Tag Archives: business

November 9, 2012 · 11:42 am

The Confit Solution

For our Foodie Friday Fun this week, let’s examine  confit and what it tells us about business.

Duck confit with salad

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m thinking specifically of duck confit, one of my favorite foods, but the process is often used with fruit or vegetables such as onion or garlic.  For those of you who’ve never experienced it, duck confit is made by salting the duck, generally legs, and letting it cure with some herbs for a day or so.  The salt is removed and then the legs are poached in their own fat at a low heat.  In a way, it’s a fancy version of barbecue  where meat is spiced, left to cure a bit, and then slowly smoked to add flavor and render the fat.  The result is a rich-tasting product that can be heated (particularly to crisp the skin) and eaten as is or shredded to use in other dishes.

Interesting, you say, but what does this have to do with business?  The beauty of confit to me is that the key to the dish isn’t fancy external additions but, rather, the technique.  The main ingredients – the meat and the fat – are right there when you begin (OK, you might need some additional duck fat to cover the legs when cooking but stay with me here).  That lesson is often lost on us in business.

It’s hard for someone who makes a living parachuting in to help companies to say this, but more often than not the keys to success are already in place.  What happens is that managers tend to make things too complicated by searching for external resources or solutions when the ingredients they need are already on hand.  Confiting something is nothing more than a deep, gentle immersion in something that’s already there – fat for meats, sugar for fruit.  Instead of cutting off the fat and discarding it since it’s often seen as a problem, it becomes the key to the dish.  How much better off would many businesses be if they allowed all of their resources to shine instead of writing them off as “just” an accountant or secretary or junior analyst?

There’s a Shakespeare quote of which I’ve always been fond – “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…”  That’s confit, and good business advice in a nutshell.  What’s your take?

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November 8, 2012 · 11:41 am

Cable News And Your Business

One of the things that our highly segmented media world has done is to provide a lot of information on things that are, in the scheme of things, pretty meaningless.     That thought occurred to me as I was watching the election results the other night and there’s a useful business point that it raises.  We’re all aware of the various “tilts” the news networks have.  They tend to focus on every little fact that advances their point of view and that denigrates a political figure with whom they don’t agree.  I’ve written before about the echo chamber and what it can do to your perspective.  This is an extension of that phenomenon.  What’s the business point?

Partisans are focused on every detail. Most people aren’t. They build a narrative that’s as simple as possible and once that’s in place it’s very hard to change it.  As an example, I saw a Latino interviewed who said Romney lost his community with the “self-deportation” remark he made many months ago in a primary debate.  Game over.  The various commentators seemed surprised by the fact that certain arguments and billions of dollars in political ads didn’t seem to make a difference in the outcomes of many races.  It works that way for your business as well.

We’re partisans for our brands.  Hopefully we know our brands and our businesses inside and out and we’re fixated on every little detail.  We can talk for hours about why the store is set up the way it is or the amount of work that went into a piece of content.  That’s myopic.  Most of our customers don’t care.  Like the hard-core viewers of cable news, there are some who pay attention to the details but the bulk of folks don’t.  To a certain extent these media outlets are seeing the trees of today’s news cycle and missing the  forest of the public.  We might lag behind our customers in the same way.

No amount of marketing will fix a bad initial experience.  Opinions are very hard to change once they’re formed.  What’s your opinion?

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November 6, 2012 · 9:59 am

Consumer Supression

Happy Election Day! I hope all of you here in the U.S. have voted or will do so before the day’s end. While I’ve often stated we don’t do politics in this space, I’m going to make an exception today and talk about something that’s been going in the political world that I find repugnant. I can hear you all wondering which of the hundred of things from which one can choose I’ll mention!

I’m doing so because today a business point makes the political one (usually it’s the other way around here) and they’re both instructive   Think about your business and businesses in general for a minute.  I know of very few that discourage customers.  Some country clubs and co-op apartment complexes won’t do business with consumers wanting in.  Some professionals in the service sector – doctors, some consultants – are picky about accepting new clients.  That’s about it.  I’m not talking about an overbooked hotel or a full restaurant – they’ll take your money but they don’t have room.  Even when business is going well we all need new customers to keep it going.  We’re not in the business of doing anything that suppresses consumers from becoming customers.  Turning people away in good times discourages them from ever coming back, particularly when we need them the most.

Government’s consumers are voters.  Part of what each citizen receives for their tax dollars along with roads, schools, and protection is the right to vote.  The ability to influence everything else that the government does.  The more citizens that participate in the voting process the more likely it is that those who are elected will reflect the majority will of the people, which is a good thing in my mind.

That’s why the efforts by some to suppress the vote is not only repugnant, but short-sighted.  Government needs customers – voters – just as any business does.  Curtailing voting hours, sending out misinformation about polling places, and positioning poll-watchers to intimidate voters discourage customers.  No business can succeed doing that and maybe that’s why government is failing in many ways.

There is another truth here.  No business can succeed by cheating.   Neither can a political party.  Voter suppression, which seems to be perpetrated by one party almost exclusively – is cheating.  Suppressing the votes in areas that historically have not voted to support your candidates is wrong, and writing it off as “politics” is worse.  When a business sells you something using bait and switch tactics they’re cheating and we all get angry when that deception is discovered.  Maybe this kind of behavior is part of why many people feel disconnected and angry at government?

There are many ways to give feedback to a business these days and many people do so via online reviews and social media.  If you’re being smart about your business you’re listening carefully to it.  You’re certainly not telling customers to go away.  Today is the day when all of us as customers of government have the chance to offer feedback.  I’m intending to offer mine.  I hope you all do the same.  Let’s hope they’re listening.  What do you think?

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