A Businessman's View

It's no secret that I've been unemployed since the end of May. And although I'm sticking by my decision to take my time and find the right position that satisfies both my responsibility to provide for my family and my desire for career growth, I won't deny that the past few months have been tough. In fact, with my wife having her own, home-based business, we are frequently ready to maim each other simply due to my ennui and our constant exposure to each other. This "I'm so bored that I want to gnaw my fingers off" feeling can happen at other times too. Several years ago, during the last business downturn (or, more specifically, during the Internet bust that occurred earlier this decade), I was working for a small company that produced web-based software. Our pipeline was in the dump and there was little to do, which was scary considering that we had 150 people and a rapidly dwindling bank balance. To put it bluntly, even though we had some small consul...

Anyone who is a baseball fan has to wonder what is going on in the Angels' heads based on the way they are playing. I can't easily recall two games that were filled with more game-changing blunders than the two that I've watched between the Angels and the Yankees. It sometimes makes you wonder if the Angels have even practiced much. Maybe they should take a cue from Direct TV. Craig Calcaterra put it in a humorous light in his NBC Sports blog Random observations from ALCS Game 2 . As I sipped my beer and waited for the commercial break to end, I wondered to myself: "is there a single person watching this game who said 'you know, I wasn't going to get Direct TV, but now that the Black Eyed Peas have weighed in on it, I'm going to take the plunge.' " He is talking about, if you haven't watched the games yourself, the incessant commercials that feature Fergie and Will.i.am overdubbing their own music video (for the song Meet Me Halfway ) with a...

Last week I discussed how having an eye for the needs and desires of the customer can translate into real, tangible benefits for your company. Since then two other incidents have occurred that I feel a desire, almost an obligation, to share with you. We've been looking to relocate to NJ to be nearer to my wife's family. With the real estate market there is in a real slump - that's relative to the rest of the country, where things are bad as well - there are some great deals to be had. We stumbled across one of those deals when my wife chanced across a bank-owned, previously attempted to be auctioned off but failed property that is listing at 50% of what it was sold for in 2003. We looked at the property on Friday night; saw the apartment to be in rather good shape (not perfect, but who's going to argue about minor stuff with a Viking Professional stove and Subzero refrigerator in the kitchen?); and as we contemplated our next step found out that the bank was going t...

Lately, I've been looking at the finer details of people's experience, especially those who are in senior positions within their respective companies. After noticing a lot of MBAs in the group I asked Tom Schodorf , who is the former General Manager of BMC's Services Delivery business unit and now has his own executive consulting company, what work experience or other tangible credentials / certifications a CEO needed to have to be successful. His response was insightful: "Very few things sharpen the senses more about the needs of your customers than having a quota and selling the product quarter after quarter. Experience in sales and marketing as an individual contributor and in management helps you understand nearly every facet of your own business as well and is very valuable experience for future CEO's." If I may summarize the first point it is "be customer focused." I would argue that this is not only necessary for a CEO to be successful but ...