Tag Archives: business

November 5, 2013 · 10:43 am

Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

It’s an Election Day edition of our TunesDay screed.  You might think this is the one day of the year when things get political in this space and you’d be wrong.  However, one thing that culminates on this day is campaigning.  No matter which party you support or on which ticket you’re running, the last few weeks have been about communicating and that’s what led me to this week’s tune.

Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood was written in for Nina Simone and came out in 1964.  A year later, the song was released by a British band that sped up the tempo and added a signature riff throughout.  This was the result:

I’ve loved this song since then and it’s been reinterpreted by dozens of artists since its release by The Animals.  To me, it makes a great point both for Election Day as well as for business.

Baby, do you understand me now?
Sometimes I feel a little mad
But don’t you know that no one alive can always be an angel
When things go wrong I feel real bad.

I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood

We live in a time when communication has never been easier.  Explaining how one feels or where one stands on an issue should be simple – much more so than 30 years ago when there were no digital communications.  Ironically, both for politicians and for businesses, it’s exactly the opposite.  The tools have made communication so simple that the noise level is almost impenetrable.  There are thousands of voices competing for attention where dozens competed not long ago.

The result is that customers – and the electorate is a customer base – tend to listen to a very limited set of information.  They tend to hear what they want to hear from sources that they’ve chosen out of the morass.  Businesses – and political messages – get misunderstood because their messages are either unheard or undermined by competing signals (and that seems to be where our political system is these days – “gotcha” over substance).

As businesspeople we ought to be focused on not being misunderstood as much as we are on the getting a message out at all.  After all, one misinformed customer can spark a firestorm of social media backlash.  Election results are when we see how well understood candidates are.  Every day is when you find that out about your business.

Did you vote yet?

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November 4, 2013 · 11:29 am

Will Rogers

Let’s start our week with a business point from the great American humorist Will Rogers.

Will Rogers

Will Rogers

For those of you unfamiliar with him, he’s best known for saying (in reference to Leon Trotsky) “I never met a man I didn’t like.”  I’ve always considered him the successor to Mark Twain in many ways in that he often made very pointed remarks in a gentle, funny manner.  That didn’t make his humor any less barbed, however.

You might think that I want to use that to make a point about business behavior.  That’s not a bad notion but not where we’re heading today.  Instead, let’s think about something he said that was brought to my attention via a fortune cookie.  A reader sent me the contents of the cookie (and I do hope that you will feel free to send in ideas, questions, or even rants) and when I read it I just knew it had to be a topic.  It said:

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

For a man who died even before commercial television began, Will certainly gets business today.  No business can afford to rest on its laurels.  Market conditions change, consumer preferences change and of course technology has changed everything.  Take, for example, a huge company like Microsoft.  They built up large, profitable markets for their operating system and their Office products and those were cash cows.  Sure, there were constant upgrades but mostly they just “sat there” enjoying the stream of profits.  Suddenly, Google and Apple are cleaning their clock and those cash cows are in danger.

I take the statement on a personal level as well.  We all need to keep learning.  Much of what I do today is built upon the base of 35 years of business experience but it also requires me to have kept up with changes in the media and tech worlds.  I submit that none of us can be effective at our jobs or personal lives if we don’t make a constant effort to keep growing, no matter how successful we’ve been to that point.

Any thoughts?

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November 1, 2013 · 10:35 am

Ssshhhhh…

Foodie Friday, and this week I want to talk – very quietly – about secrets. You might be familiar with the fact that some restaurants have secret menus. They range from the unofficial like Starbucks (you pretty much have to describe to the barista exactly what you mean by a Red Candy Apple Frappucino) to the official but hidden menus at In-N-Out Burger which puts the hidden menu on its website.  McDonald’s, Chipotle, and pretty much every other chain has off-menu items, as do many top restaurants.

What I find strange isn’t that some customers are “in” while others are left wondering what that was the other table was eating.  No, what I think is really odd are those establishments that are themselves hidden.  These are restaurants – and many of them are very good – that go out of their way to hide.  No sign,  and often an unmarked door so you can’t be sure of the address.  In fact, The Times just reviewed one of these places (so much for keeping THAT secret)  and pointed out the restaurant is in a basement. It is closed four nights out of seven. Its sole offering is a $100 tasting menu that is not posted in advance. Substitutions are not allowed.  Not exactly a prescription for embracing the customer and yet the place got two stars (that’s damn good here in NY, folks) and you know it will be mobbed.

There are hidden places in other cities as well so it’s not just a NY phenomenon.  But it got me wondering why a business would do this.  I get the whole “the first rule of Fight Club is don’t talk about Fight club” mentality.  I know many people like to be in on the secret and know something that someone else doesn’t.  But given that Yelp, Urbanspoon, and other review sites are out there, the odds of keeping the menu and the business itself secret are pretty slim.  I mean there are even websites dedicated to outing these places. Why bother trying?

Maybe it’s the sense of belonging to something even if they’re not really “secret.”  Maybe it’s an incredibly clever form of marketing.  In a time when it seems as if every business is trying to get louder, these are standing out by making no noise at all.  Interesting, right?

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