The Worst Business Plan Opening Lines

Each year, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, sponsored by the English Department at San Jose State University, challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.

Garrison Spik was the 2008 winner, offering this gem: “Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city, their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’”

Or, as Dan McKay wrote in 2005: “As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.”

You get the idea.

(I had a friend not so long ago tell me that he thought one of the best openings to a novel was found in William Gibson’s Neuromancer: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” I agree, though it's hard to top John Varley in another classic scifi, Steel Beach: "'In five years the penis will be obsolete,' said the salesman." Would that get you to read the second sentence? By the way, there is such a thing--if you enjoyed that second example--as a “bad sex award” in writing; see here. It'll make you wince.)

All of which brings us to the notorious business plan, just another form of communications whose opening line, rhetorically speaking, can be botched as badly as any atrocious novel.

And, while you may never write a novel, if you work long enough, you’re going to end up writing a business plan. It’s an entrepreneurial right-of-passage, and, for serial entrepreneurs, perhaps even a right-of-endurance.

There might be a million lines written about what makes a good business plan. But they all boil down, in my estimation, to intent; if you write a business plan for the right reason, everything falls into the place. And that reason must be: You want to convince yourself and your team, through a fact-based, well-reasoned argument, that what you are about to do (with your time, money, and sweat) solves a real problem in a real and compelling way.

That means you do the hard digging, visit the potential customers, and network through to real experts and real data required to convince you and your team that it’s all worth the pain of launching a business.

Compare that to the much more typical reason for writing a plan: You’re excited about your idea/technology/opportunity, have had a little success, and now need to raise capital. From that premise, you rely on secondary information, elaborate spreadsheets, anecdotal information, team resumes, and often end up with the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.

“You’ll love our team, and I can’t wait to write all about them—especially me.”

Or, “You’ll love our cool technology; in fact, we’re going to spend 90% of the plan (including lots of pictures and exciting flowcharts) describing it.” (And when we meet you, we won’t be able to shut up about it.)

John W. Mullins had an excellent article in the June 22, 2009 Wall Street Journal entitled “Why Business Plans Don’t Deliver.” (I’ve adapted it into a mind map below for future reference.) In it, he touches on many of the points above, as well as a few others. See here.

Mullins reminds us:

A good business plan starts with a clearly defined problem—something that’s really troubling or compelling—supported by evidence from marketing research, testimonials, letters of intent, or whatever, that the pain is real. If you can convince your readers that this problem is real, they’ll be hooked, at least for a while, as they read on to see whether you’ve found a solution that can resolve the pain. If the pain isn’t real, stop writing. There’s no need for a solution.

If you’re starting a business plan from ground zero, you might check Jack Derby’s site for good advice, or Guy Kawasaki’s “Zen” article.

By the way, if you ever find yourself writing something like, “The market size for my idea is $10 billion, so all we need is a .1% share and we’ll all be rich,” stop. You’ll do better launching a business plan with the opening line, "In five years, we expect to obsolete the penis."

At least that latter kind of an opening will get the reader to line two of the plan. Just don't quit your day job.

(Click for a better look; write for your own copy.)

TechCrunch: The New Talk-Radio

I subscribe to TechCrunch, a blog that provides a wealth of good, current information about Silicon Valley and technology in general. Michael Arrington is the founder, and I find the blog especially helpful and interesting when he does analytics around issues like the economic value of Facebook, or shares his competitive thinking around search engine and operating system wars.

TechCrunch also tracks the latest gadgets, a nice bonus.

Unfortunately, a subscription to TechCrunch also involves sifting through a fair bit of dreck, like the recent post by Arrington entitled “I Am Stunningly Uninterested In Diller And Malone’s Opinion Of Twitter.”

In this instance, “Malone” is John Malone, the chairman of Liberty Media; just read the first paragraph here and you’ll get a good idea for how remarkable this guy is. Diller, of course, is the famous Barry Diller (see here). Between the two of them, they have made money with nearly every business model conceivable, profited on a half dozen so-called technology revolutions, and remain two of the smartest guys in the world when it comes to combining money, people and technology into profitable entertainment and information businesses.

Arrington writes

Diller and Malone both preside over huge companies with a variety of assets. Some of those assets, like Ask.com and Expedia, would even be considered new media or Internet startups. But just like the truly old media guys, Diller and Malone are already dinosaurs in a fast changing world. They have no clue what Twitter is even about. So why in the world would we care what they think about its business model?

To support his argument, Arrington says that his father didn’t understand the music he listened to as a boy, either.

It’s hard to know even where to start responding to something this silly. In fact, that’s the very point: There are 119 comments to this post (and no doubt more by now) and a kind of firestorm, with Mr. Arrington probably sitting back in his chair having a good laugh and stirring the pot now and then just to keep the comments flowing.

The conclusion to be drawn is not about John Malone or Twitter, but about TechCrunch, which has essentially evolved into Talk-Radio, Twenty-First Century style.

Talk-Radio has long known that it's nice to have smart, informed callers, but better to have outrageous callers who light up the phone lines. Similarly on TechCrunch, it’s important to have thoughtful articles to post, but much, much more important to have articles that inspire passionate comments, generating eyeballs and clicks.

Because the real business model isn’t about delivering smart technology commentary to readers, it’s about delivering smart readers to advertisers.

When you understand that simple concept, it all makes sense.

Repeat after me: The real business model of Facebook is not about delivering cool social networking to Gens X& Y but about delivering their associated wallets to the Gap, Apple and Coke.

Again: The real business model of Twitter isn’t to create a hip new messaging system for scheduling after-dinner drinks or Mideast revolutions, but to plant the Twitter user firmly in the store or on the website of some Fortune 500 retailer.

When Peter Drucker said the point of business is to create a customer, I'm afraid he wasn’t thinking about you, the social networker. It turns out you are some form of raw materials, work-in-process and finished goods being sorted and packaged to attract the real customer.

Twitter is free! Facebook is free! YouTube is free! (Right, Chris Anderson?) For that matter, in 1929, Amos and Andy was free! All you had to do was turn on the radio.

These services are all free like chum is free to a big, dumb fish about to be hooked and gaffed.

This is a business model that is irresistable, venerable, and exceptionally easy to understand, whether it’s CBS Radio in 1929 or Twitter in 2009 (assuming, of course, that Twitter can make it work--at least they know how to chum). It's also a business model with loads of pitfalls but stunningly good upside.

That’s the reason, if nothing else, that you really do want to pay attention to what guys like Malone and Diller think. Because they can see past the shiny new toy, the latest revolution.

And why you can expect a steady assortment of incendiary blog posts on places like TechCrunch. It’s how we all get sorted and packaged before we are sold. It's hard to know if Michael Arrington really believed what he wrote about Malone and Diller, but it's' not hard to see how he made money doing it. That post was just good business. David Sarnoff and Bill Paley would have been proud.

Oh, and responding to these kinds of crazy posts just encourages more bad behavior on the part of bloggers like TechCrunch.

