Email to Philippa

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Walt

Her name is Philippa, (Pippa for short), and yes, she is short, five feet tall and yes, she was named by her mother in memory of her father, Phillip, known to his contemporaries as Phillip the Great.  The “Great” was earned during his years at Dupont where he was a legendary, some say tyrannical, executive.  When He married her mother, she was 26 and he was 54.  He died while she was pregnant, so Philippa it was.

In a loosely formed chain of events, Philippa went into business too- only she went through, what in her father’s day was considered the back door.  At forty, Philippa founded a healthcare business, providing staffing and human resources services to several large hospitals in her town.  At least, that’s what the business looks like today.  When she started out, she was everything: the provider and the person provided; in other words, her business was a one woman consulting gig that grew to something quite wonderful.

Today she manages two hundred healthcare professionals, and thirty HR and IT and Administrative Consultants.  She is financially conservative, self-funded (with a line of credit), and owns one hundred percent of the business.  Her husband, Howard, is the CFO and they have three children, two of whom are well launched, and the youngest was just accepted at Dartmouth.  Philippa has not had a vacation for six years.  The demand to grow the business has been relentless, and the future is bright, blindingly bright.  While the nest is emptying, she and Howard (aka sweetie) are not feeling as sweet towards each other as they did in the past.  These circumstances are what sent her out to find a community, some credible conversation about being a CEO.

At first she looked for a CEO women’s group, but she couldn’t find one.  She settled on a coed CEO support group who met monthly for a day.  Their charter was to discuss issues particular to being a CEO, expose members to current thinking, and explore ideas about running businesses.  At her first meeting, she felt a wave of relief being in the same room with peers who were grappling with many of the same issues she was grappling with.  That was five years ago.  Her group became a safe harbor, a great place to air out ideas, hair-brained or otherwise.  What pleased her even more was how much she learned simply from listening, CEOs doing the same thing, throwing their ideas out for consideration, observing, and contributing.  She felt herself growing by leaps and bounds.

We join Phillipa at a meeting.  It is 7:30 AM.  The group is seated talking, like a three generational family gathered around a giant ornately carved, highly polished, wooden table made centuries ago, probably built for state visits or country house dining.  Lit by muted yellow light from a chandelier, they sit, three women, and nine men, dressed across the spectrum of business garb, jeans to Armani, Phillipa and the other women preferring tailored suits and Etro scarves.

The scene plays out like the first moments of a family reunion: some joy, energy sparked by reconnecting, a bit of banter, and for a few, nervousness.  The meeting is called to order by Jack, a professional facilitator who blends them, keeps them going, and on purpose.  They begin with their monthly ritual Check-In, an update from each about themselves and their businesses.  The Check-In often morphs into dialogues, extended conversations, taking the better part of the morning and is an important part of their monthly time together.

In many ways, Philippa’s CEO group is her second family.  They come together every month for a whole day.  Most have been together for five or more years and know a lot about each other.  Being opinionated people by nature, they hold strong opinions about each other.  The strongly held opinion about Pippa (as she is called by her siblings) is that she works too hard, that she is going to burn out some day but she won’ t even know she is burning out because she’ll be too busy to notice.  That’s her MO in the group.  She is well liked, even loved.  The group is in awe of her success and her effort, but she just can’t seem to take her foot off of the accelerator.  Her CEO siblings have said this and more in a dozen different ways, how concerned they are, though, most freely admit, she shows no sigh of cracking so far.  At this, heads shake, smiles emerge, and another month passes.

We join Check-In as Harvey, a 350 pound asthmatic finishes his update.  He is having trouble breathing today but he is animated.  It seems he is being booted upstairs to the Board of directors by the same people he so carefully chose to serve on the board.  He is talking about betrayal and inevitability.  Turning to his right, wiping sweat from his brow with a white starched napkin, he says, “well Pippa over to you because that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”  Laugher.

“Thank you Harvey.  Well, I’d like to start with an announcement.”  Pausing to gather her thoughts, she continues.  “After our last meeting, you broke through – Pippa you work too hard, Pippa you need a vacation.  I heard you.  I left our meeting, went home, poured a large glass of wine and told my sweetie we’re taking a three-week vacation.  So off we go, departing next Monday.”  Loud applause, smiles, cheering too, her siblings are pleased.

“No wait, there’s more … I bought first class to Maui, and prepaid a nonrefundable three-week package at the Four Seasons.  We’re locked in, nothing but sun, sleep, good food, trashy novels, swimming, and being together.”  More cheering and applause.  Beaming now, Pippa scans the table when Tom, a thirty something pre-revenue CEO pushes his hand through long hair and says, “yeah but will you be able to read your BlackBerry on the beach?”  The family erupts into laughter.  Pippa blushes and says; “I h-a-v-e thought about that, yes!”  More laughter.  “In fact, Tom, you’ll like this, I’ve calculated that in a typical three-week period I receive between 1,500 to 2,000 bloody emails.”  Someone off to her left groans.  “But you see I have a plan.  First of all, I’m not going to read business email while I’m in Hawaii.  I’m not going to even open the company email account for three weeks.”

