Malcolm Muggeridge, the British journalist and wit among other talents, entitled his autobiography, CHRONICLES OF WASTED TIME. I read it at publication decades ago (he lived 1903-1990) and found it slow going with great writing and interesting insight. The title always amused me.
Recently, I sent the title out to a number of people on my panel who were retired or who announced they were about to be in the near future. I did not ask anyone to read Muggeridge only to react to the title of his autobiography. Here are some of the more interesting comments that I have received back:
--“Don, what a perfect way to describe my career! I spent more time in meetings both internal and with clients than I did actually working. The work itself was a joy; the meetings deadly.”
--“A few years back, I became a consultant. I am so much more productive than I ever was at an agency. No being bored by the long harangue of my CEO, no pompous creatives to ruin my day with their holier than though attitude. At the same time, if I have not spent 30 years at several shops and five client side, I could never do what I do now. So, the “wasted time” was the greens fee that I had to pay for the free and lucrative life that I have today. Sometimes, I miss the camaraderie, but most days I am very content.”
--“I have always been impatient. Meetings sapped my time and my emotional strength. I bet that I spent 20 years of my career in meetings. Now, I do a few conference calls and lots of e-mails and am very productive. Clients know that I charge by the day so they do not waste my time. They have expectations of me and have all their ducks in a row when I visit them. I have never worked more efficiently.”
-- “Meetings are just part of the process. The time was not really wasted. If you listened carefully and stayed attentive, you learned a lot about the players involved. The mavericks, the yes men, the lazy, the nut jobs, the ultra-talented all showed themselves eventually.”
--“Don’t get me started. There were times in my late 50’s when I felt that I had wasted my life by staying in this business. My husband helped me stay on an even keel. Yes, my career was a chronicle of wasted time. Wasn’t yours?”
--“Firemen, combat soldiers, political assassins, and day traders all have down time but on the job itself they do not waste time. The rest of us do regardless of profession. It is called life.”
Personally, I could deal with it fairly well except when it became repetitive. I had a client whom I visited twice a year for nine years. At each session, he asked precisely the same questions. After four or five times, I sent him a lengthy report thanking him for his interest and hoped to put the issues to bed. Nope. The next meeting he opened with the same inquiries. I never could figure him out nor could anyone around me. He was never rude and not unintelligent. Yet, he was a time waster on steroids.
How about you? Has your career been a Chronicle of Wasted Time?
If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
The 80:20 Rule
Unless you are a newcomer to the business world, you have experienced, thought about, or been part of the 80:20 principle.
It first surfaced way back in 1896 when Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, published a paper at the University of Lausanne. Pareto’s research illustrated that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by 20% of the population (and you thought income inequality was a new issue! Nope, remember Karl Marx). Pareto kept digging and found that across countries similar patterns existed. As late as 1989, looking at global GDP by quintile, the top 20% (quintile) produced 82.1% of the economic handle.
After World War II, a few others led by philologist George K. Aipf, picked up the Pareto mantle and the 80:20 principle was found to be widespread and some soon called it the “principle of least effort.”
The following items were often observed across the world:
--20% of employees were responsible for 80% of corporate output.
--80% of sales came from 20% of clients
--80% of profits came from 20% of customers
--In bookstores, 80% of sales came from 20% of titles
As more people examined it, the 80:20 principle started to creep in to management science or quasi-science. Some entrepreneurs failed as they did not leave tasks to others that they did not do well. They should have focused on the 20% at which they excelled. The mantra was to work harder on elements that work harder for you and ultimately focus energy on what you enjoy.
Big companies often shed brands or divisions that were not profitable. Conglomerates often did not work out well so chieftains sold off the least profitable or most difficult areas and became stronger organizations.
Asking a few ad agency chiefs about 80:20 was interesting. Here are the two best comments:
--“No one wants to resign business unless the clients are complete bastards. Over the last few years, I saw 80:20 clearly in our P&L’s. So we have asked for big increases in compensation from a few clients. If they refused, we resigned them. We are a bit smaller but more profitable during a challenging time for shops our size. I wish that I had done this 10 years earlier but it takes guts.”
--“When you contacted me, I was afraid to answer but my partners urged me to tell the truth. Candidly, if we could start over tomorrow, we might only keep the 20% of our staff that is still growing and contributing a great deal. I think that if I were totally honest, I just might fire myself. It stuns me how 80:20 applies in so many areas.”
