Monthly Archives: April 2011

Pesky Details

ANZ Business Banking Manager Fred Ohlsson, announcing the launch of another business plan competition (emphasis mine):

“Nearly all the business ideas we see are great, however sometimes people haven’t always thought through and covered off all the details like how they will get paid or researching if there is a genuine market for their product or service.”

Pesky details!

By the way, I recommend the competition to every start-up founder who values their time at zero – if you’re selected as one of the regional winners your prize is $1000 cash, $1000 of services from “website and social media experts” and $1000 of legal advice (how many 6 minute units is that I wonder?)

I suppose this sort of reality TV approach is how we choose pop stars these days, so why not start-ups too!

Source: Stuff

We made a mistake

The 37signals blog posted this quote from Cisco CEO John Chambers, about the decision to cancel the recently acquired Flip Video Camera product line:

“We are making key, targeted moves as we align operations in support of our network-centric platform strategy. As we move forward, our consumer efforts will focus on how we help our enterprise and service provider customers optimize and expand their offerings for consumers, and help ensure the network’s ability to deliver on those offerings.”

Unfortunately Google Translate doesn’t yet help you decipher corporate-ese, but I think what he was trying to say was something like:

“We made a mistake.  We’re going to try something different.”

Nobody real talks like that. So, why would they choose to use such obscure language? (I say “they” because in a large company this invariably passed through many hands rather than being written or spoken by one person in their own voice).

Perhaps it was on purpose? Needing to say something they intentionally decided to say nothing that could be easily interpreted. Wanting to cover over a contentious decision, they chose to hide behind complicated language.

Or, maybe it’s just a reflection of the culture of the organisation combined with a lack of empathy for the audience. By the way, those of us who think that Flip Video Cameras are lame and, anyway, everybody has a smartphone these days are making the exact same mistake – see the link below.

For those of you who want to avoid this sort of thing there are some simple things you can do: try looking somebody in the eye and reading your words out loud, and always remember that you can’t really hide, so you shouldn’t try.

PS If you’re interested, David Pogue writing in the New York Times has some more background on this decision. Reading that it’s hard not to conclude that it was not only poorly communicated strategy, but poorly considered strategy.

Losers

We normally only ever get to hear from the winners (see: survivorship bias). Imagine if that wasn’t the case…

Joe Bloggs was left pondering what might have been this morning, after missing out on last night’s Lotto Powerball jackpot.

Earlier in the week Joe made a special trip to the Pak N Save in the next town, where he decided to spend twice as much as he normally does.

“I normally get a $100 ticket, but with the jackpot this week I decided it was worth an extra investment”, he said.

“The Pak N Save is such a lucky store too”, added Joe, “They’ve sold three division two winners in the last three months, so I just can’t believe that it wasn’t to be for me this time.”

Store manager, Betty Bell, offered her commiserations, but was also left struggling for an explanation.

“We have a big sign by the checkout with photos of our previous big winners, and I know that people come from right around the region to buy their tickets here because of that.  It’s sort of like a tourist attraction.  So of course it’s just so disappointing for Joe and for us that we can’t add another happy face.  It would have been huge news for the district.”, she commented sadly.

“We were literally run off our feet selling last-minute tickets yesterday”, she noted, “It’s just heart breaking to think that all of them are losers this morning.”

Joe’s misfortune is also bad news for some local charities.

“I had more or less decided what I would do with the money”, Joe said.

“Of course I would have paid off my mortgage first and got myself an expensive new car. But, what I was most looking forward to was helping my family and some local charities that I have always wanted to support.  I just never have enough money left over at the end of each month to give them as much as I’d like”.

A spokesman from NZ Lotteries was also sorry to hear about Joe when contacted, but pointed out that 20c from every dollar Joe spent on Lotto is recycled back to the community eventually via grants.

Despite his misfortune, Joe is apparently not completely discouraged.

“I’m sure there will be another jackpot eventually, and I’ll probably play again then. I know the odds of winning are low, but when you read about those lucky people who win it’s impossible to not believe that it could be you next time.”