Philosophical Friday: Doubt

Doubt is powerful.

Destructive.

Or motivational.

You choose.
 

Dance and Yodel. Why Books Aren’t In Trouble. But The People Who Sell Them Are.

I went to Barnes and Noble this morning. I was one of 35 people standing outside waiting for them to open.

Where else in Manhattan, I wonder, did a retailer draw a crowd today without a free giveaway involved?

No one went to the cafe. No one went to music and video. Two people headed to the magazine sections. And the rest of us went looking for books.

45 minutes later, I walked out with four. Thanks to no-one and nothing. Except my perseverance and determination.

In the business section, an employee stood at his counter drumming his fingers on the counter-top. Loudly. I think it was loudly. It was hard to hear above the noise of the phone ringing beside him.

I turned to the computer help centers. Helpful. Provided you know the precise spelling of author. Or book. Luckily my iPhone Google search interpreted my attempt, and corrected me. No inter-device cut and paste, however. Dutifully I tried again. The book was in stock, one aisle over.

Except it wasn’t. I tried to decode the cataloguing system. An explanation somewhere would have been helpful. Even if I can’t re-sort by clicking a column header, understanding how you’re trying to do it would save me the trouble of figuring it out for myself. Alphabetical by title? Ah, by author. Except here and here and here. And in any event, my title and author exist in neither.

Another staff member walked by. I looked up plaintively. Without breaking stride she asked me if I needed any help. “I’m looking for the Art of Seduction,” I said, more loudly than I cared to. Based on her response, I’m fairly sure she hasn’t read it. Though I sensed she knew where it was. Her gesture had a number of interpretations, one of which was to duck. But as she disappeared round the corner I gave one last hopeful glance in the general vicinity of her final indication. There, a single copy, lay forlornly and ironically by itself. Clearly, sympathetic presentation of the merchandise hadn’t been on that morning’s staff meeting agenda either.

If you’re going to sell something, sell it. Use technology intelligently, find people who care, train them properly and worry about the details.

Demand is out there for all kinds of things. But if it matters more to your customer than it does to you, their standards will eventually decide if you’re in business.

Google just announced the launch of their online book store.

How much is a Kindle?

Chrysler. A Case Study In Unconscious Capitalism.

Why does the world need Chrysler? Or General Motors?

As business models they are subsidized blackmail. In which the American taxpayers provide the subsidy and the guilt.

Were Chrysler or GM to fail, the loss of jobs and the reverberation through the American economy was deemed to be so devastating that we are told it is worth the price we pay to keep them both around.

In which case, wouldn’t it be better to use all this political, emotional and financial capital to build companies worthy of the investment.

Great companies, big and small, are run consciously.

They know why they are in business. The know what they are trying to achieve. And they work to create value for four groups of stakeholders.

• Customers


• Employees


• Suppliers


• Owners

There is no order of priority to that list. Great companies work equally hard for all four groups. And, unsurprisingly, the businesses who succeed in every area, produce the best financial results.

Both Chrysler and GM are off to a lousy start. As my friend Jerry Solomon wrote today, General Motor's self-serving approach to one group of suppliers is extraordinarily destructive. To any supplier short-sighted enough to accept their terms. And to themselves.

The Obama administrations have revealed their shock at the state of both companies.  And came close to letting them fail. The inside story is here. It's worth reading. Chrysler were ultimately saved by the deal with Fiat. Which came with a heavy price.

Chrysler's new marketing chief, Olivier Francois, is also responsible for: marketing all of Fiat’s brands; leading all of Chrysler Group’s advertising; brand development and strategy development, and is also CEO of Chrysler. He will “execute his duties via a trans-Atlantic routine.”

His reputation as a marketer is that his work should first of all be noticed. And he is stronger on style than strategy.

Hardly a platform for a turn-around.

Perhaps we should collectively ask him to step into our office. Since, in large part he works for us.

Or perhaps we should simply decide that Chrysler and GM are both past saving and build companies that create things the world wants.

Starting with respect.

Life Lessons

My father reads my blog.

Which represents a sea change in our relationship.

Because until April 28th, we had spoken only once this Millennium.

