Tag Archives: business

June 19, 2012 · 8:50 am

Fear Of Flying

I used to travel by airplane a lot. 100,000 miles in a year was not unusual for a while there.

English: The view from a window of an airplane...

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In general I got used to flying but like a lot of people I always had the panic button go off when we’d hit a rough patch or when landing in so-so conditions.

I bring this up today because a number of pieces I’ve been reading in corporate uses of social media remind me of the primary driver behind that occasional fear of flying: the sense of not being in control can be terrifying.

Media, and marketing media in particular, have always been subject to enormous control.  After all, what’s more important than the company message and how it’s presented?  Using social media is like raising a child.  You do the best you can before you send it out into the world, but once it’s out there anything can happen.

I’m struck by how many companies are investing in social media (according to one study, as many as 23 team members supporting social in big companies) and yet they might be doing so incredibly inefficiently.  I’ve found that social media teams tend to be decentralized and they often are a mix of in-house staff (who may or may not have much training), consultants and even community members. As a result there’s often confusion and off-message posts.  And that’s before the social sphere starts responding.  Marketers are doing a better job of monitoring relevant social activity but are often terrorized by what comes back (ask McDonald’s, LG, and other’s who’ve had hashtags hijacked).

We still need to get from point A to point B quickly so we get on the airplanes.  It’s the same with social media: we need to engage our customers and potential customers and social is becoming a major part of the marketing plan.  We make airplanes safer – we can do the same with social by doing a better job of monitoring and measuring results (and stop thinking that “likes” and “followers” are good metrics!).  We’re never going to get full control of either the plane or the social sphere, but we can get on board knowing we’ve done everything we can to assure a safe trip.

You on board?

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June 15, 2012 · 8:43 am

Anchovies

Let’s discuss the little fish that’s often the subject of big disagreements for our Foodie Friday Fun. Of course I mean the anchovy.

Northern anchovies are important prey for mari...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

They’ve been used in cooking for centuries despite the fact that many people wrinkle their noses are the very idea of the bony things. “Caesar salad but no anchovies” is a familiar refrain to servers everywhere.  Yet every culture employs them as a part of their native cuisine so they must be doing something right!

I’m bringing them up today because there’s a business thought I have as I think about them and it’s tied to a cooking secret:  you’ve probably eaten more anchovies than you realize.  They aren’t always visible as they might be atop a pizza or on a salad.  They’re like duck fat – an ingredient in many dishes that makes everything else more delicious.  Many pasta sauces – puttanesca, Norma, and others – as well as Worcestershire sauce contain anchovies.  They’re not really noticeable as a salty fish taste as we expect – they’re a subtle note we’d notice is missing if they weren’t used.

The business point is this:  in every business there are anchovies – quiet, semi-hidden elements that mustn’t be left out or the overall effort suffers.  The problem is that we often ignore them or choose to omit them as we become conscious of their existence.  They might be best practices or they might even be people.  You might not like tight financial controls, for example, but you’ll notice when they’re missing.

Personally, I’m a fan of anchovies of all sorts.  They help make me better both in and out of the kitchen.  How about you?

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June 13, 2012 · 9:52 am

Why?

Why did you get out of bed this morning? Habit? Hunger? Bladder issues?

Question mark

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Hopefully the main reason was that you couldn’t wait to get going on what you were going to do today.  Trust me – I’m well aware that not every day can be like that but when the balance between excitement vs. dread over the day ahead tilts the wrong way, it just might be time to rethink things a bit.  The reality is that many of us just keep on doing what we’re doing, feeling lucky to have a job and income, and wait for the weekend to come around.  Thoreau‘s “life of quiet desperation” lives on.

Companies are like that too.   While I don’t share some folks’ belief that companies are people, I do think that they have a certain amount in institutional inertia.  They keep on doing what they’ve been doing, very focused on what that is and how they’re going to do it.  They rarely stop, however, and think about why they’re doing – what’s their purpose beyond making money for the owners/shareholders.

I got to thinking about this as I read the book “Start With Why“, by Simon Sinek.  They quick summary is that the most important thing leaders can do is to figure out why a company or organization exists and why that should be meaningful to customers and others in society. Once you get the answer and you convey it to everyone that touches the organization, the rest of the decisions about what to do and sell and how to do it become infinitely easier.  Marketing, social campaigns, product choices, packaging, everything.

That principle extends to individuals.  We need to think about who we are, what we stand for, be a bit more introspective.  I think some of the unhappiness many people feel when they think about going to work is the dissonance between their own”why” and that of their company (or the lack of one at their job).  How about you?  What do you think?

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