Tag Archives: life lessons

April 12, 2016 · 11:22 am

Get Dirty

It’s amazing how much every business depends on technology.  Whether it’s as basic as email or as complex as cross-platform measurement and analysis, it’s hard to find a job that hasn’t been changed over the last two decades by the advent of various technologies.  That’s obvious for those of us who work with technology and technology-related businesses every day.  It’s less obvious for people in non-tech businesses or areas of responsibility such as accounting.

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One thing I see happening is that we tend to isolate ourselves into our primary areas of responsibility.  We learn, for example, what good marketing entails but we draw the line at understanding the technology that drives much marketing activity.  We might write great content but we have little notion about what’s involved in making that content visible both to humans and to search engines.  It gets worse as you go higher up the food chain.  I’ve known plenty of managers or directors or higher-ups who not only don’t get their hands dirty but don’t wish to understand much of anything involved in the workflow.  They love to see the finished sausage but they refuse to see how it’s made.

We can’t allow specialization to keep us from knowing a little bit about a lot. I’ll give you an example.  I got a frantic call from a client years ago.  Their new website wasn’t showing up in Google and they couldn’t figure out why.  They had used an outside developer who was unreachable (I think avoiding them since they were kind of high maintenance) and wanted to fix the issue.  One look at the homepage code showed that the developer had used a “Noindex” command which tells the search engines to ignore the page.  It’s a common thing done in development and easy to spot if you know about it. I’m certainly no coder but by knowing a little bit about it, I could help.  Problem solved.

We need to know more than just our jobs.  We need to know a little bit of everything.  You have to get your hands dirty in many processes and speak the languages spoken elsewhere in your company – tech, finance, marketing, whatever. Does that make sense?

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April 7, 2016 · 8:52 am

Bringing In The Broker

I mentioned the other day that we’re getting Rancho Deluxe ready for sale. Part of that process is choosing a realtor. It’s a very important part of the process since the realtor is your guide. What work should we do on the house prior to listing? How much is a reasonable but aggressive asking price? Where is the local market and are the offers we get worth considering? It’s a job interview, even if the job is temporary. I thought some of what we found is applicable to any form of hiring, and that hiring might be personal (a job) or organizational (by a client). 

We got the names of three realtors from friends who had worked with them. Each walked through the house and scheduled a second meeting, the purpose of which was to give us their thoughts on the questions I mentioned, above. It was also a chance for them to demonstrate their thinking and competence.

Two of the three came back with folders containing listings of comparable houses to help us price. They gave us a good overview of the marketplace and described the buyer they thought would be looking at our home. The third showed up with nothing. When asked about comps she scrolled through her phone looking for some while we sat and waited.  While she could talk about the market, her conversation was very general and not specific to our situation (location, the age of our home, etc.).  Had it been a business meeting, I would have tossed her out of my office after 15 minutes.  The point is preparedness.  While Woody Allen may have said that 80% of success is showing up, I think showing up prepared is far better.  Needless to say, she was disqualified from consideration.

The choice between the other two came down to a few things.  Personality (with whom dd we feel most comfortable) was a big part.  How hard we felt they would work on our behalf was another.  While they each told us what they thought needed to be done to get the house ready, one of them offered to help us make those things happen by offering to hook us up with some reasonably priced contractors/handymen.  She didn’t just identify our issues; she offered to help us resolve them.  In addition, she described what money she would invest, putting her own skin in the game. It means that if the house doesn’t sell she is not just out the commission she won’t receive but also some funds she has invested herself.  That was the tie-breaker.

Each of those points – preparation, personality, problem-solving, and commitment – is something that should come up in any vetting process, whether you’re hiring or being hired.  How does each candidate stack up?  How do you?

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April 5, 2016 · 11:41 am

Hanging On

We’re selling our home. The kids are grown and living on their own.  We don’t need all the space and the property is too large and expensive to maintain. In other words, we’re doing the downsizing (or rightsizing!) that many folks in our situation do. Obviously, a lot of “stuff” has aggregated over the 30+ years we’ve been in the house and we spent many hours over the last few weeks decluttering. 

This past weekend was spent scanning old tax returns and putting the supporting documents into a “shred” box. Why were we hanging on to receipts from anything beyond the 3 years the IRS recommends? Who knows. We also found (and put in the shred box) cancelled checks from every decade beginning in the late 1970’s. That was long before banks did everything electronically and held scanned copies for you. I guess we got in the habit of filing them away.

In addition to the financial documents, we tossed (or donated) things that had sat in the basement or the attic for many years without anyone missing them. It’s nice, for example, that nearly every sporting event I attending during my years in sports TV gave out a duffel bag of some sort but having 20 bags in the attic gathering dust when someone somewhere needs one is silly, right?

So here is the question for you. When was the last time you took a look at the “stuff” hanging around your business? I don’t mean extra duffel bags or cancelled checks. All the detritus we collect over the years is due in part to a process we have in place.  When was the last time you examined the things, processes, etc. – to which you’re hanging on and why?  It’s not just a matter of freeing up space.  It also means you question each thing you touch and its relevance to your business moving forward.

It’s not just a matter of freeing up space.  It also means you question each thing you touch and its relevance to your business moving forward. I found a number of things (an automatic pasta maker, a countertop deep fryer) that I won’t ever use again but were hanging around the basement.  I rarely eat pasta anymore and it takes less time to make it by hand then it does to clean the machine after a use.  Why was I hanging on to it?

Old habits die hard, especially in business.  We need to stop hanging on and get our proverbial business houses cleaned up.  It makes wherever we decide to go next a much easier move.  You with me?

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