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Learn from the past

Brighteyes’ Bad Business

July 13, 2020 by Oliver Cummings Leave a Comment

Another bit of wisdom not found in books

Oliver W. Cummings

The coronavirus pandemic has thrown millions out of work. Some jobs were stable throughout and some companies were and are hiring; some jobs lost will come back, some sooner, some later; and some jobs lost are gone, period. Whatever job you land eventually, there are still some fundamentals to which we all should pay attention.

The Lesson.

It was the 1930’s and hard times on the farm. Crops were not good; farm products were not selling for anything. Eggs were about 8 or 9 cents a dozen delivered to the Produce Company. Getting ahead or saving for the future was not even a question – just getting by was the issue.

One morning in the middle of the week, after the early morning chores were done, as the story was told to me, my dad appeared at the breakfast table dressed in his only, very old, suit, frayed white shirt and tie and his “good” shoes with a fresh coat of polish on them. When Mom looked at him with her most inquisitive look, he said simply, “I am going to get a job today.”  

He drove the eight miles to the nearest town of any size, Vienna, Illinois, and started looking for work. The third place he stopped was the local Buick dealership; they were looking for a salesman. Dad got the job, though he had never had a sales job before. He took the job seriously and for many months, in spite of the fact that the country was in a depression and almost all of the trade was in used cars, was a successful car salesman.

He worked with another salesman, a man called “Brighteyes” Miller, known for his sparkling blue eyes and glib manner. Almost everyone around home had a nickname – Dad’s was “Seedcorn,” but that is another story, and no, mine was not “Nubbin.”

Brighteyes was apparently one of those people that helped establish the used-car salesman stereotype.  More than once, Dad told of the customer that came back, after having bought a car from Brighteyes, and complained bitterly and long about the car he’d bought. The customer got no sympathy from Brighteyes.

The confrontation ended in an exchange in which the customer called Brighteyes a bastard, to which Brighteyes replied, “You can’t prove it.” 

The unsatisfied customer left in a huff and Dad observed that for the next twenty years, that dissatisfied customer drove Fords and Chryslers bought from local dealers, but never drove another Buick.

Listen to Dad

The sales job provided Dad and Mom the money they needed to get through a rough economic period and allowed them to save enough money to start a small produce store of their own. He told me this story many times in various circumstances and there were always three points to be made:

  1. If you are willing to work, you can always find a job. If you present yourself as confident and trustworthy, even if you aren’t the most experienced or sophisticated person around, people will appreciate doing business with you.
  2. You may need to be willing to accept a job that is not the job you wished for and/or where you would like it to be. If so, then make that job a steppingstone to your next one.
  3. You need to always do your job ethically and work with all people in an evenhanded manner, because not to do so can have very long-lasting negative effects.

Filed Under: Learn from the past, stories

The Duh-Factor

June 22, 2020 by Oliver Cummings Leave a Comment

Another from the lessons-not-found-in-books series

VisualHunt

Life is full of the Duh-factor.

What, you may ask is the Duh-factor, and why is Duh always capitalized? I am not sure I can precisely define the word and I have no idea why Duh should always be capitalized. It just seemed the right thing to do. Perhaps a couple of examples of the Duh-factor in operation can help.

Comedians, especially it seems hillbilly comedians, can make a career of the Duh-factor. Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck if …” comes to mind, or better still Bill Engvall’s “Here’s your sign” bits. If you haven’t had the good fortune to see these guys, I can’t help with that. Try Youtube.

My father knew the Duh-factor approach and used it with me when I was a kid. It sometimes remotely resembled the Socratic Method. That is, it usually, but not always, involved a question.

An example is: “Do you know what that white stuff on bird sh*t is?” Now if you have ever studied bird sh*t, you could have observed that for many birds, from sparrows to chickens, their poop consists of at least two tones, one dark, almost black, and the other white. These appear to be two parts of the same piece of poop. But, if you haven’t made it your goal to ponder bird poop before, you might simply respond to such a question as Dad posed with something like, “No, what is it?” His immediate response would be, “Its bird sh*t, too.” Duh!

There is evidence for the Duh-factor in business as well. Look at some of the failed products that abound in the marketplaces of our lives. Things are made or services developed that people do not want and will not pay for. Witness the Edsel automobile (Ford, 1958-1960), Frito Lay’s Cheeto’s Lip Balm (2005), Google+ (2011-2019) and the list can go on. The blunder by Coca Cola when they tried to abandon the original Coke formula in the mid 1980s in favor of “New Coke” is a good example of the need to listen to your clients, understand what they value and offer products that satisfy that value. Sales of Coca Cola slumped and continued to be poor by historical Coke standards until they reintroduced the original formula in “Classic Coke.” The turnaround in sales that occurred after that reintroduction was attributed to listening to the customer.

