My First Accountant

I was fourteen when I first started working, and I quickly learned about the challenges of balancing my new earning power with the desire to just be a teenager and enjoy life. I felt slightly left out when the rest of the family would go to a movie or out to eat when I was working, but I also enjoyed being able to go out with friends and buy clothes or music that I wanted.

It was during this time, when I first started working, that I began to get an early glimpse into the principles of cost accounting. My mother volunteered herself, as mother's often do, to be my accountant and provide financial counseling, even though I hadn't hired her, or even asked her, to do so. I wanted to buy stuff and spend money as I got it, but she wanted me to save it over time to do something productive with it.

Of all the homespun advice she offered, some practical, some humorous, what I remember most is how she would analyze the true cost of things. I wanted to go to a week of camp one summer, so we talked about the cost. I thought I could afford the tuition for the week, but she said there was more to consider. If I rode with friends to the camp, I'd have to share the cost of gas, and I'd have to buy meals along the way. If I wanted a new ball glove for camp, or new hiking shoes, I'd have that cost to consider.

As the price tag mounted for my simple week of camp, my mom delivered the final blow. I was, after all, only a part-time employee, and I didn't get vacation time through work. If I wanted to take a week off work, then that would translate to lost wages for me. Had I thought about how much money I would be forfeiting by missing a week of work?

I'll leave it for you to guess whether I went to camp that summer or not, but the cost analysis my mother stepped me through has stuck with me. Very little in life costs only the sticker price. There is always the supplemental cost of upgrades or modifications, the ongoing cost of maintenance, and the opportunity cost of choices not made.

Even though my brother and I occasionally enjoy teasing mom about her labored analysis of our spending when we were growing up, the reality is that these principles of cost accounting are timeless, and they are good lessons for a teenager to learn. Looking back after all these years, I guess I have to admit that mom was pretty smart, after all.

Light it up...

Rob

Rinse, Lather, Repeat

I spent most of the day doing yard work at my mother-in-law's cabin up North, mowing what has got to be the steepest hill imaginable. The weather was beautiful at the lake, and the breeze was nice, but the only thing I could think about as I was mowing was, "I'm going to have to do this again...and again...and again, all summer long."

Despite my gloominess as I plodded along behind the mower, when it was finished, I felt a certain satisfaction of a job well done. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd be doing it all over again soon enough. It made me think of the common directions on a shampoo bottle - rinse, lather, repeat - only my reality was something even more mundane - mow, trim, repeat.

I remember reading an article several years ago about the guy that invented vertical blinds. This inventor was photographed in his warehouse full of junk where he imagined new ways to attack old problems. He had hundreds of patents to his name, but the one that made him the big bucks was vertical blinds.

What really struck me was a counter-intuitive statement he made about inventors. He said that the most basic requirement for an inventor is that they must be innately lazy. His reasoning was that the greatest inventions make the things we do easier in some way. In fact, vertical blinds were born out of laziness. He said he was dusting his traditional mini-blinds one day, regretting that he had to do the chore at all, when he realized that if he hung the blinds vertically, he might not have to dust them ever again!

I realize that innate laziness is just a little tongue-in-cheek. It was one of the greatest inventors, Thomas Edison, that said genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. As I perspired over the grass today, I was longing for just a little bit of inspiration. None came, but I'll still be looking for it.

As I look ahead to another summer of mow, trim, repeat, I'm convinced that there's got to be a better way around this whole ordeal. Perhaps it will come to me some scorching Saturday afternoon in August; in the meantime, maybe I'll have to check into a nice rock garden.

Light it up...

Rob

Uncertain Intangibles

I enjoy learning new words, digging into the etymology, and understanding the story behind them. Great words will stop me cold in the middle of a conversation, if only for a brief moment, as I savor the word and make a mental note to use it again some time soon. If I occasionally come across an unfamiliar word, I can usually deduce its meaning quickly enough, and soon find that this new friend, this word, begins to appear everywhere.