Recently, I had an experience with 80:20 that shook me to the core. I looked at my stock trading since 1973. Even a persnickety statistician would consider that to be a longitudinal study. And, my findings? You guessed it. Some 79.4% of my gains came from 20% of my holdings. Eerie, but true.
The 80:20 principle is alive and well!
If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com
It first surfaced way back in 1896 when Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, published a paper at the University of Lausanne. Pareto’s research illustrated that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by 20% of the population (and you thought income inequality was a new issue! Nope, remember Karl Marx). Pareto kept digging and found that across countries similar patterns existed. As late as 1989, looking at global GDP by quintile, the top 20% (quintile) produced 82.1% of the economic handle.
After World War II, a few others led by philologist George K. Aipf, picked up the Pareto mantle and the 80:20 principle was found to be widespread and some soon called it the “principle of least effort.”
The following items were often observed across the world:
--20% of employees were responsible for 80% of corporate output.
--80% of sales came from 20% of clients
--80% of profits came from 20% of customers
--In bookstores, 80% of sales came from 20% of titles
As more people examined it, the 80:20 principle started to creep in to management science or quasi-science. Some entrepreneurs failed as they did not leave tasks to others that they did not do well. They should have focused on the 20% at which they excelled. The mantra was to work harder on elements that work harder for you and ultimately focus energy on what you enjoy.
Big companies often shed brands or divisions that were not profitable. Conglomerates often did not work out well so chieftains sold off the least profitable or most difficult areas and became stronger organizations.
Asking a few ad agency chiefs about 80:20 was interesting. Here are the two best comments:
--“No one wants to resign business unless the clients are complete bastards. Over the last few years, I saw 80:20 clearly in our P&L’s. So we have asked for big increases in compensation from a few clients. If they refused, we resigned them. We are a bit smaller but more profitable during a challenging time for shops our size. I wish that I had done this 10 years earlier but it takes guts.”
--“When you contacted me, I was afraid to answer but my partners urged me to tell the truth. Candidly, if we could start over tomorrow, we might only keep the 20% of our staff that is still growing and contributing a great deal. I think that if I were totally honest, I just might fire myself. It stuns me how 80:20 applies in so many areas.”
Recently, I had an experience with 80:20 that shook me to the core. I looked at my stock trading since 1973. Even a persnickety statistician would consider that to be a longitudinal study. And, my findings? You guessed it. Some 79.4% of my gains came from 20% of my holdings. Eerie, but true.
The 80:20 principle is alive and well!
If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Is Your Firm A Learning Organization?
In the last 15 years all of us have clearly learned one thing--the world is speeding up and, as even frontier markets get wired, people are getting more demanding or spoiled. They want precisely what THEY want and they want it now, not in the future. As the pace of change continues to accelerate, all companies, but especially those in communication, have to adapt and change or perish. A firm has to continually improve across all departments and you need to rethink your goals. Yet, what is a company? It is essentially its people and people only change when they are learning new things and shifting behaviors. As one person wrote to me, “Learning is the capital of the future” (More about that later).
About 25 years ago, Peter Senge of MIT wrote a book called THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE: THE ART AND PRACTICE OF THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION. His thesis was that it was not merely individuals but the organization itself which has to learn and keep learning to stay current. He described learning organizations as “organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.” Sounds fabulous, huh?
Does anyone truly do it? Well, as is often the case, theorists such as Senge were more than a bit ahead of their time. Today, in 2016, I would argue that being a learning organization is crucial for the growth and even survival of many media entities and small to medium sized advertising agencies.
Did you ever ask anyone or observe what it is to be part of a great business team? Maybe even a well run department within a larger firm? To me, it always seem to hinge around an open environment for ideas and that people feel that they are doing something meaningful.
Senge identified things with a bit more precision that that. Disciplines needed in a learning organization include:
1) Systems Thinking--this is simply saying that what you do is interrelated and what you do can effect others and have long term effects. All too often I observed people 100% concerned with their own job, job security or department. No one looked at the big picture--people focused on their own “silo” or “sandbox.” Long term it hurt growth and the overall environment of the company.
2) Personal Mastery--here Senge says one lives life from a creative rather than reactive standpoint. These people are still learning and hungry for it. There are no “fat old men on tenure” who are coasting. Curiosity reigns. This is much easier said than done especially in a service organization.
