Tag Archives: business thinking

October 9, 2012 · 10:31 am

Debating Leadership

Like a lot of other people, I watched the presidential debate last week and I’m very much looking forward to the remaining few.  As you know we don’t do politics here but I think it’s safe to say that President Obama probably didn’t do very well in making his case.  The primary critique seems to have been that he didn’t aggressively push out his point of view and he didn’t state factual errors forcefully enough when his opponent made them.  Some on the left complain that this has been his problem for the last few years – all of the accomplishments for which the administration takes pride haven’t been promoted well enough, or at least loudly enough to drown out the criticism.  I, of course, took away a couple of business points which I’d like to share.

First, history shows that most incumbent presidents lose the first debate.  I suspect it has something to do with the office.  I don’t recall hearing of many meetings with any President in which people tell him he’s wrong and argue against what he wants to do.  After a few years of no one getting in your face, it must be a shock when someone does.

I’ve seen that in business too.  Some top folks do encourage honest, open debate from their staff but I’ve been around many who don’t.  “My way or the highway” seems to be the order of the day.  Real leaders like debate. What I think is ideal is a sort of benevolent monarchy in which the head person will make the call but will do so only after fact-finding and honest debate with an open mind .

Second, it’s nice to do anonymous good acts.  However, when your ability to stay in business depends on the good will of your customers (which is what an election is about), you need to make sure that everything you do is publicized loudly and amplified by those for whom the good work was done.  Letting people know what you’ve accomplished isn’t bragging – it’s a critical part of staying in business or employed.  If you’re in charge of a department, you need to let the higher-ups know of your group’s good work.  If you run a business, your customers should know how you’re helping them as well as others.  If you have a job, letting the boss know you’re helping the team is important even if it’s obvious.  Of course there’s an obnoxious way to do so as well as an acceptable way but that’s another post.

Did you watch?  Does this make sense?

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October 8, 2012 · 9:51 am

Don Larsen And You

Way back on this date in 1956 the Yankees were playing the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series.

The "everlasting image" of Yogi Berr...

The “everlasting image” of Yogi Berra leaping into Larsen’s arms upon the completion of the perfect game (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Yankees’ Don Larsen did something that had never been done before (or since). He pitched a perfect game in the World Series. For those of you who don’t follow baseball (we do have quite a few international readers here!), a perfect game is one in which 27 batters come to the plate and none of them reach first base. 3 outs per inning, 9 innings per game. No walks, no hits. Perfection. It’s an extremely rare feat under any circumstances – there have only been 23 perfect games in the 100+ year history of major league baseball.  To accomplish it under the pressure of the World Series is amazing.

I don’t know what was in his mind as he took the mound that day but I’m willing to bet his focus was on getting the next batter out, not on making sure none of the 27 would reach base.  Let me give you a similar thought.  There are two Swedish golf instructors who operate Vision54.   The thinking is that if we can birdie every hole during a round of golf we’d shoot 54.   That’s perfection of another sort and it sounds impossible.  Then again, as I pointed out to someone over the weekend, he’d made birdie on every hole on our course at one point or another, just not in the same round.  Like a baseball pitcher who’s retired every batter he’ll face that day at one point or another in his career, the task is to turn what you’ve done before into a consistent reality, one pitch or one swing at a time.

That’s the business point too.  We look at daunting tasks – double our sales, find 50 new customers in a few months – as impossible.  Yet we’ve increased our sales and we’ve found new customers.  We have the ability to do the remarkable because the remarkable is just stuff we can do done each and every time.  It’s less about ability than it is about execution (and maybe a little luck thrown in from time to time).

What do you think?  What impossible thing will you do today?

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October 5, 2012 · 9:01 am

Eating Rocks And Bark

Our Foodie Friday Fun this week revolves around rocks, bark, and dried flowers. You probably had all three for breakfast this morning. Seriously.  Salt is the only rock we humans eat on a regular basis (or on any other basis as far as I’m concerned). The bark we regularly eat is cinnamon – you might have sprinkled some on your oatmeal or cereal. The dried flowers are pepper – maybe on your eggs?

You just know there’s a business point lurking here, and you’re right.

What’s interesting about each of the aforementioned food items is that someone had to be the first to figure out that these seemingly unappetizing things were actually quite tasty and useful in the kitchen.  None of them, however, can be used “as is”.  Peppercorns (actually a fruit of a flowering vine) need to be dried.  Cinnamon needs to be transformed from tree bark into a dried and ground form.  Salt comes in dozens of types but is either extracted from the ground or from the sea.  I’m not sure who was the first to figure that out but it’s instructive.  All have been used by humans for millennia and maybe the ancients were smarter than we are in some ways.

Sometimes our first instincts when we see something or someone who doesn’t appear to be particularly useful is to move on.  Our ancestors couldn’t do that – food was not something you ran to the supermarket to get.  In many businesses today, resource availability is in many ways as challenging as food was for the ancients.  Everything they encountered was evaluated (I expect quite a few brave souls didn’t survive the “R&D” phase of new food discovery) before it was discarded.  In the cases of these three items, someone had to figure out how to transform them into something useful.  Maybe a dead animal or fish was preserved in a bath of seawater that dried.  Maybe someone saw an animal eating tree bark and tried some.

We need to have the same mentality in many ways.  Don’t dismiss anyone or anything out of hand.  Take some time to think about how they can be useful in another form or another position (I know a lot of ex-lawyers who are great salespeople and a few accountants who do wonders in marketing).  Rocks and bark may not seem like a great diet but thinking out of the box is at the root of a great business.

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