During the holidays, I had the chance to re-read one of my favorite marketing books: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Ries and Trout. While many people seem to think that the book is no longer relevant, I was more than a little surprised by how of much of the book I remembered and…
It’s the holiday season and I’m faced with my annual dilemma: How do I thank a small number of employees who have disproportionately supported the company’s and my own success over the last year? For most of my career, I’ve believed non-cash rewards were better than cash. After all, cash gets used for next months’ car…
Despite the fact that only two of my readers have pointed it out, it’s painfully obvious to me that I haven’t posted in two weeks. While two weeks isn’t very long, I pride myself on posting weekly and commited to measuring frequency of posting just a few months ago. The few days off I took for Thanksgiving…
In the Upside of the Downturn, Geoff Colvin suggests death rates go down in a recession. Regardless of the accuracy of the claim, it’s worth remembering the recession provides new opportunities for companies willing to take risks. To emphasize this point, Colvin subtitled his book “Ten Management Strategies to Prevail in the Recession and Thrive in the Aftermath.”…
A few weeks ago I got a chance to listen to Geoff Colvin talk about his new book, The Upside of the Downturn. Geoff, a long-time editor and columnist for Fortune Magazine, is an engaging speaker and he peppered his opening comments with headlines from that morning’s newspapers. He also made the intriguing claim death…
After poking fun at Marketing, several people forwarded me this classic joke about the communication issues between Marketing and Engineering: A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces his altitude and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts, “Excuse me. Can you…
Halloween statistics can be scary. According to a survey of 8,526 people conducted by BIGresearch for the National Retail Federation (NRF), consumers spent an average of $56.31 on Halloween in 2009, down 15% from $66.54 last year. The survey blames the economy, citing that nearly a third of consumers said the economy negatively impacted their…
After last week’s post, Scrum By Walking Around, a reader emailed to ask if I knew the the origins of the phrase management by walking around (MBWA). Rather than replying immediately based on what I believed, I spent a fair amount of time doing Web research but the results were inconclusive. Most sources credit the Hewlett-Packard culture for…
If you’re not in software development, you may not be familiar with an agile software development framework called scrum. Scrum is an alternative to the traditional waterfall approach and attempts to simplify complex projects by structuring them in short cycles of work called sprints. Each sprint is based on prioritized customer requirements such that the highest value features…
On a recent transcontinental flight, I found myself writing the phrase “less is more” in response to a 60 page PowerPoint I had been asked to review. Although the origin is unclear, the phrase “less is more” is often associated with Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, one of the founders of modern architecture and a proponent…