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Make Your Business Plan a Living Document

You know if it's a smart decision to make your will a living document doesn't it make sense as a business leader to make your business plan a living document? No need to ponder. Of course, the answer's yes.

Reading Tim Berry's post, The Living Business Plan, - 30 Years Ago, made me think about that. Tim references an article written 30 years ago. And the wisdom of that post continues today with one addition: technology allows you to keep that living document, with room for comments and changes, in a digital format on your digital desktop (your computer) for easy editing.

It's your plan and you're sticking to it.

John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing offers in his most recent newesletter an article titled Strategy Before Tactics. Here's but a brief excerpt:

Small business owners often fall prey to the marketing whim of the week, chasing every new way to do direct mail or draw web site visitors they encounter, because they have no real marketing strategy to help them drive marketing decisions. If I could change anything about the way small business owners view marketing - that would be it.

Without a strategy firmly in place to use as a filter for where the business is headed, it's far to difficult to really analyze whether any particular tactic or marketing initiative makes sense for a business or not.

There's more to this article. He offers 2 crucial factors you need to be very clear on when you develop your strategy, and why this is important.

Get clear on those 2 factors. Develop your plan. It's your plan; stick to it.

I don't find a link to this article on the website. John?

You should subscribe to his newsletter. Visit his site:  Duct Tape Marketing. You'll immediately be given the opportunity to sign up. I have no idea how he creates such great content on all the various sites. But he does. And we're better for it.

You are what you [read]

Wonderful article on the libraries of CEOs and their significance to their successes: CEO Libraries Reveal Keys to Success.

Perhaps that is why — more than their sex lives or bank accounts — chief executives keep their libraries private. Few Nike colleagues, for example, ever saw the personal library of the founder, Phil Knight, a room behind his formal office. To enter, one had to remove one’s shoes and bow: the ceilings were low, the space intimate, the degree of reverence demanded for these volumes on Asian history, art and poetry greater than any the self-effacing Mr. Knight, who is no longer chief executive, demanded for himself.

The Knight collection remains in the Nike headquarters. “Of course the library still exists,” Mr. Knight said in an interview. “I’m always learning.”

I rarely reveal all that I'm reading. That's for several reasons: A. I'm private; B. I don't find many avid readers to discuss my library with; C. People make too much out of too little and they do it poorly. Trying to read someone's personality based on their reading lists is a bit less helpful than reading re-used tea leaves for the same purpose.

I may share some content and thought from one book every so often. Occasionally I've even bought a title for everyone to read here in the company.

Right now, I'm very much in a summer, fiction, reading mode. Having said that, I've got lined up a few political, business and historical titles for later this year. But...it's my private library that delivers a lot of private pleasure. It's more important you have your own.

This is What Net Neutrality is About

A million or tens of millions of William Kamkwamba's. A neutral net keeps the power in the hands of citizens to solve for our needs, our communities, our families, our economies, to create jobs that meet our needs.

Link shout to Smart Mobs for the story on William Kamkwamba.

Federal Minimum Wage Went Up Y'day

Not a whole lot of fanfare was generated y'day when the Federal Minimum Wage was increased...$.70 an hour. It's understandable that not much fanfare was generated. It's not that much of a raise. It's the first such raise, federally mandated,  in over 10 years for the minimum wage paid workers. 10 years without a raise.

And now  the raise is $.70 an hour. For a 40 hour work week that raise adds just under $30.00 a week to the employee's gross pay. After taxes the employee will take home...an extra $18-20 a week.

And it took 10 years,  2 bull markets and recent record profits on wall street before this raise was approved.

From 1997 to 2006, though, Congress voted to allow automatic annual pay raises, er, cost of living increases. I guess cost of living increases only effected them.

I received some emails from services that keep employers up-to-date on these rapid changes. Darkly, I laughed when one email breathlessly asked if I was aware or ready for this change. Here's why:

We don't hire people who will settle for $5.15 an hour.

We can't run a business with people whose skills can settle for $5.15 an hour.

We wouldn't pay people $5.15 an hour. It's an amazingly short-sighted tactic to pay people below subsistence wages. I'm willing to bet if we polled those companies that pay their employees the minimum wage we'll find them the same companies with the highest employee turnover, theft and the highest gap between executive pay and employee pay.

If you need why explained to you...you must be in Congress, maybe.

3300 Flights Cancelled Today

If today was like any day in June, then that would be likely be true based on the number of flights cancelled during the entire month of June: over 100,000.

100,000 flights were cancelled during the month of June, according to this article in Money/CNN.

That's around 3300 flights per day in June that were cancelled.

Let's assume on average there are 100 passengers on board. That's ...330,000 people per day, every day, in June whose vacations and business meetings and plans and budgets were disrupted.

330,000 times 30 days in June = 9.9 million people sharing their experiences with your industry through word-of-mouth.

9.9 million people per month turned into customer vigilantes....

That's not an indicator for anything but problems for the existing companies.

And the situation offers HUGE opportunities for those who can find a solution. (Any solution....)

There's another whole discussion of how we got here...as passengers being herded like cattle around the airport, of how the airlines motivated their employees to stop caring, of how the airlines motivated their pilots to not return after being laid-off or unable to hire new employees knowing their the first laid-off and laid-off they'll be, too. I know I cancelled my plans to fly this summer. The thought of another trip where 50% of our flights were cancelled...as a reward for suffering through long security lines, bad food, loud and crowded terminals, our plans rearranged to fit the airlines' convenience...I don't think so.