Come to think of it, writing blog posts in response does, too.

Wait; I’ve been had. . .

Nuts.

Golfing in a Postcrisis World

You are in luck, dear reader.

A few days ago two magazines landed on my desk, the Harvard Business Review and Golf. I subscribe to the former and find many of the articles beautifully researched and brilliant, so when a “we gotta make a splash on the newstand” issue crosses my desk, I take notice.

I do not subscribe to Golf magazine, as many of you know about my general fascination and high regard for the sport. In punishment, over the years, a free subscription somehow finds its way to me each month.

In any case, this particular HBR concluded, in the words of its editor, that “the landscape of business has been forever altered” and that we were now entering a “postcrisis world.” One of the articles within is entitled “Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis.” Another, “The End of Rational Economics.” A third, “Shareholders First? Not So Fast.”

Does anyone (who is not selling a book, or offering consulting services) really, truly believe that the world has changed so radically in the last year that we are entering some kind of brave, new future where all of our old skills have to be retooled? Where all of our thinking about consumers has to be altered? Where the shareholder won’t come first?

The second magazine, Golf, in a more modest way promises simply to improve our power off the tee.

I have been through both issues in great detail and offer you this short course on how to hit longer drives in this new postcrisis world.

You may need paper and pencil. Ready?

Here goes.

1. Prepare for slower long-term growth in global consumption. (Stand up straight with the club out in front of you.)

2. Shift investment to Asia. (Flex your knees until you feel comfortable and athletic.)

3. Focus on older consumers. (Bend at your hips down to the ball.)

4. Find ways to offer luxury on a budget. (Assume a more neutral grip.)

5. Seize immediate opportunities presented by the recession, particularly M&A. (Tee the ball so the center is just below the top of the clubhead.)

6. Refine your purchasing strategy. (Get wide in your takeaway.)

7. Foster adaption, helping people develop the “next practices” that will enable your organization to thrive in a new world. (Feel like you’re turning into the inside of your right leg.)

8. Embrace disequilibrium, keeping people in a state that creates enough discomfit to induce change but not so much that they fight, flee or freeze. (You should see wrinkles in your right pants pocket.)

9. Generate leadership, giving people at all levels of the organization the opportunity to lead experiments that will help it adapt to changing times. (Keep the club low to the ground.)

10. Monitor foundational changes in digital technology and public policy that could alter competitive dynamics. (Keep your hands as far away from your head as possible.)

11. Assess how well your company participates in the movement of knowledge, talent and capital. (Turn your shoulders more and swing your arms less.)

12. Cut back on protective services, since overseas travel is down and fewer employees are at risk abroad. (Make sure your back will be facing the target at the end of your backswing.)

13. Overhaul the management practices that have caused destructive outsourcing decisions. (Start down slowly.)

14. Visit the corporate data center and re-examine the logic of data-center ownership. (Focus your whole swing around your spine.)

15. Retool for the neighborhood general store of the future. (Maintain your address posture throughout.)

16. Stress-test your business model under different globalization scenarios. (Try sucking in your stomach.)

17. Dispense with the view that the only objective of management is to increase shareholder value. (Keep sucking.)

Now, SWING!

Hey--you missed the ball completely?!

After all that helpful advice?

I hate when that happens.

The Worst Consumer Experience in America?

We went to the (large, national) movie theater this weekend to see Public Enemies and decided, both of us, to have a small Diet Coke and small popcorn as just a little pick-me-up to get us to dinner.

Thus began what is probably the worst consumer experience in America, played out daily at a movie theater new you.

First, if you know what movie popcorn and Diet Coke cost to make, you already know that the food-buying experience at a movie theater is grand larceny. The justification we make to ourselves, of course, is that going out to the movies is an experience—if we wanted to save money we’d stay home, drink refreshing tap water, and watch Hulu. So, we think, we’re treating ourselves to a night out--what’s a little highway robbery?

However, it doesn’t stop there. The nice lady behind the counter next tries the so-called “upsell,” a way of adding injury to insult, which goes something like, “For a dollar less I can upgrade you to a giant Diet Coke and a colossal popcorn.”

We used to try this little number in cable television back in the 1980s. A reluctant subscriber would say, "No, I don’t want 50 channels for $19.95 a month because I don’t watch TV." And, in our brilliant reading of the selling situation, we would respond, “Well, in that case, I can give you 100 channels for $29.95 a month! That’s a deal you can’t possibly turn down!”

So, “No thanks,” you say, “I couldn’t drink a giant Diet Coke in a week,” only to have the nice lady smile and wink and say, “I can give you free refills with that!”

(I get it now. First prize is a week in Philadelphia. Second prize is two weeks in Philadelphia. Later, in the Men’s Room, I take a hard look in the mirror: When did I start looking stupid?)

When this offer of munificence is declined, the nice lady then moves on to the so-called “suggestive sell,” which is a simple “How about some candy with that?”

Oy.

Finally, when you’ve declined all 12,000 calories and are about to happily pay $15.00 for some 40 cents of corn and syrup, the nice lady says, “For only a dollar more I can add a box of Airheads!”

Vey.

Like relentless on-line spam promising to enhance our various body parts, someone must be falling for this upsell and suggestive sell and Airhead sell, because the theater just keeps doing it.

Now, though, the crushing blow: I walk over to customer service just before the movie for some help with a ticket, and while I’m standing there I see a sheet of instructions, posted on the wall in yellow, clearly in view of any and every customer requiring service. The instructions—I kid you not—spell out in 24-font a reminder to all counter help to push the Airhead sale this month (after, of course, the suggestive sell and the upsell) because the theater with the most candy-sold-per-person wins a crew party!

I take some small comfort in knowing that at least there’s a compelling economic reason—a crew party for the nice ladies behind the counter—to be treated like consumer dunces.

I suppose it's like the old joke, where the guy asks the lady if she'll sleep with him for a million dollars. She says, "Well, yes.'' He then asks, "How about for a dollar?" She says, "Of course not! What do you think I am?" To which he replies, "We already know what you are. Now we're just determining your price."

By standing in line for food at a movie theater, we've already announced what we are. Now the nice lady behind the country just wants to determine our price.

I sure hope everyone at the crew party will be served a giant Diet Coke and colossal popcorn. There will, I know, be no Airheads served because they will all be happily lining up at the counter to order food before the next movie.

Hitting the Toaster, Hoping for Money

The Long Tail, a book by the editor of Wired magazine, Chris Anderson, was published in 2006 and went on to become a best-seller.

I did not read The Long Tail because, before I had a chance to purchase it, I read this and this and especially this. It seemed Mr. Anderson’s theory wasn’t exactly wrong, but was so vastly overstated and misapplied that it lost much of its credibility.

Now, I bear absolutely no ill will toward the author--except when his magazine prints in a font two sizes too small—and hope he becomes rich or, I suspect, richer.

I just don’t want any of his wealth, in this instance, coming from me.

