Risk: The Science And Politics Of Fear

Just took a week’s R&R - no phone, no laptop - just beach and Canadian cottage country.

Got a few books read including; Risk: The Science And Politics Of Fear by Dan Gardner

I loved it - a book most all politicians and marketers won’t want you to read.

Dan - if I went though it again with a fine toothed comb - I am sure I saw a couple of relative statistics of your own!

 

Captain D. Michael Abrashoff - It’s Your Ship

I recently read “It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques From The Best Damn Ship In The Navy” by Captain D. Michael Abrashoff. (See the Bookshelf)

I confess, I usually pick a book because;

a) I already am familiar with the author
b) It was recommended to me - either personally, or through a review

This was a little different, I spent a few days in San Francisco and was wandering through a bookstore. Well, having served several years in the RCNVR, a text by a Naval Officer writing on management intrigued me.

First off, the title is wrong! The book is better than that - it is about leadership.

The book does not have anything “new” in it if you read texts on leadership and management. But what I enjoyed about it was the first person narrative, with some real examples of of how those difficult conversations happened.

 

The Game Changer

Just finished reading The Game-changer: How You Can Drive Revenue And Profit Growth With Innovation by AG Lafley & Ram Charan (see bookshelf). The book was great - but…….

In business books like this, there is great writing about strategic goals and planning - but the piece that is missing? We know that there were a lot of very difficult conversations getting traction on these - you don’t make changes in a multi-billion dollar company without breaking a few eggs.

Those difficult conversations is what I would like to read about.

 

Component Marketing

I just finished reading Tim Hurson’s book Think Better: An Innovator’s Guide to Productive Thinking (see bookshelf) The book mentions a topic that has been on my “to write” list for a while.

Mr. Hurson mentions successes by W.L. Gore and Assoc. as well as others, that have successfully become household names, even though they do not physically manufacture or create the “end user” product. In this case Gore-Tex. The term is component marketing, getting the consumer actually asking for your product.

As mentioned a few times in this blog, I am employed with an organization that is a (very) small provider of services to the automotive industry. In the automotive industry, a key source of revenue is getting you, the customer, to bring your vehicle to the dealer for your maintenance and repairs,rather than the corner garage or your local quick lube joint. When you think of the car manufacturers, you instinctively consider other manufacturers as being the only competetion, however at the dealership level, the competition is also those other automotive service providers.

Except for real “gear heads”, the parts that go into your car are invisible. You may know that brakes, or shock absorbers are there, but really, so what?

About a year ago I did a presentation demonstrating that the service parts on a motor vehicle are just as invisible to the end-user (the owner or driver) as the computer chip in a computer. Yet one of the most famous component marketing campaigns in history is Intel Corp’s. “Intel Inside” advertising. (who above the age of 15 does NOT remember it?) For a supplier of something that no one outside of the technology world will ever see, Intel is a household name. To this day the little “Intel” sticker is on most consumer and business laptops or PC’s that you can purchase.

Personally, I saw a huge opportunity for the OEM industry to mimic that type of component campaign. The idea never went anywhere, but to this day I wonder if it could be as successful as the “Intel Inside” campaign was.

Maybe some marketing guru can tell me why it wouldn’t work.

Maybe some auto dealer is willing to try with your local market tier 3 marketing dollars.

 

A Few Days R&R

Took a few days off! it has been too long.

Spent an extra long weekend in SanFran. Did all of the usual tourist visits and squeezed in a visit with friends at Travis AFB.

All in all a wonderful time

 

How Cheap is This?

Talk about ignorance, or nasty advertising.

Here in Canada, we use the metric system (yes I grew up in that change) it was a hassle when Miles changed to Kilometres. When it came to automobile “gas mileage”, we went from the familiar “miles per gallon” to the more confusing number of litres of fuel per 100 kilometres.

Now - liters are smaller than US gallons (to the tune of approximately 1 US Gal being 3.78 L) So in the Litres per 100 Kilometres equation, smaller numbers are better, vs. large numbers in the “miles” part of miles per gallon.

I drove past a car dealer yesterday and found that they had emblazoned absolutely HUGE numbers on the cars being sold such as 66 or 77.

I could not see any other text at the time, but I knew that sure as hell, that those cars would not get 77 MPG, and even a Hummer gets better fuel economy than 77 litres of fuel per 100 kilometers.

So, I drove past again today - what they had done was put 77 KMPG

In other words, the shorter kilometer as the distance measure, with the larger gallon as the fluid volume measurement.  And I am sure that there will be some out there illiterate enough to get caught in a scam like that.

 

The Dead Computer

Yes, it happens to us tech types as well. A corrupted device driver toasted my laptop - it needed to be rebuilt from scratch. No software repairs worked. Rebuilding is a pain, But; yes I have backups of all my data……

To paraphrase that old American Express commercial, Backups, don’t leave home without them.

 

A Wonderful Thing

The Internet can be a wonderful thing. Every now and again you stumble onto something that is so perfect, that you have to share.

Perfect prose, perfect subject matter, and perfect humour.

OK, it is a little unsettling as well read it here.

 

A Dime a Dozen

January 09 2008

I know that blogs in the tech space are a dime a dozen, but for a dozen years I have complained about many aspects of technology and IT management. Arguing with any one who would listen (usually just my imagination) about how it coulda, shoulda, woulda been better.

As in anything - there comes a time to put up or shut up