?  How many of us operate without a plan or without regard to data that might prove useful?  How many of us let our fears of failure undermine our abilities to function, despite the fact that there is plenty of evidence (like Na’s scorecard) that says we’re doing well?

Part of our ability as businesspeople is our mental capacity, which includes the ability to shut off our brains when we need to and just let our other skills take over.  To a certain extent, we need to get outside of our heads in order to let our brains function.  I’ve had the experience of feeling as if I’m watching myself give a presentation to a few hundred people, one for which I’ve prepared diligently.  My head got out of my brain’s way.  Hopefully Na, who seems like a good guy, can use this experience to do the same.  How about you?

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