ACTOR Grace Jones couldn't find work when she began because people told her she was too "weird." She became discouraged, thought about it, and decided that if she was seen as weird then she was going to show them weird as they had never seen it before.
She got parts.
In one film she was seated at the board room table of a perfume company. They were tossing around names for the latest corporate fragrance.
"After-birth," she spat out.
Whether unwilling or unable, the surrounding group of old white male executives stuttered and stumbled in attempts to clarify her suggestion. "After-bath?"
Hockey hall-of-famer Wayne Gretzky was not physically-superior. Team sport members are picked – if not at first then ultimately – to play synergistically and specifically cover each other's weaknesses. Today the road signs upon entering the city of Edmonton announce it as "the city of champions."
Stop trying to be what they want. Stop trying to be what's in. Pause, reflect, and determine who you are, what you like to do, and what you do well. Then, figure out how to put that in the face of people who've demonstrated a demand for it.
If you focus on trying to improve your weaknesses the most you will achieve is mediocrity. When the time comes you will devise conciliation; don't begin with compromise.
Go, get your true colours on.
HAVING recently resigned myself to the fact that I was going to lose my mind from dealing with technology issues I decided to throw some clothes in the car – my devices, being all mobile, were already in it – stopped by the outdoor store, and turned my wheels to the country.
Upon choosing a location of retreat I quickly observed that the way business is practiced there stood in stark contrast to that of technology companies.
I complained one morning after being awakened throughout the night by rowdy next-door neighbours. The management of the campground in eastern Ontario booted the offending party from the site with swift dispatch. Later that day the owner advised me that the next time it occurs I should wake him up.
"Even at 1:30 in the morning?" "Yes."
Curious, when I contact my technology providers with the latest issue they make me wait up to 40-minutes only to inform me, invariably, that if my device ceased functioning normally it was because I did something wrong to it.
How refreshing to learn that my difficulty getting through the night was not due to an inability to pitch a tent properly or being a sleeping novice.
I define management, simply, as "making decisions and getting things done." The managerial competence displayed in the campground is distinguished. No, they're neither a technology company or a multi-national conglomerate. But even big utilities in this country can't seem to get customers without trickery. (1)
I've said all along that technology is not required for business to make money. Typically, it enables it.
Indeed, the campground offers wi-fi throughout and is within range of the mobile networks. The pervasive use of cell phones by its management is likely related to their maintaining a service delivery standard of mere minutes.
The level of complexity of technology utilized by a business should match the level of complexity of its operations. No, running the campground is not complicated; it's just a lot of work. So, if a particular technology or device can make it easier for either them or their customers then it should be deployed. But utilizing more technology is not necessarily better; indeed, it can backfire by imposing excess complexity on customer roles and increasing business costs.
The worst-case scenario for a business is to institute very expensive technology and then raise its prices in order to pay for it. Trying to convince consumers that a technology-laden experience warrants a price premium is becoming lame.
Correspondingly, the campground's management does not require you to be "in" the computer in order for you to be in receipt of service delivery, answers to your questions, or anything else. Should the bean-counting late at night, however, be performed in a sophisticated database, well, that will just save money and allow them to analyze business efforts and results 'till the cows come home (litererally) (2).
That's called "separating the back- and front-ends" of a business, and it's for another post.
IT'S called knowing your costs, and requires a detailed work-up by a management professional or cost/management accountant. Failure to do so, with a business of any sophistication, can lead to endless effort with minimal or marginal results.
I had one client who was really pushing a service that she thought was a winner. I calculated that it was selling at a loss. In a demonstration of organizational change that would impress the Fortune 500, all evidence of the service ever existing vanished within 24-hours.
I also performed an industry work-up and recommended what other services to push or drop ("expansion" versus "retrenchment") and predicted what her competitors would be doing, similarly. A year later she called me back and said it had all come true.
Knowing the state of the industry, the stage of the industry, the basis of competition, the standard method of promotion, and having a sustainable source of competitive advantage are the keys to good business positioning.
