The Solution: Our Latest Random Thoughts on Business

Signs of the times

By Rick McMullen August 23, 2024 Change Management, Marketing

The current US election cycle is adding more data points to a trend. Legacy media is complaining that they are not getting the access to the candidates that they’re used to. It’s true, they’re not. The Harris campaign is bypassing them and getting directly in front of the electorate by using social media channels, and being very successful in doing so.

Legacy media had a transactional relationship with political candidates. Media got the content to sell their product, and the candidates used the only venue available to them to get their message out. Both parties benefitted. At the recent convention, the Democrats put influencers in a bull pen directly in front of the stage and they were live posting to their followers, generating an instant connection. Legacy media was put in the stadium’s upper tiers, well away from the front line. Why use a translator if you can make an immediate, direct connection?

The market has changed. This campaign highlights exactly how. If legacy media wants to stay in the game, they need to offer something the direct connection can’t. I don’t profess to know what that is, there might not be a viable solution.

One thing to note for any organization is the language being used by the Harris campaign. Keep in mind, these are people who will get access to trillion-dollar economies and nuclear weapons and they’re they’re using real language. It’s not wrapped in ‘policy speak’, they’re saying things in all mediums as if it was a one-on-one conversation. It’s real and it’s consistently authentic. That should be the main take-away.

Uber is NOT in the taxi business

By Rick McMullen March 26, 2021 Change Management

Uber and Lyft are not taxis. They’re not even in the transportation sector of any kind. They have no inventory, they don’t own any vehicles, and until recent legislation passed in jurisdictions like England, they didn’t have many employees.

Uber is an app.

Uber is a tech company that decided to disrupt the taxi business by completely changing the existing business model.

Two lessons: 1) If you’re in business, watch your back for serious technological disruptions from the far left field. 2) With a little knowhow and some imagination, you might be able to overthrow the status quo of a complacent industry and completely change the game.

Self-imposed Bureaucracy

By Rick McMullen December 29, 2020 Change Management, Human Resources, Marketing

Not all change is easy. The opposite is also true – not all change is hard. The key to anchoring any change in your culture is knowing how to handle both.

As with most problems, solving the problem is rooted in ensuring you ask the right questions to define what the actual problem is and allowing the solution to naturally flow from the answers, without bias.

“I bet that’ll work” and “Ooohh… that’s going to be tough” are sure-fire approaches to failure without doing the research. That can be as simple as a SWOT exercise (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats).

As ‘Change’ is the process of altering people’s behavior and not a ‘Project,’ we need to know where are people are starting, clearly identify what they’re going to face going through the change, and ensuring they have the tools available to get there.

You may have already walked the path of change. The people the change is being imposed on also have to walk that path. Maybe you just need to point. Maybe you’ll need to provide a compass, a machete, and rations. Figure that one out. That’s job one.

Don’t just make a statement. Do the work

By Rick McMullen November 24, 2020 Change Management, Communications, Marketing

In recent years the world and our society has faced a litany of harsh realities. #MeToo, #BLM, #MMIW… it’s a long list. And companies, large & small have had to make some choices as to whether they make a statement in support of the cause that caught their attention (or the attention of their customers) or perhaps make a donation.

This is good. Unless it’s done for purely marketing purposes. A couple of years ago, Apple made an announcement that they had achieved gender equity in their payroll. Catch that? It was an announcement. It was news. How do we make it *not* news?

The one thing that Apple did do, was the work required to be able to make that announcement. What’s better than any announcement saying you support something? Doing. The. Work.

Most racists say they’re not racist. Toxic masculinity doesn’t admit to being misogynistic. So what separates those that say it by making a statement and those that really mean it? The work.

Accept the shame that goes with privilege. It’s ok. Step up and own the previous mistakes. Know you’ll make more. If necessary, apologize but then fix it and… Do the work.

Math for your emotions

By Rick McMullen February 26, 2020 Marketing

If you’re in a situation where you need to purchases the perfect amount of supplies so you don’t buy too much and also don’t want to lose out on sales by having too few, how much do you buy? It’s called ‘the newsvendor problem’ in supply chain management and the formula can be quite complicated involving ‘salvage’ – what you can sell the surplus for. Mathematically, the equation ideally solves at zero. You buy exactly the amount you’re going to sell. You have no leftovers, and no one leaves disappointed.

