What to Learn From the Economic Mess

Posted on April 29, 2009
Filed Under Attitudes, Business Ideas | Leave a Comment

This video of Dan Ariely from TED has several enlightening and surprising ideas you can use. It’s 18 min long but the last 2 minutes are an ad.

Why people cheat and steal and how this can be encouraged or discouraged. The reasons are not at all what you’d expect.

How these conditions were exacerbated by the stock market and financial systems to cause the mess we’re in.

Why our intuitions can lead us wrong and what to do about it. This doesn’t come up till about the 14th minute but it’s the most important takeaway. It broadens the appeal beyond cheating and beyond the financial mess. How many of your intutions do you rely on to run your business and how many have you really tested?

Takeaways:

Buy Dan’s book here http://www.predictablyirrational.com/
Test your intuitions. This is a hard and painful process for most people. Hard because our intuitions are often invisible - we just think of them as “how things work.” And painful because self inspection often is. Hire a coach to help if you want to break out of the limits your intuitions are imposing on your growth.

Technorati Tags: CEO skills, entrepreneurs, intuition, small business, management

Internet Access Blocked by Zone Alarm plus Visa

Posted on April 15, 2009
Filed Under Software | Leave a Comment

I had sporadic problems getting online. It would work fine for anywhere from a few minutes to an hour. Then (sometimes in the middle of loading a page) it would tell me sites were loading (no “page not found” errors) but they never loaded. This happened in all my browsers (Firefox, Chrome and IE). At the same time email would work and I could see other computers on the network. And any other computer could get on the internet fine. I had to reboot to get back to normal.

All my other computers are running XP. This one is my first with Vista (Home Premium) and like I thought I was supposed to, I loaded protection: AVG anti-virus and Zone Alarm. Both free versions. They’d worked well in my history with XP.
Solution:
A shout out to Mark Wasserman of Janus Systems in Branford Connecticut who diagnosed it in ten minutes over the phone. Zone Alarm was the problem. He says windows firewall is fine for what I do (I don’t spend lots of time online in what he calls dangerous environments - like airports and coffe shops) so I uninstalled Zone Alarms, turned on the windows firewall and am good to go. Mark also said that AVG is fine and virus protection is more important for me.
Bonus - shut down and start up are a lot faster. Also I used to get an error with Firefox. If I shut it down while it was having a problem and tried to restart it without rebooting, it would tell me it couldn’t start because it was already running. This has now gone away.

NOTE: This is a blog about business tips not my cat (or my computer) but I’m posting here because I had the hardest time finding any solution online. I hope that by posting it here the search engine spiders will pick it up and others can be helped. As always there’s a takeaway for business.

Takeaways:

Technology keeps evolving. (I thought windows firewall was bad and Zone Alarms was almost a reguirement - those may have been true when I learned them but certainly aren’t now). Every company needs a relationship with someone who keeps up with it.
That person should not be you unless that’s your job or your hobby.
One size does not fit all - Mark asked me a lot about how I used my computer and would have a different recommendation if I hung out at Starbucks all day. Make sure your tech person understands this.

Technorati Tags: Technology, Small Business Computing

Two interesting (unrelated) posts

Posted on March 19, 2009
Filed Under Business Ideas | Leave a Comment

Mark Cuban - owner of Dallas Mavericks - put an interesting perspective on the AIG bonus situation using an analogy to a free agent athelete. Did I say he owns the Dallas Mavericks?
Hint - to keep good employees, financial firms will have to offer not bonuses but options. IF they do well in a few years they will get filthy rich and it will look like they did it off taxpayers money. How will that play in the press?

Seth Godin writes about how company founders can split equity.
Key point: Don’t give out all the common stock. If you and I split a company 50/50 we each own half. If we you get 5% and I get 5% for all practical purposes we still each own half. But we have a lot more latitude about how things work in the future. Seth doesn’t say this, but as an angel investor I know, founders often have no idea of the most useful place of common stock in the pecking order of a growing company.

Weekly One-on-Ones

Posted on January 11, 2009
Filed Under Management, CEO Skills | Leave a Comment

One on One Managemet Tool “What’s new since we talked last?” I asked. “Meetings,” she said. “I’m doing one-on-ones with my people, like we talked about.”

She is a client. Her company makes web sites and on-line products for a specialized industry. They’ve got a reputation for high end work, solid market penetration and about a dozen employees. She is the primary sales person and has the most common complaint I hear from business owners: “I can’t find good employees”

The meetings were going well. She was staying on track, learning what people were up against, and heading off complications before they became actual problems. The words were very positive, but her tone was not.
“So?” I asked.

“All these meetings. They’re keeping me from my real work.”

But she was wrong about that. What a small company has in common with a small child is despite their size, they still need all of the parts. So even small companies need three levels of management, someone to do collections, to analyse the numbers, and all that stuff big companies have whole departments for. But being small you don’t need them all full time. So people wear multiple hats. And when that happens, you tend to wear the hats you’re best at or enjoy the most. So my client loves sales and coming up with new product ideas.

