Tag Archives: Strategic management

March 9, 2018 · 2:13 pm

Side Dishes

It’s Foodie Friday and today I’m inspired by a friend of mine who loves side dishes. Anytime a meal is discussed, the only question raised is “what are the sides?” Beef Wellington that took hours to prepare? Meh, but what kind of potatoes? You slaved for five hours over a perfect Bolognese Sauce? Interesting, but what veggies are we having?

I suspect that many of us think in an opposite manner. Side dishes are a throw-in – a starch of some sort, maybe some roasted veggies and a salad. When was the last time you just tossed a steak on the grill but worked for hours over perfect Pommes Dauphine? I suspect the next time will be the first since it’s much easier to put a bag of tater tots in the oven. Even when one goes to many restaurants, while the main proteins often have lengthy descriptions of each dish, the side dishes are generally just a listing of the vegetables and starches available.

I’m starting to pay a bit more attention to the sides. As it turns out, many businesses are too. What do I mean? Take the airlines. Originally, “ancillary revenues” such as baggage fees, change fees, advance boarding fees, and all of those horrible nickel and dime items the flying public hates were just side dishes. The main business was in filling seats. Today, airlines make over $80 Billion on these sidelines, and in many ways, they’re the entire profit center for the business. In other cases, what began as a side dish became the business. Groupon used to be an online fundraising site and only sold stuff as a sideline. Nintendo sold playing cards and making video games was a sideline. Twitter was a side project within a podcasting company called Odeo.

When was the last time you thought about the side dishes contained within your business? Maybe there are folks out there who love the sides more than the main and would be willing to skip the main altogether?

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March 7, 2018 · 10:49 am

Pay Me Now Or Pay Me Later

One thing that frustrates me is some folks’ inability to understand cost and value. There have been a few times over my last decade of consulting when that inability manifests itself in a particularly bad way. I’ve begun work with clients on more that one occasion where the client has spent a lot (in one case, close to a million dollars) of their seed money to build websites that didn’t accomplish what the client needed them to do. Most of the reason for this was that they hired the lowest-cost option. They failed to see that the value they needed was in their provider understanding the client’s business and delivering a solution that met the business requirements. Instead, they hired someone who made them a beautiful website that was fairly useless from a business perspective. That’s cost vs. value. They saved on cost and failed on value.

Startup companies are notoriously short of funds. Often the founders are working without pay and the thought of paying consultants, lawyers, accountants, and other professionals is anathema to them. That’s a big mistake. I worked with another startup that took intellectual property advice from “a friend who had done this before” instead of a lawyer. I noticed a potential problem with their name immediately but they were happy to go with their friend’s advice despite my asking about a legal opinion. As a result, once they launched their brand, they received a cease and desist letter informing them that they were infringing on another trademark. That resulted in a major depletion of their remaining funds to rebrand and to pay a lawyer to respond to the C&D. Cost vs. value in action.

What’s my point? If you’re venturing onto new grounds, hire some guides before you get lost. You’re going to be paying these professionals at some point and you might as well do so early on. Yes, it’s a cost you don’t think you can afford, but the value you receive can prevent very expensive mistakes and will ultimately save you money in the long run. Had I or any reasonably smart consultant been involved early, we would have talked about what analytics we needed from the website to make actionable business decisions before we worried about anything else. Every dollar spent on the site afterward would advance the business’ goals and not to making art rather than commerce.

Pay us now or pay us later. I think the sooner the better. You?

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February 26, 2018 · 12:34 pm

New Greens, New Breaks

One of the first things you learn about writing is that you generally want to stick to writing “what you know.” That’s why things around here generally revolve around business, golf, and food. Sometimes those three things intersect (a bad food experience at an obviously failing snack bar on some golf course?) but generally I manage to get two of the three put together, and all the screeds have a business point to make.

Today, as is often the case on Mondays, something occurred to me on the golf course over the weekend. My home course replaced the greens last summer. We went from bent grass greens to Minverde Bermuda greens. I can hear your eyes rolling, but let me explain what that has meant and why it just might be meaningful to you and your business.

One thing with which many businesses are dealing, either directly or indirectly, is climate change. In the case of golf courses here in North Carolina, it’s meant that some strains of grass just can’t take the heat and clubs spend a lot of money trying to prevent them from dying. There are dead spots, root rot and massive fans that are installed near some greens which run up the power bill trying to cool down the grass that can’t take the heat. Our place lost parts of 5 greens two years ago. The takeaway is that you can believe or not believe in climate change but you can’t ignore the effects that whatever is going on is having. I don’t suspect you run a golf course, but you may stock seasonal items or have staffing needs that are weather-dependent and you can’t stick to the calendar as you once knew it.

That, however, isn’t my main point today. One of the other things that happened when they replaced the greens is that everything was different. The speed was different, the way the ball moved on the green was different, and the new greens were very hard, so you couldn’t land the ball where you used to because it would bounce and roll. The breaks (how the ball moved in response to the topography) were completely different, so all of the local knowledge you had was gone. I will tell you that it’s frustrating to have a putt you’ve made many times before suddenly not move as much as it once did. It is also difficult to train yourself to ignore the slope you know is there because you also know the ball isn’t moving the way it used to.

That sort of thing happens in your business. Things change and you can’t operate under your old belief system. I may believe the ball will move three feet left but on the new green, it barely moves. You may think to be on Main Street will assure you of foot traffic but when the new mall opens, your reality will be quite different. You need to do the best you can is reading the new terrain and adjust your thinking. Otherwise, you’re going to be missing the mark quite a bit, sort of like I did this weekend. New greens mean new breaks and that means a new look at everything you do. Make sense?

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