Faces darken, brows knit, eyes avert, heads shake imperceptibly.  In silence, her family sits stunned.  She continues: “I’ve told everyone, customers and team members alike, that I’ll be gone and out of email range, that I’ll not be responding to emails no matter what.  I’ve told each client, customer, support agent, administrator, everybody: I’ll be gone; contact this person or that person.”

Harvey, mopped his brow again, leans forward as if speaking to the center of the table and rasps, “Are you sure about this Pippa, is this the responsible thing for you to do, to go from no vacation in five years to jumping ship for three weeks with no contact?”

“Good question, Harvey.  Look, I employ plenty of people who can keep the business rolling for three weeks, thanks to you all, thanks to your poking at me, Pippa get a team, Pippa hire high, Pippa get ahead of the curve.  I’ve listened to you all and I have a good team, I do!  And if it turns out my team isn’t up to it, well, this is a good time to find out.”

Tom laughed and said; “Yeah, but it’ll take you three weeks to read three weeks of email when you get back, you know…you’ll never catch up!”  Heads nodded, agreeing, looking at her, waiting for her response.  A tennis-like match had broken out: Pippa, sibs, Pippa, sibs, Pippa, sibs, and now the sibs were waiting for her return.

“Yes Tom you’re right!  I’d never get through all those emails, and do my real job too.  But I’ve been thinking about this.  It’s not just the vacation – there’s something wrong with email, or at least email as we use it to communicate.  I’ve been looking more critically at my email, and how it adds to my workload.  Tom, you’ve nailed it, I can’t read two thousand old emails and do my job too.  So I’ve decided to do my job.  All of my email will be read and vetted by others, and sent to the appropriate person.  Others can handle the work load if I actually let them do it.

One of the things I’ve learned from this group is that you get what you expect from your people.  If you expect mediocrity, or indecisiveness, you get it.  I plead guilty.  I’ve decided I expect my people to be managers, leaders, good customer relations people and we’ll see how they do.

So that’s the big news, but there’s a footnote, one I would’ve never reached without your poking and prodding.  After the dust settles, after we have some data from this experience, we as a company are going to take a long hard look at how we communicate in general, and eventually, how, as a business, we can better manage email.”

There was a long too silent pause.  The floor squeaked as her sibs shifted in their seats.  “Well,” Pippa said, “come on what do you think?  You might as well tell me.  I’m going to do this no matter what.  Sorry that I’ll miss our next meeting but I’ll be on the beach, so it’ll be two months before I see you again.  Give me your best shot, I’m good for it!”  Pippa smiled confidently.

Harvey put his napkin on the table, and ever so slowly, began to clap, looking at his sibs as he did, and like small children, following the lead of a teacher, hesitantly one by one, they all joined in to full applause.

The sibs were saying we don’t know what’s going to happen but there is more good here than bad.  They were saying please do check in with us so we can learn from your experience, because we have email problems of our own, and we have communication problems of our own, and many of us have an over-controlling over-working problem too.  The sibs were saying: we’re behind you Pippa!

And you, what are your thoughts?  Are you a little disbelieving or are you excited for Pippa – are you clapping too?  However you react to Pippa’s announcement, consider your own experience.  First of all, we all know that it’s not much of a vacation if you’re reading business email half the time.  Pippa has taken the responsible step of taking a real vacation away from work for three weeks.  She has set up contingency plans and has told her team what she expects.  She’s also decided not to sentence herself to the purgatory of digging out from hundreds of emails (most of which aren’t really worth reading in the first place).  This means Pippa will return to work with a good tan, rested, and better able to do her job.  She’ll find out what she needs to find out by talking to her team and others.  And it won’t take her long to get up to speed.

Oh yes, and the people whose job it will be to cover for her while she is gone?  Well, they’ll be better for the experience, a potential growth spurt, exposing her people to real challenges.

Then there is the greater issue: email.  This is a topic worthy of a book, not just a blog.  The advent of email as a communication device has gone from a time-saving convenience and cleaver technology to a tidal wave of unintended consequences in overflowing in-boxes and gigabyte message storage.  But because we all have email, and because email is the main method of “sending stuff” and because it’s so handy, we’re all being beaten to death by it.  So yes, as for email, our ever courageous Pippa will wrestle with that too.

Taking the data from this experience, she’ll work with her team to enhance the useful attributes of email and to dampen the unintended consequences.  It will be a carefully tailored solution, one that makes sense for Pippa and her organization.

Epilogue:

Over the recent holidays, several companies (including Volkswagen) announced email policies to reduce the “crush of email”, email access during the winter holidays, email on weekends, and email outside of office hours.

We’ve thoughtlessly bought into the “be connected 24-7” idea, the “if you work longer you will get more done” idea, the “more data is better communication” idea.  Yet there is considerable evidence to demonstrate that these things aren’t true – for human beings …even highly motivated human beings.  It’s the human part that gets us.  It’s also the human part that’s what true leadership is about… being a leading human, like Pippa.

