Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 21, 2023

Your customers know what they want more than you do. Find one to teach you. This week’s insight came from personal experience and from a good friend who advanced the notion of the “teacher-customer” years ago. I internalized this phrase, recalling the many times I had partnered with customers to design new feature-functionality into my hotel computer system back when such systems were brand new to the industry.

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Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

You might be here: You have a great new product or service that you and your associates love. Early adopters should climb all over each other for a look. But are you HERE? But what have you done to test the concept against the realities of the marketplace? Have you developed a prototype, alternate pricing schemes, even a PowerPoint mockup to show to potential buyers?

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Berkonomics

JULY 13, 2023

In these past weeks, we explored the need for a tangible goal and strategies that are measurable as steps toward achievement of your goal. Today, we explore how to create tactics to accompany each strategy, and even suggest a number of tactics to consider for your strategies. Definition of tactics: Tactics support strategies and are shorter term and more procedural than the strategies they support.

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Berkonomics

JUNE 29, 2023

It’s time to speak of some sort of business plan. As a professional investor in early-stage companies, I have long discounted long, detailed business plans in favor of a concise “executive summary” followed by a believable spreadsheet-based financial forecast projecting three to five years into the future. Yes, everything does change between drafting that plan and its successful execution.

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Berkonomics

JUNE 15, 2023

We’ve spent several weeks discussing your vision for success, and whether you could be the next Ford, Jobs or Musk. Now it’s time to make this more tangible, more real – by attaching personal goals to this vision we’ve created together. Reminder: What is your vision? So, your vision tells the world what you want to be as you contemplate how you will change the world for the better.

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Berkonomics

JUNE 8, 2023

I have a good business friend, an experienced manager and teacher with a Harvard MBA, whose creativity and intelligence are admired by many. But he dilutes his effectiveness with wordy PowerPoint presentations. It has become a long running joke between us, as I often remind him that most of us have a very limited attention span and ability to recall important points from a presentation.

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Berkonomics

APRIL 6, 2023

Some of you have gotten along forever without a board of directors, or used your spouse as the “other” board member from the start. But there are some very good reasons to build a great board composed of some outside members. And good board members can add real value to you and the company. Where to learn more… In other posts (and in our book, “Building Great Boards” – available on Amazon and other booksellers) we cover legal responsibilities of a board, how to pay boa

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Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 16, 2023

Here’s the IRS take on the issue: It is no secret that the IRS carefully looks below the surface for personal use of company assets (including cash) in its corporate income tax audits. This insight addresses more the impact of such behavior upon the actions of employees and others who observe that behavior from a senior manager or owner of a business – and know that they cannot say anything about it without jeopardizing their jobs.

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Berkonomics

DECEMBER 22, 2022

Repeat customers, raving fans, angry backlashers, commodity shoppers. Wow, what a range of loyalty these represent. And in your years, you may have experienced all of these. First, negative kinds of loyalty: Here’s another way to look at the ladder to an ideal customer loyalty relationship. But first, let’s examine the three kinds of loyalty you don’t want to engender….

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Berkonomics

DECEMBER 15, 2022

Here’s a statement that you never thought would apply to your business planning. . Sometimes we get stuck in the muck with our marketing, product, management focus, and in keeping up with trends. It is natural for executives and entrepreneurs with lots on their plate and little extra time – to just keep up the same activities that have made the company a success.

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Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

Here’s the question: Wouldn’t it be great if there were no more digital or printed reports to tell us what happened in the past? I know. We need financial data for comparison, and to a degree – for planning. But we should be thinking of finding ways to make data available to us much earlier when it would be more meaningful and actionable. Let’s give it a name.

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Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 10, 2022

Zoom, Teams, phone, or in person? Imagine yourself with a calendar requiring you to be in six meetings in a day. Day after day. It doesn’t matter whether you’re required to be there in person or virtually, you get worn out after a few of these. Your attention span sorely reduces to nil, and your quality of input and insights fall as the long day progresses.

