Tag Archives: business

March 11, 2013 · 10:00 am

The CW

You might have read this morning that the online betting site InTrade is shutting down.

Intrade $ predictions - Nov 3

(Photo credit: New England Secession)

Unlike many of the gambling sites with which you might be familiar, InTrade lets users place wagers on non-sports-related upcoming events.  It was a lot of fun to read the site during the election season because you could see the odds of various candidates’ success changing with each news cycle.  You can read about why the business is shutting down here or here.  We can debate if it’s for legitimate concerns or just because it seemed to be operating outside of the long arm of the law but that’s not really my topic this morning.

What interests me about this site is that it was sometimes criticized for “getting it wrong”, as if the odds it offered were some kind of prediction.  That’s as off-base as thinking that a Las Vegas betting line is a prediction of the outcome.  Neither of those things are true.  InTrade’s odds simply reflected the conventional wisdom – how people saw the outcome and were betting.  It was not any sort of analysis of polling and other data to make predictions.  The Vegas line is similar.  It’s not a prediction – it’s an inducement.  It reflects how the conventional wisdom perceives the event’s outcome and is there to induce an equal number of people to bet on either side.  That’s why the odds change and the line changes.

We do the same thing in business a lot of the time and it’s often to our detriment.  We don’t “bet” on the outcome because we often confuse it with the conventional wisdom.  It’s the old expression about no one ever getting fired for buying IBM or ATT back when those services were the “go to” providers.  We see it today in media plans – start with TV and see whats left.  Even in digital we see it with the “buy Facebook” thinking I run into all the time.  “Winning” in my mind means trying new things all the time, measuring them with data, and not worrying a whole lot if the outcomes defy the conventional wisdom.  After all, it’s easy to get lost in a herd (or to get trampled).

What do you think?

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March 5, 2013 · 12:09 pm

Trust The One You’re With

I’ve written a number of times here on the screed about the subject of trust.  Most of the time I’ve written about how consumers need to trust the sources from which they receive marketing messages or the sources from which they get information.  Today I want to make it more personal but probably more important as well.

Each of us relies on other people to do business.  I’ve found that one of the most important factors in that process is trust.

Benutzer:dapete and Benutzer:Ezrimerchant shak...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In fact, I used to tell new employees that the only way they could get into serious trouble with me was if they did something that caused me to lose the trust I was going to give them unconditionally.   I was on their side until they proved that my trust was misplaced.  Lie to me just once – cause me to doubt that they were giving me the facts and all the information about a topic – and our relationship would be severely damaged, maybe irreparably.  I feel that way about business partners too.

I’ve dealt with people who I knew were holding back information.  Sometimes it was more a feeling than probably was warranted.  Several times it turned out to be a huge problem, as a meeting would take an ugly turn based on information that had been withheld but ultimately surfaced.  Often it’s because they didn’t want to give anyone bad news despite them hearing that bad news is just another situation we need to work through together as partners.  When someone finds reasons to delay a conversation or slows down a deal, my early warning system would go off.  It still does.

I’ve been told from time to time that I’m hard to deal with because I’m very open and blunt.  I’m told I’m a pleasure to deal with for the very same reasons.   On the whole, transparency seems to work.  It fosters trust although I’m the first to admit that over the years I’ve had to learn to be more tactful.  I think folks with whom I’ve worked would tell you a lot of things about me but one thing they probably won’t say is that I hide the truth or obfuscate the facts.  That’s about trust in my mind.

On a simple level it’s about someone doing what they say they will do.  On a larger level it’s about them being who they say they are.  You with me?

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