Entries from July 2006 ↓

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This blog is inspired by two respected marketing bloggers who posted blogs independently of each other related to not dropping one’s standards in business. By not letting customers set the standard, you effectivly remain in business.

Bottom line - their customers standards may vary and so if adopted, potentially your business could go down the tube.

But not all SMEs and single owner operations set standards that meet my or your expectations of what constitutes a great product or what outstanding service should be. Why? Who knows.

So someone has to raise or set the standards bar for those businesses that do not seem to have set their values or standards by which their workmanship will be seen to achieve and be paid for by a very discerning public. That someone is me and you, the customer, whose hard earned cash is being used to pay for a service or product of sub-standard quality.

I have a topical subject to argue my theory from - builders! Nobody I speak to gets a first-time service out of builders. Snagging lists prevail. Not one of the hundreds of people I have spoken to over the years has been satisfied first time round and none of them paid up in full when demanded. They all witheld money from their builder until the job was completed to their satisfaction.

I cannot understand why builders think they can get away with the shoddy botched up work and think it is acceptable. My plumber must be rueing the day 3 weeks ago when he famously shouted at me that he did not do jobs a second time! Wrong. He is now on his third attempt to get 5 items correct.

So as much as my two hero bloggers may say the customers must not set the standard, I disagree when it comes to builders! Unless of course, my two blogging heroes classify builders as the exception to the rule?

Here are some thoughts from Seth’s site

Belief

People don’t believe what you tell them.

They rarely believe what you show them.

They often believe what their friends tell them.

They always believe what they tell themselves

Whatever happens during your day tomorrow was scripted in your mind last year, last week and yesterday. As you read this blog the outcome of your actions and desires for yourself are already being programmed by your subconcious.

Last night while you slept, your subconcious was a hive of activity. It had to sort information such as pictures, sounds, smells, thoughts, recall memories from long ago and departmentalise what happened during the preceding 12-24 hours and then file all that information away for use at some future date. While you sleep, your subconcious does a lot of good work.

The subconscious consists of cognitive information that both the unconscious and conscious have access to, but of which we are intermittently aware.

The above definition goes on to say that the subconcious is only able to ‘register as much information as it can manage directly’. I disagree. I believe your subconcious registers masses of information and deals with it most adequately and properly. The perception that we can only learn ’stuff’ at a certain rate has been proven to be inaccurate. It transpires that we can can take in a huge amount of data at any given moment and your subconcious will file it all away for use at a later time.

I have said before, our brains are literal and only obey direct intstructions like, ‘go forward’, ‘go sleep now’ and ‘be happy’. Your brain will not compute this: ‘if it turns out to be a 60/40 day, and if you feel like it, be happy’. It can’t take gray or indirect unclear instructions to perform its tricks. You tell what you want as directly as you can and it, (your subconcious) will drive you toward that goal. It will.

Your subconcious is unerring in its desire to achieve what you tell it to do. So if you say ‘fail’ it will do its damndest to make it happen. If you say ‘win sale’ it will oblige you and drive you toward that objective. So be careful what you tell your subconcious to do for you. The more positive instruction it gets, the better it will equip you to be happy and thus you will be able to deal with the problems that come your way resolutely.

You must make certain that tomorrow will see you doing as much good work as you can. Good work can take the form of physical labour or matters of a more sedentary nature such as writing your blog, that report, the novel, a memo or note to a child, parent or friend. Whatever it is, start thinking about doing it successfully today ‘cos when tomorrow comes, you will suddenly find yourself doing things you can’t remember learning or telling yourself to do.

What you find yourself doing is what your Executive Assisitant (your subconcious) is telling your concious to do. So make sure your EA is told to do great things.

Shhhh! Half year stress is back. Ignore him. He’ll quieten down and crawl back into his box.

Bored? Then do something productive.

Go here and construct the best ever paper airplane

John Dodds’s at Making Marketing History wrote an article and points to an atricle on CBSNews.

Being possessed of a rapacious appetite for all things ‘Technobilge’, I could not resist adding this paragraph to my collection. It was too delicious to ignore! As cooking is to Jeanne at Cook Sister, technobilge is to me.

Buzzwords from the old dot.com era — like “cool,” “eyeballs,” or “burn rate” — have been replaced in Web 2.0 by language that is simultaneously more militant and absurd: Empowering citizen media, radically democratize, smash elitism, content redistribution, authentic community … This sociological jargon, once the preserve of the hippie counterculture, has now become the lexicon of new media capitalism.

I regret that matters of an architectural matter called ‘design alignment’ in my household required my attention so I was not able to write up anything at the time. A pity because the opportune moment to capture the inaneness of it has been lost. I did not make notes to cue myself this morning.

As for John Dodds? Well he has provided me with my ‘kick in the ass Eureka it is clear penny dropped’ moment. I really enjoy John’s articles. The simplicity of his works makes life a treat.

He is a marketing professional and I feel that the teaching profession in UK has missed out on an incredible talent. I cannot say for sure but I think John invented the K.I.S.S. acronym!

John does not fuck about by splattering or littering his prose with buzzwords thus rendering the piece unintelligible and in need of MI6’s decoding crew to make sense of it.

So go read John’s blog and luxuriate in his use of good old simple English.