Have a look at this Wired Magazine story (a follow up) that may have caught Pippa’s eye.  I know it caught mine.

Aloha

 

Posted in Build a Culture, Entrepreneurs & Managers, Growing your Business, Leadership, Live your Life, Vision | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

It’s All About the Money!

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Walt

If I paint you in money, you will turn green, not the “save the world green”, but the envy, angry, I-can-never-have-enough green, the same color that seasick people turn when the floor is moving beneath them and they are about to throw up – that green.

So sayeth the Muse of Enterprise

A Parable

Let’s start a business, and the reason for this business is so that I get a lot more money.  Off I go, start to chop wood, deliver it to people and I get money.  This is good!

Now I hire you, and tell you I will pay you $2.00 an hour and I want you to work hard.  Pretend $2.00 per hour is a fair wage.  So you start work for me.  You chop and for a while I chop too, really just to show you how to chop and make sure you aren’t screwing around.  You chop and discover that chopping wood is damn hard work.  At the end of the day you’re exhausted, your hands and arms are really sore, and you’re thinking that $16.00 you’ve earned today isn’t much given how hard you had to work.  You go home.

Next day you say to yourself “what the heck, I could use more money so I’ll go to work.”  As the day progresses, I notice that you aren’t chopping very hard; in fact you’re chopping at half the speed as you were yesterday.  I get angry and yell at you, “chop harder!”  While I’m standing next to you, you do chop harder.  But as soon as I’m out of sight, you go back to the half-hard chopping.  When the day is over, you’ve chopped half as much wood as you did the first day, your hands are still sore as can be, and your arms are about to fall off.  I come around, see your half stack of wood, become mad as hell, and open my mouth to yell at you.  Only I catch myself and think for a moment….  I think; I like this business better when you’re chopping than when I’m chopping, so I don’t yell quite so loud, although I’m stern.  “You show up tomorrow with a better attitude or I am going to find someone else to chop” I say.

That night your car breaks down and you need more money to fix it so you can go out Saturday night with your friends.  So you roll out of bed and go to work on day three and start chopping, about half as hard as you did on day one, except when I’m around, when you chop a little harder, just hard enough so that I won’t yell at you.

Several weeks later I hire a second person and you show her how to chop.  At the end of that day the two of you have chopped about as much wood as you chopped by yourself on your first day.  But you think this is fine, because that’s about as fast as a person ought to chop given that this is lousy work.  You like this new person and at least you’re having some fun together when I’m not around.

I’ve become an executive and am out getting orders, chatting up customers and delivering wood.  I too like my new job, but I’m angry at the goofing off and what I call “low production”.

One day I go to a business seminar where they teach me about incentives so I return and tell you two choppers that I’m cutting your pay in half, but will give you each a bonus if you chop enough wood to exceed a chopping quota, and if you chop a mountain of wood, you can even get rich (in wood-chopping terms).  I think this is very clever, very capitalist-like, and also serves you right for being so damn slow and only chopping half as fast as I think you should be chopping… but I’ll show you who’s boss!

You two come in the next day and the two of you chop like crazy, for half a day.  Pretty soon you realize that if you chop like crazy all day you might earn what you earned before the new incentive plan was put into place.  You’re both pissed about this and begin to slow down a bit, until you’re back to the old rate.  Hands are sore and shoulders too.  I however, am feeling righteous:  I showed you who’s boss, I have more wood, and I paid you a lot less money to get it.  Another thing they taught us at the seminar, in fact that was the name of the seminar; was “It Is All About the Money”.  I’m feeling great.

Until two weeks later when neither you nor the new person show up for work and I’ve a giant order to fill.  I’m furious and phone you at home, waking you up to ask you “What’re you thinking, not coming to work?”

And you say “I am thinking you’re a greedy jerk and I don’t like working for you.  My car is fixed and we’re looking for work together.  We want to work some place where we’ll be treated like people, not underpaid wood chopping robots…”

I’m outraged!  Full of indignation and fury, I’m chopping like a fool to fill the orders, saying to myself, “Don’t they don’t get it?  Well by heaven, I’ll find choppers who will – they’re a dime a dozen.  This is all about the money!”  I chop and curse, and chop and curse, and chop and curse until the sun disappears, the dark brings cold, sweat starts to freeze on my upper lip, and I yell in frustration, throw down the ax and shout: “why me? why Me? why ME?”  Picking up the ax for one more angry chop, I swing, splitting a large piece of wood, which somehow almost explodes as I hit it, and a large piece flies out hitting me in the head, right between the eyes.  I black out, for I don’t know how long.

I dream I’m running along a forest path, chasing a bag of money that is somehow levitating in front of me, just out of reach.  The path twists and turns through light and dark.  Chasing the bag, I see an old woman on the road ahead, standing and watching me with old woman eyes, her thin lips stretched in a not so pleasant smile.  As I approach her, I’m also gaining ground on the bag of money, so I prepare to push her out of my way, but as I reach my hand out, it goes right through her, ephemeral, like she was a moving picture person projected onto this trail, but I don’t have time to stop.  I’ve almost caught up with the bag, and lurch forward.  As I do, the bag also lurches forward, springs out along the winding trail up a hillside, and I follow, now sweating and breathing in panting gasps.  This chase goes on and on, and I keep passing this old woman, three, then four times.  Finally, the fifth time I see the old woman, I stop and say to her “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m watching you run.”

