Business Rule 6: Who Dropped the Paddle?

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Can This Canoe Be Saved?

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The scene is an executive meeting. The characters sitting around the table are the best team of people I’ve ever worked with –- they have the highest core competencies and know the business we are in, which unfortunately, is darned unusual. I “sat” on the table inside the black telephone that looked like a spaceship, patched in from Califormia. I had already learned the OZ-like power of the black box by then.

As a company we were fighting the uphill battle of trying to reverse a decline. We were determined not only to show a profit in six months, but to buy our way out of the bank covenants that were tying our hands.

The company ran on a direct mail model much like Lands’ End. The market was schools and educational institutions. The question on the table that day was whether to make one huge catalog drop for the most important fall release or to hold back some money and do a second release in January. Some of us suspected that if fall didn’t work, there wouldn’t be a January. The owners were looking for progress.

I was new to direct mail and in the spaceship on the table, so I walked around my backyard listening in. The longer I walked, the more the conversation went deeper into what had gone wrong in the past. The history was informative as background for the decision. But an hour later, the discussion was still on the history.

I was in California. I had run out of backyard to explore.

“Excuse me,” I said. They had forgotten about me in the spaceship again. I measured my words and spoke with some urgency. “When you’re in a canoe and about to go over a waterfall, NOW is NOT the time to discuss WHO DROPPED THE PADDLE.”

I still smile to think of the Director who answered with a laugh, “Is it a BIG waterfall?”

“YES, . . . and there are LIONS and TIGERS below it, WAITING at the bottom.”

That meeting became known in company folklore as “The Famous Canoe Analogy.”

The President called me an hour later to say thank you for stopping the history telling. The story still comes up when we get together.

Sometimes the obvious is the hardest thing to see, especially when we are a part of it. In this case they had forgotten Basic Business Rule # 6:

Focusing on the past can’t fix the future. Focusing on the future might.

We had decided to put all of our strength into that fall catalogue. We made that decision in 10 minutes flat. The decision paid off. We won the bet. We finished the year with 3% growth in an industry that was showing 3% growth, after our own company had suffered three years of 10% decline.

That was also the day that my favorite CFO decided that I talk best in stories and sound bytes. He still doesn’t know I write much better than I talk. (A girl has to have some secrets from a CFO.)

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Perfect Virtual Manager on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related
Business Rule 5: Never Underestimate the Power of a Voice on the Telephone
Business Rule 4: You Know Your Truth — Listen to Yourself
Business Rule 3: In PRM, the First Test Always Outweighs the Final

Business Rule 2: How to Do What You Want

Filed Under Business Life, Perfect Virtual Manager, Successful Blog | 14 Comments

The Most Important Pattern

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I snuck into business. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I didn’t go to business school. I was a first-grade teacher. Well, at least that was true once. The truth changes. I did spend a year studying organizational behavior and other MBA stuff. But that’s not what this story is about, so let’s go back to where I was.

After teaching, I was an executive recruiter — that’s right a headhunter — for high-level sales positions. Then I was a territory sales rep that handled two states, selling shirts wholesale for the Phillips Van Heusen Corporation. I even worked in an Interior Design Firm. None of these jobs quite fit me. They were fun, but not where I wanted to be.

Eventually I decided to use my degree again. I started freelance writing about education for magazines, textbooks, and finally for developers who worked for educational publishers. Then I got a job directing a group that included editorial, design, production, typesetting, and printing. That led to my first real publishing job — I was the youngest Executive Editor my new employer had ever hired.

At the beginning of my business career, I felt that without a business school education I had lost out on knowing how business worked. I wanted to know what the unwritten rules were.

I even said out loud, “Just tell me the rules. I’m an overachiever. I like to do the impossible.” But no one came through with the answers. I’d missed the secret handshake and I’d missed everything.

I kept doing the only thing I knew how. I paid attention and processed all of the information I could. I read hundreds of books on management –- I learned Drucker inside out. I read all of Tom Peters. The list was extensive and encompassing. That’s when I got interested in organizational behavior, and looked for patterns in everything.

I discovered the most important pattern of all.

You can do anything you want in business, IF you can show how it’s in the company’s best interest.

Why didn’t I see that sooner? That’s true of everything. What have you done lately to frame what your goals in terms of those around you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

You might have heard of my new service for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and folks who are forging a path of their own. I’m calling it PVM, the Perfect Virtual Manager. We all need Managers. It’s perfect because you get to decide your manager’s job description. What could more perfect than that?

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Business Rule 1: Working at Home and Doing it Right

Business Rule 1: Working at Home and Doing it Right

Filed Under Business Life, Perfect Virtual Manager, Successful Blog | 70 Comments

What I Do for a Living

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I no longer work in an office. It’s been years. Now my desk is glass. It sits in my living room in Chicago behind a Chinese rice paper screen. Out the windows behind me is Lake Michigan and, in the wee hours when I have a chance, I can look at the water and think about what I’ll write next.

My office is the Internet. It’s inside my computer and inside yours. It’s open 24/7. My friends will attest that I’m almost here. I like it when you stop by or interrupt. It’s kind of lonely when no one’s around.

When folks ask me what I do every day, I say I write about thinking, and writing, and strategy. They usually get what I mean by that. But what I really do is try to share what I’ve learned and have fun while I’m doing it. It’s a rule of business and of life —

If you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right.

What work did you do that was fun today?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

You might have heard of my new service for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and folks who are forging a path of their own. I’m calling it PVM, the Perfect Virtual Manager. We all need Managers. It’s perfect because you get to decide your manager’s job description. What could more perfect than that?

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