A Story of Pervasive Influence

The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and It’s Secret Influence on American Business (Simon & Schuster) – Duff McDonald

I found Duff McDonald’s new book The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and It’s Secret Influence on American Business to be an interesting examination of the influence that the consulting giant wields not only in the corporate world in the corridors of government power. It is equally thought provoking when pondering the impact that business consultants have had in both positive and negative ways.

It got me thinking back over my career and how consultants have often negatively impacted the industries that I have worked in over the course of my career. McDonald makes a strong case that that the goals of the consultants don’t always work in harmony with the businesses that they are serving. Projects often snowball into seemingly lifetime appointments with lines being blurred and initial goals pushed to the wayside if not completely off the table.

While certainly there are any number of high profile successes that can be cited, there are an equal if not exceeding number of grand failures that can be laid squarely at the feet of the consultant class. The overriding question for businesses seem left unanswered; are the consultants delivering the expected outcomes or have they become just another crutch for a failure to lead on the part of upper management. Consultants can be the double edged sword of hero or scapegoat for leaders who fail to truly lead.

I have witnessed the limp leadership that is wrought by consultants. Having spent the first half of my career in broadcasting, I am firmly of the belief that the dire circumstances that radio broadcaster currently find themselves in can be laid squarely at the feet of consultants. In their determined rush to homogenize and make uniform the way “personalities” delivered their product, consultants gutted a business that thrived on creativity and left the door wide open for replacements like online streaming services and Ipods. Is it any wonder that advertisers have jumped ship and radio struggles to produce revenue.

It is that pervasive influence that is the underlying question that McDonald weaves through the McKinsey story. It is clearly a question that real business leaders must ask themselves as they ponder the role consultants play in their organizations.  

 

Getting to the Why

Big Data Marketing: Engage Your Customers More Effectively and Drive Value – Lisa Arthur (Wiley)

Any marketer possessed of common sense will tell you that word of mouth is the most effective way to market. A potential customer of ABC Widgets expresses and interest in purchasing a widget and a family member, friend or trusted co-worker speaks positively about the experience they had with ABC Widgets and before long Mr. Potential customer is walking through your door or visiting your website and making their widget selection/purchase. Short of cloning a bunch of product or service advocates armed with antenna to scope out potential customers seeking your goods, and hone in to deliver your positive message; what is a marketer to do to reach those customers and drive business.

There has been a business section headline making fundamental shift in the way we do business in recent years; that shift has placed the consumer squarely in control of the of the journey from prospect to close. No longer are traditional methods of shouting at customers (advertising) driving business growth. Marketers are on the hunt not only for what works when it comes to effectively communicating to consumers, but also on a journey to discover why it works. It’s about getting to the why.

 

One of the most prominent business page headlines involves the phrase “Big Data.” Every day we are inundated by a firehose of information about who our customers are and what they want. Author Lisa Arthur tries to help marketers make sense of all this information and how to make effective use of it all in Big Data Marketing: Engage Your Customers More Effectively and Drive Value.

Arthur delivers a no nonsense approach to the entire process. If you go into this book looking for a way to justify your marketing strategy, you’re in for a wakeup call. This is about the customer experience being front and center when it comes to your marketing. Think about it; you have effectively researched and developed the product or service offerings for your business; you’ve right priced for the marketplace and then you deliver an awful customer experience. All the marketing, advertising, public relations and community outreach in the world won’t save your business.

This is not a book that delivers secret formulas or hard to understand process improvements. Arthur serves up five practical steps that marketers of every level of the experience scale, can take to drive strategic marketing decisions. In a day and age where the mantra continues to be “do more with less” Big Data Marketing offers up tools to understand what works and why and do things more effectively.

Just Do It!

Do It! Marketing: David Newman (Amacom Books)

The branding masters at Nike famously coined the term Just Do It! to sell their iconic athletic gear. The message left unsaid was to get up off the couch and get to it already.

It is with a similar thrust that David Newman exhorts business owners and marketers to get on with it when it comes to marketing their goods and services in his new book Do It! Marketing. While strategy and planning certainly are a major part of marketing for any business, there is a tendency to get bogged down in the planning stage and never getting off the dime when it comes to execution.

 

In the book, Newman teaches a bias towards action; by offering practical steps that any business should be able to put into action immediately. I think he hits on a real cornerstone on which to build when he talks about the starting point for any business should be knowing very clearly who you are! It’s amazing the number of businesses owners I have talked with about their marketing who can’t manage to clearly define who they are, what their business is and what their goals are.

