CE “Oh” no™

Boy I wonder if people actually bother to look their corporate brands up in a dictionary before they build a company around them.

Right now the Internet is on fire around the whole Yahoo thing. I can’t weigh in myself on certain aspects of the deal (too close to one side of it).

What I can do is comment on the CEO disaster minefield this deal was for Yahoo, which the definition seams to fit. As we all have learned over the past couple years email and internal memos can bring forth all kinds of fun when opened up through litigation.

I cannot comprehend the lengths that Jerry Yang went to, and the amount of circumstantial evidence he and his cohorts have giftwrapped to the fireman’s fund that is sueing them. So I’d like to ofer my rule of thumb on this, when doing something controversial (see will get you sued) make sure you do your own discovery ahead of the action, and see just how bad it will look. Once you’ve done this exercise determine the outcome of not doing the deal and weigh those costs against doing the deal.

Check out all the fun reading here

Well I’ve been away for too long dealing with personal stuff. Fortunately the news doesn’t stop when I’m not writing about it. I’ve got a very nice article coming up, so you’ll all just have to wait for it.

In other news it looks like my patent is about to get published in late August. Hopefully the examination fort it won’t be too terrible.

In tech “services” has been the almighty buzz word for the last couple years. Its either SaaS (software as a service), Software+Services, or any number of other combinations with the insertion of services.

Now lets talk about babies + Services. Yes my friend yesterday gave birth to a lovely boy. What I found interesting was the luxury hotel atmosphere of her hospital room. While I instantly saw the practicality of it from a business perspective, it does make you wonder about our priorities.

There is a need to keep women in hospital following up the birth of a child for observation. Making them comfortable really assists in allowing for this need to be fulfilled. It makes you wonder though as stingy as some HMOs can be why this decadent service is offered while so many essential healthcare options remain blocked. It seems the one time with which patient interests and HMOs interest line up, so I suppose its not shocking to see hospitals exploit it.

It really did leave you left thinking wow. Its impossible to get some forms of life saving care, but hey we can build a fireplace and 50in LCD into the waiting room of the birthing unit.

I was going to load a clip for this, unfortunately Hulu didn’t have an older episode of MadTV. Lowered Expectations was a fictional online dating company that had commercials on MadTV their slogan was “You’ve tried the rest now settle for what you can get”.

I always thought this was a remarkably clever skit but it brings up a good point on managing expectations within companies. I would put forth that the most successful companies are not always those that make the most money or have the best products, but those who do the best job of managing their expectations.

Apple, while not a company I am very fond of has always done a terrific job of this. Their attitude of narrowing the focus alongside sending clear messaging about what their product is and will be reduces a lot of customer confusion. With the Web 2.0 world (I hate this buzzword crap) they’ve turned this strategy up even further.

Its important for companies to take a page out of Apple’s book here. With customers rabidly curious in any and all products its vital to set expectations correctly. This helps insure the right amount of positive buzz, and more importantly minimizes the opportunity for the fan base to backseat drive. While your customers opinions are important its foolish to assume that the customer will take a 360 degree view of the product before offering their suggestions. Therefore leaving the conversation open ended without any guidence is bad news.

I’m not saying tell the customers “Settle for what you can get” but set the boundries for the arguement before customers get involved in the discussions and you’ll have a much better experience and fanbase.

I think the title really lays out the point that the subject matter discussed in this post really is nothing new.

I’m talking about “gating mechanisms” in the work environment. Recently my brother had a chance to interview for a position and I decided to help him out. Being familiar with the industry and acclimated to successful interviewing I suggested numerous questions he could engage the hiring manager with. His response was interesting, he suggested I should start up a business definitions blog as to him I was practically speaking a foreign language.

I laughed a little at his response, until I started looking later that night and came upon a position for an Agile software development company. I was introduced to many different words that really I had no clue existed. Reading through the Wikipedia entry on this (I know such a reliable source right) it seems to be not that foreign to work I have done. So why don’t they just call it a fast-paced collaborative work environment with incremental release cycles?

Well that brings us back to the story of Ali Baba and the words “Open Sesame”. The concept is the same you say a few magic words and it opens the right doors. Unfortunately for businesses, like the 40 Thieves encountered, this security system isn’t full proof. Someone will get ahold of the buzzwords and gain access to interviews when they shouldn’t.