“Why don’t you make yourself useful, grab that bag for me.  It would save me a lot of running!  Can’t you see how tired I am, this is really hard work?”

“Why don’t you stop running and try something different,” and she smiles that not so pleasant smile at me.

“Something different?  Something different? I don’t need something different I just need to catch that bag, and I will, you’ll see.”

“Not this way you won’t, that much is certain.”

“Sorry?  What’s that mean… not this way?  Of course I will, I’ve almost caught it four times now.”

And in the dream I run off, chasing the bag for a while longer.  Finally I see the woman again, I am frustrated out of my mind, I stop again and explode: “Will you stop looking at me that way, I’m doing my best!”

“Yes, I can see that,” and she laughs a dry whispery laugh.  “Only your best is to do the same thing over and over and over.  How’s that working for you, son?”

“Not very well,” I admit.  “I don’t seem to be able to catch it this way.”

“No of course not,” she says, “because you have it wrong.”

“What’s wrong”?

“The money.  Business isn’t about chasing the money; business is about building a community that makes some money.  The better the community, the more money it can make, but community building and business building take some time, some trust, some fairness, and a little luck.  Stop running young wood chopper, and start building,” she said.

I woke up with a splitting headache.  You two woodchoppers happened by and helped me up.

“Are you hurt?   My gosh, what happened to your head?” you both ask me.

I smile and say, “I’ve made a mistake, but it will be okay I think.  I’d like to discuss a new compensation arrangement with you, one that will pay you fairly, give you some benefits, and I want us to see if there are better ways to chop wood too.  We need to make this a great place to work, learn, and earn money together. What do you think, want to give it a try?”

Epilogue… Some economists say it’s all about money (stimulus), but in life this is only true for a while.  It’s really about people and life, not just the money, although money is certainly a part of the story, but just a part.  Some businesses have learned this from the old woman on the road; and they are called Nordstrom and Gore Ind. and Cosco and Google and Microsoft, oh yes, and WoodChoppers-R-Us, an up and coming wood store coming to a town near you.

Who says dreams don’t come true?

Posted in Build a Culture, Entrepreneurs & Managers, Growing your Business, Leadership, People. People. People., Strategy, Survival | 2 Comments

“A Piece of the Rock” (A fictitious conversation based on many real ones with entrepreneur owners)

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Walt

“I’ve been thinking.”

“About?”

“Well, Jessica, John, and Amanda have been with me from the beginning, four years.  I think they need something more, something to keep them committed.  I don’t want to have to replace them.”

“I understand, do you think any of them are looking?”

“It’s not that, no, it’s that I want to be proactive for once.  I want to keep them from looking, you know, get in front of this.”

“Okay, what are we talking about here?”

“I think I am going to have to give them some ownership, you know a piece of the rock.”

“Really…?”

“Yes, it’s what I would want if I were in their shoes.  I do that and they’ll be tied down for the long haul.  Then, if I ever sell they’ll get a payday.  Also it’ll get their attention.  Once they’re owners, they’ll be really driven, as owners, not just employees.”

“Are you feeling that Jessica isn’t working hard enough.  Or John.  Or Amanda for that matter?”

“No, they’re working their butts off, but you know, I need them to grow up, to step up to the next level, and I think this is a good way to do it.”

“Have they asked for shares or ownership?”

“No, but I know what people want: they want to own something.  Everybody does.”

“Perhaps, no sorry, I’m certain that’s not true; not everybody wants to own something as you put it… especially when it comes to a business and especially so when it comes to an entrepreneurial business.”

“That’s nuts – of course they do.”

“No it’s not nuts.  What is nuts is a person with what I will call a regular run of the mill risk profile being locked into ownership in an entrepreneurial business.  Have you forgotten what it was like around here three years ago?”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Sounds like I have to… come on, three years ago, in the middle of what was going to be your best year ever – remember -  you made a simple mistake, miscalculated, and then came the perfect storm as I recall and gigantic losses appeared like the earth opening up to swallow you and your whole company.   You think people want to own a part of that?”

“We’re smarter now – that won’t happen again.  Besides, if they own shares, they’ll have to share in the bad as well as the good – that’s what I’m talking about, getting my key people in the boat with me.”

“With you in the boat?”

“Yes, I mean really in the boat, you know skin in the game.”

“And sharing your pain.”

“Yes, if need be and sharing the rewards too, all of it.”

“And when it comes to making big decisions, allocating money for investments or setting salaries, buying new equipment, you want them sharing in that decision too?”

“Yes, that would be good.”

“What if they disagree with you?  What if they don’t like you taking a raise or giving a raise to someone you see is a rising star, what do you do then?”

