Business Resolution #7: Focus

If you make these five things your top priority in 2007 and focus on them, you are sure to succeed.

I can’t believe you fell for that. The real point of this resolution is that you can’t make five things your top priority. It’s not grammatical and it’s not possible. Haven’t you bought enough of those business books touting some prime number of prime directives? Here are some simple ideas I hope we can agree upon:

- multi-tasking is productive up to a point, and counterproductive thereafter
- part of a leader’s job is to remove uncertainty
- clear directions are easiest to execute

Therefore, as managers, leaders and strategists, we must resolve to choose and prioritize our tasks and those of our subordinates carefully.

Business Resolution #6: Market Locally

This summer I casually tossed off a sound bite while writing a marketing plan. I wrote, “all channel marketing is local.” I didn’t think much of it, it was just one of a bunch of bullets. Later on it showed up in a strategic presentation as “All Marketing is Local,” and became a major part of how we are articulating our marketing strategy.

But what does this really mean? What kind of marketing is not local? If such marketing exists, does it have any effect? (If a marketing drops in the forest and there are no customers to receive it, have you wasted your budget? Yes, Socrates, you have.)

High-tech marketing cuts both ways on this. What could be more local than receiving marketing messages in your very own email inbox? But what could be less local than getting marketing messages that don’t speak your language – literally or metaphorically?

Marketers have the means to deliver marketing messages more and more directly to customers. And they have the means to customize and tailor and localize those messages better and less expensively than ever.

With such power comes responsibility. Resolve to create and deliver marketing messages locally, as close to the customer’s heart, mind and gut as possible.

Business Resolution #5: Know the difference between lucky and good

I know somebody who got asked in an interview, “have you ever hit a home run in software?” It’s a good interview question, and I’d sure like to hire some people who can hit home runs in software, but it got me thinking. The sports metaphor might be apt, but even the best hitters have averages in the .300’s and hit home runs much less frequently. In business, I’d like better odds because there are a lot fewer games, innings and at-bats in business, and the penalty for striking out is quite high.

But let’s think about the home run thing again. It’s a rare event, and no matter how skilled you are, all the factors have to come together just right at the right time. And that is what is usually called luck. How much of that business home run you hit last year was skill and how much was luck? Do you even know which parts were which?

I don’t mean to tear down the accomplishments of great people by calling them just plain lucky. Great people are more than just lucky, but they probably are partly lucky. The luck/skill mix matters if you expect to be able to do it again. Business demands repeatable results. Skill is repeatable, luck, well, luck might or might not be repeatable, that’s its nature. Were you wearing your lucky hat when you hit that home run?

Back to business. Replace ‘home run” with some business metric. Last year you made the number with an awesome segmentation strategy. Luck or skill? Can you do it again this year? Is the segmentation strategy repeatable? What parts of it can you learn from and what parts were just in the right place at the right time?

Resolve to question the sources of your success.

This rant owes a debt to Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s ideas expressed in his excellent book, Fooled by Randomness. I recommend it to skeptics everywhere.

Business Resolution #4: Keep it Simple

I’ve been reading John Maeda’s book, The Laws of Simplicity, which I learned about reading the excellent blog Presentation Zen. It’s a deliberately brief book, but it’s full of powerful insights and actionable concepts. Resolve to simplify.

Business Resolution #3: Don’t be a Lemming

Don’t be a lemming. Don’t believe the hype. Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.
Complex systems seldom behave linearly. System Dynamics is the science of observing and modeling complex systems that include feedback loops. Humans are notoriously bad at estimating the behavior of such systems that often work exponentially because of this reinforcing feedback. Phenomena like real estate and stock market bubbles, traffic jams, and stampedes are all caused by the same thing: people misunderstanding small events and taking action that makes those events much larger and much, much worse.

Business Resolution #2: Don’t just hire great people, keep them

Everybody knows the old saws: “our people are our competitive advantage,” “A people hire A people; B people hire C people; and C people hire dogs,” etc. And everybody knows that it’s critical to have the best people, but so many companies that pay attention to hiring the best fall down when it comes to retaining them. Resolve to remember and apply the rules of retention:

There is no i in trademark

Looks like somebody found a missing scale in the armor on Apple’s IP dragon. As reported today by PC World, Linksys has launched the iPhone, snapping up a name that we had all assumed was Apple’s. Personally, i had thought that the little “i” prefix was played. Even Apple dropped the iBook with the launch of the MacBook Pro. Reading a little more, I see that Linksys has not fully grokked Apple’s sense of simplicity of design or concept. The iPhone models are called the WIP320 and the CIT400. Come on guys, even the evil Cylons got the job done with one- and two-digit model numbers. Linksys’ new phones are not nearly as well-designed as #8 for example, but if I were an Apple attorney, I might be suspicious of the CIT310’s glossy black or white finish…

Business Resolutions 2007 Begin with the End in Mind

It’s getting to be that time of year – the end. Budgets are being finalized, it’s getting harder to find people because vacations are starting, salespeople are either squeezing the last deal out of the pipeline or comfortably relaxing over quota. And it’s time to think about new years’ resolutions. How can we improve ourselves and our businesses next year? Over the next week or so, I will serialize seven suggestions for business new years’ resolutions.