Category Archives: Uncategorized

January 18, 2013 · 9:33 am

Leading By Keeping Quiet

If you’ve been reading the screed for any period of time you know that I’m a huge fan of Top Chef.

Top Chef Middle East

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This week’s episode provides us with the raw ingredients for our Foodie Friday Fun.  It was “restaurant wars” week, in which two chefs each conceive of and open a restaurant in 48 hours.  The chef selects other contestants as team members to serve as their staff and it’s not unusual for the losing head chef to go home.  What happened this week made great television, but it also demonstrated a fantastic business point for anyone who wants to lead a team.

One of the team captains selected a contestant who probably should have gone home several weeks ago.  It’s obvious that her talent and work ethic are not up to the standards of the other remaining contestants, much less up to those of the woman who chose her for her team (and no, she wasn’t a top pick).  Over the course of the prep day and the service day, the slacker chef delayed preparing a critical part of a dish which resulted in the dish not matching the head chef’s vision for it.  At judges’ table, the head chef did not complain about the other chef’s refusal to work as instructed. The judges had no way to know what had caused the offending dish to come up short.  All they knew is that the head chef said she was responsible, both for the dish and for the overall meal.  She went home.

The business lesson is critical   The leader’s taking responsibility and refusing to complain about her subordinate when she could have done so in order to save herself shows the type of character that makes a great leader. More importantly, it show that she understands that real leadership means assuming accountability to go along with your organizational authority.

That’s not to say she demonstrated perfect leadership skills.  As things weren’t going her way she got very frustrated.  Like many perfectionists she was  hard on herself and she shut down to a certain extent when she should have been more assertive. Things often don’t go the way we envision in business (in life to, come to think of it) and we  need to face the situation, adapt, and be flexible.  If we’re not confident we can’t possibly instill confidence in our teams.

The web is filled with the comments of outraged fans of the show screaming how the “wrong” chef was sent home.  Maybe the verdict was misplaced but the leadership lesson certainly wasn’t.

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December 31, 2012 · 10:56 am

The Most Important Thing I Learned This Year

Sometimes things that are very personal can also be important to a much wider sphere. Today is one of those things, I hope, and it’s a good one with which to end 2012.
As my brother lay dying a month or so ago, he said something that really stuck. He had a very rare form of cancer, one which even if it had been caught very early might not have been curable. While Mike was never one for much (if any) self-pity, on this occasion he indulged himself just a bit. What he had to say was a very important thing for your business life and that’s what I’d like to share.

“Why didn’t I take a day off and go to the doctor? Why didn’t I tell a client I can’t meet? Why did I keep going to the office?”

He knew – long before it was obvious to any of the rest of us – that something was wrong yet he felt a responsibility to his job and to his clients to put them first.  Obviously, I’m a big believer in that – I write often about a customer-centric focus.  However, what I learned this year was that if you’re going to serve your clients well you also need to be in sound enough shape physically and mentally to do so.  That requires that we take some time away.  Shut down the email, turn off the cellphone.  Go play a video game or golf or cook or read a non-business book.  Treat yourself as you would a client – they deserve some focused, uninterrupted time and so do you.

As I said, even if he had gone to the doctor the outcome might have been the same.  What might not have been, however, was how he used the time he had left and how he was treated to determine that time.  Mike’s lesson wasn’t exactly something I learned for the first time this year but this time it’s stuck.  I hope he can help it stick with you as well.

Enjoy a day or two off – on to a great 2013!

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November 27, 2012 · 10:10 am

What’s On Channel 2?

According to Pew’s Internet & American Life survey 27% of voters relied on both TV and Internet to follow the Election Night coverage.  When you put that in the context of 65% relying exclusively on TV, it doesn’t sound like it’s a lot.  Only 6% said they monitored results only on the Internet, so it’s pretty evident that our primary screen continues to be the TV, at least for the moment.  However, the more we segment the audience into the “digital native” realm, the more we see this behavior.

Use of dual screens was most pronounced among the 18- to-39-year-old segment, where 39% “dual screened” the election, as Pew calls it. As reported here:

In fact, for the under-40 crowd, it was almost as likely they would track returns on two screens as on TV alone (45%). And 28% of those ages 40 to 64 also used both media during the course of the evening. In fact, it was only in the 65+ segment where the dual-screen behavior was negligible (9%).  There is a sharp digital divide in two-screen behaviors based on educational levels. Dual-screening the returns was strongest among voters with college degrees (36%) and some college education (28%), compared to those with high school or less (14%).

People have always multi-tasked while watching TV.  They chat with someone in the room or on the phone.  Maybe they’re eating.  In my ind, this is different since either they’re ingesting the same content in a different way or perhaps they’re doing something else that requires a lot more attention – email, for example. It would be interesting to know whose content that 6% was following – the “traditional” providers of broadcast and cable news or newer sources such as Twitter so we could see if the shift in channel was joined to a shift in content providers.  Either way, as a recent eMarketer piece stated:

Consumers’ attention is more divided than ever as media multitasking becomes the norm.  Formerly linear consumption activity, defined by appointments with specific media, is now a tangle of simultaneous activities, some related, some not. TV remains at the center of this multitasking, but more often than not, there is another screen more directly in front of the viewer.

How are you planning your content and marketing to accommodate these changes?  Are you worrying about what’s on Channel 1 while the audience is watching Channel 2 at the same time?

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