20 Questions to Ask Before Falling in Love

1. Before?You Fall In Love
2. The Geography of Innovation
3. A Most?Important Week?Ahead
4. An Unsung Innovator
5. POTUS has one…why not you?
6. Econ Recon

Before You Fall in Love…

Falling in love, whether with a person, project, or company, often does not turn out well (it is called “falling,” after all). Usually, the reason is a lack of thinking before committing. This applies to not only falling in love with a person, but also a project or company.??

Marketing guru?Seth Godin offers 20 questions you might ask yourself before taking any plunge when thinking about a project or a company. He warns, “There are no right answers here, but before you fall in love with a business or an organization, it may pay to think about these and other options that are built in.”

The Geography of Innovation

Countries differ from each other in many ways:? law, culture form of government, etc. In terms of economics, few things are more important to giving a country?an advantage is the extent to which it encourages innovation.

A page from Visual Capitalist will show you why. It lists every country in the world according to its Global Innovation Index or GII.? The GII is calculated based on 78 individual indicators for 133 economies.?

The adjective most often paired with the word “ingenuity” is “American. How do you think America or your country fares on the list of innovative companies? Learn more about the “geography of innovation."?

A Most Important Week Ahead?

Do you know what the first full week in October is???

It’s Customer Service Week!!! Except for sales people, no one else in your organization have more opportunity to influence your relationship with customers and ultimately the health of your brand than your customer service team.

One of America’s best experts on customer service, Shep Hyken, offers five ideas, one for each day of the week, to inspire you to motivate and appreciate your employees.

It costs much less to keep a customer than obtain a new one. Maybe every week should be “Customer Service Week.”

An Unsung Innovator

Malcolm McLean, Inventor of the Shipping Container

This past week many Americans panicked at the thought of the dockworkers strike (once again toilet paper was flying off the shelves!!) Fortunately, the economy may have ducked a bullet with the temporary return of 47,000 dockworkers to jobs at ports across the US. Contract negotiations will resume in 90 days and while significant pay increases have already been granted, the really big issue remains unresolved: ?the introduction of more automated cargo handling equipment and related job security issues. The US significantly lags China and European Countries in port automation so our country’s ability to compete is at stake as well.

Today’s conflict over automation at our ports is by no means the first. We are all familiar with the giant ships from which container units are picked up with a crane and deftly deposited on to a waiting tractor trailer. But it was not always so.

In the 1950s, trucking company owner Malcolm McClean was frustrated by how long it took to?unload ships of cargo crate by crate, box by box, and bale by bale. It could take weeks to unload a cargo ship. McLean saw that containerization could radically improve productivity at the port if the goods were containerized and simply lifted “in bulk” off the waiting ships.

McLean overcame many obstacles to realize his vision: unions, government regulations, a lack of ships designed for containers and cranes able unload the new containers.? His persistence paid off. “Based on numerous sources, it looks like containerization, once widely accepted, reduced shipping and loading costs by at least 80%, and perhaps 90%.? In the old days, freighters spent up to 2/3 of their time in ports, loading and unloading. Port turnaround times, which were as high as 3 weeks, dropped to 24 hours.”

A man who began life running a gas station used incredibly simple technology to vastly improve the cost of shipping. One can only wonder what international trade would be like today without him. I hope you’ll take a few minutes for an executive summary of a great entrepreneur: ?Malcolm McLean: Unsung Innovator Who Changed the World.

POTUS has one…why not you?

The problem with being a CEO of a small to medium size company is that you’re usually not a full time CEO. Too often you’re wearing a sales hat when courting a major customer, dealing with the bank or other major matter. Larger companies can delegate these roles more effectively. The key point is that everyone else in the company has a manager to organize their work and make them more efficient and effective. ?

Who manages the CEO?

The role originated in the military and President Harry Truman appointed the first civilian chief of state?to the president in 1946. Every president since has availed themselves of this important role. Award winning Vistage Speaker,?USAF Colonel Robert “Cujo” Teschner, a former fighter pilot and founder of the VMAX Group?knows firsthand about the role of Chief of Staff having served in that capacity while still in the Air Force. “Every business is doing battle… our battle space is in the business battle space, a rapidly changing, chaotic, uncertain, complex, ambiguous environment,” Teschner says. “A good Chief of Staff is going to help us navigate that battle space and make sure that the entire team is equipped, confident, ready and willing to take action to bring the Commander’s vision to life.”

An executive summary of the Chief of Staff role in a business environment is offered on the Vistage public site:??Elevating your Leadership:? Why every CEO needs a Chief of Staff: “The exact responsibilities of Chiefs of Staff vary from business to business, but what is consistent about the role is that it is a senior-level confidant of the CEO. This person can be charged with everything from being a sounding board for the CEO and overseeing confidential projects to collaborating with other executives and representing the CEO at a board meeting. Many times, the responsibilities can include all those items, plus dozens more.”

If POTUS has a Chief of Staff, why not you?

Peter Drucker once remarked that in every organization? “The bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle.”?Maybe acquiring your own Chief of Staff will allow you to be a bit less of a bottleneck.

Econ Recon

Beating Expectations:??Despite reports of some sizeable layoffs at bigger companies, this week’s announcement of 254,000 new jobs in September is encouraging and easily beat expectations. Economist Brian Wesbury takes the numbers apart for you.?Check out his one-page analysis of the September Employment Report.

Be Ready to Borrow: ?In his latest Fed Watch ITR Economics’ Brian Beaulieu sees some weakness and opportunity.??Click here to find out what they are.

Thanks for continuing to read the Make A Difference (MAD) newsletter. I appreciate you and wish you a productive week.

Sue Tinnish, PhD,?Vistage Chair, Facilitator, & Executive Coach

Find me easily at: 847.404.7325, [email protected], Twitter:?@STinnish, LinkedIn: www.dhirubhai.net/in/suetinnish, Website: https://vistage.com/chairs/sue.tinnish