How ya doin’?

A common greeting, yes?  I often wonder what a person’s response means.  Sometimes I think we just respond robotically with no related meaning.

When I’m asked, I typically respond “Pretty darn good”; or sometimes just “Good”.  I suppose that means I’m on the glass-is-half-full side of the proverbial optimist/pessimist scale.

Optimist:

The person who makes it possible for the pessimist to know how happy he or she isn’t.

Unknown Sage

When I ask back, “How about you?”, I often hear:

     Not too bad                  Oh, I don’t know

     OK, but it’s early           I’m alright

     Hanging in there             Tired

     Doing the best I can         Don’t ask

And occasionally:

I’m blessed                  Terrific!

What’s your go-to reply?  I don’t know if there is any correlation between this generic greeting and response, but it does beg the question, “No really – How are you doing?”

Today we seem to be bathed by stress; loaded with To Do lists; pressured by deadlines; surrounded by electronic interruptions; and traffic; can’t leave out the traffic:

            Welcome to Denver:

The morning rush hour is from 5:00 to 10:00 AM. The evening rush hour is from 3:00 to 7:00 PM.  Friday's rush hour starts on Thursday.

Forget the traffic rules you learned elsewhere.  Denver has its own version.  The car or truck with the loudest muffler goes next at a 4-way stop.  The truck with the biggest tires goes after that.  Blue-haired, green-haired, or cranberry-haired ladies driving anything have the right of way all of the time.

North and South only vaguely resemble the real direction of certain streets.  University and Colorado are two boulevards that run parallel.  Geometry evidently not working at altitude, these streets intersect south of C470.

Highway 285 runs North, South, East and West and every direction in between; it can be found in every section of the Denver area making navigation very interesting.  You can turn west onto southbound 285; you can turn north onto westbound C470; and you can drive southeast on the Northwest Parkway.  This is why Denver uses the additional driving directions of “out”, “up”, “in”, “down”, and sometimes “over”.

Construction barrels are permanent, and are simply moved around in the middle of the night to make the next day’s drive more challenging.  When you see an orange cone, you must stop and then move ahead slowly until there are no more cones.  There need not be construction, just cones.

If someone has their turn signal on, wave them to the shoulder immediately to let them know it has been accidentally activated.

If it’s 70 degrees, Thanksgiving is probably next week; if it’s snowing, it’s probably the weekend after Memorial Day.

If you stop at a yellow light, you will be rear-ended or cussed-out.  A red light means four more cars can go through.  Not three; not five.  Four.  Never honk at anyone.  Ever.  Seriously.  Never yield at a “Yield” sign.  The yield sign is like an appendix; it once had a purpose but nobody can remember what it was.

Just because a street on the east side of town has the same name as a street on the west side of town doesn’t mean they’re connected.    

                                  Unknown Sage

I think it’s best to pause from time to time (maybe while sitting in traffic LOL!) and do a quick inventory of our blessings and the status of our peace of mind, true?

Why don’t we take a quick inventory right now…  How ya doin’?

GAP

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

 

It’s just coffee…

Lots of business turmoil these days.  Even Starbucks has been in the news.  New leadership; big changes; customer confusion; disruption.

How is it that a coffee shop company (albeit a big coffee shop company) has reached this point?  Based on the lines at their drive-thru windows I’m surprised the perception is they’re not succeeding; require new leadership; need a refill.  I wonder what’s missing:

As you work to build your organization, remember this:

·         Personnel determine the potential of the organization.

·         Relationships determine the morale of the organization.

·         Structure determines the size of the organization.

·         Vision determines the direction of the organization.

·         Leadership determines the success of the organization.                                 

John C. Maxwell

Has employee potential maxed out (with the machines waiting in the wings to take over) at American companies?  I’ve written frequently about the challenges of maintaining employee morale.  Lord knows organizational structure in constantly changing aka being blown up!  (Even the federal government isn’t immune to that one.)  I chuckle at Starbuck’s vision of being a coffee shop again.  All told, that’s a lot of pressure on leadership.

