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April 28, 2006
Private Equity Lawyers: The New Rock Stars
From the Dealbook blog on the NY Times, Private Equity Lawyers in Demand:
The boom in private equity investing is carrying over to the legal profession, with many law firms expanding practices in that field. As a result, lawyers with a background in private equity may have their pick of jobs. The pay scale can range from $150,000 for junior associates to “very comfortable seven figures” for some partners and general counsels, one legal recruiter tells The New York Times. “Private equity lawyers have become the new rock stars,” another recruiter says.Posted by PJ at 09:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 21, 2006
Getting There
From the New Yorker magazine, "Getting There: The Science of Driving Directions" by Nick Paumgarten:
In the fifteenth century, Henry the Navigator, a Portuguese prince, presided over a court in Sagres that became a center for cartographers, instrument-makers, and explorers, whose expeditions he sponsored. Seafarers returning to Sagres from the west coast of Africa reported their discoveries, and new maps were produced, extending the reaches of the known world, which in those days did not go much beyond Cape Verde. These maps became very valuable, owing to their utility in trade, war, and soul-saving, and were jealously guarded as state secrets.Posted by PJ at 02:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The latter-day equivalent is a company called Navteq. It is the leading provider of geographic data to the Internet mapping sites and the personal-navigation industry—the boiler room of the where-you-are-and-what-to-do business. Its only real competitor is a Belgian company called Tele Atlas. Most of the Web sites, car manufacturers, and gizmo-makers—anyone involved in what are known as intelligent transportation systems—get the bulk of their raw material from these two companies. The clients differ mainly in how they choose to present the data. This allows civilians to have preferences.
April 19, 2006
Negotiation Tips From The LAPD SWAT Team
Your average day probably doesn't involve dealing with hostages (although, some people stuck in your meetings might disagree). But the negotiation tips that Lieutenant Michael Albanese, OIC of the LAPD SWAT team and crisis negotiation cadre leader shared with MSN might help you anway:
Keep it informal. "I never get on the negotiating phone and say, 'This is Lieutenant Michael Albanese, special agent in charge of LAPD SWAT, cadre leader, do you have hostages?' and all that. Instead, it's just, 'I'm Mike from the LAPD. Is this Jim? What's going on inside there?' "
Speak at Steven Wright's speed. "If the other person is increasingly anxious, don't try to keep up with his or her fast pace and heightened delivery. Keep your voice monotone and flat, but still be reflective and caring."
Ask open-ended questions. "Try to get more than just yes or no answers. I don't say, 'Will you come out?' I say, 'Tell me why you don't feel comfortable coming out.' "
Repeat after them. "A main part of negotiating is being able to capture the other person's thoughts and mirroring their words back to them so they know you're listening."
No doesn't mean no. "Don't accept a no answer. If they give a firm no, I say, 'I can understand it, but maybe in a while, when you're ready to, you'll come out.' "
If you really want to say it, don't. "You can be sure that if right before you say something you're thinking about how good it'll feel, then two minutes later you'll be saying, 'Why did I open my mouth?' Avoid zingers. If you return a product, don't say, 'It's broken. Typical, huh?' Say, 'I understand you're having some problems with this particular model.' "
Negotiation might not be the most tempting SWAT-type technique you'd like to use on your boss or coworkers, but it's the one most likely to go over well in the workplace...
Posted by PJ at 07:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackApril 17, 2006
Managing The Generations
HBS' Working Knowledge on Managing Different Generations:
Workers Under 35:
Younger workers feel much less loyalty to institutions than do older workers. They also want responsibility and expect to have input right away, whereas older workers expect people to earn their way up. Younger workers aren't afraid to make decisions, and if you can create a strong social fabric at work, you can leverage their network-centric attitudes.
Workers 35 to 54:
This middle cohort tends to be antiauthoritarian and idealistic. They are ambitious, flexible, productive, self-sufficient, and people-oriented. On the other hand, they distrust leadership, are juggling busy lives, and demand merit-based systems and participative management. Make their work fulfilling to them, and they will move mountains; if they fail to believe in the mission, they will disengage—as 71 percent of this age group have done, according to Concours research, and become unproductive.
