Business Record - Iowa Biz

Welcome to the Microscope

As a leader in your company, do understand that you are under the microscope at all times?  Yes, I mean at all times.  Any time someone in your organization can see, hear, or smell you - the mircoscope is on. 

You are being analyzed for flaws, consistency, honesty, ethics, integrity, and even if you are worthy of the position you hold.  I am sorry to say that there are too many leaders that are clueless to what I just said.  They have let ego and power pollute their leadership.

These polluted leaders are the ones that criticize their employees, down grade them, play games, and complain about how everyone in the company takes advantage of them and the company.  Soon they are always complaining about everyone and no one measures up.

Then when they try to initiate culture change, they wonder why it does not work.  If you want change, then as a leader you better know and understand the cultural microscope you are under.  It all starts with you.  You must exemplify what you are trying to achieve or change.  When you start to get it, then so will those you lead. 

Flickr photo by DarkMark

Don't have time for reading? Let technology help.

I love to read.  But... I don't have much time for it.

With early morning meetings... my reading sessions at sunrise tend to get cut short.

And... even though I go to bed with a book... with good intentions of reading for a while...  I usually fall asleep after digging into just a paragraph or two.  (In fact, my wife doesn't let me read hefty-hardcover books in bed any more.  I was too prone to dropping them on my face as I zonked out!)

How about you?

Do you enjoy reading but wrestle with the clock on finding the time to do it?

Well... technology has launched some options to help the too-busy-not-to-read crowd!

One big announcement came from XM Radio this week.  On September 10th, they are launching The Big Read in which celebs like Robert Duvall, Sandra Day O'Connor and Colin Powell are going to read classic novels for 30 minutes at a time.  The broadcasts will air three times a day.  So... you can catch installments of Fahrenheit 451 or the Great Gatsby while you're in your office... your car... or at home making dinner.

Another option is the growing number of titles that are available on itunes.  You can grab an audio version of many of the current best sellers (as well as many lesser-known titles) for your ipod.  So, instead of listening to 30 minutes of bad news as you jog on the treadmill in the morning... you can get filled up on some great new ideas or go on an wild adventure with your favorite secret agent.

So... again... if you're short on reading time... maybe listening to a book might make it an option.

Lastly, I will say that my wife, Melissa, always says there's nothing better than cracking open an actual book and pouring over the pages one by one.  So... if you're in that camp... and the new technology isn't an option... then hearing from the author of the Harry Potter series... J.K. Rowling... on her strategy for making time to read might help.  (click here to check it out). 

Either way... grab a book (a paper and glue version or an electronic version)... dig in... refresh... and enjoy!

By the way... how do you find time?  What are your strategies for making time to read?  Click "comments" and join in the conversation.

Photo credit: sweet destin

Auto Manufacturer Parts versus After-Market Parts

I always try and throw in a true story every now and then to keep things interesting. I was out at Glen Oaks for a golf tournament - watching, not playing, of course.  The day had started to wind down and I was walking back to a friend’s house where I had parked.

It was hard not to notice this beautiful, white 2006 Mercedes Benz CLK Class convertible parked at the very bottom of one of the driveways I passed.  Now, the cost for this vehicle is somewhere between $54k and $83k.  A small car but not a small price tag!

As I walked by, I heard loud music and the engine of some supped up, jacked up truck. The very young driver of this pickup started backing down the driveway when all the sudden I heard what sounded like a tin can crumpling in someone’s hand. 

The truck had struck the Benz and was hung up.  The driver - not knowing what had happened - began to give it a little gas. That's when I saw the entire front quarter panel on the driver's side of the Mercedes peeled back like a banana. 

The driver - still hung up - must have thought it would now be better to go forward. His pickup was too high and so he couldn't see the little convertible that he was hung up on.  It was like an electric can opener magnetically taking the lid off of a can of green beans.  I could see clear inside the car. May I remind you of the $83,000? 

What should the insurance carrier use to fix the car?

The controversy is this: does the insurance company use original equipment (OEM) or after market (non-OEM) parts.  How would you feel about your expensive little Mercedes getting after market parts on it?  Is a replacement headlight OK?  What about the hood or front quarter panel?  This is a huge on-going debate.  Check out this article and read more about this ongoing debate.

If you think you know what your auto insurance covers - whether personal or business - take another look. And ask some questions.

The Feng Shui Blessing and Purging

I looked at the project plan for the facilities move with my client.  We had been working for weeks, ensuring that all of the tasks had been identified, that they had been sequenced correctly, that the right resources had been assigned, and that they had the correct work effort and duration assigned to them.