More recently, Chris Anderson has written Free: The Future of a Radical Price, and just as I was about to purchase it, a friend sent me this. It seems Malcolm Gladwell, whose books I do purchase (and love), has taken Mr. Anderson to task in Free for precisely the same sin committed in his first book: over-reaching.

When a theory works over here, it works. Hooray. But if it doesn't work over there, too, then there’s no sense in trying to make it so. Theories have limits like everything else.

Gladwell says it better that I:

The only problem is that in the middle of laying out what he sees as the new business model of the digital age Anderson is forced to admit that one of his main case studies, YouTube, “has so far failed to make any money for Google.”

Why is that? Because of the very principles of Free that Anderson so energetically celebrates. When you let people upload and download as many videos as they want, lots of them will take you up on the offer. That’s the magic of Free psychology: an estimated seventy-five billion videos will be served up by YouTube this year. Although the magic of Free technology means that the cost of serving up each video is “close enough to free to round down,” “close enough to free” multiplied by seventy-five billion is still a very large number.

I have written once, and remind you again, about the little boy who takes a hammer and hits his piggy bank, only to have all the money come flying out.

What does he do next? He hits everything in the house hoping money will fly out.

If your theory is that money comes out of a piggy bank, I buy it. Write a book and tell me about it. (I'll buy it--on my Kindle 2. :) But please don’t feel the need to convince me that money comes out of a toaster, too.

In this age of staggering economic uncertainty, the value you’ve provided me--to keep my eyes open and be on the ready with my hammer for the next available piggy bank--is a small certainty that still provides great value indeed.

Get a Grip, Boomers

As we made our way through the most recent season of graduation speeches, I was absolutely mortified to hear that Baby Boomers (1946-1964) all over the nation were apologizing to graduating Gen-Yers (also know as Millennials, 1982-2001) about the mess we’d made of the world.

The Governor of Indiana called the Boomers “self-absorbed [and] self-indulgent.” Thomas Freidman referred to the Boomers as “the grasshopper generation, eating through just about everything like hungry locusts.”

Even Ken Burns, who should know his history, opined that the boomers tragedy was to “squander the legacy handed to them by the generation from World War II.”

That particular WWII generation, by the way, used to be called the “Silent Generation” until Tom Brokaw stuck his big fat nose into everything and decided they were the “Greatest Generation.”

I don’t have a particular bone to pick with the Silents, though I should point out, just for the record, that if living through an economic Depression makes you great, there have been a half-dozen of those generations in American history. And while the Silents certainly sacrificed in WWII, the brains who planned the victory--leaders like Eisenhower--were from the so-called “Lost Generation.”

If you want to see a war the Silents helped plan and execute, think Vietnam. Not good. And we’d still have a lot of separate-but-equal civil rights misery if the Boomers had accepted that particular legacy from the Silents (thanks again, Ken Burns).

Like I said, Brokaw should have stayed out of it and just left the Silents alone. They have contributed a lot, no question. And the Boomers like them, so long as they remain silent--and turn in their driver’s licenses and get off the road before, say, they turn 100.

As for Gen X (1961-1981)—slackers all! If the Boomers are driving the bus to perdition, Gen X is sitting in the back seat, hurling epithets at the driver while sipping a latte and enjoying the view.

(For an earlier--and perhaps more balanced--look at generations, see here.)

Now that we’ve dismissed those two annoying generations, Boomers need to turn their sights on those pesky Gen Ys—our own children. We love them for sure, but Boomers were born competitive and we don’t intend to yield an inch to the Gen Ys now entering the workforce.

So, it was with great surprise that I read the July-August 2009 Harvard Business Review article by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Laura Sherbin, and Karen Sumberg called "How Gen Y & Boomers Will Reshape Your Agenda."

Huh? Do you mean to say, after despoiling the Universe, the Boomers have something in common with Gen Y?

It’s even better than that. The authors note:

The combination of Generation Y eagerly advancing up the professional ranks and Baby Boomers often refusing to retire has, over the course of a few short years, dramatically shifted the composition of the workforce; each of these generations is roughly twice the size of Generation X, which lies between them.

In military terms, Gen X, this is called a pincer movement. Be afraid.

Here, then, are the surprising takeaways from the article:

1. Given the large size of these generational cohorts—relative to Generation X—Boomer and Gen Y workplace demands have significant practical implications for how employers should design work environments to attract and keep talent.

2. Both Boomers and Gen Ys want to contribute to society through their labor; seek flexible working arrangements; value social connections at work and loyalty to a company; and prize other rewards of employment over monetary compensation. Both Boomers and Gen Ys are drawn to opportunities that allow time out to explore passions, hobbies, and good works.

3. Time Warner recently developed a mentoring program that engages people on both ends of their careers. In this case, some of the company’s senior executives were challenged to stay at the forefront of a rapidly evolving new-media landscape. Time launched Digital Reverse Mentoring where college students mentor senior executives on emerging digital trends, in the process teaching them about their values, behaviors and communications styles.

Plus, the Boomers had someone to get them coffee.

Only kidding.

4. Conversely, 42% of Gen Ys go to Boomers for mentoring, and their motto seems to be “Trust those over 50.” Heck, 42% of GenY ladies and 30% of GenY gents speak to their parents every day. (How else do you think they pay the rent to the Boomer landlords?)

5. 86% of Gen Ys and 85% of Boomers say it’s important that their work involve “giving back.” (Gen X are at 76%. Take that, Tom Friedman.)

6. A whopping 45% of Gen Ys expect to work for their current employer for their entire career. (Wow--that certainly breaks a stereotype.)

7. Gen Ys rank high-quality colleagues, flexible work arrangements a steady rate of advancement and promotion as rewards as important as compensation. Boomers rank high-quality colleagues, flexible work arrangements and an intellectually stimulating workplace as important as compensation. Not really much different.

So if Boomers and Gen Y are so much alike, why all the pathetic groveling at graduation?

C’mon, Boomers, get a grip. This is embarrassing. We’re half-way through the third lap of a four-lap mile and the mea culpas are already making my teeth hurt.

The truth is, Gen X and Gen Y, we’re not as strong or as good looking as you. (Though, of course, we used to be much stronger and much better looking.) But 50 or 60 years on this earth means we are sneakier. Much sneakier. And we’re done apologizing.

Indeed, that is the sustainable competitive advantage of the Baby Boomers: unapologetic scheming. And we plan to use it to its full advantage.

First of all, we’re not retiring for another 25 years. In the immortal words of Al Haig, “We are in control here.” And we just might sign up for a Facebook account someday. You’ve got that to worry about.

Second, we might also fix some of the broken things. Or at least make them a heck of a lot better. Then what will you have to complain about? That the iPhone 3G S is on backorder? (Steve Jobs: Unapologetic Boomer Supreme.)

Worse than that, and believe me on this: We’re never giving up our driver’s licenses. Maybe Dean Kamens (another Unapologetic Scheming Boomer) will invent a car we don’t have to steer. Maybe we’ll just run you off the roads we repaired with our magnificent stimulus package.

