Richard Yong

Not being what you aren't - A Warren Buffet Story.

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

That's a $200 billion dollar company's website.

They are a reinsurance and investment company. They know that, and they make sure you know that, they do it by making it clear what they do not do.

Here are some things they do not do:

• Web design
• PR
• Logistics (AGM, first Saturday of May)
• Executive lounging
• Excitement
• Buy expensive things (They bought a company once, the CEO was late... looking for unexpired parking meters)
• Hire writers

I think there's a story here around being who you are being made up of what you do, but more importantly what you do not do.

It's a dificult thing, and it took me six years of dawdling before I realised who I wasn't going to be. I wasn't clear about what I wasn't willing to do, and in return I ended up being everything to everyone, the Jack of All Trades. If you let others control your destiny, you end up being and doing what others want and not what you want.   

Can you imagine how uncomfortable some companies would be if they dropped their PR division, or fired their homepage designers?

It's the difference between the Doing Men, and the Maybe and Sorry Men.

Are you clear about who you aren't?

Are you clear about about what you won't do?

Some thoughts for Monday.

Flickr Cred: Thomas Hawk

The title is once again tongue in cheek. I was reading some scrawled pen marks in 'The One Minute Manager' by Blanchard and Johnson, it said 'No one does nothing to you, you do it to yourself.' Nice meaning, odd writing.

Oh and Activision blew analysts expectations away, putting on over 15% on Friday.

Doing the right thing - Lenovo revisited, a cautionary tale on the Sorry Men.

Doing the right thing is almost never about just doing your job.

It's easy to do your job, it lets you say I'm just.

I'm just a customer service assistant, packer, accountant, finance clerk, cleaner, checkout clerk or security guard. But that's how you lose the plot.

I've had an ongoing debacle with Lenovo.

On the face of it, it's a simple business.

Build and sell laptops. If you had to write a plot summary for the Lenovo movie, those would be the 4 words.

Some people they hire are fantastic. But everybody in Lenovo has a 'title.' That's great if it gives you something valuable to do, but not if it robs you of power. Worst of all, it should never distract anybody from your business (which is to build and sell laptops, just in case Lenovo staff read this and forgot).

Here are some real life quotes (not strictly verbatim) from Lenovo staff:

'I'm just in sales, I don't know technical, you'll have to ask the engineers'

'Sorry I know the website might say it's available, but it's actually not, there's no option in my process'

'I don't know about that sir, you'll have to ask someone else'

'Sorry sir, that's not possible it's not part of the process'

'Sorry sir, that's not in our policy to receive pdfs in emails, only faxes.' (Anyone spot the irony here?)

'I'm just in customer service, you'll have to ask repairs for an ETA.'

What if they started focusing on doing the right thing? They might take a leaf out of Vodafone and Optus who had the following to say to me:

'Look you are a great customer, I know we're not wrong here, and you're not wrong, we're sorry you had a problem, and look it's a waste of time for us to escalate this to management... I'm not suppose to do this, but look lets just waive the fee this once okay!'

'Oh it's disappointing that you're cancelling your account Mr. Yong, but let me check with my manager right now if we can waive your exit fee anyway, you've been with us a long time! Please wait one moment <brief pause> It's been approved, thanks for your patience sir.'

The conversation changes. Completely.

It's Friday, so relax. But on Monday, think about doing the right thing, not just your job description.

Next time you get asked what you do, whether you're the cleaner or the CEO, you might say 'I'm helping mums and dads save money,' or 'I'm helping make and sell the best laptops', 'Helping kids grow into good people' or 'I'm making sure our customers want to use us again.'

A hint for Lenovo: Fire everyone with the job description 'Sorry - that's not my responsibility', then spend that money on hiring half the number of people and give them the job description 'Goal #1 Help Lenovo make and sell laptops. Goal #2 Create and retain customers. Goal #3 Spend saved 'Sorry Men' money on creating and keeping good customers.'

You'll have spent $0 dollars more, and gotten rid of the Sorry Men.

Risk, Return on Investment and demanding profit.

People generally expect too little return from their business. Why? Because they never measured the risk.

Owning your own business should never be about buying yourself a job, it should always be about maximising your ROI (return on investment).

ROI is really just a fancy jargon term for making sure you earn more money than the risk you take on.

64.2% of small businesses fail within 10 years.  How's that for risk?

It's the reason why restaurants and retail stores are a horrible proposition for most people. The maximum expected income or return will never even closely reflect the amount of risk (overheads, employing people, initial startup costs, sanity)

It's a relative measure and opens up vast avenues when it comes to working out which option to pick when launching a new business. Look at these two examples:

1. Uni student launches an advertising based, content driven web site for under $2000 and starts earning ~$5000 a year. So 250% ROI.

2. Restaurant opens costing just under $250,000 to purchase and launch. What ROI does the owner need to make it a worthwhile proposition? Would it be better to be the uni student? Legitimate questions, and a reason I would never run a restaurant unless it was a hobby, or it was my ultimate passion.

If you're thinking about launching a business, and before you go neck deep in debt, make sure you ask yourself two simple questions (then go and work out the complex calculations!):

1. What's the risk of my failure?
2. So if I succeed, how much do I need to make it worth my risk of failure?

Oh and a third one serious one:

3. Is this a romantic dream, or is this about doing what I love and being able to support my family and my life?

The risk is more than most people probably imagine. It's also a very good reason to hang on to a job, the risk is low, and for many, the ROI is o.k. For businesses, it impacts the way their price and the way they go to market.

