Tag Archives: business thinking

December 11, 2014 · 12:02 pm

Sick Days

I feel like crap. I’m told that I sound that way too. Congestion in my chest has migrated up into my head and the pressure in my sinuses is killing me. It’s actually hard to keep my eyes focused as I’m trying to get this written.

I know you’ve been here too. Unless you live in a sterile environment like Howard Hughes, we all get a bit under the weather from time to time, especially when the seasons change. I’m going to keep this brief today.

While once in a while you and I can have a sick day, we can’t ever allow our businesses to do so. Sure, the people who are the faces of our enterprises get sick or fight with their significant other or have other problems. That’s when we encourage them to stay home, or at least take them away from dealing with customers until their physical or mental health returns.

Our customers and partners want to be able to count on us.  While they may be sympathetic to our personnel issues or to other things that can make a business “sick”, they aren’t going to be working with us for long if there is a chance that our illness will spread to them.  Obviously I’m not being literal.  But our problems can’t become their problems.

Thoughts?

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December 8, 2014 · 11:58 am

The Motivation Test

I spent some time over the weekend thinking about motives.  I’ll admit that I fall into the camp of people who tend to ascribe malevolent intent to many of the seemingly innocent things that happen to each of us each day.  I also admit that it’s misguided to do so.  As I wrote a few months back, people tend to be more stupid than they are evil.  Add oblivious to that list.  That, however, isn’t really today’s thought.

English: Human figure with thought bubbles

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My thinking led me to this.  What is important is that people do question why we do what we do as businesses and businesspeople.  They look at two things – actions and motives.  When our actions are tone-deaf or out of sync with someone’s desires, they let us know.  Maybe it’s by lack of purchase; maybe it’s via social media.  In those cases we can usually apologize, explain that we recognize the error of our previous course of action, acknowledge bad decision-making, and promise to do better.

Where we run into issues is when the consumer, partner, or employee looks at our motives.  Yes, they will do that in the course of receiving the aforementioned apology.  That’s where we can’t screw up.  I’ve found that people are very willing to forgive if your intentions were good even if your actions were wrong.  We get into much deeper and hotter water when our motives were as wrong as our actions.

It’s not about rationalization.  In many cases where we screw up, our actions can be rationalized but not justified. In fact, almost any action can be rationalized, but justification requires something more.  I think that something more is the underlying intentions – our motives.

I get that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” and it’s important to act on those intentions.  When we screw up in so doing, the inevitable examination of those intentions needs to check out.   If we don’t pass that exam, we can’t possibly succeed at business.  You agree?

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December 5, 2014 · 2:07 pm

Sneaky Is Stupid

Foodie Friday, if you’re not too stuffed from all of the past week’s consumption.  I came across an article in The Guardian which pulled back the covers on how some restaurants improve their margins by cutting corners in sneaky ways.  What prompted them to write the piece was the travails of The Olive Garden we featured here on the screed a few Fridays ago.  Not surprisingly, the myopic practices going on there is just the tip of a much larger set of things restaurants do. 

A few examples: restaurants will often serve glasses with a half-inch to an inch of foam on top because leaving that much foam can save them around 20 beers per keg.  They will use heavier, high-grade silverware for steaks to give the perception of a higher grade of meat.  They will cut back portion sizes and buy smaller plates.  If they cut an ounce out of a burger they’ll buy smaller buns (something I think they learned from the package goods folks).  Naturally, prices don’t change.

The list goes on but it raises the obvious business point.  As I wrote in September, many companies lose their core identity in the chase for revenues which is bad.  Hurting the products that got you to this point is worse.  Smarter companies do one of several things.  If you’re Apple, you maintain higher prices and don’t mistake cost for value.  If you’re Honda or Toyota or Nissan, you create separate brands (Acura, Lexus, Infiniti) that allow you to charge for a better product while permitting you to change the “standard” brand however you’d like.  No smart brand is sneaky.

What dumb companies do is to cut corners. Successful companies are always looking for creative ways to protect the bottom line without giving the impression that quality is going down with it.  Imagine what happens when your current customer base picks up on the smaller burgers or questionable shrimp.  Legitimate changes – repositioning menu items to increase sales or example – don’t affect quality.  Anything that does may increase your per table margin but you’ll be seating far fewer tables over time – even if you’re not in the restaurant business.

Make sense?

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