John R. Brandt's Blog

"Innovation sticks for about 18 months..."

Excellent interview with Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of the non-profit Harlem Children's Zone, in yesterday's New York Times. A couple of his management tips:

• "Convincing people to give your way a try will work if you neutralize – and sometimes you have to cauterize – the ones who are really against change. They're the kind of person who, if you tell them it's raining outside, will fight you tooth and nail. You'll take them outside in the rain, and they'll say, “But it wasn't raining five seconds ago.” I spent a year trying to convince those people to change and give me a chance [at a school, early in his career]. Then I realized that was a wasted year.

• "Innovation sticks for about 18 months.So let's say you put a great innovative program in place. You put the right people on it, you get everything organized, and if you don't come back and do anything with it for 18 months, that program's half as good as when you started. They just start decaying."

Slimiest marketing ever

My daughter was in a minor traffic accident, for which she filed the appropriate police report. Three weeks later, a telemarketer representing a local chiropractic clinic rang our house to say: "We're calling about her recent car accident. We just want to see if she's OK."

Yeah, right.

 

What does your Filter Bubble look like?

Incredibly important article by Eli Pariser in The Observer — "How the net traps us all in our own little bubbles" — about how personalization of the web by Google, Facebook and others now limits the the variety of information we can find. Increasingly, search engines only feed us stuff that looks, sounds, and reads like stuff we've seen, heard or read before — reducing our chances of bumping into something new or surprising or uncomfortable, all of which are required to spur growth or change. Favorite two paragraphs:

"We are predisposed to respond to a pretty narrow set of stimuli – if a piece of news is about sex, power, gossip, violence, celebrity or humour, we are likely to read it first. This is the content that most easily makes it into the filter bubble. It's easy to push "Like" and increase the visibility of a friend's post about finishing a marathon or an instructional article about how to make onion soup. It's harder to push the "Like" button on an article titled "Darfur sees bloodiest month in two years". In a personalised world, important but complex or unpleasant issues – the rising prison population, for example, or homelessness – are less likely to come to our attention at all.

"As a consumer, it's hard to argue with blotting out the irrelevant and unlikable. But what is good for consumers is not necessarily good for citizens. What I seem to like may not be what I actually want, let alone what I need to know to be an informed member of my community or country. 'It's a civic virtue to be exposed to things that appear to be outside your interest,' technology journalist Clive Thompson told me. Cultural critic Lee Siegel puts it a different way: 'Customers are always right, but people aren't.'"

What does your filter bubble keep you from learning (or caring) about?

Why Manufacturing is Exactly Like a Hike in the Cloud Forest

I recently visited Costa Rica. We hiked in the cloud forest (the view from the continental divide…amazing), zip-lined over the rain forest, and chilled afterward with an Imperial beer or two (the only bit of high school Spanish I could recall, it seems, was “Dos cervezas, por favor.”). It was a life-changing trip, and I feel privileged to have seen one of the most ecologically diverse (and fragile) regions in the world.

Yet in getting ready for my vacation, I was struck by how unprepared I was for a new adventure. And that got me to thinking about Next Generation Manufacturers. I was unprepared because for the past 10 years I’ve primarily traveled for speeches or business—and in true Boy Scout/Lean fashion, I always have my business travel “tools” ready to go:

• A garment bag preloaded with a toiletries kit (including duplicates of everything I use at home) and workout clothing (again, duplicates)
• A briefcase preloaded with every charger, connector, and cable I could conceivably need
• Preselected “meeting ensembles,” including sport coat, shirt, and pants, that all work with the same black belt and black loafers (to ease passage through the TSA maze at the airport)

This system lets me pack and get out the door in minutes for a business trip—but was next to useless for an expedition that required hiking boots, insect repellant, headlamps, a multi tool knife, GPS, etc.

In short, the trip that I was prepared to take wasn’t the journey that I actually found myself on. Which meant that I had a steep learning curve and a not-inconsiderable amount of pre-adventure stress, even though I really did want to reach that vista over the cloud and rain forests.