Because she’s done a good job in those areas, the company needs more production capacity, and better coordination. So now she must consider management to be her “real job”. By focusing on this (not exclusively but predominantly) she’ll enable others to do more with fewer problems. That’s the real job of building a company. When problems decrease, and productivity improves, she’ll be able to wear this hat a little less and put on another a bit more.

One-on-one’s: Great management tool.
Have one with each of your direct reports.
Meet weekly at the same time for 30 minutes. Never reschedule. It’s that important - it is your real job.
Prepare. They should and you should too.
Don’t solve problems. Or train. Some of that may happen. But if you can’t fit it into 30 minutes along with the other stuff, then you need a separate meeting for training or problem solving.
It’s a time for you to share certain things and learn certain other things. Generally the same kinds of things each week (maybe even in the same order depending on your style) which makes it easy for each of you to prepare.
What to share. Anything the other person must know to do their job better. That’s your role as manager: to help them do their job better. Maybe share what’s happening in other departments so they can interact better. Maybe it’s feedback of how they really made a difference. Share what they can expect from you and the rest of the company; both before the next one-on-one and longer term. You prepare by keeping a notebook around all week and jotting down stuff that you’ll need to share with each person. Then spend a few minutes pulling it together before the one-on-one.
What you should learn. Status: what happened since last time and how that compares to what you expected. Why there’s a difference. What problems they are running into. Their opinions on things. Insights you don’t know about because you don’t live at their desk. Over time, you’ll get a sense of who they are as a person: what motivates them, what puts them off. You’ll get a feel for what they do well and where their limitations are. Make notes about this.
Written take-aways: What each of you will do before the next meeting based. This becomes the status for next week’s meeting. Notes you can use for their annual review. They should take away your impressions of how they’re doing so nothing (I repeat nothing) in their review is a surprise. If it is, you’re not doing it right, but that’s another column.

Trust (in both directions) is a non written take-away.

Beware: You’ll think you don’t have time. But it reduces time spent on interruptions and problem solving. And it’s your real job.

Takeaway:

Do Them.

Technorati Tags: management, CEO skills, entrepreneur, small business owner

Turning Things Around

Posted on December 9, 2008
Filed Under Attitudes, Business Ideas, CEO Skills | Leave a Comment

Most of us aren’t in a position to turn the entire economy around. But don’t think you are powerless. Some people look at this situation and see all the negatives. Some people see opportunity. It’s easier to feel the fear and do the cut back thing and blame the economy.

In fact, it’s both the worst of times and the best of times (haven’t I heard that before?) And you’ve got to deal with both. I’m launching a new program to help companies do this called “Tighten Up and Come out Swinging”

Tighten Up to deal with the problems. Come out Swinging to take advantage of the opportunities.

In fact I’ve re-done the opening page of my web site to explain the details. Check it out.

Takeaway:

Call or email to see if I can help you

Technorati Tags: CEO Skill, economy, small business, entrepreneur, turn around

Part Two

Posted on November 24, 2008
Filed Under Attitudes | Leave a Comment

Here are two followups to two (unrelated) posts.

Update to What Really Happened To The Economy?

Michale Lewis, who wrote Liar’s Poker has an article on Conde Nast Portfolio.com with an inside story about what went wrong and why. You’ll be shocked, SHOCKED, to know that there was greed, short term thinking and stupidity on Wall Street. It’s not nearly as positive as Warren Buffet’s take, but I’m not sure how much difference that makes to the ultimate question of what do you do now.

Update to What to do When the Excrement Hits the Air Velocity Accelerator.

Here’s an article by Ram Charan about the opportunities that arise in bad economic times. It was written about different bad economic times but the lessons till apply.

Ram Charan is a pretty smart guy. Every book of his that I’ve read I’ve found to be useful. However, he works mostly with large companies. They have more reserves than small companies so can do more things in a recession. Still, you can can do more than you think if you try hard. And one lesson is build up reserves in the good times.

Takeaway: (same as last time)

Plan for the world not to end. If it doesn’t you’ll be in better shape for planning and if it does, your planning won’t matter anyway.

Technorati Tags: economy, small business, ceo, entrepreneur

What to do when the Excrement Hits the Air Velocity Accelorator

Posted on November 17, 2008
Filed Under Attitudes, CEO Skills | Leave a Comment

1. Talk to people - Don’t assume
Talk to your customers

Ask how the current situation will impact them.
Ask how you can make it easier to keep their business

Talk to your vendors and suppliers (Look at point #2 before you do this so you can combine discussions as you see fit).