Hat's off to Typepad for their Customer Service

Tip of the hat today for the responses yesterday of Typepad during their power outtage. They notified customers promptly with clear, open, honest communication, explained what was happening, how it effected my use of their service AND...kept the communication going until the problem and its impact was resolved.

Problems, technology, communication, people...sometimes happen. Always, really. It's how you respond that sets you apart. Typepad's response, for me, sets them apart.

Economists Puzzled by "Irrational" EBay Buyers

Funny. Economists have found that in 43% or more  of the  auctions the bidders ended up paying more than the 'buy it now' price. And this trend effects all price categories...

Some economists are puzzled by this behavior they refer to as irrational.

Funny. They've never been to a live farm auction. I attended one...once. Never again. The whole point of having an auction is to incite a buyer frenzy that's based on obsessive, complusive, competition between buyers not a rational numbers-based decision. 

Yes, it's emotion-based. But it's not irrational. It's very rational, very predictable. The premium paid (gladly by repeat buyers anyway) is for the emotional experience, the adrenaline rush of the chase and the resulting victory.

This is built into eBay's service...an emotionally rewarding experience culminating in the conquest, the purchase...at any price. It's a value-add. Very rational. Very emotional.

That's what you need for your business. A value-added experience for your customers that they can get only with you, only consistently with you, in a safe setting with a trusted source. Then customers will gladly pay a premium of 25% or more for your product.

But it's not really a premium. You're giving more, more than what they can get at a 25% discount elsewhere. In their mind, they're coming out ahead. You met their needs and they gladly paid you, thanked you actually, with offering a premium, a tip so to speak for the great experience.

eBay's success is they've institutionalized this experience, streamlined it, insured it, built themselves as a trusted advisor where caution isn't necessarily thrown to the wind but...the customers can approach without being guarded or wary. And it's there when the customer wants it, not only on Saturdays standing in the hot sun (summer) or brutal winds whipping down (winter). And it's seemingly in private without your neighbors next door seeing wha' chur buying or what you're paying.

Article at USAToday.

Is Anti-Capitalism Growing?

Interesting, brief, post at Jim Cornwall's The Entrepreneurial Mind by the same title.

In his post he cites a poll by the UK's Financial Times saying it is...

I think the pendulum seeks a balance. It  seems less an anti-capitalist bent than an anti-obscenity or anti-excessive bent. Someof the excesses displayed by the leaders of the tyco's and Worldcom's and Enron's around the world, to name but a few, have been egregious, hoggish, excessive, even obscene...when compared with the low wages,  miniscule benefits, and the resulting the lifestyles, the living conditions, they've required their servants (employees) to endure in order to for them to have their lavish lifestyle.

My read on this growing sentiment is that it's less about what people make than about how they got  there and how they're staying there. 

Extremes on either side ultimately are unproductive. But a bit of balance...never hurts.

Instant Messaging Brings Relief to the Office

Instant messaging within the office has allowed us to move faster, easier, with less stress. We use SKYPE's IM service. We'd already downloaded Skype to use last year when they offered free calls within North America. It was easy to then incorporate their IM feature.

Instant messaging is but one resource we use to kill the messenger, aka email. Email's become a bane to our existence as a business. We've moved most internal communication away from it. We use the basecamp wiki from 37signals for our internal conversations on projects and tasks and meetings. We use SKYPE's instant messaging resource for quick dialogues. (It keeps a history of these.) And we get up and visit each other if these two don't allow the give and take needed.

Here's a great article  from WSJ online: Instant Messaging Invades the Office.

During the preholiday crush last December, a computer maker asked staffing company Adecco SA for 300 additional factory workers -- immediately. Using an instant-messaging program, Senior Vice President Steve Baruch tapped managers in three states to line up the workers within hours. If he had relied on email and phone calls, Mr. Baruch says, the same process could have taken him as long as three days.

To that I say Exactly.

How to Write A Business Plan

Guy Kawasaki gets Tim Berry to answer 10 questions on How to Write A Business Plan. Tim should know what he's talking about. According to Guy's post:

...he's the president of Palo Alto Software, the principal creator of Business Plan Pro, and the author of a blog called Planning, Startups, Stories. He was recently named the US Association of Small Business & Entrepreneurship (USASBE) Corporate Entrepreneur of the Year for 2007.

I've re-read it twice now. Some comfort was felt; some...ouches were, too. I'm always learning. Here's a great quote:

Growth spurts in a company are good things, meaning more sales, and presumably more profits, but unplanned growth can suddenly suck up liquidity and in the worst cases kill the company. Growth without prior planning can be as fun as a hard kick in the stomach.

You know the old saying: Failing to plan is planning to fail.

It's a great read.

Tim blogs at Planning, Startups, Stories.

Guy blogs at How to Change the World.

Tornadoes

Tornadoes came ripping through Iowa Monday night. That's not necessarily news: Iowa, summer, tornadoes. But how close the tornadoes came to our home is newsworthy. Maybe...4-5 miles away by car...they started cutting a swath across fields. My wife and I drove out last night. And as you've read...you can see the path of tornado very clearly from the destruction it brings. It's a clearly marked path. Corn on one side of the road flat; corn on the other side upright, untouched. And as it about hit the city limits it changed path...otherwise, these photos of cornfields could instead have been of our house lying flat.

