I was a client of Diners Club for 20 years. When it became simply another type of MasterCard, I stayed with them. I paid my bills in full, each month, for 20 years.

Unbeknownst to me, Diners Club cards were taken over by Bank of Montreal. Not long after, I received a form letter telling me my credit had been limited to a cap of $20,000 “after a review of my spending and credit information” and it basically explained they felt I was too much of a risk for anything higher. (I’m an American Express Black Card member, and my net worth is up there.)

I cut my card in half and sent it to the president, telling him basically that if they want to alienate clients with my history (and credit score), good for them, they succeeded. A month later, a woman calls from the “presidential complaints unit” (they apparently must receive a lot of complaints to have a separate unit) and tells me this is Bank of Montreal’s policy. But they don’t want to lose me, would I please come back.

“No,” I said, “unless you show me some sign of gratitude for my business. For example, raise my credit to $25,000 as a show of faith.”

She told me they could only do that with a full credit check and, of course, every credit check damages your credit score in this loony age of paying attention to computer numbers and not people.

“Ciao,” I said.

Today, I received a letter from the vice president of that woman’s presidential complaints operation (a LOT of complaints to merit separate officers), and he said, “Too bad you wouldn’t come back, but if you decide to reapply, we’ll review your application carefully.”

I suggested he not hold his breath.

Canadians are wonderful, polite people. But even my Canadian friends admit that service standards are lower in Canada than in the U.S. Bank of Montreal probably has more people in the “presidential complaints unit” than in its retail operation.

But it is good at something. It’s earned my Dumb-Ass Stupid Management Award. Congratulations!

© Alan Weiss 2012. All rights reserved.

The National Transportation Safety Board wants to ban ALL use of phones in cars, even hands-free phones, except in the case of emergencies. (The NTSB has no enforcement power, but does have an influence on Congress.)

Can someone tell me how a hands-free phone is more distracting and more dangerous than:

• Fooling with the radio and finding different channels.

• Using an iPod for music in the car and finding the right playback.

• Talking to passengers in the car.

• Using GPS while underway.

• Trying to follow written instructions.

• Glancing at notes and reminders in those dashboard holders.

• Drinking hot coffee.

• Eating.

• Applying makeup.

• Daydreaming.

In today’s Wall Street Journal there is an article about how complicated and hard to use certain dashboard music systems can be.

I’m all for safety on the roadways, but I tend to become allergic to overwrought attempts to legislate every part of our lives (there are bills in several states that would prohibit smoking in your own car; and according to several car seat rules concerning weight and size, some petite women would have to go to their college proms or weddings in a child seat).

Dialing a phone and sending text messages while driving is insane, dangerous, and shouldn’t be condoned. Driving without a seat belt creates a greater chance of serious injury and expense in medical costs and insurance. These are legitimate and specific concerns.

But if you intend to try to legislate to the point of absolute perceived 100 percent safety, then you need to arrest every woman putting on mascara and lipstick; anyone with a drink rising from cup holder to lips; those changing their GPS views or looking at the map; and anyone seen glancing at a passenger in the course of conversation.

You can educate people to be careful, but there comes a point where attempting to legislate it clearly abrogates personal freedom. (A police cruiser, ostensibly driven by a careful, experienced, knowledgeable officer was shown on the news last night being towed off a telephone pole which the officer had driven up vertically while his attention was “distracted.”)

The tentative person pulling onto a highway at 25 MPH and not increasing speed immediately, the person rolling through the stop sign, the person not signaling the lane change—they are more dangerous than someone talking on a hands-free phone and, one would think, they ARE paying close attention.

Some people die of peanut allergies. The answer is not to ban peanuts from the marketplace. Some people die in plane crashes. The answer is not to ban flying. We know people die from tobacco, but we’ve yet to abolish its sale.

Careless people will cause accidents. We need to educate them, take them off the road if blatant or repeated. But we need to heed Peter Drucker, who said, “…and laws that result from a ‘scandal’ are invariably bad laws. They punish ninety-nine innocents to foil one miscreant. They penalize good practice, yet rarely prevent malpractice. They express emotion rather than reason.”

Maybe we should remove all those distracting advertising billboards, and clear all the trees and vegetation that cause the eye to wander, especially in the fall when trees turn color. Where does it end?

It ends when people are educated and expected to use good judgment, not when the government acts like a parent trying to control unruly kids. If the government wants to act like a parent, then clean up the tax code. That would be a welcome start. But stay out of my car.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

After delivering my keynote and a special session for an elite group of Canadian speakers last night, I caught a limo from the hotel this morning after a 5:30 am fire alarm trumped my later wake-up call. The limo arrived early and the driver was very polite.

At the airport, I headed for Global Entry. There was a long wait in the regular system, with maybe 10 US immigration officers amidst booths for three times that number, and long, Disneyland lines. I bypassed everything, and then ran into Mr. Ugly American. An officer at the machine, instead of saying the machine was out of order, and he’s sorry, interrogated me as to whether I had Nexus, and why didn’t I know what that was. I said, “Can I use this machine or not?!” and he said, “Go see an officer!” I asked him if he were always that unpleasant. I find this intolerable as an American. It’s humiliating to employ this kind of attitude.

After 15 minutes in the line and halfway through, I saw that the machine was lighted again and Mr. Personality had left. I ducked under the ropes and did my thing in one minute. Then at the exit point, a woman was working slowly to collect forms but a man next to her was doing nothing. “Are you open?” I asked politely. “I’m Canadian police,” he said, “and all I can do is arrest you!”

“That’s the best deal I’ve had since I entered immigration,” I explained, “what can you do for me?” He offered cozy accommodations with three meals and a sound roof, with plenty of security. We both laughed and I was finally at the woman taking forms. He told her not to let me return, and she stopped her mechanical actions and asked him soberly, “Why?”

Security was fast, but I was asked for my boarding pass—I am not making this up—six times before I was finally on my way to the gates. Some of these people were all of 10 yards apart.

Finally, I entered the Priority Club, an Amex benefit. The hostess checked me in and I asked how far my gate was from the club. Incredibly, she replied, “I’m sorry, sir, I’m not familiar with the airport.” She was actually hired and trained and never asked to familiarize herself with the airport, while dealing with passengers! And coming to work every day, she didn’t feel the need to do so!

Never feel that there is no work for consultants and performance improvement. Most immigration officers are fine people, and anyone can have a bad day. But I sensed this guy was in the midst of a bad life. Security is vital, but paranoia is dangerous. (“The price of eternal vigilance is indifference”—Marshall McLuhan, ironically, a Canadian.)

And if you don’t know what’s outside your door, you might as well be a hermit. They don’t have to commute.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I’m in Toronto keynoting for the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS) tonight. In two weeks I’ll be in Key Biscayne helping to facilitate an “elite” speakers workshop for the National Speakers Association (NSA). I’ve made well over 60 appearances for NSA and the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC). I’m one of only two people in history granted the highest honors of NSA (Hall of Fame) and IMC (Fellow).

I tell you all this because I’ve been very involved in these organizations and have tried to “pay back” the professions which have been so important to my success. So I was saddened to receive an email today from the New England chapter of the IMC—historically highly innovative and organized—stating it is considering disbanding.

The problem with these organizations is historic (I’ve been a member since the 1980s): They have failed to brand themselves and their primary certifications. No one—no buyer—has ever asked me about CSP (Certified Speaking Professional) or CMC (Certified Management Consultant). Never. Moreover, there are thousands of superb speakers and consultants who choose not to belong to the organizations, because they see no need or benefit. (I believe you support professional associations in your profession, and try to help others.)

Scores of chapter officials, national presidents, officers—and thousands of board members—have failed to understand the need to create a brand powerful enough to distinguish members and recipients from others—in other words, to create a gravity toward them and make marketing easier and more effective. There has been insufficient understanding, interest, investment, and action. Stringing initials after your name that are not recognized immediately by prospects creates skepticism, not acceptance. But using those that are readily known—MBA, PhD, PE—creates credibility.

