Cool Friend: Cramer

Kathryn Cramer is the coauthor with Hank Wasiak of Change the Way You See Everything Through Asset-Based Thinking, which she defines this way:

Asset-based thinking is looking at yourself and the world through the eyes of what's working, what strengths are present, what the potentials are.

The book is just appearing in stores now. Cramer is a practicing psychologist, a sought-after corporate consultant and speaker, and author of four books on personal effectiveness and professional development. She founded and became Managing Partner of The Cramer Institute in 1990. You can read the rest of her Cool Friend interview here.

When

Since high school, one of my favorite pieces of musical wisdom has been this: "Focus less on what notes you are playing, and focus more on when you are playing them."

This idea of "when" is also a great thing to think about at work.

In music, a focus on "when" keeps you in sync with other people. Nothing is more frustrating in music than a person who keeps their own time. Isn't that true in business also? Collaboration isn't just about what you do with other people, it's about when you do it.

And "when" is also a key to musical expressiveness. A short string of notes can sound boring when played with one rhythm, but take on beauty when played with another. Start at C on a piano and play down the white keys in even time until you reach the next C. Now do the same thing to the rhythm of "Joy to the World." You have created something totally different. Doesn't the same thing happen in business communications? Isn't the timing of words—sometimes measured in seconds, sometimes measured in months—a major reason those words are either heard or ignored?

Think "when."

Event: Dunkin' Brands

The event of the day is Dunkin' Brands in Las Vegas. Take a look at their website. A quick scan of the front page reveals that they're looking for people who'll be passionate, and that stories are what you'll find on their press page. I'm sure they can appreciate Tom's message. The slides are here: Final Version and Long Version.

We Try Harder, Too!

Hats off to Hertz. I rented a car from them at John Wayne Airport (Orange County, CA) on Friday. The gent who handed me my key at the remote pick-up point, I discovered in a brief conversation, is 82! I'd wager that the fellow who checked my contract and let me out of the garage was about the same age. Whether or not this has any bearing on the heated immigrant debate is not clear. I simply wish to commend Hertz for creating a fantastic win-win situation. The guys both seemed glad to be out and about and of some use; Hertz doubtless benefits from conscientious and generally cheerful employees who presumably are not taking home a king's ransom.

More: In the "little things" department—there are no little things in Service-Experience World—more Hertz kudos for exceptional driving directions, readily produced, that put Mapquest to shame. (LA and environs are a damn good test.)

As I wrote that last I realized anew how valuable I believe the word-idea of "experience" to be. To me, it's light years beyond "semantic difference." "Experience" conjures up a different plot line entirely from "service." It's helped me in my own work—the seminars—to adopt the word-idea "experience."

Event: WIN

The Wisconsin Innovation Network is where Tom is speaking today. Otherwise known as WIN. Nice acronym, don't you think? The slides are here: Final Version and Long Version.

Event: IIR

Today, Tom is speaking at a Conference on Marketing to Youth, presented by IIR in Huntington Beach, CA. There are two PowerPoints for downloading: Final Version and Long Version.

Fast Company

We told you that when the new issue of Fast Company came out, we'd link the stuff that mentions Tom from last month's 10th Anniversary issue. So, April's issue is published, March has become "last month," and here are the links as promised: "A Brief History of Our Time," where Tom makes a paragraph's contribution, and "Cover Gallery: First Impressions," where you can see the one with "A Brand Called You" among the featured magazine covers.

I Wonder If ...

Okay, I know you know I'm hardly keen on Big Mergers. So I'll just ask you one question. While reading about the likely Lucent-Alcatel deal, I just wondered, simple guy that I am: Did the two CEOs, in weeks of intense negotiations, ever get excited about the consumer per se? Not the number of consumers they could sign up, not about the higher ranking in the Fortune Biggest Global Corporations (whatever) list. But did either of those guys ever say, "Wow, this will really make a difference in the quality of communications tools my 17-year-old daughter Mary will have ten years from now"?

Well, damn it, did they?

