I’m a management consultant and writer serving organizations both large (Fortune 500) and small (nonprofit) on a range of strategic issues

The power of trust in building a brand

Be vulnerable, build loyalty
BusinessStrategy
Posted on July 10, 2019

A guarantee to boot

Outdoorsman Leon Bean was very familiar with the backwoods of Maine. Years of roaming the wilderness had given him ample experience with fishing and hunting and the gear needed for these activities. One item that left him wanting were his boots, which failed to keep his feet dry in the wet terrain. He decided to create an improved version that mated a leather upper to a rubber sole and would hold up better in the conditions.

Bean set up a company bearing his name to manufacture and sell this new shoe. He signaled trustworthiness by guaranteeing the product unconditionally. L.L.Bean was an early pioneer of a radical policy in retail: anything it sold could be returned, at any time, if it didn’t perform to the customer’s satisfaction. The definition of “satisfaction” was left to the buyer’s discretion, and proof of purchase was not required. This was in keeping with the sturdy ethos of the rural New England towns that shaped Bean’s upbringing, where reputations were built and maintained for the long term.

This approach initially turned out to be very costly. 90 of the first 100 pairs of boots he sold were sent back, revealing unexpected issues with the design that needed to be sorted out. Instead of abandoning the idea he absorbed the financial hit and learned from these mistakes, sending a redesigned version back into the market. Read more…

  1. The boot still looms large in the company’s mythos, as well as its income statement. They have also become hot fashion items in certain circles, which would likely confuse the original Leon if he were alive to see his “Maine hunting shoes” used to get Instagram likes and not ducks. A “bootmobile” in the shape of the iconic product can even be seen driving around, a la Oscar Meyer’s Wienermobile. ↩
  2. The brand unexpectedly became a cult favorite in Japan, which is the only country other than America that has its retail stores. ↩
  3. As the meme says, this is why we can’t have nice things. ↩
  4. And the thrift shop hackers who had developed a side business in reselling L.L.Bean merchandise credits they claimed in exchange old products. ↩
  5. Bonobos claims to be the first to use the term ninja for its support reps, which has since become a trendy catchall job title for hip companies. ↩
  6. The company was eventually bought by Walmart, whose associations with the hoi polloi mortify the trendsetters who supported the brand. ↩
  7. Netflix’s expense policy is five words long: Act in Netflix’s best interests. ↩
  8. The University of Virginia and its Honor System being one of the more noteworthy examples. ↩
  9. One large services firm required employees and household members to first vet every prospective stock trade against a list of the firm’s clients. ↩

ping

BusinessJargon
Posted on July 8, 2019

to check status or seek rapid feedback from another party, generally for a discrete and often time-sensitive reason; adopted from the computer networking term in which one machine sends a signal to another to verify operating status, generating a standardized response from the receiver; used in an attempt to give a technical sheen to something that would otherwise be quotidian, as in “I’ll ping Adrian tomorrow to check how the draft report is going”; related to tickle, which is a similar brief communication oriented to subtly ensuring that progress is being made

Valuing what your customers don’t

Understand the true model
BusinessStrategy
Posted on July 3, 2019

Fly the friendly skies

By today’s standards, air travel across the United States in the 1960s and 70s was strangely luxurious. Planes had roomy couch-like seats and usually weren’t full, elaborate meal services were the norm even in economy class, and both passengers and crew were elegantly attired.1 Health and safety standards were different too: flyers strolled aboard with no more screening than would be needed to board a bus, and flight attendants were ready with cigarettes and a light once the no smoking sign went off. For those with sufficient means, flying was a noteworthy occasion.

But these service levels enjoyed by past travelers didn’t result from altruism. The amenities arms race took place because airlines were legally forbidden from competing on the most basic dimension—price.

This was because a federal agency known as the Civil Aeronautics Board set fares, approved routes, and tightly regulated the entry and exit of participants. As a result, they were forced to find other ways to distinguish themselves from the pack, and they did so by finding diverse and ostentatious ways to enhance the passenger experience. Read more…

  1. On one 1200-mile flight, Delta Airlines even offered an 8-course first class meal. They were probably being generous in their definition of “course”, but still. ↩
  2. If it were legal some passengers would probably travel in a crate in the cargo hold, if it meant saving a few euros. ↩
  3. In the 1980s international economy class passengers on Pan Am received a gift box that included a razor, which while fascinating was of limited use to the children like me who received them. ↩
  4. In between midair sales pitches for co-branded credit cards, delivered by flight attendants who aren’t sure this is what they signed up for. ↩
  5. While most newspapers have done away with extensive stock sections a few shrunken listings remain, for those who can’t figure out the Google. ↩
  6. Which would boggle the minds of early 20th century transatlantic travelers, who had to spend 4 or 5 days in transit instead of the 7 or 8 hours it requires today. ↩
  7. One school of thought is that some journalism may only work if its nonprofit, and that approach is being taken in a few areas. ↩
  8. Much to the chagrin of many in old media, what they did care about was click-baity listicles. So goodbye to your Middle East bureau, hello to a millennial-friendly content farm in Brooklyn. ↩