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Berkonomics

OCTOBER 6, 2022

This is not necessarily the way we intend to behave as managers, but our headline reflects the reality of most experiences when viewed in retrospect. Don’t we most often hire based on experience? We carefully vet the potential hire for experience required. Ninety days or longer later, if. that person is terminated by management, it often is for actions resulting from the person’s relationship with others in the organization more often than failure to perform the specific task for which the pers

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Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

Leading by example. How do you teach your work force that mistakes are OK as long as they learn and don’t repeat them? By being a visible example. A friend and fellow CEO states that he publishes each of his mistakes in his company internal blog along with the lesson he learned. “If the CEO can do this, he gives permission for anyone to confess as well,” he states.

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Berkonomics

AUGUST 25, 2022

Let’s set the scene. One of the CEOs I used to coach started his day by walking the floor of his extended facility and checking in with managers and employees of the various departments, especially the call center. He tried to feel the pulse of the company by the intensity of motion, the metrics of backlog, and the stated problems brought to him as he asked.

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Berkonomics

AUGUST 18, 2022

Does this really happen? Business unit managers are under lots of pressure to perform, and occasionally are tempted to step over the line finding ways to look better than reality reflects. Of course, this has never happened to you, and you have never done this in your past. So, we are speaking of a theoretical manager here. Of course. Well, how to prevent it from happening?

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Berkonomics

AUGUST 11, 2022

Want the best way to create your core competency quickly and inexpensively? . Think like a startup, with little resources, a limited window of time, and few dollars to spend on expensive experts. Divide the hiring decision into two boxes. This insight comes from a fellow CEO who explains that he leverages his financial resources for growth by dividing his hiring decision into these two boxes.

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Berkonomics

AUGUST 4, 2022

Remember the five “W’s?”. In my early journalism classes, I was taught the five “W’s” of good news stories, and that most should be in the first paragraph at that. Who, what, when, where and why are the five, with sometimes a “how” thrown in for those followers of the macabre. Which of the five is most important for you? But of the five, “why” is by far the most important for business leaders to consider and communicate.

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Berkonomics

JUNE 23, 2022

First, the challenge. Let’s say you have been told by your board, by your chairman, CEO, or direct leader to solve three problems you identify and report back within a month showing progress – or that you have solved these three. But wait. You have questions! First, you’d worry that this is an artificial way to focus management. Why three? Why now?

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Berkonomics

JUNE 9, 2022

“Here’s the deal…” So, I occasionally read suspense novels to break up the relative monotony of constant business books. A sentence in the one I recently read caught my eye. “There are three types of advice,” the wise White House Senior Counsel to the President told the young White House attorney. He referred to the three as legal advice , moral advice, and political advice.

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Berkonomics

JUNE 2, 2022

What’s a gatekeeper? Looking for an entrance into a VC, an angel group, a bank, a CxO for a sales opportunity, or any other entity? There are always gate keepers whose job it is to filter out the inconsequential or inappropriate and allow through those with most promise. That said, gate keepers can and do block some great opportunities before the decision maker even has a chance to use his or her expertise to evaluate.

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Berkonomics

MAY 19, 2022

No–one needs to tell you that mobile readers now outnumber desktop readers for your. message. A recent Experian marketing survey revealed that 52% of all email opens are from mobile devices, and that 38% of all clicks are from mobile devices. Experian looked at three hundred brands and 21 billion emails – a few more than you or I have as a resource for our marketing intelligence.

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Berkonomics

APRIL 21, 2022

We think of media advertising as either paid or free – placed by paying a fee or by a PR firm or by you at no placement cost, especially when you provide editorial content beneficial to the publisher. But now there’s new media…. But this new era of Internet advertising has given rise to two more forms you should know and use in addition to the two traditional types above.

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Berkonomics

MARCH 17, 2022

We’re talking about brand strategy here. Not advertising, and certainly not an easy grasp for amateur marketers. So how developed is your company’s brand? Is your message clear, concise, and consistent? Here’s the professional’s process: There is a process used by professionals to get to clear messaging. It starts with “discovery,” the process of finding the strengths of the company in the minds of all stakeholders.

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Berkonomics

MARCH 10, 2022

Customer empowerment is moving so fast nowadays that many of us are running to just catch up. Yet if we don’t or can’t, it is a sure thing that someone else will. Yes, we can blame the Internet for this. But don’t close your eyes to the fact that your customers have grown to expect your products or services in the form of…. ‘WHAT I want, WHEN I want, and WHERE I want.’.