Here's my flickr photo set for Tornadoes. (Don't expect to be wowed. I'm doing this as much to learn how to use Flickr as to showcase my photo-graphy skills...)

Here's my flickr photo set for Summer Storm. My wife and I were out driving 'round as this storm came ripping through to welcome the first day of Summer. (Maybe our next career will be as storm chasers...There's an interesting adrenaline rush driving around in a storm we both seem to enjoy, especially with cameras in our hands. I can see us in our 80's yelling Hurry up. Get your Depends on and get in the car...a storm's a comin'...!! )

Health Care's Expensive When Your Products Aren't Wanted

One thing the Big-3 auto manufacturers have been successful at is in downstreaming the discussion (the responsibility) for their bad decisions on models, makes, designs, features in their products, etc onto the shores of their union members and now their retired union members.

Retiree's Health Costs Loom Over UAW Talks. UAW will begin negotiating with its members, particularly its retired members, on how to address the rising costs of health care benefits at the same time as a rising number of Americans no longer buy products from...their employer: Big 3 auto companies.

Tricky how that works. You're retired. You're promised benefits. No one complains about the costs of those benefits....as long as products are designed that the consumer wants. None of those design decisions involves input from you.

Now the scenario changes: You're still retired. You're still not asked to give input on the decisions to build which cars. But now the the cars being designed, built and marketed are cars the consumer no longer wants...And now it's the fault of your health care expenses...It's your health care expenses that made them design cars no one wants.

Yep. Darn it. I wanted to design a good-looking car that got over 30 Miles per gallon...with exceptional quality and safety...but those darn health care benefits of retirees kept me thinking about humvees and V-8's...Ford Explorers...I just couldn't design a car worth looking at because of the cost of our retiree's health care.

Makes sense.

The Big-3 blame rising health care costs on their inability to compete. Huh. Ok, so the retirees' health care benefits and their costs TODAY...made you design cars for the past 3 years  or more that fewer and fewer American consumers are willing to buy.

I'm confused a bit, 'cause last I looked, when you had models people wanted, you didn't complain about the costs of health care for your retired employees.

And you know, the timeline for new model design is at least one year out if not 3-5. So that means health care benefits for retirees has been making you THINK about bad car designs for...nearly a decade now.

And you've just come forward to tell us that.

One could think, of course it would be wrong, that you've run out of excuses and places to point fingers. You're left with blaming...retiree benefits for your business decisions of the past decade. But that doesn't make sense....wouldn't be right.

I wonder if the health care benefits for current or retired management at Big-3 car companies made them design models no one wants.  It's never mentioned.

Doesn't really matter now does it. The Big-3's  strategy seems to be working. You keep saying something long enough, people will believe it, I guess: Health Care Benefits of Our Retired Employees Made Us Design Cars for the Past 10 Years No One Wants.

It is written, thus it is so.

Dark Laugh of the Day: "It could be worse" program for your employees

Tom Vander Well  at QAQnA blog shares the frontlines of Call-Center Quality Assessment. Great blog.

Last week he shared a link to this video at Despair.com where dissatisfied employees were offered a motivational program called "It Could be Worse". Here's the link to the YouTube version of the video.

Thanks, Tom.

Nothing changes...

...if nothing changes.

I got a good chuckle from Skip Reardon's post titled Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes. While I'm chuckling, what you don't see is I'm nodding in agreement, too. Yep, so true, Skip.

The trick is how to...incite change first in yourself, then in your organization.

Skip's got a great post and links to more content on how to do just that: (encourage, allow, provide for, incite, support, nourish....) change.

What's Bob say about change?

He not busy being born

Is busy dying ...

It's alright, Ma...

[We're only changin'...]

Differences Should Be Leveraged

That's principle number 5 for innovation from the The Center for Creative Leadership.

Interesting.

Differences Should be Leveraged. The differences that normally divide people - such as language, culture, race, gender and thinking and problem-solving styles - can be a boon to innovation.

Seems obvious. How do you solve new challenges with old thinking, with same thinking, with rote thinking...with ideology, not thinking?

Differences should be leveraged. Or, maybe, differences should be celebrated.

I know here I've learned that any solution is always best reached, best served, if all the different perspectives are included from everyone that works here. It's a cumbersome process...it's time-consuming on the front-end...sometimes annoying with its need to distract from tasks-at-hand...but decisions are always best when everyone participates in the discussion.

On a community scale, there's too much research to show that diverse communities are communities that thrive, survive, grow, are communities to celebrate.

On a national scale, diversity has always been our nation's strength. Differences should be leveraged. What a mind shift for our national discourse, these days.

Link-shout to Fortune's Business Innovation Insider for the link.

Blinking BlueTooths: Bad

Funny. Funny post at 37signals: Blinking BlueTooth Headsets.

I'm trying to find out why mine won't blink any more...even if I can't see it when it's blinking in my ear.

Update: SmartMobs posts on the future of Mobiles as urban Instruments. They reference a phenomenon called Participatory Urbanism that's included in a study from Intel Research Berkeley. (Digression: Is there a non-participatory urbanism...? Or is that another term in lieu of denial? Anyway.) Here's a quote from that research project:

Participatory Urbanism presents an important new shift in mobile device usage...

