Is Your Business Becoming A Newspaper?

Sunday,November 1, 2009 started just like every other morning of the week. I woke up and turned on Fox and Friends to get the latest fair and balanced news. The first headline I heard from Alisyn Camerota (the weekend anchor) was that Abdullah Abdullah had dropped out of the presidential race in Afganistan. An hour or so later I sat down to read the Sunday paper and the first headline I notice said, "Challenger poised to quit race", another story about the Afghan presidential race.

I'm really not following Afghan politics that closely but I couldn't help notice the difference in the two headlines and how much they resemble the state of some businesses.

For a moment forget all you know about the biased press being on the ropes and focus on the difference in the Fox and Friends headline and the newspaper's headline. Even with all the advance since the invention of movable type the paper had to go to press long before Fox had to go on the air and that time delta was the difference between reporting what may happen and what had actually happened.

The paper's overall business strategy may be sound but it has been overtaken by market forces that they failed to recognize, analyze and heed (sorry but I just couldn't make that last word rhyme). Did newspapers fail to understand the impact that electronic media would have on their overall strategy; assuming that is,their strategy included providing accurate and timely news. Had they not been rigidly myopic could they have switched to a different format that would have allowed then to continue to thrive alongside twenty-four hour cable news?

I can't accurately comment on the eventual downfall of newspapers except to wonder if their commitment to succeed in a shifting marketplace will lead to their failure, in need of a bail-out as it were. It happened to Sony twice. Once with the Batamax and the second time with the Discman. Both times Sony had a sound strategy and both times the products performed badly. Both times a shift in market demand or technological advancement did them in.

So what does an organization do? Should they change strategy to account for every change in their market regardless of how small? What if the change in the market turned out to be a rapidly passing fad, an annomoly? The Harvard Business Review once quoted a Boeing executive as saying that (because of lead-times and retooling etc)you bet your company with the decision to produce the next generation of aircraft. When you set your strategy how do you keep from betting your company?

There needs to be one person or one consultant inside of every company to act as a devils advocate or disruptive force. It would be their job to identify all the potential seen and unforeseen forces that could lead to a serious puncture wound to your plans, study them to the point that the list could be prioritized based on probability and other common risk variables, a build contingencies based on their occurrence. In this way you wouldn't be caught by surprise and you would know where to go to get additional expertise to make a rapid, yet well thought out, change. This person wouldn't necessarily be the best loved guest at the company picnic but they could very well save you a bundle of money.

Don't get caught setting type when the cable company goes flying by.

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Carter Redux And Then Some

Like every one else I have political views and generally I try not to make my political views a business issue. I certainly have no intention of turning this into a political blog. So why am I bringing this up? I bring this up and I'm posting this to my blog because I heard a statistic last night that absolutely has me frightened over the future of business in the United States.

Remember the general funk that enveloped the country during the reign of Jimmy Carter. The was double digit inflation and double digit interest rates. There was no consumer spending because no one knew if they were going to be employed the next day. Many economists will tell you that America was on the ropes because Mr. Carter expanded the money supply by 13% in order to pay for his version of "spread the wealth".

So a 13% increase in the money supply to feed run away government spending produced 18%+ interest rates. So that was a long time ago, why, you might ask, am I just getting around to complaining about it today. Barrak Obama has increased the money supply 120% in just 10 months. As of COB today the interest rates haven't followed the expanded money supply but only because of smoke and mirrors.

Look at the state of business. The government has seized many of the larger banks, the public ownes two of the big three American auto makers, and the government is trying to grab another 20% of the economy through the health care fiasco. If you use credit cards you know that lenders are raising the rate now because Congress is going to cap them in the next couple of months in order to continue shielding you from the reality of the situation.

How will your business fare if the money supply dries up and interest rates exceed 20%? Will you be able to afford investment in facilities, equipment or people? Will your customers still buy from you when they can't access capital? Will the unemployed riot in the streets? Will it take a bucket of dollars to buy a loaf of bread? Will China move to foreclose on debt that could only be paid with over inflated dollars? Will you have a business to pass on to family or shareholders?

This is the most corrupt, deceitful political administration in US history. There is no more room to hide, face the facts. If you are where you are because of the free enterprise system it's time that we all stood up and defended it.

