Tag Archives: business

September 10, 2013 · 9:59 am

You Don’t Have To Cry

Today is TunesDay and so it’s into the world of music for a little business insight. I was driving the other day and one of “those” songs came on. You know them – tunes you adore and can’t get out of your head but you never hear much any more. It was Crosby, Stills, & Nash‘s “You Don’t Have To Cry,” which they will tell you is the first song they ever sang together. Its harmonies are the personification of ethereal and it’s a lesson in blending individuals into a unit. But that’s not our topic today!

First, have a listen:

Here are the words that spoke to me:

Are you thinkin’ of telephones
And managers and where you got to be at noon?

You are living a reality
I left years ago, it quite nearly killed me
In the long run it will make you cry
Make you crazy and old before your time
And the difference between me and you
I won’t argue right or wrong but I have time to cry my baby

Having lived the life of telephones and noon meetings, I can tell you that it is a reality that can kill you.  The business point today is that we all need to find that “time to cry” or laugh or sing or do whatever returns our breathing to normal and our frenetic brains to a state of calm.  It’s harder now.  Mobile devices are always at our sides (or on our heads and wrists!) and the pressure to participate in the social stream that engulfs your friends and family is big.   Something is “always on” and pleading for our attention.

It’s not easy to disconnect – maybe impossible other than in limited doses.  But unless “crazy and old” is your objective, you need to find that figurative time to cry, even in brief segments.  That’s how our business lives remain what we do to live and not who we are.  You with me?

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September 9, 2013 · 10:36 am

Testing The Visual Field

Every so often my eye doctor has me take a visual field test. For those of you who have never had the pleasure, this is an accurate description:

The patient sits in front of an (artificial) small concave dome in a small machine with a target in the center. The chin rest on the machine and the eye that is not being tested is covered. A button is given to the patient to be used during the exam. The patient is set in front of the dome and asked to focus on the target at the center. A computer then shines lights on the inside dome and the patient clicks the button whenever a light is seen. The computer then automatically maps and calculates the patient’s visual field.

It’s actually not so easy to stare at the target and the machine knows when you’re moving your eye around to look for the white dots (which is cheating, kids!).   Other than the fact that I went to take this test this morning, why do I bring this up?

I think we need to administer this sort of test to our businesses.  Every business has blind spots just as does every human.  It’s important to know where they are and to make sure that the overall vision the business enjoys isn’t impacted.  Assessing the limits of our vision – how well we see light as it gets dimmer and how well our peripheral vision is working is important to understand.  Unlike a human, the business can’t simply compensate by moving its gaze around.  It needs to strengthen its sight through better intelligence, by doing a better job of listening, and by making sure the assumptions under which it operates still hold true.  Our own biases (yes, we all have them) can often lead us in a direction that’s seriously out of touch with reality.  That belief system can be a huge blind spot and unless we evaluate things carefully we might miss opportunities or problems.

I get my eyesight checked fairly often.  I’d suggest we need to do the same sort of business testing at least as regularly.  Do you agree?

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September 5, 2013 · 8:34 am

Shana Tova Time Again!

A shofar made from a ram's horn is traditional...

A shofar made from a ram’s horn is traditionally blown in observance of Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish civic year. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Happy New Year!  I’m thinking about making this post an annual thing.  I know I don’t often repeat content but as I was thinking about what to write as Jews around the world celebrate Rosh Hashanah, I went back and checked out another post I wrote on the topic.  It seems to cover it pretty well, so I’m posting it again (in case it seems at all familiar as you read!).

Last night marked the start of the Jewish New Year.  I didn’t go down to Times Square to see if they were dropping a giant knish at the stroke of sundown – probably not.  L’Shana Tova – a happy and healthy New Year to all of you.

One of the things Jews do over the next 10 days (or at least are supposed to do) is to reflect on the year gone by and think about where it took you on life’s journey.  It’s not really as much about looking back in my mind as it is about looking forward.  Oh sure, one is supposed to think about where one strayed from life’s path in terms of dealing with other humans and human codes of conduct.  We get a day of fasting next week to get that sorted out.  But it’s also a time to think about a fresh start.  Which, of course, promoted a business thought.

When do businesses stop and enter a period of reflection?  It’s obvious when they’re changing – witness Facebook last week – but I, for one, certainly wonder sometimes if those changes happen due to the momentum of previous (maybe not so good) decisions or if they’re the result of a pause, some reflection, and a willful thought by the entire organization as to the direction.  Often, I fear, it’s the former.

Jews are to use the next ten days for reflection and repentance.  I like to think of them as ten days of self-improvement.  I’d also suggest that it would do many businesses a lot of good to build the same sort of period into their corporate calendars.  Some do – they call it the budget process – but I think that’s too selective in terms of participants and goals to do much good.  Some smart CEO needs to declare it New Year’s Day for the company once a year and get everyone to do the same sort of professional reflection that many of us do on the personal side.  Identify your sins (figuratively speaking) and atone.  Faulty customer service, weak brand identity, bad employee relations, products that aren’t optimal, fostering an atmosphere of fear – these are all good places to start.

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