“I’ll just out-vote them.  I’m not giving them control, or anything close to control – you think I’m nuts?  I’m just getting them locked in, that’s all, a piece of the rock.”

“I see.  So the deal is you give them minority shareholding.  They can talk, but you don’t have to listen and they have put up their houses for the line of credit along with you, but you’re the controlling voice… is that it?”

“Yes, and they will have pride of ownership too – that matters to people.”

“Yes it does, that is if they really own something.”

“Yes, you’ve got it now.”

“Yes. I have, and I still think it’s nuts, and you must think they’re nuts too.”

“Look what’s wrong with it?”

“Well for openers, you had a partner once, and it was a disaster.  Now, you’re considering three of them.  What happens if you have a big loss again, and Amanda has to tell her family that their house may not be theirs anymore because the bank wants to call your line of credit, what do you think it will be like – in the boat – then?  And while we’re at it, how easy do you think it will be trying to guide the business back to profitability with three frightened partners, 8 hands tugging frantically at the wheel at the same time… just imagine that for a moment.”

“You’re just dwelling on the negative-  that never helps anyone!”

“Actually it’s a little negative, but you and I both know that being an owner involves profits and losses, as in making money and losing money.  Your putative partners may have seen you make and lose money but they haven’t experienced it themselves.  Even if you convince them to do this, most people aren’t equipped to handle it and worse, I doubt that this is really what they want in the first place.  Have you asked any of them what they want in life, financially, what they see for their futures?”

“No, but everyone wants to own something.”

“We are not talking about buying a car here.  John can buy a car, he can pay for it, he can drive it.  And so he can have that pride of ownership.  If you’re hit by a bus (as they say), John can’t run this business, so being tempted into a deal to own part of a business only to discover that he can’t control it is a grim experience.  With a car, you can just park it in the garage and turn the engine off.  No real loss.  No long term consequences.  The business though, keeps going no matter what… someone has to drive it or dismantle it and pay the bills.  Do you honestly believe that any one of your great key people is up for that type of experience?”

“All right I see your point.  Well how do I get them to step up?”

“Why don’t you find out what it is they really want, then put together a package that will allow them to earn what they want over time, bit by bit, earning each part along the way.”

“How do I do that?”

“Develop a relationship with each of them where you talk about the future, in particular their futures and the company’s future, and how it can all fit together.  You’ll figure it out from there.  Over time as they progress, they’ll also feel the effects of having a personal and financial developmental program, one that meets their needs, and something you can support.  Then every year or two, revisit the conversation.”

“What if they want more than I want to give them, what then?”

“Then, good to know now.  But my experience is that they may say they want this and that, but if you keep questioning them about their wants, most people will settle into a pattern that gives them some security, a future, some fun, and new challenges.  Over time you can help make most of that happen.”

“Sounds complicated.  What if they say they want shares anyway, like I think they will?”

“Everybody says they want shares as if one can pick up a bunch of shares off the sidewalk and get a piece of the rock as you put it… but you and I both know it doesn’t work that way.  So yes they say they want shares, but if you ask more questions, you’ll find out that what they really want is security or retirement, or vacations, or college for their kids, or a new house on a golf course and so on.  No one, well almost no one, wants to put their house up to the bank, or have to give back last year’s bonus because someone in the company screwed up.  That’s when having a piece of the rock is like having the rock tied around your neck and being thrown off a bridge in to a cold running river. So in many cases, when your employees say they want shares, they can’t really imagine what ownership means.

“But I did it.”

“Yes you did, and I suggest you keep your shares right where they are.  As for Jessica, John, and Amanda, find out what they really want and give it to them.  It’ll take a little more effort up front – the conversations, but it will be worth it in the long run for all of you.”

“They’ll want to know what happens if I sell?”

“Well, if you think it’s in your best interest, you can make a deal with each of them to give them a portion of the proceeds as a kind of buy-out bonus, so they can have a pay day too.  But only if you want to do it and only if you think it won’t cause them to be too focused on the buy-out bonus as opposed to running the business.”

“I don’t understand that last bit.”

“Unfortunately, it sometimes happens that good key employees become fixated on possible future financial gain (Read “Drive” by Daniel Pink).  This fixation sometimes changes their work strategy and motivation from, say, being a dynamic challenging executive to an employee being on the job to stay on the job no matter what so as to get the bonus someday. So a strong executive turns sycophant or a “yes” person or some derivative- to everyone’s detriment.

“I get it.”

“Good, if Jessica, John, and Amanda make it for the long haul, they will appreciate it too.”

“Oh, another question.  What if my key execs want to buy the whole business from me?”

“Another conversation entirely, we’ll talk about that another time.”

Posted in Build a Culture, Growing your Business, Leadership, People. People. People., Strategy, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

I Could Make a Million or The Secret To Success (Most of the Time)

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Walt

A wagon pulled by two tired horses appeared on the main street of a small town.  Behind the driver was a tarp stretched across a hillock of boxes, ropes criss-crossed to hold a load in place.  The driver reigned the rig to the livery area, unharnessed the horses, gave them some grain and water, tied them up and moved toward the general store two streets away.

