February 2009 Entries
I couldn’t resist. Seth Godin’s blog this morning was short and sweet, but very thought provoking (that’s why more people read him than me, I guess…). I had to share:
When there were old-school parking meters in New York, quarters were precious.
One day, I'm walking down the street and I guy comes up to me and says, "Do you have a dollar for four quarters?" He held out his hand with four quarters in it.
Curious, I engaged with him. I took out a dollar bill and took the four quarters.
Then he turned to me and said, "Can you spare a quarter?"
What a fascinating...
As a follow-up to the previous blog entry about open collaboration, I’d like to recommend a Harvard Business Review article: How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. (Since HBR.com is now a private subscription-based site, please email me and I will send you a copy of the full article.)
Here is a summary of the lessons learned by Pixar:
· Creativity is not a solo venture. It typically involves a large number of people from different disciplines to work effectively together to solve a broad range of challenges.
· It also involves a certain element of risk: if all of your group’s ideas...
As industry leaders, we need to incorporate more improvisation into our daily business.
Over the years I have noticed a tendency for companies to become too mechanical in our execution. Ironically, we need to make more FORMAL time for INFORMAL collaboration and creativity --- and problem-solving improvisation. Allow me to explain…
Now, more than ever, it’s important to operate all aspects of our business creatively. In the past, production issues may have been solved by throwing money at them with new machines or consultative new processes. In your supply chain, conflicts were often resolved by advancing orders, re-routing, and LTL shipments. Pretty expensive solutions, eh? And in...
Two seemingly disparate items converged for me this morning:
My wife and I have been watching the HBO series “The Wire” on DVD
A BBC article about “Teaching Entrepreneurial Skills to Prisoners” landed in my inbox today (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7839957.stm)
As we watched The Wire, my wife and I both relished in the business and leadership skills shown by Stringer Bell, the COO of the street drug operation. Not only did he brilliantly develop his logistical coverage based on JIT principals, but...
A few days ago the online magazine Politico published “What Would Sully Do?” an article outlining the lessons learned from the crash of US Air flight 1549.
Certainly the challenges we face as managers cannot be easily compared with a potentially tragic plane crash, but there are lessons we can learn and apply in our management as we address the uncertain economic times. Here is a summary of the article (a link to the original is at the end of this blog):
1. You can’t lead from the fetal position. Don’t panic. He didn’t let his initial fear keep him from acting...
Last week I participated in a “virtual forum” sponsored by TPMA, an industry group focused on trade promotion practice.
Being the techno geek that I am, I was familiar with Second Life (www.SecondLife.com), but had never researched it. Intrigued, I accepted the invitation to the forum, and then signed onto Second Life and created my alter ego: Thomas Roxley.
The majority of the TPMA membership consists of middle-aged business executives, many of whom are from the financial discipline at major CPG companies. Not the kind of folks who you would expect to see on Second Life. However, I visualized potential application for training and...
Today’s NY Times has an editorial by Noam Cohen with a list of life lessons that a pickup basketball game can teach President Obama. I immediately saw a connection to business strategy and decided to step in and steal the ball. I didn’t copy it verbatim, just “batim.” Enjoy, and see how many you can convert directly to business activity…
LET THEM THINK YOU CAN’T PLAY. It’s a time-honored way to gain an edge: look like a scrub. Wear glasses, dress socks, maybe a Warhol Museum T-shirt, and be overweight. Fast is fine, but it’s no different from merely being faster than your opponent...
Someone said that “…creativity is the stuff you do at the edges.” Intriguing, but here is something to consider: The edges are different for everyone, and the edges change over time.
If you visualize the territory you work in as an old sweater, as you wear it over time it stretches out, gets bigger and looser, and the edges move away. Stuff that would have been creative last year isn't creative at all today, because it's not near the edges any more.
So we have two useful tactics for problem solving:
1. If you want to be creative, understand that you'll need to...
Before you read this list compiled by the NRA, note that it is the result of a survey of more than 1,600 American Culinary Federation member chefs, so its application in the kind of foodservice we conduct every day is not necessarily “direct.” However, I suspect there are opportunities to evaluate your items in light of these trends; either to develop new offerings --- or simpler yet --- create serving suggestions or recipes to address hot food concepts.
1. Locally grown produce
2. Bite size/mini desserts
3. Organic produce
4. Nutritionally balanced kids meals
5. New/fabricated cuts of meat
6. Fruit/vegetable children’s side items
7. Superfruits (i.e....
Here is something fun and free.
Ever want to take a quick look at the front page of an out of town paper? Read an article in a foreign newspaper? When major news events occur (the election period, global tragedy, or business tumult) I like to browse some of the international papers to see how they handle the story from their perspective.
The web has always offered ways to sign up to get an email feed from that publisher (usually for free…which is part of why newspapers aren’t making any money…but that’s another blog). Well here is a new tool from the NEWSEUM: http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/
Just “mouse”...