I came across a word today that fit none of my previous experience, and I've not yet decided if this word is a friend or a foe. My first reaction was one of humorous disbelief, followed by a reluctant realization that it was, in fact, a word that effectively conveyed a complete thought. More unnerving than anything, however, was when I realized that this word has been around for quite a while in marketing and knowledge management circles, but I only today stumbled across it.

The word is "mindshare". It is not yet common enough to be found in a standard desk reference dictionary, but it appears to be used quite liberally among marketing professionals. There is even a marketing company that uses this word as its name.

I discovered this word in a marketing blurb that referred to a company "moving mindshare" with a new product. My initial reaction was that this was merely corporate jargon for an intangible quality that can neither be proven nor refuted. Did they move mindshare because had a captive audience? Will they just as quickly lose that mindshare when their audience turns its attention to the next entry in the marketplace?

Does any of this truly translate to something certain and tangible, like sales, and ultimately, marketshare? That is the prime objective of taking mindshare, yet how often does it play out as planned? Kleenex may have a ton of mindshare among consumers, but when the consumer's Kleenex is really a box of Puffs, who wins?

I suspect that I will ultimately adopt "mindshare" into my linguistic arsenal, despite its uncertain intangibles, but I'll probably struggle with it for a while on principle simply because it sounds too much like corporate spin or business jargon. In the meantime, I'll probably try to poke some holes in the concept, at least until someone comes along and can offer a good way to quantify and capture mindshare in a very real way.

Light it up...

Rob

Apples and Ideas

I was reading an article on Innovation in the Gallup Management Journal when I came across (or rediscovered) a quote by George Bernard Shaw: "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples, then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

I enjoy going to the apple orchard with my family in the fall. Our favorite orchard has hay rides, a corn maze, a pumpkin patch, and a big barn filled with apple processing equipment, apples for sale, and a cafe with some wonderful apple creations. They have samples of the standard varieties of apples, and every year they have the latest variety for everyone to try.

As we walk out of the apple orchard with a basket or bag full of apples each fall, I realize that it won't be long before all the apples are gone. It occurred to me that this experience lends itself well to extending Shaw's analogy. If you and I exchange apples, then we'll each still have only one apple. However, it won't be long before neither of us have an apple left. If we exchange ideas, however, we'll find them to be reusable, and neither of us will ever lack for an idea again.

This quote from Shaw is really what my blog is about. I love to find new ideas, especially innovative ideas, and to implement them and share them. Some days go by so fast that ideas come and go and I can never quite get my hands around them. However, I hope that by taking the time to share these ideas with you, we can capture more of them together and each claim them for our own.

Light it up...

Rob

11 Herbs and Spices

Many years ago, in a previous working 'life', I worked as a manager at KFC restaurants. I learned a lot in the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) industry, particularly from my first employer, an outstanding KFC franchisee that I would still call a friend. I learned a lot about myself, too, though mostly about my weaknesses, and how my greatest strengths had pretty much nothing to do with managing a restaurant.

When people learn that I worked at KFC, the one question almost everyone asks, even to this day, is whether I knew what the Colonel's 11 herbs and spices were. It's the funniest question, and yet, because it is a secret, everyone wants to know about it. Actually, we were told that even the vendors that produced the spices for KFC didn't know the formula because different vendors only produced part of the blend.

I've often wondered what 10 herbs and spices would have tasted like. Why did the Colonel need exactly 11? I thought about these questions recently as I've been doing coaching for my team at work (back to the present day in the Medical Device industry). We've been having everyone do Gallup's Strengths Finder survey, then I've been doing one-on-one coaching with each team member to develop an action plan to help them play to their strengths.

It occurred to me that the precise combination of strengths, weaknesses, personality, social style, beliefs and life experiences all work together to put a unique stamp, or fingerprint, on each individual. In this way, we are all like our own blend of 11 herbs and spices. For instance, two people in my group are both strong in the Restorative theme, which means that they love to solve problems and find solutions, but they both express this strength in different ways.

One of the individuals is also strong in the Activator theme, so she likes to identify a problem, quickly find a fix, and get on with the rest of the team's work. The other person, however, is also strong in the Connection theme, so he would prefer to spend time finding the root cause of a problem, seeking out each of the connections that came together to create the issue so that it could be prevented next time. Both are valuable pursuits, and their strengths complement each other on the team, but each is unique and expresses their common strengths in slightly different ways.

