Tag Archives: management

September 9, 2013 · 10:36 am

Testing The Visual Field

Every so often my eye doctor has me take a visual field test. For those of you who have never had the pleasure, this is an accurate description:

The patient sits in front of an (artificial) small concave dome in a small machine with a target in the center. The chin rest on the machine and the eye that is not being tested is covered. A button is given to the patient to be used during the exam. The patient is set in front of the dome and asked to focus on the target at the center. A computer then shines lights on the inside dome and the patient clicks the button whenever a light is seen. The computer then automatically maps and calculates the patient’s visual field.

It’s actually not so easy to stare at the target and the machine knows when you’re moving your eye around to look for the white dots (which is cheating, kids!).   Other than the fact that I went to take this test this morning, why do I bring this up?

I think we need to administer this sort of test to our businesses.  Every business has blind spots just as does every human.  It’s important to know where they are and to make sure that the overall vision the business enjoys isn’t impacted.  Assessing the limits of our vision – how well we see light as it gets dimmer and how well our peripheral vision is working is important to understand.  Unlike a human, the business can’t simply compensate by moving its gaze around.  It needs to strengthen its sight through better intelligence, by doing a better job of listening, and by making sure the assumptions under which it operates still hold true.  Our own biases (yes, we all have them) can often lead us in a direction that’s seriously out of touch with reality.  That belief system can be a huge blind spot and unless we evaluate things carefully we might miss opportunities or problems.

I get my eyesight checked fairly often.  I’d suggest we need to do the same sort of business testing at least as regularly.  Do you agree?

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September 6, 2013 · 9:06 am

The Sous Chef

Foodie Friday! I’ve been watching Top Chef Masters (I know – huge surprise) again this season. The twist this year is the presence of a sous chef brought into the competition by each of the masters. For those of you unfamiliar with the pecking order in a kitchen, a sous chef is, literally, an “under” chef. They’re the number two person in kitchen. While the executive chef or chef de cuisine sets the menu, it’s the sous chef that make sure that menu is executed daily to the chef’s standards.  The sous chef also creates the daily specials but this is a real understatement of their responsibilities.  Frankly, the main task of the sous chef is to keep the kitchen from falling to pieces.

The competition this season revolves around how well the sous chef performs in a series of contests  among the other sous chefs.  A sous chef not doing well can dramatically impact the master chef’s chance in the main competition.  Conversely, their sous chef winning can give the master chef immunity from elimination without them having to lift a finger.  Pretty sweet when your subordinate can throw that kind of protective wrapper around you!  Which is of course, the business point.

Throughout my professional career I was blessed with incredible sous chefs.  Of course, in the business world they’re called something else – assistants, secretaries, whatever.  They made me look good when I was having a bad day, they kept me on task and on time, and when I wasn’t able to handle a task directly they had the knowledge and intelligence to step up and get things done as I would have.  In a kitchen, the sous chef’s role is to back your chef, no matter what, at least to the rest of the world. What we would discuss or fight about was for us and never (to my knowledge) made it to the rest of the staff.

The best assistants were of the rest of the team but not really in the rest of the team.  Everyone loved them but respected their positions as well as the fact that they could speak for the boss when the boss was otherwise occupied.   Why do I bring this up?

Too many executives underestimate the value of a great right hand.   It could be your assistant, maybe it’s another executive on your staff.   No matter what, every great executive I’ve known has someone who can stand in their stead and make sure things run smoothly until the boss can step back in.  If there is no one with whom you work that can do this, you need to do one of two things:  find someone, or get ready to get replaced.

Here’s to sous chefs everywhere – in kitchens and in cubicles!

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August 27, 2013 · 9:55 am

Take The Money And Run

TunesDay, and what better theme for a business-related post than the Steve Miller Band‘s Take The Money And Run?  Steve Miller is an interesting cat.  Unlike most rock stars, he’s always been the kind of guy you couldn’t identify in a lineup.  You can probably picture most of the other big-name artists of the 70’s and 80’s.  He might be a little harder to visualize.  The list of musicians who have come though his band over the years – Boz Scaggs being the most notable – include members of Journey, Santana, and others.  The band came out of the Bay Area music scene in the late 60’s and is still with us today.

His song about Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue is about two kids who decide to rob a house, possibly killing the owner in the process.  They evade the law and get away singing “Go on, take the money and run.”  The story is in complete contrast to the light music – let’s listen and see:

There is a business point here.  Too many businesses think as do Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue.  They’re not particularly concerned with what’s right, only with themselves.  They practice the Golden Rule: he who has the gold rules, and once they extract it from their victims, they’re gone.  That tactic worked once for these kids and it won’t work much more often for a business.  One bad customer experience can haunt a company forever (just ask United Airlines about guitars).  An American Express survey found a couple of years ago that people tell an average of nine people about good experiences, and nearly twice as many (16 people) about poor ones.

You don’t need to take the money and run as a business.  That same survey found a large majority of people (70 percent) are willing to spend an average of 13 percent more with companies they believe provide excellent customer service.  In other words, your customers will GIVE you the money if you do right by them, and they’ll keep coming back.

While it makes for a clever little tune, taking the money and running is a bad business idea.  You agree?

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