We parted ways on Christmas Eve, 1999. For most of the nine years we were estranged I thought of him as dead. Not wishing he were. Simply an emotional reality that arrived naturally. A matter-of-fact state of grace for a painful relationship.

My father was an ad giant. A cerebral thinker who defined global advertising. Among his vast portfolio are two of the world’s iconic pieces of global brand building.

When Sergio Zyman plotted the introduction of New Coke, my father told him that wasn’t his call. “You don’t own Coke,” he said. “The American people own Coke. They won’t let you change it.” Two months and several hundred million dollars later, the American consumer proved his point.

Assuming you know better than your customers is a lesson learned expensively. And often only once.

The trouble was that all my father's big picture, macro-marketing, advertising-for-the-ages achievements came with a large price tag. Paid by his family. It’s an old song. My mother, sister and I weren’t the first to be sacrificed at the alter of ambition. And we won’t be the last. But over time, everyone gets a bill.

What someone is prepared to sacrifice in order to succeed is the most personal of equations. And those for whom the choices made at the prime of their career came with a side of guilt, never find a payment plan that gets the balance to zero. A realization that always comes too late.

Because the consequence of any decision is hard to see in real time. And the urgency of today usually overwhelms the warnings of tomorrow.

But conscious decisions made within context stand the test of history. And come with fewer regrets. If any. Because though we can’t know the outcome, we can be satisfied with how consciously we made a choice. A difference my father would accept today. A late maturity in which he is not alone.

At eight years old, I knew my father was in trouble. He left for a month - his first significant absence - and we held each other and sobbed as the cab waited outside. It was the last time for forty years that he was present emotionally. His physical disappearance took a little longer.

Over the next ten years, the absurd become normal. We were used to him traveling all the time. We were used to him missing, well, everything. And when, in 1978, he made it home only for the day after Christmas - only meaning one, out of 365 - we accepted that as normal too.

Life is informed by perspective. And we often see what we want to see. A fact that makes life simpler in the short run, business riskier in the long run, and the end result anything other than that which we hope for.

As 1979 broke on the horizon, my father and my future lay elsewhere. And my past was about to seem a very long way away. 
 

Irrelevant This

We don’t know what we don’t know.

Which makes building a better business difficult at the best of times.

But virtually impossible if we ignore what we do know.

Or convince ourselves that this time the facts won’t apply. That we should act based only on what we want to be true.

As a case in point, consider Roland Burris.

For those outside the U.S., Roland Burris is the junior senator from Illinois. Appointed to replace Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate by the former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, who was then impeached for trying to auction the seat to the highest bidder.

As his final official act, he appointed Mr Burris, a 72 year old black Chicago politician, to fill the seat. A move the leadership of his party in the Senate immediately decided they would reject.

It was, the Democrats said, inappropriate, unacceptable, illegal, unconstitutional. Mr Burris was told his claim was invalid. They denied him the seat. Then they turned him away at the door. Literally.

Here are two facts they ignored:

Fact 1: There was no legal basis for their position. None that withstood the simplest scrutiny.

Fact 2: Nor any political one. Denying a black candidate the opportunity to replace the only black senator is bad for electoral college counting.

And so, after two weeks of noise and bluster, Mr Burris became Senator Burris.

For eight months, a chilly detente has existed. The Democrats counting the days until his term ends in 2011. Mr Burris left isolated and unwanted, and fighting his own ethics charges without support from his party.

Until now. When the issue of health care reform approaches a final vote in the senate. And the debate about the public option becomes real.

For the record:

• 77% of America wants health care reform with some form of government  provided health care. The so-called public option.


• The Democrats need all 60 of their Senators to pass any kind of health care reform.


• Several are reluctant to support a public option.


• Mr Burris has declared, "I would not support a bill that does not have a public option. That position will not change."

Which leads us to two more facts the Democrats tried to exclude from their analysis:

Fact 3: Without Mr Burris’ support, the Democrats can’t pass health care reform.

Fact 4: Without health care reform, the Obama presidency slogan becomes, No, we can’t.

