Send the CEO to Summer Camp

I've lived in some of the largest cities in the world - Mumbai, Montreal and Toronto. As a result I'm used to noise, pollution and high population densities. Some city dwellers must escape from time to time. Not me. When on vacation I prefer to be in other big cities like NYC, Paris or LA. I'm a inner city type of person.

When I was a kid our family spent the summer in the city. Before I was old enough to get a summer job, my parents would send us to summer camp. Actually it was a day camp at the local Y. Our days would be spent playing baseball or swimming. But we were less than five blocks away and went home every evening.

A recent experience made me think of summer camp. My daughter is Director of a summer camp in rural Nova Scotia. It's a six week sleep away camp in the country by a lake. We visit frequently. But yesterday was the first time we were there on opening day. Opening day is the day that campers arrive and get settled into their cabins and bunks.

These campers are young kids, some of whom haven't been away from home before. Scary stuff for kids and their parents. The first day away is a real test. But fear not, from the minute the kids step off the bus they're immersed in tight community. Kids get over homesickness pretty quickly because there's so much to do.

It was an eyeopener for me. I always thought that summer camp was just about doing things you could only do away from the city. For example - learn how to paddle a canoe. But the true benefits to the camp experience are deeper.

Campers learn independence, social skills, problem solving...all without the 7x24 presence of a parent. This doesn't happen by accident. Camp staff work long hours to make the experience a memorable one. The team running the camp is qualified, well trained, compassionate and always engaged/connected to what's going on.

I was struck that this camp experience is similar to what you would get at five star hotel. The five star hotel attends to each detail, the staff knows your name, knows your preferences and makes your stay a memorable one. Minus the bunk beds of course.

I can't help but wonder how many hotel CEO's ever went to summer camp. I bet that some did. But if they haven't, perhaps they should arrange for a summer camper focus group to get the insight to reinvent their customer experience!

Tech Takes Over

Parts of the tech industry are in growth mode in the midst of the current economic downturn. Surprising but true!

A recent article in the National Post by Karen Mazurkewich asserts that while Automotive declines in Ontario, technology takes over...particularly in Waterloo. Ontario is the centre of Canada's manufacturing sector and automotive in particular. Waterloo is situated about 112 km east of Toronto.

Here's a quote from the Post:

"Situated in the heart of the auto parts manufacturing region, Waterloo is the new tech capital of the country. In this former agricultural heartland, still heavily populated with stoic Mennonite farmers, the story is upbeat. The tech sector here generates more than $15-billion per year, and the employment growth rate is 7%, significantly higher than Ottawa or Toronto."

Wait, it gets better: "Technology firms in the Waterloo region employ 28,000 people, and there are at least 2,000 more jobs looking to be filled. The community now boasts 550 technology companies, including the region's anchors: Research in Motion (RIM), Open Text, the largest software company in the country; and Christie Digital Systems Inc., make of a high-end projection system, to name a few."

I imagine that Waterloo is now the envy of every other North American city! Click here to read the entire article.

What I Learned from Hollywood - Part 7

Did you see that WALL-E won the the Academy Award for best animated film? For those of you that don't know WALL-E, it's a Pixar film about a robot that is left behind after mankind abandons earth.

Naturally for some people the message in WALL-E is an environmental one - save the planet! For others it's a love story. Yet others, including me, see the movie as an amazing example of what the talent at Pixar can produce. But what I really learned from WALL-E was something completely different...one person (or robot) can do the impossible!

WALL-E made me remember a time earlier in my career when I was on a high risk, long term, high impact, strategic project. Initially this project was a solitary pursuit, much like WALL-E's. In his story, he finds a plant during the course of his work. This plant appears after 700 years of cleaning the planet. This small live vegetation saves mankind!

I learned from WALL-E that one person (or robot) can do the impossible! So keep at it no matter what the odds and you will succeed!

