August 30, 2010—Issue #50
This week’s focus point: At a New York theater last week, at the conclusion of the performance, side doors were opened and the entire place emptied in three directions in about five minutes. There was no standing in the aisles for 20 minutes while people chatted and crawled out. The theater was customer-friendly. (If you think about it, airplanes should load and unload that way, but airports have been built for planes and not passengers.) What are you doing to be client/customer-friendly? Are you easy to reach, quick to respond, constantly providing value? Or do you treat your customers like inconveniences?
Monday Morning Perspective: Sed quis Custodiet ipsos Custodes? (Who shall guard us from the guardians?) — Juvenal
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ISSN 2151-0091
© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved
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August 23, 2010—Issue #49
This week’s focus point: The new “headline” is that many college freshmen can’t write in cursive script. Whether that’s accurate or another urban myth, what is accurate is that your emerging buyers’ perspectives and frames of reference aren’t always the same as yours. We used to think that fact applied only cross-culturally, but rapid technology change makes it true cross-generationally, as well. Find the other person’s self-interest and you’ll find a customer or client.
Monday Morning Perspective: We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of one’s exploring will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time. — T.S. Eliot
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ISSN 2151-0091
© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved
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August 16, 2010—Issue #48
This week’s focus point: It’s time to provide NEW products and services to existing customers and clients. No matter how happy they may be with your past performance, they no longer feel the “same old/same old” (I call this SO/SO) is sufficient for volatile, changing times. They already trust you, so take the initiative and create some new value for them. You can’t afford to be so/so.
Monday Morning Perspective: If winning doesn’t matter, why does anyone bother to keep score? — Legendary University of Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp
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ISSN 2151-0091
© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved
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August 9, 2010—Issue #47
This week’s focus point: There is a marketing difference between instigation and investigation. You should use “outreach” alternatives such as blogs and newsletters and speeches to instigate people to think differently, react to your intellectual property, and exhibit your thought leadership. Then they may be prompted to investigate your background, your depth and breadth, and that’s what a web site is best at—displaying credibility. You don’t want an overly promotional web site or a low key blog.
Monday Morning Perspective: The supreme vice is shallowness. — Oscar Wilde
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ISSN 2151-0091
© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved
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August 2, 2010—Issue #46
This week’s focus point: Life is more of a rheostat than an “on/off” switch. You can be in favor of some aspects of an issue, and not in favor of others (which is why generic “labels” are so odious—they brand you as “for or against,” “on or off”). Don’t place clients, friends, and colleagues in the awkward position of “take it or leave it.” Compromise is based on mutual best interests being met, which means you have to find the appropriate setting on the thermostat, or it may get very icy or awfully hot.
Monday Morning Perspective: I’ve been broke, but never poor. — impresario Mike Todd, Jr. (When his accountants told him to cut back household spending because of his debt, he famously replied, “I’m thirteen million dollars in debt. What do you want me to do, smoke cheaper cigars?!”)
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ISSN 2151-0091
© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved
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July 26, 2010—Issue #45
This week’s focus point: Consulting is art and science. There are things we know which we can influence. There are things we know which we can’t influence. There are things we don’t know that we can find out, and some things we don’t know we’ll never find out. Actually, that’s not a bad approach to life, either.
Monday Morning Perspective: …to find the best in others, to give of one’s self, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
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ISSN 2151-0091
© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved
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Alan’s Monday Morning Memo’s mission is to help readers to thrive.
July 19, 2010—Issue #44
This week’s focus point: The undertow drags you out to sea when you’re in the surf. If it’s strong enough, you can exhaust yourself trying to get back to the beach, and when you do extricate yourself, you’re usually at a different point and disoriented. Undertow in our lives includes bad advice from unqualified sources, normative pressure from peers, unrealistic expectations of clients, overextension which creates financial pressures, and managing time poorly. By all means get into the surf, but don’t let it drag you down the beach or out to sea.
Monday Morning Perspective: If we had had good kings, we all would still be monarchists. — Lincoln Steffens
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ISSN 2151-0091
© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved
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Alan’s Monday Morning Memo’s mission is to help readers to thrive.
July 12, 2010—Issue #43
This week’s focus point: I learned recently that someone who hadn’t returned my emails over two weeks was out of the country and had let 350 pile up unanswered. Good consultants advise clients to “shop” their own businesses, but have you “shopped” your own? Can I leave a message within a minute, or is your phone system telling me about your web site and thought for the day? Do you return emails within a day? Do you return phone calls promptly? Your first impressions will tell prospects how they would be treated as clients.
Monday Morning Perspective: We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing while others judge us by what we have already done. — Longfellow
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ISSN 2151-0091
© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved
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Alan’s Monday Morning Memo’s mission is to help readers to thrive.
July 05, 2010—Issue #42
This week’s focus point: Prepare well, show up on time, do your best, and go home. You’re neither as good nor bad as your last performance or effort. It’s your overall and long-term effectiveness that counts. There is no use worrying about things you can’t control, and some people can’t be helped on any particular day. If you love what you do and you do your very best, you’ll be fine.
Monday Morning Perspective: Please don’t shoot the piano player. He is doing his best. — Sign in an old western saloon
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© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved
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Alan’s Monday Morning Memo’s mission is to help readers to thrive.
June 28, 2010—Issue #41
This week’s focus point: In school I ran the sprints, and we were taught to “run through the tape.” You can’t let up as you approach the finish, you have to pretend the finish line is ten yards farther down the track, so that you don’t slow down when your effort counts the most. That’s what the best athletes are doing in the World Cup and Wimbledon right now. And that’s what the best leaders and manager do. They run through the tape.
Monday Morning Perspective: Hope I die before I get old. — Peter Townshend (1966)
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