(FYI. Wall Street Journal headline on the potential merger: "U.S. Firm, France's Alcatel See Bulking Up as a Key to Thriving in Telecom." And you know exactly what I think of that ...)

Odds and Ends

No #1 seeds made it to the Final Four—a big news story. (Well, not Iraq or Ukraine.) But do your probabilities more or less right, and it's not so odd. I figure the odds of a #1 seed making it to the Final Four is 21%, and of winning the whole shebang is 6%. My assumptions are that a #1 seed has a 95% chance of winning round #1. A 70% chance of winning round #2. Then: 60%, 55%, 50%, 50% in the subsequent rounds. That yields the 21% and 6% above. George Mason's odds of getting to the F4: around .0003, or three in ten thousand. (My assumed per game odds for a #11 seed aiming for the F4 are 30%, 10%, 10%, 10%.)

My interest in this actually has to do mostly with organization design. Six victories wins the NCAA tournament—and it ain't easy statistically no matter how talented you are. Hence, let's consider a 6-layer organization making a decision—evaluating the right and wrong choice at each rung of hierarchy's ladder. And let's be generous, and imagine each level has a whopping 80% chance of making the right decision. So the odds of eventually getting the thing right are 0.8 to the 6th power—and that's 0.21, or 21% (just like emerging in the F4 if you're a #1 seed). Not so hot. It's like the communications game in which 10 people whisper a simple message to the person next to him or her. We start with "Jack's a smart guy to consider the middle-age market," or some such. Ten dilutions later, no malice involved, we end up with a simple, "Jack's an idiot"—or something quite close. It's a heck of an argument for de-layering in any situation.

Probability buff that I am, I was reminded of all this while reading a review of ex-neocon policy guru Francis Fukuyama's latest book, America at the Crossroads. The neocons' mistakes that have led to exceptional foreign policy over-reach, per Fukuyama, were based to a significant degree on overestimating the lessons associated with the end of the Cold War and the Soviet collapse. New York Times reviewer Paul Berman puts it this way: "The neoconservatives, [Fukuyama] suggests, are people who, having witnessed the collapse of Communism long ago, ought to look back on those gigantic events as a one-in-a-zillion lucky break, like winning the lottery. Instead, the neoconservatives, victims of their own success, came to believe that Communism's implosion reflected the deepest laws of history, which were operating in their own and America's favor—a formula for hubris."

The point of this Post—combining neocons, org decision-making, and the final Four—is the absurdly common tendency to get the odds of sequential events totally and dangerously wrong. "Six layers of management? Hey, our guys are all smart as a whip. We'll get it right." Well, if "smart as a whip," per me, is 80% odds of getting a decision right at any level—then the overall success odds end up, when calculated more or less correctly, quite discouraging. Mis-appreciation of realistic odds, particularly based on a simplistic story line ("smart as a whip," No.1 seeds are invincible, "Reagan won the Cold War single-handedly because he listened to the theories of thus and such neocon theorists") are incredible dangers to the Las Vegas bettor, the corporate chief, and the foreign policy planner alike.

Viva George Mason. (Hey, you can beat long odds—about once every half century, anyway.)

Who Does Own Your Brand?

There's an article in today's business section of the New York Times describing Heavy.com, titled "A Web Site So Hip It Gets Laddies to Watch the Ads." Half of the appeal is that the community of users also contribute to the video-heavy content. But what was most interesting was the attitude of marketers at Burger King who have let these same users create ads (of a sort) for Burger King, without their control.

Gillian Smith, Burger King's senior director for media and interactive marketing, said the program with Heavy was 'a calculated risk.' Ultimately, the company concluded that people who were likely to be offended by this sort of video were not likely to spend much time on Heavy.com and besides, it no longer had the ability to control its brand imagery the way it had in the past. 'Anyone could have purchased a king mask, which we sell online, done exactly the same stuff and put it up on their own blog,' Ms Smith said.

Clearly the wave of the future. Let your customers create the advertising.