No matter. Just mark my words: We are Boomers, and we’re driving forever.

More Numbers: A Little Friday Catch-Up

It’s been a tad busy this week, so much so that thinking before writing was an at-risk activity. Nonetheless, I did pick up a few odds and ends to launch us into the weekend.

My post about data subsuming our lives came under attack twice, first when my family gave me an Easy Bloom soil sensor for Father’s Day (a true “machine in the garden”), and second when Wired magazine decided that the accumulation of massive amounts of personal data enhanced our lives.

(The Wired article reminds us that the hero of the cult TV series The Prisoner once cried, "I am not a number! I am a free man!)

I’m actually excited about sticking the Easy Bloom in the garden. However, we haven’t had any sun in New England for the entire month of June, so chances are I won’t need to be a weatherman—much less download the Easy Bloom into a global vegetable database-- to tell me which way the cucumbers are blowing.

Thanks to an invitation from gentleman Jonathan Vehar at New and Improved, I had the opportunity to see Dean Kamen present this week. Besides the Segway Personal Transporter, Dean’s company, Deka, is bringing clean water and electricity to emerging countries, as well as the coolest prosthetic arms you can imagine to handicapped veterans. As Dean said, and I paraphrase: A solider that lost an arm in the Civil War got a piece of wood with a hook. Until recently, a soldier flying a billion dollar jet at mach 2 who lost an arm got a piece of plastic with a hook. We can do better than that.

Dean also reminded the audience that the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stone. Someone decided we could do better.

By the way, Jonathan Vehar did a superb workshop on innovation at a Sensitech offsite back in 2004, and I can highly recommend him and New and Improved if you are looking to enhance your thinking around innovation, or get some projects jump-started during these dark days of our hard times. A recession is always a good time to remember: We can do better than that.

I end my short Friday post with some bad news, however—news that makes me feel a bit like President Bush when he declared victory in Iraq:

The beavers are back. This may be a job for New and Improved. Stay tuned.

Beethoven's Blackberry

I’m going to let you in on a little secret, and if you drop what you’re doing and start now, you, too, can profit from the greatest literary gold rush since Harry Potter.

Not long along, San Francisco-based comedy group Kasper Hauser created Obama’s Blackberry, published by Little Brown. In it, we get a hilarious look at what’s really going on behind the scenes in the Obama White House. For example:

HBomb: r u still mad about the primary?

Barack0: no, why?

HBomb: why am I flying coach to Zimbabwe?

Barack0: have fun eating pretzels and watching “Marley and me” :)

Pretty funny. Pretty quick to write. Pretty darn profitable, I’m betting.

In fact, my prediction is that this book will spawn an avalanche of imitators that will bury us. (I can already hear the printing presses in Wisconsin warming up.) A “blackberry book” will assault you at every turn this Christmas season, and grace the tank of your commode for years to come. (Followed, of course, by Steve Job’s Twitters. Guaranteed.)

So, I took a blank piece of paper and six minutes and wrote the following three scripts. They’re yours. Think of it as priming the pump. A starter kit. Go crazy.

By the way, I don’t use a blackberry so I don’t know any of the secret language. I figure the 22-year-old editor at Doubleday will fix that.

Beethoven’s Blackberry:

Vienna07: enough with the noise up there!

Beeth9: what noise?

Vienna07: oi. dah-dah-dah-daaaah. dah-dah-dah-daaaaah. Over and over.

Beeth9: You can hear that?

Vienna07: What are you, DEAF?

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Bill Gate’s Blackberry:

Bill$: i need to spend some money.

M$e$linda: again? what this time?

Bill$: AIDS in africa. maybe polio too.

M$e$linda: how much?

Bill$: $125 million. . .

M$e$linda: i thought we agreed that anything under $150 million was ok without asking?

Bill$: we did? i thought it was $100 million. i think $100 million is better.

M$e$linda: hmmm. ok. go ahead and fix AIDS.

Bill$: thanks, buttercup!

M$e$linda: btw, i’ll be late for dinner. i need to return something at the store.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Aristotle’s Blackberry:

Athensgal: want to join me at the Parthenon this afternoon?

Arstot?: do I?

Athensgal: do you what?

Arstot?: want to join you?

Athensgal: i’m asking.

Arstot: why?

Athensgal: hey--are you back doing that stupid "method-thing" again?

Artstot: What do you think?

Athensgal: i think sometimes you make me want to drink hemlock.

Now, imagine if a really funny person were doing this? Imagine if four or five really funny people sat in a living room with beer and wine and did this all weekend? Imagine if a book agent had promised them new year’s riches if they got three drafts done by, say, September 15?

So, consider yourself prepared. Skip work for a day and write. Maybe now you’re even rich.

Here’s the only thing left to prepare for, and I promise you it’ll happen: Jesus’ Blackberry. Promise. It's coming and you can't stop it. You heard it here first.

Twitter, Pain, and the Livery Stable Blues: Culture Trumps Technology

Not long ago I used my great-grandmother and her chicken-plucking machine to suggest ways in which gender can influence the adoption of new technology.

Recently, I’ve stumbled across a series of examples which focus more broadly on ways that culture—at least all of those phobias we classify as culture--can speed or retard the adoption of technology.

For example, when Ashton Kutcher began using Twitter, his adoring fan base embraced the messaging technology. Meanwhile, much of the rest of America continued to read and revel in a slew of “I don’t get it” articles. Now, what happens if Americans decide Twitter has been the key to supporting democratic resistance in Iran? How much of a boost will accrue to Twitter if the technology is—culturally speaking--suddenly part of the Great American Way?

Sometimes culture hurts. The first operation under anesthetic occurred on October 16, 1846, a momentous day that forever changed medicine. (Indeed, the room where the operation took place at the Massachusetts General Hospital is still called the Ether Dome.) So, it might seem odd that the existence of ether and its benefit had been common knowledge for decades, and the idea that anesthesia (via nitrous oxide) could extinguish pain had been recorded as early as 1525.

Over 300 years of unnecessary and excruciating pain. Why?

Before 1846, prevailing religious and medical opinion held that pain was an essential part of the human condition, not to mention God’s way of keeping us from harming ourselves. Much of the medical establishment believed it was pain that kept a patient alive during a procedure. Doctors who endorsed pain-relievers, therefore, were cranks who preyed on the fear of their patients, frightening others from having surgery and undermining public health.

Despite the miracle of 1846, it would take the rest of the nineteenth century to convince the entire medical establishment that pain was unnecessary, as well as confirmation from the Pope in 1957 that anesthetics were not an obstacle to interior purification. (See Mike Jay’s complete and excellent article here.)

You laugh, I know, but have you heard your wife after her (male) obstetrician rolled his eyes when she requested an epidural during delivery? The moral disapprobation by those who don’t suffer pain, directed at those who must, continues, regardless of the technology at our disposal.