Because my client contact worked for a company with strong Far East influences, he suddenly remembered one critical task which had to be complete before the owners would allow them to operate in their new warehouse/office facility:  they would be bringing in a resource to perform a Feng Shui Blessing and Purging... you know, get rid of any evil spirits from prior occupants of the land, make sure that the chi was flowing freely in the right directions, that kind of thing.

I didn't bat an eye or crack a smile.  I asked him the same questions I would ask when faced with any other task I'd never heard of before:

• What has to be complete before the Blessing and Purging can take place?
• What is dependent on the Blessing and Purging?  Can we move in furniture and complete wiring?  (Evidently, evil spirits won't affect wiring, even though many I.T. guys have tried to convince me otherwise.)
• What kind of resource do you need and how long will it take them to perform the Feng Shui Purging and Blessing?  (For the record, it takes two skilled Feng Shui holy people - sorry, don't know their technical title - approximately 2-4 hours to complete this task for a 50,000 square foot facility.)

So you see, the excuse of "we've never done this task before" is just that:  an excuse.  If somebody is smart enough to identify that a task needs to be done, then they become your point person for answering these simple questions to allow your project plan to keep going.  I've found that if they balk at answering these questions, I'll sometimes threaten to remove their task (blame the contrarian in me).  It's amazing how quickly they come up with answers.

The quick solution is this:

• Find people (it may require talking to someone outside your company) who have some familiarity with the task and will help you.  If possible, avoid talking to consulting or software salespeople when seeking this kind of help; you won't get a straight answer and the result may be the same as feeding a stray neighhborhood mongrel.
• Use estimating techniques such as the PERT tool, analogous or parametric estimating, etc.  These may all sound technical and frightening, but I've yet to hear of an aspiring project manager losing life or limb in the process.  Just follow the links I've provided and if you still get stuck, contact me.
• Sometimes you have to be brave, suck it up, and just give a silly wild a** guess (SWAG) based on what you know at the time.  Provide a few assumptions about why you are estimating the way you are.  If your project stakeholders know up front that you're providing an "educated guess" they tend to be more forgiving when the estimate needs to be adjusted.

Changes are high that you will come across your own Feng Shui Purging and Blessing.  But instead of shrugging in the defeat that you've never done this before, you can now keep your head on straight and get your project chi flowing nicely.

Carpe Factum!

"Your Call May Be Recorded" is a Two-Way Street

CNN and Money.com recently announced their 101 Dumbest Moments in Business. It's an interesting list, and one worthy of a few good chuckles and a great illustration or two for your upcoming presentation. The Grand-Prize winner for the dumbest moment in Customer Service came compliments of Comcast, whose installer fell asleep on the couch of customer Brian Finkelstein. Finkelstein took the opportunity to video tape the scene and it quickly became one of the most watched videos on the web. While Comcast apologized and fired the installer, there was no getting around the fact that the installer fell asleep while on hold for over and hour waiting for Comcast themselves to answer the phone. The negative word-of-mouth continues months later.

Companies regularly record calls to provide accountability and training. We're all used to the phrase "your call may be recorded to ensure quality service." But the recording of service experiences is quickly  becoming a two-way street. Get ready. Your customers may be recording phone calls to your customer service department and sharing them with the public. Some companies are welcoming the challenge. The Geek Squad even tells customers on their front-end IVR to go ahead and record the experience, if they wish.

Is your company ready for customers to record your calls and service experiences?

A Dose of Social Media Reality

Are you among the thought-followers thinking that Social Media and Social Networking is a fad?  Fad or not, there are some thing you may not know:

• There are over 500 groups specific to Des Moines at Facebook? Several are either for or against local businesses. Is this a tool you can use to build a community of customers?
• That even though folks like Todd Mundt are sharing several pages from the Des Moines Register, The Juice and Des Moines Business Record - these publications don't maintain archives -- which means they kill the sharing capabilities of users.
• Speaking of Todd Mundt - Dig the way he shares top stories from his Google Feeds
• Surprisingly, there's only 184 Twitter-ers who claim Iowa as home.
• A Google Blog Search for the phrase "Business in Iowa" brings up over 4,500 results.
• Over 17,000 videos have been tagged "iowa" at YouTube.
• With all the blogs listed at IowaBlogs.Net - I'll bet some of them are customers (prospects?)

Here's the thing: If you don't pay attention now - you may pay the price later. Even if it is a fad - why not tap into the power and people now?

Make sure the pluses exceed the pain

I can remember being a little kid and going with my mom as she changed from one bank to another.  There was a display table in the lobby covered with stadium blankets, an AM/FM radio/alarm clock, an umbrella, a camping flashlight and a bunch of other cool stuff.

Free gifts or incentives for changing banks.

Back in the early 70's, banking was pretty simple.  Conveniences like payroll direct deposits, ACH auto payments, recurring payments and online banking hadn't even been conceived.

