Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Good, bad or silly, ideas for products are generated in response to a problem or need. It doesn’t matter if the problem/need only exists in the entrepreneur’s mind (think Jucerio), it’s still the driving force behind creating whatever. So what happens when there are no perceived problems? When the current whatever is treated as THE solution?  Innovation takes a nosedive and monopolies thrive.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry when I see ads for stuff that responds to voice command, especially when it’s for stuff like changing the TV channel. I guess that using the remote takes either too much energy or too much intelligence to work it.

Everything today is about convenience, a trend I’ve been suspicious of, although I wasn’t sure why.

However, after reading an op-ed piece by Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia and the author of “The Attention Merchants: The Epic Struggle to Get Inside Our Heads,” called The Tyranny of Convenience I’m starting to understand what about it makes me itch.

In the developed nations of the 21st century, convenience — that is, more efficient and easier ways of doing personal tasks — has emerged as perhaps the most powerful force shaping our individual lives and our economies.

Granted I’m known as a digital dinosaur, but there are some conveniences — washing machines, telephones, cars, email, and Skype chat, among them — I’m all for — although I see no reason they need to be smart .

However, I have no cell phone, avoid any app, service, etc., provided by Google, clean my own house, wash my own clothes, shop for my own food, and do my own cooking just as I’ve done since I was 18.

I search using startpage.com, no ads, no tracking and my life functions just fine without always being connected. I’m not on social media and don’t suffer from FOMA; I meet friends for meals and fun and we talk on the phone in-between.

I suppose that all sounds very inconvenient these days, but I’m never bored and enjoy the feelings of accomplishment that come with doing stuff yourself, as well as figuring out better ways to do it — it’s called ingenuity.

I’ve seen many “convenient” items come to market years after I came up with a similar approach to use for myself.

Americans say they prize competition, a proliferation of choices, the little guy. Yet our taste for convenience begets more convenience, through a combination of the economics of scale and the power of habit. The easier it is to use Amazon, the more powerful Amazon becomes — and thus the easier it becomes to use Amazon. Convenience and monopoly seem to be natural bedfellows (emphasis mine).

Professor WU (or someone) needs to do a follow-up article entitled, “How Convenience Killed Creativity and Strangled Entrepreneurship.

Image credit: jim212jim

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry when I see ads for stuff that responds to voice command, especially when it is for stuff like changing the TV channel. I guess that using the remote takes either too much energy or too much intelligence to work it.

Everything today is about convenience, a trend I’ve been suspicious, although I wasn’t sure why.

However, after reading an op-ed piece by Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia and the author of “The Attention Merchants: The Epic Struggle to Get Inside Our Heads,” called The Tyranny of Convenience I’m starting to understand what about it makes me itch.

In the developed nations of the 21st century, convenience — that is, more efficient and easier ways of doing personal tasks — has emerged as perhaps the most powerful force shaping our individual lives and our economies.

Granted I’m known as a digital dinosaur, but there are some conveniences — washing machines, telephones, cars, email, and Skype chat, among them — I’m all for.

However, I have no cell phone, avoid any app, service, etc., provided by Google, clean my own house, wash my own clothes, shop for my own food, and do my own cooking just as I’ve done since I was 18.

I search using ixquick.com, no ads, no tracking and my life functions just fine without always being connected. I’m not on social media and don’t suffer from FOMA; I meet friends for meals and fun and we talk on the phone in-between.

I suppose that all sounds very inconvenient these days, but I’m never bored and enjoy the feelings of accomplishment that come with doing stuff yourself, as well as figuring out better ways to do it — it’s called ingenuity.

I’ve seen many “convenient” items come to market years after I came up with a similar approach to use for myself.

Americans say they prize competition, a proliferation of choices, the little guy. Yet our taste for convenience begets more convenience, through a combination of the economics of scale and the power of habit. The easier it is to use Amazon, the more powerful Amazon becomes — and thus the easier it becomes to use Amazon. Convenience and monopoly seem to be natural bedfellows (emphasis mine).

Professor WU (or someone) needs to do a follow-up article entitled, “How Convenience Killed Creativity and Strangled Entrepreneurship.

Image credit: jim212jim

It’s summer; it’s hot and air-conditioning is expensive.

Heat pumps and ceiling fans are inexpensive to run, but not everybody has them.

And window unit air conditioners are expensive to run.

I saw a great DIY solution on Business Insider and thought I would share.

There is little initial investment, it’s cheap to use and very simple to make.