3) Building A Shared Vision--teams learn to think insightfully and there is an “operational trust” among executives. There is dialog that is far more open than most organizations.
4) Leadership--autocrats need not apply. These men and women need to be teachers but not owners of the corporate vision.
About 10 years ago, I began to see the term learning organization pop up in the chairman’s letter in annual reports and corporate mission statements. I sometimes laughed out loud if I knew the group was run by a narrow minded tyrant. To me, Senge’s idea is one whose time has come. If not, many organizations we know will be swept away or much weaker over the next decade.
Finally, I mentioned that someone had written to me when I canvassed some panel members about this topic that “learning is the capital of the future.” Impressed, I asked if it were his original phrase. He said no and challenged me to find it. After some Inspector Clouseau style research, I believe it was coined by British business writer Edward Russell-Walling. His articles on Senge are well worth your time if you do not want to plow through the original “Learning Organization” text.
If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com or leave a comment on the blog.
About 25 years ago, Peter Senge of MIT wrote a book called THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE: THE ART AND PRACTICE OF THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION. His thesis was that it was not merely individuals but the organization itself which has to learn and keep learning to stay current. He described learning organizations as “organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.” Sounds fabulous, huh?
Does anyone truly do it? Well, as is often the case, theorists such as Senge were more than a bit ahead of their time. Today, in 2016, I would argue that being a learning organization is crucial for the growth and even survival of many media entities and small to medium sized advertising agencies.
Did you ever ask anyone or observe what it is to be part of a great business team? Maybe even a well run department within a larger firm? To me, it always seem to hinge around an open environment for ideas and that people feel that they are doing something meaningful.
Senge identified things with a bit more precision that that. Disciplines needed in a learning organization include:
1) Systems Thinking--this is simply saying that what you do is interrelated and what you do can effect others and have long term effects. All too often I observed people 100% concerned with their own job, job security or department. No one looked at the big picture--people focused on their own “silo” or “sandbox.” Long term it hurt growth and the overall environment of the company.
2) Personal Mastery--here Senge says one lives life from a creative rather than reactive standpoint. These people are still learning and hungry for it. There are no “fat old men on tenure” who are coasting. Curiosity reigns. This is much easier said than done especially in a service organization.
3) Building A Shared Vision--teams learn to think insightfully and there is an “operational trust” among executives. There is dialog that is far more open than most organizations.
4) Leadership--autocrats need not apply. These men and women need to be teachers but not owners of the corporate vision.
About 10 years ago, I began to see the term learning organization pop up in the chairman’s letter in annual reports and corporate mission statements. I sometimes laughed out loud if I knew the group was run by a narrow minded tyrant. To me, Senge’s idea is one whose time has come. If not, many organizations we know will be swept away or much weaker over the next decade.
Finally, I mentioned that someone had written to me when I canvassed some panel members about this topic that “learning is the capital of the future.” Impressed, I asked if it were his original phrase. He said no and challenged me to find it. After some Inspector Clouseau style research, I believe it was coined by British business writer Edward Russell-Walling. His articles on Senge are well worth your time if you do not want to plow through the original “Learning Organization” text.
If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com or leave a comment on the blog.
Saturday, June 4, 2016
Tell Them What They Want To Hear?
It has often been said in the American business world that the way to survive is to tell management “what it wants to hear.” The late Chris Argyris (1923-2013) questioned that view often in his long career. Of all his books on organizational science, my favorite was ORGANIZATION AND INNOVATION.
In brief, Argyris said that there were two types of companies which he labeled Model I and Model II. He stated that in Model I firms people only said things aloud in meetings that were felt to be appropriate to company culture. Confrontation was avoided at all costs. If an employee felt that he or she would be penalized in some way for candor, or might embarrass someone or announce bad news in a session, they usually would keep quiet, soft-pedal the issue or even lie. By doing so, top management gets knowledge that he categorized as invalid and many errors could not be corrected. Argyris felt strongly that if an organization was to learn, then finding and correcting errors was what it was all about.
Everywhere that I have worked in my career, superiors always said, “Tell me anything. My door is always open.” Think about it yourself and I am certain that most of you have heard the same thing. Did you act on it literally?