Innovation U

Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company and co-author (with Polly LaBarre) of Mavericks at Work (pub date Sept. 1, 2006) is now writing a regular column for the New York Times. Sunday's article, titled "Here's an Idea: Let Everyone Have Ideas," discusses Rite-Solutions, a software company based in Rhode Island (USA) that has "an internal market where any employee can propose that the company acquire a new technology, enter a new business or make an efficiency improvement." It's a good case study of how a company taps into the collective genius of the whole organization.

For What (Little) It's Worth

I always reply to the juvenile, "There's no 'I' in Team" with an equally juvenile, "But there is an 'I" in Win." In truth, I believe it is eminently possible and accurate to believe simultaneously in Team and I. (I'm in O'Hare as I write this ... think Bulls & Michael Jordan & Scottie Pippen & Dennis Rodman. A lotta "I" and a lotta Team ... and a lotta Championship Rings.) So if you're a "Team & I" person like me, I guess it's, "There is an 'I' and 'T' in Victory."

At any rate, the real point of this Post, I did find to read in today's USA Today sports section that in the NCAA tourney the nation's leading scorer has not been on the national championship team since ... 1952! (The occasion was yesterday's losses by both Duke and Gonzaga, who between them have the nation's #1 and #2 scorers.) (Whatever.)

3 in 5 = Yuck

Three international redeyes in five days (Boston-Madrid, Madrid-São Paulo, São Paulo-Chicago); no way to treat a 63-year-old (or 33-year-old) body. That's why in the Men's room in the Red Carpet Club, I passed a mirror (bad move) and figured out what "3 in 5" does—not pretty.

Q: When will I learn? A: Never. I had wonderful audiences in both Madrid and São Paulo. (I was asked by a TV reporter in São Paulo what made a "good speech." My answer was "good body language from the audience" and "that I'm so exhausted by the expenditure of emotional energy that I collapse into the arms of the organizers the second I walk off the stage.")

Two Cool Women in Two Cool Jobs

Yesterday's Big Event in São Paulo featured "big time" speakers—Frank Maguire, credited by many with creating the fabled FedEx corporate culture; Harvard leadership guru Howard Gardner; strategy Main Man Ram Charan. But the real Star, whom I was lucky enough to meet, was/is Luiza Helena. Up from less than the high end of Brazil's economic spectrum, she has created the nation's top retailer, Magazine Luiza—among other things, it has been one of the Top 10 "best places to work" in Brazil a dozen years running, and the No.1 place twice! (Luiza gives off more energy than a platoon of normal people.)

Upon reaching Chicago I read, in Crain's Chicago Business, a terrific cover story on Padmasree Warrior. She's Chief Technology Officer at Motorola, commanding 20,000 cranky engineers (all of us engineers are congenitally cranky). Her strategy and execution thereof is leading the quite successful effort of recently moribund Motorola to take Nokia head-on.

My Hosts, the Bestest with the Mostest

Last year I took part in the "World Business Forum," speaking to about 4,000 execs at Radio City Music Hall. The event was created by my old pals from Brazil, HSM. These masters of such events started in São Paulo (I've been working with them 15+ years, they were Peter Drucker's favorites), moved on to encompass Buenos Aires and Mexico City—then Spain, Italy, Germany, and New York, Chicago, L.A.

Their programs are imaginative—their execution is out of this world. One typical "little" example. They work closely with speakers on their handout material (no one else does this!), then as they start the program they ask, "Any left-handers in the room?" Besides me, there are hundreds of us misfits in any audience of thousands. Asking the lefties to keep their hands up, staffers go through the room handing out new booklets—with the spiral binding on the right side, which makes it much easier for us wrong-handers to use.

Incidentally (not so incidentally), HSM is now about to pull off what I believe will be one of its best coups ever, a first-ever big conference on the increasingly important role of science in business. Co-sponsored with the Scientific American, the November 8-9 event in NYC, titled "World Science Forum: Competitiveness in a Science-driven World," it will feature the very best and very brightest such as Genome Master Craig Venter and IT Futurist-Guru-Genius Ray Kurzweil (one of our Cool Friends).

