Category Archives: Thinking Aloud

March 9, 2018 · 2:13 pm

Side Dishes

It’s Foodie Friday and today I’m inspired by a friend of mine who loves side dishes. Anytime a meal is discussed, the only question raised is “what are the sides?” Beef Wellington that took hours to prepare? Meh, but what kind of potatoes? You slaved for five hours over a perfect Bolognese Sauce? Interesting, but what veggies are we having?

I suspect that many of us think in an opposite manner. Side dishes are a throw-in – a starch of some sort, maybe some roasted veggies and a salad. When was the last time you just tossed a steak on the grill but worked for hours over perfect Pommes Dauphine? I suspect the next time will be the first since it’s much easier to put a bag of tater tots in the oven. Even when one goes to many restaurants, while the main proteins often have lengthy descriptions of each dish, the side dishes are generally just a listing of the vegetables and starches available.

I’m starting to pay a bit more attention to the sides. As it turns out, many businesses are too. What do I mean? Take the airlines. Originally, “ancillary revenues” such as baggage fees, change fees, advance boarding fees, and all of those horrible nickel and dime items the flying public hates were just side dishes. The main business was in filling seats. Today, airlines make over $80 Billion on these sidelines, and in many ways, they’re the entire profit center for the business. In other cases, what began as a side dish became the business. Groupon used to be an online fundraising site and only sold stuff as a sideline. Nintendo sold playing cards and making video games was a sideline. Twitter was a side project within a podcasting company called Odeo.

When was the last time you thought about the side dishes contained within your business? Maybe there are folks out there who love the sides more than the main and would be willing to skip the main altogether?

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February 21, 2018 · 12:57 pm

Making A Deal

If you spend any time in business, you end up in a negotiation of some sort. It might begin even before you start at a job as you negotiate your salary. More likely, it happens as you work on a deal and document that deal with a contract. You might think that the deal is done when you shake hands but my experience has been that the deal is never really done, even once you’ve both signed that contract.

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To me, the contract is a reference point, something to which the parties can turn if there is a change in circumstances or confusion about expectations. As with any relationship, business deals tend to be fluid, but if the partners work in good faith, any problem is solvable. You should also remember that contracts generally last beyond the actual deal itself (check those clauses in the “survival” section).

Because agreements and partnerships are long-term, the negotiations have to be viewed in that long-term context as well. The odds are that success in the negotiation is not immediate. I have had a contract take longer to get done and signed than the term sheet that documents the general business points. It’s not because the former is done by lawyers and the latter generally by business people either. It really has more to do with the fact that others are getting involved. I’ve found that negotiating success is inversely proportionate to the number of people involved – two people can get something done that ten can’t, even though those ten can be helpful in surfacing new approaches when things bog down.

You need a couple of things to negotiate well. First, you need to know your bottom line – the boundaries you are unwilling or unable to move beyond no matter what the other side offers. You must be willing to walk away if those boundaries are crossed. You also have to be realistic about where to draw those boundaries and let the other side know when they’re asking you to cross them and why. It’s no place for dogma. If you don’t have a real reason and just want to “win,” you’ll lose.

Second, you need a vision of what the possible end result might be. You need to consider solutions with an open mind. Finally, you need to sit on the same side of the table as the person with whom you’re negotiating. I don’t mean physically. I mean you need to convey a positive message – if we work together, we might find some solution that addresses all of our concerns. We are partners in solving a problem.

I’ve had deals fall through during negotiation but they’re the exception. I’ve also had partners not live up to the contracts they signed for various reasons. That’s more common and generally because they weren’t thinking long-term when they signed the deal. What’s your experience been?

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February 7, 2018 · 11:45 am

My Uncle’s Poetry

My uncle passed away last week. He was married to my mother’s sister and, obviously, wasn’t a young man. Still, a loved one’s death is never easy and due to a lengthy illness, this one was especially hard. I flew to Florida to attend his funeral and to offer love and support to my aunt and cousins. If you’ve ever sat with folks who’ve experienced a loss, maybe you’ve had a similar experience to what went on. There was much talking and reminiscing about my uncle and many old family memories were shared with a mixture of laughter and sadness.

My uncle was a man I’d known my entire life and yet during the time spent chatting I learned something I’d never known. There was a book on my aunt’s table. In it were poems that my uncle had written over the years, mostly to her. It turned out he had also written a play. I was very surprised by this since my uncle was a rather vocal prognosticator on whatever topic happened to be at hand. Sports, in particular, was something about which he was never at a loss for an opinion. He was in an odd way a less knowledgeable Howard Cosell and although he was frequently wrong he was never deterred from speaking his mind. The fact that he had written love poetry to his wife was not exactly something that I thought he’d be doing.

The point of this is to remind each of us that no matter how well we think we know a topic or a person we need to keep an open mind and a readiness to be surprised. If someone had told me that my uncle was a playwright I’d have thought they were joking. That fact that I saw his poetry reminded me how little I really knew or understood about him.

Be willing to be wrong. Accept that there are things you don’t know and seek them out. Get as many facts as you can. Oddly, my uncle would often opine without having some key facts at hand. Even so, it’s his last message to me as expressed through the existence of his poetry that was probably the best thing he ever said to me. Does it resonate with you too?

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