That thought process once defined and in place should according to Newman lead to what really boil down to a set of simple decisions and tactical steps to implement and reach a higher level of success. Newman provides 77 executable actions steps that can be put into play today.

Like any long laundry list of ideas, the decision making process should not hinder taking action; again the bias is to action. Clearly you won’t fire up all 77 tactics at once, or in many cases at all; the idea is to pick those tactics that work best for your situation and get cracking. Anything worth doing, is worth measuring; check the results, tweak the actions to improve or continue the results then move on to the next action step.

Like Newman says, “ small business marketing is not a mystery” it’s about making a decision to just do it!

 

Ron Paul: Capitalist

The School Revolution: A New Answer for Our Broken Education System – Ron Paul (Grand Central Publishing)

I remember very clearly the time I took something called the World’s Smallest Political Quiz. Ten questions total; five on personal issues and five on economic issues. Answering the questions online, I was taken to a graph that was divided into quadrants and that dropped me firmly into the heart of the libertarian section. For a person who believes in freedom, personal responsibility and small government it made perfect sense to me.

It also made perfect sense that I was drawn to then Texas Congressman, Ron Paul. I had the opportunity to interview Paul in the days before he ran for President and found his thoughts on limited government lined up well with my own. Paul is an accomplished, bestselling author and in this new effort, The School Revolution: A New Answer for Our Broken Education System he offers up his fix for the failing public U.S. education system.

Paul writes with a very matter-of-fact style as he dissects the current state of the centralized education system. Along the way Paul delivers a historical take on things through the lens of his own education. He also indicts the system we are saddled with for funding the education system. He posits the solution that we must somehow put the funding of education back into the hands of parents as educational decision makers.

I can hear the unholy howls of public education advocates and teachers union types in response to Paul’s “answer.” Like anything else, including healthcare, I favor putting the decision making power back into the hands of the individual. I am not certain that we could ever effectuate the wholesale change that Paul advocates. In this day and age of social engineering of liberals that has lead to the destruction of the family unit I can’t imagine what the country would look like if every so-called parent; just because you’ve been part of the process of having a child, doesn’t make you a parent, were to determine the education process for their children.

It does however make perfect sense that those parents who are capable of making educational decisions on behalf of their offspring, should be afforded the opportunity to opt out of the government education system and take their dollars with them to the alternative choices they make. This simple step will inject competition into the education system. Where there is competition, it naturally follows, there is the pursuit of excellence and higher standards. If the government schools improve, they can compete on equal footing for parent’s education dollars.

Despite agreeing with Congressman Paul on the personal freedom side, I could never bring myself to support his presidential runs, because his supposed support for smaller government rang hollow when he larded his districts pork barrel projects into house spending bills and sought cover by voting against bills that he knew would pass. In similar fashion, Paul uses this book to not only offer up an education solution, but to hawk his online education curriculum. While I am a capitalist and completely understand Paul’s goals, there’s just something a bit smarmy about the approach.

Business Writing for Dummies – Natalie Canavor (Wiley Books)

My answer was simple: Writing.

I remember being asked to speak to my cousin’s 8^th Grade class on career day. I was working as a radio disc jockey at the time and she wanted to have various friends and family members speak to the kids about how to choose a career path and what tools you would need to develop to be successful. Naturally all the kids thought it was “cool” to be a DJ and wanted to know what was the most important ability to have to be successful.

My answer then, remains the same today; writing. Now the 8^th graders where a little surprised, but anyone in business probably wouldn’t be shocked by that answer. The ability to communicate effectively by written word is easily one the greatest skills/needs in today’s business world.

If you play a role in the hiring process, you probably also know that it is one of the skills that is clearly under-developed, if not darn near dead. I can’t believe the number of cover letters/resumes that I see on a weekly basis that I am tempted to take a red pen to and send back to the applicant. While the advent of technology has certainly added speed to the written communication form, it has also been detrimental to developing writing skill.

 

The folks at For Dummies books are out with an updated edition of Business Writing for Dummies by business writing consultant and coach, Natalie Canavor. This nifty little volume covers a vast array writing types including; proposals, e-mails, letters, and executive reports, among many others.

This book is perfect for any level of workplace experience, because Canavor offers up great tips to take the experienced business writer to the next level while giving newbies at great starting point. I would highly recommend this for parents with kids in college or soon to be graduating to the workforce; writing is an ability that will set your child apart from rest of the pack.