Imagine whatever vision of the future you want. Then put that aside and deal in facts.

Because dreams can come true. But only if you accept reality first.

5 Things The Airline Industry Has Taught Us About Better Business

The airline business is pointless.

If there was any kind of alternative to traveling further than 250 miles, we’d all take it. And celebrate.

Instead, we game the system to get the lowest fare possible, hope our upgrade clears, and try to make sure there’s internet access on board to help us forget that as an indicator of man’s achievements, air travel is our only major innovation that’s going backwards. Having experienced Concorde, that’s a realization that hits me every time I fly.

Fifty years after the Boeing 707 was heralded as the first jet airliner, we still fly at exactly the same speed that modern miracle achieved on its maiden voyage. 591 MPH. Imagine where things would be if technological achievement had remained frozen in 1959. Today, New York to London is still 6 hours, give or take, depending on the jet stream.

Maybe that’s the real strategy behind global warming. Heat the planet, create violent weather conditions, jump on board the jet stream. It would make more sense than anything else those that run the airline industry have offered as business rationale.

Let’s look at just this decade. Since 9/11 the industry has:

• Gone through five Chapter 11 reorganizations


• Supported two mergers


• Eliminated about 250,000 jobs


• Been responsible for a mountain of debt and pension defaults.

If over that same period you ignore the tens of billions of dollars written off to goodwill write-downs, and the hundreds of millions of dollars of reorganization costs, then the airline industry only lost around $40 billion.

$40 billion. In an industry trying to make money.

With no competition.

That every one of us will have to use multiple times this year.

And yet. The most recently published quarterly reports have been met by airline executives with rejoicing over the increases they have generated in ancillary revenues. Things like baggage fees and on-board meals. United earns about $14 a passenger in those fees. They also lost $137 million in the 3rd quarter.

What they don’t know is the cause and effect of either number on the other.

In other words, they don’t know if charging for bags increases revenue or drives people to other airlines.

Seems like a fairly rudimentary piece of analysis. If we do this, will be better or worse off?

United don’t know. (No news there for the airline that came up with the profound brand positioning, Rising.  As opposed to the alternative, one presumes.)

Neither do any of its competitors. One of the many reasons why the airline industry has lost more money than it has ever made.

But the airline industry does have value. As a business model. Of what not to do.

1. Don’t sell your services for less than it costs you to provide them. Unless you know you can raise them tomorrow. Not think. Know.


2. Don’t build a business that is entirely dependent on any single resource, especially when controlled by a limited number of suppliers who are ambivalent whether you succeed or fail.


3. Don’t build a business around a small group of people with highly specific, and hard to replace skills. And if you must, align their interests with yours. So that the success of the business is their business - as well as yours.


4. Don't restrict innovation. If your business can't offer a significantly more valuable experience every three years, your customers will find someone who can. Unless you can corner the entire industry. In which case, you don't need anyone's help.


5. Don’t focus on narrow metrics that support what a great job you’re doing while the business is falling down around you.

The truth is out there.

Just don’t expect to find it by looking up.

Philosophical Friday: Living for Today. Planning For Tomorrow

As part of a weekly feature, we're going to start dedicating Friday's posts to a philosophical thought. A reflective end to the week.

Here's the first. Let us know what you think.

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The announcement that 79 metro areas in North America have come out of recession is good news and bad.

The good news is that a strengthening economy carries everyone along for the ride.

The bad news is that good news makes people go back to bad patterns.

Most of which involve looking intently at the present.

Focus on today as a path towards personal tranquility.

But look first at tomorrow if you want to build a better business.

After all, one year from today is still today.

No matter how hard you stare at it.

Changing The World. $25 at a Time.

I had a fascinating breakfast yesterday with two entrepreneurs who exemplify all that is great about the capacity for small businesses to make a big difference.

Each in their own and very distinctive ways have built something extraordinary from nothing, developed careers, supported families and causes, changed the way we see the world, and have done so with decency, integrity and humanity.

And based on our conversation, they’re not done yet.

It was a very invigorating beginning to the day. And as I walked back to my office I thought, not for the first time, that entrepreneurs have recognizable DNA.

