The Business Brickyard

"What Matters Now" is an e-book that was created and curated by Seth Godin as he invited writers, bloggers, thinkers and doers to contribute 20-200 words about what they were thinking about as we head into 2010.

Great businesses should posses the qualities/attributes of a great person. The kind of person that you want to be around. Everyone knows a person like that (I hope) but do you know a Company like that? Is it your own? People are intrigued and attracted to great personality. Great personality keeps them engaged. You are selling to people...Aren't you?

Love, passion, energy, curiosity, compassion, guts, big ideas, creativity, humor, honesty, fun, exploration, resilience, persistence....

How many of these feel like YOUR business? Did they at one time but now... Not so much?

One of the most popular concepts from my book...

Ever notice how great things happen every time you peel yourself away from your desk/office and meet with clients, prospects or partners but how rarely you feel able to do it?

National Geographic HD has a great series called "Ultimate Factories."   I just watched an episode that showed the entire assembly process of a BMW Z4 from start to finish.  From the robots that make the welds to the machines that rotate the car through baths of paint to the people that fit the steering wheel in place. I had never thought much about that particular car but seeing the machine and human work that goes into creating the Z4 completely changes how I now look at it and loaded me with incredible stories I could tell myself and others if I owned one.

We keep running into companies that believe the old saying "You have to spend money to make money."

They spend a small fortune on marketing and a fleet of sales people begging for business from prospects. Effectively showing more "love" to someone else's clients than their own.

Are your customers just using your product/service or are they an integral part of your company? If not, why not?

Most importantly....

Do you really like your customers? Are they part of your business "Family"?

Complaining is easy. In the end, it only provides some temporary relief from frustration. Figuring out and executing a smart solution is the hard part.

One shouldn't come without the other.

I worked with a company a few years back whose President brought along a Super Soaker water gun to every staff meeting.

All meetings had 1 simple rule: Nobody is allowed to whine or complain about something unless they also propose a solution (Any solution) that fixes that problem. Failure to do the hard part resulted in a soaking blast of water.

UPS has over 94,000 delivery vehicles, 282 airplanes (the 8th largest fleet in the world) and over 425,000 employees across the globe. Over the years they have developed one of the most sophisticated hand held devices ever devised. By the end of 2008 they will have over 70,000 of them deployed worldwide. They call it the Delivery Information Acquisition Device, DIAD for short. The latest iteration has 3 different radio types and is the instant entry point for a tracking system that averages over 10 million tracking requests a day.

Pablo Piccasso once said, to paraphrase, "I have tried, above all, to retain the mind of a child."

The man had a point.

At the core of all of the creativity/brainstorming labs are various attempts to bring our minds back to when we were young. Wide-eyed kids that wanted to know anything about everything. No fear of failure, no reflex to quickly knock down an idea.

And best of all, no idea that was too big. Ever.

Somewhere in our past everything started to change. When exactly this happened is different for everyone, but sadly it's a universal phenomenon.