Best, especially in places like California, you can reuse the same water over and over in containers or use the cooler blocks (the ones you freeze) from a dollar store.

Here’s all you do.

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

KG Charles-Harris, EMANIO founder/CEO, sent me a link about GitHub’s lean, “DIY management strategy pulled from the open-source world” and asked me what I thought.

So I read the article.

Open source lends itself to a great culture with a few caveats.

• All of the approaches and actions described are based on 100% superlative, open, honest, direct, no-game communications, with no exceptions, which aren’t typical of the human race.
• Millennials are impatient and will vote more quickly with their feet; HOWEVER, that may change as they marry and take on mortgages, kids, etc. High risk is more acceptable when you have little to lose.
• The larger/faster a company grows the more difficult to keep hiring for cultural fit; and
• the more difficult it is to keep the micro cultures that form under each leader (whether manager or not) aligned.

There is an underlying problem with stories about cultures like GitHub’s even with in-depth explanations of how and why they work.

Too often, founders who crave the results will try to implement the strategy without taking time to lay the groundwork.

Without the right cultural MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) in place, a deep understanding of their own MAP and a good hiring process that ensures cultural fit, the results will probably be disappointing.
Image credit: Hiking Artist

Common wisdom says that the larger a company the harder it is to get management to listen, especially when it goes against fundamental corporate practice.

Franchises are even worse and the longer they’ve been around the less they are likely to listen to a franchisee, let alone a new one.

But when they do the result can go way beyond the most optimistic prediction.

The frozen-yogurt giant credits the 32-year-old’s success with pushing them to embrace the self-serve model – a move that has reinvigorated the company and led to exponential growth.

TCBY had been around 30 successful years when Samuel Batt was approved for a new franchise in 2010.

He grew up eating TCBY, but wanted to incorporate self-service—enabling customers to choose flavors, toppings and quantity of each—in his new franchise.

Sounds old hat today, but DIY was just gaining traction in new venues back then.

Long story short; the powers-that-be said yes, as long as he kept the branding.

And within three weeks, his location was one of the top-five most profitable franchises in the country. (…) About half of TCBY’s nearly 500 franchises across the country have embraced the new model to great success, each doing from 25 percent to 200 percent better in sales than with the traditional model, Brian Mooney, director of operations for the Eastern U.S., said.

Management could have just as easily said no.

Compare TCBY’s attitude to Steve Ballmer’s at Microsoft; they are close to the same age—TCBY is just six years younger than Microsoft.

In 2007 Ballmer said, “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.”

He didn’t listen to either his own people or the industry when they said that mobile and the cloud were the future—or maybe he was in denial.

But as I recall, Bill Gates didn’t listen when staff tried to tell him that the Internet was going to be really, really BIG.

Bosses at every level, not just CEOs, have a choice.

They can choose to listen and be flexible—or not.

Flickr image credit: jessica mullen

The ‘me first’ attitude so prevalent today makes everyday living anywhere ever more difficult.

That ‘me first’ is especially obvious when poop isn’t scooped.

“In the worldwide battle to get dog owners to clean up after their pets, enter Brunete, a middle-class suburb of Madrid fed up with dirty parks and sidewalks.”

Brunette’s mayor wanted a more creative solution that didn’t rely on substantial fines, because in tough economic times that fine could be the difference between eating and going hungry.

With the creative help of McCann Erickson, Brunete’s mayor tried a totally new approach to the poop—along the lines of ‘return to sender’.

Instead, this town engaged a small army of volunteers to bag it, box it and send it back to its owners. (…) Delivering 147 boxes of the real stuff seems to have produced a far more lasting effect in this town of about 10,000 residents. The mayor guesses a 70 percent improvement even now, several months after the two-week campaign.

The campaign wasn’t done as a surprise;

At first, Ricardo Rovira, who was part of the design team at the agency, worried that the mayor would not have the courage to go ahead with its direct marketing idea. But he did. McCann also made an amusing public awareness video, produced by Juan José Ocio, largely using actors. It was shown around town before concerts and community meetings.

According to Rovira, the campaign also netted McCann some real clients with serious money to spend.

This has been a fun little doing well by doing good story on a summer Wednesday that, hopefully, will inspire you/your company to DIY.

YouTube credit: McCann Worldgroup Spain

Recruiters are some of the most loved/hated/annoying people that candidates interact with whether looking for a job or an opportunity—a job pays the bills, while an opportunity moves your career—it’s nice when they are one-in-the-same.

What candidates need to keep front and center is that helping someone, no matter how good, is not recruiters’ primary focus.