We argue there are two indisputable facts about our future mobile devices: (1) that they will be equipped with more sensing and processing capabilities and (2) that they will also be driven by an architecture of participation and democracy that encourages users to add value to their tools and applications as they use them.

So maybe, in the future, we'll be able to turn that "blinking" light off while we use it.

June's Philanthropy: Green Belt Movement

Our corporate philanthropy for June will go to Green Belt Movement.

The Green Belt Movement, according to their website:

provides income and sustenance to millions of people in Kenya through planting of trees. It also conducts educational campaigns to raise awareness about women's rights, civic empowerment, and the environment throughout Kenya and Africa.

A simple act: planting trees. And it has profound implications for creating an ecology that is capable of supporting the requisite bio-diversity necessary to allow for sustainable agriculture, safe drinking water, clean air and a landscape of beauty. Vibrant economic communities, communities that attract the best talent for creating companies and job growth and sustainable communities are based on diversity of industries and markets and whose members seek communities of beauty, clean air and clean water.

Plant a tree, build a home. Plant millions of trees and create a vibrant and diverse ecology that will support a growing, vibrant, nation for all its citizens.

The Green Belt Movement was founded by the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Professor Wangari Maathai.

You can donate to their Billion Tree Campaign here. And you can donate to the The Green Belt Movement here.

And now we'll donate to the Green Belt Movement based on the results from two sources:

* existing prospects who become customers during the calendar month of June;

* all referrals sent to us during the month of June.

Earlier this year we announced our Corporate Philanthropy - 2007 program. You can click the link to see a list of the non-profit organizations we'll support this year. And here's the organizations we've supported to date in 2007:

NEIGHBORHOOD HEALTHCARE – February, 2007

EVERY CHILD – April, 2007

In August, our corporate philanthropy will go to:

RURAL DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES 

...a catalyst for community vitality in rural areas: we work with rural leaders and volunteers to expand the knowledge, skills, and networks for building communities that foster opportunity, thrive and endure.

We hope you support these projects or other deserving projects in your area.

Time matters, not clicks

If time is money then it makes sense that time spent on a website be more important than its number of page views.

Catherine Holahan at BusinessWeek has a 2-page article, Web Rankings Shakeup: It's About Time, that talks about this sea change in  judging metrics for a website's effectiveness.

I like the logic.

On the other hand, it doesn't factor for the site's  use. You wouldn't expect visitors to linger on a search engine. Users there want speed and accuracy and the desire to move to their destination. A media site or social network site on the other hand wants people to linger, puruse the content, look at more, etc. For them it really is Quality of visits, not quantity, matters.

Time is money. It just depends on how and where the user wants to spend it and how you meet that demand.

Honestly, for me, I want people calling us. If I had to choose between time spent on our site and time spent on our phones, I'd prefer the latter. But we do need to do some more to help people A. come to our site; B. either linger at our site or...call us.

Seven Places to Look to Save Time and Money

From Renuka Rayasam's Small Biz Scene at US World Report, Seven Places to Look for Wasted Time and Money.

I'd add one element to this story. It's not an 8th area. It's the area of employee engagement, motivation, inspiration, responsibility, ownership. Give ownership to everyone in the company. Invite their ideas on ways to save. Identify a clear, quantifiable goal. Explain why it's important to them, their jobs, their co-workers, their company. Create a plan of manageable steps. Give a deadline. Offer an incentive. Then stay out of the way. 

Otherwise, the places remain. And the amounts in them do, also.

Why Net Neutrality is Important to Small Business

From a recent article in BusinessWeek, Give Net Neutrality a Chance:

With net neutrality, you can start a business selling widgets online and be assured that consumers can reach your Web site just as easily as Wal-Mart's (WMT).But under the tiered system proposed by the phone and cable companies, the level playing field is gone. Wal-Mart will be able to buy a spot in the fast lane on the information superhighway. The little guy will be stuck on dirt roads.

And dirt roads in web 2.0 age don't take you to the market.

iPhone Small Print

The small print's not with the product; it's with the network. The network in this case being...ATT.

Brett Trout's an IP attorney who's shared some of the discoveries of the fine print in the ATT contract that he would assume like a heroin addict outside the methadone clinic, you did not sit down and review the entire contract before activating your precious bundle of joy. Right he is. How many of us sit down and look closely at the terms of any contract, service agreement, terms of service, etc, etc. especially when it's the last thing between us and using a bundle of [tech] joy.

Brett's post is at iPhone Legalese. I'm not sure which of the items he lists are at the top of my dark-humored favorites. Billing for network errors...uncompleted calls....those are all good. But my favorite is...Regulatory Cost Recovery Charge. It's a fictional charge. They could have called it status symbol bling-bling charge or psyche! great product, not so great network charge. Either way it's a fee  charged by ATT intended solely to bilk iPhone customers out of a few bucks each month (and when you can pony up $500 for a phone, then you have a few bucks to spare, they assume). AND as an added bonus for the managers at ATT, they've chosen to make this a line item charge so they don't have to include it in the costs for their network they quote customers. Cool. THAT's why they get paid the big bucks. (That and everyone's willing to pay it...)

Great post. Thanks, Brett. Brett blogs regularly at Blawg IT.

( Caveat emptor. Yes, indeedy.)

