The Corner Office

I heard it twice last week: “Well, next week’s Thanksgiving, and then comes Christmas and all those holiday parties so nothing’s really going to happen until January.”

Bah! Humbug! Okay, I’m not much of an Ebenezer Scrooge. But let’s face it; if your business is party planning, the holidays are a boom time. Otherwise, you may as well roll up the carpet and hang a “Gone Fishing” sign on the door, right? Wrong.

If you’re resigned to lost productivity and plummeting effectiveness during the holidays, it’s just like handing market share to your competitor. Why? Because, if they’re smart - and I’m sure they are - they’ll be planning new programs for the new year. That’s right, the holidays are actually the best time to initiate change programs, strategic planning, or brainstorm innovative ideas. Anything out of the ordinary.

Why? Well, I’m not entirely sure. This is empirical observation - it just works. Still, I can take a stab at it.
First, this time of year the days are cold, the nights are long, and people don’t hibernate, so they become bored and antsy. Second, the holidays are inspiring - people tend to become animated and optimistic. Third, folks start getting into a freewheeling party spirit, so if you can get them out of their daily doldrums and into a brainstorm or planning session, they’ll be up for it.

Anyway, trust me; it works. In fact, whether you’re looking for a new career, a small business owner, department manager, division VP, or CEO of a Fortune 100 company, here are …

5 Ways to Make the Holidays Work For You:

1. Initiate your annual strategic planning process or just an annual review of your company’s or group’s overarching mission, objectives, strategies, whatever. If you hold weekly meetings starting in November, you should be able to finish and be ready to hit the ground running the first week of January.
2. Initiate development on a new program or SOP. Maybe the timing’s not right for your strategic plan. Instead, review your company’s SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) and plan to upgrade or fill in the gaps. Or initiate development of a new website, CRM program, whatever you need.
3. Brainstorm new business ideas or opportunities with your staff. Kick it off with a motivational pitch, team-building exercise, or just dinner and drinks. Then assign each person to bring an idea to the table, analyze a competitor, whatever. Coalesce on one or two changes and you’re there. 
4. Conduct a 360 review. Sure, the holidays are a great time for reflection. But don’t reflect on your own subjective and tainted memories; get an objective perspective from your employees, peers, and boss. Conduct a 360 review of your management style and ability and have your staff to do the same.
5. Initiate a 5-Step Career Turnaround. Conduct your own personal SWOT analysis, develop your value proposition, or brainstorm ideas for starting your own business or making changes to your existing one. Hey, that’s what I’ll be doing.

In any case, doing this stuff during the holidays means you’re not doing some other time of the year when you and your folks should be hitting the streets working, right? Right.

When I was a fulltime executive, I never would have found time for social media and all the communications gadgets everyone’s eyes, ears, and thumbs seem to be glued to these days. I used to work like 50-60 hour weeks, not to mention all the travel. The rare times I was home and not working or sleeping, I had things to do, fun to have, and relationships to maintain … like my marriage.

Now I work a lot less but my time is still somehow consumed - with what, I don’t know - and the lure of social media and communications gadgets loom like an ever-growing mountain of unmet expectations. So I wonder: how the heck does anyone have time for all this stuff and is your business life “more” or “less” fulfilling and productive now than it was pre-social media?

For me, the answers are “I don’t” and “less” and “less.” Bigtime. (more…)

Tired of seeing his business evaporate every weekend, Stuart Frankel - the owner of two Subway franchises in Miami - came up with an idea. He decided to offer all foot-longs for $5, about a buck less than regular prices, on weekends.

Next thing he knew, Frankel had lines out the door and double-digit sales growth.

Next thing Subway knew, it had one of the biggest hits in fast-food history.

The $5 footlong promotion alone generated $3.8 billion over the past year - more than Arby’s and Domino’s entire U.S. business. At a time when everyone’s business is down, Subway’s sales grew 17 percent in 2008, making it the number two fast-food company, worldwide, behind behemoth McDonald’s. Actually, Subway should surpass McDonald’s in total number of franchises in 2010, an amazing feat.

The big question is this: Is the $5 footlong just a flash-in-the-pan, a round number that resonates with fast-food customers? Or is it a function of consumer price-points and price elasticity that affect virtually all markets? (more…)

Entrepreneurs worry too much about what they’re going to develop, make, or market. What’s more important is that they make, develop or market something. The odds that they end up making it big doing something different are apparently pretty high.

Here are 15 companies that became famous, not for what they started doing, but for something that came later. Sure, they may be related, but the point is still valid: better to get started on something; innovative people find a way.

• Backed by French venture capital, DuPont began making gunpowder in 1802.
• McDonald’s. In 1927, brothers Dick and Mac McDonald opened a hot dog stand called “The Airdrome” at the Monrovia airport in California. 21 years later, the company began focusing on hamburgers.
• Nokia was originally a paper mill in Finland. (more…)

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Some executive staff meetings can get pretty heated. I’ll never forget one where we fought over a multimillion dollar promotional budget centered on the prelaunch of a major product line. In the middle of the mayhem, one executive asked a very good question.

“Why do we even need all this PR stuff? Why not just deliver the goods?”

