Inside the Torpedo
Geoffrey A. Moore has become a legend in the modern business era. He is kind of an oracle and pied-piper rolled into one clairvoyant visionary. I cannot begin to count the number of times I have seen Geoffrey Moore’s work either quoted, referenced, or bastardized by mid-level managers and big corporate executives alike. His two primary gospels are “Crossing the Chasm” and “Inside the Tornado”. I have read both of these books. They were interesting, insightful, and not too long with reasonably large print. I enjoyed reading both of these books. I have not, however, enjoyed living my management’s interpretations of these books. The problem with Moore’s work is that every two-bit manager who reads either of these books suddenly becomes the next Jack Welsh and is determined to live the dream, or inflict the nightmare depending on which side of desk you are sitting. So in response to any manager, strategist, or executive who has tried to implement Geoffrey Moore’s ideas into the real world where people actually have to accomplish things rather than just philosophize about them, I would like submit my rebuttal to Mr. Moore. I affectionately call this “Inside the Torpedo”. Before reading further, consider fully exactly what it would be like to be inside Torpedo….consider the feeling of being inside the torpedo as it travels to its destination….consider the end game of the torpedo. One of Geoffrey Moore’s most startling lessons is that “as markets move from stage to stage in the Life Cycle, the winning strategy does not change, it actually reverses the prior strategy. The very skills that you’ve just perfected become your liabilities and if you can’t put them aside to acquire new ones you are in for tough times”. “Tough times! Holy cow!” says the manager. There are two key points that I need to make here 1) most managers in business are over grown children who never got their way growing up. This is why they are managers. They can make a living telling other people what to do. 2) Two of the great lessons from every parent to every child are - never play with a gun and always treat every gun as if it were loaded so you don’t shoot anyone. Now think again about what Geoffrey A. Moore has just said in conjunction with those two very important lessons. Mr. Moore has just given a fully loaded .357 magnum to every over grown child on the planet along with a shot of whisky and pack of smokes. Your assets will become you liabilities. I think that may be true over time. However that statement, turned into strategy at the incompetent manager level turns into ideas like “we need to rearrange the deck chairs” (incompetent managers for some reason love to talk about deck chairs – I think it is so we will all think that they own boats – but we all know that only cruise ships have deck chairs so we really know that rather than owning a really cool sail boat he or she just got back from a Disney cruise and probably tripped over the deck chairs on the way to the buffet. I guess that’s why they need rearranging.) Do you know what rearranging the deck chairs means to the manager with a loaded gun? It means doing things like breaking all the long established, trusted, and invaluable relationships we have with our clients and putting snot-nosed MBA’s from Wharton in as new team leads. This is part of being inside the torpedo. I know my fate when this happens, I know the outcome when we make the people who pay our bills mad. I am inside the torpedo and there is nothing I can do to change my fate. If this type of action weren’t bad enough, newly empowered Jack Welsh wannabes then try to modify and interpret Moore’s ideas. Therefore, if over time our assets will become our liabilities….the over grown child concludes….it also must also be true that our liabilities will over the long run, become our assets. When managers who are disciples of Geoffrey Moore start extrapolating their own conclusions from Mr. Moore’s books, this is what I like to call “firing the torpedo”. This usually results in someone getting fired, like us by our best client, who we just turned into a liability. This of course over the long term does become an asset, but the new Jack Welsh didn’t realize that our new liability over the long term has become an asset not for us but our competitors. Geoffrey A. Moore’s work, in the hands of trained professionals, of managers who are not over grown children, who know how and when to fire a gun, is probably thought provoking and energizing in setting a corporate vision over time. If Geoffrey A. Moore really wanted to help the masses in business today, he would have a quiz that people would have to pass before they could buy his books. If he would follow this simple advice, he could keep his asset from turning into a liability and he could save us all a lot of torpedo rides.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
What About the 72 Virgins?
What about the 72 Virgins?