Healthy Employees = Healthy Company

An article in the Washington Post, Pass the Paste, Please, and Hold the Stress shared this:

Workplaces with employee involvement programs, such as self-managed work teams, demonstrate a 2 to 5 percent increase in productivity. Those with health-promotion programs showed an average of $3.50 savings for every dollar spent, as measured by reduced absenteeism and health-care costs.

That ROI is 350%. 3.5:1 benefit to cost ratio. Can you find a ROI like that anywhere else in your business?

People, it's not rocket science. Health employees = healthy company. Who or what is your company but your employees? Sick, absent employees create a sick, absent company for themselves and their colleagues. Engage, motivated, present, health employees....create the same for their company.

That's why it's imperative that affordable health plans be possible for smaller businesses. They are the drivers of this economy's job creation effect. Healthy small businesses add more jobs. That's not rocket science, either.

Kelly Montgomery (great resource for health insurance news) at About.com's health insurance blog writes:

A recent study shows that employers looking to save money by reducing or limiting employee drug benefits may actually end up spending more in reduced worker productivity.

Higher co-pay = Lower Use

No news there, really. Still, it reinforces the reality that health care is only valid, useful, helpful, caring if it's used. And if you can't afford it...it's not much use.

Still, more than anecdotal evidence is needed to show the numbers of people not utilizing health care, even with some form of coverage, from the unaffordable immediate costs.

As Kelly Montgomery at About.com's Health Insurance writes:

Most people know someone who has skipped or postponed seeing a doctor about a health concern because of the cost – but well-structured research projects can help this anecdotal evidence gain credibility and legitimacy among policymakers.

Your health records maintained by your employer...

How would you feel about that? Intel and Wal-Mart and a few others are creating a consortium to do just that: host employee medical records on corporate servers for their easy reference.  I'm not sure who the they is in their.  The employee or the employer? (I get queasy just thinking about that scenario.)

Um, just logistically speaking, do you allow 100% of your employees offsite access to your corporate servers? And if not, then they have to access these records and servers at work, right? And if they go to a doctor, then they have to print these records....on company printers, located somewhere...on corporate premises....Let's assume you have locked down your servers to outside hackers (unlikely) and your security is locked down tight for internal users...that's a lot of paper lying around...and someone somewhere has to have access to these servers and their files...lots of files...lots of files with lots of confidential information.

Not a good idea. I really don't know anyone who wants their employer underneath the proverbial hospital gown they wear at work. And that's what it would be. Your employer would have access, tempting access, to all your most private health records.

No. Not a good idea. It's a little chattel-ish for our company, like maintenance records you keep on your car...

Links:

* Health Care Renewal Blog: Big employers plan electronic health records (and a manned Mars expedition as a warmup?)

* Information Week: Major E-Health Records Project Unravels into Legal Battle.

Heart Attack or "Adverse Event"

An article at USAToday outlines some of the growing concerns with the diabetes drug, Avandia. One thing I always admire about Big Pharma is it's ability to spin, create new phrases.

"Heart attacks" are included in the list of potential side effects or adverse events.

Some of the side effects of this drug, according to the article in USAToday , are weight gain, increased levels of bad cholesterol, fluid retention and oh, heart attacks. So, let's see you're taking a drug to treat type 2 diabetes, the kind associated with weight gain...and the side-effects or adverse events include... bad cholesterol and heart attacks and weight gain. Huh. Weird how that happens. You're taking a drug to address a symptom and whoops, it makes the symptom worse.

A spokesman for GlaxoSmithKline had the best response:

"This is a very well-known phenomenon," where news reports lead to increased reporting, said company spokeswoman Mary Anne Rhyne. "It's good that there's awareness of the reporting system, but drawing conclusions on such data is inappropriate."

Why, yes it is. No, we shouldn't.

But let me clarify a couple of phrases:

Very well known phenomenon. Huh. Interesting turn of phrase. Did the patients know of this Very well known phenomenon? By God, those who suffered a heart attack adverse event, I bet, know of it. Now. But, the timing of their knowledge is a bit quirky, doncha think?

It's good that there's awareness of the reporting system. Yes, it is. Otherwise, we'd be short of data about all adverse events happening.

I'm not sure whether it's better to suffer a side-effect or a treatment effect. The former can be threatening to our life; the latter's only threatening to your dignity and a sign of relinquishing your own responsibility for your own health.

Know Your Flight's REAL Schedule

Artur Bergman at Oreilly Radar shares what looks like a great resource to help make your airline travels, such as they are  this summer, a bit smoother experience. It's FlightAware.  According to Artur: It tracks all aircraft that are flying, right now. So when the gate attendant says your flight is 20 minutes late...you can confirm that, within a few minutes of accuracy, on FlightAware.

Now. Don't use the tool to abuse gate attendants when their announcement could be clearly at odds with what you find on FlightAware. A. It's possible Flightware could be wrong. No real-time system is infallible...; B. Too often, the Gate Attendants are given wrong information to pass along. That puts them in the awkward position of answering for bad data they shared in good faith. (You can understand why airline employees are losing their religion...Imagine dealing with the fallout, all day long, from sharing bad data with your passengers. One would think somehow, someway, airline higherups would realize that...like in gradeschool, honesty is the best policy. ) 

Thanks, Artur. And check out FlightAware.

Can't stand, can't walk...no problem.

