21Weeks » Time

Time, Distance and Clarity

Thomas Butta — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:08:32 +0000

For all the benefits of moving quickly we must remember to stop, to think, to see. It is in those quiet moments when we usually see much more than we’ve ever seen before. And that’s where magic can happen.

By FRANK BRUNI (read the original article)
Published: December 12, 2011

Above Rome’s pale yellow and dusky orange buildings, the sky somehow looks bluer than it does almost anywhere else. Did I take proper note of that when I saw it all the time? When it was the canopy over my waking, my working and the all-consuming, all-distracting tedium of daily life?

I worry I didn’t. And I wonder how, during the two years when I called Rome home and wandered frequently through the Villa Borghese park, I never noticed an especially lush, shady patch near the Galleria Borghese that I stumbled across recently, on a return trip. Like the sky’s vividness, the discovery unsettled me. So did the regular peal of church bells, a music that must have been the soundtrack of my past but that I remembered only vaguely. It seems I failed to hear it — to listen — back then.

This is the stretch of the calendar, from Thanksgiving through New Year’s, when many of us revisit the places we’ve left behind. These journeys can be difficult, and I don’t mean the brawls over the overhead bin. Nor do I mean what Thomas Wolfe did when he contemplated the messiness of going home again, stirring up resentments and confronting how much we — and it — have changed.

What weighs on me is the opposite: how much everything has no doubt stayed the same, coupled with the recognition that I didn’t appreciate or really even examine it before. The sorrow lies there.

About a year ago I visited Chapel Hill, N.C., where I went to college, for the first time since I graduated in 1986. I ran an old running route, just to see if it conformed to my memories.

It did, in that I knew exactly where to turn and how soon the next juncture would come along. Then again it didn’t, because what I encountered along the way — the columned rotunda to my left, the storybook quadrangle to my right — had a grace and even a majesty I’d never registered before. I felt location envy, about a location I’d inhabited for no fewer than four years.

And with each stride I grew more disappointed in myself, and angrier, for having missed or at least ignored so much of this when it more or less belonged to me and was there for the taking. College was when I first, and last, had Joni Mitchell in my head, so I was well acquainted with the refrain of “Big Yellow Taxi” and its deceptively chirpy insistence that “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” But I turned a deaf ear to the song’s message as surely as I turned a blind eye to the arboretum beside the campus planetarium, though it, too, skirted the route of my runs.

My friend J. says that I shouldn’t beat up on myself, and makes the excellent point that we’re not only older and wiser when we circle back to our former homes but we’re also, even more crucially, unencumbered guests able to take their measure and siphon off their pleasures in a way we couldn’t before.

But it’s also true that we’re often just plain oblivious to the scenery right in front of us. By being closest, it’s farthest away.

I’m not talking about obvious, monumental stuff. More than half of my New York friends haven’t been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in five years or bothered with the Empire State Building in 20. But they know full well that they’re denying themselves glorious art and a God’s-eye view; it’s a conscious decision, made with the belief that they can always treat themselves later. That’s a foolishness all its own.

I’m talking about subtle, incidental blessings that are strangely invisible to us. My friend N. realized that there was a towering, flowering Schefflera plant in front of her childhood home in California only after she’d moved to New York and begun coveting one in a Manhattan store, which wanted $500 for it.

I’ve met a half dozen people on my Manhattan block who have never set foot inside the corner bakery, Levain, which makes what might be the best chocolate chip cookies in the city. And it’s not because these neighbors of mine are dieting. A few of them don’t even know the bakery’s there, though there are lines out the door some weekends.

I doubt any of the food got by me when I lived in Rome. Food seldom does. But too much else did. On my recent stay my companion halted in his tracks one afternoon to point out the heart-tugging perfection of the square we were in. It was the Piazza di Sant’Ignazio, one long side of which is traced by elaborately curved 18th-century buildings that evoke a rococo chest of drawers. I’d zoomed through it repeatedly years ago. And never once lingered.

On this occasion I did. And then, my lesson learned, I stopped by again the next morning, before I headed to the airport and lost the precious chance.

Data is the new .com

Thomas Butta — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 17:07:11 +0000

Activation and action are key.

By Roger Ehrenberg
Roger Ehrenberg is the founder and Managing Partner of IA Ventures.