This one has always intrigued me. The notion we hear that these mindless clowns who blow themselves up in an effort to kill innocent citizens or who fly airplanes into buildings and kill thousands of people they never knew and with whom they had no quarrel, would get 72 virgins waiting for them when they make it to their ever-after. Looking at these ruffians in photos on the news and listening to the mindless drivel that inexplicably was compelling enough to make them kill themselves for someone else’s idea of what the world should be makes me wonder. What about the 72 virgins? What did they do? If virgins are a part of anyone’s version of heaven, which makes me wonder even more about the intellect of this crowd, what in the world did the virgins do in this life to make them a part of heaven for the likes of these homicidal morons? What kind of deal is that for them? What kind of philosophy or religion says that when you get to heaven you will have 72 virgins for your pleasure and your pleasure alone with no regard for their feelings in the matter? Is that what heaven is? What if the terrorists get there and the virgins are all ugly? Maybe the women are virgins for a reason. Maybe there will be 72 nuns with wooden rulers. It boggles my imagination to think that there are leaders in the Muslim community, that have successfully sold the vision that when their special followers ignite, detonate, or incinerate themselves and take a few others with them that they are entitled to 72 other human souls for their sole pleasure. I am sorry, but how easily led are these followers? I might have believed something like that in second grade, however, by the time I was old enough to know what a virgin was, I would have been able to sift out the shit from the shine-o-la. To quote Bear Bryant in the movie “Forrest Gump” – these have to be the stupidest people alive”. But I still can’t get it out of my head, that the supposed waiting virgins are the ones who really get skunked in this deal. It’s not like any of these beasts would have been a door prize even if they had half their brain engaged and had taken a bath once in a while. So the sales job to the homicide soldiers by the Al Qaeda leadership is this: do what I say and you have my personal guarantee that there will be 72 virgins waiting for you on the other side. Now go blow yourself up. I’m sorry, I would need a little more than Al Qeada’s good faith and credit to have me go do anything more than walk out to my driveway to get my newspaper. Are these people that gullible or are they just stupid. Once again from Forrest Gump, I guess stupid is as stupid does. Also, what happens after the 72 aren’t virgins anymore, do they have to stick around? Do they send in replacements? After all these geniuses just blew themselves up and are dead for eternity and all they have to show for it is 72 virgins who probably don’t want to be there in the first place. It seems to me like they would need to pace themselves if 72 virgins were all they got for their efforts. And imagine spending eternity with 72 women who weren’t too wild about their fate in the first place. They may still be virgins after all is said and done…and cranky ones at that. I sure would like to see the faces of these terrorist dumb-asses when they show up on the other side and get a one way ticket to hell punched instead of the 72 virgins. But then again, maybe eternity with 72 crabby women keeping company against their will with some slobs who couldn’t think of anything better to do than blow themselves up is exactly what these idiots deserve.
This one has always intrigued me. The notion we hear that these mindless clowns who blow themselves up in an effort to kill innocent citizens or who fly airplanes into buildings and kill thousands of people they never knew and with whom they had no quarrel, would get 72 virgins waiting for them when they make it to their ever-after. Looking at these ruffians in photos on the news and listening to the mindless drivel that inexplicably was compelling enough to make them kill themselves for someone else’s idea of what the world should be makes me wonder. What about the 72 virgins? What did they do? If virgins are a part of anyone’s version of heaven, which makes me wonder even more about the intellect of this crowd, what in the world did the virgins do in this life to make them a part of heaven for the likes of these homicidal morons? What kind of deal is that for them? What kind of philosophy or religion says that when you get to heaven you will have 72 virgins for your pleasure and your pleasure alone with no regard for their feelings in the matter? Is that what heaven is? What if the terrorists get there and the virgins are all ugly? Maybe the women are virgins for a reason. Maybe there will be 72 nuns with wooden rulers. It boggles my imagination to think that there are leaders in the Muslim community, that have successfully sold the vision that when their special followers ignite, detonate, or incinerate themselves and take a few others with them that they are entitled to 72 other human souls for their sole pleasure. I am sorry, but how easily led are these followers? I might have believed something like that in second grade, however, by the time I was old enough to know what a virgin was, I would have been able to sift out the shit from the shine-o-la. To quote Bear Bryant in the movie “Forrest Gump” – these have to be the stupidest people alive”. But I still can’t get it out of my head, that the supposed waiting virgins are the ones who really get skunked in this deal. It’s not like any of these beasts would have been a door prize even if they had half their brain engaged and had taken a bath once in a while. So the sales job to the homicide soldiers by the Al Qaeda leadership is this: do what I say and you have my personal guarantee that there will be 72 virgins waiting for you on the other side. Now go blow yourself up. I’m sorry, I would need a little more than Al Qeada’s good faith and credit to have me go do anything more than walk out to my driveway to get my newspaper. Are these people that gullible or are they just stupid. Once again from Forrest Gump, I guess stupid is as stupid does. Also, what happens after the 72 aren’t virgins anymore, do they have to stick around? Do they send in replacements? After all these geniuses just blew themselves up and are dead for eternity and all they have to show for it is 72 virgins who probably don’t want to be there in the first place. It seems to me like they would need to pace themselves if 72 virgins were all they got for their efforts. And imagine spending eternity with 72 women who weren’t too wild about their fate in the first place. They may still be virgins after all is said and done…and cranky ones at that. I sure would like to see the faces of these terrorist dumb-asses when they show up on the other side and get a one way ticket to hell punched instead of the 72 virgins. But then again, maybe eternity with 72 crabby women keeping company against their will with some slobs who couldn’t think of anything better to do than blow themselves up is exactly what these idiots deserve.