Canavor say it all very early in the book with a section entitled; “Make writing your not-so-secret weapon.” I am firmly convinced that my ability to write has set me apart from the pack and allowed me to smoothly transition through a variety of career paths where the ability to put words on paper effectively is critical.

The ability to write does not come easy; it takes time, hard work and plenty of practice to hone the craft. Business Writing for Dummies is an extremely useful tool to have on your business bookshelf and refer to often.

Live Your Life With Some Brass

Grow a Pair – Larry Winget (Gotham Books)

When you work in the public eye and you express a strong opinion (the only kind worth expressing as far as I am concerned) you learn pretty quickly that you are more than likely to tick somebody off. In fact you may have people who downright loath you! So you have a simple choice; you can worry about whether or not people like you and waffle your opinion or you can choose what I did and not compromise and not really care if people like you or not.

Working in talk radio, if I wasn’t ticking somebody off, then chances are I wasn’t doing my job. This isn’t to say that I looked for contrived ways to make people mad, I simply had a set of principles and I stuck to them and if that makes you mad, then so be it. I wasn’t losing a minute of sleep worrying about if you liked me or not. It is that set of core values that I think drives what bestselling author, speaker and the pitbull of personal development® Larry Winget is all about.

Winget’s latest book is Grow A Pair: How to Stop Being a Victim and Take Back Your Life, Your Business, and Your Sanity. I found myself nodding my head in agreement and I admit it, even saying YES! out loud any number of times as I read the book. It’s so nice to know that someone else thinks exactly like I do!

 

Winget’s take on social media is right on! Yes it’s can be a great tool for business, but too many people drive themselves to distraction worrying about so-called “friends” and how many empty “likes” they generate. For me, Facebook was interesting for about ten minutes, but at the end of the day, my real friends are the folks I talk to and see in person on a regular basis, not somebody that I haven’t seen since graduating high school or college. Think about it; if they were really that important to you, wouldn’t you have stayed in contact with them? Yet I know family and friends that lose their minds if they don’t get a response to something that they posted, to the point of getting pissed off at even real friends! Sorry, but that is just plain stupid!

Winget lays out a very simple road map for you to follow when it comes to relationships, business, money and life. I am certainly not some touchy, feely self-help book kind of guy and don’t expect that from Winget. Touchy feely this ain’t; for some it will be an affirmation and for others it will be a much needed kick in the ass!

My plan is to gift a copy of the book to family and friends who will benefit from it. I can hear the response now…it will range from outrage to “this guys sounds just like you!”  

Made in The USA - The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing – Vaclav Smil (MIT Press)

A few years back I had the opportunity to interview/debate Robert Reich, the stubby little Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration about a New York Times op/ed piece that he had authored were he made the case that it was not a bad thing the United States was shipping low-skill jobs overseas. Reich’s argument was that American’s should have to do these low skilled jobs because we could spend our time and resources in a better way by developing the next generation of technology and advanced products.

My response was that while that sounds great; what were we going to do with our workforce of low to moderately skilled workers who often did those jobs for family sustaining wages, more often than not in the manufacturing sector? Did he really believe that the American education system was capable of not only training the next generation of technologically advanced workers, but re-training those existing workers to tackle those new, higher level of skill jobs. While often praised for his brilliance as an economist, professor and author, the diminutive Reich seemed dumbfounded and dumbstruck by my question.

Now respected thinker, author and professor, Vaclav Smil, a man proclaimed to be Bill Gates favorite author tackles the question in his latest book, Made in USA– The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing. Don’t be confused by the title, Smil’s effort is not a simplistic or jingoistic approach that simply advocates buying products manufactured on these shores.

Smil makes the case that to survive and prosper great nations must have an innovative, manufacturing sector and the jobs that it creates. He chronicles the economic boom that followed the close of World War II has the spark that lit the fuse on the mass consumption economy. While the so-called information economy may sound great, it really boils down to moving existing dollars from one side of the board to the other. It boils down to basic economics that real wealth is created when we take raw materials and create something of increased value from it, Facebook and Twitter be damned!

Smil tackles the future by discussing the lack of a level playing field in the global economy, the need to lower corporate taxes to encourage new investment in U.S. manufacturing and calls for a change in our education system as part of the steps we need to undertake a re-birth of our manufacturing and of our economy. Clearly Smil understands that President and politicians don’t create jobs and that they can play a vital role in creating an environment where investment and jobs can grow.

This is not only a thoughtful and in depth examination of the problem, but also an honest roadmap to a solution. That said, even Smil only gives it a 50-50 chance of succeeding.