Radical Left Business Accumen

Here's the Radical Left mindset at work in one of the most liberal neighborhoods in Seattle: 'Pay what you want' store forced to close

"I ask people when they pay to pay with their head or their heart,” said OpShOp owner Jane Horowitz.

Imagine that, the good little liberals of Seattle not walking their own talk. Now there's a shocker!

How to Get a Piece of the Bailout Pie

Neil Cavuto, business analyst at Fox News, provides a very cynical (but funny) look at how one should approach the government in order to get free money from them:

1. Look depressed, really depressed.
2. Wear a really cheap suit.
3. Keep insisting it's "for the kids".
4. During breaks, wrap up all food and say it's "for the kids".
5. Tell everyone that your workers are upset and have guns.
6. Say that your case is different and truly pathetic.
7. Keep taking all sorts of different coloured pills during the hearings.
   

Wisdom for Tech Startups

Here's some brilliant wisdom for the founders of tech startups by TechCrunch's Michael Arrington.

Is Another Tech Bubble About To Pop?

If you're in the I.T. business then you may be following the latest crisis going on at Facebook. On paper, Facebook is worth a LOT of money right now. But will that value last forever? I wonder.

Watch this hilarious and yet telling video:

Ever wonder how much money is spent holding each meeting?

I'll never forget the time I was a consultant, helping to reorganize the graphical document management system of a large company. We held a meeting to finalize a number of issues. One topic that came up was what colour a line representing a certain kind of object should be. The choice was between Red and Green. There were about 10 highly paid individuals there, all employees at this company. What I thought might take 60 seconds to decide ended up going back and forth for at least 30 minutes. It was simply ridiculous and I later started calculating how much money was being spent in salaries to make that one decision.

One of my new favourite blogs to read is the "Bits" section of the NY Times. It could aptly be described as "Technology meets Culture". An hilarious story today was about a little piece of software called "Meeting Miser" that allows one to calculate how much money is wasted ... errr "spent" at each meeting.

Words of Wisdom from Jimmy Pattison

Last night I attended an Entrepreneur Toastmasters session at the Terminal City Club in downtown Vancouver. The special guest was no other than the venerable Jimmy Pattison. He agreed to do a Q&A session and I feverishly took notes!

Here are some interesting things he said:

• "I never hire people who put money first. You should do what you have passion for and then money will come naturally."


• "The most important requirement of any employee is people skills."


• "I don't believe in luck, I believe in timing. And the harder you work, the more opportunities you have."


• Question: The Jim Pattison Group is involved with a variety of industries, including manufacturing. Why isn't there more manufacturing in Canada? Answer: "Two reasons: Innovation and productivity, of which we're very short on both."

Here are some other things he mentioned:

• He (and his staff) have started 56 companies from scratch and 2/3rds of them have failed.


• The key point in time for success/failure of a company is 21 months. No one is really sure why but this number seems to recur time after time.


• Former BC Premier and now long time Pattison employee, Glen Clark, was just down in Bentonville, AK talking with Wal Mart about going green.

Listening to Pattison talking about issues which are of extreme importance to the future success of our province was an enthralling experience for me!

Update: You can view more photos and videos here.

Management May Be Changing ... Dramatically

Have you ever worked for a large company or the government and wondered why things are done in a certain way even though that way seemed mindless and/or unproductive? Well, change may soon be at hand. BBC journalist, Peter Day, recently had a fascinating conversation with management professor, Gary Hamel, which you can listen to here.

New Vancouver Business Writer

Having been away from Vancouver for awhile, I just learned that a good friend & colleague of mine, Fiona Walsh, is now writing a bi-monthly column for Vancouver's Office Journal newspaper. Her first article is called "Sales Pitch : A car dealership for women? It’s about time".

Fiona's a really smart person and so dedicated to the art of selling & marketing. If you'd like to learn more about her, just click here.

Good to Great: The RIGHT People

I just finished another chapter of Jim Collins' book, Good To Great. I have to return it to the library soon but will definitely be buying my own copy; it's just much too valuable a resource and should absolutely be on the nearest bookshelf of anyone running a company (or thinking of starting one) or anyone managing a group (or considering doing so).

The overriding theme of this chapter is that the old adage "people are our greatest asset" is a bunch of B.S. What is quite correct though is that "the right people are our greatest asset". Walter Bruckart was VP of electronics retailer, Circuit City, when it made the transition from mediocrity to a truly excellent company. He was apparently once asked what the Top 5 factors were that lead to the company's success. His response is very telling: "One would be people. Two would be people. Three would be people. Four would be people. And five would be people. A huge part of our transition can be attributed to our discipline in picking the right people."