Too often, these designations are simply used for elitism and “rank” within the organization, but rarely transcend those borders. Recognition is irrelevant if it doesn’t influence buyers. You can’t send your plaques and certificates to the mortgage company.

In a world where we see successful branding on a global basis, from commodities to services, small firms to large, why is it that professional associations don’t understand that their major function is to create brand recognition for their members? Nothing else is as important.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

Every Canadian I speak to on the subject seems to loathe Air Canada. Here’s my most recent experience:

1. Going from Providence to Toronto, the plane is listed as increasingly late until it reaches three hours. No one from Air Canada (or their local representation, Star Alliance partner Continental) tells us anything. I figure out the arrival from Toronto, which is the incoming flight, will finally get to Providence at 1:40, yet Air Canada lists their departure from Providence at 1:30! I get all my information from Flight Tracker on my iPhone.

2. The Beach 1900D is finally ready, after 2:00, to depart. There are four of us on the 18-seat plane. The copilot gives us the normal briefing, and says, “The flight time is an hour and twenty minutes. The lav does not work. We’re hoping you can hold it for an hour and twenty minutes.” (I am NOT making this up.)

3. We arrive in Toronto, where the walk to immigration is at least two miles. There is no signage indicating that forms must be filled out or where they are. Air Canada has not provided them. I have to retrace my steps to find them. I ask the immigration agent, after the hike, if the intent is to only allow fit people into the country. She ignores me, asks me the usual dumb questions about whether I’m stealing jobs from indigenous peoples, and I proceed.

4. Air Canada originally had me on a 4 pm return from Toronto the next day, after my meeting. They told Amex that there was a “schedule change” and the plane would now leave, same day, AT 9 AM! I told Amex that we would call that a cancellation, not a schedule change. I had to take a flight into Boston instead of Providence.

5. Because of the changes, Amex mistakenly put me in coach on the way back to Boston. When I asked them to change it to business, Air Canada told them it would cost AN ADDITIONAL $1100 for the hour’s flight by jet to Boston. I refused to enable this kind of stupidity. At the airport, I asked the gate agent for an upgrade and she said, “Fine, but it will be $120.” That worked for me.

6. In the Priority Pass club I belong to through Amex in Toronto, I encountered six Air Canada pilots. “Is club membership a perk of flying for Air Canada?” I asked. “Are you kidding,” said a copilot, “we just spend so much time here (in the airport) without any amenities that we  join on our own.”

7. I can report that the US Global Entry System worked beautifully coming home, though the ticking timer in the upper right reminds me of a bad game show.

Canadians apparently have no choice but to fly this airline, or so I’m told. No wonder they all live in just a few populations centers.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

(DASM= Dumb ass, stupid management)

The Big Squeeze

Outstanding businesses attempt to improve and increase their value to customers, thereby enabling higher prices/fees and enhanced customer loyalty and referral business.

But if you walk out the door these days, you’re not in any danger of tripping over those outstanding businesses.

Here are just a few examples of what airlines have done:

• Reduced amenities.

• Increased annoying charges for meals, luggage, leg room, etc.

• Penalized customers who choose to deal with people and not computers.

• Decreased ticket flexibility and change options.

And banks:

• Implemented fees for merely holding our money.

• Eliminated amenities such as free checking.

• Reduced services and hours at local branches.

• Increased fees for typical services (e.g., stop payments).

And newspapers:

• Annoying stick-on ads on front pages which must be removed.

• Charging for obituary notices.

• Increased charges for home delivery.

• Reduced news space and news influenced by advertisers.

And credit card companies:

• Increased monthly fees.

• Reduced billing cycle times requiring faster payment.

• Draconian penalties for missing a payment date or minimum amount.

• Interest rates far higher than economically necessary.

I could go on, but I have space limitations. Stupid management takes the constant position of regarding the customer both as a problem and an ATM. (“This business would be great if it weren’t for the customers.”) I remember interviewing a candidate for managing director of a theater company. “Why did the theater you left almost go bankrupt?” I asked. “Because,” he immediately responded, “the  audience was biased and didn’t understand out offerings.”

Oh. But you can’t fire an audience, can you?

Enlightened leadership understands the obligation to increase value. Dumb-ass, stupid leadership simply strives to perpetuate the enterprise, meaning you cut services and exploit the customers. (If you’ve been flying airlines and dealing with banks and DON’T feel exploited, you have a higher threshold of outrage than I do.)

For consultants, the opportunity is clear and so is the challenge. First, find prospects and buyers who believe in value and investing in business. Eschew those who want to squeeze the customer and sell the conference tables.

Second, when you find clients sliding into reducing its value for any reason, tell your buyers you have just three words for them: Bank of America. Amadeo Giannini would be spinning in his grave, but I think there’s an extra charge for spinning these days.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

The paragraph below was forwarded to me by Josh Richards from the New York Times. The story was about the kibillion dollar Los Angeles Dodgers’ bankruptcy and possible purchase. You’ll see the gesture made by the law firm as one that just couldn’t be made up. I’m appending a virtual Whack-A-Mole for those of you who might need its comforting powers.

The (law) firm has discounted its $1.7 million in billings to $1.37 million, plus $31,682 in expenses. On the lowest rung of costs, the law firm revealed that it is giving the Dodgers a deal. On photocopies. Usually, the firm charges clients 25 cents a page. For the struggling Dodgers? Ten cents apiece for $5,851.20 in copies.

What do airlines, banks, newspapers, speakers bureaus, and publishers all have in common? (This is not a joke, but I wish it were.)

They run their businesses horribly and try to atone for it by gouging the customer, vender, or supplier.

Book publishing, with rare exception, has failed to appreciate, much less leverage, the advent of electronic media. So what do conventional publishers do? They demand that authors buy copies of their own books to reduce the cost of the press run. They refuse to promote books actively, demanding that the author do so. They invest money in promotion with authors who don’t need it (Tom Clancy, Danielle Steele) and don’t invest in new and promising works. They hire such young and inexperienced people to save a dollar, that one permissions editor once told me that she wouldn’t approve production until I had written permission submitted for quotes from Oscar Wilde. The question is no longer, “Where did you go to school?” but “Did you go to school and were you awake the entire time?”

Speakers bureaus, traditional “middlemen” dealing with other “middlemen” (meeting planners, trainers, human resource people) have traditionally received about 25 percent of speaking fees from the speaker, supposedly in return for marketing that speaker. Today, many have raised their rates to 30 percent while reducing their marketing and, instead, charging the speaker. Many bureaus now charge to “evaluate” demo videos, place people in prime spots in a catalog, include people in “showcases” (cattle calls), critique promotional material and so on. Excuse me, but aren’t you supposed to be marketing me for my 25 percent fee?

One bureau, the most unethical I’ve ever seen, actually tried to charge me 30 percent when I beat out a speaker they had nominated to speak at Toyota. I was in their catalog, but they promoted someone else, I still got the job, and they wanted a third of my earnings!

Airlines which have been led abominably and can’t seem to come up with effective labor relations, fuel management, intelligent route structures, efficient baggage handling, and so on, now charge customers for:  pillows, food, a few inches of leg room, boarding sequence, the attention of a live agent, seat location, changing a reservation, and so on. One considered charging for lavatory use. Why not just fly us all at gunpoint? The “friendly skies” have become a bad neighborhood.

Banks are now charging some customers for deposits, and for simply holding their money. I have seven-figures invested in a bank where I also had some small accounts I had forgotten about. One would have disappeared in a year simply due to the monthly charges! The bank treats me as separate computer numbers, instead of a major, diversified customer. Your “personal banker” today has a hand in your pocket.

