Yer Outta Here

"There are many things we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up."  Oscar Wilde

Like many I've been accumulating over the years.  Accumulating junk in my office, accumulating junk in my garage, accumulating "friends" on Facebook, accumulating junk emails.  Accumulating.  It's a human behavior where you're afraid of getting rid of stuff.  Afraid the minute you throw it out you'll discover you need it for some reason.

We intuitively know this isn't true.  Most times you end up eventually getting rid of the stuff anyway.

With junk email it's more laziness.  It's a pain to go hunting at the bottom of the email and find the unsubscribe button.  It's easier to mindlessly hit delete every day and clear them all out.  The problem is they accumulate at a dizzying pace.  Every time you order something online you get put on a mailing list.  Yes, even when you check (or uncheck) the "would you like to receive future notification" boxes.  Hell, anymore it seems if you even think about a product you get on a mailing list.  So it doesn't take long to have dozens of junk emails on a daily basis.

So, I've started to unsubscribe.  As I get one I take the extra minute or so to unsubscribe.  Then I took an hour and went through all the current ones and did the unsubscribe dance.  This has been a fascinating exercise.  Most, to be fair, are fairly straight-forward.  There's a clearly marked "unsubscribe" button.  You hit it and get a "thank you, you will no longer receive any emails from us" message and you don't see any more from that company.  Others?  Not so much.  From masking the unsubscribe button so it's difficult to locate to getting a laundry list of options to decide from to getting a "may take up to 10 days to take effect" message.  My favorite was the sports tickets site that made me watch a 30 second advertising video before I was allowed to unsubscribe.

What it's done is make me think about who I will and will not do business with in the future.  Yes it bothers me that none of them comply with the "don't put me on your mailing list" request I make sure I check/uncheck when completing my purchase.  But if they easily and simply allow me to unsubscribe afterwards then I'll buy from them again.  The others I'll just stay away from altogether.

It all falls under the Easy To Do Business With category.  Being consumer friendly is not just making it easy to buy.  It's your return policy.  It's your customer support.  And it's your "leave me alone" policy.

So when you're creating your customer atmosphere policies don't stop at your checkout.  Make sure you thoroughly examine the entire start-to-end process so your customers don't end up with a Hotel California experience.

So, now out to the garage where while I'm throwing out unneeded junk I need to think about what to do with Facebook.  I'll save that for a follow up post.

You can't fix stupid

"You can't fix stupid. There's not a pill you can take; there's not a class you can go to. Stupid is forever. Ron White

It seems like I've spent a large portion of my so-called career trying to fix stupid. Stupid products, stupid situations, stupid clients, stupid vendors, and yes, stupid people. The comedian Ron White uses the "you can't fix stupid" line in one of his routines when talking about finding the right person to marry with the point being that these days you can fix almost any physical issue with your mate, but "you can't fix stupid".

A few years ago I was in a situation where I had spent the better part of two years trying to fix stupid and it finally came to me that I was the leader of the pack. The only thing worse than spending more than a minute and a half trying to fix someone who is hell-bent on being stupid is realizing that you've just wasted months of your life trying to do the impossible.

I was talking to a buddy a while back who was struggling with a non-performer, a sales guy who hasn't sold anything in nearly a year. So, I'm wailing on my buddy about what part of "nothing" and "nearly a year" he's not latching on to. All of a sudden I realize that I did not have the high ground in this conversation because I've spent twice that time on a more hopeless situation.

So, here's my resolution and a modification of the "you can't fix stupid" rule. I solemnly resolve to never again make more than a cursory swipe at fixing stupid people. I'll take on stupid situations, stupid circumstances and maybe even stupid products but not stupid people. Life's too short.

The modification: You CAN fix stupid if it's yourself.

Juice

It's a mistake to think that moving fast is the same as actually going somewhere.” Steve Goodier 

I was chatting with a friend the other day who I had been in a start-up with once upon a time who was wanting to pick my brain (obviously a desperate man).  He most recently had been the CFO at a company that had been sold to an outside group.  A deal he had helped to orchestrate.

After taking the summer off and doing some traveling with his wife he was in the process of “getting back into it”. 

So he had fired up his network, quickly got some encouraging hits, had a few interviews and run directly into the “Juice” question.

What’s the “Juice” question, you ask?

