Title of the review: Essential Business Information & Diversity of Perspectives
(Jun 1 2004 By Robert Morris)
In recent years, there have been several excellent books which cover much of the same material found in this volume. For example, Steven Silbiger’s The Ten-Day MBA: A Step-By-Step Guide To Mastering The Skills Taught In America’s Top Business Schools and Milo Sobel’s 12 Hour MBA Program. (Both Silbiger and Sobel know it’s impossible to gain the knowledge-equivalent of an MBA degree in 10-12 months, much less in 12 hours or even in ten days.) Each of the their books is worthy of consideration as is this book. In fact, at least to business students and to relatively inexperienced executives, I presume to suggest that all three be purchased and then kept near at hand for frequent consultation.
Throughout history, all of the the most effective people were/are life-long learners. They fully appreciate the importance of knowing what they need to know; also the importance of knowing what they think they know…but don’t. As a result of all manner of new/better technologies, we now have access to more information than ever before…and both the quantity and quality of that information seem certain to increase faster than ever before. What we know as well as knowing what we don’t know are critically important. I am reminded of Derek Bok’s response to irate parents after a tuition increase at Harvard: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

In collaboration with Glenn Rifkin and Victoria Griffith, Kurtzman takes a different approach to various subjects than do Silbiger and Sobel. They provide a specific course of self-directed sequential study whereas Kurtzman provides a series of separate but related chapters, each of which focuses on fewer specific subjects but in greater depth and from several different perspectives. Although I recommend that Kurtzman’s book be read sequentially the first time, its greater value may derive — for many readers — from its discrete coverage of those subjects of most immediate relevance. Obviously, completing an M.B.A. degree program requires a much greater investment of time, concentration, energy, and (yes) money than does reading one or even several books. Even an excellent volume such as Kurtzman’s cannot replace that program, nor does he assert or even imply such a claim.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Silbiger’s and Sobel’s books as well as Business: the Ultimate Resource, Stuart Crainer’s The Management Century as well as his The Ultimate Business Library: The Greatest Books That Made Management, Des Dearlove’s The Ultimate Book of Business Thinking: Harnessing the Power of the World’s Greatest Business Ideas, Daniel A. Wren and Ronald G. Greenwood’s Management Innovators: The People and Ideas That Have Shaped Modern Business, Daniel A. Wren’s The Evolution of Management Thought, (4th Edition), and The Leader’s Companion: Insights on Leadership Through the Ages (Thomas Wren, (Editor). In fact, every organization should have an in-house lending and/or reference library and these are among the titles which should be included.

My biggest issue with the system was the remote control of the Decco. Most reviews mention that it is not very good: the field of reception is very small and in my case, although the battery would test fine, it would run out of power fast. The original remote uses a lithium button cell batter CR2025, which provides 3V to the remote. It’s relatively expensive to replace it and doesn’t last long. I wanted to modify it, so that it would take two AA’s which provide the circuitry with a little bit more current. To make sure that two AA’s would work, I first simply rigged to batteries to the poles of the original remote, which worked well. After this proof of concept, I was sure to not waste my time with completely modifying the remote. I found a remote control from my local electronic recycler (thanx to NERRD), that used 2x AA’s and had a flat face plate that would be easier to modify and was also big enough to fit the circuit board. The exact model of the “surrogate” remote control is Pioneer VXX2866.

Here are some pictures of what I did.

Both remotes (Pioneer VXX2866, Peachtree Decco), side by side, circuitry and buttons in the middle

Original Decco Remote - The circuit board is already modified. I used the part of the Pioneer circuit board, which holds the power terminals in place. It connects to the original Decco circuit board. I also had to drill a little hole right into the center which made room for a screw in the "new" remote. I was lucky that there was a spot that would fit it, althought I had to be very careful not to hit some pretty delicate wires on the board.

I also needed to cut a hole into the rubber mat which holds the buttons.

This is the original IR diode and the new one. I had to extend the new one and guide the leads around another screw pole in the "new" remote.

This is how everything fits into the new remote. I used the original remote face plate to trace the holes that I needed in the modified remote. I used a Dremmel to cut out the holes. Again, a bit dodgy, but the new face plate is still coming.

This shows the screw posts inside the "new" remote. I could have simply cut the middle one out, but I kept it for the sake of stability (my little kids are not too easy on these devices).