Newspapers plaster ads on the front page, often with stickers that obliterate a headline. Try to complain to the Wall Street Journal or New York Times about your subscription. You can’t talk to actual people, but an automated service will “credit you for one day” if your paper wasn’t delivered. Isn’t the point better, more reliable service and not a buck? Newspapers in many cities now charge for obituary notices. When I asked a local editor how he could countenance that, he said, “Oh, Alan, we all do it.” Oh, I guess I had missed that logic.

Why the rant? Because Pogo ought to be in charge here.

Entire industries often suffer from poor leadership, because the same crowd kicks around at the same levels (a guy who ran several airlines, Dick Wolf, including United and USAir, would paint all the planes as soon as the board confirmed him as CEO). The exceptions (Kelleher and Bethune in the airline business) are easy to note because they stand out in dull crowds.

It’s time to stop blaming and squeezing the client, the customer, the supplier, the talent. It’s time to look in the mirror. You might just see a reflection with nothing there.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I’m installing Shell Oil into the Dumb-Ass Stupid Management Hall of Fame.

I’ve been a Shell customer for over 25 years. Every single month, I pay the bill in its entirety. Every month. I think many of you can imagine what my credit rating is, and I may be earning more than the CEO of Shell (with a stress on “earn”).

With 25-gallon tanks, all three of our vehicles cost about $100 to fill when the tanks are near empty with today’s gas prices. My son has rented a large truck in Florida to drive cross-country to his new place in LA, and I provided him with a Shell card to make life easier, all on my account. Shell bills me about every 30 days.

Guess what? After I paid my last bill, we charged more than $1,000 collectively before I’ve yet to receive my next bill, AND DUMB-ASS SHELL SUSPENDED THE CARDS WITHOUT WARNING. I received an automated message from Shell after the fact, and when I called back a rocket scientist of a woman told me that she couldn’t tell me when the cards would be reinstated because I was “over my limit.” She repeated this like a broken record but without the same degree of variety.

How stupid does it get? Do you simply extend the credit limits when you have such a good customer, or when gas prices (Shell’s prices) have reached current stratospheric levels? Do you try to help your customers? Or do you just pull the plug because you’re afraid your customers are cheating you somehow?

I think a guy named Peter Voser is CEO of Shell. Maybe he and his crack team ought to get their heads out of the drilling holes and smell something besides fumes. Just when you think you can’t make this stuff up, you fall behind he satirical curve.

“Hey, let’s take one of our best customers, who’s spent probably six figures with us over the years, and just suspend his credit because he’s spending too much with us. Doesn’t that seem a good way to spend our time?”

Stay away from these people. It’s a shell game. They have shell-for-brains.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I am an advanced stamp collector (stop snickering), and have a quite sophisticated US collection. I’m constantly looking for those rather expensive issues I’ve not yet acquired.

In a national publication, I found a stamp dealer online in my home down, specializing in the US! I send an email, asking if he had three issues in particular I was looking for. Here’s what he wrote back:

The shaving cream pie thrower invading the Murdoch questioning could easily have had more lethal intent (at which point I’d guess Mrs. Murdoch would have pulled out her uzi). Did the members of Parliament hold themselves responsible for this gaffe? Was it the fault of the head of the police assigned to the inquiry? Was it the Prime Minister’s fault? Is it the Queen’s fault, since she heads the empire?

Of course not. Then how is it that they expect Murdoch or his (extremely underwhelming) son to be cognizant of and responsible for some employees within his own empire hacking phones?

There are scams and spam all over the Internet, but some are so stupid that you have to wonder if people are spilling things on themselves as they type. Here’s something just received from some outfit called Blackhat SEO actually addressed to a Beagle:

Some character named “Doc” goes on to thank Buddy for helping make his firm so successful. Unless this guy is the tree where Buddy prefers to pee, I doubt he’s been of much help….

I’m at Caesar’s Palace in Atlantic City, where we’ve holed up in order to see Huey Lewis and the News at the Flamingo tonight (3rd row, center). Tomorrow we move on to Cape May for a week.

The hotel generously provides bottled water in the room, and I’m glancing at mine right now. It tells me there are 10 fluid ounces, and also 296 ml. I don’t know why we need to know the metric equivalent, but it gets even stranger.

On the rear of the label I actually have “Nutrition Facts.” It tells me there is one serving per container, which provides the following “daily values”:

Calories: 0

Total Fat: 0%

Sodium: 0%

Total Carbohydrates: 0%

Protein: 0%

All of this is based on a 2,000 caloric daily intake.

In other words, it’s just water. That’s all. But it’s important to have people get the labeling straight, and I do have a consumer information number I can call listed on the label. I guess those people are there waiting at the other end of the phone line in case I need someone to describe the color, or whether it’s liquid, or if it’s bio-degradable.

I just turned to my left, and I’m staring at the Atlantic. There are quite a few people out there, and I’m thinking they’re daredevils. That water isn’t labeled.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

Here’s a request from a reporter that appeared today in my inbox:

Since I published my first book in 1988 (The Innovation Formula) the publishing industry has declined in terms of innovation, talent, and risk-taking. Today it’s gasping and wheezing. Herein, some of my more unusual—or maybe usual—experiences in the “glamorous” world of commercial pubishing.

• A permissions editor told me she was holding up production because all of my permissions (to use quotes of others) were not submitted.

“I always do that thoroughly,” I told her, “you’re wrong.”

“Well, then how is it you’ve quoted the same man twice and there isn’t a single permission filed?”

“Who it it?”

“Oscar Wilde.”

When I told the editor-in-chief for business books, he said, “Please tell me you made this up.”

• A developmental editor removed 13 words which she said I simply made up. “There are no such words,” she haughtily informed me, having made her Internet or  spell-check searches. (Sample: chtonian.)

I sent here 13 copied pages from Webster’s Unabridged. I’m guessing she wasn’t exactly a graduate of the Newhouse School of Journalism at Syracuse.

• A woman writes me to tell me I have an outdated technical reference in Million Dollar Consulting® Toolkit, which had been released about 60 days prior.  “You’re right,” I confirmed, “that site has since changed.”

“Well shouldn’t you fix this?!” she demanded.

“Do you want me to track down all the books and correct it by hand?” I replied.

As a result, she did a review on Amazon and gave a one-star rating.

• A man called to tell me that there were a dozen typos in Our Emperors Have No Clothes, and this ruined the content for him. I pointed out that I really didn’t care and he needed professional help with that level of anal-retention, and hung up while he was still sputtering.

• I got my first and only agent, Jeff Herman, based on a small paragraph in a speaker’s magazine. I had three books with HarperCollins at the time. He took me on and immediately took a disaster of a proposal called Confessions of A Consultant and turned it into the 20-year best-seller Million Dollar Consulting. I thought he had promise.

• A publisher wanted to create jacket art that looked like a scope of a rifle focusing on a target. I had no real veto power, but I raised a hew and cry, finally winning my point when I said, “Let’s go all the way, and have a hunter with a bloody deer carcass on the cover.”

• Inexplicably, Money Talks was translated into long-form Chinese.

• A guy calls—calls—to tell me there are 8 typos in Thrive. I tell him, “No, there are 12,” and hang up. (This is now my standard response.)

• A developmental editor starts every marginal comment on the proofs with “Hmmmm….” and then rewrites my content, as in, “You’re talking about value proposition, so let’s also talk about mission statement since they’re the same thing.” After the third time I told his boss it was him or me, and he was removed.

• The development editor for The Global Consultant argues with Omar Kahn (who’s even more traveled than I) and me about our observations around the world. (For example, he claimed that France had a national highway system to rival that of the U.S. interstates, in which case it must be available only to the French, since I’ve never found it.) We had to have him removed.

• A virulently feminist editor attacked every possible scenario in one of my books, changing pronouns even about actual occurrences to try to create a more feminist viewpoint. I finally had to tell her to go write her own book but stop writing mine or I’d complain to her boss. She shut up.