Do you know the story of "sticky notes?" It's fascinating. It's anectodal, and it goes like this:
They were invented throught bootstrapping by a guy with a company named Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing. The company adopted them because it had recently undergone a strategic planning process which, among other things, had identified its core competence simply ... as "putting glue on things" (the application of adhesives to surfaces, in technical lingo).
They're also known as 3M and are the Scotch Tape people.
The moral of the story is that they laughed all the way to the bank. But 3M would have probably passed on the prototype of sticky notes had it not determined that its core competence was entirely consistent with the manufacture of them.
Do you know what makes your business tick or are you just … trying hard? Try talking to someone who knows business. You may just find your sticky notes.
HERE'S a revolutionary way of bringing in business: answer the phone.
It's easy, it's free, and it could lead to a wonderful new commercial relationship with the caller. It may distract you, however, from the task at hand which you believe to be more important.
That would be an error in judgment.
It is unclear why companies spend heavily on marketing and then either refuse to communicate with their customers – potential or existing – or delegate such critical interactions to low paid call centre staff or dead-end voice menus.
Perhaps they are too busy planning how to answer the door to realize someone is actually knocking on it.
If the business is a small one and honestly engaged then a genuine attempt should be made later to return voice- and e-mail messages. If the situation is one of insufficient resources due to recent growth then arrangements should be made to increase them. A line-up of customers will likely only impress investors, and the door knocking won't continue forever.
The corporate cemetery is full of epitaphs. Don't let yours be "To busy to mind the store."
IN the early 1980s a man named Michael Bregman, who had just graduated from Harvard with a Master of Business Administration degree, went to work for President Dave of Loblaws in Toronto. Michael's job was to determine if the concept of "no-name" brands was viable. He concluded that it was, and along the way, also discovered that large scale grocery stores were replacing the local butcher, baker, green grocer and other specialized food providers.
Michael had grown up in the food business. His parents owned a restaurant in Toronto and he had worked there most of his life. While doing his research at Loblaws he came to think that there may be a demand for fancy oversized muffins. They would be large enough to serve as a snack and be healthy, too. It was, after all, the time of the fitness boom.
Michael quit his job at Loblaws and decided to sell these muffins - to everyone's shock. He was convinced it was a "go." He borrowed a couple of hundred thousand dollars from his uncle, opened a small shop in the Toronto Eaton Centre, and called it Mmmarvelous Mmmuffins. It took off. It was such a success that Michael was able to expand through franchising across Canada. He paid off his uncle and some years later decided to try his luck at another venture, something he would call The Second Cup.
Another one:
In the early 1980s a newly graduated Canadian physiotherapist named Tony Melles discovered a clinic which seemed to know how to treat back and neck pain well. The clinic's owner was named Robin McKenzie.
Tony teamed up with renowned back surgeon and author Dr. Hamilton Hall to form the Canadian Back Institute. They opened a clinic in downtown Toronto and later one in Oakville. They opened their third clinic in Brampton in early 1988.
Tony brought Robin McKenzie's methods to his clinics and started spreading the word of active physiotherapy. The principles of treatment were movement and exercise. Each clinic contained a gym with specialized equipment and was staffed with an exercise therapist.
At the time the Ontario Workers' Compensation Board was exploring alternative methods of physical rehabilitation. When active physiotherapy and functional restoration were endorsed by the Board in 1990 the Institute was set up to provide these services. The expansion of the Institute from then on paralleled the roll-out of the Board's New Strategy in Ontario, city by city.
The expansion of the Canadian Back Institute continued in the early 1990s until at least one clinic was operating in every major Canadian city. It was opening up a new clinic every three months which represented a growth rate of 30 per cent per year.
Today it is known as CBI Health Group and is a national organization.
There are educational texts on my business services site which describe the elements of successful entrepreneurship. It's really, really, hard to both get all the pieces in place and get that thing I loosely call the "edge" or the "in." Very few people succeed beyond basically becoming self-employed. But, good for them. It's one of the things we're able to do here, in this free country.
THERE'S something in business called romantic capital. It occurs when rich people launch, invest in, or buy a business which does not make money. Airlines, for example. Some people just love things that fly.