Here are links to previous posts in the "What I Learned from Hollywood" series:

Part 1 - Heat

Part 2 - Scarface

Part 3 - Backdraft

Part 4 - Tin Cup

Part 5 - Jumping the Shark

Part 6 - The Last Starfighter

Making Lemonade from Lemons

Seems like there are some interesting articles coming from the LA Times these days. One headline caught my eye - "About to do time? Meet your best pal" . Here's a quote:

"At a time when no job is safe, Levine is among a small but growing number of consultants who are poised to find work in the economic meltdown as prison life coaches to the perpetrators of Ponzi schemes, mortgage scams and financial swindles."

Levine is Larry Levine. He's an ex-con and consultant who bills six figures annually! He's the person to go to if you're a white collar criminal about to go to prison. But what does he provide that a top flight law firm can't? What's the value add?

The answer is that he readies you for prison, coaches you on what to do and what not to do... before you go inside. It's essential survival skills for incarceration. In many ways prison "do's and don'ts" are similar to those for a corporate environment.

For example - don't lie, don't snitch, always show respect, strive for a better work assignment, etc... Well maybe it doesn't compare to all corporate cultures, just the harsh ones.

What Levine does has much in common with what consultants and coaches do - help solve a problem. Like any successful business consultant he's got the first hand inside knowledge needed. He's been there before and can help you fix your issue right the first time. In Levine's case heeding his consel could mean the difference between life and death.

When I sat down to write this I thought of taking this piece into the direction of analyzing a growth opportunity but I think there's a bigger story here -

In an environment of increasing uncertainty and upheaval it's very uplifting to see someone (Levine) create a successful business despite a bad personal story, many setbacks and challenges. We can all learn from Levine's making lemonade when life served him lemons.

Larry, if you're reading this...you need to know that you've got the makings of a great business book...go for it!!!

It doesn't matter

It's Academy Awards night and we'll be watching. I know, I know...in this dire economic environment, isn't there something less shallow and less celebrity oriented to write about?

We consider ourselves movie people. We would rather watch a movie than broadcast TV. So naturally we've got our thoughts on which of the latest movies should get recognized. But never mind predictions on who's going to win, there is a more interesting business story buried in the celebrity media buzz.

That story is the decline in TV viewership of the event and the plans to reinvent it this year to reverse the decline. The Academy Awards is considered to be recession proof by the sellers of advertising. Perhaps not anymore - according to the Los Angeles Times:

"The ABC network, in a move that reverses years of escalating prices and underscores the worsening economy, has shaved the cost of a commercial for Sunday's annual Academy Awards show, one of TV's most-watched programs. Once considered invincible to downturns, big events such as the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl, which attract tens of millions of viewers, can no longer command automatic rate hikes."

A graph from Nielsen Media Research (by way of TV by the Numbers) of Academy Awards viewership from 1974 to 2008 tells this story well:

Hmmm...it appears that a decline in viewership has been ongoing since 2001, including a resurgence in viewers in 2003 and 2004. All non-recession years. However, there were dips in recession years - 1981, 1987 and 1997. I bet that ABC would find that its ad revenues from those years' Academy events would have been even lower, much like this year's.

So what's causing the dip in viewership if the point of origin isn't the recession? The Associated Press via the Huffington Post say: "The worst-kept secret in Hollywood this awards season has been how first-time producers Laurence Mark and Bill Condon, in a bid to build buzz and bounce back from last year's ratings nadir, are keeping their Oscars overhaul plans a secret....The academy has a problem here. The show is way too long, and the films this year are not spectacular he said. If this year's ratings are down, it could be the tipping point and they will have to make changes."

I don't know if I agree...with the assertion that this year's crop of movies is not spectacular. I do agree that it may be a tipping point moment for the Academy Awards. But it really doesn't matter. Thanks to the global economic crisis efforts to reinvent the program through format changes such as new hosts and the elimination of monologues may not make a difference.

Maybe people are too beaten down by the economy to watch red carpet questions about the latest over the top jewellery or fashion designers. Maybe they'll watch a pay per view movie or DVD instead!