Juice as in energy, gas left in the tank, hunger, ambition, willingness to engage, ability to work hard, desire to show up every day, etc.

It’s the question you get when you get of a certain age, where the number of years left to work are way less than the ones you already have.  It’s when you’re on the back nine of your professional career.

You see, employers get concerned that you’re all used up.  Even if your tires are good and engine is solid your odometer shows a lot of miles.  The old, “it’s not the age, it’s the miles” analogy.

It’s when you’ve had a long and somewhat illustrious career but you really, really want to keep working.  Not from need as much as ambition.  You've raised your kids and just don't have the "off field" drama you had in your 30's and 40's.  Frankly you have lots of free time and quite frankly like working.

My friend's problem is if he looks at CFO positions the company gets concerned with how many more years he’ll want to work.  If he looks a lower position’s (that he would be very happy doing) the company gets concerned that he’ll be unhappy and will only stay there until he scores a better position in another company.  But mainly it’s “do you have any Juice left?”

It’s a sticky one because the only way to prove it is to do it.  But you can’t do it if they won’t bring you in and see.  Essentially it comes down to the fact that they just don’t believe you when you tell them you have plenty left and want to use it for their benefit.

The other truth is, people like him DON’T have to work as hard to do the job.  With their vast experience they know how to get things done quicker and easier than some 30 year old.  They also don’t carry around the personal baggage of someone younger.  Work/life balance, blind ambition that can be destructive, learning how to navigate company politics, knowing what being a good employee means.

In fact, there’s a lot of gold in a many of these golden oldies.

If you need key talent it might be worth your time to test drive one of these higher-mileage beauties.  Bring them in on a consulting basis, see how much Juice they have left.  You may be pleasantly surprised.

I Can See Clearly Now

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” Henry David Thoreau

I had cataracts surgery a while back. Yet another sign that I am, in fact, an old geezer-head as the young son of a friend of mine once proclaimed (almost 20 years ago).

It was an interesting process. I had Lasik on both eyes fifteen years ago and it’s been great. I’ve enjoyed 20/20 vision and with the exception of the dreaded reading glasses have had no vision complaints – until recently. I was noticing that my vision wasn’t as clear as I was used to and most annoying my reading glasses didn’t seem to be helping on the close up stuff. So I bit the bullet and visited a local optometrist friend who after a thorough exam and way too many “Hmmmm” and “That’s Interesting” comments proclaimed that the good news was I didn’t need glasses. The bad news, however, was I needed cataracts surgery…in both eyes.

Great.

I was surprised about the “both eyes” part. Whereas my right eye had become very foggy (imagine having Vaseline smeared on your eyeball) I had started relying on my left “good” eye for any clear vision and frankly thought it was still at or near 20/20. I was even more surprised to learn that the cataracts were actually worse in my left “good” eye because in the right eye all I could read on the eye test chart was the “E”.

The fact that I was going to get my vision fixed was met with great exaltation from my golfing buddies who had for too long endured the countless rounds answering the never-ending barrage of “did you see my ball?” queries. The fact they didn’t bash me with a seven iron is a true testament to their friendship.

So, I had the right eye done – a pretty quick and simple procedure by the way – and after a night of wanting to claw my eye out because of the endless flood of tears from the, hardly exaggerating, nine thousand drops of medications they put in before the procedure I awoke to WOW, I CAN SEE. Not crystal, but a billion times better than before. And the bonus was in the next day followup the doc announced that my right eye was at 20/40 and there was still some swelling so it would still improve.

The funny part was now doing the right eye vs. left eye comparison I realized how bad my left “good” eye was. It was scheduled and performed two weeks later and I was once again invited by my buds to golf again.

So as is typical this whole ordeal got me thinking about life in the business world.

You know, a lot of times we fall into the “good” eye trap. Things look so bad from one perspective that by comparison other things look OK when in fact they’re not. In a way it corresponds to one of Jack Welsh’s management rules to rank your people strongest to weakest and always work on improving or replacing the bottom 10% no matter how good you feel the team has become, because everything is good or bad by perspective.

It’s hard to fix everything at once, after all they only fixed one eye at a time on me, so fixing the worst problem first is usually the right thing but don’t lose sight (no pun intended) of the fact that other things may only be good by comparison.

Now, where’s my golf bag? I want to actually see my ball going OB.