• A marketing director at a publisher considering a proposal tells me I’m not selling well, cites Million Dollar Coaching as only having sold 485 copies in 1.5 years, when it actually had been out for two weeks and had sold 1,000 copies that we knew of.

• A senior editor who has published a great deal of my consulting stuff turns down a proposal for The Speaking Bible, telling my agent that I wasn’t a speaker and had no credibility there, despite the fact I’m in the Professional Speakers Association Hall of Fame®. In all those years, she had never looked at my bio or my web site. When I pointed this out to her, she stopped speaking to and corresponding with me.

Publishing is undergoing radical changes. Seth Godin has recently announced he’s going direct to his readers, foregoing publishers, in an arrangement with Amazon. He joins other, well-known fiction and  non-fiction authors in this pursuit.

If you’re in the publishing industry—or any business—don’t hire cheap to save money, because you then have an organization of low-priced incompetence. Don’t treat your resources—your authors—as if they are barely tolerable annoyances, or you’ll have very peaceful abandoned buildings.

But then again, that’s why I earn the big bucks, although apparently not in speaking.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

This is from one of my Private Roster Mentor Members, Mike Drayton in the UK, and his newsletter, Opus Performance:

A parking firm in Cardiff refused to cancel a parking ticket given to a woman who had stopped to attempt to talk a would be suicide victim from jumping off a bridge. Cathryn James wrote to the company appealing against the ticket, enclosing a letter of comendation from the poice praising he for clinging on to the suicidal woman. However, Excel parking said  there were ‘insufficient reasons’ to waive the ticket, and threatened legal action if she refused to cough up. They have since backed down following a vociferous campaign and adverse publicity.

Alan’s reaction: Bureaucracies stress means over ends, and rules over reason. You can’t use rational arguments against the basically irrational.

I’ve actually been told the following by “coaches” and “experts” and “gurus” over the years. They really require little explanation, except to ignore the advice completely.

• Get the audience involved by asking them to raise their hands (e.g., “How many of you have been to Pittsburgh?”). Sure, if your audience comprises six-year-olds.

• Use a workbook with empty spaces for the audience to complete (e.g., “Always be __________ when stating ideas”). Sure, if your audience comprises five-year-olds. (The correct answer is “dressed like a clown.”)

• Raise prices when demand exceeds supply. Right, if you like working all day, every day.

• Consultants are hired hands who should do whatever the client requests. Do you draw the line at changing the oil and washing the windows?

• Accelerated learning can reduce your information gathering by half. Yes, and reduce comprehension to zero.

• When you move about on the stage, I can’t focus on your points, so you need to plant yourself for people. Only if they, like you, have a learning disability that prevents you from learning from moving people.

• Replicate the movements and speech nuances of the prospect to gain acceptance. Or to gain entry into an asylum or hospital when you’re thrown out the window.

• You never break confidentiality with a client’s employee, no matter what. Great, I hope you never encounter one who wants to kill the boss or rob the warehouse.

• If you have a speech, you have a book. Of course, but an excruciatingly short book.

• To get your nerves under control, picture the audience sitting there naked. And how do you suspect they’re thinking of you standing up there?

• Always dress-down and dumb-down your language for clients, so as not to show them up. Only if you want stupid, poorly dressed clients.

• Never blow your own horn. Then get used to the silence.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

You cannot make this up. Two case studies.

Last night, with the Patriots playing like the St. Agnes School for Girls and being pummeled by the Jets, and the Giants beaten so badly by the Colts that someone should have used the Little League mercy rule, my wife and I decided we needed ribs. So off we went to Smokey Bones, a very good local rib joint, complete with loud  noise and cheap drinks and amazing ribs.

Since we were able to park immediately in front of the place and there was no loitering crowd, I knew they weren’t packed. The hostess greets us and asks, “Would you like to sit at one of the high top tables?” I hate these, they are uncomfortable and in a lousy area. “No, I would not,” I reply.

“Are you sure?” she presses.

“Yes, I am,” I tell her.

She then confers with a colleague over tables on her chart, while I point out three empty booths right over her shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll find a booth,” she says, continuing the weegie board maneuvers on her seating chart.

When the assistant takes us to the back of the restaurant, I’m amazed to find 20 available booths.

“What was the big deal with the high tops?” I asked.

“Well, no one likes to sit there, so we try to convince people to use them.”

I am NOT making that up. That’s what she said.

“In other words,” I pointed out, “I’m such an unimportant customer, and you care so little about me and my returning here, that you deliberately try to seat me in your worst seats, not your best seats?”

“You got a booth, didn’t you?” she asked.

I wonder if we’re getting the inferior ribs, or the ones that dropped on the floor, or were suspected to harbor Mad Cow disease? Can management get any dumber?

Maybe so.

This morning, on line at the Dunkin Donuts drive-through, my wife spots her favorite, pumpkin coffee, which they only offer this time of year (which is itself pretty stupid, since it’s hugely popular). I order one for her with two sweeteners and cream. But as we pull away from the tinny mike, she sees a sign, “Pumpkin coffee is pre-sweetened.”

“Find out what’s in it,” she said.

At the window, I engaged in the following conversation with a woman in a nice Dunkin uniform and visor, and this is the actual conversation, so help me Abbot and Costello. (If you can, play Sinatra’s “They Got a Lot of Coffee in Brazil” in the background.)

ME: Did you put sweetener in the coffee already pre-sweetened?

HER: Yes, you asked for it.

ME: But you didn’t say it was already sweetened.

HER: You didn’t ask.

ME: What is it pre-sweetened with?

HER: Pumpkin.

ME: No, no—what’s in it?

HER: Pumpkin.

ME: Is the Pumpkin coffee pre-sweetened?

HER: Yes.

ME: WITH WHAT?

HER: Pumpkin.

ME: Is there a sweetener within the pumpkin coffee when you pour it?

HER: Yes.

ME: And what is that? Sugar? Sweet n Low?

HER: Pumpkin.

At this point my wife says, completely audibly, “Oh, dear God, the poor thing.”

ME: Are you telling me that it’s the natural sugars that are found in pumpkins?

HER: It’s pumpkin.

ME: But if it’s the pumpkin itself, then it’s naturally sweetened, not pre-sweetened?

HER: It’s not naturally sweetened, it’s pre-sweetened.

ME: With pumpkin, right?

MY WIFE: Take the coffee and let’s go.

HER: Have a nice day.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I wrote here a while back of the terrible service in a local coffee shop, Fat Bagels, in the midst of huge competition on Main Street. It’s been pretty much devoid of customers and is now officially closed. Another is apparently opening in its place.

Perhaps they’ll run it as a business, not a hobby, and realize you need employees who understand they’re there for the customers, not vice versa. I can still picture their surly employee working on his cell phone instead of the business.

Consulting practices aren’t very different. Be attentive to clients, don’t mess up the order, and at least pretend you’re enthusiastic about the work!

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

As stated here at the beginning of the season, Ellen DeGeneres acted as uncomfortably as she looked as a judge on American Idol, and she’s just announced she won’t be back (leaving several million on the table contractually). It was dumb to offer the job to her, and dumb of her to accept it.

Mentor Program member David Gammel sent me a fascinating url—it is a “modern” technique to calculate hourly fees (http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/)!!

I’m now off to create an electric buggy whip, larger vacuum tube, and stronger struts for biplanes.

I received a phone message yesterday from Dan Wolman (I may have that spelling wrong) who said he’s a new assistant general manager for the men’s department at Saks. He had read my blog entry (scroll down a few postings) and wanted to talk about my experiences. After all this time, that’s a good sign.

Well, I called the direct number he gave me, which is not a working number. But perhaps I heard it wrong on the voice mail, so today I called Saks’ main line at their flagship New York store. The first time, after waiting for two minutes through boring advisories (this call may be recorded—yes, but why doesn’t the service improve?) I finally got an operator. She asked how I was doing, I told her it took two minutes to get to her, and she became quite snippy. When I asked for Mr. Wolman, she put me on hold—permanently! Five minutes later, I hung up and redialed.