Brazil is good at a hell of a lot more than football!

A Whole New Hip Hop Mind

We knew our Cool Friend Dan Pink was inspirational. What we didn't realize was that his book A Whole New Mind would inspire a rap song. Read about how it happened here. Listen to the song here. Check out the Cool Friend interview about A Whole New Mind here or the interview about his other book, Free Agent Nation here.

Retread!

This is a replay of an ancient rant of mine—I can't hide that fact. But the point was recently underscored. I was out PowerWalking a while back while staying at Hotel X. (No obvious purpose served by naming the hotel.) Among other things, I "ran around back." I observed that the "Staff Entrance" was pretty shabby—well, truthfully, a little south of "pretty shabby."

And that, in turn, reminded me of my lack of impact over time. Well, at least I can repeat myself.

I am a longtime fan of travel services superstar Hal Rosenbluth's idea-philosophy, captured in a book he coauthored: The Customer Comes Second. That is, if you really want to "put the customer first," put the people who serve the customer "more first." Which leads me back to hotels in particular. As I see it, it's axiomatic that the "Employee Entrance" should match the "Guest Entrance" in all respects. Period.

(Why a separate entrance at all, you say. Good point, I say. Maybe the maintenance guys in overalls don't want to go through the front door? On the other hand, if the maintenance guys had only one entrance, maybe they'd wash the grease out of their overalls a bit more frequently. Whadda you think?) (Speaking of grease, a friend whose husband is a carpenter-contractor was commenting on the fact that he wears a freshly cleaned dress-business shirt "to work" every day. It's part of his "Brand You," to use my words. Love it. Comes pretty damn close to passing the "dramatic difference" test.)

More "Tricks of the Trade"

It's no secret, for guys at least, that a firm handshake administered while looking the shakee directly in the eye is a big deal. I'd add that frequency matters a lot, too. I started to say, "While I'm no politician ..." But of course I am. Anyone aiming to bring about change is a politician by definition. (It's just that some deny it—the word for them is "clueless.") Back to frequency: I purposefully reach out (literally) to shake as many hands as possible—and often a couple of times. I find it makes a big difference. ("Shake your way to success"?) (Is this as big a deal for women?? Regardless of gender, limp-sweaty handshakes are, um, not very good advertisements. Don't bother reminding me that "crusher handshakes" are just as bad—I agree without prompting.)

More Body Language. It's a commonplace observation that folding your arms in front of you is a "put-off" gesture. (Big time.) A friend who, among other things, works on customer friendliness in hospitals, Dr Thom Mayer, really whacks on Docs for folding their arms in front of them while addressing patients. Well, believe it or not, I have a deep-seated shyness streak. (No joke. A lot of good "stage performers" do.) And I often find myself hiding behind folded arms; so much so that it's physically difficult for me to unfold, even around friends. After re-reading a body language book I was asked to endorse (and did endorse), I renewed my commitment to become more conscious of this wretched gesture. In the short term my conscious reminders are helping a bit. I urge you to tread the same path.

Bottom bottom line: Body Language matters. A lot. Employee entrances (corporate body language). Hand shakes. Folded arms. Et cetera.

Outta Here

5:55 a.m. Sun rising in São Paulo. Gottagetonwithmypowerwalk, log 4-5 miles by 7 a.m.

Query of the Day

Would you buy a $500 bottle of wine from Wal*Mart? (Should you be the type, you could now do so at Wal*Mart's experimental high-end store in Plano.)

Event: Sao Paulo, Brazil

The event of the day is HSM's World High Performance Forum, and here are the slides for downloading.

Escaping the Cubicle

In the Boston Globe blog, March 13, 2006, there is an entry titled: "The Fidel Castro of office furniture" and it reads: "Reviled by workers, demonized by designers, disowned by its very creator, Robert Propst, who deemed it 'monolithic insanity,' the cubicle still claims the largest share of office furniture sales—$3 billion a year—and has continued to outlive every design meant to replace it. It is the Fidel Castro of office furniture. The only thing likely to slow the Borg-like cubiclization of our lives? Telecommuting."