This one isn’t a question, but an axiom: If you throw it out the back door and the dogs won’t eat it, it ain’t dog food. Duh.

It always pays to ask yourself the right questions along the way. And, in our current world in turmoil asking those questions is more urgent than may have been the case ever before.

  • Do our customers want something significantly different than what we currently have to offer?
  • Do our employees need changes in our processes that management can make?
  • If we need to make changes in the implicit employment contract will employees go along with them?
  • How can we reconcile differences between what we perceive we need to change in our business and the needs that our employees want to see us address?
  • What do the other players that impact our markets have on their horizons?
  • Is now the right time to make a change?
  • How similar is our “new Normal” going to be to our past “normal?”
  • What is our formula for making “dog food” going forward?
  • And, the list goes on. …

So how do I define the Duh-factor? I am still not sure I have a precise definition, but it does have something to do with trying really hard to recognize the obvious and apply, that all too often uncommon, common sense.

Filed Under: Learn from the past, tips tools techniques Tagged With: businesslesson, story

The Pool Hall

June 15, 2020 by Oliver Cummings 2 Comments

This is the first of a series of lessons not found in books

Freddy G on Unsplash

A Lesson in Life and Business at the Pool Hall; Or, You Can Learn Good Stuff from Unexpected Places

By: Oliver W. Cummings

Sometimes, when life seems particularly unpredictable and hard to cope with, it pays to think back to what we have already learned and put to use over years of experience.

My father used to say, “In life the strong live off the weak and the smart live off the strong.” This is a, perhaps less elegant but equally to the point, way of saying that the art of success in life (and business) is about finesse, not force.

Here is the Lesson

One of my favorite hang-outs when I was a teenager was a brightly lit, clean pool hall. The place was opened in town as a place primarily for young men of the community. The proprietor served pop and snacks, but no alcohol, and kept an orderly place.

One spring a drifter showed up and the pool hall became his place to pass time just about every day. He disappeared when the weather turned bad in the fall and then showed up in springtime in the subsequent years. His name was Norman. No one seemed to know where Norman went for the winter and I never really knew where Norman stayed when he was in town. Gossip said he slept in the barns at the fairground. He was not particularly spiffy, but he stayed clean shaven and his clothes were kept in better shape than those of other drifters that passed through in the 1960s.

Norman was pretty mysterious to the boys that hung around the pool hall. Many of them didn’t want anything to do with him, but I thought he was interesting. He talked philosophy and religion as if he were well-educated. I don’t know how schooled he was, but he went to the town library sometimes during the day, before he came to the pool hall in the evening. Maybe it was just a comfortable place to kill time, maybe he liked Miss Maude, the Librarian. But, I think he went there to read interesting things.

I learned some important things about pool from Norman. Most importantly: the art of shooting pool is one of finesse, not force.

How you hold the cue stick is the beginning of executing a good shot. Too much tension and you will be jerky in your execution and can’t hit the cue ball accurately. Too little control and you can’t hit the cue ball accurately either. Both ways you lose.

You need to think two or three shots ahead, because how you play one shot leads to the next opportunity you have. If you don’t think about your leave (i.e., where this shot will position you for the next shot), you can block yourself out, and, again, you lose.

You should never take a bank shot when a straight shot is possible. When you shoot a bank shot, it may look impressive, but the added variables of the angle of the rebound, the English you put on the ball, and the performance of the rail cushion make the shot more difficult than a straight shot, even if the latter is at a significant angle. Taking the straight shot represents foregoing showboating for a winning strategy.

It takes balance and planning. It takes knowing your equipment, the shot you are going to take, and your situation on the table to make a good shot.

Maybe these lessons came from Norman’s study of eastern philosophies or maybe it was simply that he was passing along a skill in shooting pool.

Either way these things are important to me because it is just that way in business and other aspects of life: the secret to success, as in shooting pool, is one of finesse, not force.

Taking the smart shot, stroking the cue ball so that it touches the target ball precisely and gently and lets it roll softly into the pocket, is always preferred to slamming the cue stick into the cue ball, making a jerky shot, and hoping that you get to hear the target ball rattle into the pocket.

In other words, in business and in life if you:

  • pay attention to doing the right things and, then, doing things right;
  • neither do things the hard way, nor shrink from the hard to accomplish;
  • sense and make sense of your environment;
  • know yourself and your equipment (i.e., what you have to work with);
  • find an appropriate balance of flexibility and control;
  • focus on what is important to winning and decide what you will do next; and
  • execute as well as you can, without fanfare;

then you can call the shots for your own game and you will win more often than not.

Filed Under: Learn from the past, tips tools techniques Tagged With: businesslesson

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