Tag Archives: business thinking

January 27, 2015 · 4:07 pm

Trust These Numbers

The folks at Edelman are out with their latest Trust Barometer and the results are interesting. Of course, one can ask “why are they important?” As the study’s sponsors put it:

Trust is a forward-facing metric of stakeholder expectation. It is an asset that institutions must understand and properly build in order to be successful in today’s complex world.

I agree. So what did they find?

The study surveyed 6,000 “informed publics” aged 25-64 across 27 markets, finding that online search engines are now the most trusted source of general news. Search also widened its lead over newspapers and TV as the first source for general information and the source used by most to confirm and validate news.

In other words, what you and I might consider as traditional media sources of news and information have fallen behind search engines.  Not surprising in some ways since the “always on” version of traditional media is skewed one way or another with respect to how things are reported. The issue with search is “garbage in – garbage out“.  While algorithms tend to give more weight to “credible” sources such as the same traditional media outlets we might discount on other platforms, many of the highly read digital sources pop up on search engine result pages on an equal footing.  The obvious issue is that many of the newer outlets offer as much quality control as a blind man in a paint factory.

That said, once you become a source, you stay there:

  • Friends and family (72%) and academic experts (70%) are the most trusted sources of information consumed by informed publics on social networking sites, content sharing sites, and online-only information sources. Informed publics are almost twice as likely to trust content created by companies they use (60%) as content from brands they don’t use (32%).
  • 8 in 10 informed publics have chosen to buy products and services from a company they trust during the past year, and 68% have recommended them to a friend or colleague.

So whom do you trust?  More importantly, what are you doing to cultivate trust among your stakeholders?

 

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January 23, 2015 · 11:28 am

Mr. Kanso

Foodie Friday, and today we have something a little on the weird side.  It’s a chain of “restaurants” (you’ll see why I’m using quotes in a second) in Japan called Mr. Kanso.  The first one opened in Osaka in 2002 and became so successful that it now has 17 other locations across Japan.  This is a pretty good summary of the business:

Mr. Kanso has no menus, only shelves stacked with hundreds of different types of canned food from across the globe. Customers choose from such delicacies as “Todo niku kare” (sealion curry), canned cocktail sausages, French salad, and whale meat (tut tut, Mr. Kanso) – all served cold in a can and gobbled up with plastic cutlery.

That’s right – diners visit Mr. Kanso and select their food from a shelf.  It’s not heated up, just opened.  As best I can determine, these are not the same cans one can find in a market.  All of them have a Mr. Kanso label so I’m assuming the chain has them made to their specifications.  I don’t get it from a consumer perspective although I guess if the contents of the cans are really yummy it makes a bit more sense.  Honestly, Hokkaido bear curry isn’t really my can of tea but apparently it’s the variety that keeps customers coming back for more.  There is, however an interesting business point here.

Think about it.  No cooking means no kitchen and no cooks.  The start-up costs are substantially lower than those of a regular restaurant.  The food doesn’t spoil, at least not in days or weeks.  The food is reasonably priced – drinks run about $5 and the cans cost between $2 and $20 (I’m not sure what that one contains) and the margins must be excellent.  The cutlery gets thrown away so no dishwashers.  In short, it’s a low investment cost, high margin business.  As long as the appeal is there, and it certainly seems to be, this is exactly the sort of model any of us can emulate.

Honestly, if a Mr. Kanso came to my town I’d probably go check it out.  Reasonably-priced food with an amazing selection has some appeal even if the dining experience has less.  The business appeal, however, is first-rate.  Thoughts?

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January 19, 2015 · 12:23 pm

Listening And Leading

I started to write another post about Dr. King in celebration of his birthday.  I went back to something I had written in 2011 which in turn went back to something from 2009.  In all candor, I stopped trying to write a new one after heading out into rants on the subject of race relations today. Since we don’t do politics here I’m reposting the older screed. Maybe in honor of Dr. King you’ll go see “Selma”, as imperfect as that film is, and reflect on his message.  

Today is the day we pause to celebrate Dr. King’s birthday.  I went back and looked at my post from two years ago, which was about dreams – specifically one of Dr. King’s dreams becoming a reality.  That was sort of focused on what he saw – his vision.  Today I want to focus on one of the great man’s best qualities that influenced how he acted to make that vision real.  I think it’s applicable to business.  No, it’s not going to be another ethics rant (although those are never out of style in my book).  Today, it’s about the most important skill I think all great businesspeople – and great leaders – posses.

To me, great leaders serve to fulfill the needs of their people.  For Dr. King, it meant endless meetings with various groups to understand their concerns and explain how broadening civil liberties to be more inclusive could help meet them.  For those of us in business, it means paying more attention to the concerns of our customers and co-workers than to our own agenda – these folks ARE our agenda to a certain extent, along with the underlying needs of our businesses.  In a word – listen.

Everyone wants to feel as if their ideas and thoughts are being heard if not acted upon. Without someone hearing them, action on those concerns is impossible. Listening, then speaking, brings trust.

I know this isn’t a new thought in this space but it came to mind on this day thinking of Dr. King.  If you go back to the early days of Dr. King’s involvement in the civil rights movement, it’s pretty clear that he was a reluctant leader. He was drafted to lead and was kind of unsure of himself.  As he listened to the members of the community and other clergy, he realized that he was simply a voice for the community and their agenda became his agenda.

Many of you will be familiar with Stephen R. Covey, who wrote that we ought to “seek first to understand, then to be understood.”  I think Dr. King, if he read pop-psychology, would have appreciated that.

What are you listening to today?

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