He was stopped half way along the raised board walk by another man sitting outside of a saloon, chair tilted back against the wall seemingly half awake, half asleep.

“Hey Jacob, you forget who your friends are?”

The wagon driver stopped; bent to look under the fellow’s hat and laughed, “Sam, my god, Sam, How the hell are you?”

“Why I’m just fine Jacob, better yet for seeing you.  Do you have time for a drink, something to eat, a visit?”

“You know I do, only I have some business to attend to right this moment, let me finish and we’ll have a meal together and catch up, shall we?  About an hour?  Will that work?”

Steaks, potatoes, beer.  They ordered the same.  Jacob asked,” what have you been doing with yourself, Sam – all these years, what is it now, twenty?”

”No wait, don’t tell me,” said Sam.  “I’ll break the spell.”

After a moment Sam said “ I never moved very far from here, you know, just looking for opportunities to make a little money, have some fun, get ahead.  Came close to a big win, oh… about four years ago, but well, luck always seems to flirt then move off when I get too close.”  They both laughed.

“What about you? Where have you been” asked Sam.

“So yes you stayed I guess, and I moved off, way off actually, two hundred miles north, out of the valley completely, to the frontier, you know, a crazy place on the frontier, only I learned pretty fast that I couldn’t out crazy the crazies, so I started a hauling business.  The crazies can speculate, mine for gold or homestead and farm, so I noticed that they needed to get stuff in and out of the area and I was just the guy to do it, one trip in and one trip out, then two then three, well it wasn’t glamorous, but it worked.   Now I have ten wagons, and they just go in and out loaded both ways, normally anyway.”

“Ten, my god!  Where did you get the money for ten wagons, rob a bank?”

“No, I had to borrow some money for the first wagon, drove it myself for two years, paying back the loan first then saved enough for another wagon, then bought the second and so on, you know ten years or so and I was an over night success!”

Both men laughed.

Sam said,” Jacob, that just doesn’t sound like you, you were always a little nuts, one load in and one load out?  Ten years, twenty years, load after load, how did you stand it?”

“Stand what?” asked Jacob.

“God, the tedium, the boredom?”

“Well, first of all, when you borrow a bunch of money and the banker wants his money back, you don’t think much about boredom, you think how good it will be to get him off your back.  Then when you own one wagon free and clear and are putting a little money in your pants you begin to think how nice it would be to have two wagons earning for you.  I kept thinking that all the way up to ten.  I have yet to be bored by any of it, believe me.”

Sam jerked his head as if to shake a fly off his nose.  “Yeah, well can’t say I’m not happy for you Jacob, but golly, where is the adventure, where’s that gambler fellah I used to know, the one who would bet on anything?”

“Well,  I guess he stayed here with you Sam.”  They both laughed again.

Then Sam said, “Yup, I do like the feel of a good bet,  $10 right on the horse’s nose,  let her rip and see how goes.”  He paused for a moment, then said  “You know  there was a hell of a chance to get some land where the train tracks were supposed to go.  So I took a flier but the tracks went somewhere else, then there was a load of furs I bought sight unseen only to discover that they were moldy and not worth much of anything.  I know there are winners and losers and if any of my investments had ever hit, well I would have been able to buy all ten of your wagons and have money left over for a house on a hill in the best part of town.  Only, well like I said, close but never quite in the basket, no, but boy what a haul I could have made.”

Jacob shook his head, smiled at his old friend and pushed his plate forward a couple of inches toward the center of the table, wiped his mouth with the napkin, tossed it on the plate and winked.   “Sam, Sam, Sam.  I really do wish you could have hit on one of those deals.  You’d look good living on the top of the hill running this town.”

Sam smiled, pursed his lips and said: “you know Jacob,  I do have something brewing.  Do you think you might be interested in a venture that could make us both really rich?”

Posted in Entrepreneurs & Managers, Financing your Business, Growing your Business, Strategy, The Secret Sauce | 9 Comments

In-Between Time

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Walt

Imagine, like so many businesses; you were hit broadside by this recession.  It came out of nowhere and slammed into your company like a careening bus on an iced-over highway, threatening to destroy everything.

Part of the problem was that you’d spent the last four years of the “great overheating” (2004 to 2008) answering the phone, taking orders, barely keeping up as new customers all seemingly appeared out of, well, nowhere.  Everyone worked hard, vacations were cancelled, and weekends put on hold as you expanded, took on additional lines of credit, claimed new territory and took market share.  And then there was the relentless need for more people: you hired frantically even though it was very hard to find people.  And of course you built “brick and mortar” facilities so you could be better, faster, and faster yet.  Then there was the money. Oh yes, the accounting department said over and over you were making money: not so much cash mind you, but earnings,  EBIDA
earnings, the ones that “average out” the interest expenses and the taxes and the brick and mortar and other growth costs which have been capitalized.  EBIDA makes the picture look better, on paper at least.  And so it was in the great overheating – you grew like crazy.