I'd love to hear about your experiences with personal ROI!

flickr credit:  opacity

I've added a fancy button up on the right, that's an RSS feed button. It'll let you keep track of all the headlines on your favourite sites. If you've never used it, click it and see where it brings you, it's like an online book mark and it'll book mark this site. Experiment and have fun (I'm new to RSS too!)

The problem with losing the big picture. Clickthroughs

A curious advertisement. A spinning lady. Is she spinning left, or right?

I clicked on an ad with that picture and was brought to the SAAB site. I'm sure the click through statistics are impressive. But that's what happens when you forget about trying to generate sales and start obsessing about generating clickthroughs.

Distracting someone on the net doesn't win you any friends.

Why not capitalise on the hard won clickthrough? How about a webpage about how the right and left brains work. Appeal to the two halves. Then invite them to see for themselves why a SAAB is so remarkable?

The ad didn't have my permission to take me to the SAAB site. I didn't even read the copy on the site. I'll probably never buy a SAAB.

But they got the clickthrough, so I guess an ad executive, somewhere, is punching the air in victory.

Are you ready?

20% of world growth came from the EU, US and Japan last year.

40% came from China and India .

48.7 million. The total number of Indian graduates in 2005.  To put that in perspective, the entire population of Australia is not even half that.

So... Are you ready?

• Are you ready to compete with the world, and not just your peers?
• Are you ready to compete with people who are just as smart, just as hard working, hungry for a challenge and willing to work for half the price?
• Are you ready for a changing world? It's going to change, even if you don't.

We idolise the old guard that lord over old businesses, because they've made it. And good for them. Those rules don't work anymore. Unless you're working towards something new, something better, you might just be in a holding pattern to replace the old guard. And if you're doing that, you might find there isn't much left to inherit.

Do you want to live in fear of losing your power base and have to fight to maintain the status quo? Or do you want to be out at the fringe, building a new power base and challenging the status quo with something new, something better, something good... Maybe even something remarkable?

So... Are you ready?

Flickr credit: squacco

The Spectacular Collapse of the Ivory Tower. Why Microsoft gets hugs and Lenovo doesn't.

What does social networking have to do with serious suit and tie business? Well, for one, everything. The ivory tower of senior management has collapsed. Those that come and play the social game, win. Those that don't... well you know what happened to the dinosaurs.

First let's examine some people who excel at the social networking game:

Seth Godin - Serial marketer, book writer, presenter and genuinely remarkable guy, takes the time to respond to his emails. Even ones from me.

Phil Harrison - Executive Vice President of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (responsible for showcasing the PS3 launch) has an ongoing dialogue with the blog, Kotaku. Even his chewing gum is big news.

Tim Ferriss - New Rich, writer of the Four Hour Work Week and constant adventurer responds personally to comments on his blog and his forums.

So if these remarkable people are so easily contactable, why can't I even get the contact details of someone at Lenovo above a customer service centre employee unless I make a plea on their forums?

We might find an answer if we start by taking a look at two different management team biography pages:

Lenovo - 'Lenovo Management'

Microsoft - 'Press Pass'

Similar. Same information. But different.

1. Lenovo doesn't want you talking to their execs. Suits and ties, their photos look like seniors taking yearbook photos.

2.  Lenovo doesn't want you talking to their execs. There aren't any email addresses, or any phone numbers to contact these guys. They're untouchables.

Microsoft on the other hand has personality, their CEO looks like he could be someones grand dad, the head of entertainment, J Allard looks like he actually likes entertainment. It's not called 'Lenovo Management' either, it's called 'Press Pass,' they're inviting you to talk to them. There is a form you can fill in if you want to speak with them too. Aces.

The bio's might not strike you as particularly different, but these small tid bits of information show a lot about how a corporation plays ball. Here are some real life examples:

1. If you call microsoft to get your xbox fixed, a human answers. If they wipe off all your signatures on your limited edition signed xbox while in repairs, they apologise and Bill Gate's signs your new one. They show they care. $250 billion dollars and they can still show they care.

2. If you call Lenovo, their sales team will pick up in less than 2 minutes, and take your credit card details in less than 20 minutes. If you call their service centre to get your laptop fixed? 25 minutes average  on the waitlist. 25 minutes before you speak to a human soul. They are over 40 times smaller than Microsoft.

What does this mean for businesses?

• Authentic communication. If you stick someone on a phone wait list for 20 minutes, don't tell them their call is important, it obviously isn't. Worst of all don't lie, I received an automated feedback email from Lenovo that was signed by Chris Askew the Senior VP of Lenovo Services. That's just insulting.
• Focus on your customer. No one cares about your processes, they just want results. Call centres have slowly become the blight of companies. In a youcan'ttalktoexecutives company, a call centre should be your biggest investment, it'll be the one time your customers speaks to a human voice in your company. What message are you trying to send your customer? Go away?
• Be available. Even if you just pretend. Invite communication. It sends a strong message when you leave a brick wall to communication. It's sending the message that you either don't know or you don't care. I'm not quite sure which is worse.
• If your customer likes you... they might not tell anyone.
• If your customer doesn't like you... they will tell everyone. With blogs, facebook, twitter, digg, consumerist... the avenues and audience become endless, and that is scary if your customer doesn't like you.

This post started out when I tried to track down Chris Askew, the Senior VP of Lenovo Services. I have been having stupid amounts of trouble repairing my three thousand dollar notebook. You can read about it here. At this moment, I still can't find Chris Askew's number or email. It got me started thinking about how different firms approach communication. I wanted to explore why some are petrified of customers talking to anyone in the company earning over $4 an hour, while others jump at the opportunity.

edit: to those that came from Seth's site, this blog is tangential, Seth's was to the point... Just show you care and the above goes away, real quick.  

Flickr cred: Esthr