Why not Organic?

An obtuse end of year thought, considering the problems the Government is having with its Green partner in policy. 

A convergence of trends, organic, free range, sustainable, all the other adjectives, food is all the rage, why not re-brand those horrid, smelly, carbon producing fossil fuels as organic? 

Well, they are aren’t they, formed from trees, nice and green, nurtured by the earth for millennia, how could the good Senator Brown possibly disagree?

The carbon tax, could be renamed a “green tax”, recognising the origins of fossil fuels, only reasonable I think, in fact, it should be a central plank of the new party platform. Hats and whistles please.

Give Julia something to think about over the break, apart from gay marriage and how to deliver the budgie a wedgie for Christmas.

See you next year.

Thanks for hearing.

The hard part about writing a blog, I have found, is not finding stuff to write about, but finding stuff that has not been written about before, or finding a new twist on an old topic, and then being sufficiently interesting to those who so generously give you their attention, that they take note.

The proliferation of sources of news and comment has sliced up the attention pie so completely, that getting and holding the attention of those who may be interested, and adding value to them in return is the real challenge.

Never has the old adage from Peter Drucker, “Communication is not saying something, communication is being heard”, been more accurate than it is now.

So, for you, one of that small group who have so generously given me their attention through this year by reading, commenting on, tweeting, and otherwise been a part of this wonderful tool of communication we now take for granted, I thank you, and wish you a safe and Merry Christmas.  I look forward to continuing the relationship in 2012, and continuing to engage with you, by scratching your brain cells with interesting and useful stuff.

Best management tool ever

The best management tool available is amongst the cheapest, a pair of shoes.

Hierarchies are vertical, they filter and modify information as it goes up and down an organisation, but real things, those that customers pay for,  get done in an organisation horizontally, and generally at lower levels, at the “coalface.” So, for someone at the top to really understand what is going on below, they must be where the action is, not in the boardroom.

In Lean parlance, a “Gemba walk”.

Get yourself a pair of shoes for Christmas.

 

Meritocracy, not democracy.

Meritocracy is about the best ideas, whereas democracy is about consensus, usually an average outcome.

In a democracy, those who manage to smooth the waters, and gain the average usually get ahead, but in a true meritocracy, those with the best ideas get listened to, and eventually get ahead.

Collaboration is often confused for democracy, everyone gets an equal turn, but in a collaboration that will win, only the best ideas survive the demanding, often aggressive review and decision making process that are core to success. It is this review that crashes most collaborations, because most people see them as democracies, not meritocracies brought together to identify and harvest the best ideas.

Sobering thought when you consider the challenges we face, economically and socially, to think that at best, we can have an average outcome.

The challenge of the first

Ever thought about how markets happen, how the emerge, how they grow?

A new market has to have a first customer, most marketers look to the value proposition, the competitive landscape, the distribution channels, the mechanics of manufacturing, the service offering, but that is not all it is, there is another factor usually overlooked.

Somewhere, sometime, there needs to be a first customer, then a second, and with luck those will tell their friends the product is good, and the ball will start rolling. 

However, for every new customer, there must be a first time, they must be persuaded to buy into a new market or product category, to overcome the barriers of habit, reluctance to take a risk, to be different, to move from something that they know is OK to something they have heard may be better. 

I have not yet bought a Smartphone, but I suppose I will at some point, when the pressure is sufficient to get me to buy one, but that will be the first time I buy a Smartphone, it will be a hurdle, the second one will be much, much easier.

Getting people to  buy their first is the key hurdle of any new market.