But how do you know you didn’t miss out? Did anyone see you were sold out and didn’t express disappointment? What if you have just one leftover? Not ‘zero’, not ‘some’, just one. Forget about math, isn’t that the only amount that satisfies you emotionally that you didn’t miss out on sales? This is the difference between solving the equation and solving the emotion. Sometimes you can’t have both and it’s worth deciding which one is more important to you before you start.

Is that one a waste? If it’s stale-dated like food, sure and of course you could be positioned for scarcity. You can also end up with one slice of pizza and who takes the last slice? Different problems for a different day…

Translating thoughts

By Rick McMullen April 20, 2019 Communications, Human Resources, Marketing

Perhaps the simplest method of transmitting a complex idea is to say it. To tell someone. The problem is, that involves at least two translations.

How do you think? Is it in words? Emotions? Do you see text? Do you hear words? While you’re thinking, do you concern yourself with what specific words mean? Why do we use expressions such as, “Think before you speak.” or “Perhaps you should use your ‘inside’ voice.” or even “Engage some filters.”

Is it fair to say that regardless of how you believe you think about ideas, that it requires some ‘processing’ before we release those thoughts to the world? There’s our first translation.

How about when you hear someone else’s thought? Does it always make perfect sense as soon as you’re exposed to it, or do we process incoming information before we assimilate it? Translation number two.

Ideas aren’t computer data. There’s no such thing as a perfect copy. We can’t plug a thumb drive into our head, copy an idea and share that exactly as we developed it. Not yet at least.

Running at the speed of change.

By Rick McMullen November 3, 2018 Change Management

60+ years ago, in the 1950’s, the average life expectancy of a company on the New York Stock Exchange was 59 years. Today it’s 19. Up until the invention and installation of the railroad, any information could only travel as fast as a horse and that lasted for centuries. Now we want an immediate response to an email and we wait with bated breath for our latest social media post to get ‘likes’, ‘retweets’, or ‘comments’. Everything has changed, its changed rapidly, and it’s only getting quicker.

We’re in an age where companies like Google state that in five years, 40% of their income needs to be coming from things they haven’t thought of yet. That’s not just managing at the speed of change, that’s staying in front of that curve. That’s also not a luxury for a company focused on innovation, it’s a requirement to stay competitive. However it’s also not the majority of organizations, so it can be expected if you’re thinking, “That’s nice – not applicable to me. At all.” You’d also be correct. Most of us don’t need to be ahead of the curve, we just need to be aware that there is a curve. This is where most of us fall short. There we are, going about our daily tasks and then woomp. All of a sudden we’re looking at something that’s happened to force us to change. Now we’re in scramble mode and we rush it.

Every so often, we need to climb to the top of the pile of ‘stuff’ around us and take a look at the horizon. What’s coming at you today?

Why 99.73% success just isn’t good enough

By Rick McMullen August 23, 2013 Lean & Six Sigma No Comments

“The last turn tightens the bolt. The rest is just movement.” ~ Shigeo Shingo.

One of the first innovators of the Lean movement from the Toyota Production System made this observation. In the Western world, we may be more familiar with the expression as ‘God is in the details’. It takes a profound dedication to the task to ensure that every bolt has been given that last turn despite the obstacles that can arise to confound that goal.

The customer, be it internal or external, isn’t interested in those obstacles. They just want to know without any doubt, that all the bolts are tight. Is it impossible to have an absolute 100% error-free organization? No, but there is a reality that nothing is perfect and mistakes happen. So that leaves two alternatives – Minimize the errors, and mitigate the consequences. The goal is three errors per one million opportunities. If you’re doing the math, that’s 99.999997%. That’s Six Sigma. at first blush, it seems unattainable. Especially in light of what many people deem acceptable – 99.73% error-free. That is until you realize that even operating at a this Three Sigma level can result in completely unacceptable conditions. Consider the following Three Sigma operating standard:

Virtually no modern computer would function.
10,800,000 healthcare claims would be mishandled each year.
18,900 US Savings bonds would be lost every month.
54,000 cheques would be lost each night by a single large bank.
4,050 invoices would be sent out incorrectly each month by a modest-sized telecommunications company.
540,000 erroneous call details would be recorded each day from a regional telecommunications company.
270,000,000 (270 million) erroneous credit card transactions would be recorded each year in the United States.

Sometimes it takes a little reality to throw the light on what really is acceptable and what isn’t.