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| Volume 9, Issue 9 |
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In This Issue:
 The man who's beating Google
Grave Robbers From Wall Street
 Three levels of persuasive conversations
 A secret for contending with colleagues
Six Sigma makes a comeback
Glock's secret path to profits
Social media will change your business
Slow economy, advancing at warp speed
 Selling [your] company (again)
Building a culture of employee appreciation
The best free software
 How to silence 7 common employee gripes
 Major Disconnect:[Executives Concern about Business Sustainability and
 the Actions They are Taking]
 Understanding users of social networks
 How Facebook ruins friendships
Where the worst germs lurk
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The man who's beating Google
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Robin Li has built the most popular search site for the world's biggest audience--in China. That's round one in an epic battle.
On a smoggy August morning outside Beijing's China World Hotel, Li Yanhong's fan club is assembling. "We'll use his English name, okay?" a wrangler shouts over the chattering young crowd. A black Mercedes-Benz approaches, its door opens and the masses do as they're told. A boyishly handsome 41-year-old executive steps out.
"Ro-bin! Ro-bin!" scream his followers, hoisting led-encrusted placards for a few obliging paparazzi. In his keynote at the Baidu World conference a few hours later, Robin Li describes to a crowd of thousands how the search service he created ten years ago is becoming China's gateway to the world of information. Then he parades
across a stage, surrounded by smiling children as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" plays in Mandarin and soap bubbles fill the room. Li has earned his share of Olympic-style marketing. In a decade he has...
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Grave Robbers From Wall Street
Use AIG to keep the banks out of life settlements.
Everyone on Wall Street wants to make a killing, except for the bankers at Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs. Those guys know better than to kill when you can just wait for folks to die. The two banks are buying up life insurance policies from desperate souls who need money and bundling them into life settlement bonds. When the people
die and each soul takes its place as a twinkling basis point in the heavens, the banks will get paid. Pretty low risk, right? Not everybody makes their mortgage payments, but everybody dies. Forget about subprime, this scheme is downright subhuman, and it needs to be stopped now. Giving the banks a shot at securitizing
the $26 trillion in life insurance policies out there will drive up premiums for consumers and could potentially lead to the abusive treatment of vulnerable people. But passing a law to ban this practice is too ham-handed. Instead, let's use...
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Three levels of persuasive conversations
"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers." —James Thurber.
It's like fingernails down a chalkboard for me. There is a Friday night gathering of the neighbors out in front of the house. The kids are all riding scooters and doing their best to imitate Tony Romo in their game of two-hand-touch football. As one of the 3-year-olds begins to pull caffeine-free sodas out of the cooler and hand them
out to the other kids, the child constantly is talking to every parent and child as he peddles his wares looking for his next customer. Here come the fingernails down the chalkboard…one of the adults makes the comment, "Boy, he sure is gonna make a great salesman someday. That boy sure can talk!" Why does everyone think the best
salesperson is always the best "talker?" It's as if that is the only skill needed to be a good salesperson. In my 18 years of experience in sales and sales management, I have not found that to be true. Some of the successful salespeople I have observed were good talkers, but oftentimes, they were not the best speakers. In fact, the
most successful salespeople I have met were not the best talkers at all. They held a much more valuable selling skill:...
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A secret for contending with colleagues
Instead of puzzling over the behavior of others, work on changing your reaction to it, says Peter Bregman.
A few months ago my wife Eleanor came home upset after an incident with one of the parents at our daughter's school. That afternoon, when Eleanor said hello to Michelle, Michelle completely ignored her. Thinking maybe Michelle hadn't heard her, Eleanor said hello again, this time louder. Again, no response. Michelle wasn't speaking on the phone or in a conversation with another parent. She was able to respond, she just refused to. Eleanor was getting the silent treatment. Not one to give up, she said hello a third time. Finally, Michelle mumbled something without looking up and walked away. Eleanor wasn't friends with Michelle. They had only spoken a few times in the past, most notably when she called Eleanor to complain about something our daughter did. Still, she was thrown off balance by Michelle's cold shoulder. It was one of those small things that's hard to get out of your mind. She wasn't expecting it. [At this point, should you still be surprised when your boss for the 100th time doesn't invite you to a meeting? Or when you send a colleague a nice email and it goes unanswered? Again. Here's my advice:...]
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Six Sigma makes a comeback
With the outlook for sales growth dim, everyone from Target to Cadbury to Merck is turning to Six Sigma to squeeze out more savings.
Here's one more reason why the world may face a jobless recovery: Six Sigma. In an attempt to boost earnings without putting more people on the payroll, companies are embracing the controversial data-driven system that aims to radically reduce production defects and improve processes in everything from marketing to manufacturing...
