Evolved Management (I) : The Carrot

Lo!, I developed a new management strategy to help with motivating individuals or groups of people to get them to do what you want them to do. Basing this on the popular Carrot & Stick method whereby you dangle a carrot or reward (note: if the subject is a donkey and you are endeavouring to get this donkey to pull you and your cart attached to said donkey, then a carrot would make an ideal reward in this scenario): in front of the subject attached closely to some form of penalty or punishment for failure to comply with your instructions. (Again, if the subject is the donkey / cart situation, you could easily attach the carrot on the end of the stick with which you could easily punish the donkey for disobedience).

The carrot and stick approach is not a new one, however in many business situations it has become over used and subjects whether they be employees, customers or trading partners can detect the ploy, somewhat limiting its effectiveness.

This is where my stategy comes in, I'm calling it the Carrot approach whereby you offer the subject the benefit of the 'Carrot' whether it be bonus, extra margin, better trading terms and immediately afterwards you threaten to strike the subject with the conceptual carrot (if, again, you are the donkey guy then you'd probably need quite a large actual carrot to get to within striking distance of the donkey and I'd therefore recommend using an inflatable or fibre-glass replica since very large carrots are not common and are likely to be very heavy and impractical for this purpose).

So, the Carrot Approach is born. First tempt with the carrot then threaten to beat the crap out of the subject with the carrot.

Obviously in a business context you won't actually be beating the crap out of someone with a carrot (unless you are in the Carrot trade perhaps, negotiating a better deal for the supply of actual carrots or making clear you levels of dissatisfaction about the poor quality of the carrots you are being supplied with, hoping to entice the carrot supplier to take heed of your plight), so ensure that you can turn your conceptual, strategic or real enticement into a blunt instrument of fear. Of course, this isn't always going to be easy, perhaps for example you could threaten an employee whom you are enticing with a $100 bonus for overperformance (the carrot), that unless they deliver results worthy of a bonus, you will deduct $100 from their standard package.

This is likely to confuse the subject considerably, rendering useless any defensive counter-ploys they adopt to body-swerve the traditional Carrot & Stick approach.

Trojan iPod

My new iPod just arrived and it's quietly charging away whilst consuming vast amounts of MP3s from my PC's disk. A couple of observations; the iPod, besides what it represents at a face value function level, is a very clever move by Apple and a real market share trojan horse. Now that I - a PC user - own a piece of Apple hardware and can now experience what it's like being an Apple customer, with all the quirky coolness the brand experience conveys, I'm a whole lot closer to buying an Apple computer.

With the iPod, Apple has skilfully smoked its brand right under Microsoft's radar, rather than confronting head on, Microsoft's otherwise unassailable fortress of PC market domination. And in doing so, Apple has been able to find an unlocked back door.

And I don't just mean they've nicked the MP3 player market from MS or other MP3 kit vendors, what they've done is to chip a big piece off the entire PC user communities' MS or PC brand loyalty and appreciation which, besides making Apple loads of money at the iPod level, may critically harm the dominant market share currently locked down by the PC vendor / MS vendor community. There's definitely a short and long game with the iPod. Definitely a trojan horse on a switch mission.

A truly brilliant business plan.

The Other Oldest Profession In The World

I don't know about the US of A, but UK wise there are roughly 1.1 million VAT registered businesses of which approximately 970,000 have annual revenues of £1M or less. In other words, 85% of the UK business population are 'very small' businesses. Quick, dirty sum, let's say those 970,000 businesses employ an average of 8 people each, that equates to 7.8 million people out of a total of 28 million employed in the UK economy, or 28%. There's likely to be another substantial chunk of people in the next small business sector £1M-£10M annual revenues, assume 70,000 businesses in that group employing an average of 30 people each which equates to another 2.1 million, brining the small business employment total to around 10 millions out of 28 millions total. Lop off a further 5 million public sector jobs and you're left with 12 million people employed in mid-sized to enterpise class businesses in the UK - I suspect these are the business book buyers - or 42% of the UK workforce.

I'm also guessing that most small or owner operated businesses (36% of the total employed and 90% of the total number of UK business entities) focus on running their businesses around their core competencies and don't have the time, money or discipline to review or develop their strategies in the managed and structured way that many mid sized or larger enterprises do. Why do enterprise class businesses do this? My guess is the ranks of corporate middle management aspire to being more than middle management and buy business books and pay for consulting to make themselves better managers (for the better of the company, of course) and, one day, fat cats. These are probably the bulk of the people who buy books like Cluetrain and the scribes of Mr Peters. Thing is these people, regardless of the sheer number of individuals they amount to, in fact represent the minority of businesses.

So the vast majority of businesses stumble along none the wiser. Which is where small business consultants come in. Small business consultants are basically a bunch of other people who have read some business books and listened to the odd Tom Peters audio-book and who use this arsenal to convince the small business guys to pay them money they can ill-afford in return for regurgitating said content, usually as part of a contract that carefully avoids pinning any obligation or liability on the consultant to guarantee any improvement in the small businesses fortunes.

"If you don't follow my advice you won't improve." or "If you haven't improved then it's because you never followed my advice."

The latter defence is usually bullet proof due to the fact that it is precisely because small businesses are unable to ever follow advice that they don't follow advice and therefore are stuck in infinite loops, paying consultants for advice they'll never use.

So, what about open source consulting? Decode, decypher the whole consulting gig. Starting with a book and some consulting on why business books and consultants are bad for your businesses. Blow the doors off.

I realise that this generalised lump of conciousness streamed is wholly unfair to all small business consultants. But it's a global economic conspiracy that needs 'outing', in my humble opinion.

Stream of conciousness nonsense, but who gives a shit. It's my blog.