Tag Archives: life

October 9, 2017 · 11:21 am

You Can’t Handle The Truth

There has never been a time when it’s been easier to get information. If you don’t believe me, pick up that computer you keep by your side most of the time (that would be your smartphone), push whichever button activates either Siri, Google Assistant, or whatever flavor of virtual assistant you have installed, and ask what the weather will be tomorrow. Ask who the Prime Minister of Denmark is or a few ways you can cook a turnip. We have the world at our fingertips.

That can be true with business information too. Traffic to your media properties, interactions with your content, results of your ad and social media campaigns, and feedback on how your company or brand is interacting with the world at large are all readily available for analysis and action. So is customer data, market predictions, and just about anything else you’d need to know. Pretty awesome, right?

The problem is that not everyone wants to know the truth about these things. Take the manager whose staff is leaving in droves. They “hear” it’s because of a better offer but they don’t take the time to sit down and dig into if there is an underlying problem in their operation. They couldn’t handle it if the problem was really them and their management style so they avoid the question.

Then there is the web person who is under pressure to keep growing traffic and doesn’t bother to exclude the kinds of traffic that inflate the numbers. You know: your own internal use of your website, traffic from places where you don’t do business, referrer spam or other obviously fake traffic. They know the truth but their bosses can’t handle it.

The problem with having information is that it compels you to act. We can always deny there is a problem if we don’t know about it or if we think the information we have is inaccurate. As with the law, ignorance is no excuse in my mind. I’ve been in meetings where some excellent forecasting predicts a downturn in a company’s business but several members of the management team want to expand their spending. The forecasts are subordinated to the feeling that more spending will yield more revenue despite the fact that the company’s share of the market has been steady for years and probably won’t increase in a downturn (which is basically what the managers are predicting). They couldn’t handle the truth: they need to tighten their belts and ride out the next few quarters. They’re no longer in business, by the way.

We hear an awful lot about fake news and there certainly is some out there to be ignored. Your business analytics don’t fall into that category and you ignore them at your own peril. If you can’t handle the truth, you can assume that reality will handle you one way or another. OK?

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October 6, 2017 · 11:15 am

Techniques, Not Recipes

It’s finally Foodie Friday again and something I cooked last week sparked a thought. I was trying to find a recipe for a dish I liked and found several versions, each slightly different. The one thing that they had in common, however, was how they were prepared. The process of pulling the dish together was nearly identical in every example. Each used a few common terms to represent techniques: saute, fold, and others.

A cook sautees onions and peppers.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This reminded me of a very basic thing I heard a long time ago: it’s learning techniques that matter, not learning recipes. One of the world’s culinary masters, Jacques Pepin, wrote a book decades ago called “La Technique” which is an encyclopedic look at everything from boning out a leg of lamb to making garnishes out of fruit. As a cook, learning technique is what frees you up to explore food and create your version of anything. It’s a process that never ends, by the way. Despite my years in the kitchen, I’ve only learned to sous vide and to use a pressure cooker in the last couple of years. Both techniques have become skills I use on a regular basis now.

Of course, this thinking doesn’t just apply to cooking. If you play a musical instrument, you’re probably aware that you spend an inordinate amount of time learning everything from how to hold the thing, the proper fingerings to produce certain notes, and what notes are in which scales. As a guitar player, I learned patterns, bends, and hammers as well. Once you understood what each of those techniques produces, you were freed up to make music: YOUR music.

Business isn’t any different. The problem, however, is that many folks don’t take the time to understand that they must learn technique before they can make their own music or create their own food. They try to produce the recipes that make for success in business without having the skills required. Without those techniques, the results will take far longer, if they’re achieved at all. Moreover, it’s nearly impossible for them to make their own music.

Which techniques? Analyzing, communicating, synthesizing, negotiating, budgeting, and presenting are good places to start. There is another dozen I could add to the list, but You get the point. In the office or in the kitchen, having an understanding of the basic techniques which underpin business or cooking, respectively, is a critical element in your success. Otherwise, just trying to duplicate someone else’s recipe will be the best you can do, and even that might be a long slog. Make sense?

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Filed under food, Helpful Hints, Thinking Aloud

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October 5, 2017 · 10:19 am

A Disgusted Capitalist

Let me begin by saying I’m a fan of making money. However, just as with free speech (you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater), I think there are some limits as to what a person can do in order to make that money. I was reminded of what those limits should be this week when I received what is not, unfortunately, an atypical letter in the mail.

I recently registered my business in a new place. I also purchased a car. In both cases, I received letters in the mail that seemed incredibly official but which were, in fact, full of deceptive language and claims. In the former case, I got a “Labor Law Compliance Notice,” that informed me I was required by Federal Law(!!) to hang a poster in my place of business. While that might be true for most businesses, because I have no employees, my business is not required to hang anything other than the 250 pictures of myself I keep around for inspiration. A little research by this company would have saved them the stamp. Still, this notice is extremely official looking, cites Federal Law, and looks like a bill for $84. Had I been required to hang these posters, there are numerous other vendors who will sell you the same thing for a quarter the price.

The same sort of deceptive crap followed the car purchase. Notices about activating my warranty came from a few sources, none of which had anything to do with the car manufacturer, and who were looking to sell me a superfluous warranty (the car will be under the manufacturer’s warranty for quite a while). Obviously, since these folks can see what year the car was made they know that, but they sent the letters anyway.

You’ve probably received phone calls from the “service department” or “IT support” telling you your computer is full of spam. While the aforementioned companies don’t fall into the outright scam category that the computer scammers do, they raise a serious issue for us all:

How far will we go to make a buck?

Charities that give tiny percentages of the money raised to the causes they serve, enriching the folks who run them instead. VW and other manufacturers rigging emission tests. Kellogg‘s claiming Rice Krispies boosted the immune system or Mini-Wheats made you smarter. It’s a long list, one to which I’m sure you could add just by opening your mail.

There are people behind these deceptions, people with minimal ethical principles. Did they at any point ask themselves how they’d feel if their elderly parent bought into a scam they were enabling?

I’m all for making a buck, lot of them in fact. But as with almost everything, there is a right way and a wrong way. You decide.

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