CBD Blog

The last 11%
Thursday, May 27, 2010

I am riffing off of yet another Seth Godin posting, but the point I want to make is slightly different.

All the spectacular is located in the last 11%. (I use 11% over 10 since a 90 is usually still an A!)

Doing something fine - that's B work. B work is good work. So much of what we experience is so dismal, that B looks pretty good.

But to knock your customers out - you need to do A work.

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Handling or Managing
Thursday, May 13, 2010

Next time you are speaking with someone about something that needs to get done - listen to yourself...do you use "handling" as in "I'm handling that!" or "who's handling this?"

If you always describe what you do as handling you are too going to be constantly disappointed.

Entrepreneurs often bemoan the fact that none of their employees handle things like (they would have done so).

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Semester over!
Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Turned in final grades for the Retailing Management class I taught at OSU this semester. The students did fine; I picked up some nice ideas to help our retailing clients.

Reflecting on the class, there is a sense of completion from a class that you do not normally have in business - the class ends, you get a grade, you sell the textbook back. At work, even if you are on a specific project, it seems there is always more which happens even after the deadline.

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Whose Value, whose Company
Tuesday, May 4, 2010

While reading a blog post on what Microsoft can learn from the iPad, I was struck by the following point - "The way Wall Street works is fairly simple — albeit, not always reasonable or fair. What drives stock prices forward are new endeavors. Stock prices rise when investors predict fantastic growth ahead."

Microsoft has had a great rollout with Windows 7 and Wall Street says, "meh".

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"I want a life as a forensic anthropologist."
- Savannah Jenkins,
Biotechnology