This shows only the top pole with the IR diode going around it. Not too pretty, but it works.

The end result (for now). I'm still going to attach a new self adhesive face plate to the newly created remote.

The new remote sits nicely in the hand and has a nice weight to it. The original remote sits funny in the hand (there is actually a little weight in the remote, just because it must have felt weird to be so small and light). Intuitively, I would always hold the original remote upside down (which some people have mentioned online).

I also ended up using another IR diode for the modified remote. Many reviews mentioned that the field of reception was very narrow. I had a look into the Decco amp to see whether the receiving side was maybe too far into the housing and therefor blocked out the signal. It’s not really the case (compared to all my other devices which have great reception). This made me believe that the original IR diode must be relatively small in order to not draw too much power from the small button cell battery. I ended up using a much bigger and stronger diode (from one of the remotes that I took apart). I’m not sure of the exact spec’s of it, but it works great. The width of the field of reception is around 100 degrees now (I can use the remote almost from the side of the Decco amp now), which is exactly what I would expect it to be in the first place.

I hope this helps some of you, who are also annoyed by the original remote. Let me know if you find a better suited “surrogate” remote, maybe even a remote blank that works better. At 0$ so far (I still need to purchase something for the face plate), its been pretty cheap.

I had a great conversation with Dave Klassen (who owns and operates Newport Landscaping) recently about taxes. It all started when I mentioned that I listen to CBC radio. In Dave opinion thought CBC is a complete waste of the tax payers money. Which brought me to a great question: If we only had one choice of dedicating our taxes to just one cause within the state, what would you want it to be?

At first we came up with job creation, and I think this would be the first choice for most people. But thinking about it further, I don’t trust people and the government enough to not just create jobs through tax funding that are only sustained by the input of tax money.

My final conclusion was, that I would want all my tax money to go towards manufacturing and innovation to boost productivity, so that Canada can compete internationally and sell its products abroad. In essence, isn’t that the only way that we can really increase this countries net worth?

This is all I wanted to leave you with today. Think about it: If you had the choice, where would you want all your tax dollars to go to?

As further reading, I recently found a great article in the Globe and Mail. It is titled: “Canada’s Innovation Window of Opportunity”

“You don’t need to convince the world that Wall Street is corrupt — we know that — you need to convince us that your option is better.”

Jason Calacanis delivered a real Zinger today in his email newsletter. If the above quote tickles your fancy, do yourself a favor and subscribe to his newsletter at: http://calacanis.com/

PS: I don’t think you’ll receive the latest newsletter when signing up, I might have to “secretly” post it here if you wish. Let me know: twitter/hanseich

In this book, Seth Godin has great new insights on how you should be completely and utterly outstanding at your job in your own rights.

Watch this quick book recommendation and hopefully you’ll give this book a shot. Let me know what you think about this book. Maybe we can share some thoughts about it. I almost didn’t read it, because I didn’t really agree with Seth in the beginning.

I often talk to people that have “spontaneous” ideas of what kind of business I could start next or get into, but 99.9% of them are nothing that I’d like to get started. I hear the sentence “such and such makes very good money.” Often I have to dismiss the ideas. The reason? Too easy, not outrageous enough!

Here is one of the biggest indicators of what company, project or job I find to be worth giving a shot: how disruptive is the technology, system or company to current markets. The more disruptive, the better. The current status quo of whichever industry you are “attacking” will always try to downplay your idea, say that it is not possible to do what you want to do. I say, unless you get a lot of flack from the guys you are trying to play ball with, the better. This is probably also an indicator that you are probably on the right path.

Here are some examples of products that have disrupted previous systems:

• the car to the “horse and buggy industry”
• vonage to the traditional phone industry (or even one step further: skype)
• emails to snail mail
• online movies to DVD rental stores
• (upcoming) electric cars to gas powered cars
• (upcoming) alternative decentralized power generation to current power generation

I think you get my point. Getting into a disruptive industry will yield the best returns, but it is a hard path of rolling that big massive stone up the hill. Eventually it will get easier as it gets more mainstream, but for the beginning: the harder, the better.

What do you think about that? Please leave a comment.

PS: Also keep in mind, that eventually the technology that was so disruptive in the first place, will also be disrupted by new technology of the future, so be outrageous and think even further down the road.

I recently sold my player and conquered my inner hipster. It was even a really good vintage model with a mint modern cartridge. All in all a great sounding thingy-ma-jiggy.