After a similar wait, which I dared not mention, the operator told me that he couldn’t find Mr. Wolman’s name or that position, so I said that he should forward me to the store’s general manager, who I figured ought to know his own assistant. Guess what? On hold again, no one ever returned.

How is it that Saks harbors such completely uncaring people? Why is the service so slow and inefficient? Does any Saks executive EVER shop his or her own store or department? If they do in men’s wear, I’m hoping they take provisions and extra batteries. And I’m betting their families don’t try to reach them through the switchboard.

So, Mr. Wolman, if you’re out there and still reading my blog, I tried, I really did. Give me another call, I’m happy to talk and relay my being almost completely ignored by a dozen sales people. And now two operators. But, if you’re a new guy, maybe you can cap this well.

My latest dumb-ass, stupid management candidates:

Saks Fifth Avenue, where the store manager and CEO of the parent have refused to even acknowledge a letter pointing out that on a men’s floor filled with high-priced items and barren of customers, the sales help sat around talking to each other and studiously not making eye contact while I tried to actually buy clothing. Only one salesman offered to help, and another advised him NOT to try finding something in my size in another store (which he did, on the computer, and shipped it to me).

Delta Airlines, where the CEO has ignored my note to him that his operation couldn’t manage to change my Chicago/Boston leg to Chicago/Providence, demanded I buy another first class ticket, then charged me for it twice claiming Amex didn’t do it correctly (they had), and then refused to refund the Chicago/Boston leg that was cancelled! (There are full fare, refundable tickets.) Amex voided the overcharge, but Delta has gone mute.

Yeah, I know the CEOs aren’t going to answer their own mail because they’re so busy running these two notoriously efficient operations, but at least they could get some good people around them to do it for them. Of course, good people are only attracted by good people.

Shopping hint: Simply take clothing off the men’s floor in Saks in New York and see if anyone stops their conversation long enough to intercept you. If they don’t want to talk to you, maybe it’s free.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

An eight-year-old, self-assuming kid named David Morales designed a baseball cap to display patriotism as a school project, and included a couple of toy soldiers—maybe three inches long—holding tiny toy guns.

The “educators” of the Tiogue School in Coventry, Rhode Island, sent him home for violating the school district’s zero-tolerance policy for weapons!

I am not making this up. You can’t make up this kind of dumb-ass, stupid management.

Teachers have a propensity today to call themselves “educators,” but they’ll tarnish that word in the same manner they’ve tarnished “teacher” because they are increasingly bereft of judgment. Pulling a girl’s pigtails is not nice, but neither is it sexual harassment, as it’s been cited by several school authorities around the country. A toy soldier’s gun is neither a weapon nor a violation of a policy about weapons, unless you have a lot of time on your hands and a perverse nature.

Teaching is demanding work. It always has been. Lately, there is a trend to blame poverty, the parents, the kids, lack of resources, and global warming for poor performance in classrooms and on tests. Maybe if the teachers and the unions started to reward excellence and judgment, and not just staying on one’s feet for a long time, we’d get somewhere.

Oh, yeah: In another story from yesterday, a teacher at Providence Country Day School—another “educator”—is facing charges for allowing a group of minors from his school to use his back yard at two in the morning to drink beer and vodka. He was asleep inside while his son was hosting the party that became so loud that neighbors called police.

Whether your tax dollars in the public schools, or your tuition in the private schools, don’t you begin to wonder who’s responsible for teaching the educators?

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I received one of those hateful automated calls today from Discover Cards, advising me of possible fraud in those mechanical tones that are so irritating and depersonalizing, and demanding that we call as soon as possible. I didn’t know we had a Discover Card, so I called my wife who was out shopping, and found that she had just purchased something for $99, and hadn’t used the Discover Card for ages before that. (She pulled it out by accident. Everyone sends us credit cards.)

So Discover is spending I’d guess over a thousand dollars, once we call and put up with the bureaucratic nonsense, to assure themselves that we really spent $99 because some computer program assembled a profile saying this was suspicious.

Meanwhile, my Bentley dealer sent back my wife’s car, which was serviced and needed a couple of tires, costing about $3,000. They picked up mine while they were here and took it back for its servicing. I tossed the driver my keys from the balcony, where I was drinking an ’04 Paolo Scavino Barolo, reading a couple of books, and smoking a Cohiba. Nothing was signed, I have no bill, and Bentley will settle up with me later. I trust them. They trust me.

I remember once storming at Amex from London that, with my history of world travel, if they grew suspicious with UK transactions and caused me to interrupt my trip because of their paranoia, I could easily switch to MasterCard. They said they’d make a note and haven’t called since. That was ten years ago.

Dumb-Ass Stupid Management is rampant. That’s why good consultants are needed. Common sense is endangered in many operations, threatened by fear, avoidance of even minimal risk, surrender to computers, and DASM. But the economy is recovering nicely and competition abounds. I can live without Discover. But they can’t live with this kind of idiotic customer interaction.

By the way, see my Saks experience elsewhere here. No response yet. I’ve written to the CEO, regular mail. Let’s see if he’s on the ball.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

My posting about incredibly lousy service (with a glowing exception) at Saks in New York has been up for several days, and a copy was sent to the store manager’s personal email. No one from the store has responded.

That’s why the sales help is so poor, because management is so poor. We have an account at Saks, we spent several thousand dollars on that one visit, and no one cares about the service at senior level. The consulting lesson: Leadership is everything.

Of course, too many times leadership is nothing. The sales guys are just emulating what they see.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I’m hosting the latest Mentor Hall of Fame Meeting at The Palace hotel on Madison Avenue in New York. We had a few hours of free time yesterday afternoon, and my wife said, “Do you need to buy anything while we’re here?”

“Summer shirts,” I suggested, and we agreed to visit Saks, the huge department store, which is less than a block from the hotel.

We selected a few things on the seventh floor, agreed to split up and then meet on the sixth floor, which has a great layout. You can walk around in a huge circle with a dozen designer collections occupying the circumference. If you see something you like, you can wander farther into the displays. I love the concept, and since I saw only two other customers the entire time, it was a leisurely stroll.

I was carrying a Saks shopping bag filled with those other purchases, which tells you I’m a buyer. I was dressed well and any salesman (they were all male) in the business could tell that I could buy whatever I wished to.

YET NO ONE APPROACHED ME! In an empty store, with people working on commission, I was ignored. Some refused to establish eye contact. Others, talking to each other leaning against display cases, never stopped their chat.

Three-quarters of the way around my circuit, I passed Brioni, and a young man said, “Hello, can I be of help?” I put my bag down, told him what I wanted, and he told me to wait there while he rounded up some shirts from Brioni and Zegna down the hall. At this point my wife arrived, I tried on his suggestions, and all but one—which we both loved—fit.

“Can we order this in his size?” the salesman asked an older colleague standing around. “No, Brioni won’t send more,” he said dismissing us.

“Wait a minute,” I stopped him, “don’t you have other Saks stores that may still have some of these?” My salesman said, “That’s a good idea, let me check the computer.” The older guy just stared at me, as if I were ruining a nice day in the park.

My salesman arranged for that shirt to be shipped directly to me from another store, packed up the others, gave us his card and told us to call him when we needed anything else.

I will.

People ask me where I get my material as a writer and as a consultant. It’s all around us. How would you like to be the men’s department manager, or the general manager, or the product managers for any of those other designers at Saks? Do you think they need to shop their own business on a regular basis? Do you think they need to throw some of that excess overhead out of there and get some people who really want to work on behalf of the organization and themselves?

This is why some shine and some don’t, in business and in life. If you can’t look a customer in the eye and proactively try to help, you’re not going to be successful.