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Glock's secret path to profits
It's the largest supplier of handguns to law enforcement in the U.S. But behind its success lies a troubling tale of business intrigue.
Gaston Glock, an Austrian manufacturer of shovels and knives, had an improbable dream: He would make a fortune selling handguns in America. In the early 1980s, Glock, a self-taught firearm designer, produced an innovative pistol for the Austrian military. He then devised a plan for promoting his invention in the U.S.,
the world's richest gun market. First, he'd persuade American police they needed a lightweight weapon with more ammunition than traditional revolvers. Then he'd use his law enforcement bona fides to win over private gun buyers. The strategy succeeded spectacularly. By the late 1980s, major police departments across the U.S.
wanted more firepower to combat crack-cocaine violence. Glock had the answer. No less impressed, street gangsters adopted the squared-off Austrian handgun as an emblem of thuggish prestige. Hip-hoppers rapped about Glocks; Hollywood put the pistol in the hands of action heroes. [Behind the Glock phenomenon, however, is
another story, one rife with intrigue and allegations of wrongdoing. The company's hidden history raises questions about its taxpayer-financed law-and-order franchise. Is this a company that deserves the patronage of America's police? Does Glock merit the lucrative loyalty of private American gun buyers? The Glock tale also
underscores the difficulty U.S. regulators have overseeing complex international businesses...]
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Social media will change your business
[BWN Classic]
Editor's note: When we published "Blogs Will Change Your Business" in May, 2005, Twittering was an activity dominated by small birds. Truth is, we didn't see MySpace coming. Facebook was still an Ivy League sensation. Despite the onrush of technology, however, thousands of visitors are still downloading the original cover story.
So we decided to update it. Over the past month, we've been calling many of the original sources and asking the Blogspotting community to help revise the 2005 report. We've placed fixes and updates into more
than 20 notes; to view them, click on the blue icons. If you see more details to fix, please leave comments. The role of blogs in business is clearly an ongoing story. First, the headline. Blogs were the heart of the story in 2005. But they're just one of the tools millions can use today to lift their voices in electronic
communities and create their own media. Social networks like Facebook and MySpace, video sites like YouTube, mini blog engines like Twitter—they've all emerged in the last three years, and all are nourished by users. Social Media: It's clunkier
language than blogs, but we're not putting it on the cover anyway. We're just fixing it...
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Slow economy, advancing at warp speed
Harold L. Sirkin is a Chicago-based senior partner of The Boston Consulting Group and author, with James W. Hemerling and Arindam K. Bhattacharya, of GLOBALITY: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything (Business Plus, June, 2008).
Conventional wisdom says the recession has dealt globalization a setback. In fact, the recession seems to be accelerating its pace.
When economic historians analyze the Great Recession that began in December 2007, they are likely to discover that the pace of globalization accelerated during the slowdown. The recession has thrown virtually everything up for grabs: entire companies, divisions, specific assets, markets, market share. And companies from all
corners of the globe fortunate enough to have the wherewithal have been expanding, launching new products, purchasing assets. Other companies have been making strategic changes to position themselves to increase their global footprints. Rather than setting it back, the Great Recession is pushing globalization
forward—encouraging and in some cases forcing companies to make decisions and take actions that may have been delayed in more normal times. Consider...
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Selling [your] company (again)
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I thought I cashed out. But then the credit squeeze changed my plans.
Yogi Berra famously observed, while managing the New York Mets, that "it ain't over till it's over." Now I know what he meant. If you followed the saga of the sale of CitiStorage and my two other companies (see "The Offer: Parts One–11"), you probably figured -- as I did -- that I had wrapped up that particular phase of my business
career back on December 21, 2007, when Allied Capital acquired a majority stake in the business and I went from being CEO and principal owner to well-paid adviser. Well, not so fast, Kowalski. For the past six months or so, I have been working to find a new owner for the records-storage, document-destruction, and delivery
businesses I spent most of my adult life building. Along the way, I've had a front-row seat to the unfolding financial crisis, and I've seen how and why it has caused the rest of the economy to seize up. I've held off writing about the
experience out of fairness to the other parties involved, but we're now at a point where I feel I can share with you some of the lessons I've learned...
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Building a culture of employee appreciation
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How Datotel overhauled its employee-appreciation, -recognition, and -incentive programs.