But really, who sits down these days, pulls out a great piece of vinyl, puts it on the platter, spins it up, pulls out the brush, cleans it, properly lands the needle in the groove and sinks into the musical sound scape of … whoever-is-big-this-nano-second.

I was just going to let this topic go by without ever saying anything, but it flared up in me again when I read a great article in “Hear the World“, while waiting to see my audiologist. The article was titled “MP3 or hi-fi? Is MP3 really destroying music, or is it the musicians themselves doing it?”. The article argued, that there is certainly nothing wrong with MP3’s (or AAC’s, the much better and newer format), but rather the musicians and producers and the music industry, which drives music to sound worse than ever. And here comes the best quote of the article: “Some high-end audio fans are more interested in mysticism than solid improvements in sound quality.” (Professor Karlheinz Brandenburg) Amen, brother! You hit it on the head.

Analog certainly has much more information than any digital format has (infinitely more in theory). I’m not going to argue that. Vinyl does have some limits though – you have to properly master the music to create a great groove, which BTW is probably what appeals to most people. The real problem is that music is mastered to be as loud as possible and has lost all dynamics, to stick out of the crowd. This has nothing to do with Vinyl or CD’s or MP3’s for that matter. The article puts it like this: “For example, amplify the sound of a bird chirping to the level of a passing truck.”

I’m pretty sure that there are a lot of vinyl records which sound totally amazing on great stereo rigs, but I can’t afford them. Sure a $50 record, on a $1000 player with a $500 cartridge, a $1000 pre-amp, with a nice $2000 amp and $4000 worth of great speakers sure sounds great (don’t forget those $1000 oxygen free pure silver cables). But I can’t afford it, and I’m pretty sure that most of you can’t either, and never actually want to spend this kind of money on a rig. (If I remember correctly n’s principle is that you have to spend 10 times more, to get 10% better sound, which will very quickly break the bank of the average music lover.)

So here is what I did. I figured out how I can consistently get the best sound, without cracks and pops, at the lowest price (I buy quite a few used CD’s at flea markets and even at Value Village). I just can’t beat the sound of a $3 CD vs. a $3 Vinyl record (which is very likely completely junk), with music that I absolutely love, through a half decent stereo. Most of my music is digitized (Apple lossless, or AAC 320kbps for the music that I’m not too fond of) and I use an Apple-TV to stream the music to my stereo. “Light pipe” (optical) to a neat little amp (Peachtree Decco with Tube Pre-Amp) to a great sounding set of speakers (B&W DM302) that don’t break the bank.

Now I can concentrate on just buying great music and enjoy it with the click of a remote. For a second I think about the guy that was rummaging through the used vinyl section at the flea market, just to find out at home that the record is totally wrecked by someone that did not clean it properly in the past and stored it in a sunny spot for decades. Just for a second though, because I almost missed the great lick of the Hammond Organ in Feist’s “Leisure Suite”. Who is enjoying the tunes now?

“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

— Thomas Alva Edison talking to Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone in 1931

What a great insight 70 years ago. What have we done with this so far?

“It appears to me that you are an introvert. How do you deal with that when running your own business?”

This question was asked to me at a recent entrepreneurial event, at our local library.

image by rionda

The answer I gave was relatively simple: “I am introvert. I’ve always been relatively shy about hooking up with other people. I’m aware that this is my personality and that it can be an issue in business. But I noticed in the past that every time I step out of my comfort zone good things happen. Also, being a bit more careful about throwing myself out there, generally prevented me from getting into business situations that are too risky [and not my nature].”

I’d like to elaborate on this topic a bit more and then rap it all up at the end with a great post from Steve Blank that I recently read.

Stick to yourself

I am an introvert, but that’s okay. I stick to it. I don’t think this really keeps me back from doing business. I might not be as “out there” during a networking event and working the room as Gary Vaynerchuk would. I am a bit more shy when I comes to cold calls and connecting with new people. I feel it every time I pick up the phone or introduce myself to someone new. In these situations, I keep reminding myself that my head will certainly not be cut off and the other person or party will most likely not even notice anything. Even if you are rejected, who cares? You just go on to the next person or situation.

I also make an effort to learn how to overcome this. Currently I hold a part time position as “sales rep” (trade broker with the charities division with Tradebank Canada) which is very much against my personality, but it teaches me how to deal with my feelings in the types of situations that I would naturally avoid.