In fact, you may just lose your shirt.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

A columnist for the LA Times (Mary McNamara) is the latest in a slew who agree with me about Ellen Degeneres on Idol. If a major media star of her magnitude (awards, host of awards shows, popular talk show, popular TV shows, etc.) can’t handle the pressure and demands of a rather simple, idiosyncratic, and subjective judging assignment on a show whose audience is ready to love you, then what’s going on?

A good lesson for all of us is that “only the gifted few can wing it.” A master in one area doesn’t metamorphose into a master of another without preparation, skills, and some affinity for the work. (Every time Randy Jackson says “pitch” I think Ellen’s going to throw a baseball.)

We all require a market need, competency, and passion to succeed. A large paycheck is seldom enough.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Apparently, Toyota has known of many of its problems for years. Deaths have occurred, and Toyota has blamed the placement of floor mats. But now, under testimony, Toyota has had to admit that it first authorized repairs and new designs two years ago, without publicizing either. The regulatory agencies have the power to severely fine and punish Toyota, including the prohibition of selling cars in the US for a while. That’s not such a bad idea. It will revive the local industry, and show that we resent people being killed by corporate cover-up. We condemned American companies for such acts (Remember exploding fuel tanks?) and if Toyota were American-based, we’d be a lot more upset. And why hasn’t the CEO of Toyota resigned yet? Where does that buck stop exactly?

Meanwhile, up here in Providence, each major local affiliate—NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX—has at least five “meteorologists” (weather people). (I’m reminded of the one great line in a short-lived TV sitcom about a TV station, where a sportscaster calls the weather woman a “weather babe.” She says, “I prefer meteorologist.” He says, “But you don’t even have a college degree.” She says, “I said I PREFER it!”) Dr. Frank Fields, the famous NBC “meteorologist,” had his degree in, I believe, optometry.

In any case, these stations up here have more “meteorologists” than they do street investigative reporters, I am not making this up. They are highly paid, have segments far longer than the content dictates, and are notoriously inaccurate. They all predicted a huge snow storm here today, and while it’s been snowing for about seven hours, we have about a three-inch accumulation. Yet schools were cancelled, meetings postponed, offices closed, people given days off, public needs unmet by closed government offices, and so on. The State of Rhode Island has probably lost $50 million to $100 million in productivity, performance, and production, because these 15 clowns read their radar, and reports, and other nonsense but divined the tea leaves incorrectly. Where is THEIR performance review? I guess it’s alongside all those stock market analysts who brag when they’re right and are never held accountable when they are (usually) wrong. Since when is snow in New England a major happening? Or maybe they believe we’re in the age of global warming?

To end on the bright side, let’s hear it for Germany, taking the lead to bail out Greece and other struggling economies before a domino effect set in. It’s nice to see people taking accountability, especially when it’s an entire government. Of course, we’re dealing with out own important matters here, such as what Sarah Palin writes on her palm, the content of SuperBowl commercials, and the President’s inability to pronounce “corpsman” correctly.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved. Oh, heck, I’m disgusted, you can have these rights.

There is an upscale tavern on Main Street here called Fat Bellys. They serve some nice single malt scotch, good burgers, and even have salads. They do a healthy lunch and dinner business, so when a storefront became vacant directly across the street, the owners figured that this was the opportunity for them to get the morning crowd, and they opened Fat Bagels. And now the difference between strategy and implementation:

There are a dozen or so coffee shops within a half-mile on Main Street, from the thriving Dunkin’ Donuts (where the dogs get stale munchkins) to Steve’s Café (where they get fresh biscuits) to Starbucks (where they get nothing, so we don’t go there). It’s a highly competitive business, and I was eager to see what Fat Bagels was like.

As the stars converged, it so happened that the first opportunity to visit was on Friday, when I work out without my wife; when my car was being serviced so I was driving her Bentley which has no cup holders; and when the dogs were not with me.

Entering the establishment, I walked up to the register and the guy behind it totally ignored me. When I said, “How are you doing?” he replied, “Struggling with this.” A woman wandered over and looked at me. I looked back. Finally she said, “Can I get you something?” No one had yet greeted me in any manner at all.

I asked for two different types of coffee, and two flavored bagels. She took forever to get the two cups, and had to ask me twice what I wanted in each. I noticed that she didn’t seem to retrieve the right bagels, after asking me about those twice, but she assured me they were what I requested. She rang me up without a “thank you.” She brought new meaning to the word, “lethargic.”

I asked for a tray to carry the coffee.

“Tray?” she said, as if perplexed. “Joe, do we have coffee trays?” It was as if I had asked for a square circle.

Joe, the register-challenged guy, never looked up from now stocking the soft drink dispenser. “Nope.” The woman shrugged. It turns out, they also didn’t have those circular things that allow you to hold a hot cup safely, nor did they use the quality of cup that Dunkin’ uses so that you can hold it without discomfort.

I was stunned. I had two very hot cups of coffee in my hands, the bagels under my arm in a bag, and I guy who must have been the manager or owner wanders over. “Do you need help?” he asks.

“I’m not sure I can get these home,” I reply.

“How far do you have to walk to get home?” he inquires.

“Over to that car,” I point out, “and it has no cup holders.”

“Shouldn’t Bentley provide at least three cup holders in a car that expensive?” he irrelevantly asks me.

“Bentley makes driving experiences, not drinking experiences,” I helpfully explain, “but it seems you ARE in the drinking experience business. Why don’t you have trays?”

“We’ll probably be getting them,” he says, dubiously.

If I only had the dogs, I could have retrieved Koufax and created a stir. These people needed the sense of urgency that an unhappy German Shepherd can create.

I balanced the coffee on my leg in the car, burning my fingers three times, and arrived home. The coffee was pretty good, but the bagels, big surprise here, are not the ones I ordered.

How do you create a retail operation with comatose, uncaring staff, improperly supplied, and apparently clueless? This isn’t about the economy. It’s about having enough brains to either do it right or ask people who know how to do it right.

There’s nothing there for the dogs, so I probably won’t go back. Then again, there’s not much there for me, either.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

The manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, Charlie Manuel, removed star pitcher Pedro Martinez in the National League playoff game with the Dodgers last night after the seventh inning. Martinez had thrown a two-hit shutout over that period, and was leading 1-0.

The Phils went on to lose 2-1, evening the best-of-seven series at a game apiece.

For my money, the Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax was the finest pitcher in the history of baseball, and certainly the guy you wanted on the mound in a tough game. His world series earned run average (runs allowed per game) was .67; he threw four no-hitters in his career, including a perfect game. Over a six-year period, after which he retired due to injury, he posted the most impressive performances of any pitcher in history for my money, for example, winning 27 games one season when the Dodgers were averaging less than two runs per game (he lost only 5).

My point is that no one able to walk erect would have thought of removing Sandy Koufax from a game after he had completed seven shutout innings and had the lead. If the manager did so, he would have required police protection upon leaving the ballpark.

Today, everyone is a specialist, some pitchers only allowed to pitch for an inning in relief, and starters are subject to “pitch counts,” meaning they are yanked if they throw too many pitches. Managers don’t use their heads—they use numbers, and charts, and odds.

Many people have likened Martinez to Koufax for parts of his career. I don’t think they’re close, but I do believe Martinez is a terrific pitcher. Last night the players were congratulating him in the dugout after being removed, having completed seven innings. He was praised for an incomplete job. No one goes home after seven innings, or at 3 pm, or takes a weekend on Thursday.

We see the same kinds of “over-managing” and misdirection in business every day. The greatest leadership involves the ability to refrain, to resist, to relax. Sometimes, doing nothing other than allowing the momentum to continue is simply brilliant.

But that extra acquisition, that transfer of people, the investment in new facilities, the termination of an agreement—they represent ACTION and that’s what the leader perceives is important (instead of results).