A truth which came thundering home when a friend sent me this link last night.

Kiva is an association that lets you lend money to a specific entrepreneur with one simple goal.

To lift them out of poverty.

The picture on the front page is of Nulu Nabunya, a 50 year old Ugandan widow with four children, who is looking for a $525 loan to help her build her knitting business. She has already borrowed and repaid twenty loans and her ambition is to own a sweater factory.

There are 870 entrepreneurs showcased, in countries from Cambodia to Togo, from Mongolia to Peru. Their funding requests range from $385 to $2500.

As I looked at some of the pictures, I was struck by three things.

1. All entrepreneurs are impacted by the same issues. Concept. Customers. Cash flow. And Credit.

Get any one of them wrong and we’re out of business.

2. The ability to see a better future does not require specific economic, geographic, cultural, educational or environmental conditions.

It requires a willingness to believe in the possible.

3. Entrepreneurs live in the real world. Where the ideal meets the practical.

And today, I for one have a different appreciation of what both words mean.

5 Myths About Selling A Service Business

When we started our own business, it seemed obvious that we should build it so we could sell it one day.

After all, even in the first raptures of blissful entrepreneurship, we thought it was possible we might not want to stay until the day we died.

So we did what we thought made sense.

We spent eleven years making ourselves irrelevant.

Which allowed us to sell when we were ready to go. And the company to prosper without us.

In the four years that we’ve been consulting, we’ve come across five myths about selling a business in a service industry that we would like to shatter.

1. The Disbeliever: You Can’t Scale A Service Business.

James O. McKinsey was an accounting professor at the University of Chicago. In 1926 he started a business in an industry that didn’t exist. Today, McKinsey & Company are the largest management consulting firm in the world. They keep their sales figures private. But will admit to at least $5 billion a year. Some estimates put it closer to $13 billion.

If the business isn’t scaling, don’t look at the base. Look at the head.

2. The Skeptic: Selling A Service Business Always Involves An Earn Out.

Only if you have made yourself essential to the business.

In which case, the price is depressed because of the uncertainty of what happens when you leave. And you have to stay longer, in order to extract yourself on someone else’s terms.

If the business functions perfectly without you, you get money in the bank and a great goodbye party.

3. The Talker: We’re Definitely Interested In Selling One Day. We’re Going To Start Planning For That Next Year.

Selling begins the day you start. We call it Plan The Last Day First®. It informs every decision, every hire, every customer relationship.

It costs no more to build for sale, than to build to stay. The only difference is the choices you have when the last day comes. Which is usually sooner than you can possibly imagine.

4. The Optimist: I Get Calls All The Time From People Interested In Buying My Business.

There’s a difference between buying a company. And talking about buying a company.

The first involves due diligence. A process that is invasive and uncomfortable and spends a lot of time looking at your financial statements. You’ll know when someone’s really interested in your business when they ask the third set of follow up questions. The ones you were hoping they wouldn’t.

The second involves a salad and a decaf cappuccino.

5. The Fantasist: We’re having a bad year. But if I got the right offer, I’d consider selling. 

This is actually two myths in one.

Buyers don’t buy service businesses in a bad cycle unless they can see the problem clearly. Buyers buy service businesses when things are pretty good, and they think they can run them better. Which typically means cheaper.

And unless you’ve trained other people to do what you do, the ‘right’ offer will definitely involve an earn-out. In other words, this scenario means giving your company to someone else, and then having them tell you what to do for the next three years.

And if they get it wrong, you don’t get paid.

The Sixth Myth

There is a sixth myth. It’s the one that says building a company that can be sold means you’re betraying your craft, your passion, your calling.

The alternative is closing the doors when you’ve had enough. Or dropping dead at your desk.

Which seems like a waste of a lot of time and money.

Unless you believe in fairy tales.

Who's Working For Who?

This morning, every one of the people who work for you made a decision to do so again today.

The vast majority probably didn’t think about it like that.

But you should.

Otherwise they will.

The fact is, we all have a choice about what we do for a living. Even with unemployment approaching ten percent, nine out of ten people who want to work are doing so.

