Tag Archives: business

December 11, 2012 · 10:16 am

The Fog

It was foggy all day yesterday and that resonated with me.

Fog

(Photo credit: rchughtai)

Maybe because it was the start of another week and like an old car I’m getting harder to start and was a little foggy, or maybe because all I keep hearing about is the uncertainty of financial markets, the economy, and lots of other things that are near and dear but not very clear.  Either way, a December day that was warm and foggy was unusual enough to give me cause to reflect.  Of course, it prompted some business thinking I’d like to share.  Let me digress, however, for a minute.

I like playing golf in the fog (no I did not play yesterday).  I know – “you like playing golf period.”  True enough.  But playing in the fog has a unique set of challenges, the most obvious being that tracking the ball once it leaves your club face is impossible.  Because of that, I find I have an increased awareness of all the things that tell me what shape the shot took – where on the face did I strike the ball, was it solid contact, was the face open or shut, my swing path – and where I might go find it.  I can see it go off in a general direction but without an awareness of if I hit it to bend right or left or how far it might have gone, finding the ball is almost impossible.  I pay more attention to what I’m doing in the here and now.

Back to business.  Like golf on a foggy day, the business landscape can be obscured.  Ask anyone in digital for a five-year outlook and you’ll get a lot of shrugged shoulders.  Maybe five months is clear, like the first 50 yards of the golf shot.  After that?  Who knows.  Then again, as with golf, the uncertainty makes us focus very clearly on every little aspect of what’s going on now, since there are a hundred things that can affect where the ball – and the business – ends up.  Rather than complaining about an obscured future, our job is to examine what we’re doing now that will bring about the possibilities that future holds.

While I liked the foggy day, I much prefer the sun.  We can’t, however, control the weather.  Business is another matter.

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December 5, 2012 · 10:23 am

Failure And Feedback

One topic that’s near and dear to me is innovation.

Innovation and Evaluation

(Photo credit: cambodia4kidsorg)

Throughout my time in business the issue of how to do or produce something in a new, better way has always been front and center.  That’s why when I read that the Economist Intelligence Unit had conducted a survey of senior executives to explore the characteristics of companies that are adept at promoting innovation, I checked it out.  You can read the entire study here.  The study was sponsored by the Oracle folks, and not surprisingly it found that most companies struggle with innovation. The report says it’s really hard  to keep coming up with new ideas, particularly ones that people will pay for.  I know what you’re thinking – any of us could have told them that without a lot of research!  It’s what follows that I find of interest.

It turns out that the most innovative companies not only permit failure, but welcome and harness it to come up with more successful ideas. Yet nearly half of the respondents to the survey  say their companies have no system in place that helps them learn from failures.   Highly innovative companies also actively gather feedback and ideas from everywhere they can. Fifty-four percent of the top innovators they surveyed said they pour over customer comments, whether gathered in direct interviews or on social networks, and scrutinize customer data for clues to effective future innovations. They recognize that collecting many ideas is the first step to identifying the great ones.

There’s quite a bit more in the study but those two points are of most interest.  How many of us can truthfully say we work in an environment where failure is welcomed much less have a system in place from which to learn from those failures?  Nearly half (49%) of the companies in the study said their company had no system to deal positively with failure. Among companies that do have such a system (38%), redeploying employees involved in a failed innovation from one business unit to another has been a successful strategy.  Contrast that with the reports we read each day of companies jettisoning employees or products rather than making a pivot of some sort.

We’ve touched on the notion of feedback quite often here on the screed.  I’m a believer that a company can never have enough and we ought to look at every opportunity to get it.  The study confirms this as a key to innovation.

Help your folks to be free to fail.  Encourage them to get feedback in great quantity and with increasing frequency.  Do so and you’re well down the road to innovation, which becomes more important each day.   Make sense?

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December 4, 2012 · 8:27 am

Take Up The Trombone

I had lunch with an old friend yesterday.

trombone 025

(Photo credit: Angela Hawkins)

As we were discussing business he told me the story of a guy he knows who had a brilliant life strategy.  As soon as I heard it I told him it was going to be today’s screed so here it is:

Take up the trombone.

A reasonable person might ask, aside from the hours of musical enjoyment mastery of an instrument might provide, why that’s such a great idea.  As it turns out, proficiency in the trombone is a great gateway into a job with high level symphonies.  Apparently, there are just not a lot of trombonists who carry on with the instrument beyond high school, so college bands are always looking (this helps with the admissions people) and professional music organizations are in dire need as well.  There are a lot of flautists and trumpet players but very few skilled trombonists.

As I thought about it I realized that my daughter’s proficiency in an unusual instrument – the bassoon – did become a topic of interest when she was looking at colleges.  The baseball fans among you will immediately think of left-handed pitchers, many of whom have terrible statistics but the demand for a lefty starter outweighs their apparent mediocrity.

The point is that as we’re undertaking new products or new businesses we’d do well to consider the empty seats in the orchestra.  Rather than “me too” ideas we ought to be thinking about the trombone player.  How can I do something that’s both in demand and gives me a reasonable chance of success even if I’m not perfect every time?  This doesn’t imply lowering one’s standards.  In fact this strategy often requires a complete rethinking of the obvious and extra time to develop the new skills.  It does, however, improve one’s chances for lasting success.

What instruments are you playing today?  Maybe it’s time to change?

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