Their focus is getting paid.

Recruiters get paid by filling a company’s open req.

Marketing a candidate is done with the primary goal of getting access to that company’s/manager’s open reqs and a contractual obligation to pay the recruiter.

A marketable candidate is not necessarily the best candidate available, but the candidate most likely to be “sold” successfully.

That judgment is based on the current needs of the marketplace and the number of similar positions in the target companies.

To actively market people who hold senior positions, have esoteric skills, are in large supply, or do not fit the general parameters of the recruiter’s normal market is not a good recipe for success.

Therefore, the decision to market or not to market has very little to do with candidate skills and everything to do with recruiters’ desire/need to spend their time productively.

The problem is that most recruiters are reluctant to explain.

Like most folks they are uncomfortable saying no, they don’t want to hurt the candidate’s feelings or they just can’t be bothered (this goes for hiring managers, too).

I have always contended that it is far worse for a candidate to think something is happening when it’s not than to be told the truth.

Disclaimer: Other than helping clients make staffing a core competency I’m long out of active recruiting, but it seems ridiculous to me that in these days of networking and DIY-everything trusting your future to a stranger when you are on the lowest rung of their priority ladder (after self and client) isn’t the smartest thing to do—and it never was.

Flickr image credit: BDPA Charlotte – IT Thought Leaders

As the theme from CSI keeps asking, who are you?

The answer is  easy, but not simple—you are your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™)

Your MAP is what truly defines you; it defines you more than your ethnicity, religion, where you were raised, the schools you attended or any other external criteria.

MAP is why you act certain ways and do certain things, as I wrote about myself several years ago.

MAP is not is an excuse to act badly.

MAP makes you you.

MAP is dynamic as opposed to static—and totally within your control.

It will morph and change as you direct and not as others suggest.

Which is not to say that you shouldn’t listen to suggestions; honest feedback is the best objective mirror for viewing your MAP.

Once you thoroughly understand the role MAP plays in your life you should understand that it plays a similar role in the lives of your team, your vendors and your customers.

Because just as their suggestions won’t directly change your MAP, your suggestions won’t directly change theirs.

Flickr image credit: EPMLE

What do you do when you graduate and can’t find a job?

What do you do when you’re laid off and can’t find a job?

What do you do when you hate the jobs you find?

DIY, better known as start your own business.

Whether building, rebuilding or remodeling a career, more and more people are opting to create their own.

Some do it out of necessity, as has been done in the name of ‘consultant’ in past recessions, but many are going for something larger.

They are doing it because they have a vision and are willing to back that vision with the 80 hour weeks and steep learning curve that it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

They are coming together online and in person to learn from each other and often to help each other.

What happens when the statistics predicting that most businesses fail within five years are proven accurate? Or when the economy improves and business ramps up hiring?

Will these entrepreneurs give a collective sigh of relief and happily march off to toil for someone else?

Some will, but personally I think corporate America is in for a very rude awakening.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dpstyles/5202530836/

Shocking answer, you don’t.

“JoAnne” called me today and asked if I could help her with a time management problem.

When I stopped laughing I told her that time management definitely did not fall within my expertise and asked why she had called me when there was so much information available.

JoAnne said that she had read multiple books and blogs and even paid for some coaching, but none of it worked. She said a friend had mentioned me and after reading some of the posts she thought maybe she had a MAP problem.

Now, that is a totally different kettle of fish, so I asked her to describe what she did and where she was having problems.

I kept notes and occasionally asked her how much time something took; then I added up the total.

No wonder JoAnne had a problem, the total was close to 22 hours and that was before such minor details as eating and sleeping.

When I mentioned this JoAnne agreed, but said she couldn’t bare to give up any of her activities and did I have any suggestions; maybe a MAP solution.

I explained that every solution was a MAP solution because if it isn’t synergistic with MAP it wouldn’t work. That simple.

I told Joanne that she already knew what to do; she just didn’t want to do it.

I said that there is no such thing as time management, only self management, and nobody could do that for her, it was definitely a DIY project.

First she needed to dig into her MAP and identify those things that made JoAnne herself, and then she needed to compare that list to the “activities she couldn’t bare to give up.”

The activities in sync with her MAP she would probably keep, those that weren’t were the ones most easily curtailed or dumped—although she might choose to change her MAP if one turned out to be important enough.

The lesson here is that the next time you’re overloaded remember that while you can’t manage time you can manage yourself. Start with your MAP, focus on what is really important and let go of the rest.

Image credit: digital_a on sxc.hu