Planes, iPods and...Lawyers

This isn't about the iPod habits of lawyers at 30,000 feet! Occasionally I collect interesting news articles, with the intention of writing a post on each. Of course there's never enough time to write. So instead of having some of these links languishing on my personal task list, here's a sampling of three links that caught my eye and the insight to be gained from each:

Airbus A380 is a mixed blessing for LAX:

• Summary: The LA Times writes about the giant A380 aircraft causing headaches at LAX. Here's a quote from the piece: "...the A380 requires special procedures because Los Angeles International Airport was not built to accommodate a plane of its size...Every time Qantas lands one of its giant Airbus A380s at LAX, parts of the nation's fourth-busiest airport come to a halt"
• Insight: The A380 offers airlines improved fuel economy, longer range, better customer amenities. But one has to wonder what the true financial impact of this immense aircraft is. Impact to other airline flights in the air and on the group, their passengers and airport authorities operating expenses. Being the biggest may may not be better in this case
• Click here to read the whole article.

The great iPod migration:

• Summary: Fortune Magazine on the 100 million migration opportunity at Apple - iPod to iPhone. An equities analyst (Bernstein Research’s Toni Sacconaghi) speculates what Apple will do to drive more revenue from its iPod install base
• Insight: I don't know if Sacconaghi's proposal to compel the 100M iPod users to upgrade through introducing lower cost iPhones (without a data plan and/or launching a smaller iPhone) is in Apple's product plan. But what an amazing upgrade opportunity. Need to track this one!
• Click here to read the entire article

Billable Hours Giving Ground at Law Firms:

• Summary: The NY Times writes that billable hours at law firms are down thanks to the economic crisis
• Insight: This is an excellent description of the problem facing all professional services firms (Accounting, Consulting, etc...) as a result of the downturn in the economy. These lawyers have some great ideas to cope - flat fees instead of billable hours, commissions on savings and even payment plans. If you run a PS firm you may want to consider these options also
• Click here to read the entire article

10 Things I'll Miss about Trade Shows

Dean Takahashi's of VentureBeat wrote a post about Sony Electronics holding a virtual trade show. here. Virtual sales calls and seminars are being done via the Internet, so I'm thrilled that a cost effective solution now exists for trade shows.

A virtual trade show has to be more cost effective, time efficient and highly targeted for both exhibitors and attendees. Sure enough Sony says: "...the virtual trade cost less than 50 percent of a real world event, not to mention that most of the virtual trade show material can be reused."
I'm certain we'll be seeing more of these events in the future. So here's the list of things I'll miss about being an exhibitor at real world trade shows:

1. Carpet rentals
2. 30+ minute waits for a taxi at the Javits, Moscone, or LVCC
3. Fifteen dollar hamburgers at concession stands
4. Hunting the show floor for a "big kahuna" customer
5. Traveling with a trade show booth...as airline baggage
6. Arriving to the show/conference and discovering that new booth signage with the new branding was forgotten back at the office
7. Checking out attendee badges without being obvious
8. Crashing a corporate suite party without an invite and meeting the "big kahuna" customer
9. Booth tear down after 7 straight hours of booth duty, then missing your flight home because of long lines at the official shippers office
10. Handing out materials, and discussions with hundreds, if not thousands of people. People who will never be a customer. Then discovering the result of the show is 5 qualified prospects after 3 days.

But the one thing I'm really going to miss the most is the Gospel Brunch at the House of the Blues in Las Vegas.

HP's Garage Rules

A few weeks ago I wrote of a list of top performer competencies. When I read today's post on Wired's Epicenter Blog about the twelve rules that served Bill Hewlett and David Packard (and their company - HP) so very well, I thought there would be value in linking to those rules also.

Here's HP's Rules of the Garage:

• Believe you can change the world.
• Work quickly, keep the tools unlocked, work whenever.
• Know when to work alone and when to work together.
• Share tools, ideas.
• Trust your colleagues.
• No Politics. No bureaucracy.
• The customer defines a job well done.
• Radical ideas are not bad ideas.
• Invent different ways of working.
• Make a contribution every day. If it doesn’t contribute, it doesn’t leave the garage.
• Believe that together we can do anything.
• Invent.

In case you were wondering about the garage reference -- HP was founded in a Palo Alto, CA garage sixty years ago in 1939. Many assert that HP's very existence led to the technology powerhouse known as Silicon Valley.

My favourite rule is the first one....which one is yours?