Throughout my business career, I’ve observed that people love to label current fashions. “Web 2.0,” “Cloud” and “Social” are three which are currently in vogue. In my lifetime likely none was bigger than “.com,” describing a business and its recognition of the importance of the Internet. Remember when long-established businesses would change their names by adding a .com extension, only to receive a salutary stock market reaction? This was an equity market story that was destined to have an unhappy ending, from which the public markets still have yet to fully recover. Needless to say, the Internet has changed billions of lives in positive ways too numerous to mention, but those benefits didn’t come from labels, stickers or launch parties. They emerged from businesses new and old building and re-positioning their strategies to harness the Web’s true power, and to engage with customers in more and better ways than was previously possible. Nobody gratuitously adds .com to their names any more, and as far as I know I haven’t heard anyone refer to an Internet-based business as a .com for at least five years. That said, I’m beginning to detect a similar phenomenon in companies touting a characteristic particularly close to my heart: the use of “data” to describe a value inherent in the business. And in many if not most cases, it’s not true and I’m not buying.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that data is everywhere, and that it is growing exponentially across virtually every dimension: bigger, faster, deeper – and perhaps even more messy. Every business uses and generates data, but this doesn’t begin to capture what it means to be a data-driven enterprise or where data is viewed as a discrete asset and treated as such. It is a fundamental issue of strategy and culture, and the mere presence of data is not itself an indicator of having deep and relevant data DNA. “Hey, our business generates a lot of data, BIG DATA” is a phrase I hear frequently which I assume is supposed to get me excited. It doesn’t. “Hey, we’ve got this thesis that as our business scales we’re going to build a monster data asset that can better help us attract, retain and monetize happy customers. It will help us create competitive barriers and we’re planning for this from Day 1. We’ve shared some early data with a data-hacker buddy and feel this is a promising avenue for building company value.” Hey now, NOW you’ve got my attention.

There is a world of difference between the mere presence of data (say, an inert corpus of data accumulated from customer transactions) and its activation (putting that same data in a form that can be analyzed in real-time to provide intelligence about trends, pricing, feature attributes, etc. and classified and stored in a way that subjects itself well for future analysis). The data-driven enterprise will embody the notion of creating and leveraging its data asset in everything it does, and will use it to drive current and future decision-making, not merely retrospective analysis. There isn’t some checklist to determine if a business has a deep data culture or not; believe me, if you are one you know it. And if you toss around labels that sound good but ring hollow as there isn’t a bridge between headline and application, then, well, you probably lack the culture I’m describing.

There isn’t anything wrong with not being a data-driven enterprise. I mean, we all can’t be data-driven, can we? Well… I take that back. There is something wrong if a business isn’t data-driven in some way. Online or offline, it doesn’t matter. Commerce generates data. Businesses need to learn from and leverage data to remain competitive and grow. Whether you operate a barber shop, an enterprise software business or sell virtual goods online you have the potential for creating a valuable data asset. But I’m here to ask you a simple question: “Where’s the beef?” Because without it don’t talk about it: just get it. It’s never too late to adapt but it requires core cultural change, and half-hearted efforts simply won’t work. Just as building an online culture has been critical for all businesses to compete in the 2000s, building a data culture has become an essential element for success in the 2010s and beyond.

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Gap CEO Tailors Urgent Revamp

Thomas Butta — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:51:16 +0000

A few months ago, social media was aflutter about Gap’s new logo. That debate seems trivial in comparison to Gap’s business reality. According to Gap CEO, Glenn Murphy, this holiday season is a make or break moment for the retailer. The changes Murphy has been driving will either work or not. With no insights beyond what I read, I suspect Gap will be successful for three reasons: Murphy has urgency. Murphy is using time as a strategic asset. Murphy is involving the entire company in the fight. If Gap has identified the most powerful path to drive relevant value, its sense of urgency should be enough to put them over the edge.

Bleeding Retailer Scrambles Ahead of Make-or-Break Holiday Season, Specifically in Women’s Tops

BY ELIZABETH HOLMES

SAN FRANCISCO—Gap Inc. chief Glenn Murphy has just five months to stop years of bleeding at its namesake brand.

It’s a tall order for a brand that has resisted a decade’s worth of attempts to turn it around. For Mr. Murphy, having replaced the brand’s president and top designer in the last few months, his goal of getting Gap back on track will all come down to a make-or-break holiday season, in the works now.

“I have a much higher sense of urgency,” Mr. Murphy, in his first interview since taking the job in 2007, said of the year it …

Article: 5 Steps For Building Company Value

Thomas Butta — Wed, 11 May 2011 22:43:15 +0000

Phil Fernandez and Marketo have a really good thing going on. They’re trying to create a new category — revenue performance management — and throwing everything they can at it. I believe they’ll be successful for one overarching reason: They understand the value of time. Time is in their control. Most everything else isn’t.

BY FC EXPERT BLOGGER KAIHAN KRIPPENDORFF

Perhaps AT&T’s recent announcement that it would buy T-Mobile for $39 billion got you thinking: how much is my business worth and what would it take to double its value this year?

