DrContrarian

This is a first for me- I am just going to promote another website. The quotes below are from a manifesto called "The Hughtrain" - a play on the original Cluetrain. Quote 1: Why did I leave the big world of corporations and Amex cards... The big city is an anachronism. All those skyscrapers, architecturally impressive as they are, were built to house large, tightly controlled, centralized bureaucracies within a very small area of land, geographically near the other like-minded bureaucracies with whom they did business. You wanted to work for Corporation X? You had to buy a house within commuting distance to Corporation X ’ s Central HQ. Ninety percent of the people you needed to talk to on a daily basis were within an elevator ride of your desk. Amazing how dated something so recent can seem. Now e-mail and its spawn are the new elevators. Quote 2: Why did you start a Blog - one of those things that when you are in start-up mode, is important but not urgent. HOW TO HA...

Read an article the other day (somewhere) that the war for talent is hotting up (again?). It makes sense in Australia where unemployment is just on 4% - a 30-year low. Being a newly minted entrepreneur – in Aus at least – I wonder about that. How and where will I find good people? People who will care as much as I do about my customers? I care because I know very personally that they are the people who allow me to eat and look after my family. Can any employee care as much? As soon as you are an employee, the person who feeds you is the boss – one step removed from the customer, and employees will always act accordingly: please the boss before the customer – that is only human. Even when I consider myself as an (ex-) employee, I must be honest and say… ‘I guess not!’ As much as I considered myself to be a valuable employee (no comments required on this one, thanks) I still did not care as much as I care now. And it is only when you are the owner of your own business that you get tha...

I have had cause recently to contemplate what constitutes a toxic workplace – and in particular which factor is the biggest driver of creating such a workplace. There are many obvious contenders, but I’ll reference the front runners only: Highly politicised Politics (of the corporate kind) is often seen to be and made to be ‘bad’, but I think that it is a very good mechanism for keeping people on their toes and equipping them with the communications and observational skills necessary to progress in the corporate world. Being able to play the game is a skill needed when you are the CEO/ Chairman/ MD and you operate in a sphere where everything is the proverbial grey. What better training ground than middle management? Bureaucratic Also much despised is the overly bureaucratic environment, but again it should be - for any half-decent manager – a relative cinch to operate freely in that environment. Learning which rules to break and where to go in order to get things done actually ...

Drove my son to the football training yesterday. As we passed a bus, he asked me whether they earned a lot of money. "About $20 per hour", I ventured. He was impressed. (He is 9.) I then proceeded to tell him that it wasn't that much - not with a mortgage and such. Then came the million dollar question: "How much did you make today?" The truthful answer was ... "nothing". He did not seem to really get that tomorrow or next week I might make$10k or $20k, which makes up for the all the 'nothing' days. "I am never going to go into business," he ventured. "I am going to be a sport star or an actor or a musician or something like that." I might not have made any money yesterday, or even the day before; but I got to drive my son to the football, AND sit and watch him play. Priceless - as they say in the ads. The joys of being an entrepreneur. (No footy pic on this computer...)

As an entrepreneur/ consultant/ author, you are always interested in finding a new angle to write about. As a free tool, I have created a marketing buzz-generator – for all to use… Pick-and-Mix one word from each of these tables, combine…. and off you go: Integrated Brand System Connected Market(ing) Solution Authentic Customer Theory Sustainable Consumer Framework Collaborative Value Platform Dynamic Communications Proposition Strategic Community Outcome(s) (Just don’t expect me to buy the book L )

The last word about Marketing I am one of those people you see in the bookshops, browsing through magazines and books. (The kind of people that annoy even me.) There are a number of reasons why I do this, and it isn’t about money. I find ‘topical’ magazines to offer very little value, but like an addict I keep going back to look. There are several magazines on marketing (and every now and then even a runaway best seller) that propagate a new buzzword and makes amazing claims about a wonderful insight the author has. (I actually created a table that allows you to create your own NEW theory in 5 seconds flat – more about in the next blog.) I thought about the discipline of marketing quite long and hard, because quite frankly, I am struggling to see how marketing (as it is practiced today) will retain its relevance over a long period. I have come up with these 7 immutable laws of Marketing. The Contrarian 1-2-3 of Marketing: 1 Law of Process CONSISTENCY 2 Laws of Product/Off...