Tag Archives: life lessons

December 30, 2014 · 10:57 am

Top Posts Of 2014 – #2

Continuing a review of the most-read posts written this past year, today we have one from way back in January.  This was one of our TunesDay Tuesday posts (should I bring those back?) and deals with the same business idea as yesterday’s post.   Do I detect a pattern in your curiosity?

Tomorrow we’ll have the most-read post of the year and Friday we’ll have your favorite Foodie Friday post of 2014.  This one  was originally called “Long Black Road.” Enjoy!

This TunesDay we’re going to look at an old song that’s actually new.  Recorded back in 2001 it wasn’t in wide release until recently when it was featured in the soundtrack to American Hustle.  The movie is very good; the soundtrack is excellent.  The song is Long Black Road which was recorded on ELO‘s last album (Zoom) and only issued in the Japanese version of the record as a bonus track.  Pretty obscure, but to those of us who’ve long  admired Jeff Lynne it was sort of familiar.  Here it is for your listening pleasure:

What makes this song of interest to us today is the message contained in the lyrics.  What I like about this song is it makes the same point in three different ways.  A directionless musician pursues his dreams in the first verse despite being told to get, in essence, a real job.  “Face reality” as the song puts it.  I’m sure every entrepreneur and every start-up has heard that at some point.

The second verse is the core message for anyone in business:

So I drifted for a while down the road to ruin
I couldn’t find my way, I didn’t know what I was doin’
I saw a lot of people coming back the other way
So I kept on goin’ when I heard them say,

“You gotta get up in the morning, take your heavy load
And you gotta keep goin’ down the long black road.”

How many businesses are caught up doing the same kind of drifting?  How often do we wonder if we’re lost?  In this case, despite the number of people coming back, the singer keeps going, having heard the message to persist.  Quitting is easy – taking the load down the long black road isn’t.   By the third verse, the singer is a success, but gets reminded that money won’t bring happiness.  The journey – overcoming the obstacles, facing “trouble and strife” are every bit as important as the end goal.  Three great business points.

Funny how much one can learn in three verses over three minutes if we’ll just listen…

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December 16, 2014 · 12:34 pm

Traditions

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah. For you gentiles in the audience, this holiday follows the pattern of many Jewish celebrations – someone tried to kill us; divine intervention saved us; let’s eat. In this case, that intervention took the form of making a single day’s supply of oil last eight days following a battle, and the food eaten this holiday is traditionally fried food in honor of the oil. It’s the last part on which I want to focus today’s screed.

No, this isn’t a rant on latkes (fried cakes of potatoes and onions) and besides, it isn’t Foodie Friday. It’s the tradition part and how the customs of the holiday got me thinking about business.  As with any holiday, whether a religious holiday or not, there are customs.  Foods we make, maybe clothes we wear, etc.  Even within your family it may be one family member’s house for a particular celebration that never changes from year to year (think Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, etc.).  These are traditions and they give a sense of comfort and continuity.  They’re great things but not, in my opinion, in a business setting.

How we get into trouble is by honoring most business traditions. Some of them are fine, but not many.  Most of the contexts which prompted the creation of a legacy business process (which is, after all what traditions are) have changed.  Those changes have been dramatic, and thinking “that’s how we’ve always done it” can be a death knell.  What we need to do is to look back on the tradition and ask “why.”  Why was this, at some point, the right answer to a business problem and what can we learn from it to adapt it to current conditions?

I’ll make latkes and light candles and honor the traditions of the holiday this evening.  When I go back to work tomorrow, it’s with an open mind and a mental library of traditional business answers from which to build new traditions that suit today’s challenges.  You?

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December 12, 2014 · 11:13 am

Finely Chopped Onions And Business

Foodie Friday, and this week it’s about chopping onions.  No, it’s not a screed on how cutting up onions relates to being in business without crying although that’s not a bad idea for some Friday down the road.  This week, it’s about a legendary chef – Marco Pierre White – and his technique for chopping onions more finely than you’ve ever chopped them before.  There are practical reasons for doing so as he explains. The video I’ve embedded demonstrates his technique, but it’s actually something he says in the video that’s our subject today.

First, the chopping lesson:

Did you hear what Chef White had to say as part of his demonstration?

‘Perfection is lots of little things done well.’

He picked that up from Ma Gastronomie by Fernand Point. He is the father of modern French cuisine. It’s a great business reminder too.  We talk a lot in this space about many “big” things but the reality is that we can’t ignore the most basic skills if we’re to continue to improve as businesspeople.  We might be focused on the big idea, but if our basic writing skills are inferior, the brilliance of our idea won’t be expressed.

Chopping onions is probably the most basic of cooking skills.  I’ve seen friends spend a full two minutes chopping an onion when had they learned the proper technique and practiced they would be able to do so in under 30 seconds.  It’s a little thing, but improving all of the little things is sometimes the only way to improve the whole.  As an aside, it’s a heck of a lot more fun when the tedious things go quickly and efficiently both in the kitchen and in the office.

Striving for continuous improvement is a noble goal.  Our focus should be on big steps forward.  The way to get our businesses to take those steps just might be through improving all the little things, especially when we’ve done a good job on the big ones already.  After all, a team that keeps hitting singles and not making many outs eventually scores a lot of ones, even without any home runs.

You agree?

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