Step out of your comfort zone

I use the feeling of shyness as an indicator that I’m about to step out of my comfort zone and into the zone where good things will happen. So I’m afraid about the step, but excited to know that good things will happen when I do this. Thinking about the good opportunities and possibilities that will open up on the other side encourage me to keep going.

It doesn’t hurt to be a bit “conservative”

Lets call it “conservative”, as in “not jumping the gun too fast”. Considering the consequences an action or decision might have before I do it, will make my business smarter and more secure and will most likely provide for a less bumpy ride. Just keep both extremes of this habit in mind: overdoing the thinking might stifle growth and slow you down, underdoing it will make you appear to be inconsequential.

What is actually important as an entrepreneur?

As an entrepreneur you will work in and on your business. The more the business grows, the more you will (and should) work on the business and not in it. You might eventually have someone else to deal with reaching out to others on a daily basis. Your job is it to recognize business opportunities and guide your business towards it.

“Entrepreneurs are artists”

Steve Blank recently posted a short video of how entrepreneurs are artists. Their art is how to create business’ out of all the different parts and opportunities out there.

See for yourself:

Conclusion
Don’t let your shyness or introverted personality keep you from realizing your dreams and business opportunities and start painting a beautiful business. Rather, embrace and use this trait to your advantage.

I must confess that looking back, I did have an eco insane phase in my life. I’ve been a person with an environmentalists mindset all of my life because I love nature, which manifested itself very early on in my life. During my “eco insane” phase, I did things that in hind sight seem over the top and ineffective. Some things I’m rather embarrassed about, some that I would and will still do today.

My observation is that in general most of the changes done in our live styles only touch the surface of the issue, or they might seem environmentally friendly, but are only a continuation of the same over-consumption and destructive pattern, just now with an “eco” label. Humanity destroys the environment, and leaves great devastation behind. In nature we could classify this as behavior as parasitism: a parasite that feeds of its host until the host dies (and with it, also the parasite). In nature on the other hand, growth is generally encouraged and desired. Growth promotes a more healthy environment.

So what is actually wrong?

Most so called “greenies” are not looking at the big picture. The changes that are being done just skim the surface. Many “green” products are either just “green washed” or they attack the issue at the wrong end and not at the root. Our lives need to become more like what they were 300 years ago. Garbage back then was biodegradable and not the kind of garbage that would stay around for hundreds of years.

An old concept + new technology

In nature, waste products become food for the next generation. When a plant dies, or the leaves fall on the ground, they become fertile soil for more plants. This is exactly how we have to look at our production cycles. The book “Cradle to Cradle” is all about this concept. Rather than being eco-efficient, which is just a slower way to pollute the earth, process’ need to be eco-effective and biologically regenerative. Once a product has reached the end of its life cycle, it needs to be either simply safely composted with no harm to the environment or fully put back into the industrial material cycle, and fully reused again.

Landfills would be a thing of the past. Giant compost heaps would be the only garbage that would exist. Giant Hybrids, which “Cradle to Cradle” describes as landfills which consist of valuable industrial materials mixed with compostable matter, would be a thing of the past.

If a product actually promotes healthy environment, then why not consume as much of it as we need? It would mean that you are actually doing good by consuming it.

Two Examples of Products that are eco-effective

Climatex: A Textile made by Gessner AG in Switzerland. The documentary “Waste = Food” uses this company as an example of what the concept it all about. When they switched their production of textiles, which traditionally uses an enormous amount of toxic materials, from environmentally unsustainable and polluting process’ to creating fully compostable textiles, the waste water that was coming out of the plant, became cleaner than on the input side.

Calera’s Concrete: This product actually sequesters CO2 from the atmosphere. Rather than using regular concrete which uses a lot of energy to produce, why not use this product which benefits the environment. I’m sure that having a forest rather than a concrete drive way would be a better solution, but unfortunately we can’t live without this product anymore, so why feel bad when using this?

I’d like to encourage everyone to watch this documentary (I’m sure I have posted the link to it before).

For more detailed information, I would also highly recommend the book “Cradle to Cradle”

(*) What does the company actually do with the money they are happy to take from your friend? What does the company actually do with the money? Have you ever asked them? Shouldn’t it be used to actively get CO2 out of the air?