Revisit Your Inner Five Year Old

My late father was born way back in 1908. I was the last of his children and am several years

younger than my nearest sibling. Dad told me a very interesting story that appeared to have happened in 1913.

His mother took him, his two older sisters and his twin brother from their home in Ames to the big city of Des Moines, Iowa. They visited a large department store on the day that the retailer was unveiling the first escalator in the city. A fairly large crowd was assembled as the owner turned on the juice of the modern marvel (with its wooden steps!). 

Everyone in the store was invited to join some of the sales staff as they rode up the escalator for the first time. No one moved. They were apparently afraid to try the new contraption. Well, the twin Cole brothers had no such fear. They hopped on the escalator and gleefully rode it up and down much to my grandmother’s embarrassment. When they raced down the up escalator my grandmother, assisted by her older daughter, was able to grab them. The owner came over, shook each of the boy’s hands and thanked them. When others saw the little fellows safely enjoying the new technology, they took a free ride as well. The owner took the whole family to the company dining room and the kids were given as much peach ice cream as they wanted.

Why tell this story? Well, over the last few decades I have read numerous psychological studies that repeatedly say that a person’s imagination tends to peak at age five. After that, we are all programmed to conform and the world loses some of its wonder for us. You go to school, you have to pay attention, do not speak out of turn, sit up straight, and get permission to go to the bathroom. Over time, the regimentation tends to knock the stuffing out of most people. Young people in the workplace often have great ideas but after years of being shouted down or ignored, they tend to go along to get along and never live up to their potential.

Not long ago, I had a student who was every professor’s dream. He asked questions constantly, led class discussions, and was so prepared for lectures that he often asked if there were additional articles or background data that he could read BEFORE I covered a chapter in the classroom.  One day, I threw a hypothetical problem at the class about what could a small coffee shop owner do to survive if both McDonald’s and Starbucks were moving in to their trading area and his monopoly loyalty would be threatened. The young guy’s hand shot up first, as I expected, and he said that they should go to friends on the town council and block the two chains from entering the village. I laughed and said no we needed a marketing solution. Actually, I was upset.

He seemed to sense it and after class asked if he had offended me. I said no but I was surprised at his answer. He said, “Isn’t that the way the world works. You get an edge by who you know.”

Somewhere along the line his imagination had been thwarted. He was way too young to be so cynical. Have you ever noticed how people who succeed in the arts or are great entrepreneurs often were troubled youths in some people’s eyes? They did not do well in school because they would not conform. Yet, as adults, they were successful, as they appeared to be wired differently than the rest of us. They have never lost the wonder they had as a five year old.

So, within reason, tap in to that five year old within you. When thinking about issues or how to come up with an imaginative solution to a problem, do not worry about current practices, political correctness, local zoning or even what is legal. Be a five year old and go directly to a solution. Ever watch a youngster open a Christmas present? Does he or she carefully unwrap the paper? Hell no! They get to the gift that is inside as quickly as possible. That spirit is what our society needs to move forward. Five year olds are not boxed in by limits or linear thinking and neither are entrepreneurs with break-through ideas.

Walk or run down that up escalator.  Do something silly once in a while. You may start to reclaim what you lost decades ago.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com or leave a message on the blog.

How Much REAL Strategic Planning Is Done?

Ideally, companies, institutions, and even people should engage in strategic planning. Put simply, it is concerned with identifying and then achieving long term objectives of your organization. This should not be confused with organizational planning which may be for the next 90 days (the quarterly report to Wall Street) or for the next year. Strategic planning is a long term forecast going out five years or more. In fact, a few companies, such as Exxon Mobil, AT&T, Microsoft, and Verizon likely look out 50 years in terms of planning.

Is 50 years absurd? Not really, in many cases. Take Exxon Mobil, for example. Fifty years from now they will likely be a significant player in energy production, transmission and sales. Several years back they made a multi-billion dollar acquisition of a large natural gas player. It has not paid off big time yet but the world appears to be moving to using more natural gas as it burns cleaner than oil or coal. Should alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, or hydrogen get more competitive with fossil fuels, you can bet that they will be there and they will have prepared for it decades before. Newer tech players in the business world such as Apple, Google and Facebook have surely begun to embrace long term planning. One key is that with the world changing so rapidly it is unlikely that your company as you know it will exist in 20 years or more. So, you have to hedge your bets and plan for the future. Such change is not a new thing. William Wrigley was selling baking powder well over a hundred years ago. To induce buyers, he ran a special where the purchaser received two free packs of chewing gum with each purchase of baking powder. The response was huge, he had the Eureka moment where he realized that he was in the wrong business, and created an empire with gum that was worth billions and recently went private.