“Because,” I replied, “The only thing more powerful than delivering a great product is saying you’re going to deliver a great product and then doing it.”

That was 12 years ago and I don’t mind admitting that today, my answer would be different. Indeed, telegraphing the introduction of a potentially breakthrough product in advance is a powerful PR strategy I’ve employed many times before and since. But the risk of overpromising and under-delivering can, at times, dwarf the potential reward. (more…)

There’s an astounding spectrum of professionalism in small business. Some almost effortlessly put customer’s needs and problems first, while others let their drama and dysfunctions dictate how they do business. Like it or not, customers get dragged along for the ride.

No matter how good you are, making customers jump through hoops dealing with your issues is no way to get repeat business in a competitive market.

My dentist spent countless weeks getting a new bridge done just right. We had all kinds of problems with temporaries coming lose and cracking and the lab messing up. It took way more of her time than it should have, including working through lunch and coming in on her day off. But you know what? She never once complained or put herself first. She just kept thanking me for being so patient.

My wife and I are regulars at a local - some would call it boutique - supermarket. The prices may be a bit higher than Safeway, but the head of the meat and seafood department will only recommend the freshest fish to us because he knows my wife’s picky about that sort of thing. And it’s not just a relationship thing. He treats everyone that way because that’s how the store does business.

That’s because they make business with me - the customer - about solving my problems, instead of making me - the customer - deal with theirs. And that makes it very easy to overlook the minor inconveniences of doing business with them. (more…)

If you’ve never won a big contract or huge piece of business, you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s an incredible feeling; like a burst of adrenaline that lasts for as long as the business lasts. But that’s sort of the problem with adrenaline, isn’t it? When it’s gone, you feel like you’re dead inside. And when a company loses that one big deal, that’s exactly what can happen.

At 4:05 pm EST on Monday, solid state drive maker STEC announced its third quarter results. Revenues and earnings were up considerably, beating the company’s previous guidance. All good, right? Not exactly.

Buried way down in the fifth paragraph of the earnings press release, came a whopper:  

“One of our customers entered into a $120 million supply agreement with us for shipments covering the second half of 2009. We recently received preliminary indications that our customer might carry inventory of our ZeusIOPS at the end of 2009 which they will use in 2010.”  

The next day, STEC’s stock was down a whopping 39 percent on volume of 32 million shares. Turns out the customer referenced in the quote, EMC, accounted for 15 percent of STEC’s revenues last year. Sure, STEC had 329 customers in 2008, but just two of them - Smart Modular and EMC - accounted for 50 percent of the company’s total sales. (more…)

Language is a relatively effective communication tool. I say relatively effective because, well, let’s face it, it’s highly subjective and open to interpretation. And you know what? We make a bad situation worse by using labels.

Sure, labels are great shortcuts, but they have a big downside. They’re more subject to misinterpretation than if you were to describe what you’re talking about in detail.

For example, telling somebody you’re a “marketing guy” narrows their interpretation of your capabilities to oh, about 500 possibilities. Steve Jobs is a “marketing guy.” He’s also a CEO of one of America’s top companies. My phone just rang a few minutes ago. It was a “marketing guy” offering a special credit card rate. Big difference.   

Politics? Don’t even get me started.

When you’re being interviewed for a job, negotiating with a customer, or speaking with a potential client, do you really want to leave their impressions up to subjective interpretation? Of course not. And make no mistake: people base a lot - even big decisions - on first impressions. Don’t you? (more…)

Updated 1:15pm PST: Just heard that the Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot the runway in Minneapolis last week were reportedly on their laptops and failed to notice all the control tower and control panel alarms and messages. I rest my case.

Last week, university researchers announced the results of a study on awareness: Just 8 percent of pedestrians talking on cellphones noticed a clown on a unicycle pedaling across a campus square, versus 60 percent of pedestrians talking with a friend.

The results are fascinating, but I think gadget and media-bombardment presents cognitive issues that go well beyond “distraction.”

A recent Stanford research study suggests that media multitasking or “high-tech juggling” between web browsing, emailing, and texting, for example, impairs cognitive control and is counterproductive. (more…)

We have record unemployment, national debt, and deficit spending. We have a vastly imperfect system. We are our own worst enemy. And we have endless greed, fraud, and scandal. But capitalism’s best days are ahead, and not just because things can’t get much worse.

I’ve got four irrefutably logical reasons why capitalism is alive, well, and thriving. And you know what? I got them from the naysayers - those who think we’re all too greedy for our own good, we should apologize for being success-oriented business people, and America’s best days are behind her.

1. Author / guru Paul B. Farrell (pictured) decries the ‘Death of Soul of Capitalism: 20 reasons America has lost its soul and collapse is inevitable,’ (not to be confused with his ’30 Reasons for Great Depression 2 by 2011,’).
   And yet you can go to his website and buy his books with titles like ‘Millionaire Meditation: Stress Management for Wall Street, Corporate America & Entrepreneurs,’ ‘The Millionaire Code: 16 Paths to Wealth,’ ‘The Lazy Person’s Guide to Investing,’ ‘The Winning Portfolio,’ and ‘Zen Millionaires.’ Do you think he really believes capitalism is going down? Think hard now.
   (more…)

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