Competition and the Market Economy
If you have ever wondered about the legitimacy of the capitalist claim that market competition provides better services at better prices, then I have a suggestion for you. If you’d like to test this premise, take a trip to the left coast, the Bay Area, the home of The Haight, one of the few places in America where it is not only okay to be a way-leftie, but it is cool and puts you in the center of the Bay Area’s political mainstream. I suggest that you spend time at Fisherman’s Warf and U Cal-Berkley. Last year I was able to spend consecutive days in each of these areas. Here is what I found: Fisherman’s Warf was teaming with tourists. It is filled with places to get great seafood, bars with good bands, shopping (everything has its darker side), and tourist attractions like Alcatraz and the famous sea lions. Seven days a week Fisherman’s Warf is brimming with tourists. Those realists among you have probably already filled out the mental image of Fisherman’s Warf as also packed with something else. Something most localities that rely on tourists absolutely hate – panhandlers. My completely subjective conclusion is that Fisherman’s Warf has more panhandlers per block than any other tourist location in the country. Those of you who are both realists and economists are now also probably concluding that with all these targets (oops I mean tourists) and all these panhandlers, that these panhandlers must be pretty good. What? Good panhandlers? Please move to the head of the class. The panhandlers at Fisherman’s Warf were, without question, the best panhandlers I have ever seen. In general they were polite, often entertaining, and almost always helpful. There were the “silver” guys who put on rudimentary street shows, there was the “bushman” who would scare the pants off your pal by hiding by a trash can, camo’ed from sight until the last minute when your victim passed by. The Bushman rustled his camo at just the right moment, getting a fabulously amusing “start” from your intended target. (I admit the bushman nailed me but good – it was the best dollar my friends spent on the Warf). There were also clever signs asking for help and offers to help tourists find elusive tickets for a bay cruise or Alcatraz tour. These panhandlers were the crème de la crème of their trade. Why? Because there were so darned many of them that if they weren’t pleasant, polite, entertaining, or helpful they had no chance to get any of the thousands of tourist dollars walking around in tourist pockets. I saw a couple of less than pleasant panhandlers on the Warf (undoubtedly rookies) making no headway with anyone at all. These must have been transplanted panhandlers from Berkley.
Prior to spending a couple of days on the Warf, we thought we would tour Berkley. See the campus of Cal-Berkley, hit a few of the bars that were probably a lot more fun back in the 60’s, and generally try to absorb some of the 60’s culture that dissipated into the atmosphere decades ago. There were still some living relics from the 60’s playing their guitars on the street for pocket change and there were some 60’s wannabe generation X’ers who appeared lost trying to be a new millennium hippie. As you might expect in any metropolitan area, there were panhandlers. I noticed while I was there that the Berkley panhandlers were an unusually snarlly lot. They asked for a hand out as though they expected it, as though my money was really their money that mysteriously found its way into my pocket. One particularly unpleasant panhandler berated us multiple times as we spent time strolling the streets of Berkley. His demeanor deteriorated each time we refused his demands for money to the point where we were flogged with obscenities the final time we tried to dart past him. As we were just getting out of earshot of this particularly unpleasant panhandler (I think the term bum probably applies to him, but I am trying to be sensitive here) I heard what I am sure was a well intentioned lady approach the snarly panhandler and ask “would you be offended if I offered you a few dollars?” Offended?!? Why would he be offended? Had she just heard what he had called us? This is not someone who offends easily, but there she was, not only asking if she could give the most snarly of panhandlers money, but making sure that it was done in a appropriate way, not in any way offensive. Heck, I wouldn’t have been offended if she’s offered me a few bucks too, but that didn’t happen. This, however, is the problem with the Berkley panhandlers and why they will never be up to the “standards” set by the panhandlers of Fisherman’s Warf – they don’t have to be good. There is no incentive for them to be the best panhandler they can be. There is less competition for tourist dollars in Berkley, there are fewer panhandlers, and there are people willing to fork over their cash to these less than pleasant panhandlers without provocation and do so in an inoffensive way. I find that highly offensive. Why should these panhandlers be offered “a few” inoffensive dollars while my pal the bushman is over on the Warf scaring the shorts off my friends 12 hours a day? My suspicion is that the bushman makes in an hour what these Berkley low-lifes make in a week…and you know what, the bushman earns what he gets. Like anything in a free market economy, there is equilibrium. Products find their demand or they go away, skills migrate where they can be rewarded, and competition brings out the best in everyone, even in panhandlers. The bushman is additive to the experience of the Warf, not because he wanted to be, but because he had to be. The competition is pretty stiff on the Warf, if you are a panhandler, you’d better be the best or you’ll soon find yourself panhandling in Berkley.
