Day 29 - Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Y'all!

Wishing you a Merry Christmas!

Day 28 - Value

I had the opportunity to inspect a 200 year old barn today with a timber frame expert.  For 98% of the world, the barn was a tear down - meaning no one in their right mind would try to save it.  Most of the siding was gone and one of the corner posts and supporting structures had been ripped away.  There were holes in the floor and decaying wood everywhere.  My expert guide fell in love with the structure.  He pointed out that most of the important parts of the building were in great shape and declared it a building worthy of salvage.

All of the beams were hand hewn out of white oak, a highly rot resistant and strong North American hardwood.  As we walked through and around the building, he noted that many of the beams would have taken 30 to 40 man hours to prepare.  With probably 50 to 75 beams in the barn, it became quickly obvious how much human effort went into felling trees and preparing the wood for structure that would ultimately become a barn. 

Somewhere along the way, the barn ceased to be valuable to the landowners and was left to fall into disrepair.  It is slated for demolition in the next few weeks unless an organization that I am affiliated with takes steps to save it.

Time marches on and despite the incredible investment of human capital in this barn, unless we come up with another suitable use for the structure, it will become part of a landfill.  Reminds me of many businesses today and even more to come tomorrow as the information age gains speeds and makes many businesses and professions, which relied on scarcity of information to make them valuable, obsolete in the face of the frictionless flow of information.

Day 27 - Find Your Tribe

I spent three days with Seth Godin and a bunch of really smart folks last week.  Seth talked a lot about his vision for the future and what we will all need to do in order to continue to be successful.  Central to his thinking is finding something at which to best "the best in the world" and then building a tribe who values this contribution.

I spent a few hours this afternoon with the father of one of my son's friends.  The father runs a small retail business in a highly competitive industry.  That being said, he is extraordinarily knowledgeable about his industry and products and has a lot to offer a certain discerning group of people.  Since he opened the store, he has been torn between catering to the masses, and fighting the battle of price and selection, and focusing on a more select clientele.  He understands that he can't compete with the local superstores but is scared to use his expertise as the "headline" for why people should shop at his store.

The only thing remarkable about his store is him and his knowledge.  I think he got that point tonight and wanted to follow up after the holidays to figure out how to better build his tribe. 

Day 26 - Pattern Recognition

Patterns can tell us a great deal about how to do things.  In some cases, the patterns are obvious and in others it takes a great deal of work to ferret them out.  The obvious ones are easy and unfortunately all too infrequent.  With more obscure patterns, both the challenge and reward become much greater.

The key is to lay out the data.  Whether you are looking at sales patterns, a successful formula for cold calling or trying to pick the best user interface, going to the charts will usually give you an answer.  The trick is knowing what to chart.  Sometimes the data doesn’t tell you anything because you haven’t organized it in way where it become information as opposed to just a bunch of points on a graph.

If the picture doesn’t tell a thousand words, you may not have drawn it correctly.

Day 25 - When to Quit

I spent an hour on the phone yesterday with a couple of entrepreneurs.  They have worked for two years trying to create a "tribe" in a relatively competitive internet sector.  On the plus side, they own a premium URL and have developed a decent looking website for not too much money.  On the minus side, they haven't gotten any real traction. 

They are tired and are hoping to get a quick cash hit by selling the business.

The URL is the most valuable asset of the business, but won't fetch too much money in today's market.  They really don't have a business so I am pretty confident that no one is going to swoop in and offer them any real value for their hard work.  What to do?

The catch-22 of their situation is that the business isn't valuable unless it has a tribe and it won't have a tribe until it is valuable.  My entrepreneurs have not figured out their market nor how to satisfy it.  Until they do, I think they will be either forced to take crumbs for the URL or face the prospect of shutting the business down.  I sent them back to look at their market and start testing to figure out what is drawing traffic.

Day 24 - Paying a Price for Integrity

I found out last Friday that I lost an important piece of business.  We competed with one other firm and went into the selection process reasonably well-positioned.  I made the decision to disclose to my potential client that we might be making some changes in the composition of the firm over the period of the contract.  I was very confident that no changes would affect our ability to perform the desired services.

When the CEO called last week, he told me that my disclosure had swayed them in favor of the other service provider.  Over a couple of back channel conversations that followed, everyone acknowledged the irony that I had acted in a way that they all appreciated and would hope that a service provider in that position would behave.  They punished my firm anyway.

The stronger message is that we did not distinguish ourselves sufficiently to overcome a relatively mild potential obstacle.  We are looking a lot more like a commodity than I would like and that is something I need to fix immediately if we are going to continue to provide these services.

Day 23 - Limitations

Argue for your limitations and they're yours!

from Illusions by Richard Bach

I have always loved this quote.  It has made me think twice before saying "I can't do" anything.

No one wants to lose any more than most people want to acknowledge what it actually takes to win.  It is scarier to completely commit and fail than to go through sufficient motions to demonstrate socially acceptable valiant effort.  Although widely misquoted, we know that Edison committed to making a working light bulb and viewed each unsuccessful attempt as a step in the right direction.

Sometimes the cost of success gets too high, but that looks a lot more like a choice than a valiant failed effort.