On a recent episode of the US series Undercover Boss, CEO Coby Brooks goes ‘undercover’ to see what it’s like to work on the front lines of the restaurant chain. Of particular interest was his evident surprise that the public did not see Hooters as a family restaurant. It wasn’t the sort of place Americans wanted to bring their families. Obviously the effort they put in to promoting the ‘family restaurant’ image isn’t working. Hooters needs to find a way to make a lateral move, not a horizontal or vertical.
- When making introductions, pump it up!
- The fast way to help kindle a relationship between two people
- Keep a Delta File
- Keep a track of every time you think "I hope I never do that!"
- Task Paralysis: Overcoming the ‘too many tasks’ problem
- Task Paralysis occurs when you have so many things that need to be done right no »
- Meetings 101 – Every meeting you ever go to sucks
- Make your meetings the talk of the company with these ideas.
Are you turning into Hooters Family Restaurant?
Posted September 18th, 2010 by RickMeasham
Alexander the Great Meeting Chairman
Posted July 21st, 2010 by RickMeashamAlexander the Great is not known as Alexander the Great Meeting Chairman. But he must have been, he simply isn’t known for it.
Obviously young Alex was incredibly effective at waging war and taking over Europe as that’s what he’s known for these thousands of years later. But as human nature organises meetings we must assume too much of his day was spent watching PowerPoint presentations from his Generals.
Software Developers TNG
Posted May 29th, 2010 by RickMeashamWhat about the new crop of programmers? They don’t have that fundamental understanding. They start with a pretty GUI and a million available code libraries and a complex object-oriented language.
As an IT manager this scares me. Will I be able to hire developer in 10 years time that have the fundamentals that allow them to be great programmers? Or are we heading for a slump where there’s only the mediocre available to the average software team?
What is the objective of the meeting? Don’t go if you don’t know
Posted May 10th, 2010 by RickMeashamImagine Edmund Hillary sending out a meeting invitation to Tenzing Norgay that read like most of the invitations that get sent around the modern workplace. Imagine if Norgay saw the subject “Everest” and decided that the meeting wasn’t worth attending; after all, he knew the mountain better than any New Zealander ever would. But that’s what happens to all of us in today’s modern office.
My number one tip for making a great product
Posted April 20th, 2010 by RickMeashamWhenever I get comfortable, I like to mix things up a bit. Actually, my mentor pushes me to mix things up a bit. Whatever the case, they get mixed up!
Being a back-room guy, that meant getting out of the “back room” metaphorically speaking and joining the company’s executive team. Mission accomplished.
But now I have a new challenge. I now have the opportunity (and challenge) to get right out of the building altogether. I have the opportunity to go and meet the scariest people of all: the customers.
6 steps to becoming an email superstar
Posted April 11th, 2010 by RickMeashamBack in about 1997 I’m sure you read an article titled something like “Email Netiquette”. This is not a refresher. Email has become a major part of our daily professional lives, but is often done poorly. Just by implementing a few simple rules, you can become a superstar!
Take note of my notes on note taking
Posted April 10th, 2010 by RickMeashamI have explored various methods for note taking over the years. The traditional method (write as much as you can) just tends to distract you from being the best you can be in the meeting and gives you very little benefit later. You’re probably better off just recording the meeting on your iPod.
Black Swans: Are you ready for Doppelgänger Week on Facebook?
Posted February 11th, 2010 by RickMeashamLet’s imagine your development department is the Facebook development department. You started this cool site in PHP in your college dorm, and it became big. Scratch that, it became huge.
So your poor developers have had to take your PHP code and make it scale to enourmous proportions. But we all know you can’t do everything at once. You pick something and you work on it.
Communication: When it fails, who is to blame?
Posted January 26th, 2010 by RickMeashamA friend on Twitter asks “If someone doesn’t understand you, is it their error or your own?” It’s an interesting question, one I couldn’t answer in 140 characters. Read on for my thoughts on willing, hostile and distracted listeners.
Occam’s Razor vs Everything You Know
Posted January 25th, 2010 by RickMeashamAssume that a coin is fair, i.e., has an equal probability of coming up heads or tails when flipped. I flip it ninety-nine times and get heads each time. What are the odds of my getting tails on my next throw?
