Want A Result, Offered A Process

I try to deal in real, tactical issues. Strategy becomes an explanation of what happened the last time.

However, I have been working with a client who made a make or buy decision to purchase some business services. Maybe we were asking the wrong people, but what came back were all these offers to run a process, as if the result was incidental.

Maybe it’s our litigious environment, or changing economy, but we couldn’t seem to find anyone who was as interested in the desired result as we are.

Several years ago I was selling a software company that had lost its technical staff. We had a software product we had to hold together through sale, so we brought in some outsourcing gurus. They would be oh so happy to make us so happy, but first they had to run their process. Pay now, please.

A week later, we had a catastrophic failure of the product and were swamped by irate customer calls. We called our new guys and were told it would be a couple of months before they would be able to complete their process and then address fixing our problem. Oh, and we certainly hope you’re still around to pay our fees.

I went into complete BSC mode to posse up a team to fix the software. I don’t deal well with uncertainty.

The owners took steps to get their deposit back.

Technically we had a happy ending, because the catastrophic failure was fixed in two days, but the gut dropping horror of not knowing stays with me. Businesswise, it was a draw, which I would categorize as a disaster to our former gurus.

If somebody needs to buy a result, sell them that result or sit down.

Consider your Focus.

Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist or The Spirit Of The Times, or temporary craziness, occurs in business, too. Over the past few years watching disintermediation of industry after industry has not only terminated scores of businesses, but also dramatically changed the business processes of the survivors. 

There are still top down organizations trying to hold off new customer-driven competitors, while increasing pressure strains remaining resources. But fewer of them. 

Remember reengineering? That worked pretty well...for a while. 

The management pyramid? Was that in Egypt? 

Took a while to figure out that best value just means lowest price. And figure out, figure out, figure out. 

Y2K? Dodged that bullet. Whew! 

Participative management? Fewer places to participate these days. 

Doing-more-with-less seems to keep morphing, popping up like a champagne cork on the tide. Maybe because it’s not a prescription but a description. 

In How To Create A Mind, Ray Kurzweil says that being early is just as bad as being late. He’s been successful in the inventing business for almost 50 years, and has been early, on time, and late.

Taking advantage of the now

How do you sift the media-anointed from the real? 

Alan Kay recommended, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”  For many of us, we’re moving the ball smartly, trying to find the end zone.  

Which means throwing out many of the analytical tools that will tell you when you’ve committed too much, adopting the tools that encourage carrying on until game’s over.  

I liked Bonnie Raitt’s observation, “Wow! Twenty years to become an overnight success.”

The future shows up regardless.

Springtime. We need a rainmaker! 

Wall of Shame

A site owner told me he was taking down his “Wall of Shame” or leaderboard, showing the top contributors to his site. It was an administrative headache as users changed their posting patterns. He was most upset about power users who had been thrown off the site, but their cumulative contribution continued to show.

Dave Eggers’ unsettling book, The Circle, recommended by JBat, provides some insights about personal and marketing addiction to leaderboards and potential uses and consequences.

Although I had not joined the site for the leaderboard, didn’t discover it until I got the notice I was on it from the site owners, the leaderboard subsequently did drive my contribution, and when it came down, my participation diminished. The site became less of a priority.

I’m just reporting my behavior change. There was no encouragement/discouragement, just a page that got more compelling over time. I’m pretty driven when I’m browsing, and I spent a lot of time glancing at that page.

Nothing cynical or damaging. An insight into what works.

On another site, they ended their Wall of Shame thinking it might be an increasing discouragement to the other 99%.  The members who were contributing to the site changed dramatically. Contributions are down and posted by a different group. Not overnight, but over weeks and months.

I noticed that the editorial contributions of the independent writers is tighter, closer to the site owner’s desires, and less interesting.  That could be maturation of the community, a change of the participant’s focus or something else. I think it’s too big to be a conspiracy.

The Wall of Shame is a powerful tool.

See how Cost Goes Both Ways

Ego

Marc’s boss said, “With all your accomplishments, I don’t see your ego.”

Marc said, “I win.”

Feel the heat, Dune Leadership Lessons

Owners, Performers, and Optimizers

One of my really talented performers called today. He had met with a new consultant and was a little rattled, considering mutually assured destruction, rape, and pillage. He called wanting to know if I had any more satisfying revenge scenarios.

His boss, the company’s owner, had brought in the new guy because he was frustrated with their rate of growth. The consultant figured where better to start than with their top performer?

So the “consultant,” who is really an unemployed administrator, thought it would be helpful if the producer would take the time to recommend a dozen people with similar talents, right after documenting why he is successful.

The performer had an ugly year last year, and he did a lot better than the owner, best in the company, in fact. The consultant had been asked to clean out his desk at wherever he was hiding last year.

I’m real sure why the performer is successful. He works hard. He and I have spent a good deal of time honing what he does as he learns about what his market wants.

After figuring out something new, he disappears into the market and comes back with a new trophy. In the last 20 or so years, I’ve seen him do it at six companies, and what he does changes as the buyers’ needs change.

Sooner or later, he attracts the attention of an organizer who wants to optimize the effectiveness of the performer’s work. Not do any work, mind you, just trick somebody into supplying the magic slideshow that creates the tsunami.

Our internal explanation for these guys is, “When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done.”

At one company, we built an explanation of the market that bewildered a dozen optimizers, while the performer built a six billion dollar business.

Finally, one optimizer understood that the real problem was the performer and managed to rightsize him. The organization exited an unusually profitable multi-billion dollar niche fifteen months later.

And we understand the owner’s frustration. As we were figuring out a tactical plan, we realized that the performer is the main hope for the owner, and that being nasty wasn’t going to help.

We are dealing with a government controlled economic slowdown, so correct behavior to continue to  support the owner, without necessarily giving intellectual property to a consultant who can’t understand it. The owner is getting most of his useful support from the performer.

The best defense is not being offensive, it is using the current position as a vehicle until the road ahead clears.

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