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Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 17, 2022

How do you define credibility in business? A friend of mine recently told me his story of how his very career rests on his credibility with his major supplier–partners. He stated that everything rides upon his credibility when he declares that he can produce a quality product on time, especially when his competition has faltered attempting to do so.

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Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 10, 2022

Here’s the problem: Investors sometimes join into investment rounds that have been pre–negotiated by others, receiving the paperwork already created by attorneys from that negotiation. It is not uncommon for a sharp investor to discover a “stinky” clause or two in such agreements when reading them in preparation for signing. Bill Payne came across just such a stinky clause in a deal we both were joining as investors late in the process.

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Berkonomics

JANUARY 27, 2022

Why is this important advice? Because the first rule for raising money is to do it on good news – right when sales are increasing at an accelerating rate. Or when a major customer signs a significant deal. Or when something happens that makes an investor think this company is about to break out. What if you have no good news to offer? Unfortunately, the longer you wait without significant upward news, the harder it is to get attention.

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Berkonomics

JANUARY 6, 2022

First, the marginal exit event: Sometimes the end game or sale of the company is not a happy event for the early investors, including the entrepreneur or the founders. Especially when outside investors, venture capitalists or angels have put in substantial money, and the sales price is not enough to give them a reasonable return for the time and money invested, these investors can be – in a word – greedy.

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Berkonomics

DECEMBER 16, 2021

Here’s the bright side to patents. When you think of patents, you think of added value to the corporation in the form of protection of its intellectual property. In fact, many corporations spend millions developing surrounding patents to form what is known as a “patent thicket,” much like Brer Rabbit jumped into to protect himself against his detractors in the briar patch.

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Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 25, 2021

If you could predict a crisis within your business before its occurrence, wouldn’t you move to prevent or reduce its impact? Making such predictions is a skill that can be developed, and here’s one method of doing so. First let’s eliminate external risks for this conversation. Of course, there are external risks that cannot be controlled or predicted but can be planned for as well – natural disasters, sudden political or economic events that rattle the entire economy, and more.

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Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

It is all about execution. Waiting over a year to see results is too long, since your chance of mid-course correction is greatly reduced. To make the point, Harvard’s Robert Kaplan believes that less than 10% of corporate strategies are effectively executed. Ouch! If that is true, we are tolerant bunch. We carefully plan in long, dedicated sessions each year or so, then draw up a series of goals, strategies, tactics, objectives, targets, or whatever we want to name them.

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Berkonomics

OCTOBER 21, 2021

We’ve debated this one forever it seems. Should be overwhelm prospective employees with stock options and perks? Or concentrate our available resources on just plain money as an attraction? Well, here are rules to make money work for you in recruiting AND to better control its use after you’ve hired your candidate(s). Some obvious qualifiers. Salaries or hourly wages must be within reasonable limits set by the industry and matched by the competition, both regionally and for the same job clas

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Berkonomics

JULY 29, 2021

This is a trick headline. . There can be three “whys” or twenty, depending upon the issue and the responses. To make the point, the word “why” has to be one of the more powerful words in your vocabulary. Asking the question forces the other person to think beyond the usual “what” that generated your first “why.”. It sure is a way to get to the bottom of an issue. .

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Berkonomics

JULY 22, 2021

Here’s a test of your patience and your willingness to suppress your tendency to avoid conflict or confrontation – all in the same insight. First a reminder about why we hire: New hires can shore up the weak areas of a business in ways existing employees cannot – if hiring is done to fill true needs. We acknowledge that some employees lose their drive, or remain behind as the company grows, failing to gain the experience or knowledge needed to manage expanded processes or numbers of subor

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Berkonomics

JULY 1, 2021

Here’s one that most small company founders and CEO’s miss until it may be too late. What is the role of a chief financial officer in growing and protecting the company? How about co-strategist? I recently coached a CFO in a small company to urge the CEO to stop working upon the operational issues and focus upon the future, even if that meant a pivot to protect the business as the world was changing in that industry at an accelerated rate.

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Berkonomics

JUNE 24, 2021

It is hard to coach or teach leadership in a few paragraphs. But let’s try by limiting this short insight to a list of the five principal tactical skills of a great leader. These are not the strategic visionary skills, like leading companies through risky product launches, or steering the course through economic storms where leaders become oversized personalities for their superhuman efforts.

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