Fixating on a single outcome is one of the common reasons for entrepreneurial failure. If you just keep tweaking it enough, it'll work? Right?
Wrong.
If the product or service is less than perfect it will still move if there is some demand for it. It just won't move a lot.
If it doesn't move at all being less than perfect it's because either there is no demand or it has too many competitors or substitutes. If entrepreneurs can get the word out in any least little bit the Internet today will take care of getting the word out thoroughly.
If the product or service is saleable.
And what's saleable will be something for which there is typically a demonstrated demand rather than a product or service which the entrepreneur develops because either they're able to, or they think it's wonderful.
The market will determine if it's wonderful. If you need to be told you're wonderful, call your mother. For that matter, call her anyway, especially if she is supporting you in all this.
Frankenstein: a face only a mother could love.
And she died laughing.
COMPETING in business and sport are similar: you need a strategy. But what good is a strategy when you have no core competence? If you cannot demonstrate adequate ability to deliver a product or service – or play a sport – then implementing strategy will not help but hinder. You need to be able to perform something with simplicity before you should try doing it with complexity.
I've written about business at length here. Today I will write about volleyball. Here are a couple of classic strategy elements:
In other words, demonstrate consistent "bump, set, spike:"
If your team can't do that and do it each and every time then they need more instruction or practice. They do not need strategy; it will just throw a wrench in the machinery.
Attempting to implement a level of strategy beyond a team's basic ball-handling ability is a classic cause of failure. Doing that may just be a matter of ambition or zeal: after all, we all want to improve. But there's a method to all this madness. It requires education, training, skill development, and coaching. Some people actually make a living out of it in addition to the athletes who do so playing.
And finally, there is strategy and there is participation. (Like profit versus not-for-profit corporations.) If the purpose of the league is superior play, winning, and position on the ladder then strategy can play a larger, if not necessary, role. If the purpose of the league is recreational, on the other hand, it can incorporate various levels of play – and even strategic ones should the team warrant it – but organization and inclusivity should be the dominant roles played in that situation.
Darry Marengere studied and played volleyball at the University of Ottawa and has played, coached, and led teams to medals across Canada.
CONSIDER the following first sales approach:
Do you like the widget? It costs $50. Yes, I'll be happy to stand here for 20-minutes and describe the features and benefits of it to you. If you're unable or unwilling to make a purchase decision following that time then I will vacate. Repeat: do you want the widget or not?
Now consider the second:
We provide "X" services. They may be standard or custom. We can design our services to meet your needs. What are your needs? Do you even know? They don't seem to be very pressing because you refuse to put any money toward them. Yes, I'm still here trying to meet your needs.
Websites that are e-commerce enabled and sell products perform marvellously. Amazon. E-Bay. They feature photos and descriptions of their product lines. And now, they even display comments and recommendations from people who've bought and used their products. It's all quite cut and dry and simple.
Services, on the other hand, are purchased almost entirely on the basis of their packaging. Consumers are unable to effectively gauge the quality of what is promised or typically understand its working. Companies that sell services have visually superior websites. This would be to give the prospective customer confidence that the company will deliver the service with, assumedly, the same excellence as with which it designed the graphics.
And potential customers eat it up.
My bank is interesting. Its website has a minimum of graphics – one or two of its own ads – and is composed of almost exclusively text and text links. That's because users of it are there to do their online banking. Its purpose is utilitarian – operations – not marketing. Clearly, the bank knows the difference and allocates its resources accordingly.
Services are inherently inefficient and perishable. They cannot be inventoried. Learning and economies of scale do not occur as they do in manufacturing. This prevents 1) Increased profit over time for doing the same thing, and 2) Transferring some of that generated wealth to a) Labour, and b) Government, through taxes.
Companies that make a lot of money with services do so by either charging exorbitant rates, constantly raising those rates, or continuing to charge following cessation of service delivery. Like utilities. Ever tried to cancel?
My toll free number costs six cents per minute. Period. It's provided by an obscure but credible small Canadian company. The big utilities all wanted from $75 to $230 down and $30-50 per month – plus utilization – for the same thing. Really.