Well, there was managerial action last night, and Philadelphia is now tied with the Dodgers instead of up two games to none. That manager interfered with a good thing and took action.

And this morning, he’s a loser.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

My wife and I had to pick up our truck, which had been “naked” without radar and laser detection, so we decided to go hunt out a mini-fridge so long as we had the cargo capability with us. The fridge in our bedroom was starting to go after ten years.

The two of us pulled into an appliance place at 6:30, the only two vehicles in the lot. The store, as big as half a football field, is deserted, with salesmen waiting in line for the next customer, as is the protocol. Promptly, a 30-something man with a tie but no jacket politely welcomes us and asks how he can help. Four other salesmen and two cashiers are standing around watching.

My wife explains our needs and he swiftly escorts us to the small refrigerators. There must be a dozen. I will pause here, for these are mere simulacrums.

All of you consultants out there: What would a customer want to know about mini-fridges? Only three things, really: size, capacity, and price. I’ve piloted a half-dozen planes without a pilot’s license, because you only need to know three things: altitude, speed, and horizon. I’ve flown bombers, the Goodyear Blimp, trainers, you name it. A mini-fridge is no different. Back to my story.

Not one fridge has the capacity or size on it. We can look at and guess the capacity, but it’s tough to judge exact size so, what would a customer want to do? Those of you who said, “measure it,” are still in the running for our big prize. And you know what is about to happen.

No ruler, no tape, no yardstick, nothing. So, our salesmen enlists his colleagues (who are not occupied anyway) and it takes ten minutes to turn up a tape measure! My wife says to me that this is ridiculous but I tell her, “Are you crazy? This is going to be a great story!” (Mid-story lesson: This happens to you every day, are you capturing it for your speeches and/or articles?)

All of the mini-fridges are a couple of inches too big for the furniture in which we must install it. We depart and head for Ward’s Public House, where they have the world’s best stuffies (stuffed quahogs, for the gastronomically-challenged), a great burger, fries, and Johnny Walker black (you don’t drink martinis with quahogs and burgers). Anyway, we decide over this feast that we will check the Internet.

At home we actually put into Google “mini-refrigerators” and are quickly exposed to about 700. We narrow it down, find the capacity, size, color and manufacturer that seem to make sense, eliminate one finalist when the online reviews are unanimous in having received damaged models, and make a choice. Amazingly, the choice turns out to be on Amazon, which we order with “one click” without even inputting our names or credit card. We quickly received a confirmation with delivery date estimation and a number to call should we have questions or problems.

Now, herein lies my moral tale.

If you want to compete at the local level, make use of your unique qualities: touch and feel the merchandise, provide immediate gratification in taking home the purchase on the spot, supply a face and means to return anything that doesn’t measure up, be prompt and efficient, and so forth. When it’s easier to buy something on line that you made an effort to purchase locally, you might as well get out of the business.

At that store, the numbers should have been on the product, and the salesman should have said, “We can order different sizes from the catalog right here, let me suggest some alternatives.” All of those manufacturers made different sizes.

Consulting isn’t difficult. I can improve almost any organization having been in it for less than an hour. It doesn’t require complex methodology, or a series of steps, or (heaven forfend) a needs analysis. It requires common sense, and these questions: What does your customer need? How can I most valuably provide it the first time?

You may be thinking this is easy. You’re right. That doesn’t make it any less valuable.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Maybe Congressman Joe Wilson didn’t inappropriately yell “Liar!” during the President’s speech the other night, but rather “Fire!”, hoping that would clear out the place so everyone could get back to work (or go back to sleep). (I know that’s illegal in a move theater, but perhaps not in Congress, which offers similar entertainment at much more expense.)

While the national media engage in childish name calling, egged on by cable channel hucksters, no one is paying much attention to the fact that the, ah, recovery, is, er, underway. Everything isn’t fixed, but most of it is sure looking up.

I’ve seen the same phenomena in organizations among management. They meet, discuss, hold side meetings, complain to colleagues, exchange memos and email, give lip service to the powerful, then go back and do what they want anyway. And then I’m brought in by an executive who can’t understand why nothing gets done!

Business gets all tied up in its own shorts the same way as Congress. No one provides the leadership to overcome the interest groups, those who feel ignored, those who believe they are perpetual “victims,” and those who are just intractably opposed to anything new (which almost always includes the legal department, and Congress is chock full of lawyers). I remember being called in for strategic help by a huge, national professional trade association. They had a 54-member board, no executive committee, and 55 different opinions! “We’re going to grow smaller,” I directed.

A major Fortune 25 company stunned me with “pre-meetings,” which were intended to pound out difficulties that no one wanted raised during the official meetings, because no one wanted to seem as though they weren’t team players. This eventually worked, but took about eight times longer than an honest, open debate. One person finally said, exhausted from being so polite, “Let’s put the dead rat on the table!” I found that rather elegant, though my retirement plan was not vested there.

Let’s stop worrying about nonsense, such as the President’s message to kids to study hard, or an organization’s demand that it improve customer service. I’m willing to believe there is no ulterior motive, except for studying hard and improving customer service. We’ve all become too paranoid, driven by media which seem to thrive on paranoia—their own, first and foremost.

You know, as children, we used to scream at those we suspected were trying to scam us, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

A coincidental combination? I think not.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Most of you know that I feel that HR is an unnecessary function. The transactional stuff is better done on an outsourced basis, and the transformational stuff is too difficult for the usual denizens of HR, who have little credibility and fall victim to every academic and training firm fad ever invented. I often ask skeptics: Can you name me two top HR executives in the last five years who went on to become CEO of Fortune 500 organizations? (You’ll find COOs, CIOs, Actuaries, General Counsels, even Vice Presidents of other functions, but not the top HR person.)

David Fields has kindly donated the following true story:

“Amidst a conversation with the CEO of a large advertising agency yesterday:

” ‘My first job was in HR for and my role gave me access to the profiles of every CEO and senior executive across the organization. After reviewing all of them two things were apparent: first, not a single one made the top ranks from HR; second, every one of them had done at least a stint in sales. I immediately transferred to a spot in sales, and the rest is history.’

“His comment also speaks volumes about the people who choose to stay in HR.”

I once wrote an article for a magazine suggesting that no one should ever be allowed to spend a career in HR. We were bombarded with letters—from career HR people, and no one else!

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

The future of newspapers is in one of two directions: The will form national networks, as have radio and TV stations, or they will grow small and serve localities. A good friend of mine and media expert agrees with me about this, over lunch and a couple of glasses of wine. So we know it’s true.

Apparently, very few in the newspaper business do.

The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and USAToday are already networked. They serve the nation (and beyond) with national news and some localized flavor. People in Phoenix will be purchasing the local editions of those networks, as will the good people in San Francisco, Boston, and Cincinnati.

So what happens to the Boston Globe (which the New York Times is unloading at a huge loss) or the Hartford Courant, or the Philadelphia Enquirer? They had better understand that no one cares whether they have a bureau in London or a reporter in Kabul. We don’t need national business reports from them. We need stories on the local school system, the governor’s fight with the legislature, and who will be named to the state’s football all-star team.

Yet what brilliant strategies have such newspapers embarked upon? They’ve CUT local staffs and local coverage. (The Hartford Courant, as just one example, is engaged in the curious practice of “aggregation,” which essentially means you take other, local media coverage and reprint it yourself, sometimes with attribution, sometimes not. When I was taking journalism courses they called that “plagiarism.”)

Just as Kodak was still hiring chemists as film was being made obsolete by electronics, just as no vacuum tube manufacturer successfully entered the transistor business, newspapers have decided that it’s all about whether or not they cooperate with the Internet (their particular monster in the closet, even though they never really handled radio or TV all that well). The market model has changed, and has been changing for decades. Finally, newspapers are down to a few last fingers clinging to the branch, but the branch is cracking. (And they’ve had their chance, because they’ve made some huge profits in the past, but those simply went to the owning families or chains.)