pencils down

BusinessJargon
Posted on July 1, 2019

a condition that requires work in a particular area to cease completely, due to a deadline, external circumstance, an injunction from a superior, etc.; derives from the era of standardized tests administered on paper, during which students were strictly required to put down their writing implements upon the elapsing of a fixed time period; suited to analytically-heavy contexts, as in “We have to get the valuation data today because it’s pencils down tomorrow once the executive team arrives”; this term is the opposite of hands on keys, a more technologically current exhortation to continue working

Game shows and learning from unconventional strategy

Question the answers
BusinessStrategy
Posted on June 26, 2019

Ready player won

Law student Chuck Forrest had been working on a disruptive new strategy, and now he would finally get to unleash it.

Forrest wasn’t in a typical competition. He was about to appear on the American game show Jeopardy, a now-iconic trivia program in which three players face a grid of clues, arranged by increasing dollar value along six themed categories. The contestant who rings in first and responds correctly gets to choose next. With the right answer and precise timing, anyone can take control and decide where to head on the game board.

The objective is simple: have the most money at the end of the game to win. Victors also get the chance to appear again the next day.1

Convention dictated that players start with the easiest, low-dollar clues at the top of the category and proceed downward to the more difficult ones. Games typically unfolded in predictable ways as contestants worked through clues sequentially. The show’s writers often built in a theme that revealed itself as a category was worked through, further reinforcing this approach. This style of play also made it easier for television viewers to track with the game.

A crucial fact is this pattern was not in any way enforced or required. It wasn’t part of the rules. Read more…

  1. Prior to a rule change in the early 2000s players were retired after five consecutive wins. Lifting that restriction would open the door for the captivating streaks unleashed by several people in the last fifteen years. Also the show tapes five shows per day for efficiency’s sake, so a win means you get 20 minutes to change outfits before competing again. ↩
  2. Like the NBA Playoffs, but for nerds. ↩
  3. Only the player with the most money banked gets to keep that amount. The other two get small consolation checks unrelated to their final score. ↩
  4. Until James Holzhauer came along, the highest one-day cash total was $77,000, and no one had come close to it for years. He broke this record a staggering sixteen times, resetting the record to $131,127. ↩
  5. Even without that layer Teslas are still rather pricy for customers, and the company’s stock price woes show that a stable financial model has yet to be uncovered. ↩
  6. When the next iPhone comes out priced at $1,000 just try offering $500 and see how the befuddled millennial salesperson at the Apple Store reacts. ↩
  7. It wasn’t enough for Saturn, which ultimately disappeared from the market, collateral damage in the 2008 economic collapse and bailout of the U.S. automobile industry. ↩
  8. When I played on Jeopardy, I had internalized the advantages of the Forrest Bounce and used it, but for some reason never considered Holzhauer’s money-maximizing clue selection. ↩

belt and suspenders

BusinessJargon
Posted on June 23, 2019

an extra-cautious approach that involves redundant elements in case one of them fails to perform as expected, used due to extreme prudence, perceived risk, experience, etc.; comes from the image of the gentleman wearing both a belt and suspenders (or braces, for the Brits) for the purpose of holding up his trousers, despite the fact that only one is necessary absent a highly-unlikely failure; in addition to noun form this term can be used as an adjective, as in “Keep both projectors live for the keynote, we need to go belt-and-suspenders given how important the CEO’s presentation is”; as with the original sartorial example, such a strategy can be clumsy or ungainly due to the additional backups involved

A tale of two presentations

The big idea
Business
Posted on June 19, 2019

Triumph and disaster

Director Michael Bay is known for a long resume of blockbuster summer movies featuring his trademark emphasis on grand spectacle, including the liberal use of pyrotechnics.1 While critics have not been kind to his work, the studios that entrust him with their marquee franchises have happily raked in the profits, as his productions have collectively grossed billions of dollars.

In 2014 electronics giant Samsung sought an appropriate spokesperson for a new television it was about to launch. Given his reputation for visual effects Bay seemed the perfect fit. He was asked to participate in the premiere industry forum where the company’s latest technological achievements would be showcased.2 Sharing the stage with a company executive, Bay intended to talk up the potential of these new screens, leveraging his own experience as a prominent director.

The session began with the usual anodyne comments. Unfortunately for all involved, that was the only part that went as planned.

