Archive for the ‘Best business practices’ Category
It’s an election year here in the United States. 2012 will also mark changes in the Chinese government as well. The backdrop to all of this is a seemingly constant stream of rhetoric from the U.S. that China has unfair trade practices. President Obama made reference to that in his State of the Union message this past Tuesday calling for the creation of a new trade enforcement unit that will be tasked with investigating unfair trade practices in countries, he said, “like China”. Both President Obama and the Chinese government know that any punitive action as a result of this investigation is highly unlikely.
I’ve been to China a handful of times over the past two years and our company is doing business by helping Chinese companies in the U.S. as well as helping U.S. companies enter the Chinese market. I’ve learned a great deal and have much more to learn in the coming years. However I have learned a number of very important things. Here are three to think about:
1) The Chinese will not be pushed around. It’s like when you are being yelled at by someone and you eventually just tune out. Jumping up and down demanding that China accede on trade practices and currency valuations will have little or no impact on how China will act.
2) Win-win does not mean the same thing to the Chinese as it does to Americans. I can hardly count the number of times I’ve had a Chinese businessperson tell me Win-Win right? With a smile and a handshake. Win-win to the Chinese means the company wants you (the U.S. side of the venture) to take all the risk in helping them develop their business in the U.S., and for the most part, non-major Chinese companies are unwilling to invest any money in developing the U.S. market. This should not be all that surprising given that just a little over thirty years ago the notion of marketing and advertising was as foreign as – well, a free society.
3) It is an understatement to say that it takes patience to have your China market strategies bear fruit. When I tell my Chinese associates and U.S. expatriates that we’ve been able to gain client engagements in China in less than two years they are amazed and impressed. For me it feels as if it’s taken a really long time with constant work, some missteps and changes in strategy. I’ve been told repeatedly that having success in anything less than three years is unusual.
I believe most Americans are smart, smart enough to realize that starting a trade war with China will not help the U.S. get its goods and services into the fast-growing market any faster. Yes of course we all desire a level playing field and at the same time it’s frustrating to have to deal with the subsidization of Chinese enterprises by the PRC government. However the U.S. and other western countries will be far more successful if they try to find more collaborative methods to effect policy when it comes to the Chinese.
The Chinese are not focused on helping the west rebound from its financial difficulties. China has its own problems. But the Chinese are aware that they are holding the right cards at the moment. That China will continue to try to exploit its hand should come as no surprise to anyone.
But somehow that doesn’t seem to be the case. Do you think I am being naïve? Practical? Neither? Both?
Until this year we’ve never been closed on MLK day. There are a number of reasons none of which are all that compelling. From years past we have traditionally offered ten official ‘company’ holidays. At the beginning of each year we determine which ones will be observed. New Year’s Day, President’s Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day and the following Friday, and Christmas Day are somewhat fixed. That’s eight. Often we like to give Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. A number of years ago we offered Columbus Day (and he was not even an American) but have not in many years.
When I have worked on MLK day in recent years I have noticed an increasing amount of companies that are closed. Of course MLK day is a Federal Holiday, no banks, post offices and even the financial markets are closed. New York area commuter trains runs on a Saturday schedule.
So what took me so long? I really don’t have a good answer. I have great respect for the work done by Dr. King and his importance and significance in American history is in my view underappreciated. But from this point forward, as long as I am running a company MLK day will be an official company holiday.
Of course I write this from my desk at work on the morning of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But that’s my choice to get a things accomplished on an unusually quiet Monday morning. I think it’s no problem to work on a holiday like MLK day – as long as the choice is yours. Please pardon that it took me an inordinately long time to figure that out.
Is your company open today and if not are you working anyway?
Does that ever happen to you? It happens to me all the time. Yesterday I read about the idea of having a ‘Guest’ application on a mobile phone such that you could offer your phone to someone else to use (temporarily) and they would log in as a guest and make a call or do whatever they needed to on their own account and not be able to get into your account. I realize that it won’t be long before everyone has a smartphone but sometimes batteries die, phones get lost or don’t work so having this as an option in the form of an application is a great idea. It seems so obvious to me and caused me to wonder why I didn’t think of that?
Several years ago I wrote a post on how I thought there should be an iPhone EZ pass application – http://wp.me/pJX7l-9L – and BTW I didn’t and still don’t have an iPhone. I would now add that it should be a smartphone application for all platforms (Android, Blackberry if they last). Good idea but I’ve lately been trying to find a way to make it happen and have been stymied every step of the way when it comes to contacting people at EZ Pass – which has been nearly impossible. If it was easy it already would have been done right?
So my conclusion is that the answer to ‘why didn’t I think of that’ can sometimes be answered in realizing that the idea is only part of the process and successfully implementing an idea is most often more difficult than thinking it up in the first place.