It is very hard to find an executive in almost any industry who is not at least minimally defensive about criticisms from an employee. After a period of years goes by and a relationship develops, most of us have learned where they can go and where they avoid comment. I made it a point never to call someone out in a meeting in front of peers. Stronger comments were always better one on one and even then, it was difficult at times. This week I just finished THE MURDER OF LEHMAN BROTHERS (Brick Tower Press, 2009) in which Joseph Tibman (a pen name for a former investor banker at Lehman) talked about how Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld was always insulated from bad news right until the end of the company’s existence. Clearly, they were a Model I firm.
Model II companies, according to Argyris, have somehow found a way to express issues. People are not afraid to raise conflicting views and their is actual encouragement of challenging publicly even what the CEO has to say. Problems can be dealt with even when you are pretty far down the road on a project. Argyris says there are only a handful of Model II companies out there. He wrote that in 1965 and I bet it is still largely true today.
Where do Model II companies exist? Startups, particularly in tech, would likely head the list. I have seen and heard of it in small professional practices in law, medicine and financial planning and analysis. Everyone is experienced and fairly secure. Family businesses sometimes operate on Model II. As one person said to me, “Yes, we argue, disagree and fight. But, at the end of the day we still love each other and we are all owners.”
Does it work in the media world? A sales staff may have it if it is not too large. Everyone is under pressure to perform so the sales chief is not the villain--the bean counters at headquarters are. So, people are often apt to speak up about sales tactics or who to pursue for new business. Ad agencies? Maybe a few start-up digital shops are Model II but generally candor is found in private conversations at long standing agencies among senior management who are financially secure.
The late Andy Grove of Intel once famously said, “Only the paranoid survive.” It always gets a laugh when it is brought up but today in many firms, particularly advertising agencies there is a crying need to move toward a Model II culture.
If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com
In brief, Argyris said that there were two types of companies which he labeled Model I and Model II. He stated that in Model I firms people only said things aloud in meetings that were felt to be appropriate to company culture. Confrontation was avoided at all costs. If an employee felt that he or she would be penalized in some way for candor, or might embarrass someone or announce bad news in a session, they usually would keep quiet, soft-pedal the issue or even lie. By doing so, top management gets knowledge that he categorized as invalid and many errors could not be corrected. Argyris felt strongly that if an organization was to learn, then finding and correcting errors was what it was all about.
Everywhere that I have worked in my career, superiors always said, “Tell me anything. My door is always open.” Think about it yourself and I am certain that most of you have heard the same thing. Did you act on it literally?
It is very hard to find an executive in almost any industry who is not at least minimally defensive about criticisms from an employee. After a period of years goes by and a relationship develops, most of us have learned where they can go and where they avoid comment. I made it a point never to call someone out in a meeting in front of peers. Stronger comments were always better one on one and even then, it was difficult at times. This week I just finished THE MURDER OF LEHMAN BROTHERS (Brick Tower Press, 2009) in which Joseph Tibman (a pen name for a former investor banker at Lehman) talked about how Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld was always insulated from bad news right until the end of the company’s existence. Clearly, they were a Model I firm.
Model II companies, according to Argyris, have somehow found a way to express issues. People are not afraid to raise conflicting views and their is actual encouragement of challenging publicly even what the CEO has to say. Problems can be dealt with even when you are pretty far down the road on a project. Argyris says there are only a handful of Model II companies out there. He wrote that in 1965 and I bet it is still largely true today.
Where do Model II companies exist? Startups, particularly in tech, would likely head the list. I have seen and heard of it in small professional practices in law, medicine and financial planning and analysis. Everyone is experienced and fairly secure. Family businesses sometimes operate on Model II. As one person said to me, “Yes, we argue, disagree and fight. But, at the end of the day we still love each other and we are all owners.”
Does it work in the media world? A sales staff may have it if it is not too large. Everyone is under pressure to perform so the sales chief is not the villain--the bean counters at headquarters are. So, people are often apt to speak up about sales tactics or who to pursue for new business. Ad agencies? Maybe a few start-up digital shops are Model II but generally candor is found in private conversations at long standing agencies among senior management who are financially secure.
The late Andy Grove of Intel once famously said, “Only the paranoid survive.” It always gets a laugh when it is brought up but today in many firms, particularly advertising agencies there is a crying need to move toward a Model II culture.
If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com
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