The Globe writer was commenting on this article from Fortune. I am glad to say I've escaped the cubicle—how about you?

Event: AERCE

In Madrid once again, Tom's talking to AERCE. Here are the slides for downloading: Final Version and Long Version. Below this post you can see his photo offering from the trip.

Happy Spring!

I'm back in Madrid. (São Paulo later in the week.) While out wandering, at Plaza de Canalejas, to be specific, I came across in a downtown square what one comes across everywhere here—boys (and girls!*) playing football. The kids were weaving their way around and through the numerous "civilians" like me wandering in the plaza. (*Girls' participatory football is the fastest growing sport in Europe—and a few clever marketers are starting, in a glacial way, to "get it.")

Innovation TV

Last night I watched a new reality TV series, American Inventor, mostly because our Cool Friend Doug Hall is one of the judges. Remember he's the one who originated the idea of Dramatic Difference, which Tom has been quoting since he read Doug's Jump Start Your Business Brain. Doug knows a great deal about innovation and the viability of new ideas from his years running Eureka Ranch and at P&G.

Also, I was very curious as to what people thought would be innovative. It came as no surprise that innovation ran the gamut from very cool to seriously strange. Ideas ranged from a new way to create sandbags (thumbs up), portable gyms (thumbs up), to a "Beddie Pouch" (thumbs down), and a "tizzy tube" (thumbs down). People of all ages came up with ideas.

[read more]

Happy St Patty's!

This horrid self-portrait (Orlando, 4:30a.m., 03.17) ... in Red Sox green ... is the best I can do in the way of a personalized St Patrick's Day cheerio. (And, no, I refuse to "smile for the camera" when I'm taking my own damn picture. Bad enough that I should do it at all.)

Event: Mass Mutual

The event today is the 2006 General Agents Conference of MassMutual Financial Group, in Orlando, Florida. The slides for downloading are available here: Final Version and Long Version. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Fara Warner: New Blogger

We're quite happy that our Cool Friend Fara Warner has decided to add her voice to the blogosphere. She's the author of The Power of the Purse. Check out her blog here and her Cool Friend interview here. Welcome Fara!

Event: MasterCard

Back on this side of the Atlantic (but not for long, next week he's off to Madrid—again), Tom is in Orlando speaking to people from MasterCard. Here are the PPTs for downloading: Final Version and Long Web Version.

Another Highlight

More SXSW: Jory Des Jardins, one of the organizers of BlogHer, gave a two-minute(+) talk on the theme "What's the Secret?" and Erik Hansen was there to catch her on video. I think you'll enjoy listening to her comments. One caution: It was taken with a video camera by someone in the audience, so it's not the highest quality, but other than a couple of garbled sentences, amazingly good under the circumstances. Here's the link. Or the long route to the video through Jory's blog. (And the transcript is there, if you want to read the parts you miss on the video.)

AirPost 15 March

Just playing. On the way home from Bucharest (via Frankfurt). Flying Lufthansa. They (alone?) have FlyNet—and I just created an account. (A+ for ease of sign-up.) We are currently flying over the Irish Sea, heading for the North Atlantic.

Sending an email Blogpost from 11K meters (to me) is very cool.

SXSW Opening Remarks

Our Cool Friend Jason Fried and our old friend Jim Coudal gave the opening remarks at the South by Southwest conference in Austin (10-19 March). Here's the link to the podcast. Jim talks about creativity and design entrepreneurship, and he says, "The curious shall inherit the Earth." Jason talks about "less," and he says, "Don't quit your day job." It's stuff I think our readers would love to hear. It takes a while, but it's worth it. It's all very Tomesque.

[Tomesque = Word coined by Geoff Thatcher, now Creative Director at Carat Brand Experience, who got Coudal Partners to start our blog, way back when.]

Not Quite Spring in Bucharest

My hosts in Romania (my first visit) were warm and welcoming—but the weather Gods weren't so sure. This is the view from my hotel room window at 6:30a.m. this morning as I left for my power walk on the streets.