In 1917 Victor recorded a group of New Orleans musicians known as the Original Dixieland Jass Band in what is generally regarded as the first commercial recorded jazz. The two songs, Livery Stable Blues and Dixie Jass Band One-Step, went on to sell millions of records. Millions. In 1917. Indeed, this first jazz record annihilated the reigning record champs, Enrico Caruso and the John Phillip Sousa band.

What happened next? Victor went on to release dozens of records to exploit the commercial success of jazz, right?

Nope. Victor disassociated itself from jazz. So did Columbia. One industry magazine claimed that “the future of our industry lies in encouraging the sale of high-priced goods and the best records. . .[not] cheap machines and jazz records.”

The problem, culturally speaking, was that high-brow, white America associated jazz with blacks and illegitimate activities. (Jazz, the myth went, was created in the brothels of New Orleans). Thomas Edison expressed his disdain for jazz, as did the wives of Messrs. Morgan, Harriman and Phipps. The Catholic Church and Salvation Army vigorously fought jazz. The founder and president of Victor was the top financial contributor to the Republican Party in 1928, putting him in the sphere of Mellon, Rockefeller and Guggenheim. The vice president of Victor married into the family that produced John Adams and John Quincy Adams.

You see the problem. Victor stumbled into a cultural train wreck and could only recover by backing away from tainted commercial success with new recordings of European operatic and classical music that would appeal to the “best class” of people.

(So as not to make this post too long, I’ll simply say: jazz prevailed. So as not to completely confuse the subject, the Original Dixieland Jass Band was composed of white musicians. But that’s a different post for a different day.)

Sometimes the culture wars play out in a smaller technology community. In The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman tells the fascinating story of how IBM—a poster child for proprietary software in 1998—approached the open source Apache community. “IBM said, ‘We would like to figure out how we can use [Apache] and not get flamed by the Internet community.’” IBM understood that culture trumps technology, and their subsequent measured, respectful approach to the open source community led to the incorporation of Apache into WebSphere; today, Apache powers two-thirds of the Web sites in the world.

On an even smaller scale, and in motion today, the battle to acquire Silicon Valley’s Data Domain between neighbor NetApp and “buttoned-down East Coast EMC” is just such a clash of cultures. (See here.) The Wall Street Journal reported, “Silicon Valley companies don’t like being taken over by out-of-towners, especially East Coasters like EMC.” Similar cultural angst played out when Sun Microsystems rushed into the arms of Oracle, escaping big, bad IBM.

Was that the best result for investors? Will Data Domain allow culture to supersede value creation? This is not an inconsequential point some culture-deaf shareholder might make to a CEO.

Similarly, a patient might well have argued to his surgeon in 1840 that God had other ways to let him know he was human than having him suffer through an amputation.

Technology matters a lot. But, as Twitter may find out with their impressive showing in Iran, culture often matters more.

(P.S.—The first two recorded jazz songs, Livery Stable Blues and Dixie Jass Band One-Step, can both be purchased on iTunes and available on your computer/iPod in about 45 seconds. Such a thing would seem, for 1917 America, a miracle. Frankly, it still seems that way to me.)

How Bout Bringing "Massacre Day" Back?

Not only has Bunker Hill Day survived for another year (see here), but (the always clever) Alex Beam has found historians who, worried about national amensia, would love to bring back Massacre Day (as in Boston Massacre), Pope Night and Powder Alarm Day.

All floating holidays, or course.

Happy Bunker Hill Day!

Interviewing the Blunt CEO

Not long ago, I blogged on a terrific interview with the CEO of Amgen, one of a series of CEO interviews featured in "Corner Office," Adam Bryant’s weekly column in the Sunday New York Times.

Since then, I’ve read all of Bryant’s interviews, which capture the thoughts of such luminaries as Will Wright (Sims, Spore, StupidFunClub), Clarence Otis Jr. (Darden), Dany Levy (DailyCandy.com), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft), Eduardo Castro-Wright (Wal-Mart), Anne Mulcahy (Xerox), Ken Sharer (Amgen), John Donahoe (eBay), Terry Lundgren (Macy’s), Nell Minow (Corporate Library), Richard Anderson (Delta Air Lines), Robert Iger (Disney), James Schiro (Zurich Financial Services), and Greg Brenneman (CCMP).

That’s a pretty heady line-up, and combined, the repository of some real leadership and organizational wisdom.

With that in mind, I’ve distilled the interviews into one, very blunt interview that tries to capture the flavor of what these CEOs are saying (kind of what Pandora does for music). Note that none of them actually said what I wrote below (mostly); it’s just my best guess at what, with a few beers and not being quoted in the Sunday New York Times, they were really saying. Think of it as an unvarnished interview with the “blunt CEO.”

Q: Tell me about meetings.

A: They take a lot of my time, and I don’t like them much, so here are my rules: Show up on time or I’ll kill you. End in about an hour or I’ll kill you. Send me the PowerPoint in advance and make sure everyone has read it before the meeting, cause if you take “the long and winding road” through every slide, I’ll kill you.

Q: Anything surprise you about the CEO job?

A: Everything I say is amplified. My thinking-out-loud can stop a discussion. A suggestion becomes a mandate. I have to be very careful, go slow, ask questions. People often take what I say, even my musings, at face value. (In fact, about that “killing stuff” in the first question--can we forget I said that?)

Q: What are your weaknesses?

A: I’m impatient. I’m anxious. I’m a little neurotic. I can have a bad temper. I run people over if I’m not careful. I can’t always stay focused on you when you’re answering a question because my mind is already on to the next point. I need to listen better. I know that, and I’m trying. Really.

Q: What annoys you most?

A: When people dump a problem on me and haven’t worked a solution. In fact, one way I assess talent is to look for the people who are creating big, far-ranging, creative solutions to our biggest problems. Don’t drop the Rubik’s Cube in my office unless you have a plan for twisting it into shape.

Q: Anything else?

A: Complicated stuff. Business isn’t easy but it should be simple. There are only three or four things that we can focus on as an organization at any one time. My job is to make sure everyone knows what they are. Your job is to stay focused on them, and keep your team focused.

Q: Anything else?

A: I should be able to tell you who we are and what we do and stand for in about ten seconds, without any buzz or double-talk. Likewise, when I ask you a question about your business, you should keep the answer very focused. Once you launch into a monologue I know you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Q: Anything else?

A: It’s hard sometimes for me to find the balance between optimism and realism. And it stinks when good people are working hard and being successful but the economy and environment keep me from rewarding them as they deserve.

Q: What do you look for in employees?

A: IQ. Emotional intelligence. Integrity. Passionate curiosity. Energy. The ability to connect the dots across disciplines and throughout the environment. Tech-savvy. Great communication skills; in fact, if you can’t write, I probably won’t hire you.

Q: How do you keep up with the business?

A: I stay in touch by staying in touch. I get into the field two days a week or more. That makes some of my employees uncomfortable, but being CEO can be a solitary job. I can’t function without unvarnished feedback from customers, and employees who deal with customers. And I’m used to incoming missiles, so don’t be afraid to launch them.