David Brown thinks it's important to make his employees feel valued. So Brown, founder and president of Datotel, an IT services and data storage business in St. Louis with 38 employees, was dismayed when he realized his employee-of-the-month program wasn't helping morale. Recipients didn't seem enthusiastic about the award,
which consisted of a $25 gift card, a perfunctory e-mail, and a mention on the company intranet. It seems like a simple concept: Make employees feel appreciated, and they will work harder and be more loyal. But there is often a disconnect between the type of appreciation employees want and what their managers think they want,
according to a recent study by the International Association of Administrative Professionals and OfficeTeam, a staffing company in Menlo Park, California. Managers responding to the survey ranked...
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The best free software
Paying is passé. Use these 10 free software programs instead. Free
is a lovely word; unfortunately, it's often followed by a disappointing product. We have found 10 great free apps that will help you run your business. Some are so good, you might even be willing to (shudder) spend money on them. -- Mark Spoonauer...
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How to silence 7 common employee gripes
A recent study says that 40% of managers in the United States are considered “bad bosses” by their employees. Yet most managers assume that their relationships with their employees are running smoothly.
Obviously, some of those bosses are wrong … and that can create major problems for a business. A Gallup poll says organizations are 50% less productive—and 44% less profitable— when serious boss-employee conflicts exist. According to a new book, 30
Reasons Employees Hate Their Managers, some common employee complaints about management, plus ways managers can silence them, include:...
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Global Study: Major Disconnect Between [Executive] Leaders Concern About [their company] Sustainability and the Actions they are Taking
An overwhelming majority of corporate executives believe that sustainability-related issues are having or will soon have a material impact on their business.
Yet relatively few companies are taking decisive action to address such issues, according to a new study by MIT Sloan Management Review (MIT SMR) and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The study, titled The Business of Sustainability, is being released today in two publications—a detailed special report by MIT SMR and a
summary report by BCG. The findings are based on a global survey of more than 1,500 corporate executives and more than 50 in-depth interviews with experts from a range of disciplines such as energy science, civil engineering, management, and urban studies. “What came across loud and clear is...
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Understanding users of social networks
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"Women actually say things, guys give references to other things."
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If the ongoing social networking revolution has you scratching your head and asking, "Why do people spend time on this?" and "How can my company benefit from the social network revolution?" you've got a lot in common with Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski.
"All first drafts are terrible. I don't care if you're Hemingway." "What comes out unfiltered from anyone's mind is mud." The first two quotations come from writing professors whose names I've since forgotten (and they were quoting other people whom they'd forgotten). The last one is one I just made up myself. But regardless of the
source, the advice is sound: no email should be clicked-to-send without revision. I've found that for your average email, the number of revisions largely depends on the number of recipients. Here's my experience:...
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How Facebook ruins friendships
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Notice to my friends: I love you all dearly.
But I don't give a hoot that you are "having a busy Monday," your child "took 30 minutes to brush his teeth," your dog "just ate an ant trap" or you want to "save the piglets." And I really, really don't care which Addams Family member you most resemble. (I could have told you the answer before you took the quiz on Facebook.)
Here's where you and I went wrong: We took our friendship online. First we began communicating more by email than by phone. Then we switched to "instant messaging" or "texting." We "friended" each other on Facebook, and began communicating by "tweeting" our thoughts—in 140 characters or less—via Twitter. All this online
social networking was supposed to make us closer. And in some ways it has. Thanks to the Internet, many of us have gotten back in touch with friends from high school and college, shared old and new photos, and become better acquainted with some people we might never have grown close to offline. Last year, when a friend of mine was hit by
a car and went into a coma, his friends and family were able to easily and instantly share news of his medical progress—and send well wishes and support—thanks to a Web page his mom created for him. But there's a danger here, too. If we're not careful, our online interactions can hurt our real-life relationships...
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Where the worst germs lurk
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Concern Over Swine Flu Grows, Prompting a Hard Look at the Hygiene Hot Spots During the Day.
They lurk on the kitchen sponge, your computer keyboard and the dirty laundry. Flush the toilet and they become airborne. Strangers leave them behind on airplanes, gas pumps, shopping carts, coffeeshop counters and elevator buttons. Your desktop, office microwave handles, and the exercise bike at the gym are covered with them.
Don't even think about the toys at day-care centers or the kids' playground equipment. Germs—the microscopic bacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa that can cause disease—cling to the most common surfaces and then hitch a ride on our hands. As swine flu spreads from person to person around the world, it is most often being
transmitted by coughing or sneezing, but it can also infect people who touch something with flu virus on it and then touch their mouth or nose, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns. And like an unwelcome house guest, a flu virus can hang around for days. [Still, I wanted to know where in my home, office and
wider world I should most forcefully brandish my disinfectant wipes and hand-sanitizer. My calls to experts turned up some surprising culprits:...]
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