I may never know what 10 herbs and spices would taste like, but I do know that my strengths make me unique, and I am going to look for every opportunity to capitalize on them. It just probably won't be managing a fast food restaurant!

Light it up...

Rob

The Units of Work

I read a great quote this week by Ram Charan from an article entitled, "Conquering a Culture of Indecision" (Harvard Business Review, April 2001). Charan is the co-author of the business best-seller, "Execution: The Disciple of Getting Things Done". I am looking forward to adding his latest book to my library: "Know How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't".

In Charan's HBR article, he writes about the processes we use for making important decisions, and highlights the need for effective communication. Here is the quote: "Dialogue is the basic unit of work in an organization. The quality of the dialogue determines how people gather and process information, how they make decisions, and how they feel about one another and about the outcome of these decisions."

The concept of dialogue as a unit of work really struck a chord with me. Too many leaders attempt to lead with a monologue, disregarding, or not even thinking to consider, the feedback of the people often most affected by their decisions. Great decisions are made in the context of a quality dialogue, and great leaders know how to facilitate this dialogue. They can gain the trust of the key stakeholders in a decision, gather their input, and avoid countless pitfalls in the process.

I remember my freshman chemistry professor at university driving home the point every day that none of the calculations we were doing had any relevance unless we considered and included the appropriate units in our work. Charan's reference to the "basic unit of work" drives home this point for me: there is really little relevance to the decisions I attempt to implement at work unless I consider and include the appropriate units of my work - that is, quality dialogue to ensure quality decisions.

Light it up...

Rob

A Bigger Pie in the Sky

I was chatting today with a friend about one of the coolest ideas I've seen in a long time - electronic billboards. I'm sure many people disagree with me about how cool they are, especially since the City of St. Paul was recently discussing a moratorium against building additional electronic billboards in the city. Yet despite the complaints against these new signs, you can't deny that they are innovative.

I hadn't thought much about the billboard industry until I saw the first electronic billboard in my area a few months ago. What I have observed since then is that, prior to electronic billboards, there seemed to be only a linear growth potential for the outdoor sign market. As urban sprawl marched on, and suburbs expanded, new billboard sites came available, and as the surrounding area developed, the sites became more valuable.

The truly revolutionary thing about electronic billboards is that they instantly give the companies in this marketplace the potential for exponential growth. Every existing site in the system can now be utilized for 2, 3 or 4 signs, on a rotating basis. This means that companies can immediately grow their revenues even without taking market share, simply because the size of their market pie is now increasing.

The outdoor sign companies can even charge their clients a reduced fee for a rotating sign relative to a static sign. This is great for the advertisers because they can utilize outdoor advertising as part of a more cost effective marketing strategy. And this is great for the sign companies, because even though they might charge less for each client, the total revenues per site could double or triple.

Outdoor sign companies have had some success with rotating signs in some other cities, utilizing a mechanical rotation that puts the physical sign on a series of rotating surfaces, not unlike the letters in the Wheel of Fortune puzzle. Even though there is likely a higher maintenance cost with electronic billboards than with manual rotating signs, and a much higher capital expenditure up front, the ability to design, update and publish content to the electronic signs via a satellite link would be very appealing to both the outdoor sign companies and to their advertisers.

The major objection to electronic billboards is the "light pollution" that they introduce into neighborhoods. I won't deny that this is a legitimate concern for people whose homes nestle up next to a billboard site, and I don't know if there is an easy answer for this problem. This is the primary reason St. Paul was considering a moratorium on adding additional electronic billboards in the city.

Despite the objections, however, it seems inevitable that these electronic billboards will proliferate, since there is so much potential revenue at stake. What really fires me up, though, is not the potential revenue, but the essence of the idea itself. I hope my next major business initiative could have half the potential impact of an electronic billboard - it could give a whole new meaning to the phrase, 'light it up...'.

Light it up...

Rob