If you have ever wondered about the legitimacy of the capitalist claim that market competition provides better services at better prices, then I have a suggestion for you. If you’d like to test this premise, take a trip to the left coast, the Bay Area, the home of The Haight, one of the few places in America where it is not only okay to be a way-leftie, but it is cool and puts you in the center of the Bay Area’s political mainstream. I suggest that you spend time at Fisherman’s Warf and U Cal-Berkley. Last year I was able to spend consecutive days in each of these areas. Here is what I found: Fisherman’s Warf was teaming with tourists. It is filled with places to get great seafood, bars with good bands, shopping (everything has its darker side), and tourist attractions like Alcatraz and the famous sea lions. Seven days a week Fisherman’s Warf is brimming with tourists. Those realists among you have probably already filled out the mental image of Fisherman’s Warf as also packed with something else. Something most localities that rely on tourists absolutely hate – panhandlers. My completely subjective conclusion is that Fisherman’s Warf has more panhandlers per block than any other tourist location in the country. Those of you who are both realists and economists are now also probably concluding that with all these targets (oops I mean tourists) and all these panhandlers, that these panhandlers must be pretty good. What? Good panhandlers? Please move to the head of the class. The panhandlers at Fisherman’s Warf were, without question, the best panhandlers I have ever seen. In general they were polite, often entertaining, and almost always helpful. There were the “silver” guys who put on rudimentary street shows, there was the “bushman” who would scare the pants off your pal by hiding by a trash can, camo’ed from sight until the last minute when your victim passed by. The Bushman rustled his camo at just the right moment, getting a fabulously amusing “start” from your intended target. (I admit the bushman nailed me but good – it was the best dollar my friends spent on the Warf). There were also clever signs asking for help and offers to help tourists find elusive tickets for a bay cruise or Alcatraz tour. These panhandlers were the crème de la crème of their trade. Why? Because there were so darned many of them that if they weren’t pleasant, polite, entertaining, or helpful they had no chance to get any of the thousands of tourist dollars walking around in tourist pockets. I saw a couple of less than pleasant panhandlers on the Warf (undoubtedly rookies) making no headway with anyone at all. These must have been transplanted panhandlers from Berkley.
Prior to spending a couple of days on the Warf, we thought we would tour Berkley. See the campus of Cal-Berkley, hit a few of the bars that were probably a lot more fun back in the 60’s, and generally try to absorb some of the 60’s culture that dissipated into the atmosphere decades ago. There were still some living relics from the 60’s playing their guitars on the street for pocket change and there were some 60’s wannabe generation X’ers who appeared lost trying to be a new millennium hippie. As you might expect in any metropolitan area, there were panhandlers. I noticed while I was there that the Berkley panhandlers were an unusually snarlly lot. They asked for a hand out as though they expected it, as though my money was really their money that mysteriously found its way into my pocket. One particularly unpleasant panhandler berated us multiple times as we spent time strolling the streets of Berkley. His demeanor deteriorated each time we refused his demands for money to the point where we were flogged with obscenities the final time we tried to dart past him. As we were just getting out of earshot of this particularly unpleasant panhandler (I think the term bum probably applies to him, but I am trying to be sensitive here) I heard what I am sure was a well intentioned lady approach the snarly panhandler and ask “would you be offended if I offered you a few dollars?” Offended?!? Why would he be offended? Had she just heard what he had called us? This is not someone who offends easily, but there she was, not only asking if she could give the most snarly of panhandlers money, but making sure that it was done in a appropriate way, not in any way offensive. Heck, I wouldn’t have been offended if she’s offered me a few bucks too, but that didn’t happen. This, however, is the problem with the Berkley panhandlers and why they will never be up to the “standards” set by the panhandlers of Fisherman’s Warf – they don’t have to be good. There is no incentive for them to be the best panhandler they can be. There is less competition for tourist dollars in Berkley, there are fewer panhandlers, and there are people willing to fork over their cash to these less than pleasant panhandlers without provocation and do so in an inoffensive way. I find that highly offensive. Why should these panhandlers be offered “a few” inoffensive dollars while my pal the bushman is over on the Warf scaring the shorts off my friends 12 hours a day? My suspicion is that the bushman makes in an hour what these Berkley low-lifes make in a week…and you know what, the bushman earns what he gets. Like anything in a free market economy, there is equilibrium. Products find their demand or they go away, skills migrate where they can be rewarded, and competition brings out the best in everyone, even in panhandlers. The bushman is additive to the experience of the Warf, not because he wanted to be, but because he had to be. The competition is pretty stiff on the Warf, if you are a panhandler, you’d better be the best or you’ll soon find yourself panhandling in Berkley.
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