This isn’t an issue of whether people enjoy holding a physical newspaper, kicking back, and reading with a cup of coffee or something stronger (they do). It’s about value and who is willing to pay for what kind of value.

When I edited our high school newspaper, I would tour the school in the morning to make sure the distribution was efficient. And I inevitably found absolute quiet, once a month, during those tours. A lack of cacaphony was otherwise unthinkable in this rowdy, inner city school. But everyone was hunkered down with the newspaper open—looking for their names. (So were most of the teachers.)

Locally, people want to see their name, their kids’ names, their neighbors’ names. The don’t need local news to tell them about national unemployment but rather about local jobs. The can learn about the country’s health care debate elsewhere, but not where to go to get a flu shot.

Don’t let anyone tell you that strategy is an esoteric or unnecessary or unworkable exercise. It’s vital to do it right, almost always with someone from outside the organization, untainted by history, politics, superiors, and a vested retirement plan. This is where consultants are worth their weight in platinum. It’s too bad for the industry that newspapers never thought to hire more of them.

But, then again, that’s old news.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

I’m growing really bored with newspaper owners and management whining and crying about unfair competition and the generally nasty ways of the universe. Compete or close. Newspapers won’t be “lost,” they will just be in a different alignment.

Radio hit its stride when networks were formed, so that dramatic shows, musicals, comedies, and news could be heard at the same local hour in widespread communities. (Don’t forget that railroads put many local stores out of business once the Sears Catalog could be distributed and fulfilled that way. The “Internet distribution” is hardly new.) Radio didn’t immediately lose ground to television, but did so only when TV networks were formed in the early 1950s. Cable, Apple TV, on-demand and all the rest use basically similar distribution but with many less restraints on language and depiction, and much more flexibility in time shifting and remote viewing.

Newspapers had a hard time dealing with radio, so the fact that the Internet may be their “last stand” in this form is hardly surprising. Or cause for the rending of garments, for that matter.

Newspapers will become more networked. We already have network-newspapers: USAToday, The Wall Street Journal, national editions of The New York Times, and so forth. That will intensify, so that people in Denver or Dallas or Dayton will subscribe to the Times, which will carry locally-relevant sections (not unlike current “zoning” done by metropolitan papers trying to appeal to neighborhoods and suburbs). Will San Francisco collapse without The Chronicle or Boston disappear without The Globe? I kind of doubt it. Declining readership and advertising tells you that they are no longer the pillars of community information or business.

We have survived well in this country through the trauma of NOT manufacturing televisions any more and watching GM declare bankruptcy. The current recession is clearly ending, though it will take some time, things are looking up. Not every city requires or is entitled to a local daily newspaper. When I was younger, New York had six dailies. Today, there are three, barely.

Incidentally, these aren’t idle ramblings. I’ve had as clients The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant, Singapore Straits Times, The Providence Journal, and a dozen others, and I’m the only non-journalist in history to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Press Institute. Newspaper ownership—predominantly families (Hearst) or conglomerates (Gannet) in the past—have taken zillions out of the newspapers during flush times. No one has been inventive and innovative enough to compete in tougher times, with rare exception.

Newspapers will be around. But they are going to change through economic circumstances since they apparently couldn’t or wouldn’t of their own volition.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

The Standard Hotel is new to the Meatpacking District in downtown New York, and I like it quite a bit. I’ll come back when I’m in the neighborhood (our grandchildren are about 10 blocks away). However, dining there is another issue.

The restaurant has been open for only two days, and is still on its “shakedown cruise.” Compared to this, the Titanic had a successful journey.

At breakfast, when people want coffee, it is most difficult to get (drum roll, please): coffee! It takes ten minutes or more because the coffee is a half-mile from the tables, and management insists on “barristas” (how I detest that pomposity) making it in special receptacles that, inexplicably, hold 1.5 cups of coffee, so they are useless for sharing or a refill at the table.

I had to ask a manager for service, since everyone was ignoring our table. My wife’s grapefruit, a fifteen-minute wait, became grapefruit juice, then a “brulee grapefruit,” and finally cancelled. Her soft-cooked eggs were pure liquid. My breakfast sandwich was tasty but cold. Her accompanying “toast soldiers” were AWOL. (“Are they marching to Valley Forge?” she asked an uncomprehending waitress, apparently lacking either a sense of history or irony.)

When we walked into the restaurant, the hostess actually seemed stunned, as if customers were not expected at the front door. When we asked for outside seating, she stopped in her tracks and actually uttered, “Oh!” She eventually got us to one of several tables available, while getting in the way of three servers.

The gentleman next to us, there before us, finally got up and left when the restaurant could not deliver his smoked salmon which, to my shallow culinary knowledge, requires only to be placed on a plate.

I could go on (coffee, when finally served, was not accompanied by spoons), but I may get giddy. This is a management problem, not an employee, motivation, communications, or wage problem. It is the height of stupid management. On your first day, when coffee can’t be delivered within two minutes at breakfast, you move the coffee. (That will be $25,000 for the advice, please.)

The buck stops at management, and fixing these things is not rocket science. We received no check and abundant apologies. We were told to come back, that they were still experimenting.

Yes, but I don’t enjoy being a lab rat.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

There is a near-mythical titanium card, usually called The Black Card, issued by invitation by American Express. Among the criteria for acceptance is an annual, minimum expenditure of $250,000. It’s actually titanium, and can’t be shredded (there is a pouch provided if you have to return it for any reason), and there is no limit on it. My wife and I used the service of a single call from Capri, Italy to reverse our entire trip and return home the next day when my daughter gave birth prematurely last September. The agent took care of every single need in 20 minutes, and left a message for us at DeGaulle Airport where we changed planes, that if we didn’t make our connection, she had a later flight also reserved, first class.

I tell you this because I’m receiving offers and reading ads for a Visa “black card.” It purports to have extra benefits and “status,” but it’s really a woeful derivative of Amex. If you’re going to try something, at least be original. When you have to leap on to a competitor’s coattails, it means you’re acknowledging that they’re better, got there first, and have a stronger brand.

A lesson for everyone: If you have to use the competition’s brand and signature approach, you’re just not good enough to compete in that arena. Therefore, I welcome Visa to the ranks of DASM.

(See the prior post here and how Visa could learn a lot from The Naval War College.)

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

* My book “Our Emperors Have No Clothes” had a working title of “Dumb Ass Stupid Management,” which the publisher was too chicken to use.

*****
A firm named JL Powell started sending me expensive, hard copy catalogs out of the blue. I’m assuming they purchased some special lists. Their casual clothing is expensive, e.g., $230 for a pair of deck shoes.

The first time I ordered, I was told one item couldn’t be shipped for two weeks. It finally took three. The second time I ordered, a few days ago, I received an email back several hours later telling me my order was cancelled because the item was no longer available. This from a new catalog I had received that day.

There will be no third time I order. When I sent an email requesting my name be taken off all lists, an actual human being wrote back to tell me she’s happy to do so—no questions about why, or my experiences, or my interests.

Now, this company is spending major bucks on advertising and promotion. I had never heard of them and I am squarely, apparently, in their demographic target. After making the investment, successfully finding me, AND enticing two orders, they are now on my black list, and I’m inaugurating them here into DASM. (By comparison, the general manager of Bergdorf Goodman in New York called me personally this morning about a problem I was having there.)

Marketing has these elements:
1. Identifying value
2. Identifying targets for that value
3. Successfully attracting those targets
4. Converting the attraction in to a purchase
5. Sustaining the purchase into loyalty, repeat business, and referrals

If you stop after point 3, you might as well do what a friend of mine did in the Mirage Casino in Las Vegas: He handed his money to the dealer, but refused the chips the dealer assembled. “Let’s just cut out the middle stuff,” he said, “and you just keep it all.”

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.