Category: Corporate Games

One of my buddies recently
ordered a western-style lasagne
in a Thai restaurant.
She was disappointed
because it wasn’t good.

You may be thinking
‘Well, that’s silly.
Of course, it wouldn’t be good.
They specialize in Thai food,
not Italian.’

Yet don’t we make that mistake
all the time
in other areas?

We’ll order a new site design
from our web host
just because they offer it
and it is convenient to deal
with the one vendor.

We’ll sell a book to our existing publisher
because it is easier
even though it would sell more copies
if another publisher published it.

An executive I once worked with
would constantly ask us
‘if we weren’t already with this vendor,
would we give them this business?’
If the answer was no,
give the business
to someone else.

One of the temps
at my current company
was recently put on reduced hours.

This is part of contracting life.
You cost the company money
with every hour you work
so they try to save money
by cutting your hours.

You have a couple of options
when faced with reduced hours, reduced pay.
You can find a new contract gig
and replace your employer.

Or better still,
you can use those reduced hours
to work on your own business.
I use mine to write.

However, I ALWAYS push back
so the reduced hours are in one chunk of time.
If they want me to move
from 40 hours to 35 hours,
I’ll maintain 8 hours a day
Monday-Thursday
and put in a half day on Friday.
It is a more effective use of my time.

Reduced hours is not a bad thing,
especially if you plan
for the downtime.

I worked for a major beverage company
whose executives would boast
of past employees’ successes
even if these successes
were at other companies.

It drove us to achieve
and actually created more loyalty,
rather than less.
Employees knew the door was always open.
We could come back if we wanted to.
We also knew that would be awkward
if we went to work
for the competition.

Another company I worked for
had a
‘don’t let the door hit you on the way out’
policy.
Once you were gone,
you were considered dead to the company.

Many former employees
ended up at the competition.
If they tried another industry
and didn’t like it,
they had no other option.

If you want to weaken your competition,
make returning to your company easy.

A small publisher operated
for years
with the premise
that they published in eBook first
and if sales were good,
the stories were published in print.

This did a number of things.

It gave authors an incentive
to promote
the more profitable eBooks.

Best of all,
it forced authors to focus
their marketing.
During the first couple of months,
they focused on selling eBooks.
THEN they switched
to selling print books.

It is very difficult
for a single person
to market both formats
at the same time.

Now, because of the ease
of publishing in print format,
this publisher decided to offer both
at the same time.
Overall sales have decreased
with this change.

Just because you CAN offer
all options at once,
doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

Victoria’s Secret is known
in the modeling world
for their models
going onto business success.

One of the reasons for this
is because
you can use confidence in one area
to give you confidence in others.

As Chief Marketing Officer Edward Razek states
“They have a certain level of confidence
that bodes well for
whatever they want to do
going forth.”

Model turned entrepreneur
Josie Maran
didn’t hesitate
to walk into major retailers
and pitch her product line.
“I was ignorant about business,
but I totally believed in myself.”
As a result,
she got sales
other entrepreneurs wouldn’t have the balls
to even pitch.

I’m not a model
(by any stretch of the imagination)
but I do draw from my successes
in other areas
to give me confidence.
I’ll remember a big win
before pitching a business plan
or asking for a sale.

It doesn’t really matter
where you get your confidence,
as long as you have it.

Right now I’m in India,
half a world away
from my home.
Yet I’m conducting business.

The world is mobile.
You can be also.

Jordan Zimmerman
of Zimmerman Advertising
maxes out mobility.

“I use 10,000 to 12,000
cell-phone minutes every month.
All my client calls are cell to cell.
I also carry my cell around the building,
and my employees do as well:
It’s how we communicate.
The office is 85,000 square feet
on several floors,
and my executives are located
with their functions,
so it’s inefficient to chase after people.
And if they’re out of their offices,
I don’t want to wait
until they get back.”

If you have a mobile employee base,
consider moving to cell phones.

One major beverage company
I worked with
interviewed potential employees
on the weekends.
Their explanation for that timing
was that they were looking for superstars.
Superstars already had jobs.
They normally worked late during the week.
But even superstars could find time
to interview on the weekend.

I loved it.
I didn’t have to sneak out
or make an excuse to leave the office
early (for me).

Seth Priebatsch,
founder of SCVNGR,
also interviews on Saturdays.
“I’ll interview people on Saturdays,
late at night,
early in the morning.
Those are perfectly reasonable times
to expect someone who is a rock star
to be on top of his or her game
and excited.”

If you want a superstar
or rock star,
interview at times convenient for them.

If I had to chose one method
of communication,
it would be email.

I need documentation.

After every important meeting,
I’ll send out an email confirmation
of what was said and decided.

Mark Cuban has the same thoughts
on email vs phone.

“Anything you can say on the phone,
you can put in an e-mail.
Any deal of consequence
you close on the phone
is going to have to be documented.
Someone is wasting a boatload of time
trying to transcribe
what two people thought
they said and heard.”

Get it in email.

I’ve been reading about
more and more executives
swearing to the 50% scheduled rule.
They’ll schedule half of their working day,
leaving the other half free.

Some use that free 50%
to do a walkaround
and touch base with employees.

Others use it for problem solving.

Scott Lang
of Silver Spring Networks
swears it boosts his productivity.

“For me,
a big part of productivity is being agile.
I like to leave a lot of blocks
in my day open.
On an average day,
I’m only 50 percent scheduled,
though occasionally
it gets as high as 80 percent.
That’s imperative,
because often something comes up
out of nowhere.”

Try scheduling only half
of your working day.
It may make your entire day
more productive.

Caterina Fake,
co-founder of Flickr,
likes project teams small
and meetings to be short.
(My kind of executive)

“Follow Jeff Bezos’s two-pizza rule:
Project teams should be small enough
to feed with two pizzas.
At Hunch,
we don’t have meetings
unless absolutely necessary.
When I used to have meetings, though,
this is how I would do it:
There would be an agenda
distributed before the meeting.
Everybody would stand.
At the beginning of the meeting,
everyone would drink 16 ounces of water.
We would discuss everything on the agenda,
make all the decisions that needed to be made,
and the meeting would be over
when the first person
had to go to the bathroom.”

Small project teams
and short meetings
are effective.