March 22, 2013 · 10:17 am

An Unleavened Week Of Business

This week’s Foodie Friday Fun is our annual reflection on Passover.  The holiday starts Monday night although in many homes the cooking will begin over the weekend.  What – you eat your brisket on the day it’s made?  Despite debates over what exactly species of fish is a “gefilte” (it means “filled, by the way), there are no debates that this seems to be the favorite holiday of many Jews as well as of the non-Jews who join in the celebratory dinner.

English: Passover plate with symbolic foods: m...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The thing about Passover that raises a business thought today is that it’s a week of eating that’s out of the ordinary.  While the first question in the dinner service is “why is this night different,” it’s the week without leavened foods of any sort that’s the biggest change for many.  Some Jews won’t eat anything that swells up – beans, rice, etc. – as well as abstaining from bread and cakes made with leavening agents.  It’s a subtile reminder throughout the week that the escape from Egypt, the deliverance of the people, and the lessons learned from those events shouldn’t be forgotten.  Which is the business point as well.

What if every business designated a week during which something they did on a daily basis was changed?  Maybe they turned of internal email and made face to face conversations happen.  Maybe they let everyone work on projects that were important to the people involved rather than things important to the business.  Or just maybe they refused to let anyone use the word “can’t” or the phrases “bad idea” or “not do-able”.  I’m sure you can think of a few things that your organization could do differently for a time to cause everyone involved to focus on something other than the day-to-day routine.

The Jews spent 40 years wandering around in the desert after they left Egypt.  Many businesses spend a lot of time figuratively wandering around as well.  Maybe a week of change can provide a better focus and get you to your goals more effectively.  Worth a shot?

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March 21, 2013 · 9:48 am

The Bluetooth Runaround

Today we have yet another tale of consumer woe and multiple corporate failures.  This one is a doozy, since it affects a couple of popular products and is generating a lot of chatter on the interwebs.  In fact, one popular site has over a hundred comments on this topic and that’s just a subset of the problem.

Android invasion, Sydney, Australia

(Photo credit: Pranav Bhatt)

As our featured players we have a very popular phone, a couple of very popular families of cars, every cell phone carrier (notice I didn’t use the term “popular” with them) and a LOT of consumers.  Let me explain.

A coupe of months ago I upgraded my phone to the Galaxy SG3.  I love the phone – great display, very fast – no complaints at all.  It came with the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android and I use AT&T as my carrier.  When I got the phone I linked it to my car – a Nissan Altima Hybrid – using Bluetooth and was happily using the car’s built-in hand’s free system to chat and drive safely.

A month ago I became even happier when AT&T pushed an upgrade to Android, installing the Jelly Bean version.  The phone seemed even faster, I got Google Now, and  I was happy to be running a more current version.  Until I received a phone call in the car.  It sounded like an alien calling and I had to pull over to pick up the phone and talk.  I rebooted the phone, it connected to the car, but the sound was bad.  Unusable, actually.  I tried pairing it again to the car, hard resets of the phone and a few other tricks but the audio is completely garbled.

A search on the topic showed me that we have a multiple part blame game going on.  It is an issue affecting not just Nissans but VW/Audi, Inifinitis and a few other models.  Just this phone, every carrier, and only when the phone is upgraded to Jelly Bean.  The carriers say it’s Samsung’s fault.  Samsung says the auto guys need to upgrade the Bluetooth software in their cars.  They all blame Android for not making the Bluetooth version in Jelly Bean backward compatible.

Here is what none of them are doing:  taking responsibility for fixing it.  What they’re not seeing is that it’s costing them money as well as massive amounts of goodwill.  At a minimum  it’s hundreds of calls to customer service, each of which costs money   In the case of the carriers, many people are demanding new phones (which have the older version of Android) to replace the upgraded one.  That’s expensive.  Does any business have too many customers?  There are a lot of cars/phones/carriers from which one can choose, and while very few people are going to make an immediate change to their car or carrier, people don’t forget how they were supported when the time for that evaluation comes.

I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with this.  Maybe I’ll just try to use the phone’s speaker if I get a call while driving.  Maybe I’ll go get a new S3 and not upgrade it until I see this is fixed or they push another version of Android (the rumors are 4.2.2. fixes it).  I’m really interested to see if any party to this mess steps up and does something other than point fingers.  Why am I not surprised?  Isn’t that sad?

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March 20, 2013 · 11:55 am

Taking Sides

I’m in the middle of a few negotiations. Actually, I’m more of a mediator than a negotiator and I’ll explain that in a second.  What we’re negotiating isn’t important to the screed today but the manner in which the negotiations are taking place is. Frankly, I’ve rarely been as frustrated as I am at the moment and I’d like to explain why because it illustrates some things people sometimes do that are self-defeating.

The Inner Cloister

(Photo credit: kern.justin)

One thing I’ve always believed about business dealings is that there needs to be a certain amount of trust.  You have to believe that the other party is acting in good faith.  In my mind it’s like our system of justice:  innocent until proven guilty. In this case I’m working with two parties who completely mistrust one another.  In part that’s because they’re in a field that’s filled with people who misrepresent themselves.  In part it’s because neither of them is willing to reveal more than a little information at a time which fosters mistrust and doubt.  It’s a prescription for disaster.

Another thing that’s become obvious is that rather than the two parties positioning themselves on the same side of the table trying to solve mutual problems they’ve taken seats on opposite sides.  They’re missing out on the mutual creativity and solutions that can come when the parties work together.  Instead, they make demands of one another which arise from their own needs without any recognition of the other side’s reality.  It makes for a protracted discussion rather than a quick resolution.

I think it boils down to the people involved.  It’s way too easy to write it off to the industry or to the money.   Negotiating requires maturity and empathy – these folks seem to have neither.  As is the case in most business situations you can’t fix the business until you fix the people involved.  That’s a far more difficult process than any business deal.  As the intermediary, my role has been to keep the information flowing, the dialog alive and the emotion each party has been expressing to me from arriving on the other party’s doorstep to make things more complicated.  I’m successful at it some of the time but once in a while some of the above factors leak through my firewall.  It makes for interesting days.

There is only one side in a negotiation – the one on which things get done.  Of course there are divergent needs and priorities but unless and until everyone commits to a solution that is mutually-beneficial and encompasses the entirety of those things, not much gets done.  Do you agree?

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