The cost of health care continues to rise due to 1) An increase in knowledge resulting in more diagnoses being made, 2) Treatment being made available for those new diagnoses, 3) Technology providing more and more diagnostic and treatment procedures for existing diseases, and 4) Drug companies continuing to increase their prices.
This accounts for more of the escalation of health care costs in Canada than the aging of the population. And, of course, health care is a service.
There's something to be said about greengrocers, newspaper stands, and chip wagons: they're small and simple but turn a tidy profit.
Yeah, gimme a widget.
I WENT to see someone I know today. He's a most polite and solicitous gentleman. From Iraq. Had to leave there a long time ago because he spoke against Saddam. Has a wife and three children. He came to Canada and eventually became an entrepreneur.
I went to see him because I needed a haircut.
When he launched his shop in 2008 it was on a beer-bottle budget. Home grown sign. Used chairs. Minimalist decor.
But he provided the best haircuts anyone in the neighbourhood had experienced in some time. Just him. He talked to you while he worked his magic, and it took about 20-minutes.
When I went in today the shop had been re-done with fixtures, furniture, decor, and staff. I was out of there six minutes later with military precision and efficiency.
My gentleman friend wasn't there. I don't think I will be again, either.
That's the problem with new ventures. They become successful and then become … something else.
They lose that thing that chefs try to describe when they put their fingers together in the air and purse their lips. That … that … thing, that special ingredient that makes it good.
For me it was personal service that made me feel good about, well, just being me. Someone took an interest in me and gave me attention.
And it was genuine because it wasn't purchased attention from an overpriced spa: it was an entrepreneur doing his thing.
So now he's doing the post-entrepreneur thing, I assume: relaxing and enjoying.
I've got – what – about six weeks to decide if I want to return to the shop or find another?
A man and his barber. A man and his dog.
It's the simple things.
CONSIDER the following features of self-employment and small business ownership:
It is not surprising that the majority of people choose the relative physical and financial comfort of organizational life. They also tend to not let things at work bother them.
Many with an entrepreneurial inclination are seduced by the assurances of schemers, peddlers, multi-level marketers, and franchise distributors who tell these ambitious yet unsavvy souls that they can make a forutune very easily if they just give these people THEIR MONEY. Pyramidal selling can also get you into trouble with the law.
There are three legs to the new venture development stool: the opportunity, the entrepreneur, and the capital. In addition, there is a fourth leg: the "edge" or the "in." And luck can make the difference between a dreamer and a visionary. As an illustration there are over 30-different social networking sites: What makes Facebook any better? Why did Oprah come to dominate her industry while Sally Jessy Raphael no longer broadcasts?
The naked truth is that there is an element of the ouija board in all this. Try watching CBC's Dragon's Den or the American version Shark Tank as the money people attempt to determine if the presenting entrepreneurs will make it big. Their criteria vary and their decision-making doesn't always seem rational. These venture capitalists have come to have a feel for these things and often act on instinct.
If you don't want to be in the cubicle anymore make sure you really don't want to be there. If that's the case, go for it. It'll either make good fortune or good fodder.
Too often service firms concentrate on what they want to do, what they feel they should do – because, you know, they're experts – and remain completely unaware that service delivery is:
And you know what else? All this knowledge has been around since about 1995.
I know, there is the resistance of organized labour and bureaucracy to overcome in implementing such strategies. But on the good side all the above costs a hell of a lot less than a big ad campaign. And they'll return. A big ad campaign will only get them there once.
Remember these two things, if any: 1) It's an experience, and 2) Set their expectations beforehand through communications.
Just imagine what would happen at McDonald's if someone went up to the counter and didn't know what to do. That's your new customer, the one obtained through expensive marketing. If you fail to meet their expectations they will not be satisfied, not return and may even broadcast it all.
Yes, I know you know everything about your profession. Now, go start learning how to do business as a service provider.