Now before I go any farther; you should know that this little fiction is not a set up.  This
isn’t one of those MSNBC “what an idiot you were” sort of media riffs.  In this story you stayed within borrowing limits, you hadn’t gone out and loaded up on 17% mezzanine financing, or entered into risky equity partnerships, or risky leveraged acquisitions, or
anything like that risky. Nor did you do all of this growing and expanding for some venture capital firm who wanted you to get big fast, profits be damned on the way to an imagined IPO.   This story is about you building a good, strong, profitable, yet rapidly growing business which was experiencing an amazing expansion.

Now comes the careening bus.  You’ve been going like crazy for four or five years, barely keeping up, feeling like you’ve been leaving chips on the table month after month in unfilled orders or potential services you couldn’t provide because there was always too much to do.  And you, as CEO, have never worked harder, and your people, well, they have been heroic.  Then someone in a provincial branch or office hears the first sound, a distant fugue of a jet engine, screeching tires and wind.  By the time you see it, by the time you put the images and data together, its too late..  The bus approaches, out of control.  You can’t believe it. In fact, you’ve been working so hard for so long to keep up with orders, you can’t make sense of what is bearing down on you.  Bearing down on you and your company.

The crash takes three or four months.  It is not a loud crash, as you might imagine. The bus hits you and leaves a loud silence. The phone rings less and less, until it doesn’t ring at all.  Your deliveries are being returned, accounts receivable are extending from thirty days to forty five days to sixty days, then ninety days, until they fall off the table as collateral for your line of credit.  The bank doesn’t call; they send you a letter: “broken covenants” it says, and your delivery trucks are all nested unmoving at the main beautifully built state-of-the-art brick and mortar distribution facility.  All this and more happens without a sound.  And the people who were exhausted with exertion are now sitting at clean desks, or in cars making fruitless sales calls, standing at idled manufacturing lines, all still, looking around because there is almost nothing to do.  And everyone is wondering – what’s next?

At some point in the midst of this quiet and frightened place, you get it… you know there is a very real danger of going down.  You also know that it’s your job to see that you don’t go down. In fact, it’s your job to make sure it lives, somehow, in some form, that when this crash is over, there needs to be a community of people to answer phones again, to fill orders again, to go back out there and grow.

We all know the kinds of sad and dispiriting steps you need to take.  First everybody takes accrued vacations, and a 10% or 20% salary cut, bonuses are stopped, and then begin the layoffs as  whole parts of the business are shuddered, idled, perhaps closed, and groups and teams and collections of talent broken up to become small and slightly profitable (if possible) as what’s left of your once upon a time growing business enters the dark world of recession winter and hope for survival.  Overnight your strategic goals have shifted from grow, develop, take market-share, to stay alive somehow, anyhow, please stay alive.

Fast forward to today.

Imagine you did it.  You survived.  You saved the company.  You have seen courage and humanity as you and your fellow travelers pulled costs below meagre revenue,  absorbed bad debts, as new teams formed tentatively, made things right with the bank, the phone rings from time to time, and  “the new normal” looks like a place where your “new normal”  business can survive.  Yes, it’s a different business than it was two years ago, but you’ve made it and you can see a future again.

So here you are, exhausted with a ringing in your ears. Six months later moving at this slower pace, you’re working a little less frantically, and the smaller more manageable business seems relatively easy to run.

This is the time you should ask yourself a few questions.

This is the “in-between” time.  It is between one great adventure and another.  It’s when you have a chance to make sense out of all that you learned during the great overheating, the crash, the firefighting, the saving of the enterprise, and the righting of the new normal business. This is a time to identify all of those lessons learned, all of those mistakes you made, all of those really smart things you all did.  How do you do this?  One way is to tell stories about the crash and what you learned, and to encourage others to do the same.  This is a time to “write the book” about the past and how it informs your future.  If you can do this, in the next overheating you’ll be a much smarter community, a much more robust enterprise.  And when a bus is seen careening down the highway again – in maybe five or ten years – you will all know what to do.  You’ll be a stronger enterprise and the “next normal” won’t be as painful to reach as it was before.

My old eyes have seen the bus that careened through in 1973, 1981, 1990, and 2007.  There is no avoiding a bus: they just happen.  It helps however, to learn as you go along.
Just use the “in-between time” as an opportunity to get way smarter about the whole adventure so the next bus won’t be nearly as dangerous as the previous one.

I have a wise friend who says “learning is difficult but development sucks.”  He’s
right.  But development is a lot easier when you understand that: “busses happen” and the  “in between times” are for learning, regrouping, and rebuilding, using the past as a guide to help make the future a better place for you, your community, and your business. You’ve survived the bus; now make sense out of the whole picture.  Make the in-between time investment time.

Posted in Growing your Business, Survival | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

MY FIRST BLOG entry and Who Cares?

Posted on June 2, 2011 by admin

Irony is the trick of a good mystery, a romance novel, a white knuckled adventure tale that surprises.  Irony instructs; it is elegant, and it somehow indirectly helps us make sense out of something else entirely while delivering a satisfying click as the last piece of a puzzle is pressed into place.