Workers 55 and Over:
Workers who are 55 and over bring an entirely different perspective, according to Concours research. They trust authority, respect rules, and are loyal to institutions. They expect people to "pay their dues" before being given authority. They place great value on financial security and may be uncomfortable with the ambiguity that is common in contemporary business. They also tend to have stronger social skills than their younger counterparts. This can, for example, make older workers ideally suited for call centers and other roles with significant customer contact.Posted by PJ at 11:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 13, 2006
The Cost of Failing to Innovate
An excellent piece from Passport, the Foreign Policy magazine blog, about the American auto industry: "American Auto Industry: 'Healthy As It Has Ever Been'":
In fact, as of this month, Japan now builds more cars in North America than General Motors. And they build an average new car in 18 hours, compared to GM's 20. Don't they hire the same workers as GM and Ford? (and pay nearly the same wage?) Why aren't Honda and Toyota laying off tens of thousands of employees?
The answer is simple. US companies spent the 1990s trying to recover from a legacy of producing poor quality automobiles, and they let innovation fall by the wayside. And on top of that, quality is still job #2. It's no wonder there isn't a single American car among Consumer Reports' top 10.
The shortsightedness is staggering. It wasn't until a few months ago that GM dropped its boneheaded moratorium on developing hybrid cars, a segment expected to "outpace sales of sport utility vehicles, pickups and luxury models" in the next five years. We just finished a period with historically low interest rates, when U.S. cars should have been selling themselves! And we're having to lay everyone off.
It also contains a wonderful quote from this Business Week article:
"The domestic auto industry is as healthy as it has ever been," says Eric Noble, president of Car Lab, an industry consulting firm in Santa Ana, Calif. "The names on the plants are just changing."Posted by PJ at 08:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 12, 2006
Loving The Brand
Fast Company sat down and talked with four people who handle marketing for brands with passionate owners. The article is here, and here's some of what they have to say:
Chris Parsons at Guinness:
Years ago, when I first started drinking Guinness, I think I was a little intimidated by it. A lot of people are. It's black when other beers are yellow. It's got a creamy head when other beers have a fizzy head. When it pours, you see it surge and settle in the glass. When you first see that, you think, "That's not what I'm used to drinking." And the tendency is to sip, but it doesn't really taste as good as when you have a proper mouthful of Guinness. A brewmaster once told me, "Guinness awakens the taste buds in your mouth. It's alive."
Lisa Kilgore at Netflix:
More than 90% of our customers tell us they evangelize the service to friends and family. The biggest impact we've seen is people spending a lot of time talking about what's in their queue of movies they want shipped to them next. Some even use Netflix as a verb, as in, "Whale Rider? I Netflixed it."
Lee Ann Daly at ESPN:
Although ESPN has grown into 40 different businesses [25 television networks globally, a radio network, a magazine, ownership of the professional bass-fishing and extreme-sports tourneys, a chain of sports bar/restaurants, etc.], what hasn't changed is our conversation with fans. It's almost like a club. So all of these extensions of the original ESPN must serve our relationship with each fan. When we expand, the most important thing to me is whether we can transform the business that we go into by better serving the fan. If it doesn't, you'll make money for 10 minutes, and then the fan will be disappointed and you won't be making any more money.
Yana Kushner at Luna Bar:
In the beginning, a lot of our business was built by word of mouth -- women telling each other about Luna bars, sharing them with their sisters, mothers, girlfriends. My favorite Luna story is from a woman working in an ad agency, in a fast-paced, stressful environment. Her boss, also a woman, would pull the younger, female, more-junior workers into her office during times of stress, sit them down, open up her bottom drawer, pull out some Luna bars, take a deep breath, and have what she called a "Luna moment."
Joanne Bischmann at Harley-Davidson:
We have a lot of people call us who want the manual on how to keep customers passionate. There's no manual. And there are so many ways to screw this up. In the '90s, we couldn't satisfy demand, so people had to wait up to two years for a bike. When we would place ads, I'd personally get letters saying, "Tell me where this product is. I've been looking at 10 dealers, and they don't have it." That was really frustrating. We tried to bottle demand and show customers other opportunities to experience Harley -- through the clothing, through events we hold. Don't give up the dream. Just give us a little time. Everyone's thinking we've got the best job because the product was basically sold out, but what marketing really had to do was keep relationships going.Posted by PJ at 07:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 10, 2006
When First Mover Advantage Fails
From Working Knowledge at the Harvard Business School:
The first-mover advantage is well chronicled, but it didn't help Netscape when Microsoft launched Internet Explorer. What drives technology adoption, and do browser upstarts such as Firefox stand a chance? A Q&A with professor Pai-Ling Yin.
Great article here.
Posted by PJ at 11:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackApril 08, 2006
NYTimes on... um.... tax payers.
This raises some questions about deductions, doesn't it?