This story's darkly funny. US to Ban Slaughter of Immobile Cows. That's right. USDA-approved beef can continue to include cows who can neither stand nor walk....symptoms common to cows afflicted with Mad Cow Disease.

In 2003, cows were found suffering from Mad Cow Disease here in the US. Not to worry, the USDA promptly banned testing of cows for the disease since then and has continued to allow processing for human consumption...those cows showing symptoms of mad cow disease. Despite the test ban treaty, so to speak, cases of mad cow disease were discovered in 2005 and 2006. (So, if we're not testing...how'd they know? Could it be they observed in the animals symptoms common to those suffering from mad cow disease...symptoms like being unable to stand or walk?)

As of May 29 of this year, the USDA continued to fight to prevent testing for Mad Cow Disease citing costs and the threat of false positives...

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.

(Japan banned our beef in 2003 then resumed it again in 2006. The losses were in the millions. How's that for costs?)

A federal judge ruled that the tests can proceed starting June 1 and noted the test used would be the ones developed by the USDA. The USDA countered that their tests weren't dependable and as of today...no testing's being done and animals with some of the more common, observable, symptoms of mad cow disease continue to be allowed, er, processed for human consumption.

Oh well, there's always China to blame for food safety concerns.

Spectrum Auction Run By Open-Access Rules...maybe

What if...you can plug in any device or run any application on it no matter who happens to be billing you for your wireless broadband access?

Why then...you would be able to buy an iPhone and not be locked into AT&T's network.

(And as noted earlier, not being locked into ATT's network could be a good thing for iPhone users...)

Next Net blog posts on plans from the FCC to auction WIFi spectrum with open-access rules and the possible outcome of such.

iPhone backlash: iPhones rock. It's the network, silly.

That's fast. Already people are returning iPhones for dismal performance. No, not the iPhone's performance. It's the network's performance. In the iPhone's case, it's ATT's EDGE network that's being exposed or overwhelmed, at least according to some initial reports.

So, let's see. Net Neutrality is...how important to innovation? ATT is one of the incumbent telcos who are pushing Congress to allow a 2-tiered  or 2-laned internet. A fast lane for those who can afford a premium. A slow lane for the common folk including consumers, startups, small businesses with these 3 being the source for...job creation. But I digress for a moment. And one would have to think that ATT's exclusive contract would encourage them to either transparently send iPhone traffic on their fast lane (they have one ready, right? ) or tout their routing of iPhone/Big Partner traffic on their 2-tiered system to showcase the brilliance of the logic for ending net neutrality. Huh. Guess not.

Link from MuniWireless.

High-Speed Trains without Borders

From Lunch Over IP, a story on how the countries of railroad companies of France, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and the Eurostar (London-Paris) have formed an alliance to create a high-speed rail system between their countries as an alternative to highways or regional airlines.

Huh. Cooperation, collaboration, with other countries, including communication (listening as well as talking) and compromise to achieve a better life for all their citizens....that's a novel idea. I wonder if anyone's heard of it in Washington?

Quote of the day: Don't complain about the ride

Quote of the day from No Limits Ladies:

"I am not going to complain. I knew where the ride was going when I bought my ticket." -Tammy Cravit.

There you have it. And if I didn't, it's no one's fault/learning experience but mine. And either way, no one forced me, I volunteered.

Still...it's therapeutic to complain. For a few moments, anyway. Gets it out of the system...let's me look at the absurdity...and remind me, at least, my anger's always directed ultimately at me for the decisions I made that led me to a position that's ahem a bit annoying...to me.

Des Moines Register to Share Video Clips with the Public..

Shuh....as if.

No, it's the NY Times, along with the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal who are getting Youtubed. Beet.tv posted a few weeks ago that The New York Times will make the embed code of its video clips available to the public by early fall.

Cool.

But back to the DM Register...keeping it's spot solely behind the times DM Register asked me to remove a photo from their site I'd posted and clearly marked as being from the DM Register and with links to the paper, on the page where the photo was displayed as part of a larger group of photos on the same topic. The Executive Assistant to the Editor explained it was just fine for me to link to the paper and help drive WOM and traffic to their site hosting the many paid ads... but not share any of their content, even when clearly marked and linked back, that would further entice viewers to visit  said and venerable DM Register. (Way to build community, guys!)

I was once told that when change comes slow, it comes  to stay. Well, by God, when DM Register decides to make the embed code available to the public, that baby's gonna stay.

And now back to the NY Times...this is a great move. It'll only serve to enhance their traffic and their readers' loyalty.

3 reasons people talk about you

Andy Sernovitz was the founding CEO for WOMMA, Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association. He knows a bit about WOM, word-of-mouth. And now he runs GasPedal Marketing which is all about...yep, you guessed it...WOM and how to generate it.

To wit, his newsletter and blog is titled Damn I wish I'd thought of that....

There he recently listed the 3 reasons people talk about you. Here they are:

Reason #1: You. They Like You and Your Stuff.

Reason #2: Them. Talking Makes Them Feel Good.

Reason #3: Us. They Feel Connected to the Group

This falls perilously close to semantic quibbling...but I think Andy gives a bit too much credit to the you in this conversation. The you being the client, the company, the product/service provider.

