Category Archives: rants

Bing’s Right. Stop Apologizing!

I agree with (Stanley) Bing. “Please, Tiger, don’t apologize anymore.” But it’s not just Tiger I want to stop apologizing. Unless you have a reason to apologize to the public, unless you mean it, and unless you have a way to fix it (if it needs fixin’), please shut the hell up and stop clogging all the news channels with bullcr@p. Most of us are too damn busy to keep up with real news. We don’t need your insincere whining, and the endless media commentary, clogging up the TV, Radio, and Internet news feeds 24 hours a day. We just don’t. (And those twits on Twitter don’t need anything else to OMG GES WHO S@ID SRY about either.)

If you screwed up, and it doesn’t affect me, I don’t care. If you hurt someone, and you’re truly sorry about it, apologize to them. If you did something really bad, and it affected the public, like allowing salmonella laced food to hit the stores, melamine milk to hit the shelves, or cars of death to hit the streets, then you should recognize your error, apologize for it, mean it, have a plan to fix your mistake and make sure it doesn’t happen again, and convey that plan with sincerity — or keep your mouth shut and disappear, never to be seen or heard from again. Because all insincere bullcr@p does is feed the bullsh*t PR machine, and us bloggers despise that.

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Zero Rupee Notes … Not Just for India Anymore?

Recently, boingboing ran an article about a Zero rupee note that Indians can slip to corrupt officials who demand bribes. The idea of the note, pictured below, was to shock grafters into honesty. Given all of the recent bribery scandals north and south of the 49th parallel, I’m wondering if we shouldn’t have a $0 Dollar bill that honest businessmen can slip to politicians who demand bribes and kickbacks before awarding contracts. Or are our some of our politicians just too corrupt?

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Where Traffic Tracking is Concerned, Can We Trust Anyone But Google To Do No Evil?

After reading this recent article on TechCrunch which asks How Does Compete Get Its Web Traffic Data?, which followed Jason Calcanis’ rant on “Why We Should Boycott Comscore”, and after noticing that my Alexa, Ranking, and Traffic Estimate Rankings bounce up and down on the string of a yo-yo despite the fact that my traffic has been non-decreasing since day one (as it’s always holding steady if not steadily increasing), I’m starting to wonder. (Quantcast is still pretty good, though sometimes it seems that it’s gone from reporting over 60% to missing slightly over 60%*, but that’s about it.)

What do you think? Is there anyone we can trust anymore, or is the new model of business e-bribes? And can we even trust Google?

 

 

* This could be as much my choice of blogging platform and the fact that where I have to embed the tracking code in the page compared to where they recommend you embed the code to maximize traffic capture and minimize the chance of cashing, as caching poses a problem as well as browsers that disable or block certain types of scripts.

 

“You’re Lucky to Have a Job” is NOT a Talent Retention Strategy

While reading “The Talent Game”on the SSO Network (membership required) Panel Discussion transcript, I was horrified to read that one participant said that many employees are being told they are lucky to have a job — that is one form of retention. Simply put, it’s disgusting. Not only does it show an utter lack of respect for the employee, but it also shows an utter lack of competence in talent management.

Even if you recently went through a layoff, presumably the employees you retained are those employees who were best at the jobs you needed done. These are, by definition, the same employees your competitor would also keep in the same situation. And since these are the best employees, these are the employees that companies who didn’t have the same talent pool to draw from before the recession are desperately seeking in an economy where they need a workforce who can do more with less. Maybe your employees are lucky to be making a high salary, or to be receiving above average benefits, or to be working at a company that challenges them on a daily basis in a job they like, but they are not lucky to have a job. Even if she has to make a sacrifice in pay, benefits, or flexibility, a good employee can always find a job.

So if you still think that your employees are lucky to have a job, you better wake up and smell the coffee before they do. Otherwise, you might find that your best employees are leaving for your competition as soon as the economy recovers.

Purchasing Magazine should hire Geraint John as Editor-in-Chief

Rather than rant about yet another article from Purchasing.com that had me foaming at the mouth, I thought that, for a change, I’d offer Purchasing some constructive feedback and free advice. Hire Geraint John as Editor-in-Chief. For the past few years, I had tremendous respect for two supply management publications that consistently delivered high quality supply management content month-in and month-out. One is the Supply Chain Management Review, which has Robert Rudzki as one of its lead bloggers. The other is CPO Agenda, at which Geraint was Editor-in-Chief until May 2009.

To be honest, I used to think that Purchasing was a good magazine. But then again, 5 years ago, Doug Smock, who co-wrote the book (Straight to the Bottom Line), used to be the Editor-in-Chief. And ever since he left, as far as I’m concerned, it’s been a slow and steady decline for Purchasing Magazine. We’ve gone from creme brulee telling us “What Supply Chain Management Is” and that we need to “Think Like a CPO” to gruel that tells us that “spend analysis is good, but expensive” and that “it is good to be a tweeting Twit”. Sure you can live on gruel, but after eating creme brulee, do you really want to?

That’s why I’m recommending Geraint John for Editor in Chief. He did great work at CPO Agenda, has what it takes to return Purchasing to the glory days they experienced back when Doug Smock was in charge, and, to the best of my knowledge, isn’t attached to any publications. If Purchasing really wants to reach Purchasing 3.0, they’re going to need someone like him running the show. They might have good editors, but, as we’ve seen, good editors only make a great publication under great leadership. Time to bring some back. (Otherwise, I would bet that Purchasing can continue to kiss its web-traffic goodbye, as I predict that such traffic will continue to migrate to blogs like Metal Miner, Transformation Leadership, Supply Chain Matters, and Sourcing Innovation as long as Purchasing maintains the status quo.)

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are solely the opinions of the doctor. Furthermore, Geraint John had no prior knowledge of this post or the doctor‘s opinions.