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Sales and Misspelled Words

I've come to the conclusion that, in some cases, there is a parallel between coaches trying to help a client increase sales and someone trying to find a word in the dictionary when they can't spell.

Generally when you asks someone how to spell a word they'll tell you to look it up in the dictionary. When you can't find it the person you asked begins showing you how to use the dictionary. Think about this for a second, I find it one of the dumbest exhibitions of human nature you'll ever have the opportunity to observe. Chances are that the person receiving the lesson in dictionary use knows how to use the book when they have some idea of what they're looking for but if you have no idea how a word is spelled finding it in a book organized around proper spelling isn't a quick task.

To me this is very much like the coach or sales consultant offering to help you increase sales; no one seems to have a plan or program that starts at the beginning. All that I've met and talked to offer improvement in your technique, approach or method assuming you have a technique, approach or method to improve.

My email this morning contained a question from a LinkedIn contact apparently floundering around looking for answers to the sales improvement question. They were looking for someone to show them the starting line or someone with a technique, approach or method they could hire to sell their company's product or service.

I felt compelled to respond to their plea because I've been in the very same situation and continue to have many of the same questions. Unfortunately for both of us I had no answer other than to show him how to use the dictionary and ask that he share any rejects that contacted him.

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My New Toy

If you read anything on this blog it won't take you very long to realize that generally I'm motivated to write about things that don't work well. I've come out against Windows Vista, poor customer service and faulty political thinking to name a few. Today is different, I bought an iPhone 3GS.

I started in the connected world with one of the first entry level Palm Pilots. I moved through the Palm product line, added a cell phone, added an iPod Shuffel and then bought a Trio in order to limit the number of devices I had to travel with. When I figured out that Palm had abandoned graffiti on the Trio I switched to a Blackberry Curve.

All of these products worked well enough but several friends and associates raved about the iPhone and damned if Apple don't make the best commercials since the Jefferson Airplane quite hawking 7Up. What did I have to lose?

I ordered my iPhone through AT&T and it arrived yesterday afternoon. Once I opened the box all thoughts of any other activity for the day flew out the window. For the remainder of the day I set-up and played with my new toy. Today, I have to keep reminding myself that it's not a toy it's a business tool; fancy but a tool none-the-less.

If you find yourself thinking about about listening to your friends and becoming mesmerized by those commercials, give in. The iPhone works like what you think a PDA should work like. Working within applications is easy and intuitive as is moving between applications. If every Apple product works this well, this blog may be updated on a MacBook before too long.

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It's Never As Easy As They Claim

Nothing is ever as easy as everyone would have you believe. Telephone systems that are supposed to efficiently route our calls will soon necessitate adding another key pad to the average telephone to accommodate all the possible choices. Fast food is no longer fast and by the time you get through the drive-up window at the bank you've missed a payment on the bills you were putting the money in to cover.

I recently received a gift certificate to Barns and Noble (the certificate was from Vocus, an excellent product, check it out). When I got the certificate in an email my first thought was that I was caught in a fishing expedition. After I checked it out and found that it was in deed a real gift I went to the Barns and Noble site to put it to use. When checking out the B&N system took the certificate number but didn't show that the gift was deducted from my total purchase and asked for a credit card. Now I would have bet that I was the victim of a trick or had just bitten the hook.

To ensure all was still well I tried to call the B&N number provided on the check-out form. As you may have guessed I got a recording and the opportunity to select from a number of choices. The first set of numbers led to another set but with a little perseverance I finally got to talk to a human who ensured me that all was on the up and up (I didn't need the credit card) and that I should call later to verify that the certificate had been applied,

After waiting the allotted time I called back, went through the options drill to get through to a human, and that's where the second half of the fun began. I was asked to supply the order number, my name and address, the billing and shipping addresses, my email address and the name of something on my order. I would have offered a DNA sample but figured that after that verification fiasco I would probably be too old to read and couldn't pay someone to read to me because my money was still being processed by the bank.

Yesterday, I tried to set up things so that notice of my blog entries would be posted to my Twitter account. That simple and easy procedure took over two hours and never verified that it had been done correctly.

I think I liked a lot of things when they were harder to accomplish.

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