INDEED, operations management is about making things. I, in admittedly being over-simplistic, put it another way:
Of course, senior management of national and multi-national corporations have to be concerned with things such as corporate strategy, mergers and acquisitions, investment instruments, advertising goals and budgets, etc. But they got to that position, as the Royal Bank used to say, "one customer at a time," or specifically, using the above formula. So big companies have to be concerned with both. Small companies can remain focused on competitive strategy and management at the business unit level.
But occasionally, a company, or an entire industry, can … depart from such foci. Allow me to illustrate:
The leveraged buy-outs by Canadian Airlines International of Canadian Pacific Airlines and Wardair which put their debt:assets ratio above the ideal 30%. Their vice-president of finance at the time, a Harvard MBA, was so celebrated in this accomplishment that he was made president. The economy went downhill and so did the demand for commercial aviation. Canadian became insolvent.
Hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars of bail-outs by the Alberta and federal governments did not help, and in the end, Canadian went bankrupt. The situation left Air Canada with a domestic monopoly until a company called WestJet launched, dramatically undercutting the fares of Air Canada, and things began to change.
Here's another one:
I watched, in horror, as the price of physiotherapy treatment in Ontario, and parts of Canada, went from about $10 in 1988 to $400 by the mid-90's. Sure, they were delivering more with the service, which is technically called "adding more value." But if you look closely at the concept of "adding value" it specifically prescribes not do so unless your customers are willing to pay for it. What was sold as patients being in the gym for up to eight hours with physical activity simulating the physical demands of their jobs was really just 60-90 minutes of it.
I suspect Canadian insurance companies, most of whose head offices are in Ontario, were quietly lobbying the Conservative Party of Ontario in the hope that they would, and they did, decimate the Bob Rae government in the next election. The resulting Harris government changed both the law regarding the Workers' Compensation Board and the Statutory Accident Benefit Schedule of auto insurance. Practitioners, who had been charging over $1000 for a functional abilities evaluation, were told that the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board – the new name of the Workers' Compensation Board – would now only pay $40 for it. That's quite a market … adjustment.
There was an economist a long time ago named Adam Smith who postulated that the mechanisms inherent in a free enterprise economy would take care of all problems by themselves in the end. He called it the "invisible hand."
Indeed, economists and other conservatives argued against the bail-out of Canadian Airlines International at the beginning, and they were right in the end. With regards to the physiotherapists, although the benefit of "work hardening" for chronic pain syndrome had begun to be documented, what I observed was all patients, not just they, being given exercise programs that specifically circumvented their pathologies or regions of dysfunction. I called this "fitness for the sickies" and it didn't last, either.
There is the growth imperative of business – specifically manifested as capital appreciation of their shareholders – and that's fine, but there is, also, greed, which is not in anyone's long-term interest.
Michael Douglas may have glamourized it in the movie Wall Street (and there's a sequel) but it tends to not last long if it surfaces, unless it's due to collusion, which does exist in this country. But it shouldn't be the end goal. Re-read the four (4) steps above and I'll let you decide what to do after dinner.
OK. So how do we sell things if there's no demand?
And then again, there is research that shows that people choose a dentist based on the availability of free parking. Go figure.
Finally, the traditional model of generating revenues for professionals is a brick-and-mortar office, complete with receptionist, and a regular business card ad strategically placed. Sit back and do the work as it comes in over the course of ten years and be sure to never make a mistake. This likely requires more financing than the education itself to become such a professional, so not everybody can do this, either.
It's tough. We're either looking for an innovative, competitive, or, at least, quality product or service to move – or are creating one – or are trying to move things based on our expensive and hard-earned education or training. I don't know everything but I do know that if there's no demand for your product or service it will either take a lot of money or a lot of time to sell it. Choose your tactic.
THERE are two ways: rules (policies) and culture.
Rules are the old-fashioned way, based on a model where employees didn't really want to work and needed to be told what to do. Employees today, on the other hand, especially young ones, want to be empowered and want their jobs to be enriched. Policies: maybe not. Having a limited selection in the "drop-down box" on the computer system which controls their job outputs may be more effective, if not annoying – to both them and the customers they serve.
