Tag Archives: business thinking

August 1, 2014 · 9:54 am

Old Cooks, New Cuisines

It’s Foodie Friday and this week I want to report on a business point I learned at supper last evening. IMG_20140801_092530It was a lovely, small Italian restaurant and the food they were serving was really excellent. High quality ingredients were used which always makes a difference but the skills the cook showed were impressive. He had a firm grasp on southern Italian fare.

I chatted up the owner who, as it turned out was both Italian and the wife of the cook.  I mentioned how much I appreciated his skill and apparent knowledge of Italian food and techniques.  I then asked where he was from, wondering as I asked it if he was from the north of Italy or the south.  As it turned out, the answer was south as is VERY far south.

As in Morocco.

They had met in New York  and she had taught him Italian food.  He was already an accomplished cook when they met and he was able to translate what he knew into another form.  After all, what is couscous if not a cousin to acini di pepe or pastina?  Many of the spices and seasonings are the same and the basics – knife skills, etc. – never change.  What does this have to do with business?

We tend to pigeonhole people.  This one is an accountant, that one is a fabulous assistant.  We don’t spent enough time thinking about how the skills they have can be used elsewhere in other contexts to make the business better.  There was a shrimp dish last night which had an extraordinary broth.  The cook had added a bit of his marinara – just enough to make the “usual” scampi broth a lovely light pink.  That sort of addition is more common in his native cuisine than Italian and, with the addition of some scallions it make for a great dish.  We need to let smart people with excellent skills use them in new cuisines and see what emerges.  As I found last night, the result is often surprisingly good.

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July 31, 2014 · 11:38 am

Don’t Leave Home

One of the classic ad lines is”don’t leave home without it” which David Ogilvy penned for American Express 40 years ago.  I asked myself how the line would have been written today as I read a study from Accenture on shopping and retailing.  It’s called From Retail to “Me-tail” and you can read it here if you are interested in their take.   These points really caught my attention:

• Stores as we know them will no longer be relevant—many shoppers will never even visit one
• Consumers will be able to shop seamlessly across multiple channels—and expect to find relevant content on all of them
• “Fast fashion” will be the de facto industry standard—with dramatic consequences for store inventory levels
• Supply chains will be optimized across the full product lifecycle—right through to disposal
• Consumers themselves will help form the communities of talent required to service a vast diversity of new and constantly shifting demands

That first point has profound implications.  What will take the place of retail outlet?  I can’t see Main Street populated by warehouses or shipping centers.  The truth is that as my family’s shopping habits have shifted to online, we leave the house far less often to hit the stores other than the supermarket.  Ogilvy’s classic line works less well when consumers don’t leave home at all, at least not to shop.

What can retailers do? I like one site’s take on the study:

Ensuring consumers are comfortable and confident wherever they make purchases is critical for brands as they bridge their online and offline experiences. The comfort of brick and mortar stores can easily be replicated online with the right tools and tactics. And, brick and mortar will continue to become more like online via their use of analytics and in-store digital tools that enhance the customer experience. Once these types of strategies are in place, customer satisfaction will improve along with the retailer’s bottom line.

That makes sense to me.  You?

 

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July 16, 2014 · 10:20 am

The Skills That Matter

Some of you know that my professional training was as an educator.  Hopefully that shows on the screed from time to time.  In fact, my wife and eldest child are also trained teachers and my youngest does education as part of her profession.  Focusing on the skills people need is a big deal in our house and that got me thinking about what those skills might be.

I spend a ton of time in the tech world.  There are new skills that my clients feel as if they need to acquire almost every day.  What is the latest and greatest way to code?  How do we employ the social media platform du jour in order to stand out and engage our customer base?  What’s the best way to run an A/B test of landing or other pages to optimize conversion rates?  Those are only a few of the components of the rapidly changing skill set business people might need these days.  You probably won’t find me working with them on those initially.

Instead, I like to start with the skills that matter.  First and foremost of these is critical thinking.  How would I define that?  This is from The National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, way back when in 1987 and I think it says it pretty well:

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.

That skill trumps the others.  It’s the ability to figure out what data points matter and why.  It’s understanding core business issues and not permitting the noise of the business world to clutter up that understanding.  It’s what you use, having achieved that understanding, to choose the tools with which to carry out the business goals, strategies, and tactics.  The point is this:  the tools will change; the need to possess the ability to think critically won’t.  Kids learning Word in the schools today may not use it in 10 years.  I guarantee they will need to be able to figure out the world around them.

There are other key skills, of course.  Writing and speaking clearly are the next in line for me since if you can’t explain your excellent thinking it does little good to the business.  First things first, however.  That’s how I see it.  You?

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