Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

Interior of a Sea Leopard yacht.

Dematerializing (parts of) supply chains

James Governor of Greenmonk Consulting is doing fascinating things to help businesses build more sustainability into their operations. His research takes him to many companies, including some of the biggest (IBM, Microsoft, Sun, etc.), to study their approaches to these challenges.

For instance, earlier this summer he got to visit the Bristol, England labs of Hewlett-Packard. He wrote up the findings of his visit in this post on the Greenmonk blog:

On HP Labs, Sustainability, Energy Demand Management and Bit Miles

HP most obviously impacts the 2% of global energy use — and greenhouse emissions — associated with IT hardware. Smart design of future servers and data centers can help reduce this impact. But IT’s 2% can also go much further when it helps to “dematerialize” other aspects of business supply chains. As James puts it:

I like HP’s narrative of dematerialisation, whether we’re talking about printed pages or processors. Don’t make things manifest unless you actually need to. That’s a key to sustainability.

The past luxury of waste

The Greenmonk/HP logic hardly prevailed in the past. From the Industrial Revolution through the 20th century, the fundamental cheapness of energy meant that you could “make things manifest” with regard mostly to the cost of their materials and labor; this often went along with limited regard for energy use, and no regard for emissions and other “footprint” metrics. But that was before energy got expensive and stayed expensive, and before concerns about climate change and other environmental problems became widespread.

In other words, we had more than 100 years of being able to think, “Ah, let ‘er rip — we can afford it.” So that’s what we did. But now we’re constrained like never before.

If we want to successfully navigate this fundamental change, it’s going to take much more of the kind of thinking that HP and Greenmonk are doing.

Designing a yacht means working with constraints

Here’s the metaphor that’s guided my thinking about these changes:

• The past century of widespread, unconstrained wealth-building has been like designing and building a house.
• This new century of globalized, constrained wealth-building is like designing and building a yacht.

Whether you’re building a house or a yacht, you can do it across a wide range of budgets. You can include or exclude a huge range of features based on what you want and how much you can afford to spend.

But when you’re designing a boat, your fundamental considerations don’t stop at “Do I want it?” and “Can I afford it?” You also have to consider “How much space will it take up?” and “How much will it weigh?” These concerns are often trivial for an architect designing a mansion; at the worst, maybe you build up the foundation to accommodate the weight of a flagstone fireplace. But on the yacht, you rule out the flagstones altogether, simply because you can’t afford to warp the whole design to accommodate one nice-to-have-but-inessential feature.

When you’re done building the boat, it could be cheap, it could be luxurious, it could be makeshift, it could be elegant — just like a house. But it can’t be indiscriminately large.

Now, when you transfer this metaphor into the world of sustainable design and business, you’ll run into plenty of folks who dig in their heels. They don’t want to admit constraints, even when you show them the math for why the constraints are beneficial, and show them all the wonders that are possible as we build this new giant luxury yacht of the global economy. They want that flagstone fireplace.

Time will tell whether they can afford it, I guess. My money’s on those — like James — who are figuring out how to achieve environmental sustainability while also doing very well for themselves and their customers.

What the boat-building mentality could mean

How will they achieve this hybrid success? Spelling it all out would take forever — after all, this is the stock in trade of Greenmonk, green building firms, profit-seeking solar energy companies, and so on. But here are a few points of reference to start us off:

• Savings. Years ago, Pasquale Pistorio of STMicroelectronics started the giant European chipmaker on the path of reducing its effluents — not, primarily, for environmental reasons, but because as an engineer he realized that exhaust gases and fluids represent waste in manufacturing processes. And waste costs money. Other big manufacturers like DuPont have jumped on the same train — and reaped huge financial rewards, not to mention good press and lower compliance costs.
• Innovation. Inspired by Kathy Sierra, I’ve written several things about how constraints can bring out the best in us. Just think of all the innovations that have come about in electronics by the desire to make radios, televisions, computers, etc. handheld, portable, and wireless. Constraints fuel creativity.
• Entrepreneurial opportunities galore. We’re already seen waves of startups in non-fossil-fuel energy. Likewise, there’s a long, rolling boom in many fields (green design, efficiency engineering, etc.) that will contribute to better sustainable practices in the long run.

Nautical versions of land-based amenities tend toward the compact and the nifty, and there are plenty of specialist firms that supply the world’s boat makers. I wager we’ll see the same thing happen — on a much larger scale — around sustainable materials, computing, supply chains, and on and on.

I’m not saying that this future will be easy to navigate — but if you’re a fan of innovation, what’s not to like?

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Related posts:

• The greatest challenge of business: Both/And thinking.
• Not logic, but culture.
• Proof of Concept for carbon-neutral futures.
• Expectations of waste.
• An ethic of waste.
• What we waste without worrying.
  

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(Photo by kidsire.)

Waaay back in my college-bachelor days, I managed to keep my dance card reasonably full — despite a paltry bankroll and the un-Cary Grant-like face you see in the sidebar — simply because . . . I talked to women.

I know, I know, I am just full of breathtakingly original strategies.

Yet my massively oversimplified approach — talk to lots of girls, be nice to everybody — got me a lot more dates than a buddy of mine. He easily had as much to offer as I did to prospective girlfriends, but he was too full of theories about how he should go about it, when would be the perfect time to make his move, and so on.

Don’t overthink.

Thing is, our smarty-pants brains love to come up with reasons why not, reasons to delay, reasons we’re not ready. And it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about asking for a date, launching a new project, asking for a raise, or starting an entrepreneurial venture.

Sure, sometimes you need to concern yourself with timing. I wouldn’t recommend opening your summer action-blockbuster movie on the same weekend as the sequel to Iron Man, for example. I wouldn’t recommend paying a call to Wal-Mart’s buying offices before your infrastructure can be ramped up to fill any order they might choose to place.

But unless there’s a specific, compelling reason to delay . . . press “Play,” walk right up to the object of your attentions, and ask if you can have this dance.

A confession

Sometimes I struggle with pressing the “Publish” button for posts on this blog. I want to do more homework, or I’m not sure which post I should work on first, or . . . well, it doesn’t matter, does it? The point is, I can be prone to delay.

The antidote: work straight through, get it done, then send it out into the world. If it needs fixing, I can fix it — just like, back when I said something goofy to those college co-eds, I could laugh at myself and say “Let’s try that again.”

How do YOU overcome the tendency to delay?

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(Picture by Robyn Gallagher.)

I can’t give away too much right now, but suffice it to say we’re going to have a big pile of goodies for you right after Labor Day — and throughout September.

Stay tuned . . .

We live in a world of unfettered choice. In our business lives, in our private lives, with colleagues, family, or friends — our options are practically infinite. And no matter how much we test, read, buy, or sample, there’s always more where that came from. There’s more every day — every minute.

Yet we don’t live in a world of unlimited time. We don’t have unlimited attention or mental energy. Indeed, time and attention are exactly the things that come in the most sharply limited quantities. (Shameless mercenary note: this is why Hoover’s exists — because you don’t have time to go digging up detailed company information yourself.)

Our thousand avenues of communication — from Twitter to the good ol’ landline on your desk — throw the gates open, letting all the world’s fascinating people and ideas (along with the duds) stake a claim on our attention and on our precious time.

• Our colleagues ping us day and night.
• We proof the PowerPoint deck from home at 11 p.m.
• We answer the Facebook message from an old friend we haven’t seen in years.

This is how we work and live now, many of us, and it’s brought us all manner of good things. What it hasn’t brought us is . . . time to think.

Sometimes you have to close the gate. Not to deny all entry to those outside, but to reinforce a useful boundary, one that helps you to do better work.

When the gate is closed, you can still check the weather. You can still smell the flowers. You’re in earshot of the street. But you’re not at the mercy of every ping, ring, buzz, and beep that wants a piece of your attention.

I’m thinking of this because I’m looking at a giant stack of blog posts that are between 5% and 95% done. Even if some of them turn out to be brilliant, they’re not doing you any good for as long as they’re unfinished, and they’re not doing me any good while they’re weighing on my mind.

Yet it’s so easy, out of simple habit, to launch myself back into the tide of new information that washes in each morning. E-mail, news headlines, RSS feeds, Twitter streams, updates from Facebook and LinkedIn — the list keeps growing.

So, just for a little bit, I’m swinging the gate shut. Behind the gate, those blog ideas can ripen into more posts that you’ll want to read and I’ll be proud to publish. (And some of them, no doubt, will be put out of our misery before they ever see the light of day.) If I do this right, you’ll see more posts, and better posts, in the days to come, and you’ll get quicker and fuller answers to your comments — which I wholeheartedly encourage you to make.

But if I do it right, you’ll also see much less of me in other venues. I won’t go on a tear of commenting on others’ blogs, at least for a week or tvo, and I may be a little slower answering e-mail, and I won’t tweet so much.

But when it’s all said and done, I hope you’ll agree that it’s worth it.

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“Good fences make good neighbors.”
~Robert Frost

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(Photo by tifotter.)

Then stop doing the things that aren’t making you more money.

Sure, that’s simplistic — but if it were easy advice to follow, everyone would already be doing it. And sometimes, simplistic is good for getting us to think about what’s really meaningful.

You can profit from things that make you money directly:

• Hiring extra salespeople.
• Adding another production line.
• Retooling your Web site to make it easier for people to buy from you.
• Using more efficient equipment, or better-priced vendors, to lower your overhead.
• . . .

You can profit from things that make you money indirectly:

• Lowering phone response times in your call center = happier customers likelier to do more business with you.
• Promoting a positive corporate culture = happier employees who get more done and stick around longer, lowering attrition and H.R. costs.
• Pursuing savvy p.r. and social media strategies that help you find out what people are saying about you (feedback that can help you change in the right direction), and help you to better interact with your customers (promoting their loyalty).
• . . .

But you can’t profit from things that make you money neither directly nor indirectly:

• Long, pointless meetings where one or more people bloviate to (a) hear themselves talk, (b) practice CYA, or (c) both.
• Perks for the sake of perks, or for the sake of stroking egos that would be better served with challenges.
• Dithering about the color of the bikeshed and other rudimentary decisions.
• Remember back when Lucent owned a golf course? Seems relevant to mention.
• . . .

What examples can you give of common practices that can’t make money for a company either directly or indirectly? Feel free to state the obvious, and feel free to comment anonymously.

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Related posts:

• Book Review: Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It
• What works better than most meetings?

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(Photo by AMagill.)

A better question for many of us is “Who CARES who won the medal count?” That, at least, was a frequent refrain when I was talking this over with some friends last night.

This is totally anecdotal, but I thought the “story” about the different methods of ranking medal-winning countries — by gold medals, by gold medals, etc. — was one of the most overworked journalistic angles of the Beijing Games.

It was clear that many Chinese wanted to privilege the winning of gold medals . . . and just coincidentally their whole Olympic program is geared toward winning the maximum number of gold medals. It was clear that many Americans wanted to rank by total medals . . . and just coincidentally the U.S. routinely comes out on top when counting total medals won.

My number is bigger than yours

There’s a business parallel here: think of all the companies — banks, car makers, telecoms, et cetera — that go to great lengths to be #1 in their industries. Ambition can be a great thing, and there can be great advantages to scale in certain businesses.

But often the simplistic focus on the top line of revenue masks problems underneath. There have been many years in which GM was the largest car maker in the world in terms of revenue, but far from the best in terms of profitability. And many mergers — such as the ill-starred combinations of Alcatel and Lucent, or Time Warner and AOL — are made with a hard focus on the top line . . . but a lot of wish-casting about the bottom line.

Per-unit measures

Getting back to the Olympic medals, this suggests a couple of obvious alternatives for how to look at the medal count. The U.S. is the richest country in the world, and China is the most populous, so at some level you expect them to perform well in medal counts.

If you look at the top several countries in the final official standings, you’ll note Australia — sixth in gold medals with 14, fifth in total medals with 46. But Australia has just 20 million people, which is one-third as many as Britain (19 golds, 47 medals), one-fifteenth as many as the U.S. (36, 110), and 1.5 percent as many as China (51, 100).

This site goes one better, sorting all of the medal-winning countries by population and GIP, resulting in these “winners” of the medal count:

• Population per gold medal: Jamaica.
• Population per total medals: Bahamas.
• GDP per gold medal: Zimbabwe.
• GDP per total medals: Zimbabwe.
• GDP/population per gold medal: Zimbabwe.
• GDP/population per total medals: Zimbabwe.

Hmm . . . I can’t recall lots of stories about how Zimbabwe was the big winner of these games. It might be worth noting that the country won four medals in total — and that they were all won by one swimmer, Kirsty Coventry.

I suggested to one of my friends that a even a rudimentary improvement on the “official” system would be to weight the medals using points, for instance gold = 3, silver = 2, bronze = 1. Using back-of-the-envelope math, this still put China ahead of the U.S., but by just three points.

The winner is?

After we had talked about this, my friend came across this site, which uses a weighted score along these lines (gold = 4, silver = 2, bronze = 1) and then divides by population. Using this system, the easy winner is . . . Jamaica.

Which, given Usain Bolt’s jaw-dropping performances in the sprints — not to mention the classical running of Veronica Campbell-Brown and the astonishing world record in the men’s 4 x 100 — seems about right.

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Also of interest:

• Yahoo: 36 facts about the Olympic medal count

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(Image of Paavo Nurmi — he of the nine gold medals — from Wikipedia.)

Monday morning seems like a good time to start anew, so let’s try a series of awkward questions:

• Is there a troubled reporting relationship on your team?
• Do you need to apologize to someone?
• Does someone need to apologize to you?
• Is it time to come clean about something?
• Is there a key piece of feedback you could give?
• Is a Big Nasty Issue — a failed project, a cultural issue, a mysterious firing — hanging over everyone’s heads?
• Is there a pointless regular meeting that everyone would like to eliminate?
• Is there an employee who needs to be fired?
• Is there a client who needs to be fired?
• Is there a toxic manager or executive who’s causing havoc?
• Is Jack a bully? A sexual harrasser?
• Does Jill display the hallmarks of a problem drinker?
• Is the tool broken?
• Is the process broken?
• Is a fundamental assumption mistaken?
• Is someone in over their head? (Is it you?)
• . . .

Hey, it’s none of my business, so you don’t have to tell me. But if there’s an elephant in the room, you know it — and you’ll be relieved when it’s gone.

Maybe today is the perfect day to clear the air about whatever-it-is.

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(Picture by digitalART2.)

The other day I wrote at length about what American might do with the “AmericanAir” account on Twitter. Turns out — just as in the case of the ExxonMobil account earlier this summer — the account isn’t official.

The evidence? This comment on my post from AA spokesman Billy Sanez:

We are aware of the “AmericanAir” account on Twitter. This account is not an official communication/conversation effort by American Airlines and we are looking into who set that up.

(As for his bona fides, I’ve already traded e-mails with Sanez, plus he’s recently been quoted in the media here, here, and here.)

It’s good that AA has someone keeping a finger on the pulse of the social media for them. And shame on whichever misguided person decided to represent themselves as speaking for the company. If it’s just a prank, it’s not a good one, and even if it’s well-meaning, it’s ill-advised.

One of the key tenets of social media is — or should be — transparency. The technology underlying blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and so on allows for many-to-many conversations like never before. But it won’t work for corporations to treat these media at arm’s length, or for corporate representatives, official or unofficial, to be anything less than transparent in their actions.

American Airlines, at least, seems to be on the case, and I hope their initial stumbles will give way to an effective social media presence. As I’ve said before, some airline is eventually going to come up with something that separates it from its competitors. I’d like nothing better than to see AA succeed on the back of an honest, well-executed social media initiative.

More specifically, I hope to talk more with Sanez later in the week — and I’ll be sure to share any findings with you here.

Monday morning hits a lot of us harder than we’d like. It seems to take hours to get into the swing of things. You face all the same challenges that you did on Friday, but with none of the momentum.

Here, then, are half a dozen ten-minute tasks that you can do in an easy hour over the weekend, or even during your first hour in the office on Monday morning.

I’ve used all of these tricks, and I find that even the simplest ones help get the ball rolling for a more productive week.

1. Reduce your inbox load by 10%.

Do this by deleting messages, filing them, or a combination. If your inbox is small enough, you could handle messages one by one. My favorite trick is to set Outlook to queue up the next message automatically when I delete or file; the program will keep feeding you messages one after the other until you’ve hit your target.

If you have a big inbox, there’s no shame in it, but you will be able to navigate it better if you remove some of the cruft. If you have 6,000 messages lying around, you won’t be able to make individeal decisions about 600 of them in ten minutes. But you can make some big-bucket files — “2006 projects,” “Sales forecasts,” “Mom,” etc. — and handle your 10% quota that way.

It’s a good habit to get into, and maybe the experience will persuade you to take other 10-minute chunks of the week to do more inbox housecleaning. (When you’re ready to really take control of your e-mail, be sure to read Merlin Mann’s “Inbox Zero” series.)

2. Remove yourself from three distribution lists.

Now that your inbox is cleaner, why not make a move to keep it that way? This step could be applied to internal lists that don’t mean anything to you, or else newsletters from outside that you don’t usually read.

For most external newsletters, it’s as simple as clicking an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the message. For internal lists, a very short e-mail to the distributor might suffice. (”Nancy, I appreciate your work on these reports, but since I don’t have a role in XYZ anymore, I really can’t put them to use. If you would remove me from the distribution list, I would appreciate it.”)

If you’re afraid you’ll ruffle feathers by requesting to leave an internal distribution list, take two minutes instead to set up a filter that will catch the messages and route them to a special folder (or the trash) before they ever hit your inbox.

3. Ping three old friends you haven’t talked to in a while.

Now that you’ve got some breathing room in your inbox, why not use your e-mail for something rewarding? Spend a couple of minutes looking through your e-mail archive or your social networks and find three people you like but whom you haven’t spoken to in a while.

Keep each message simple enough that you can write it in two minutes. Most folks love to get a note from an old friend, even if it’s just five sentences and starts with “I have to apologize — I can’t believe I’ve let so much time go by without being in touch.” You can talk at more length once they write you back.

Sometimes networking can seem like a daunting task, but this sort of small, contained step can be surprisingly effective for keeping in touch with people who are important to you.

4. Block out time for your #1 project.

Switch to your calendar and look over the coming week. Find at least a couple of two-hour blocks that you can book, then book them — just like you would any other appointment — to work on a longer-term project that tends to get shoved aside by the day-to-day press of business.

Take a minute to figure out how you can be sure not to be disturbed during this time. I suggest working from home, booking a conference room, or finding a quiet table in a cafe. Shoot off a quick note to your boss, if need be, to explain why you’ll be out of pocket during these times.

If it’s not clear what your most important long-range project is, use the time you’ve set aside to work on any high-yield project, or else to figure out what projects you should be working on.

5. Remove one bad meeting from your schedule.

So long as you’re adding something important to your calendar, why not remove something unimportant? Many people are amazed to find that they can get out of their most dreaded meetings — and that many meetings can be done away with altogether.

If there’s a meeting you “own” that fills you with dread, think for a minute about how you might shorten or eliminate it. One-on-one conferences? Cut it down by half an hour? Compile and distribute a one-page report in its stead? Sometimes the change is as simple as sending a note to the other participants that says “I can only meet for 60 minutes, not 90, this week” — and then silently making that the new standard going forward. And even if you can’t deliver big changes this week, you can certainly bring them up when the meeting convenes.

If it’s a meeting that someone else owns and you normally just suffer through it, figure out a way to get out of it, even for only one week. Send a short note to the organizer saying that you’re heavily booked — which is truer than ever, since you just blocked off five hours for Project #1. For that matter, see if you can schedule your Project #1 time so that it conflicts with the bad meeting. Then see if you can make missing the meeting a regular thing.

Too often, we get trapped in routinely bad meetings simply out of habit, not because we really and truly need to be in them. If you must be there, fair enough. But if not? Claw your way free. If you’ve never tried it, you may be surprised at how effective ten minutes of schedule-pruning can be.

6. Answer the hardest e-mail in your inbox.

Okay, 50 minutes have elapsed and you should be feeling a sense of accomplishment. That’s your big spoonful of sugar — but now it’s time for a small dose of medicine. If you’re like me and most of the folks I talk to, you’ve probably got an emotional or logistical landmine lurking in your inbox somewhere. It could be a project that you flubbed. It could be an awkward request. It could be the opener for a whole new can of worms.

Whatever it is, you’ll know you have the right one if you get the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it. If you’re going to feel those feelings regardless, would you rather feel them once — intensely, right now — as you’re doing something to make the situation better? Or would you rather feel them over and over as you see that problem e-mail every day? Things like that are like a sore tooth: you can’t help but probe them over and over. And you’ll feel even worse for letting it linger.

Better, then, to make a clean breast of things. Start with an apology, if one’s called for. Accept responsibility for whatever you should. Offer to talk it out in person. Be as circumspect as you need to be, but by all means be candid.

Don’t worry about writing a multi-paragraph essay; after all, the point of the exercise is to take no more than ten minutes. It’s amazing what you can say in a small space if you’ll let yourself be honest and direct.

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There’s your 60 minutes. You’ve improved your day-to-day communications, your networking, and your scheduling. You’ve cleared some of your backlog and blocked out time for strategically important projects. If you’ve had enough, shut down the computer and enjoy the rest of the weekend, knowing that you’ll glide into the workweek a little sleeker than usual. But if you’re still feeling productive . . .

BONUS: Write one proactive e-mail about a Big Idea.

Maybe you want to enlist a friend for your Project #1. Maybe you want to rally support for killing the weekly TPS report meeting. Maybe you want to ask the boss about telecommuting more, or changing the mix of your work. Whatever it is, try to stay on your rhythm — take just ten minutes to set something in motion.

Now let me turn the floor over to you:

What are your favorite quick-and-effective ways
to jumpstart your work for the week?

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(Clock photo by givepeasachance; friends picture from freeparking; calendar photo by Yandle; warning-sign photo by kyle simourd.)

It’s easier when you’re the boss, because you have a presumptive right to give feedback at any time to those below you. You should be home free if you show a little savvy by (a) pairing the criticism with a dose of praise, (b) offering it in private, and (c) making the criticism about a task or a skill instead of about the person. (E.g. “I really like what you’re doing with this project . . . but I think this presentation might have been clearer if . . .”)

It’s easier if you’re giving feedback to the boss — at least if the boss is mature about soliciting and listening to feedback.

It’s easier when you’re working on the same project, because there are plenty of opportunities to raise concerns.

But what about other situations? What about all the other people you interact with in the course of your work? How can you use your insights, skills, base of knowledge, and so on to offer honest help to someone you know could use it?

I don’t have the answers to this one, despite having faced this situation any number of times in my career. So please share your own wisdom — I’m all ears.

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(Antique report card image from Marion Doss.)