I saw an article a couple of weeks ago from the LA Times that really nailed it as far as Economic Fluff pieces go. Economic Fluff pieces are typically delivered under the guise of being hard hitting stories, here’s how to spot them.

1. They’ll be as broad as possible with extremely outlandish titles “Raised in boom times, many Gen-X and Yers see their dreams go bust” . Really? We’ve had a boom time since the 80s with no down turns?

2. Focus on 1 individual sob stories - “Kelly McAuliffe of Los Angeles can’t believe how quickly she has gone from rushing to back-to-back business meetings to passing her days watching the Game Show Network and reruns of “Law & Order.”" Special note to Kelly here looking for jobs is a bit more productive than watching the Game Show network.

3. Pepper the article with many experts - Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff, Edward Wolff, an economist at New York University

4. Rely on anything but facts (see numbers) - “This generation as a whole has not experienced any substantial kind of financial difficulty,” said Leslie Winefield, director of the Portland, Maine-based Institute for Financial Literacy. “It could be a defining moment for them.”

5. Call out obvious problems that impact everyone including the group you’re trying to scare - “Now they have to deal with losing their jobs, keeping their house and $4 gas,” Twenge said.

This article offered zero facts kind of like another LA Times piece aboutTupac Shakur’s supposed murderer.

Here is a fact I came out of college in 2003, since 2001 our economy has had to endure the following:

9/11

War in Iraq

War in Afganastan

Enron

MCI WorldCom

Outsourcing

The Housing Market collapse

Plain and simple Gen-Y has never known a Boom-time. This generation has had to cut its teeth in niche areas and battle against economic forces, and are far from the soft group of people this article makes them out to be. 

I’ve been talking a lot about managing for the stakeholders not the shareholders. From what he’s been saying it sounds like thats exactly what Jerry Yang was doing. Not sure if I agree or not, but carving 20% off of your stock price in a day definitely isn’t managing for your shareholders.

The good news is it’s Cinco de Mayo. So my advice to him is hit the Mexican restaurants after work and party.

Adam Smith talked of trusting the invisible hand to guide the economy. The thought was intervention creates waste; this was a common conception of free market economists. While poor regulations in some instances can result in widespread corruption its interesting to see when we remove choice and are left with obscene bureaucracy. Looking at a proposed bill in Mass. I can’t help but think this falls into the latter category.

I understand some classes have protection and rightly so. Expanding protection in this way limits choice substantially, and causes a new level of frivolous lawsuits. It also takes the decision out of the hand of employers.

The big take-away from the article is this though:

“overweight people tend to share the bias to a greater extent than other groups do. In this case, there really is a sense that ‘I really am to blame.’ ” ~Roehling

When the guy proposing the bill is telling us that in addition to the discrimination this group receives due to their perceived laziness or poor self image etc, they actually are themselves lacking confidence. In every interview I’ve ever been in my confidence was an asset. I would never hire anyone who wasn’t confident in their ability to do the job. If we want to address the reason for this “self-discrimination” maybe we should deal with that area, because until you believe you deserve to be there you in fact are not the best candidate for the job.

I was going to write a piece on leveraging (debt/equity) pointing out how proud some companies are of being debt free. Basically these companies enjoy having all their borrowing done in the form of equity.  It’s interesting because it plays off of what I would assume is American Culture.  Simply put we see debt in terms of a negative rather than a neutral tool for businesses and our personal lives.

A funny thing happened on the way to defining this argument though

Definition I was looking for:
Equity: Informal. ownership, esp. when considered as the right to share in future profits or appreciation in value.

Definitions that caught my eye:
Equity: the quality of being fair or impartial; fairness; impartiality
Equity: something that is fair and just.

Am I the only one who thinks these two sets of definitions when applied to our current corporate practices are complete antonyms? Corporations’ attachment to stockholders on such a biased level that all other shareholders interests are ignored hardly rings true to the premise of fairness. On top of that, not even all stockholders are treated impartially. With shares of preferred stock dwarfing the rights and value inherent in lesser “voting shares” it becomes an even more lopsided.

Hardly equitable.

Now I’m not sure if this is true, and I’m linking to a story of a story that isn’t documented the best. Sometimes you have to just comment on something that is really amusing though.

Thanks go out to my brother for finding this.