I did find one long term plan some years back that was clearly in la-la land. Japan’s Matsushita Corporation (now Panasonic since 2008) said they had strategic plans going out 250 years in to the future. Initially, I thought it was a typo and they were saying 25 years. Nope. I had to laugh out loud. The changes that will occur over the next 250 will defy even a science fiction writer. Did their plan include selling space heaters on Jupiter? Give me a break!

Strategic plans incorporate objectives, strategies and tactics. All companies have objectives. They may include increasing sales, growing market share, or finding a niche where they can protect themselves from competition.

How do you achieve these objectives? That is through a strategy or grand plan. A surprising number of companies fall down here. They “fly by the seat of their pants” and react to competition but fail to lay out a coherent strategy. Part of the problem is that often their have unrealistic objectives.

Expressing your grand plan or strategy locally or on a micro level is the province of tactics. Here way too many people use terms strategies and tactics interchangeably. Also, I have sat in way too many painful meetings where managers spent hours mulling over whether a part of the plan was a strategy or a tactic. If they had a real plan, they would know.

If you spend time with small business operators or entrepreneurs, you rarely see  even a semiformal strategic plan. Many will point to their temple and say something like “it is all up here.” Not a good idea. Think about it. If someone dies suddenly, there is no plan for heirs to carry on. If you get a plan down on paper, even a simplistic one, you are forced to think about it. Show it to associates or a business savvy friend and you will get some healthy push-back and you will be forced to refine your plan. Also, a plan also implies commitment. I heard from a reader this week who wrote the following: “This may sound weird, but my plan is a contract with myself. I read it over once a week and force my CFO to review it monthly. Am I meeting my objectives? Do I have to shift gears? The written plan forces me to have discipline.”


With strategic planning, you need to follow-up. A “set it and forget it” mentality is deadly especially in a competitive environment. So, the best strategic plan needs to be followed up with strategic management, if you will.

There are key questions to ask when putting together a plan and they include:

--What is our share of the market and how strong is the market?

--Do our competitors pose a big threat and have we really identified all of them?

--Do our customers really like us? Where are we strong and where are we weak? Research can help a lot here and many CEO’s and top management are almost delusional about their image. A brutally honest consultant can help as well.

--What do we need to change to adapt to the future? Can we do it?

--What might happen if we continue with the status quo?

So, in answer to our title of this post, “How much real strategic planning is done?” My opinion is not nearly enough for companies of all sizes.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

Schedule Time For Self Development

In our time pressured society, many if not most people seem harried. When I ask if they have read a specific new book or pass on an article, the response I often get is “thanks, but I am too busy and do not have time for that.” Oddly, the most successful people that I have ever met always seem to find the time for learning new things in their field and will respond in detail to anything that I send them.

My theory about these clear winners is that they seem to schedule time for self development almost instinctively. For years, self help gurus have encouraged people to take a sabbatical a few times in their careers. Well, that is fabulous if you are an academic where sabbaticals are common and often provide full pay or close to it during your time off or work for that rare company that provides them (For years, Time, Inc. gave staffers sabbaticals. It was not simply for writers. Sales executives would get them and come back refreshed and with a fresh eye on things). Others claim that several months of unemployment are a great time to reassess things. Maybe. Most people understandably use that time to be laser focused on becoming employed again. Some say being out of work told them that they needed to switch careers but that is usually only for a minority.

Sabbaticals are not practical in most areas especially small business where most of the job growth comes from these days. And, there are times in the middle of a work siege where all of us find the task directly front and center to be an all consuming passion. Yet, now during these exciting but turbulent times in marketing, you have to stay current and be able to embrace new ideas. Conventions, seminars, even TED talks can be valuable.  The value to me has always been that I never feel alone after such a session. Topics are brought up that were a non-starter at my place of employment or other issues were covered that no one else with whom I worked saw as important. Some valuable contacts could also be made.