A missed cue and a momentary hiccup in the prompter from which Bay read his lines threw him off kilter, and he found himself unable to regain his place in the text, quickly bringing the session to a halt.3 His co-presenter attempted to steer him to a more general discussion—which should have been simple given his extensive background in the medium. Even that failed to rescue the floundering Bay. Read more…

  1. The plots are more often mechanisms for stringing together wild explosions instead of story exposition—My Dinner with Andre they are not. But not everyone needs something cerebral while digging into their massive tubs of theater popcorn. ↩
  2. Incidentally it had a curved screen, along with 3D television a feature that made little inroads in the market and has been quietly dropped by major manufacturers. ↩
  3. Red flag #1: if you’re delivering a presentation and need a word-for-word transcription to keep you moving, chances are you haven’t internalized the message you are delivering. ↩
  4. People were definitely talking about the presentation afterwards, but the focus wasn’t on Samsung’s new TVs. ↩
  5. Oh for those simpler days of yesteryear, when the iPhone 4 was state-of-the-art. If still around today they’re pretty much a paperweight. ↩
  6. Given Jobs’s legendary perfectionism and temper one can only imagine the unpleasantness afterwards. ↩
  7. Even Bay’s requisite apologetic post-event tweet read as a marketing message, designed to try once more to hype the televisions. ↩
  8. And if you’re regularly delivering messages you don’t care about, maybe consider a different line of work? ↩

optics

BusinessJargon
Posted on June 15, 2019

a term used to refer to the way something appears, in contrast to the original definition meaning the science of light and its effects; this usage likely arose due to superficial association of its technical origins with the act of viewing something in an attempt to appear proficient or masterful, as in “I don’t like the optics on this page, let’s change it before we share it publicly”; the word has been figuratively extended to indicate how an action could be perceived, especially in the context of public relations or politics, as in “Sure you could take a job with that donor, but the optics wouldn’t be great”

Work-life balance and seeing the fuller picture

Measuring what matters
BusinessStrategy
Posted on June 12, 2019

On the mountaintop

Silicon Valley’s mythos is grounded in stories of scrappy entrepreneurs who upended their entire lives in pursuit of their mission. An archetypal example is Marissa Mayer, who started as employee number 20 at Google before rising through the leadership ranks, eventually moving to the top spot at Yahoo. She proudly notes that during the early years work demands would often keep her in the office overnight, as well as throughout weekends.1

This ethos of total dedication has influenced many other companies, and the image of the single-minded founder foregoing sleep, exercise, and personal attachments is a common one. This isn’t limited to the startup phase, as a similar mindset prevails in larger firms—those foosball tables and free cafés now de rigueur for the millennial-friendly organization might seem benevolent, but they are also a mechanism of further enfolding employees’ lives into the all-encompassing world of work.

The business world is not alone in valorizing such outsized dedication. British historian Niall Ferguson has received numerous accolades for his prodigious output of books, speeches, and television series unpacking topics in economics, finance, and international affairs. His academic career has included teaching and research at several of the world’s great universities. Measured by popular acclaim and impact he has reached the pinnacle of his profession. Read more…

  1. She also tosses out a 130-hour figure for her work week, which simple math and basic human physiology doesn’t really support for any sustained period. Even working nonstop from six in the morning to midnight seven days a week doesn’t get you there. Prospective Navy SEALs going through the notorious Hell Week with about five hours of total sleep aren’t subject to such demands for weeks on end, for good reason. ↩
  2. Including time with his young children, as he mentioned in another interview. ↩
  3. His hobby involves the over 100 cars and motorcycles he owns, which are far more tolerant than children of being ignored for a few weeks at a time. ↩
  4. Unless you’re paid in a currency experiencing hyperinflation, in which case comparisons quickly become impossible. ↩
  5. Although the debt-fueled consumer credit economy allows people to live beyond their means for a while, that façade comes crashing down eventually. ↩
  6. And given the current age of omnichannel media, Christensen’s brief article and talk on the matter was soon developed into a full book of the same name, in the same fashion as terminally-ill professor Randy Pausch’s viral “Last Lecture.” ↩
  7. So don’t. ↩
  8. A young Indian entrepreneur who established a global technology business in his teen years mentioned how it cost him a significant part of his childhood. While peers were playing and relating and exploring, he was grinding away in the office. ↩
  9. To paraphrase a quote from Jesus, what good is it to gain the entire world if you lose your soul? ↩

air-grabbed

BusinessJargon
Posted on June 6, 2019

(adjective) a less obvious way of suggesting that some idea, or more likely a particular statistic, was generated with no analytical support and thus was pulled out of the air, i.e., from nowhere; although derisory in implication, can be used to highlight the weakness of a particular figure in a self-deprecating way, as in “If you’re wondering how much faith to put in those market size estimates just remember the Japan figures were air-grabbed”