If you’re building a better business, you’re hiring insightfully, training pro-actively, mentoring sensitively, promoting effectively and compensating fairly.

Which is a start.

Being sure that you’re also building a company that creates long term possibilities for your best people is the other part of the equation.

We meet so many business owners these days who missed their time. Who thought they alone were responsible for their company’s success. Who thought it would never end.

Until now.

For them, it’s too late.

But for you, it’s not.

Build a business that gives your employees a reason to keep coming back. Personal growth. Long term economic benefit that goes beyond a salary. A voice.

The company will expand beyond your DNA. And will begin to incorporate theirs.

When you’re ready to leave, they will no longer need you.

But they will need your equity.

A win-win.

And the key to this model?

Two words at the end of every day. Spoken to every employee. With real understanding of the choice they will make tomorrow.

Thank. You.

Courageous Conversations

At the heart of the problems faced by many companies, is that the owner has so far avoided a Courageous Conversation.

Instead of identifying and exposing what's really going on, owners resort to analyzing the company's strategy, a debate that is often substituted as an alternative to confronting two primary questions.

Am I still in love with this business? What am I trying to achieve?

Entrepreneurs build extraordinary businesses when their talents meet their passion. When their passion fades, the business suffers.

Unless it has been built to thrive without them.

Most are not.

And when owners bury the real issues - consciously or sub-consciously - the interests of the company, its staff and ultimately the owners themselves are seriously damaged. Often permanently.

The situation is complicated a hundred-fold when a partnership is involved. Then, the absence of an exit strategy and an ownership transition plan becomes a noose from which many companies never escape.

A Courageous Conversation is needed when you see these conditions appear in combination:

• A business without a clearly defined Purpose.


• A partnership that used to work effortlessly but is now increasingly disjointed.


• Employees taking sides.

Employees smell lack of ownership interest instinctively. And even if you’re kidding yourself, you won’t kid your employees for very long. In the absence of a company Purpose, great employees will stick around in this economy only long enough for the unemployment numbers to start falling.

Sometimes, a Courageous Conversation results in a genuine re-commitment by the owners to the business. Madonna Badger of Badger and Partners and Jerry Solomon of Epoch Media talk about this on our website.

Other times, it highlights the divide, and requires the negotiation of a fair, equitable and practical separation. No small feat. And often hardest for close partners who tie themselves in knots trying to be reasonable at the expense of reality.

The good news is that Courageous Conversations are the fuel of empowerment. And liberation.

Two traits on which both companies and lives can prosper.

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Note: The concept of the Courageous Conversation was brought to us by our newest
associate, Jamie Gutfreund.

Jamie was introduced to us by Dana Astrow, our first.

Their background and expertise speaks for itself. Their insight is extraordinary. Their enthusiasm infectious. We’re a much better business for having them be part of it. 

66% = Two Out Of Three

One of the issues we hear from clients most frequently is the difficulty of getting their people to work together.

And until you solve that problem, any hope of making substantive change to your business is on long-term hold.

Long-term as in forever.

The solution lies in two basic instincts we share as a species.

1. We change our behavior when we believe the result makes the effort worthwhile.


2. We want to express ourselves. To have a voice. Sometimes literally.

I can offer you no better proof than this video two friends posted on Facebook yesterday.

I don’t speak Swedish. I suspect you don’t either. It doesn’t matter.

66% is a universal language.

Gourmet Magazine: Right Ingredients. Wrong Recipe.

The announcement today that Condé Nast has decided to shut down Gourmet Magazine after 68 years was a stark and startling reminder that even great brands go stale.

In the moment its demise was announced, Gourmet was revered by the professional and privately passionate alike. Jean-Georges Vongerichten, regarded as one of the most celebrated chefs on the planet is a fan. And a subscriber. As are 978,000 others. A number that has stayed relatively unchanged for a decade. Indeed, Jean-Georges attributes his success to Gourmet’s prestige. “It helped make me what I am today.”

How then does a 68 year old institution with the power to make or break the world’s greatest restauranteurs, become a memory?

There are two reasons. One we talk about a great deal. One we do not.