Event Slides: Bucharest

The slides for the event are here: Bucharest Version 1 and the Bucharest Leadership50 Version. Note also: Tom expanded yesterday's Irreducible List to 188 items for his Romania appearance. You can download the Bucharest Irreducibles188 here.

And More Slides

While he was at it producing three PowerPoints for the folks in Bucharest, Tom also worked on his Master, and he came up with two updates for that. You can get the latest Working Master (updated 03.12.06) and Short "MiniMaster" (updated 03.12.06) here.

Boys' Night (Afternoon) Out

Wandering London. New Bond Street. A favorite: Franklin & Winston.

Go Steve. Go Trevor.

Power. Simplicity. "Customer = Anyone whose actions affect your results." This keeps rolling around in my head. Profound. Profound in its implications. Way cool.

[Tom's referring to this blog entry by Steve Yastrow.—CM]

Message?

Sir Joshua Reynolds. China. Goldman Sachs. What more is there? (Royal Academy of Arts. London.)

Cool Britannia!

FREE admission to all public museums. Go, Tony!

Strange Choice

A current commercial for Just For Men hair coloring features the music of this Jackson 5 song, which we've all heard thousands of times:

Ain't nothin' like the real thing, baby

Ah—the difference between saying something and being understood.

This was, most likely, the rationale Just For Men used to justify the choice of song: "Our product is so genuine and authentic that people will assume it's the real color of a person's hair."

But I'm sure I'm not the only one who hears, "This product ain't nothin' like the real thing."

Event Slides: Investec

As Tom wrote yesterday, his event of the day is in beautiful Mauritius, speaking to Investec. He offers the above photo with the caption "6 a.m. Mauritius, headin' out." You can download the slides here: the final presentation version, and the longer Web version.

Refine to Simplicity

I have, for the past few years, been using the following definition of a customer:

Anyone whose actions affect your results

I have found it to work in just about any situation. (It helps explain why vendors and employees are customers, too. Not to mention bankers and municipal authorities.)

Comments?

Mauritius!

Here I am, off the East coast of Africa ... and 25 yards from one of the world's most spectacular beaches. Took 32 hours to get here from Boston, inclusive of an 11-hour layover in Heathrow. Will talk tomorrow to the leaders of the spectacularly successful South African-based financial services company ... Investec. Hit the beach as soon as I arrived, for a 2-hour walk; good to be so sweaty that my T-shirt was about 3 times its normal weight when I got back to my room. There's been an outbreak of a mosquito-borne nasty, related to Dengue fever but not fatal. Found, actually at my doc's suggestion, some 98.1% DEET Ben's bug juice (yo, cancer), which seems to do the trick—though I can say that wiping your sweaty eyes with a hand covered with 98% DEET is memorable.)

On the way down-over, during the last 12-hour leg, I produced, in prep for tomorrow, a 308-slide "MiniMaster" ... hereby attached.

Will face off with my pal Jim Collins tomorrow.

And You Thought Enron Was Bad ...

An absolutely amazing (damning) piece on private equity in Forbes, March 13: "Private Inequity." I think it's Pulitzer quality. The privatizers often take a sagging company private, dump a ton of people, issue a ton of debt in order to pay themselves back instantly, add in stratospheric "management fees" ... and then return it to public status (further lining their pockets) or drop it into Chapter 11. I've not come close in that description to pinning down the slime and double-dealing—some of it sounds at least as fiendish as Enron.

Told You So

I hate arrogant titles like this one, but I have been shouting about the coming implosion of Big Pharma for several years. Well, it's here. Consider these three factoids from, again, Forbes: In the last 3 years big pharma have laid off 70,000 folks. Pfizer, Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Schering Plough have lost $394 billion in market cap in the last 5 years. And, as biotech adds muscle, Amgen and Genentech are on a trajectory to pass Merck in sales by about 2009.