People will talk about you if you make them feel good about themselves, their problems are solved, their day is made better, they've been astonished/impressed/wowed, made to smile...their day has been markedly improved from their relatively brief experience with your product/service. As a company we have but a few moments in a customers' day to add to it. They have their entire day, their entire week or months with blogs and podcasts and phone calls and face-to-face conversations and emails ('member those) to share their experience with their friends and build their network and build their reputation, their standing, and connect with their network.

It's a bit semantical. But it really isn't about YOU, as the company. It's about them, the customer.

Other than this slight difference, Andy's newsletter and blog have got great content, suggestions, free wine possibly, tips and stories. So...read it. YOU'LL be better (customer or company).

5 Steps for Higher Net Promoter Scores

Jeanne Bliss shares 5 action steps you can take to start Mining The Gold... from your detractors...and generating higher Net Promoter Scores.

I'm going to list them (and comment on our status with each step). But you have to read her post to understand the why's and how's along with a full plan of action to utilize the data quickly to start generating better Net Promoter results.

Action Number 1: Know your Detractors by segment. [This is not something we've done...yet. We will.

Action Number 2: Know the reasons why customers are your detractors. [That we do know. We're able to address it. ]

Action Number 3: Conduct a monthly loss review. [This is something we do now on an ongoing basis. We've created a wiki where we itemize each customer's departure, including their reasons and doing it in their own words. Key stakeholders (myself, customer service and the sales agent) are immediately notified.]

Action Number 4: Get the voice of Detractors in the Ear of Executives. [ The data from the prvious steps accomplishes this as part of our normal routine. And where that doesn't capture the data, we have an open door policy, used regularly, for any additional input. It's always valid. Either I'm not understanding or it gives me a chance to insure a greater understanding of an issue with everyone in the company. ]

Action Number 5: Establish accountability to remove the detractor issues. [ Accountability is automatic when the information is shared openly with all parties. It's obvious who's responsible and done openly, from just the facts ma'am...then peer pressure and professionalism and loyalty to your colleagues does the rest.]

Again, read her post for a greater understanding on ways for Mining the Gold.

8 Easy Ways to Grow Your Blog

Blogs remain one of the most powerful, social-networking, word-of-mouth, viral, authentic, brand differentiating, PR-generating, search-engine maximizing, organic search-result ranking/generating resource on the web. Fundamentally, all web 2.0 social network resources build on the foundation of blogs.

Most of you readers are already on that page. But for those of you just discovering or begining to consider blogs as a resource...here are 8 Easy Ways to Grow Your Blog from Mack Collier at MarketingProfs.

I'd add a 9th: Write something worth reading.

I don't accomplish that all the time. But occasionally, I may say something interesting, quirky, strange, outrageous, useful, helpful, insightful. If not me, then I try to point you to others who do accomplish that feat: writing something worth reading.

Otherwise, you can just read advertising.

What's Your Story?

If you asked those in your organization that question, what would they say?

Here's a post at Guy Kawasaki's How to Change the World that articulates The Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing. It's based on Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing by Lois Kelly.

Our story is the David vs. Goliath. We've not yet defeated Goliath. And he hasn't defeated us, either. And we're getting some punches in. Or some rocks on his head...

Reading her list as Guy shares it makes me want to get her book.

Some customers you just have to let go

Good for Sprint. They fired customers they couldn't please, or more likely who wouldn't be pleased.

And when their records showed phone calls and conversations didn't work, Sprint used email. I support it.

I first thought how terrible...when I read that Sprint had used email to cancel 1000 subscribers. But then I read more and realized:

When customers call you 40-50 times more often than the average customer...

When they do that month after month...after month...after month...

When they ask for details on other customers' accounts...

You have to let 'em go.

And an email is completely appropriate way to communicate you're terminating the relationship provided you allow sufficient time for the customer to find alternative solutions for their needs, whatever that may be. Sprint did that by offering them until the end of the month to find a nother provider in order to keep their same phone number.

Why is email appropriate? Their calling record clearly shows that interactions by phone are not effective.  And email gives you a record you can refer to in future conversations with the data remaining unchanged regardless of a caller's memory.

We've had to terminate a few customer relationships where it became clear that a customer wanted/needed some service we weren't in position to offer. At some point, you have to recognize that you're not able to meet a customer's needs, stated or not, revealed or not. And we used email when  our experience showed that phone conversations with that customer were not effective.

I know we have a much shorter leash. We wouldn't wait for 6 months of more than daily phone calls of complaints to effect a change starting with ourselves...then ultimately...with the customer. If the service is that horrendous, then we're doing the customer a favor, honestly, to terminate the relationship.

According to published reports Sprint emailed 1000-ish customers to notify them they were terminating their service at the end of this month.  ( I guarantee anyone who has a ritual of a more than daily call to a cell phone provider's customer service line...for more than 6 months...could be considered to suffer from OCD. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 2.3% of Americans suffer from OCD, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Out of 54 million customers, the odds are that over 1 million of Sprint's customers suffer from OCD. And while the disorder ranges from distracting to debilitating, ritually calling a customer-service line, day-after-day, month after month, isn't going to make it better. )

The article states this group of customers called Sprint's customer service operation 40-50 times what the average customer would call. They'd done so for a series of months. Some have asked for details of others' accounts.

And Sprint realized...the match wasn't made in heaven. Whatever these customers needed/wanted...Sprint couldn't deliver it. After 40-50 times the number of calls over a period of 6 months to a year....the data was clear...the customer needed another provider...and weren't able to make that decision for themselves.