The first is that Gourmet failed to understand the essence of its value to consumers. Not as a magazine. But as an authenticator of taste. Sensory and subjective alike. Regardless of the medium. Or the calendar.

Absent that understanding, Gourmet did not bring us Yelp.  Foursquare. Or even an iPhone Gourmet app. They gave us information. Great information. But on their terms. Not ours. As Jean-Georges explained, “Even I look up information on restaurants on the Internet when I travel, to see what's good or bad."

The second, is that McKinsey, the consultants brought in to analyze the state of Conde Nast concluded that Gourmet was better dead than alive. A decision that suggests a failure to see the possibility of repurposing the value of a 68 year old iconic brand. Or an unwillingness to re-invest in it by its owner.

A waste. By consultant and corporation alike.

And unnecessary if you take time to understand why you’re really in business in the first place.
 

Money Can't Buy You Love

Chris and I were in Bloomingdale's in Manhattan last week. It was the first time either of us had stepped inside in two decades.

It's possible we'll go again. If we live to be 100.

Bloomingdale's used to be IT. When I last lived here in the early 80s it was a destination filled with atmosphere, attitide, aspiration and Big Brown Bags.

Today all that's left is the attitude.

Bloomingdale's owns Macy's. Who own Thanksgiving. And large parts of Christmas. Well, one street's worth.

Macy's is spending several millions of dollars refurbishing Bloomie's. Construction is everywhere. Which gives the impression for a few minutes that something is happening.

It is.

Money is being wasted. Display case fulls at a time. Because regardless of what they stock, Bloomingdale's staff is singularly uninterested in selling it.

In a twenty minute excursion we asked for help from five different people. To say we were an inconvenience would be to suggest that root canal during love making is a distraction. And the person who smiled at us most warmly? The man who held the door open as we left. As he pulled it closed we turned, half expecting to see the staff offer us a collective grimace before returning to the pursuits we had clearly interrupted.

Building a better business means making sure what and where you're selling comes after who you're selling to.

Because once they've walked out the door, all the fresh paint in the world won't bring them back.

5 Steps To An Information System

You can’t build a better business without better information.

With rare exception, the information management systems of most companies do little to contribute to their success.

At best they are not getting in the way. Most of the time, they are considerably more destructive than that.

A better business is one that knows where it’s going. And is built to get there.

In that outlook it is not surprised by its success. A trait that becomes self fulfilling.

Here are five foundations to creating durable information systems that will outlive their founders:

1. Strategy. Well designed systems are built to fulfill their company’s purpose. Only when you have defined that can you establish the architecture that will support the journey.


2. Scalability. Start with a numbering protocol that supports enough digits. Re-engineering platforms in response to success is expensive, distracting and sometimes impossible. Companies as sophisticated as American Express have made this mistake.


3. Sensitivity. Particularly to the daily needs of the staff that use it. Systems that demand consistent data input but provide no immediate return to the people responsible for its entry, fail prior to installation. Any system must benefit every user.


4. Flexibility. We absorb information individually. Systems that treat us as two dimensional limit the long-term growth of a business by minimizing the involvement of those who see the business on three planes.


5. Clarity. Users have little time for and less interest in training. A system built on consistent interface protocols shortens adoption timelines and increases exploration and ultimately use.

Information is the compass that guides a company. Without it your final destination is a guess.

Which makes the journey more exciting.

But more prone to icebergs.
 

Sshhh

I mentioned in a blog last week that we have hired a consultant.

His name is Alan Weiss. I call him the Consultant’s Consultant.

We met last Friday in New York. We talked for an hour.

But one thirty second exchange justified the entire expense. And it was entirely obvious.

When working with a customer, talk about their problems. Not your solutions. How else will you know if the former requires the latter.

Simple. Obvious. And guilty as charged.

Building a better business is based on knowing what you’re talking about.

And knowing enough not to talk about it until you’ve discovered if or how it’s relevant.

Enough said.

The Non-Denial Denial

In the darkest moments of Watergate, with the White House engaged in full frontal attack, Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post kept Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation moving forward by focusing on the substance of the administration’s response.

Loud. Confident. Assertive.