(More on "told you so." As the industry began to stagger, the defense mounted by most of the "premier" players was ... you guessed it ... major mergers.)

More Than Bedside Reading

After reading a superb interview in the Boston Globe on Sunday, I picked up a copy of Alan Dershowitz's 24th book, Preemption. Though Dersh has liberal credentials, this is anything but a liberal screed. The author insists that, given the quality of the massive new threats, preemption is a must. The "only" questions: What? How much? When? What are the appropriate checks and balances? The issue is thorny and has profound consequences. Dershowitz, as always, lays out an incredible amount of evidence, going back centuries, and proceeds with an incisive line of reasoning. We should all, as informed citizens, be thinking about this. The choices are hellish, but, as I did, you'll doubtless go away from this book with a startlingly new grasp of the issue. In short, it's tough going ... but worth it. (One damn thing is clear: This is not an issue that lends itself to sound bytes—despite both political parties' predictable efforts to make it so.)

B.School M.I.A.

Did I share this slide, #3, attached? It's my short list of the essentials that are missing in most B.School programs, especially at "elite" schools—from giving great presentations (and listen per se) to project management to building "brand you." The quote in slide #2 is from Stanford emeritus prof and Nobel laureate Bill Sharpe—Mr Sharpe warns the B.Schools to avoid "fads"—such as "leadership," "entrepreneurship," "management," and "global business." Huh?

Sales 111 at ChangeThis

You saw it here first, but Tom's "111 Ridiculously Obvious Thoughts on Selling" is now beautifully packaged, by our good friend Phoebe Espiritu, and presented on ChangeThis.com. We'd like to thank everyone there for making this happen. You can visit ChangeThis.com to see other manifestos that made their debut along with Tom's.

How Do I Hate Thee, Let Me Count ...

Okay, I'm online, wireless, from the BA lounge in Heathrow. And that's a good thing.

But ...

Ye gads BT (BT Openzone) made it as painful as possible. Consider: Long layover, so I wanted to buy three hours. Required to buy three vouchers, one hour each. Each has its own username and password. Ridiculously complex passwords and ID. Typical password (CASE SENSITIVE!), szUXPxc3w8. (My user name that hour is the memorable 83167759.) Then the system rejected my Visa card the first two tries, requiring me to thrice start afresh with data entry. All in all, the transaction took about 15 minutes—only an unholy thirst for connectivity kept me in the race.

Today's exam, spurred by BT: Call or email your company, or perform a Web transaction: Is said transaction a gen-u-ine "Wow Experience"?

(All this also makes one-me wonder about the ATT-Bell South link-up. Just what we need, a monster-size, near monopolist, devoid of incentives to kowtow to the customer.)

Backlash, Merited or Not?

After months, perhaps years, of "China Will Eat Our Lunch" stories, I've suddenly observed a micro-epidemic of dissenting voices. These "well maybe not"-ers have focused on the following sorts of things: unrest among "other"—the roughly two-thirds/one billion Chinese, mainly on the farm, who've been left out of the "miracle;" their lot is not improved, and they are exposed daily to images of a minority who are doing extremely well. Pollution, not a matter of conscience, but concern about grave and widespread health threats. Corruption on an unprecedented scale. Burgeoning university education and R&D not all it's cracked up to be, thanks to State control and a disposition toward rote learning. Productivity gains almost all due to migration to the city rather than better worker utilization (management, organization, automation).

Knowing Your Customer!

Whole Foods has become the first major company to "go wind"—100% of its electricity needs (160 stores) are being fulfilled by windpower.

10 Years of Fast Company

Fast Company magazine's March issue commemorates its 10th Anniversary. Get the magazine, and you'll find two mentions of Tom. In the "Cover Gallery," p. 33, the issue with his article "The Brand Called You" is named "the issue that put Fast Company on the map." And, he contributes to the "Oral History: the tale of how Fast Company came to be," p. 39. Next month we'll link these items, but for the first month you need an access code to get FC content on the Web. We wish them a Happy Anniversary!