I thought good for them. You can't be all things to all people. You can't make all customers happy especially those whose service needs are outside your parameters.

However, you can make your employees miserable and your company suffer by not focusing on what you do best, those customers you serve best, the services you offer best, and those customers who want what you have to offer.

Individual cell phone subscribers who call their provider's customer service offices 40-50 times more than the average over a 6-12 month period don't want what that provider has to to offer. Trying to appease them will create a demoralized, unmotivated, disengaged employee and distract from your ability to support your real customers.

Sprint...good for you. Though I'm still staying with US Cellular.

Offshore Call Centers Fail to Deliver

So, class, let's review. Our most valuable business relationships are with our customers and our co-workers. And so we want to cut costs for maintaining, dare I breathe the words grow, enhance, develop, expand, excite, deepen, reward, embrace, strengthen...these same critical relationships.

Huh. Ok.

And then we want to communicate how important these people are to the organization by handing off their care and nurturing to...yes, people outside the organization.

It's the equivalent of a wet-nurse, a fulltime nanny, a care taker for these most important folks. They're so important...you want to hand off their handling so you can focus on what's important to you...everything but them.

That's in effect what outsourced call centers are: hired nannies for your customers. Yes, they're important. But not important enough for your time.

So you hire a contractor instead. And that frees you up for important meetings and one-time bonuses and bigger offices as now there's so much more room in your building...and time to think big thoughts about...strategy and planning...not boring details like customers, customer care, customer service...I mean they are only the ones who pay for those bonuses and offices and you surely wouldn't want to prioritize them in any way.

Data is finally being gathered to show that, offshore call centers  don't build loyal customers, don't deliver quality care, damage your reputation with your customers and generally aren't the quick-fix source for your company's needs.

Weird, huh. Throw away your most important relationships into the hands of indifferent parties and the relationship deteriorates. Then act shocked, SHOCKED!, at this outcome. Why I never...( no you never did).

Management Issues has some more discussion on how Offshore Call Centres Fail to Deliver.

How to have 4000 users waiting for your launch

Tony Wright posts at RescueTime Blog on How to Have 4,000 Users Waiting When You Launch.

Very thorough, detailed, description of what steps he took to reach this achievement. The common theme I saw was listening to your fans and evangelists, asking for feedback, being humble, implementing what THEY want...

But there's more. It's worth the read...if you want 4000 users waiting when you launch.

When to Dump That Great Idea

When do you dump that great idea? You know the one. It's the one you've convinced yourself is just...wonderful....it's creative...and colorful...and if only a few people would share that same recognition...ok, a few thousand are needed...but the flood starts with a trickle, right?

My pain experience has taught me it's easy to know when to dump the idea if I know what  my goals are BEFORE I begin. Start with the end in mind, I believe, is the correct phrase. What do I want to accomplish with this project? And what do I expect will be my costs to get there? When do I want to reach that goal. Time really is money.

Without those...it's hard to know WHEN TO DUMP THAT GREAT IDEA.

Wil Schroter at Forbes has some thoughts on When to Dump That Great Idea. He offers 3 ways to know when enough is enough. His first one, Paying Customers Never Show Up, is usually enough for me.

Best Small Business Tip: Dual Monitors

The best small business tip I've ever read: Use Dual Monitors.

Here's a picture of this arrangement in my office. Standalone monitor is plugged into the side of my laptop. Now I have twice the screen space. It makes it so-o-o-o much easier to move between applications. No longer do I have to minimize/maximize multiple applications. They both display at the same time, one on the laptop monitor and one on the stand-alone monitor. I can drag aps from one to the other, seamlessly.

I'm not even going to begin to offer you instructions on how to achieve this. But a few hints can at least drag you to the right areas.

Clearly you're looking for a connection on your hard drive or laptop to connect your 2nd monitor.

Then for PC users you're looking at Settings > Control Panel > Display > Settings Tab. After that you're on your own...Sorry.  But if I can figure it out...you can too. For Mac users...sorry.

Tip from Dr. John, Aka John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing.

Apologies for the picture quality. But, you get the idea.

What Makes You Different?

One of our sales agents was asked that question last week:  What Makes You Different?

Here's his answer: I answered your phone call on the first ring.

The prospect (now customer) replied: Yeah. You're right. No one answered when I called the other providers.

Sometimes...the process of differentiating yourself in a commoditized industry starts with that simple act. 

Now, behind the scenes, there are a few discussions and decisions to be made, priorities to be set, decks to be cleared, resources to be made available, a leave-them-alone attitude by management needs to be in place, reminders to be issued, incentives and recognitions and yes, penalties, too, to be delivered, accountabilities and responsibilities need to be communicated, understood, reinforced, celebrated...tracked and reported, more discussions...and innovation and experiments to grow that number of prospect calls and ways to speed responsses to customer needs, build on it, expand on it, etc, etc....failures, understandings of why, more experiments, etc, etc....

But bottomline, the simplest way to set yourself apart from your competition, especially in a commoditized industry, is to answer the phone calls of your customers and prospects. Be there when THEY need you.

That's the first step, the easiest step, to show you're different in oh-so-many industries and markets.

That IS what it's all about right? Putting your customers first?

What makes YOU and your company different?