Tag Archives: Strategic management

October 22, 2015 · 10:32 am

The Tip Of The Iceberg

I”m not sure why, but a lyric from the Rush song “Distant Early Warning” popped into my head this morning:

I know it makes no difference
To what you’re going through
But I see the tip of the iceberg
And I worry about you…

I think that’s something we do in business – see the tips of those icebergs – but we also do a very human thing and ignore them. I’ve been part of organizations that were just as guilty. I can clearly recall a sports sales meeting in the 1990’s in which the sales staff laughed at competing with this little cable sports network called ESPN. Buyers were talking about it, even though their numbers weren’t much at the time. It was the tip of the iceberg, except we didn’t worry.

Those tips surface all the time. A decade ago, no one was “worried” about social media taking dollars from mass media (although what could be more “mass” than social media these days?). Having a highly profitable media business disrupted by consumers watching TV on demand and on a mobile device? A good way to get a room full of executives to laugh.

It’s not just the media business. How many businesses have a written disaster plan in case a server goes down, a system gets hacked, or a natural disaster occurs? Why written? Because there is a high likelihood that you won’t have the time to figure it out on the fly, and it’s possible that members of the team will lose communication. We see the tip of that iceberg in other businesses struggling with floods and hacker incursions, but what do we do about it?

You might also ask yourself about the distant early warnings of burnout. Many of us are stressed, and that constant strain can lead to burning out – a state of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion.  When was the last time you looked inward as well as outward for signs of those icebergs?  Ignore the distant early warnings at your own peril.

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October 20, 2015 · 11:00 am

Myth Busting

When my brother was born, I’m told that he was to be named Mickey. Upon being informed of this, my response was “don’t be silly – Mickey is on television.” The “Mickey” in question, of course, was Mickey Mouse, and I was an avid viewer of his afternoon club. TV Mickey was very real to me. Brother Mickey was renamed Michael. 

I’m sharing that story because it speaks to the power of myths that have become real. You might think that business is the last place we would find such things, but you’d be wrong. Most prominent in my mind, of course, is the shared myth that drives billions of dollars of media spending: Nielsen ratings. Putting aside the obvious issues with sample error and lack of reporting from out of home viewing, read any ratings book and Nielsen will tell you that what’s inside is only accurate within certain limits. They are a shared myth, one that allows both sides of the advertising transaction to negotiate against some standard, even if it’s dead wrong.

The ratings field is instructive because some folks finally decided to challenge the myth by providing another, more accurate look at audiences. It’s having a double effect – Nielsen is improving their service and there is a second “currency” that can be used in negotiating ad placements (sometimes you would rather buy in Swiss Francs than dollars). Someone challenged the myth and both they and business is better for them having done so.

Another example: a taxi medallion in NYC is worth lots of money. Uber challenged the myth by making every car owner a potential taxi service, and Google and others are challenging it even further by negating the need for drivers at all. Until recently, a car needing a driver was a shared myth, and when we can simply call for a driverless car, day or night (no drivers means no sleep needed!), the nature of car ownership changes as well. How will car dealers and resellers be impacted in 20 years? I suspect the myth of fossil fuels will be blown up in the next decade too.

The point is this. Nodding one’s head at myths that have the force of reality instead of seeing them for what they are can impede progress and obscure opportunity.  Sometimes the emperor really is naked and you need to be that kid saying so.  It won’t make you popular, but it just might make you very profitable.  Any myth busters out there?

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October 12, 2015 · 9:18 am

Discovering Columbus

In celebration of the Columbus Day holiday, I’m reposting my screed about the day and its namesake.  If you’ve got the day off, it’s fair that you appreciate why.  Enjoy!

It’s Columbus Day here in the US.  While in many places (generally those with large Italian populations) the day is celebrated in a larger public way, it goes unnoticed in many communities.  Too bad since I think we need to pay a lot more attention to the things Columbus teaches us about business.  First, a little history.

Christopher Columbus, the subject of the book,...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cristoforo Colombo was born in Genoa and is generally credited as having “discovered” America.  We know, of course, that he wasn’t the first European to set foot on this continent (that would have been Leif Ericson) though he certainly did it more publicly and more often than anyone else and he succeeded in bringing the Americas to the attention of the European powers.  He’d been a sailor nearly his entire life.  Though he lacked much formal education he read a great deal including some very sophisticated (for the time) books about astronomy, geography, and history written in multiple languages.  Through them and his world experience at sea, he came up with the notion that the distance between Europe and Japan would be considerably shorter if one went West rather than East.  The Americas were a kind of happy accident that turned up en route.

To be able to make that voyage, Columbus had to raise a great deal of money and spent almost a decade after he developed his theory finding investors.  That was made difficult because many of those advising the investors were dead certain Columbus was wrong and passed on the opportunity.  Any of this sound familiar?

A curious mind hungers for information and actively seeks it out.  That leads to innovative thinking that’s years ahead of anyone else’s.  From that thinking, a business plan is developed and it takes a long time to get others to believe in the notion (and to put their money where their belief is).  The plan, once it moves forward, encounters an unplanned opportunity (he wasn’t looking for natives in the various Caribbean islands when he started!) and pivots to take advantage of it.   I suspect you could use those few sentences to describe any number of successful businesses or products.  That would make them all pretty good things for us to celebrate this Columbus Day as business folks, wouldn’t you agree?

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