One part of the Chapter Summary should be drilled into the heads of every business student:

We uncovered three practical disciplines for being rigorous in people decisions:

1. When in doubt, don't hire - keep looking. A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.
2. When you know you need to make a people change, act. But first be sure you don't simply have someone in the wrong seat.
3. Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. Note: If you sell off your problems, don't sell off your best people.
   

I must confess that it was very painful for me to read these things, for it brought back many less than pleasant memories of bad mistakes I've made in the past. Some of the people I've hired in times past were just great, but others were clearly on the "wrong bus" from Day 1. Yet I didn't have the courage and foresight to "kick them off my bus". My failure to do so really hurt morale and undoubtedly made my good employees question my leadership abilities. In the end, I do believe that this was the #1 reason my previous company folded.

I've often heard it said that it takes 3 attempts to make your first $1 Million. The litmus test now will be to see if I've learned from my past failings and will make the right decisions in a timely manner in the future. Regarding people, Collins asserts that in order for each of us to be happy & successful in both our personal & professional lives we need to have only people around us that we care about and respect. If you don't then they just drag you down, sucking all the energy out of you. And make no mistake, this is very much vice-versa. We must also take a close look at ourselves to ensure that we are living up to our own expectations of others. Do we deserve to be on the bus with them?

I know for the last while that I haven't be ready to get on the proverbial bus with anyone but I'm near the end of that period in my life. When I do launch my new product and it starts to soar, I will be ready to grow a company again - this time properly. Hiring the first few people will be scary as hell but once I have the first few seats of the bus populated with the right people then the trip ahead is going to be absolutely fantastic!

Good to Great: Leadership

On the recommendation of my friend, Sarah, I've started reading a very interesting book called "Good to Great", by Jim Collins. In it he & his team analyzed the performance of 1,435 companies over 40 years - no small feat.

It's late but I was so inspired by what I read that I just had to put my thoughts down to paper ... albeit of the electronic kind!

Some intriguing results came out of their research. One is that there's a consistency in personalities of the CEOs that were at the helm when the [relatively small number of] companies made the leap from just good to truly great. What may be surprising to you is that all of the following would not end up on that list:

• Donald Trump
• Lee Iacocca (Chrysler)
• Jack Welch (GE)
• Carly Fiorina (HP)

This group of four would have the following in common:

• Bigger egos than perhaps anyone within a square mile of them
• Much larger paycheques than any of them deserve
  
• Sub-par performance records in the long term and after they left

Collins would most likely use the term "Level 4" to describe their leadership skills. But by their very nature (success of themselves over top of success of the company), they're incapable of achieving "Level 5" leadership status, which is necessary to make a company truly great.

In my own life, I've been sucked in by the allure of charming egotistical leaders. I've worked for some and done business with others. Much like top athletes or movie stars, they're very interesting people to be around. But, in reading Collins' book, it's clear why these supposed "superstars" are the ones to walk quickly away from if you ever encounter them in business.

It's telling and somewhat sad that everyone in the business world has top-of-mind knowledge of the 4 CEOs listed above. Yet the CEOs who are the true superstars - the ones with the most profitable winning teams - are rarely ever mentioned in the mainstream press. We shouldn't be surprised though because this same media does exactly the same thing with the glitterati of Hollywood. For example, why exactly is Paris Hilton famous?

I've thought for some time now that we, as a society, have gone down the wrong path, starting perhaps 25 years ago:

• With business leaders making scandalously large amounts of money, approved by incompetent or complicit boards of directors. I'm a capitalist but what is going on in some of these companies is just pure theft from the shareholders.
  
• Ditto re professional athletes, plus the issue of rampant steroid use in many sports.
• Sub-standard Hollywood "stars" churning out sub-standard TV shows & movies. What exactly is the minimum requirement for being a "star" these days, anyhow?
  
• Greedy politicians who are more interested in padding their own coffers than actually looking out for the longterm good of the citizens they represent. Might not a 3-term lifetime limit be a good thing for ALL politicians?
• The media. Not all, but most. It sickens me to see that so many of them don't focus on reporting the news but much prefer to manufacture the news instead. Artificially created controversy is a prime tool of these folks. With their mindless 10-second sound bites, agenda-driven slanted polls, and tremendous power to shape public opinion, I'm absolutely convinced that the mainstream media are more responsible than any other group for damaging society and the average person's faith in the goodness of their fellow man.