• These are small things, but are they proxies for larger things?
• Can you trust a company that hires a customer service manager that tolerates – if not promotes – lying to prospect?
• Will a messy restaurant be clean as well?
• Can you believe anything a liar says?
• What job performance can be expected by someone who steals from a company?

In the larger scheme of things, both in the personal and corporate world, I have witnessed these happenings, and I have witnessed that it is let go, and in many cases it is expected, and justified by the ready-made sentences: “Buyer beware”, “Gaming the System”, “Focusing only on what’s important” and variation on such themes.
BUT . . . there are HUGE advantages to deal only with people and companies that can be blindly trusted 1,000%, so why not refusing to continue any further dealings with people and companies with deceiving practices? How can anyone expect or justify to behave one way during certain circumstances, and behaving diametrically opposite during other? To the skeptics I will concede that YES, you might be wrong 5% of the time (I doubt it). Sure it might be expensive and painful to let go someone just because of a small indiscretion; or refusing to do business with one company may result in higher costs or less revenue. But isn’t the alternative a self-fulfilling prophecy where things can only get worse? And weren’t those things flowed to begin with?

Where does your company stand on this issue? Where do your people stand on this issue?
Will you attract better customers, managers, workers if you had better standards?

Do birds of feather really flock together? They did at Enron, Artur Anderson, MCI, Adelphia, Tyco . . .

If your actions reward activities, you’ve got a problem, too many people spinning too many wheels, while you are going nowhere.

I don’t mean to pick on cab drivers but . . . If you take a cab during a slow day, in a city that you don’t now, and you ask to be taken to the airport, will you be given the tourist ride of the city and surroundings, and will you be driven expressly to the airport? The cab driver’s interest is in having the meter running for as long as possible. What if you change the rules of the game, before getting into the cab you ask: how much will it cost to get to the Airport? Somewhere between 40 and 50 dollars. What if you offer the cab driver 60 dollars to get you to the airport in as little time as possible, safely and respecting all the traffic regulations?
Now the cab driver has a vested interest of earning that $ 60 in as little time as possible.

What if you selected an handful of mini CEOs to delegate to:

• CEO of Finance (formerly known as CFO)
• CEO of Operations (formerly known as COO)
• CEO of Revenue (formerly known as Chief of Sales/Marketing/Advertising/Branding)
• CEO of Information (formerly known as CTO/CIO)

Make sure you do NOT assign ONE person the STRATEGY function, it is too Strategic to be left to the CSO or CEO of Strategy, and do NOT have a CTO or a CEO of Technology, Technology is a mean, Information is the end game.

Why call them CEOs? Because within the Vision of the company, each mini-CEO has a mission to accomplish. Make it clear to quantify what the goals of the mission are; make sure to give them resources (time, money, people & infrastructure), and demand a plan in return. Call it the game plan, or action plan, but please, don’t call it business plan, too boring. Measure progress against the game plan on a weekly basis (executive committee is not optional and it’s not a waste of time) and demand to be informed of major issues on a timely basis. Be available to help with your influence and resources, and to shield them if necessary. Then step back, try to NOT overstep their mandate, don’t give in to the temptation to overrule their day-to-day decisions to play “nice CEO”, let it flow. It’s the end results that count, not the individual actions. Of course you always have the option to fire their sorry derriere if there’s no performance! We are talking about mini-CEOs here, there’s no time for corrective measures, training, development, it’s show time, it’s where the rubber meets the road.

How to check the cost of complexity: outsource your operations. I am not talking about hiring contract workers or consultants in lieu of employees, I am talking about finding an outfit that will take over your operation on a pay-for-action basis, where the bulk of the cost is directly related to the number of tasks to be performed.

If you work with someone who has been in the business for a long time, they are masters at algorithmizing your business. Algorithmize: I just made this word up, signifying breaking down your operations in step-by-step procedures. If your operations are loosely based on principles, but relying on one-offs solutions on a continuous basis, with so many exceptions and “what ifs” that the related documentation fills heavy tomes, and the flow charts resembles more a Jackson Pollock painting than a Mondrian.

Start with your business model. Can you explain it to your mom by using only a marker and ONE cocktail napkin? Two is OK, but if you need three and your mom doesn’t get it, you are in trouble. What about your hierarchy? Do you have more chiefs than you have workers? Can the people in Customer Service explain to you in 30 seconds or less what it is that they do? It’s hard to let go of (bad) habits, it’s easy to make exceptions for the sake of “flexibility”.

Leadership decisions are the hardest to make, and the hardest decisions are the ones that will allow your company to reap the greatest benefits.

Make sure you have the vision to discern simplicity from stupidity, and that you have the change in you, that you believe in it, that the change is a natural extension of you, not an item to check off in your to-do list. Authenticity is one of the pillars of change.

Simplicity is a simple way to attain a competitive advantage.

Plain and simply you NEVER raise money . . .

. . .  but you SELL something:

1. you sell shares in your company (e.g.: Angels, VCs);
2. you sell portion of your company’s future cash flow (e,g,: loans, bank);
3. you sell seats on the board (usually an accessory top a.);
4. you sell control: in a VC deal, often the first 49% of a company is free, it’s the additional 2% that’s very expensive.

Therefore raising money is a selling activity, a selling process that encompasses institutional branding, institutional marketing its own collateral (e.g.: business plan), and its own selling experience.

Of course if you believe that things are no longer sold, but they are bought:  what are you doing today to stimulate the purchase of what you are selling, either your goods or services, your shares or both?

Try to approach the raising money process as a selling process, sell, sell, sell, sell in everything you do:  will interested investor call your support line?  Will they place an order with you?

Q.: Where does the selling/branding stop and where does it begin?
A.: NEVER!  It never stops!  From the way you answer the phone, to whether you answer the phone (Amazon.com does not have a phone #, but you can have Amazon.com customer service call you), Zappos uses white boxes highly distinguishable if you see someone walking carrying one, in Rome (Italy) there’s a restaurant called “LA PAROLACCIA” where the wait staff is rude, and calls customers names ON PURPOSE, and customers do the same.  Do not go there alone or on a date!  Calling their customers dorks and a-holes is their brand!

Suggested reading:  SELLING IS DEAD