Tag Archives: business

March 11, 2014 · 8:36 am

On Whose Scarecrow Are You Raining?

TunesDay, and this week it’s one of my favorite artists, John Mellencamp. Starting his career as John Cougar, a name he hated, he’s a member of the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame (2008) who has written some of the most American rock songs ever. Today we’re going to take a business point from one of my favorites – “Rain On The Scarecrow”. First – a listen:

As a founder of FarmAid, this has to be one of his most personally important songs.  It’s the dark cousin of his song “Pink Houses“.  Where does the land for all those houses come?  From the destruction of the family farm.  But the point I want to make today is buried in the middle of the song:

Called my old friend Schepman up to auction off the land
He said John it’s just my job and I hope you understand
Hey calling it your job ol’ hoss sure don’t make it right
But if you want me to I’ll say a prayer for your soul tonight

There are so many things I see these days where I wonder about what human beings are making the business decisions involved and, more importantly, how they live with themselves for having done so.  “It’s just business” is a lousy excuse.  That’s the “blood on the scarecrow.”  I know we don’t do politics here, but have a think about how the “profits over people” mentality has made this country and our world a little less human.

It’s impossible to serve our customers when we’re totally focused on the bottom like.  No, Schepman, I don’t understand.  Customers – and the people who work to serve them – aren’t numbers on a balance sheet.  Cutting staff or reducing their pay to improve profits hurts you because there are fewer (happy) staff to support customer issues.  It may be investors who make the decisions but it’s customers who pay the bills in a well-run operation.  Springsteen wrote in the similar-sounding “Cover Me” that

This whole world is out there just trying to score
I’ve seen enough I don’t want to see any more

Maybe it’s not our economy or our businesses that are in trouble but our priorities?

This is the title song from an album about the fading of the American dream in the face of corporate greed.  That trend has only become worse in the almost 30 years since the album was released (1985).  I may be too much of an optimist but I believe that can be changed.  As with everything, it’s people and not faceless legal entities called corporations that are doing this.  People can undo this too.  What say you?

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March 3, 2014 · 12:18 pm

That Won’t Work

Since Mondays are days of new beginnings (“does the work week actually ever end?” you ask), let’s begin with some thinking on starts.

Not just start-ups, since there are starts everywhere in business. A project, a deal, a meeting – they all represent new beginnings.  As we start whatever those journeys may be, we need a few things. Most important, we know to have some sense of where we’re heading and how: objectives and strategies in business-speak.  We need to understand that there may be detours along the way that will require us to adjust some things – maybe a delivery date, maybe tactic, maybe even the entire place to which we’re heading.

Where many businesspeople get into trouble is when they maintain a firm determination to get to wherever it was they set out disregarding the detours.  That’s silly.  So is the opposite – seeing all of the possibilities and refusing to firm up one’s focus.  If the purpose of the enterprise or project can’t be expressed clearly and definitively, there’s a problem.

As a leader, your job is to define the mission, assemble the team to accomplish it, instill confidence, and provide whatever resources your team requires to get to the destination.  If you project an attitude of determination and success, your team will as well.  If you’re unclear or scared, your odds of success drop dramatically.  You don’t need to have all the answers; you do need to believe that the answers are within the team’s grasp.

One of the hardest things you need to be able to do is to say “Stop the car – we’re lost.”   Telling the team “that won’t work” feels like a loss since it’s an admission that something has gone wrong.  Not true.  “That won’t work” can mean the situation has changed or that you’ve learned enough from what you’ve done so far to recognize adjustments are required.

The leaders and businesses that fail are the ones afraid to admit something won’t work out loud and then to adjust.  Great leaders see the need and explain it to their team clearly.  Which will you do?

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February 28, 2014 · 9:46 am

Pickles And Pizza

At last it’s Foodie Friday Fun time.  Today I want to contemplate pickles and pizza and how they relate to your business.  I’m a fan of each of those foods although I will admit to being rather fussy about the latter.  That stuff they serve in a pan in Chicago isn’t pizza.  It’s good, but it’s not pizza.  I’m careful when I choose to eat one – thin crust, great sauce, and whatever I choose to put on it needs to be fresh and/or of high quality.  I’m less fussy about pickles although I don’t really care for sweet ones.

Since you’re already wondering about the business point it’s this.  Even if you got your perfect pizza and a jar of your favorite pickles, you probably wouldn’t put the pickles on the pizza.  I’m told that in some parts of the country people do but pickles are probably not the first pizza topping that comes to mind.  Business is like that.

We do our best to find the best ingredients – great staff, a fabulous product or service, a superior business model – but we don’t often think about if they’ll go together.  Moreover, there is a tendency that once you realize that you have pickles and pizza to panic.  Maybe even to start over.   I think that’s a mistake in many cases.  Am I advocating a pickle pizza?  No.  I do think, however, we need to broaden our thinking.  Pizza is basically a grilled cheese sandwich with the tomato soup in which they’re often dunked already on the sandwich.  You’d eat a pickle with that, right?

We can also think about the pickle.  One can pickle any vegetable pretty easily – pickling liquid is just a spiced brine, after all.  Why pickled cukes?  Maybe peppers – you have those on pizza all the time.  Or cabbage – kimchi is a pickle and I have seen that on pizza.  That’s how we need to think in business.  How can I change whatever frame of reference has my business not performing optimally?

Business isn’t about looking at pickles and pizza and throwing your hands up in disgust.  It’s about rethinking each piece  – dough, sauce, seasoning, pickle – and finding a way to make it work.  How can I make things or people or markets that just don’t seem to fit work together to make something in which the flavors mesh and everything is balanced?  That’s how I see it.  You?

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