Successful new ventures are often founded by charismatic entrepreneurs. They tend to be natural-born leaders. They regularly and clearly articulate the organization's reason for being, exactly what they deliver to customers, exactly how they want customers to feel following that delivery, and, especially, what are the most important things to the organization.
With such an organic organizational culture it's also not unusual for people to be drawn to its leader with a desire to work for them. It's a self-reinforcing loop.
All that's fine until the organization goes from being small to medium and then to large. At that point it's really hard to remain organic. That's when we see everything change and policies begin to be circulated in binders (or included on the organization's intranet or web site). The employees who were the founder's followers tend to migrate and be replaced by "organization men/women" who thrive on bureaucracy.
At that point the founder / entrepreneur may decide the beast they've built no longer suits them and … sell it.
Only occasionally do we see large organizations having a strong culture and relatively few rules or policies (except those required, or encouraged, by law). IBM had that. Google does today. GM does not.
The break-up of AOL / Time-Warner has been attributed to a long-term inability to reconcile the culture of the first half of the merger monster – which was organic, young, visionary, new media-based and relaxed – with the old, print-based, dogmatic, and strict one of the second half. (And, of course, the fall from financial grace of the "dot com's" in the early 2000's.)
The ability to control people without law has always existed through, for example, religion and cults. If an organization has a strong culture with everyone pulling in the same direction – "superordinate goals" – it can reduce the organization's costs, save a lot of staff time, avoid role conflict, and improve customer service.
Those charismatic and articulate leaders who have an interest in starting a business attract the attention of venture capitalists. Other attributes of entrepreneurs tend to be required for success but those of personality cannot be trained. They must be found.
As Charles Coburn said of Marilyn Monroe in the film Monkey Business: "Anyone can type."
I HAVE a friend who's son announced one afternoon – after having a fight with her – that he was leaving home.
He packed up his clothes and said his "Good-Bye's." On his way out he also packed up half the pantry.
"I don't think so," declared his mother. "You're not leaving here with the food."
So her son decided not to leave home, after all. He was only 14-years old, had no money, and couldn't earn any even if he had wanted to.
The case illustrates two principles:
The first principle I learned while working in management. You don't deal with things head on. No, you get them in the Achilles heel instead. Simply silence the complainers, for example. No complaints, no more problem. What's so hard about being in charge?
The second applies to entrepreneurship. People have no idea the work, risk, or uncertainty of the whole thing. They honestly don't understand why you're not laughing the way you used to. They've been living off the same paycheque and employer for 10-years and haven't attempted anything in life except for assembling last year's new Bar-BQ.
It's up to you if you want to try to explain your entrepreneurship situation to them. The standard small business line is "Everything's great."
Give me a call if it's not. I'll understand and I promise not to take the food.
CYCLIST and teacher Michael Schratter arrived home in Vancouver November 13, 2011 following a 469-day journey spanning six continents and 33-countries.
The goal of his trip, entitled Ride Don't Hide, was to raise funds for, and increase awareness of, mental illness.
Mr. Schratter planned to collect $100,000. After being on the road since August 1, 2010 he came in at $65,000.
It is doubtful if that amount represents more than what he would have been paid for teaching another year of curricula to BC students.
The results of Mr. Schratter's efforts are illustrative of those of new ventures today. Consider the following facts:
Business success today reflects popularity and having iconic proponents in the industry in which the enterprise is venturing. Developing a product or service which may easily be duplicated hardly impairs their ability to solicit investment or support.
Popularity, in turn, is largely a function of communication, as distinct from marketing.
Indeed, comments by industry experts on a recent blog post on entrepreneur.com on the topic of branding stated outright that advertising today has lost all credibility.
To be fair, the commenters elaborated – which has also been my experience – the enterprise needs to deliver on promises made to customers and ensure a positive experience for them. Then – and only then – may it share the spoils of contemporary business war.
Mr. Schratter intends to share the $65,000 he raised with the Canadian Mental Health Association's BC child and youth initiatives. His courageous worldwide cycling trek – and its corresponding empowerment of young people with mental illness in Canada – won't be so easily duplicated.