I also seek really candid feedback from HR and my board. I don’t like it any better than you do, and I ignore about a third of it (just like you do), but the rest is indispensible.

Q: How do you manage your time?

A: I get up early, I exercise, I reserve time to think and stay organized, and I keep my meetings efficient. I’m hooked on the Blackberry/iPhone. But if you use yours in a meeting, I’ll kill you.

Q: Anything else?

A: Yes, can we strike that last comment?

The Problem with Statues

Per my recent historical postcard post, I’ve stumbled upon a few very current examples of how our history is purposefully shaped by our present. It is an ironic idea because we often think of the past as fixed and inviolate; in fact, our efforts to control the past often exceed those we invest in setting our future.

Where the past and present meet most violently is, oddly enough, in our statues, those monuments intended to be permanent reflections of great people and great ideas. To wit:

· When Lafayette made his triumphant tour of the United States, his last stop was to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill. On June 17, 1825 he marched with 30,000 spectators (including 40 veterans of the battle) to the dedication on the hill, which he termed his “North Star.” Bunker Hill was the quintessential moment for many in the Revolutionary generation, the first moment the colonists realized they could stand toe-to-toe with the British. Today, there’s a budget movement afoot in Massachusetts to eliminate Bunker Hill Day (June 17) as a paid day-off for government and schools in Boston’s Suffolk County. Lafayette’s “North Star" is yielding to financial griping over “pointless days off.”

· Around Baillet-en-France, French archaeologists have unearthed dozens of nine-foot, 1937 era Soviet-built sculptures (like a tank driver and a textile worker) honoring the international brotherhood of workers. Straight from the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 Paris World Fair, the Soviets gave some of the statues to the French, but when Communism fell out-of-favor the statues were buried. (A 1952 coin in one of the pits provides some clue as to timing, but nobody is quite sure the circumstances) Now resurrected, the statues remain problematic, as Stalin-era art not entirely copacetic in France.

· Back in America, we’re moving statues around, too. Earlier this month a statue of Ronald Reagan was installed in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Each state is allowed two statues, and it is a big deal to change them: both chambers of a state legislature must vote, the governor must endorse the decision and then the federal government is petitioned. So who got knocked out by Reagan this time? Thomas Starr King, a Universalist minister and “the orator who saved the nation,” credited by Lincoln as keeping California in the union. That’s not a bad resume, but obviously not enough to keep Reagan out of the rotunda.

With all of this statuary in motion, I direct your attention to a book by James W. Loewen (author of the fabulous Lies My Teacher Told Me) called Lies Across America. In it, Loewen visits and discusses the sites of statues and monuments which do more to obscure history than enlighten it. He also gives us his top 20 candidates for toppling, a few of which I list here:

• Every statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, who appears 32 times in Tennessee (more than Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk and Andrew Johnson combined). A brilliant cavalry commander with a mixed military career, he became the first national leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

· The marker for the “horrible Indian massacre” of 1861 in Almo, Idaho, should at least be taken to a museum, since the event it described never happened.

· Statues of Christopher Columbus, or at least the ones in California and Ohio claiming he proved the earth was round.

· The most hated monument in America, that celebrating the White League in New Orleans.

Perhaps Americans could steal a page from the Spanish, whose socialist government has banned fascist icons. That means Gen. Francisco Franco’s statue was uprooted from the city square of Santander and banished to a local museum last December. The Spanish government reasons that no Nazi symbols are allowed in Germany, no statues to Mussolini are on display on Italian streets—why should the symbol of their painful past be on public display?

In Mickey Mouse History, Mike Wallace reminds us that Serbian troops besieging cities in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 1990s made a point of blowing up museums, monuments, libraries, and archives. It was, he says, an effort at “historic cleansing.”

It is a reminder that we move history at will--even the big, heavy variety--to suit our purposes.

It also makes me glad we do not erect statues to CEOs, economists and Federal Reserve chairmen.

A Quick Update on Bing. . .

from TechCrunch. It's still very early in a long, long race. Prior posts here and here.

Beavers Redux: Making the New York Times

Last November I wrote about the beavers raising havoc in our neighborhood, flooding the backyards of our downhill neighbors.

Today, at least in our little corner of the universe, we can claim victory: no dam, no beavers, no flooding. I don't know how it happened or where they went, but I do know for a fact that the neighbors who broke the dam didn't move the sticks nearly far enough away from the stream. So, when the beavers return--and they will, though, again, I don't know how--they will have ample ammunition for their new assault.

I mention this because today, the New York Times highlighted the explosion of the Massachusetts beaver here. As one expert said, "There are at least 30,000 beavers all over the state. . .[each of] which can reach 60 pounds and are the largest rodents in North America. . .Beavers are the ultimate ecosystems engineers."

My response: A large, pervasive, tenacious, industrious ecoengineer rodent is, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, still a rodent.

Now that they've made the New York Times, I'll let you know when their national tour reaches our neighborhood again.

More Historical Postcards: Found, Fading and Destroyed

Last August I was reading about the Battle of New Orleans and, recognizing the profound impact the battle had on Jacksonian Americans, offered the idea of “historical postcards”-- those events that are seared into the memory of an entire generation.

At the time I suggested five postcards for the Baby Boomers: 9/11, the Challenger disaster, the moon landing, MLK, and JFK. (I specifically excluded the Carlton Fisk homer, but only just barely, and also considered the OJ trial and Diana accident.)

I also wondered about (what I’ll call) the “Stan Musial problem,” which Bill James offered up in his marvelous Historical Baseball Abstract (1986): “The image of Musial seems to be fading quickly. Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem to me that you hear much about him anymore, compared to such comparable stars as Mantle, Williams, Mays and DiMaggio, and to the extent that you do hear of him it doesn't seem that the image is very sharp, that anybody really knows what it was that made him different. He was never colorful, never much of an interview. He makes a better statue.”

Why does that happen, I wonder? Jim Thorpe was voted the greatest athlete of the first fifty years of the 20^th century. Where’d he go? Mary Pickford was the most popular actress (and maybe best-known woman) in the world, auctioning off one of her curls for $15,000 to raise money during WWI. Where’d she go?

The Mexican-American War of 1846—ever hear of it? It’s the war that Winfield Scott taught Grant and Lee, Longstreet and Pickett how to fight, the war that saw the most dramatic amphibious landing before D-Day at Veracruz--not to mention the subsequent securing of the “Halls of Montezumas” in Mexico City. Long afterward, the son of Dwight Eisenhower would call Winfield Scott “the most capable soldier this country has ever produced.” (High praise from the son of General Eisenhower.) Where’d Scott go? For that matter, what happened to George Marshall (who raised an army of 7 million and was said to be the closest thing to George Washington that America produced in the 20^th century)?

How about King Philip?

Sorry—that last one was a bald self-promotion.

Anyway, ever since that “postcard” post, I’ve been on the prowl for the lost and found of history--and stumbled upon some fascinating examples. You'll like them. Coming up next.