That is the kind of question we have been helping our clients answer for years. And we have found the best way to learn is to ask. When you are learning to cook a new dish, you consult a recipe. When you assemble IKEA furniture, you follow the directions (at least most of us do). So why not also consult someone about how to build huge value in your business?

Over the years, my colleagues and I have interviewed many CEOs and entrepreneurs to understand how they do it. But last week, we think we hit the gold mine.

Phil Fernandez is an entrepreneur who has already taken two companies public. Now he is applying his process again, as the CEO of Marketo–a Revenue Performance Management company, which over just a few years grew to 1,000 customers in 30 countries with a 315% year-over-year revenue growth rate. My colleague Nadia Laurinci and I got a chance to learn first-hand how Phil does it, and you can view my blogcast on building company value here.

Here is Phil’s recipe:

1) Set out to change the world: identify a business opportunity where you can make a dramatic impact. Tesla Motors (the first U.S. automobile company to establish IPO since Ford) is pursuing a grand mission: “to increase the number and variety of electric cars available to mainstream consumers.”

Does Transformation Motivate You?

Thomas Butta — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:20:00 +0000

Most people we poll answer ‘Yes’ to this question. On the surface, an affirming response makes perfect sense. Almost everyone is open to doing something new or doing better. Some are even open to doing things differently. The reality is most reasonably motivated people have the natural desire to improve.

And why not? There is an enormous ecosystem of products and services available to support our desire to change. You know the list. Personal trainers, foreign language discs, self-help books and tapes, music instructors, dance teachers, art classes, nutrition experts, executive coaches, sports coaches, clutter buddies, etc. The resources available to help people drive personal change are endless. You’ve probably tapped a number of these resources yourself. The change industry conservatively generates more than $11 billion a year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-help). It attracts 108 million hits on Google. And it grows larger and more varied every day.

Our desire to change, to grow is innate (http://pcs100.com). And our commitment to try to change is as predictable as the calendar itself. Each January 1, millions of people go through the same ritual of renewal by writing down their resolutions for the New Year. Then on or about April 1, the original list first committed at the start of the year is replaced by something less ambitious or more focused.

What happens? What gets in the way? Why do we fail ourselves? There are a number of plausible excuses. Most people simply lose interest. Others don’t see results fast enough. Some are too easily distracted.

But the real reason people can’t see change through (if they were completely honest with themselves) is they lack conviction, fortitude, and courage.

Change is hard. And transformation of any reasonable magnitude is damned hard. For all its possibility for a better way, the process of making change happen can be enormously frustrating, debilitating, even infuriating when you encounter the obstacles that are always there.

What forces have the strength to derail or stop the transformation train? There are two: Inertia and time.

The power of inertia is relentless. It will wear you down. Find your weak spot. Shine the light on an escape route which most people all too often are willing to run to. This is a common behavioral trait that is integral to the human condition. How many times have you heard someone say, “but we don’t do it that way.”

Time is our most valuable commodity, yet we treat time like it’ll always be there for us. Time waits for no one. Nor do marketplaces or our competitors. Which means every day is a lost opportunity to do something better. Lost time is our most shameful opportunity cost.

How then do companies manage to transform themselves if they are populated with people who can so easily fall off the grid of change?

The answer lies in finding people who don’t just say they are motivated by transformation, but people who actually are completely motivated by transformation and all that it brings. These people are leaders. They are at once the architects, drivers and ambassadors of the new way. These people are strong and in a hurry. These are people that will not be put off by inertia or an entrenched culture or the fear of commitment. These people are rare. But they exist. This is what they look like:

·
· They are in a hurry, have a plan, and know the stake of the enterprise is greater than the sum of its individual parts/departments

·      They push the boundaries
·      They go beyond most people’s comfort zones
·      They have a commitment to speed
·      They are willing to be bold
·      They won’t settle
·      They seek out others who share the same conviction and commitment
·      They are passionate
·      They motivate in their actions and words
·      They have the commitment from the board and/or the executive leadership team
·      They put in a place a structure that will enable change not slow it down as we wrote in our last blog
·      They are entrepreneurial
·      They communicate often

Do you know people like this? Are you one of them? Does transformation truly motivate you?

Organizations need people like this — now more than ever. How else will our companies fulfill their highest level of potential? How else will we identify and capture new markets? How else will we challenge the big dogs? How else will we get our MOJO back? How else will we instill pride in our workforce and in what we do? How else will we realize our true enterprise and shareholder value? How else will we accelerate through our opportunities?

How else indeed.