Posted by PJ at 08:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBackApril 06, 2006
Easier to Solve Than to Manage
Malcolm Gladwell on problems that are easier to solve than to manage, in Million Dollar Murray:
Culhane then put together a database—the first of its kind—to track who was coming in and out of the shelter system. What he discovered profoundly changed the way homelessness is understood. Homelessness doesn't have a normal distribution, it turned out. It has a power-law distribution. "We found that eighty per cent of the homeless were in and out really quickly," he said. "In Philadelphia, the most common length of time that someone is homeless is one day. And the second most common length is two days. And they never come back. Anyone who ever has to stay in a shelter involuntarily knows that all you think about is how to make sure you never come back."Posted by PJ at 08:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The next ten per cent were what Culhane calls episodic users. They would come for three weeks at a time, and return periodically, particularly in the winter. They were quite young, and they were often heavy drug users. It was the last ten per cent—the group at the farthest edge of the curve—that interested Culhane the most. They were the chronically homeless, who lived in the shelters, sometimes for years at a time. They were older. Many were mentally ill or physically disabled, and when we think about homelessness as a social problem—the people sleeping on the sidewalk, aggressively panhandling, lying drunk in doorways, huddled on subway grates and under bridges—it's this group that we have in mind. In the early nineteen-nineties, Culhane's database suggested that New York City had a quarter of a million people who were homeless at some point in the previous half decade —which was a surprisingly high number. But only about twenty-five hundred were chronically homeless.
April 05, 2006
Fail Smart
Fast Company has an interesting article on Kamran Elahian, a serial entrepreneur who started one too many companies, and fell flat on his face with the failure of Momenta. His journey after the failure is remarkable, as is the sum of what he has accomplished in those years. The article is here. FC had a sidebar that's worth reading: Five Ways To Start Fresh:
How do you better the odds that you'll succeed at a new start? Serial entrepreneur Kamran Elahian has made a life out of starting over. Here are his hard-won lessons for starting fresh -- and starting smart.Posted by PJ at 07:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Write a mission statement. You'll never do work that matters unless you define what matters. Elahian gave himself a sense of purpose by writing a mission statement for his life. He succinctly outlined his big-picture goals. Then he mapped out how he would get there.
Don't look back. Once you embark on a new venture, put all of your focus on the future. Second-guessing only slows you down.
Be your own biggest critic. Relentlessly (and ruthlessly) evaluate your performance, paying special attention to your weaknesses. Only then can you shift your course of action so it plays to your strengths.
Celebrate your setbacks. Or at the very least, learn from them. If you don't analyze what went wrong and what you'd do differently, then you'll repeat the same mistake.
Lose like a winner. Failing doesn't mean that you're a failure. Pete Sampras is one of the greatest tennis players of all time, but he has lost many times. In business as well as in life, the only unforgivable sin is never trying in the first place.
April 04, 2006
Hard Ball for Hard Times
Came across a really great article from a faculty research publication at the University of Ohio called Perspectives. The article, Hard Ball for Hard Times, looks at the “golden years” for professional baseball and asks if we’ll ever be there again:
Now that we’re comfy, and our national pastime is Shopping, baseball is simply too hard. It is too hard for our kids, who, if they dared to be players — players, that is, by the standards of 1930s America or today’s Dominican Republic — would unplug the earphones and turn off the tube. Would hustle on down to the sandlot or pasture or schoolyard and play for the pleasure of playing the game. Play the skin off their knees and the covers off their baseballs. Play until every last inkling of twilight had sunk from the sky. [...] We do. We need it. Baseball isn’t the Web or the spa or the mall. Baseball is Main Street. Baseball is so American that the French refuse to play it. Baseball is ours.
Upon reading it, one of my colleagues remarked that:
One of the things that I love about baseball is that it accommodates the nerds, freaks, techies, bloggers, lonely guys still living in their parents’ basements, etc. All of the folks have no place in football, hockey, or basketball fandom. In baseball, though, the weirdoes not only have a place, they have status.Posted by PJ at 12:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Somehow, I equate the good-ol-days, skinned knees perspective with disdain for the baseball fringe. I love the fringe. I also love the drunk Sox fan from Southie who thinks Johnny Damon’s long hair made him look a ‘little queeah.’ So, yeah, long live the sinned knees and the sandlot and the good ol days and all the tough guy baseball stuff. But, also, long live the statistical validity of PECOTA and taking your computer print-outs (dot matrix?) to Fenway, and working on your blog (The Tao of Manny) until 3:00 AM too. There is room for just about all of us in this great game.