Filled with reasons about why the accusations couldn’t be true.

But absent any evidence that they weren’t.

Bradlee came to describe them as non-denial denials.

Politics has used Watergate as a new benchmark. Anything above breaking-in is acceptable. Anything below, we can talk about.

Which is fine, because we’ve become more cynical consumers of politics. And why when a politician gives even a reasonably straightforward answer we greet them as champions of change.

But in our own lives, personally and professionally, the non-denial denial has become a destructive impulse to which we all succumb.

In the last few months I have been increasingly aware of the determination with which we paint reality to suit our own narrative.

We don’t deny that things are tough. We simply tell ourselves that somehow it will all come right. That the future will take care of it. That we’ll worry about it later. The current benchmark is after Christmas.

I have had five conversations recently with smart, self-aware, successful people whom I admire greatly. Some work for companies. Some own them.

In every case I have come away stunned by the paper-thin reality to which they are clinging. And their artful articulation of why the evidence they themselves present does not in fact draw the conclusion I suggest.

The do not deny the evidence. They do not say I am missing something in my analysis. They just say it isn’t that way.

A non-denial denial.

The truth is hard. But denying it is ultimately much more costly. And finding it is free.

It requires three things.

Someone you trust.
A willingness to ask hard questions
A willingness to answer them honestly

It doesn’t matter what title they go by. Friend. Relative. Consultant. Coach.

But there is no one I know who doesn’t need to go through this process.

Including us.

Which is why we just hired a consultant.

Because the future is coming and I for one want to meet it on my terms.

The facts. The truth.

Powerful platforms on which to build a better business.

Pass It On

Last year’s university freshman are a historic group. They are the first generation for whom the internet has existed since birth.

If you are reading this blog you have developed a facility for technology that would have astounded you twenty years ago had someone described the communication capability to which we now have access.

Free content on any subject, instantly searchable and accessible from anywhere in the civilized world. Oh, and wirelessly.

For most of us, no matter how comfortable we become, there is a degree of awe that comes with the opportunity to converse like this.

For a twenty year old, they can imagine no other way. They look forward. And ask for more. The difference, as Sir Ken Robinson points out, of being digital natives versus digital immigrants.

A better business embraces the future.

Today, doing so requires a leap of faith to test even the most devoted agents of change. And glasses. Two hurdles most twenty year olds don’t have to contend with.

But for all their hope and exuberance, they’re looking to us to lead. For at least a while longer.

I think it’s time we did. By looking forward. With purpose.

Yesterday was great.

Tomorrow will be better.

Pass it on.

We’ve Always Done It This Way

Thirty three percent of men do not wash their hands in public washrooms. Nor do twelve percent of women.

With H1N1 apparently on its way back, how many of you expect those numbers to change significantly?

Count me in the nays.

In the last year, despite the worst economic melt-down in most of our lifetimes, America’s alcohol consumption habits have remained at sixty year norms. As a nation, we are not apparently drowning our sorrows in drink.

On the other side of the coin, one in three has reduced their personal debt ‘significantly’, and thirty one percent of those asked said they are now in the habit of spending less.

As a species, we do not change our habits in response to threats.

We change them in response to events. Typically ones that frightens us.

By which time the damage has been done.

In every company it’s essential to separate culture from habit.

The first is part of a company’s DNA. The second is a repetitive action, conducted without thought.

An important distinction in building a better business.

And a better life.

Doing What It Says On The Tin

Building a better business means first doing what it says on the tin.

An English expression I have come to value. Simply put, it means stating your intention. And then acting towards it.

Too many business owners do the first. But not the second.

With the result that instead of building a business, they’re expending a lot of energy giving themselves a job.

Here are four ways you can tell if the company owners are interested in creating real value for themselves and their key employees. Or just satisfying a need to be needed.

1. The original founders are the only people with real ownership


2. They are essential to the company’s ability to earn business


3. No one else in the company has responsibility to make meaningful decisions


4. No one can envision the company without them

If a ten year old company exhibits more than two of these, the chances are it will stay in business only as long as its founders want to work.

When they’re done, so is the business.