Many accuse leaders of being overly focused on their personal wealth.  Morale, structure, and vision are intellectually interesting but on their own may not be enough for success.  Just when you think all of the pieces are in place…

I’ve always advocated for the tactical side of things; the doing; the executing:

Focused action beats brilliance any day.

Art Turock

It may start with brilliance and a visionary leader but come sundown, without execution the rest is almost always temporary:

In its most fundamental sense, execution is a systematic way of exposing reality and acting on it.  Most companies don't face reality very well.

Larry Bossidy

Starbucks has exposed their reality, true?  I remember legendary Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz back in the day saying:

We’re not in the coffee business; we’re in the destination business.

Everyone followed his lead and Starbucks grew from a regional company to an international powerhouse.  We all started stopping at Starbucks and while we were there we bought a cup of coffee.  Following Howard’s “retirement” the company keeps rehiring him to help steer them back on track.  It makes you wonder if he gets more engaged than the other leaders:

Here is the fundamental problem: people think of execution as the tactical side of business, something leaders delegate while they focus on the perceived bigger issues.  Execution is not just tactics - it is a discipline and a system.  It has to be built into a company's strategy, its goals, and its culture.  And the leader of the organization must be deeply engaged in it.

Larry Bossidy

The big news of the day is Starbucks trimming their menu; returning free refills; becoming a destination again; perhaps realizing - it’s just coffee.

GAP

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

Sad day…

After cutting the cable cord BC (before Covid), we’ve decided to re-connect.  Like so many others, we’ve been in the wireless world for home internet and TV.  We used Tablo for free broadcast TV; T-Mobile’s “5-G” wireless internet; and a few subscription entertainment services such as Netflix and YouTube TV.  Sound familiar? 

Looking back I can see now that we followed the progression Clayton M. Christensen wrote about literally last century:

FUNCTIONALITY.  Once two or more products credibly satisfy the market’s demand for functionality, customers tend to choose a product and vendor based on RELIABILITY.  But when two or more vendors improve to the point that they more than satisfy the reliability demanded by the market, the basis of competition shifts to CONVENIENCE.  Again, as long as the market demand for convenience exceeds what vendors are able to provide, customers choose products on this basis and reward vendors with premium prices.  Finally, when multiple vendors offer a package of convenient products the basis of competition shifts to PRICE.

Our overriding reason for cable cutting a few years ago was cable companies propensity of surprise billing and price increases.  In hindsight we’re actually more aligned with what Adamson and Dixon wrote about in The Challenger Sale ®:

… while we might have assumed that things like price and willingness to customize would top the list for decision makers, they're significantly less important than widespread support and ease of doing business.

Hmmm “widespread support and ease of doing business” am I dreaming? 

My wife is the patient one.  She’s also the technology savvy one.  But even she has capitulated.  Too many program interruptions due to buffering; re-booting; disconnecting the wireless box; calls to tech-support, which after waiting countless time on hold being told, “Everything looks OK from our end. We’re showing you’re connected.” even when we weren’t connected.  We’ve added equipment; swapped equipment; and come just short of throwing equipment, all to no avail.  We should have known better:

Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window.                                 

Steve Wozniak

Re-enter Comcast lurking in the wings for frustrated former customers like us I suppose.  We still remember their issues back in the day.  Buffering; dropped connections; waiting on hold for countless time only to be connected to a rep that couldn’t solve the technical problem from off-shore.  It seemed the only thing Comcast was good at was similar to the general contractors Norman R. Augustine wrote about:

Anyone who has ever built a house will understand the only thing that the general contractor ever manages to get out on time are the bills.

So here we are; back where we started.  Time will tell if cable technology is truly any better.  Comcast has already changed our pricing expectations even before we’re connected!  As it turns out the lower monthly price requires a direct debit to our bank account and the promotional price is good for 2 years and then will go up.  Is that our favorite, Unknown Sage in my ear?

"DEJA MOO”:

The feeling you've heard this bull before.

Wish us luck – we’ll need it!

GAP

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.