If I have learned anything from creating http://www.yourcover.com is that good ideas don’t always translate into good businesses – at least not right away – and even if they do it will take time as it has with YourCover which I am happy to say is now a very successful business. And even if they do translate into good businesses the road to success is will be long and filled with potholes that we do our best to avoid. However I find myself on the side of the road from time to time fixing the damage done when the pothole cannot be avoided.
But I strongly encourage people to not answer the question ‘why hasn’t it been done already? Before they’ve tried actually doing it. Even if other people thought of it, putting an idea into action and making it happen requires more than ingenuity. The idea is only the beginning and the hard work then follows. What happens to me is that I think – someone has undoubtedly already thought of this and there’s a reason it has not been done. I realize that is a pretty poor excuse for not at least exploring an idea to a greater degree.
Some time ago I had an idea for a smartphone mirror application – something that would look like a compact-type mirror. Sure enough when I looked I found one on the Android system (but not for Blackberry as far as I have been able to determine) http://bit.ly/wrPbwp. The question I should ask myself (and you should think about asking yourself) is – ‘Why didn’t I think of making it happen?’
Mobile communications companies share the collective animosity of their customers. It does not matter if you are an AT & T subscriber, T-Mobile, Verizon or any other provider. The customers that stay with you are choosing you for one of two reasons – 1) it’s the only option they have, 2) they have not found a better option.
For those people who are unaware, Verizon decided to cancel its policy http://bit.ly/uTG2Fw of charging a $2 “convenience fee” for bill payments made over the phone and online. The policy had been intended to go into effect as of January 15, 2012. Within 24 hours of announcing the new rule, Verizon did an about-face and completely squelched the idea.
It’s score one for the little guys right? Let’s face it – it’s altogether too rare for a company to actually listen to its customers (well the customers were yelling pretty loudly) and then act by rescinding a new rule based on the collective outcry of their customers. Of course critics note that Verizon’s 4G LTE network went down last week for the third time in a month which also served to infuriate its customers.
I am wondering about the meeting that occurred at Verizon where the concept of a $2 customer “convenience fee” was not only unveiled, but voted on positively by the powers that be. Perhaps there wasn’t a meeting or a vote after all? I mean, who could sit there and listen to this plan and not think that Verizon’s customers would do a total freak-out?
What if Verizon intended on floating this idea out there with the distinct knowledge that they would pull back once the customer outcry reached fever pitch (this took less than 24 hours BTW)? I know that’s cynical but it is possible right? And if that were to have been the case Verizon would have been able to close out 2011 on a somewhat positive note as a company that listened to its customers concerns (outrage?) and acted upon it.
The alternative is that the brass at Verizon is so clueless that they put out a rule change that stands out as being one of the dumbest business moves of 2011.
I don’t think Verizon reached a market cap of more than $113 billion because they do dumb things do you?
For the past almost six years I have been a member of a CEO group called Vistage – www.vistage.com . I’ve alluded to my participation in the group on more than one occasion on my blog. My original reason for joining was to gain perspective on running a small business that would be difficult to obtain simply by reading newspapers, magazines, and the like. Vistage gives you the opportunity allows the CEO of a small business to get out of their fishbowl, (and committee of one), to see how others in similar situations deal with their opportunities and challenges. Before I joined the CEO that invited me to consider it mentioned that the other members of the group would ultimately become friends and confidants and he could not have been more right.
Our business has had a tough year and my company continues to undergo many changes and as such I felt the need to step away from the group to completely focus on the issues we are facing. This was not done without careful consideration. It is not inexpensive to be a part of the group. However in today’s business world every business conversations seems to begin with three letters – ROI and I can tell you that the value I have received from being a part of the group has far exceeded the financial investment.
For those of you that do not know – a Vistage group meets monthly for an entire day. Think about setting aside one day a month where you would not go to the office but actually sit in a room off-site all day, not answering emails or phone calls (or at least not constantly) and discussing issues related to everyone’s individual business. It’s always intense as we regularly have an outside speaker for 3 hours who will talk on any number of subjects, and then we meet as a group for the balance of the day going around the table updating our personal as well as individual company statuses. The meetings last 7 or 8 hours and I often found myself exhausted from processing issues and thinking deeply about subjects that were discussed at the meeting. We feel the responsibility to be accountable to one another as peers and that responsibility is not taken lightly by any of the members. It’s one big reason why it works so well.
Each CEO also meets with the ‘Chair’ or group facilitator once a month for 1 ½ hours to tackle issues directly related to our business. One responsibility of the Chair is to get a CEO to do things that he or she would prefer not to do but knows that they should. It’s probably akin to herding cats at times.
The bonds I have formed over the past six years with my fellow members run deep and that was evidenced today by the groups abject refusal to accept my stepping down in what they consider a time when I could use the collective intelligence of the group more than ever. Not only did they implore me to come back to report as a ‘guest’ and keep in touch with the group, I walked out feeling that I have 14 very smart, very dear friends for life. And that’s very personal.
What do you do to get out of your own fishbowl?