PS: More about the CBSNews article later. Stay tuned.

Please say bye to everyone for me!

They confiscated my whoopee cushion. It was meant to be a fun day at office today.

Facists!

I cannot believe the nonsense I heard yesterday when I was called by the local hospital to “advise that we have been given two appointments with our physiotherapy department and as you have been referred, wonder would you like to come see Anushka at 08:35am or Dylan at 2pm tomorrow”. The call came as a shock since it has been two years in the making and I would like to know who gave them the two appointments. Is there a Santa Claus of Appointments? Why didn’t they simply tell the truth and say two patients have cancelled?

The same goes for the Police. Suddenly I am their ‘customer’ and to hear a cop doing politically correct speak is the most teethskin stripping, idiotic, non-convincing, grade 1 level crap I have ever heard. Cops cannot inflect and get tonality going. The speech tones I have heard to date have been flatter than a flatline on an ECG graph..

I want my cops to speak and sound like cops and not some grammatically challenged skinhead with a speech impediment. All this fake ‘care’ and customer focus is utter bullshit and does their PR no good at all. I would prefer that they drop it and get back to doing what they do best - beating up criminal thugs and keeping the streets clear of crime and stop pandering. Cops can’t pander (oops a copcar pun - sorry!). They are supposed to bash down doors, do car chases and shout at people to spread ‘em!

Being PC (no pun intended!), is simply not what I want from the police. I want them to revert to being the thick n brave models of respectability in the community. At the moment they are seen as being completely ineffectual parodies of something they do not represent and limper than the skin off a rice pudding dessert.

Get Sir Ian Blair out. He started the PC rubbish in the cop force and for my liking, there are two too many Blairs in high command of UK public service. Both are definately not the dogs bollocks and should be hounded (what is with these puns), out of office now.

I posted this comment at Guy Kawasaki’s site. Go read this magnificant article about his first 100 days as a blogger.

“Aw jeeesh Guy, why the frig did you have to go and post # 5. “An expert who blogs is more interesting than a blogger who experts.”

That’s it. I have to quit blogging now. I’m done. It’s all over. Bring the curtains down. Kaput. Fini. I am dog mess on your diamond soled Hi-tecs. Als ist kla.

Pass the razor blade. “

I know what my reminiscences of my frst 100 days as a blogger would be:

GET ME OUTTA HERE!

Just go and check this brilliant piece of work out. Click here

Thanks John Dodds for the link

by William H. Swanson, CEO and President Raytheon Company

Bill Swanson’s ‘25 Unwritten Rules of Management’
1. Learn to say, “I don’t know.” If used when appropriate, it will be often.
2. It is easier to get into something than it is to get out of it.
3. If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.
4. Look for what is missing. Many know how to improve what’s there, but few can see what isn’t there.
5. Viewgraph rule: When something appears on a viewgraph (an overhead transparency), assume the world knows about it, and deal with it accordingly.
6. Work for a boss with whom you are comfortable telling it like it is. Remember that you can’t pick your relatives, but you can pick your boss.
7. Constantly review developments to make sure that the actual benefits are what they are supposed to be. Avoid Newton’s Law.
8. However menial and trivial your early assignments may appear, give them your best efforts.
9. Persistence or tenacity is the disposition to persevere in spite of difficulties, discouragement, or indifference. Don’t be known as a good starter but a poor finisher.
10. In completing a project, don’t wait for others; go after them, and make sure it gets done.
11. Confirm your instructions and the commitments of others in writing. Don’t assume it will get done!
12. Don’t be timid; speak up. Express yourself, and promote your ideas.
13. Practice shows that those who speak the most knowingly and confidently often end up with the assignment to get it done.
14. Strive for brevity and clarity in oral and written reports.
15. Be extremely careful of the accuracy of your statements.
16. Don’t overlook the fact that you are working for a boss.
* Keep him or her informed. Avoid surprises!
* Whatever the boss wants takes top priority.
17. Promises, schedules, and estimates are important instruments in a well-ordered business.
* You must make promises. Don’t lean on the often-used phrase, “I can’t estimate it because it depends upon many uncertain factors.”
18. Never direct a complaint to the top. A serious offense is to “cc” a person’s boss.
19. When dealing with outsiders, remember that you represent the company. Be careful of your commitments.
20. Cultivate the habit of “boiling matters down” to the simplest terms. An elevator speech is the best way.
21. Don’t get excited in engineering emergencies. Keep your feet on the ground.
22. Cultivate the habit of making quick, clean-cut decisions.
23. When making decisions, the pros are much easier to deal with than the cons. Your boss wants to see the cons also.
24. Don’t ever lose your sense of humor.
25. Have fun at what you do. It will reflect in your work. No one likes a grump except another grump.

I need help! I don’t know how to create a XML file. I have tried and keep botching it! Yes I am stoopid! I want you guys to be able to subscribe directly. I have the RSS feed via Feedburner at the moment. Is that OK or do you guys prefer to have the feed direct from the file you can download off the site?

If you can help me create the file and also fix some broken stuff I will be most grateful

If you do a lot of selling on E-Bay then this is for you.

You can also catch the article at co-developer Erik’s site

Keep an eye on this chappie! He is doing great techie stuff for Africa and e-Bayers!

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