The Zen of Fish: Everything I Knew About Sushi Was Wrong

I just finished The Zen of Fish, and I am now completely and totally intimidated about going out for sushi.

Author Trevor Corson observed a female sushi-apprentice and her classmates over a 12-week class at the California Sushi Academy, reporting on the personalities, the fish, and the history of the fish in a beautifully written tale. The only problem is, I also discovered why the chef's been scowling at me from behind the sushi bar all these years. To wit:

1. Stirring green globs of wasabi into your soy sauce overwhelms your capacity for taste and smell and is very distressing to the chef, who probably got up at 4:30 a.m. to find the freshest fish possible. Fish that you can no longer taste.

That's at least one reason he's always scowling at you. And by the way, real wasabi is a rare plant that is notoriously difficult to grow; what you're eating is a mixture of horseradish, mustard powder, citric acid, yellow dye no. 5 and blue dye no. 1. Which you have now mixed in soy sauce to make soy goo. Which won't kill germs or parasites, contrary to urban myth. Only your tastebuds. Only the chef's self-esteem.

2. The point of the pickled ginger is to cleanse the palate between servings of different kinds of fish. "Not eating a slice of ginger between each type of fish. . .is like mixing five different wines and trying to taste the Chardonnay." Unless, of course, your tongue is covered with soy goo. In which case it's hopeless anyway.

3. The most popular form of sushi in the U.S. is the big sushi rolls, loaded with carbs, sugar, fat and sodium. So, all that healthy sushi you've been eating over the years--isn't.

4. Dunk the fish side in the soy sauce, not the rice side. Eat the piece in one bite, not two. Use your fingers, not chopsticks. And miso soup should be eaten at the end of the meal, not the beginning. Yep--you've been doing it all wrong. And he's been scowling.

In fact, if sushi were a Toyota most of us would be driving on the wrong side of the road, sitting in the passenger seat barely steering with one foot on the wheel and sticking the other foot out the sun roof. Going backwards. In the breakdown lane.

5. Sushi refers to the seasoned rice, not the fish. We even had that wrong. By the way, Sushi chefs call rice shari, a Buddhist term that refers to tiny pieces of the Buddha's bones. Just thought you should know that.

6. A pandalus shrimp starts out male, spends a few years as a bachelor, loses his virginity, and then turns into a female. (And then we eat him. Her.) And scientists think humans are the most evolved species?

7. I won't even tell you about salmon.

The Zen of Fish is a fascinating story, a little bit like the "class for boys" we all were forced to attend in sixth grade: Really? You mean it's done that way? All these years I thought. . .well, never mind.

(P.S.--I had great sushi with friends at Douzo on Dartmouth Street in Boston a few weeks ago. It's worth visiting if you are in town.)

Why I Love (The Idea of) Bing #2

This is my back-of-the-envelope (Michael Porteresque) competitive map (click to enlarge) of the search business, now that Microsoft's Bing has officially launched. (See my prior post about Bing here.) As the map will show, I am not an expert in competitive search. Nor do I know if Bing will be successful. But, as a person who appreciates good strategy, and loves to watch cash-rich, brilliant companies compete (in one of the largest and fastest growing markets in the world), I offer the following takeaways from the newest search duel:

1. Google is vulnerable, not because they are not a great competitor (which they are), but because any product or service with a switching cost of “zero” is vulnerable.

I love Google search. Click. Click.

Hey, now I’m trying Bing! I love Bing, too.

Click. Click. Now I’ve forgotten about search completely and am watching a dancing baby on YouTube.

See my point, oh fickle reader?

Furthermore, Microsoft thinks it has found some real weaknesses in the Google fortress: 25% of search clicks involve returning to a previous page (suggesting frustration), and people don’t find what they want about half the time.

That said, Google search is still pretty darn good, and the company has been brilliant in building superstructure around its core (Picassa, docs, blogger, etc.). This has created some element of friction in switching, so the cost isn’t really “zero.” But it’s not enough yet to stop folks from trying Bing, especially folks like me who still have lots of computer territory occupied by Microsoft, and switch between Microsoft and Google regularly (e.g.—I’m typing this in Word and will paste it into Blogger; no sweat).

I read an analyst who said something like “Microsoft doesn’t understand the lead Google has in search.” Now I just need to find the old quote by the auto analyst who said Toyota didn’t understand the lead GM had in automotive.

2. Unlike Microsoft Search and Yahoo—which seem to me to be “me-too” products, a hard-to-sustain, unprofitable competitive position in Michael Porter’s world--Bing appears to be a truly differentiated offering. If so, that gives Bing a real basis for competing.

3. Bing is hardball, in the sense that Microsoft is going after Google’s core search business. Everything else at Google is noise compared to search. That’s called commensurate response, since Google (with its Docs) has gone after Office, one of Microsoft’s crown jewels.

4. Every additional share that Yahoo loses in search makes them less expensive to Microsoft—a marriage that will almost certainly happen. (Logic: Yahoo is an undifferentiated Google and is rapidly losing value. Yahoo is more valuable to Microsoft than anyone else.) Which is why I said that Steve Ballmer is a genius: he attacks one foe and drives another into his arms with a single move. Bartz and Ballmer are saying exactly the things—“You’re ugly” and “So's your mother”—that two star-crossed lovers always say before they fall into each other's arms. (Please refer to Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew for additional competitive insight.)

5. The genius who built Bing also honchoed Yahoo search. Quelle coincidence! (Like my French?)

In the very early pages of Competitive Strategy, Michael Porter suggests a tantalizing possibility, saying that sometimes companies can compete in two ways simultaneously. Hmmm. He says it's hard, and tricky, and not for the faint of heart, but. . .Bing makes a splash and builds some share. Yahoo continues its death spiral and sells to Microsoft (better late than never). Now Microsoft wires together three search engines and has a third of the search market, with a differentiated product. Not to mention a long, long horizon and lots of cash on the balance sheet.

Of course, Google won’t be sitting still. As Marissa Mayer said, search is still a very young business. And you can bet really smart people who get paid to do this for a living have mapped out steps 3, 4 and 5 on a white board in a war room somewhere west of the Mississippi (the Continental Divide? West Shoreline Blvd?).

For the rest of us: This is Coke vs. Pepsi, 21^st century style. It’s smart people doing great strategy, it’s a blast to watch, and net-net, everybody ends up drinking more soda. Let the games begin.

Why Bing is Genius (and Other Unassailable Truths)

Bing is a search engine that finds and organizes the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions.

++++++++

There are very few things in business that remain constant.

Take, for example, our powerful, unassailable, bedrock American companies. Standard Oil had 90% of refinery production circa 1910. A&P, with 16,000 stores and up to 75% share in a number of cities in the 1950s, became the Standard Oil of food retail. GM, boasting 50%+ world domination in the 1960s, became the A&P of automotive. And, of course, Google (at 60%+ search share) is now the GM of search.

