Category Archives: What’s Going On

August 7, 2017 · 12:18 pm

Eclipsing Our Sun

By now you’ve probably heard that there will be a total solar eclipse in two weeks (August 21).  This will be the first total solar eclipse (when the moon moves directly between Earth and the sun) visible in the United States in nearly four decades.

English: Total Solar eclipse 1999 in France. *...

(Wikipedia)

During the eclipse, the 70-mile-wide shadow cast by the moon will darken the skies from Oregon to South Carolina, according to Space.com. What makes this eclipse notable is how accessible it will be to many people since the path of most total eclipses falls over water or unpopulated regions of the planet. This event will go down as the first total solar eclipse whose path of totality stays completely in the United States since 1776. Too bad it didn’t happen on July 4!

Total solar eclipses supposedly have happened at notable times in history. Jesus’ crucifixion, Mohammed‘s birth, and King Henry I‘s death all coincided with a total eclipse. I’m not here to speculate on why those or other events happened simultaneously with a disruption in the Sun’s presence. Instead, I want to focus on a business thought that came to me as I thought about other effects an eclipse has.

When we fall into the moon’s shadow, birds think it’s night and stop chirping, the temperature falls, and things not usually visible become clear. The Sun’s corona, which is the Sun’s upper atmosphere, is clearly visible, as are many stars and planets often obscured at night by moonlight or all the lights turned on automatically on the ground. If you look around you, you might even see a 360-degree sunset as well. What does this have to do with business?

We all have our business “sun.” It might be our process, it might be our boss or coworkers, it might be the favorite customers that illuminate our days, provide warmth, and make survival possible, Every once in a while, however, it’s not a bad idea to precipitate an eclipse of some sort. As with the upcoming event, doing so will often make things visible that your business sun obscures. Maybe your reliance on that sun or suns is stopping you from seeing things about them or opportunities beyond them. What do you think?

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June 21, 2017 · 10:02 am

Cars For Dummies

I bought a new car yesterday. Mine was going on 10 years old and was beginning to show those little warning signs that it was heading downhill. Advocate for proactive action that I am, I decided that 10 years was a good run and that the car and I should part as friends. I know this will come as a shock to you but today’s post isn’t a screed about how my salesperson mistreated me (he didn’t) or how the paperwork takes forever (well, only about an hour) or how I had to negotiate my butt off to get a fair deal (we agreed on numbers in about 30 seconds – yay for the internet bringing transparency).

What has surprised me instead is how much more complex the car is. The decade has turned our vehicles into rolling computers. The owner’s manual – which comes in a few volumes – is roughly the size of a paperback edition of War And Peace. It should have a “hernia hazard” warning on the cover. The car has radar on all sides so that there is no longer a “blind spot”. I can set the cruise control and the radar in front of the car will keep me at a pre-determined distance from the car in front of me regardless of the speed I’ve set. The car will also hit the brakes if it thinks I’m moving toward an object too quickly – useful for idiots that are texting and driving I suppose, but also in case the car in front of you stops short.

I have the ability to connect via Bluetooth, which I had in my old car, but the functionality is much more advanced. In addition, I can link in via a USB cable and have the car perform dozens of functions through my phone and the car’s software. I can install apps in the car, which has its own ISP address. Of course, that’s assuming I can understand how to use all of this. The media center has its own rather large manual as well. My favorite passage in both manuals so far? A warning not to test the collision avoidance system. I suppose some moron thinks driving at a wall doing 40 to see if it works might be fun.

Why am I bring this up? Cars are very complicated machines and while I’m certainly a long-time user of them (as well as a relatively sophisticated user of digital products) I’m kind of overwhelmed. Part of what we need to remember as we introduce new features to current users or our product to new users is that they need help. Jargon isn’t helpful nor are explanations written by technical writers who are engineers first and consumers second. I would have loved a short pamphlet that showed the “Top Ten Things You Will Want To Do First”, written in plain language, highly illustrated, and backed up by a newcomers’ hotline I could call if I ran into trouble. Expensive to support? Sure, but cars are expensive products. Could the dealer have sat with me and provided that service? You bet. Did they? Nope.

Selling the product is only part of the process. Making sure the customer gets every bit of value out of what you’ve sold them is just as important. I’m off to figure out just what I’ve bought here. At least I knew how to get it home!

 

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June 12, 2017 · 11:52 am

Learning From The Apocalypse

While you’re probably aware of the loss of jobs in the coal mining sector, you might not have been paying attention to what’s going on in retail. Department stores alone have lost 18 times the number of jobs when compared with coal miners since 2001. That doesn’t include all the smaller players that have gone out of business nor the number of jobs lost among those who are support people at shopping malls – cleaners, etc. The term you see most often as you begin to research this topic is “apocalypse.” If you’re in the media business, the music business, or many others, you might think of it as just another incidence of disruption.

Inside an abandoned mall in Allen, Texas. The ...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the most disturbing things I’ve read recently was as study by GetApp, which reported that

Two out of three business owners who currently run both an online and physical store believe that they will close their physical store’s doors within ten years and operate their business solely online, according to new research conducted by GetApp.

In fact, there were over 3,500 store closings from Macy’s, JCPenney, K-Mart, and others this year. It’s happening because of technology and globalization. Ask yourself when the last time you went to the mall to go shopping. The only times I’ve been have been when I needed something in my hands immediately, and even that reason is being addressed by Amazon and others. It’s not going to get better, either.

So what do you do if you’ve invested millions of dollars building malls or other large retail spaces? That’s really the situation many businesses find themselves in. Not with respect to owning physical space but in having to expand their thinking. Landlords who thought of themselves as containers for retail are now having to think about servicing a different clientele. Churches, movie theaters, medical offices, gyms, and other tenants can move in while others move out. I drove through what used to be an outlet mall this weekend, and while it was pretty deserted (and kind of depressing), there appeared to be a couple of small start-up companies who had leased space. I’m wondering if the space was less expensive than comparable space in one of the many start-up hotels that have popped up seemingly everywhere. Of course, servicing these other tenants will require a different set of services and skills but that’s what disruption breeds, isn’t it?

The retail apocalypse is just one manifestation of what’s been happening for the last 25 years. Every business is ripe for disruption and it’s really a case of how far along it is in the process. The real question is how prepared are you as it’s happening?

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