"Perfect" 10

Sedan, Less Than $20,000. Sedan, $20,000-$30,000. Sedan, $30,000-$40,000. Luxury Sedan. SUV, Less Than $30,000. SUV, More Than $30,000. Pickup Truck. Minivan. Green Car. Fun To Drive.*

These are the 10 flavors of cars assessed by Consumer Reports ("TopPicks2006," April 2006). The winners are ...

10 of 10.
Japanese.
All.

Detroit has a problem. Pensions? Healthcare costs? Screwed-up parts makers? Or: Cars no one gives a S%^& about?

Your call.

Carol Loomis, a brilliant Fortune writer and researcher of many years' standing, wrote a b-i-g cover story on GM ("The Tragedy of GM") in the mag's 20 February issue. From the cover, in part: "The company remains so central to the economy, so sprawling in its reach, that going into Chapter 11 would be ominous almost beyond contemplation."

Sorry, Carol, I respectfully disagree. Don't get me wrong, I pine for dislocated GM workers. (Fordies, too.) However, I fret much more about Intel's recent, minuscule decline in sales than GM's problems. Could be wrong. But I don't think so. We really do have a "new economy"—and, to some extent, the faster we can get over the "old economy" the better off we'll be.

*FYI, the "Fun To Drive" winner was the Subaru Impreza WRX/STi.

Tom and Scale and Big Takeovers Redux Redux Redux

Op-ed. Wall Street Journal. 2 March 2006.

"Boutique vs. Behemoth: Upstarts Steal Market Share from the Investment Banks."

Old, old story to which no one seems to listen. A day later: Adidas announces crappy #s, thanks to its acquisition of Reebok.

News?
Hardly ... according to me.

Off to Mauritius+

March Madness: Leave tomorrow for Mauritius, Romania, Madrid and Brazil. Don't know what connectivity will be in the former two. Meanwhile, a last walk near my VT farm yesterday (see above). Will be Spring by the time I get home. Saw "boiling" for the first time yesterday—for the uninitiated, reducing sap to make maple syrup.

Query: But will it be Spring when I arrive in Siberia on April 14?

Robert Altman

Mr Altman won the lifetime achievement award at the Oscars last night. I loved this from his acceptance remarks, and I paraphrase: "The role of the Director is to create a space where the actor or actress can become more than they've ever been before." (Or, maybe: "dreamed of being." Better yet. I'll have to find a transcript.)

To me that's the essence of leadership—in any context.

Chiding the Press (and Myself)

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Did a few interviews with the Wisconsin press this morning, in preparation for a speech at the end of the month to the Wisconsin Innovation Network. We immediately fell into conversation about Madison's new biotech stars, Harley-Davidson, Johnson Controls, and the like. It was easy conversation—conversation that I can conduct while typing this Blogpost. Then I caught myself, and said, "But let's not forget the 'other 85 percent,' the largely ignored and under-reported ones working at body shops, spas, independent insurance agencies, 5-person accountancies, real estate brokerages, and the like. The productivity and excellence of these thousands of unsung players and their small passels of employees have more to do with the health and wealth of America and Wisconsin than, with all due respect, Harley."

It's a fact.

Learning through Criticism

A point in a conversation tonight with friends:

Some criticism is given incorrectly. Some criticism is taken incorrectly. We spend a lot of time worrying about the way criticism is given, but we can learn much more from how we take it.

Cool Friend: Scoble

To most of our readers, Robert Scoble needs no introduction. We hope you'll be thrilled to find him among the Cool Friends. We're happy to have had a chance to talk to him.
His blog: scobleizer
His other job: Channel 9
His book (coauthor is Shel Israel): Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk With Customers
Shel Israel's website: itseemstome.net
And, finally, the Cool Friend interview: Robert Scoble

Event Slides: Aetna

Tom's in California, and before his speaking engagement with Aetna, he had time to take some beach photos. He caught this great shot of a surfer's pre-ride meditations (it looks like) at Laguna Niguel. If you'd like to download the Aetna PowerPoint slides, you can get the final presentation version here, and the long Web version here.