Will they need to change terms?
Tell them what you’re going through so they aren’t suprised

Talk to investors
Talk to your bankers
Talk to Employees
Talk to your spouse and family

2. Cut back - conserve cash. Think of cash flow before profit.
Do a line item inventory. Go through your P&L statement and stop spending on anything you don’t absolutely need. For everything else, call up your vendor’s and renegotiate.
Cut back on employees last (unless there are some you should have let go anyway - and this is true for many companies)

Be sure to explain to employees what they can expect. They’ll expect the worst if you don’t and you may end up losing people you want to keep
Maybe we call all cut back on hours so as not to lay anyone off
Maybe we can cut back on some pay or benefits - start with yourself (and since you’re talking to them - see #1 they’ll understand.
Maybe become like Toyota - Invest in your employees.
UPDATE: If you can’t be like Toyota and find you do have to lay people off read this by Guy Kawasaki about how to do it well.

Cut back on Marketing second to last. The stronger you market in the down times the better position you are in

A) you’ll be more likely to get a bigger share of the business that is still out there
B) you’ll do better faster when things turn around as your weaker competition is gone
C) perhaps you’ll find ways to get into markets you haven’t had before

Cut back on prices as necessary. Understand where your break even is and what your marginal costs are. It may be smart to take some jobs or sell some product just to keep your staff employed. Be flexible.

3. Look for more ways to get more bang for your time (you thought I was going to say buck didn’t you? - you did that in #2 if you were paying attention).

Takeaway:

Plan for the world not to end. If it doesn’t you’ll be in better shape for planning and if it does, your planning won’t matter anyway.

Technorati Tags: CEO, entrepreneur, recession, small business, economic melt down

Just go Vote already!

Posted on November 3, 2008
Filed Under Business Ideas | Leave a Comment

My apologies to non-US readers. We sometimes do things a little strangely here.

Did you US readers know that in Australia there’s a fine for not voting? or that in Canada the government just sends you a voter registration card so there’s no opportunity for one party or the other to purge the rolls? And how is it we’ve been doing electronic transfer of money from ATMS for decades - I can get cash from my bank in almost any country in the local currency without any significant error - yet we can’t figure out a way to vote where the disputed votes are smaller than the margin of victory? That’s what I mean by strange.

What Really Happened to the Economy?

Posted on October 5, 2008
Filed Under Business Ideas | Leave a Comment

And is the bailout bill a boondoggle? Spend an hour with Warren Buffett.

Yes, he talks in a few cutsey sound bites, but he also talks so you can understand (at least I could) what really caused the problem and why the bailout bill is/was solution. It was broadcast on Oct 1, 2008

By the way, he’s supporting Obama.

Technorati Tags: economy, entrepreneur, warren buffett

How was School today, Dear?

Posted on September 3, 2008
Filed Under Customer Relationships, Attitudes, CEO Skills | Leave a Comment

What a dumb question. If you’re a parent, I doubt you’ve ever gotten an answer that comes anywhere near what you’d call satisfactory. And if you’ve ever had a parent, I doubt you’ve given such an answer.

Because it’s the wrong question.
I was reminded of this watching the Republican political convention. For some reason we had on the PBS channel (we usually watch on C-span so we don’t have to listen to pundits) and one of the “reporters” was asking someone in McCain’s campaign about the choice for VP. In case you’ve been under a rock for a week, you know that the pick and how it was handled is pretty big news.

The question was “Did you vet her well enough?”

Why waste prime time asking a question when I know what they’re going to say? I don’t mean I know the answer - that’s a judgement call. But when you’re a reporter talking to someone in the campaign, it’s the wrong question. She should have asked “When did the campaign first learn about xxxx?” or “How many people were interviewed in the vetting process?” or any number of factual questions which would give more of a hint at the vetting process, especially when you can see if the person avoids the facts.

So what does this have to do with running your business? Simple. Asking the wrong question will make you think you have an answer when you don’t. If your kid says “School was fine” does that mean it was? Maybe, maybe not. It probably means they don’t want to talk about it anymore.

There are lots of questions you want to ask of prospects, of customers, of employees, of suppliers. But if you don’t ask the right ones, you’ll think that school really was fine. And the risk is you’ll be wrong and not know it.

Takeaway:

If you have younger kids, ask them who they sat next to at lunch or what games they played at recess. If you have older kids, ask for a similar level of detailed facts. And remember the names of classmates and teachers so you can ask about them in detail next time. That will tell you more about how school really was and you’ll get a much better conversation going - which is probably what you wanted anyway.

Technorati Tags: business, entrepreneur, parenting, school, CEO skills

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I'm sharing things I wish I knew when I started my business 25 years ago, and things I've learned in 12 years of coaching other entrepreneurs. You won't find the single big, new idea that solves everything, because it doesn't exist. Rather, you'll find ideas you can really use. You can read my story here.

Please contact me if you have ideas or questions.
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What to Learn From the Economic Mess

Internet Access Blocked by Zone Alarm plus Visa

Two interesting (unrelated) posts

Weekly One-on-Ones

Turning Things Around

Part Two

What to do when the Excrement Hits the Air Velocity Accelorator

Just go Vote already!

What Really Happened to the Economy?

How was School today, Dear?

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