See the trend? All unassailable companies. All built to last.

In fact, a paper coming out next month in the California Management Review says that, empirically speaking, few companies make it to their 40^th birthday. That’s equivalent to the 35-year life expectancy of a person in the Middle Ages, which Thomas Hobbes described bluntly as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” (Note to any of my children reading this: That's a person in the Middle Ages, not a middle-aged person. There is a difference.)

So it sure is nice, in the nasty and brutish world of the American corporation--a world that brings unassailable companies to their knees on a regular basis--that we can tie our anchor to a few constants. And, while Google isn’t one of them (I’m afraid, despite our current fascination—see Seth Godin’s dismissal of Bing here), the competitive world order of Michael Porter is.

In Porter’s iconic 1980 Competitive Strategy, the HBS professor gave us three, and only three generic ways to compete: overall cost leadership, differentiation and focus. (As Monty Python said, “Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three.”)

So, this week when Microsoft announced Bing, their newest entry into the search wars, it had to, ipso facto, fit one of those strategies. Or not--in which case it was doomed.

By my reckoning—whether Bing is ultimately a success or not—it fits almost perfectly into Porter’s scheme, and sets up a classic, knock-down-drag-out competitive battle with Google.

It also accomplishes some things vis-à-vis Microsoft’s dance with Yahoo that make Steve Ballmer brilliant.

Though, I might add, brilliance is one of those unassailable qualities of a great CEO, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I love Bing. More in the next post.

May 09 Digest

When I wrote my 50^th birthday essay I mentioned that I was in the generation that straddled the slide rule and calculator, the one (as a friend reminded me) that still “rolls up” the car window, the one that shared one computer with 300 people in its first job and now has (about) 300 (often broken) computers for five family members at home. 

Even now, I wish Apple would add an AM radio to its iPod, though I expect I am in a minority "straddle" in this regard.

The other awkward straddle my generation did was between that “mixed-drink-greatest-generation” and the younger, wine & beer Gen X’s.  I never went on a three-martini lunch, for example, though there were still plenty of those going on when I took my first job on Wall Street.  On the other hand, I’m not sure I know my favorite micro-brewery or micro-winery from my elbow, so I kind of missed that wave as well.  It turns out, however, that help is on the way.  It seems Esquire has identified the one mixed drink that everyone should be able to make: the Old Fashioned.  So, just to help my alcoholically-challenged generation, I’ve included it as your “Cultcha” this month.  (Click on the mind map below, or write me for a copy).

What makes us happy?  If you track over 250 men for three generations you might have a clue, and it’s not what you think.  Take a look at the Harvard Study of Adult Development (in the Atlantic) that included a president, a bunch of cabinet members, and more than a few folks who didn’t make it into their 50s.

A.G. Lafley of P&G shares his thoughts about the four things that only a CEO can do.  It gets to the questions that a CEO should never ask his or her board, because the answer is assumed.  

Should I grow fast or grow profitably?  (Yes.)  

Should I invest in long-term or short-term projects?  (But of course.)  

Should I centralize or decentralize?  (You bet.)  

Lafley does a great job spelling out some of the basics.

There’s also some info in the mind map on great places to hike this summer, as well as ice breakers for early summer cocktail parties.  ("Did you know that rich parents favor firstborn children more than poor parents?)

The mind map below also has links to all of May’s Occasional CEO posts.

For updates, some of you know I’m a little skeptical about the social networking craze, at least as a sustainable set of businesses worthy of carrying the Silicon Valley mantle.  A May 26 article from the WSJ about Twitter was gasoline for the fire.  I will share with you my five favorite quotes:

Headline: “Micro-blogging site has 32 million users but hasn’t built revenue model or management team”

“Mr. Williams, 37 years old, and Mr. Stone, 35, say they don’t feel any external pressure to change their approach.  Instead, they want to develop the company slowly in order to find people who fit with its culture, which they are working to define through rituals such as family-style lunches and weekly 'teas,' or happy hours.”

“Meanwhile, Twitter is facing pressure to prove it has staying power, as a good number of users lose interest in the service after trying it for a while.”

Twitter raised $35 million from venture capitalists in February, on top of about $20 million previously raised.  That month, Twitter received a $255 million valuation that makes it unlikely the company would sell for anything less than $1 billion, people familiar with the matter say.”

“Twitter will need more ‘business-type folks eventually,; says Mr. Williams, but those are the ‘parts of the business that we haven’t fleshed out yet.’”

Finally, there was a great article in the WSJ about Baselworld, the international watch show.  Despite sliding sales in this recession, it doesn’t sound like the high-end watch folk have scaled back much.  In fact, I think I spotted five watch ads on page 2 and 3 of the Journal the other day—and not a watch under $10K.  Which is why I still love Swiss watches.

Here’s to good weather in June.

Why Didn't I Get Promoted?

About a year ago I wrote about (what I’ll call) one leg of the Bermuda Triangle of Managing People, the so-called “Game 3 employee.”

I’ve often thought that one of the toughest things in business is to manage the "Game 3 Employee." That’s the person capable of delivering superior work--and who does so for stretches at a time--but habitually falls off (for whatever reason) to perform at an unacceptable level. 

As an addendum to that article, I’ve noticed over time that good managers invest a great deal of time in these “Game 3” people, coaching, setting expectations and working to improve poor performance.  I’ve also noticed that great managers do not, at least after the first failed attempt. 

The second leg in the Bermuda Triangle of Managing People (and I freely admit it might be the Bermuda Octagon by the time we’re done) is getting to the end of a good performance review, especially one where all goals have been met or exceeded, but realizing that there are important intangibles holding the person back from a promotion that you have not been able to clearly articulate.

In the June 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review, John Beeson goes a long way toward defining the essential intangibles that propel an executive ahead in his or her career in his article, “Why You Didn’t Get That Promotion.”  (I thought Beeson's information was worth keeping for futures, so I did a quick mind map which I am happy to share (via interactive pdf or Mindjet reader) if you drop me a note at ericbschultz@gmail.com.)  Beeson writes:

In most organizations, promotions are governed by unwritten rules—the often fuzzy, intuitive, and poorly expressed feelings of senior executives regarding individuals’ ability to succeed. . .Many of the unwritten rules are especially hard to nail down because they don’t pertain to technical ability, industry experience, or business knowledge.

These rules, Beeson says, fall into three categories.  For short-hand, I have defined them as Nonnegotiables (like ethics), Career-Busters (like the kiss of death: “he’s not a people person”), and Capabilities to Cultivate, which is a short but rich list of articulated skills that may bail you out of the Bermuda Triangle one day.

Beeson ends with some advice on how to ask, and how to listen for feedback.  He suggests, should you be on the receiving end of such a review, watch closely for vague terms, like you “need more seasoning.”  Then probe and push to get at the underlying issue.

No matter which chair you sit in--giving or receiving--clarifying these kinds of unwritten rules is hard work but fair, kind and worth the effort.

(Please click on mind map for a better view.)