It’s similar (though with less beer) for would-be Next Generation Manufacturers. These execs have spent so much time just surviving over the past few years—cutting costs, rationalizing product lines, shoring up capital structures—that in some ways they’ve arrived at an economic recovery with the wrong tools in their bags. Success over the next few years will require dramatically different thinking about:

• What customers really want
• What it really means to be a global or green manufacturer
• What talent it takes to really seize the opportunity to grow

Most companies don’t yet have those answers. And for those that do, few have them arranged neatly in a bag that they can carry confidently to the future.

The good news is that the research says that NextGen tools, techniques, and tactics are out there—and that, used properly, they’ll get you to where you want to go.

But it’s going to take a little repacking.

Thanks, Incredibly Sloppy Online Marketing Firm Named Epsilon...

...for allowing my email address to be stolen by hackers. Why just yesterday I was asking myself: What can I do to get more spam? Little did I know that you, Chase, Best Buy, Disney and a host of others were already working on my lack-of-spam-and-phishing problem. Thanks, too, for your awesome forthrightness about the security breach, evidenced by this quote from your spokesflack in The New York Times: “We are currently working with authorities and are conducting a full investigation. We are limited in what we can share.”

Um... what? It was my information that was stolen, right?

Fortunately, I've already done my own full investigation, and don't have to wait to share its one-word conclusion: 

Unsubscribe.

Email footer that made me laugh out loud

Notice: It's OK to print this email. Paper is a biodegradable, renewable, sustainable product made from trees. Growing and harvesting trees provides jobs for millions of Americans. Working forests are good for the environment and provide clean air and water, wildlife habitat and carbon storage. Thanks to improved forest management, we have more trees in America than we had 100 years ago. (originally from, it turns out, The Wall Street Journal).

Attention TSA Personnel

It has come to my attention that some of you still labor under a number of misconceptions. Let's set the record straight on two quick items:

1. There is no "National TSA Policy" on whether to put your shoes in a bin or on the conveyor belt. I know you think, based on your experience at your airport, that the way you do it — In the bin! On the belt! — is the only way to safeguard the nation's airspace. THIS IS NOT TRUE. That means that when you act offended or disgusted by the shoe-bin-or-belt ignorance displayed by those of us who travel to multiple airports (and who have binned or belted according to local custom), you seem like a rube.
2. The same goes for whether an iPad or phone or keys can be in the same bin as a laptop. Multiple airports, multiple standards. Think of it this way: If the X-ray person can clearly see both, you're just saving time and space. Save the outrage for the 85lb. Hello Kitty carry-ons.

Thank you, and have a pleasant day.

Thanks for putting extra garlic in the leftover pasta you brought for lunch

If you're feeling more cramped at work, you're not alone: According to figures released by the International Facility Management Association, American cubicle dwellers had 16.6% less space, on average, in 2010 than in 1994 (75 square feet vs. 90 square feet).

Moo.

Four letters, begins with "F"

Finally chased down a prospect (let's call him Mr. D) who'd asked us for a fair amount of upfront analysis (my mistake) to see if our data would work for his purposes (after which he'd promptly disappeared for five months). We chatted amiably, weather and business and such. He explained that they'd gone ahead and done the work themselves, but might like to use our data now to corroborate their findings.

"Great!" I said. "Can you send us your findings?"

Unfortunately, no, he couldn't, he had to check with somebody else internally who "owned" the data.

"Great!" I said. "So you'll check with her, then send us the data?"

"Yes," he said. And paused. And continued: "But if you don't hear from us, that means we're not interested."

Um... OK, Mr. D. Thanks for the call.

And thanks, too, for the reminder of what always comes from giving away work for (here comes the F-word) free: Not a sale, not gratitude, not even common courtesy (would it be so hard to send an email saying, "No, thanks?") Just expectation of more free stuff.

If you don't hear from us again, Mr. D., that means that we're not interested, either.

A series of recent meetings without focus (foci?) has reminded me of one of the pithiest maxims every penned, by turn-of-the-century theater impresario David Belasco:

"If you can't write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don't have a clear idea."

Which leads directly to Brandt's Corollary: "You can't help somebody who doesn't know — or can't tell you — what he or she wants."