THE distinction was made clear this week with two networking gatherings I attended. Contrast the following receptions:
I meet their eyes and they light up. Their face expands. They walk towards me and stretch out their arm. They engage me, question me, and continue to talk to me even though I may not be their immediate solution.
I meet their eyes and they look away. I tell them I'm a business consultant – what, I'm out of place at the Chamber of Commerce? – and I get the back of their shoulders in my face.
There are three types of small business people:
Which one do you think will live long and prosper (sorry, Spock)?
Better yet, which one will you prosper by talking to?
Start paying attention to how people behave 1) In and of themselves, 2) When they're interacting with you, and 3) When they're interacting in their (closed) groups. Target your sales prospects to ones who demonstrate an interest in you. If they're not responding either 1) You're in the wrong place, or 2) You're selling something that's not you. Everybody has something of value to offer. The challenge is in discovering it and then finding someone who will value it, or specifically, you.
That is the difference between business strategy (product / service market choices and how to be competitive within them) and marketing (throwing more money and time at product / service markets because they're not working well). Yeah, I had to get my plug in here.
If it walks like a duck, walk away from it.
IN my first few weeks of attending graduate business school in 1992 a few young men in the front row of the class shouted out: "Women should not expect so much from the workplace; they've only been in it a couple of decades."
I was flabbergasted. Having come from a female-dominated profession – physiotherapy – and knowing that the University of Ottawa school of medicine, for example, had instituted a half male / half female admission policy as early as 1981, I just couldn't believe that such a comment would be made in a Canadian university, and further, be allowed to stand.
And it was made in a human resources class, no less.
At the time the Oilmen's Club in Calgary was being attacked on all fronts for maintaining a sexist member and door policy. It was demonstrating high levels of testosterone in its fight to keep all levels of estrogen out. Today the board of governors of the Canadian Oilmen's Executive Association boasts no women, although the Calgary Petroleum Club – a dining establishment – welcomes executives of both genders.
Yes, women display different managerial styles, it has been my observation, at the middle and higher levels of organizations. I will not elaborate; that's for the academicians. At the technical or operations level I have observed no difference, and, certainly, not among entrepreneurs.
Returning to the example of medicine, the change in school admission policies has increased the proportion of graduates choosing to become specialists, as well as changing physician availability: women are the ones who bear – and often raise – our children, and for this reason alone often have reduced office hours or take leaves of absence.
Notwithstanding, I have not seen a difference in clinical decision-making. These are science professionals, and, when I worked clinically, the gender with whom I was discussing the patient wasn't something of which I made note. Why would I?
In fact, people from all walks of life, including those possessing a different background or experience, can benefit an organization by increasing the array of options of which it is aware and considers in making strategic and operational decisions. Having a rich backdrop of knowledge, ideas, and skills from which to source can increase competitiveness.
But it's all very frowned-upon by most organizations. The majority white, male, straight, Christian, and – increasingly – aging people who run them just don't seem to value diversity. They fail to appreciate not only that it's ethical, but that it tends to enrich the organization.
The Conference Board of Canada released a report today stating that the presence of Canadian women in senior management positions has stalled in the past two decades.
"Between 1987 and 2009, the proportion of women in senior management has changed little – men are still more than twice as likely to hold a senior executive position," it declared in a statement.
Specifically, the proportion of working women who held senior management positions in 2009 was found to be 0.32 per cent compared to 0.64 per cent of all working men.
It went on to say that the proportion of women in middle management positions had grown only four per cent during the period of time studied.
"Since 1987, men have consistently been two to three times more likely than women to hold senior management positions," the Board concluded.
I discovered some ten years ago that the "Big Five" accounting and management consulting firms present in Canada ceased having the first names of their partners printed in their white pages listings. It's no surprise – the names were almost all male ones.
We can change laws and policies, but changing attitudes, beliefs, and backroom behaviour is much more difficult, if at all possible. Sociologists, anthropologists, and others who study human behaviour – either singular, group, or societal – may come to have some recommendations in time.