So, it was pretty easy to lure a customer to your bank.  Offer to deposit $5 to a new account or toss in a free stadium blanket.  But times have changed. 

The pain of changing bank accounts is significantly higher today.  You have to call the phone company, the utilities, switch your direct deposit, re-create your entire online bill pay set-up, and cancel all your auto payments.  Ugh.  We often stay with a bank we don't even like, rather than go through the hassle of making a change.

Today, I received a postcard offering me a personal coffee maker if I'd change banks.  Are you kidding me?  Go through all that pain for a $10 coffee maker?   No thanks.

The moral of this story? Make sure the incentive you are offering is commiserate with the pain of becoming your customer.  Otherwise, the message you are sending is that you're out of touch and don't understand where your potential customer is coming from.

Taste that contract before you steal it . . .

. . . because if you don't, having it rammed down your throat is going to be a mighty unpleasant experience. 

This week Rush Nigut wrote a great post on his blog about copying other companies' employee handbooks. I see the same thing when it comes to companies and their online contracts.

The thing about stealing contracts is that, like smoking, one puff is probably not going to kill you. Over time, however, your three pack a day habit is going to catch up to you in an ugly way. By the time a problem arises, it is often too late to stave off disaster.

The beautiful thing about online commerce is its scalability. For not too much extra effort, you can increase your sales tenfold. Unfortunately, bad decisions, like stealing contracts,  can increase your liability tenfold as well.

I have seen companies steal terms of use agreements and privacy policies from websites that have nothing to do with their line of business. Not even taking the time to read the contracts, they unwittingly leave in the original company's name, address and preferred jurisdiction. An Iowa company looks pretty awkward explaining to a court why their contract dispute should be tried in Albuquerque.

Terms in contracts are construed against the drafter. If you leave in an ambiguity, the court will read it in favor of the people suing you. That is why lawyers take such care in customizing contracts to your business and its goals.

Standard terms of use policies and online contracts are relatively inexpensive. If you need a lot of custom changes to the standard policy, the cost goes up. The more customization your company requires, however, the more likely a stolen contract would have gotten you into hot water by failing to address the unique aspects of your company. 

Finally, there are a few attorneys out there that take a special pride in drafting online contracts from scratch. They also take particular umbrage at people stealing the fruits of their labor. Sometimes even going so far as to include a unique string of words in their contracts which makes the contracts easy to Google-trace. 

So even before your stolen contract has an opportunity to get you in hot water with your clients, it may get you an copyright infringement injunction which shuts down your entire website.

First, Stop Digging.

There's a lot of wisdom in the old advice on getting out of holes.  It applies just as much when you get in a hole with the tax authorities.

One of the most common ways taxpayers get in a hole with the IRS is by failing to deposit withholdings and payroll taxes on time.  The penalties are stiff, so the hole gets very deep very fast.  How stiff? If you are one to five days late, you pay a 2% penalty.  If that doesn't seem bad, think about it this way: if you are the full five days late, you are borrowing from the IRS at an effective annual rate of 146%.  If you are only one day late, the effective APR is 730%.  Even car title loans are better than that.

The penalty rate jumps to 5% on day 6, then to 10% on day 16, and eventually to 15%.  Meanwhile, interest accrues the whole time on the whole thing at the IRS underpayment rate.

 

A Minnesota business is learning about the dangers of getting behind on payroll taxes in a very stern school - the federal court system.  It got off to a bad start with the IRS, falling behind on payroll taxes in 1997, its first year.  Twice it negotiated installment agreements to get caught up, and twice it failed to keep up with either the installment plans or its ongoing payroll tax responsibilities.  The Eighth Circuit court of Appeals stopped the music this month; it allowed the IRS to levy on the business to collect $2.5 million in unpaid taxes.

Each year the IRS will tell you how quickly you need to deposit your payroll taxes.  New taxpayers find this out shortly after they apply for their employer identification number.  Be sure to be current - at best, paying late is an expensive way to borrow, and it can become a fatal habit.

Further reading: IRS Tax Workshop on depositing payroll taxes.

Find a Networking Partner

One of the biggest fears in networking could be the easiest to overcome.  The fear I'm talking about is attending an event alone and not knowing if you'll know anybody in the room.  This often causes people to avoid networking events and ultimately could lead to not getting that big client you've been hoping to sign up.

How would that be easy to overcome?  Simple.  Take a networking partner with you.  They don't have to be your best friend from high school, but they should be someone you're comfortable with.  They should also have a good grasp of what it is you do and what potential clients you're looking to meet.

When you have a networking partner, make sure you introduce yourselves to people in the room.  It helps break down social barriers and may lead to that client introduction you've been seeking.