Irony is how we reconcile the twists and turns, in the twists and turns of unfolding stories, including our own.  I am talking about the feeling of coming around a corner and, “oh-wow, that’s what it means” or “I would never have guessed but of course that’s what this is about.” Those types of discoveries.

Blogs are a common fixture in the world.  Everybody who is anybody is talking to the world, doing digital pushups for all to see… one – two – three.  (Whether the world is listening is another matter).  And yet, I, the chap who loves to talk hasn’t written a single blog thing, not done a single public digital push up.  In a way that’s irony.  Let’s call it Irony Number One.

They say people don’t change.  That’s neither ironic nor true.   People do change.  I have a couple more wrinkles than I had last year – that’s change!  And at the risk of piling on about this, I’ve also decided to go all in to the blog world – that’s change too.  You see, now that the crowd has rushed by and flooded the landscape, I figure what the hell.  And for those who don’t know me, I do so at age 67 and a half.   Like newborns and toddlers whose journeys are measured in days, weeks, and then months, I’m starting to use what you might call “age fractions” because time is getting way more important than it used to be, a subject for another day.

Irony Number Two is that although I may rage against the world, like some Shakespearean hero, I may be only talking to myself.  BUT I have been a writer for a lot of years so I am used to talking to myself.  The real shock will come if someone actually answers or interrupts my train of thought!

And Irony Number Three is the subject of this “first” blog which is:

For once I am starting something NOT being the youngest guy in the room… not by a long shot.

I started my first business at age 27, and by 49 I was done being a CEO: that career was over.  So pretty much all through my life as a CEO I’d be in a room with a group of other CEOs or business owners and I would literally be the youngest guy in the room.  I loved it, saying stuff to myself like:  I am smart, I have energy, I am quick, I am ahead of the curve, I can drink more wine and I have way better muscle tone.  You get the picture.

This youngest guy in the room thing continued into retirement life (such as it was).  We moved to Sedona, AZ, a post card beautiful town buried in a wonder of the world, red rock canyons in the middle of nowhere, with eight thousand inhabitants, a single traffic light and one movie theater that featured one film at a time for the whole week.   At 49 I was yet again younger than most of the people around.  Again I loved it…  I could sprint up a trail or eat three burritos or do more pushups than most people in the room.  This sense of being relatively young was very cool, invigorating — go figure!

So finally, here we are, 20 plus years after the semi-retirement experience.  Age 67 and a half.  I enter Blog City.  I look around, and notice that most of the people, who by the way don’t even notice me, are really young, I mean really, really, young!  One person I passed on the way in was saying to no one in particular; “what the hell is this old guy doing here”.

Good question!

I am here to write just like you.  I am here to write about us with “old eyes”.  No kidding, I am here to add to the conversation. I’m here to share the part that older eyes can see because younger eyes might not see.

I have been blessed by having had the “youngest eyes in the room” experiences in business and life, a ton of them. It was a blast!

In the last 20 years or so I have had a different perspective, old eye perspectives. And with old eyes I’ve traveled the world, flown two million miles (literally) met and talked to thousands of you, heard a zillion stories about hope, sadness, success, happiness, failure, business, and life.

One big lesson from this odyssey is how much I would have benefitted from having some “old eyes” with me on my young person’s journey.  Really, it I could have avoided a lot of carnage, saved myself and those around me a ton of grief.

Here’s another head slapper:

I am certain that most people want to do good work and want to do interesting things.  AND most people are honest and care about others.  Oh and most everyone can, wants to, and will learn.  Everyone develops over time.

What’s the big deal about that, you ask?  Well, just look at how we structure our business organizations to protect against the behavior of a few outliers instead of tapping into and organizing the good intentions and skills that most people have and want to contribute.  Just look at the Zappos website or talk to someone who makes Gortex or has anything to do with Patagonia and you’ll see what I mean.

Here’s another:  business isn’t a special case in human behavior.  People don’t behave differently at work or in an organization because “this is business” or “we are at work”.  Just watch an episode of “The Office” or read “The Bonfires of the Vanities” or “The Smartest Guys in the Room” if you doubt me on this.  People are people are people… and they behave like people.

I am the product of a fine business education but I would have been better prepared for business ownership, leadership and life had I spent WAY more time in the schools of psychology, sociology, and spent the rest of the time taking a couple of foreign languages, read history, all the classics, especially the gut wrenching upsetting ones like the Iliad or Anna Karenina.  Sure, I needed to learn accounting, but that only takes three months or so.  I could have doubled or tripled my skills had I spent most of my time in the “liberal arts” not the business school.  The key to business is people.  That’s it! Oh and one of the main coefficients of well-being is, you guessed it… people… what a surprise.  Learn more about yourself and people, real people, and the whole journey makes more sense.

Okay, enough with the riffs, the prelude. Here we go.  Please welcome me to blog-land.  Come talk about your world, business and life.  I’ll share what I can as seen through “Old Eyes”.  That’s the deal.  I am all in, Old Eyes fueled by a young heart — I think that is Irony Number Three.

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments