Hired to replace Robert Dynes in the aftermath of a management meltdown in which UC administrators flouted, circumvented and violated university policies governing pay and perks, the 63-year-old [Mark] Yudof knows his mission when he officially takes over next month.

“I’ve really got to get the trains running on time (at UC). There are a lot of things I believe in, like global initiatives and dealing with the deferred maintenance on campus and being absolutely competitive for faculty,” he said in a recent interview in the East Bay. “But I’ve got to get the platform right. I’ve got to regain the trust of Californians and the Board of Regents. I’ve got to get our (number of employees) down and our budgets down. Then we can start talking about what else we want to do.”…
He recognizes that many problems are entrenched at UC. But that won’t deter him.
“There is a saying, ‘A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,’ and that is my view,” he said. “And my view is that some things we probably should have done 10 years, five years, 20 years ago may get done when you have a crisis.”

– Tanya Schevitz, San Francisco Chronicle in Next UC president - homey image, hefty mission, Thursday, May 8, 2008

Your staff is well-aware that you are imperfect. So are your customers.

So stop trying to perpetuate the idea that you don’t make mistakes. Nobody thinks that about you. And stop trying to be perfect. You’re not going to pull it off.

Instead, figure out how good you need to be, and shoot for being that good and a little bit better. Ask your staff and your customers to help you be better — by providing you with feedback on how well (or how poorly) you’ve done, and for providing suggestions on how you can do better. If you get good at this, you’ll find that life is much less stressful.*

Remember that being “good enough” isn’t always about scoring 90% every time you try. Sometimes it’s about scoring 100% nine times out of ten, and getting a goose egg on the last one. Learning to identify, acknowledge, and make amends for mistakes is a skill worth developing. And learning that skill is a much better use of your energy than trying to be perfect.

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*Especially if you’re a business owner.  People who own their own stores have a particularly hard time with this kind of thing.

Last week, one of my longtime business friends was kind enough to introduce me to one of his new colleagues over lunch. I was grateful for my friend’s effort, but a touch horrified when his words of introduction described me as still doing work that I quit doing at least two years ago.

When it comes to marketing my own business — letting good friends and colleagues know what I’m doing and what I want to be doing, and what’s different from what I used to be doing — I’ve clearly been falling down on the job. Talk about your cobbler whose kids have no shoes!

Step Number One — I’m adding “Marketing and Management Consulting” to my email signature.  Steps Two and Three will be to find some clearer words about what I want to do for my clients, and to actively spread the word. I’ll keep you posted on how this self-consult works…

The first purpose of a small business is to serve the entrepreneur who created it and who owns it. The business may have other purposes: to serve customers and even to serve the community. But before these, the business must serve the entrepreneur.

How does a business serve its owner? Certainly, the business should make money.* Beyond that, the business should make the owner happy: through the nature of what it does, through the things it allows the entrepreneur to do with his or her time, through the daily experiences that the entrepreneur has while running the business.

Every economist understands that if a business doesn’t succeed in its obligation to serve customers, it’s not going to be in business for long. But not everyone remembers that if a business doesn’t succeed in its first obligation to serve the entrepreneur, there’s not much chance that it will keep serving its customers well, and there’s not much point trying.

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If the business doesn’t make money, then it isn’t a business, it’s a hobby.  Or at best, an unintentional “nonprofit organization”.

Don’t print a testimonial that praises you for something you don’t want to do.

One of my clients occasionally works miracles for its customers.  When they feel they ought to, my client can pull off a rush job, manage a customer’s disorganized team, and do it all at a rock bottom price.  Sometimes the customer sends an effusive thank you note for the miracle, detailing everything and saying, “feel free to use this as a testimonial.”

My client is smart enough to leave the comments off their website.   That’s not the kind of business they want to attract.  So why would they want to advertise that they do it?

“I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game — it is the game.”– Louis Gerstner, Jr., in Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?

Corporate Culture isn’t a new idea any more.  But I think that its importance is on the comeback.  In 2008, many people are observing that “how we look at the world” is one of the most important things that shape how our lives go.  Add to that two other observations: (1) “how we see the world to be” is something we have to work hard to perceive, since it is so fundamental that we can have a hard time starting to grasp it and (2) “how we look at the world” is something we can change, if not easily.

Same goes for businesses.  “How your company sees the world to be” is a fundamental part of a business’s corporate culture.  It’s hard to grasp, and it is something that can be changed, if it needs to be, and if the company has people willing to do it.  This is true at every level of the corporation, and in every part of the corporation’s mind: strategy, management, and marketing.

Everybody likes testimonials.  But what are they really for?

A testimonial’s number one job is to help you help you sell.  A good testimonial shows that your product made somebody else happy: by generating money, saving money, or taking care of some other need that they thought was important.  A good testimonial shows how you’re different from your competition.  A good testimonial from a credible customer shows that you’re a company that smart people are happy to hire.  All of these things help you sell.  And all of these things can help you sell at a higher price.

More subtly, a testimonial strengthens the relationship between you and your customer.  In a good relationship, both sides like to help each other.  And a testimonial is an opportunity for your customer to do something nice for you.  In the process, your customer may begin to hold you in even greater esteem, as they realize just how many ways you’ve helped them.  “Gee, I’d forgotten how good it was to get X product or Y service from you folks.  Thanks!”  And by formalizing their praise in a public way, they strengthen their commitment to working with you.

Meanwhile,  as you ask for and receive a few words of praise, you’re taking an honest look at the value you’re providing to your customer — finding out what’s really great, and forcing some honesty about what you might not have delivered.  And lastly, you’re giving your customer an important opportunity to be heard — not only by you, but also by everyone you’re going to share their words with.

I’ll confess. I don’t have a system for backing up my files. Sure, I do make backups (offsite and onsite) at least every few months. And when I’m working on a critical document, I make constant backups by sending copies of my files-in-progress to an offsite mailhost. But I could do better. Odds are, you could, too.

Here’s a quote from and link to a PCWorld article on online backups, Back Up Your Files Online Without Even Trying:

I’m sure that by now all of you back up critical files weekly or even daily, and religiously refresh your full-disk-image backup once every few months, right? No? Well, you’re not alone. And while there’s no substitute for a genuine backup strategy, the move toward desktop-caliber online applications has made it easier than ever to get some degree of backup protection without even trying.

Happy easier breathing to you.

Winning companies make a habit of doing things that are good for their health.  That means choosing work (whether they be projects and clients, or products and market sectors) that adds to the company’s bottom line, assets, and general happiness.

What do you need for a track record of smart choices?

1.  Knowing what works for you.

2.  Evaluating projects (or clients, or products, or market sectors) before you pursue them.

3.  Pursuing only the projects that make sense.

4.  Working the projects you win to make sure you’re doing what you intended.

5.  Measuring your results, during and afterward.

6.  Tuning the process to make it better each time.

If you don’t care where you’re going, it doesn’t matter where you go.  But I suspect you care where you’re going.  And please, remind everyone on your staff (including yourself)  — financial success is measured by net income, not gross income.  And if your staff don’t know how to tell whether their work is yielding red or black net income, think about how to change that.  Pronto.

Demarketing requires discipline: the discipline to decide what you’re not going to do, and then the discipline to stick with the decision.  Some people have this kind of discipline in spades:

Xiang Yu was a Chinese general in the third century B.C. who took his troops across the Yangtze River into enemy territory and performed an experiment in decision making. He crushed his troops’ cooking pots and burned their ships.
He explained this was to focus them on moving forward — a motivational speech that was not appreciated by many of the soldiers watching their retreat option go up in flames. But General Xiang Yu would be vindicated, both on the battlefield and in the annals of social science research.

In The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors (New York Times February 26, 2008), John Tierney discusses the work of MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely.  As Tierney describes, Ariely proves scientifically that brainpower is not a sufficient driver for discipline:

Most people can’t make such a painful choice, not even the students at a bastion of rationality like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Dr. Ariely is a professor of behavioral economics. In a series of experiments, hundreds of students could not bear to let their options vanish, even though it was obviously a dumb strategy (and they weren’t even asked to burn anything).

The experiments involved a game that eliminated the excuses we usually have for refusing to let go. In the real world, we can always tell ourselves that it’s good to keep options open.

…Your child is exhausted from after-school soccer, ballet and Chinese lessons, but you won’t let her drop the piano lessons. They could come in handy! And who knows? Maybe they will.

In the M.I.T. experiments, the students should have known better…

But they didn’t act like they did.  Read the article and learn about the psychology.  Then remind yourself that discipline is hard, and prepare yourself for the effort.