Sometimes it is not easy. I have seen senior managers refuse to send people to conventions saying that they are a waste of money and Bob or Mary simply wants a few days off from work. True, in some cases. At the same time, I have witnessed a few highly motivated types pay the entry fee themselves and, in one case, even take vacation time to attend. None of these people stayed with their employer much longer but they were not going to pass up a chance to “go back to school.”

Also, I have met people who do it quietly. A sales rep that I have known for years would lunch with me three times a year. We did some business early on but then my accounts changed. He still met with me and asked a barrage of questions about various futuristic media and marketing topics and took copious notes. After a while, I had a book and a few articles ready for him. Today, I send him e-mails regularly and he never fails to respond despite his lofty title these days. Recently, I found out that he has been doing this with five other people for the last 20 years!
Entrepreneurs seem to know instinctively that they must reach out and ask for help and read a great deal about their field. They are often running scared which is a great way to stay on top of your game.

Finally, I have seen people from 58-65 year old do a complete makeover. Some retired, some were forced out, some worked for dying enterprises. When their unplanned sabbatical hit them they did not engage in self-pity. They used their first free time in decades to reinvent themselves. Their genius was not going to go untapped!

So whatever you age or situation, may I suggest you make the time for self-development. You will become more interesting and perhaps happier.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach at doncolemedia@gmail..com

Western World Demographic Outlook

Several years ago, I was about to put up a post entitled “Demographics are Destiny.” When I could not get most of my panel members to weigh in, I knew that the title must have been deadly. So, I renamed it “Jennifer Aniston is 40!” (Media Realism, April 23, 2009) and soon my e-mail box was loaded with comments and there were many hits on the actual post from across the world.

Well, a lot has happened in the last six years but, as you might expect, politicians around the world have “kicked the can down the road” instead of addressing a demographic iceberg that will hurt all and clobber many western democracies in the next two decades.

In terms of demographics, things have gone from rotten to worse over the last few years. There is not a single country in the European Economic Union (EEU) which boasts a fertility rate that guarantees an increase in population over the next three decades. In some countries, the population will decline drastically such as Italy and Spain. Others have serious issues for unknown or unresolved issues. Take Russia, for example. The World Health Organization (WHO) posits that the average Russian male has a life expectancy of under 60! They attribute this to big increases in heart disease, strokes, smoking and alcoholism. This gives them a life expectancy lower than males in Nigeria, Tanzania and Pakistan.

Japan is setting records for a peacetime decline in population. By 2050, 40% of the population will be over 65. Supporting the elderly will bankrupt them.

So, how will these countries survive or maintain an infrastructure? There is only one way--big increases in immigration.

In the United States, Treasury department estimates project that we will need 10 million immigrants per year to maintain our ratio of workers to retired citizens. Read this carefully. They are not calling for 10 million new immigrants. What they are saying that to keep the CURRENT RATIO intact, we will need that many new people. So, if we do not reform Social Security with some mix of higher S.S.taxes, older age for eligibility,  and net worth means tests, the system along with Medicare will collapse without a huge injection of immigrants to prop up the entitlements. And, many of us old folks will keep working longer as well.

Many rural places in America and throughout the western world are suffering acute labor shortages. Immigrants can help turn these areas around or provide vital services. Someone told me that young Brits, Germans, or Frenchmen would not wish to work in a small town Finnish old age home. I agree--wiping oatmeal off the faces of octogenarians does not have much appeal to them nor would it to most American youth.   Yet, if you were from Syria or a frontier market in Africa or Asia you would welcome the chance to live and work in a western nation with healthcare, free education, and a social safety net. People forget that unskilled immigrants often do the jobs that people in wealthier nations do not wish to do. I vividly remember being in Zurich, Switzerland in late 1973. Hundreds of then Yugoslavs hung out in the train station on Sunday afternoons. They had nine month or two year work permits. It had to be lonely but it was a step up from their life at home. British writer Randy Charles Epping put it well when he wrote, “a job, even a relatively low-paying one by Western standards, is the best hope for a worker to start building a better life.”

So, the impact on marketing will be profound. The old people have much of the money (sorry, kids). Many will live very long lives and will need caregivers who may well be immigrants. Marketers still have not adjusted to this emerging reality as many messages are still aimed a the under 35 group who are often struggling economically across the western world.

Politicians in Europe, and Japan need to do something and quickly. In the U.S., we need to act but not as drastically. Will any have the political will to take the necessary measures to right the demographic shifts? History tends to damper my normal optimism about the future in this regard.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com