Would you like more coffee, sir?
JOHN Connelly was CEO of a company called Crown Cork & Seal which supplied most of the containers for Coca-Cola and many others. How did he accomplish this?
It's complicated and it's discussed at length in essays available on the Internet (for a fee). I won't go into details here of what Connelly did – and was years ago – but it emphasizes the role that … thought … plays in achieving business outcomes.
Don't just try. Try smart.
Figure out your core competence, your position in the industry, the balance of power among its players, and then build your sustainable source of competitive advantage.
Take that to the marketers. And then you can take it to the bank.
Does something distinguish you from your competitors? And don't give me that "customer service" crap. Give me something real: price/value ratio (the downward spiral of which was the downfall of Sears and the superiority of which made WalMart the largest corporation in existence), superior quality / durability (for products – Lexus) or experiences (for services – Fairmont), unparalleled experience with a consumer market (Proctor & Gamble), innovation (RIM's Blackberry), … something.
A strategic look at your enterprise and the industry in which it operates can formulate that distinction for you.
IBM's employee newsletter used to be called Think. Later, Big Blue got real excited and renamed it to Think Again.
If a tin can company can tell Coca-Cola what to do, you can do a bit better, too.
THERE'S an old joke in business circles about economists that goes like this:
Question: Three economists stranded on a desert island. Nothing to eat but a can of tuna. What do they do?
Answer: Assume a can opener.
If you know anything about economists you'll laugh because almost all their conclusions are predicated by a long list of assumptions. The chief criticism of them is that they don't operate in the real world; they draw recommendations on a tapestry of theoretical concepts.
Small business owners can be criticized, too. The assumption upon which they operate is that no one – and I mean no one – can possibly understand their business like they do. Furthermore, if they do come to have a business, it means they also understand everything about business itself.
There they stand, on the tracks, shouting out to me as I walk away: "Train? What train?"
Do you know how many business owners to whom I've offered assistance who choose instead to go down with the ship?
It's unfortunate. Answers exist. And because I have degrees in both business and science I can tell businesspeople with a scientific background that business is not as complicated as science. Help is available to not only stop the ship from going down but to turn it into a luxury liner.
The worst thing about small business owners who are professionals is the egocentrism inherent to that position which prevents them from seeing things from the perspective of their customers. Consumers today want it their way, and there is a global marketplace of competitors and substitutes from which they can choose in order to get it.
If a business has a significant number of competitors or substitutes, or if the supply of its products or services exceeds demand then the sales will go to the best performer in the end. Gimmicks, promotions, and soothing communications will get consumers there once. Getting them back requires meeting their needs and exceeding their expectations.
The Via Rail line extends throughout the Ontario-Quebec corridor. Don't be left standing on the tracks when the train arrives.
THERE were few of these," entrepreneur Steve Glenn told a standing-room-only crowd recently at the University of Southern California.
Mr. Glenn is a social entrepreneur and founder of home building start-up LivingHomes. He constructs pre-fabricated modular homes that merge high design with sustainability.
His address was to a room full of business, architecture and engineering students, and the reference he made was to responsible real estate developers in the greater Los Angeles area.
Mr. Glenn, like many entrepreneurs, faced doubt by those around him. Not everyone believed his dream.
"Sometimes you can see things that other people cannot see," he told the students.
Prior to launching LivingHomes, Mr. Glenn had worked mostly in the tech industry for various start-ups. He was invited to speak at the Marshall School of Business' Lunch and Learn series because he is engaged in a sound business that maintains a triple bottom line of people, planet and profit.
His business builds modern homes that are locally manufactured, made with fewer compounds that cause air pollution, and are equipped with eco-friendly features like gray-water ready systems and cisterns for irrigation.
His company is profitable.
He concluded by saying that beyond execution the one element he feels is critical to success is timing. He admited that the timing for the real-estate market was less than ideal for him, but it is a good time now for businesses focused on sustainability – a topic which has a strong presence in the public's conscience.
Like all good entrepreneurs, Mr. Glenn continues creating. His keen interest in developing communities is driving his next project.
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