Tag Archives: Reality checks

September 10, 2013 · 9:59 am

You Don’t Have To Cry

Today is TunesDay and so it’s into the world of music for a little business insight. I was driving the other day and one of “those” songs came on. You know them – tunes you adore and can’t get out of your head but you never hear much any more. It was Crosby, Stills, & Nash‘s “You Don’t Have To Cry,” which they will tell you is the first song they ever sang together. Its harmonies are the personification of ethereal and it’s a lesson in blending individuals into a unit. But that’s not our topic today!

First, have a listen:

Here are the words that spoke to me:

Are you thinkin’ of telephones
And managers and where you got to be at noon?

You are living a reality
I left years ago, it quite nearly killed me
In the long run it will make you cry
Make you crazy and old before your time
And the difference between me and you
I won’t argue right or wrong but I have time to cry my baby

Having lived the life of telephones and noon meetings, I can tell you that it is a reality that can kill you.  The business point today is that we all need to find that “time to cry” or laugh or sing or do whatever returns our breathing to normal and our frenetic brains to a state of calm.  It’s harder now.  Mobile devices are always at our sides (or on our heads and wrists!) and the pressure to participate in the social stream that engulfs your friends and family is big.   Something is “always on” and pleading for our attention.

It’s not easy to disconnect – maybe impossible other than in limited doses.  But unless “crazy and old” is your objective, you need to find that figurative time to cry, even in brief segments.  That’s how our business lives remain what we do to live and not who we are.  You with me?

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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 29, 2013 · 10:25 am

Getting Pinned

Credit card

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A friend had her pocket picked last night. Yes, I’m being literal – they got her wallet and immediately ran to a couple of stores to buy electronics which are easily turned into cash on the street. Fortunately she noticed her wallet missing not long afterwards and so was able to block the credit cards relatively soon.  Still, thousands of dollars of goods were charged – they were few in number but big in price.

As someone who used to supervise a fairly large online sports store, I’m well aware that it’s usually the merchant who bears the brunt of these fraudulent purchases.  Most of the time, the onus is on the retail outlet to verify that the card is being used by the rightful owner or the outlet will eat the cost of the goods refunded to the consumer.  Because of that, there are a lot of electronic countermeasures taken during online checkout to be sure that the card is real by both merchants and card issuers. You may even have experienced some of them while traveling, especially if you’ve gone out of the country (banks don’t like it when the card is suddenly being used overseas!).

What strikes me as odd, however, is that it’s far easier to commit fraud in the real world than it is online.  Think about your last experience charging something with a credit card.  The cashier may not have even looked at the card to see if the sex of the user matches the name on the card.  They might not have verified the signature.  Neither of those, by the way, is much of a deterrent.  Maybe you swiped the card at a gas pump which then asked for your zip code.  As in my friend’s case, if they have the entire wallet, there is probably something in there identifying the correct zip so that doesn’t work either.

Contrast that with a bank debit card.  You must have a PIN to use the card.  Forget the pin and there is no way to get cash or make a purchase.  Does anyone think it’s odd that when the bank is on the line (as with a debit card) for the money there is a fairly secure (ok, very secure except for the idiots who write the PIN on the card) check but it’s not there when someone else is liable?

It seems like a pretty simple fix and it can save billions.  Like many things in business, you shake your head and wonder why no one is taking the time to do it.  You agree?

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