M is for Manager & Mind

I was lucky enough to give a presentaiton at the CHrsitmas Function of the Australian Institute of Management's "Public Speaking Club" last week. This is how it went:

"Since I last spoke to you I had yet another birthday, they are becoming an annual thing. A friend of mine told me that being married makes for a longer life. Married men may live longer – but they wish they didn’t.

The good news is that tonight I can show you the way to a increase your life span and techniques which you can use in your own life. I invite you to compare it with your own experiences and decide what you think.

M may be for Manager but I am sure that you know that the key to a good manager is the power of their mind.

Who has been on a management development seminar/boot camp/retreat where you are encouraged to get in touch with your right brain? Now tell me, how many people weren’t already being creative in their jobs?

Recent research at Harvard Business School has identified that companies can get just as much management development by also developing the logical left side. Let’s for a few moments talk about our brain – we’ve all got one. We do gym classes for our body but when was the last time you exercised your brain to develop it.

The early brain explorers like Freud were convinced that the brain developed up until late teens and then couldn’t be developed further. Yet we also know that Socrates and Galileo were at their most productive in their 60s & 70s.

Enter the field of neurogenesis. We now know that we can make our brain continue growing, offsetting aging , dementia and Alzheimers as well as helping us be productively engaged with society for much longer.

So how can we exercise the brain?

• Manage By Walking About
• Read funny books - humour
• Play games –chess suduko
• Act out – role play scenarios
• Find what you’re not learning
• Get the most out of business trips – visit a museum , Milan story
• Take notes and then re-read them –Branson, NLP
• Try new technologies – geeks ville
• Learn a new language – Italian
• Exercise, exercise, exercise
  

I said earlier that M is for Manager for I think we are a long way towards knowing that the mind makes the manager. Albert Einstein said that Imagination is more important that knowledge. I hope that each one of this in this room continues over this next year to develop our minds. So much so that I’ve already enrolled in Italian lessons starting next year. Perhaps next year, instead of opening with Guten Abent, perhaps we’ll be saying Buona sera."

Holiday Price Gouging

It was surprising to see the extent to which some people will go to maximise their profit from the holiday season. 

 

This week we have seen the price of milk in this humble camping ground go from

 

$3.10 on Monday

$3.40 on Tuesday

 

Flavoured milks are now charged at a higher price to kids than they are to the watchful adults.

 

I guess this milk man, as hard working as he is, is in for a consumer backlash.

Froth report

The quality of the foam was excellent today.  Swell was moderate.  Water temperature about 18c.

Chrismas Greetings

It is that time in the Australian busines calendar when offices start to become deserted.  I'll be away for a short break in the classic norther NSW holiday township of Lennox Heads.  I do wish all of my readers a very Merry Christmas and a safe festive season.  If you are driving - be safe. 

 

I'll leave you with this message:

 

=============
A young man went to a fortune teller. Gazing into her crystal ball, the old lady asked, "What is your dream, young man? What do you want to do with your life?"

"I want to become a great writer."

"How do you define great?" she asked.

"I want to write things that the whole world will read, things that people will react to on a truly emotional level, things that will make them scream, cry, wail, howl in pain, desperation and anger."

The fortune teller reassured him, "It will be so."

He now works for Microsoft, writing error messages.
==============

 

Merry Christmas

 

 

 

The 'pressures' of competition

Today I received an email from a supplier whom we have recently ceased to do business with.  The gentlement whom purports to be the CEO of this organisation was surprised that we had chosen to take our business elsewhere.

 

In supply relationships Gilkatho aims to be an excellent client in order to gain strategic advantage by having better supply terms, faster delivery and earlier access to new products.  We expect and often receive informaiton from suppliers before it is generally available in the market.  This allows us to plan our business better.

 

In the case of this distressed supplier today he assured me that many issues had been fixed in their organisation and their performance would be better in the future.  He did apolgise for the lack of communication in the last 18 months.  "18 months!!!"  That last comment simply served to reinforce our business decision from February.  That is how long it took us to move after deciding that we had a problem with this supplier's arrangements.  At anytime they could have responded to the issues with price, delivery times etc etc.  Instead they held out until we had made our move to a new supplier.

 

18 months...wonder if they have heard of the modern competitive environment?

Competition

Over the past three years we have seen a dramatic influx of competition in all segments of the market place. The most obvious example has been the release of many "category" killers in the sub $1,000 category.

At the time of a new model's release the manufacturers' state how their new unit is going to cream the competition in the home appliance category, after 6 months each manufacturer realises that they have very little competitive difference and the large retailers just want to carve the price further reducing margins.

Gilkatho was fortunate to have foreseen the looming amount of competition in the home appliance market. In 2004 we ceased to renew a very effective print media campaign that we had been running in a glossy publication aimed at home appliances. This budget was re-allocated to direct marketing to the corporate market.

Three years later it is nice to still have a growing business and not to be caught up relying on the sales from the appliance wars between the likes of Myer, Good Guys and Hardly Norman.

The management foresight in avoiding a deteriorating market is one skill. Identifying opportunities in another market segment is another core management skill. More on that another day.

Google Adwords

Two lessons about Google Adwords.

Gilkatho was an early adopter of the Google Adwords technology that displays relevant advertisements next to search results. It was real case study material to watch how Google followed the "build it and they will come" strategy. The first years of their company's development was all about growing the effectiveness of their search results. The founders were more interested in the technology than the money. It was only after they had the commanding market position in the search engines that they introduced advertising. Google did advertising differently though. In their usual low key way, they were better at targetting adverts to the search users. That meant two things:

1. The searchers were happier as they got the most relevant search results and the most relevant adverts
2. The advertisers were happiest as they only advertised to the right buyers thereby reducing advertising costs while getting better return on investment.

With our web analytics we were soon able to track our conversation costs of a Google referred web visitors compared to say the pathetic results from Yellow Pages online. Today people search in search engines not directories.

One expected side effect of the success of Google has been the increased costs of the pay-per-click advertising. As more people see the success of Google Adwords, more people use it. More people bidding for the ad space means higher prices. Adwords was probably incorrectly prices at the start...offering excellent value for a very low price. The built-in protections of the bidding system means you know you will always be paying the market price. Got a niche product with few advertisers? Google is cheap. Enter the fiercely competitive world of coffee and the prices are going sky high.

Now, why this insight? Did you know that one of the least successful ranking positions is the Number 1 Adwords position? The visitors are less profitable and more likely to spend less time on your site. They aren't reading the search results, just clicking on the first placing. The visitors who choose carefully from the advertisers, spend more time on the chosen website, visit more pages and are more likely to convert to a sale.

The first lesson, to get the best value from Adwords, bid to be in the top 2-4 places, reduce your costs and maximise the sales return....we do.

And the second lesson...buy GOOG shares....I did.

Coffee Snobs love coffee

You may be aware that Gilkatho has been a sponsor of the coffeesnobs.com.au coffee forum for the past year. In the past couple of months our Milton office has been the drop off point for the premium green bean supplies that some of these home roasters have been buying from Andy.

What an interesting bunch of people we've had visiting the office. We've heard stories of people with using their heat gun/hair dryers to roast coffee. Stories of modified overheated popcorn makers to the semi-professionals with their drum roasters. We love the enthusiasm that coffee drinkers the world over have for this humble beverage.

Melanie and LIz have also been giving out roasted samples of our development blend, code named "Blend 207". We are looking forward to the feedback from these coffee patriots.

From what we can tell so far, it seems that the coffeesnob participants are not snobs!

December

December is traditionally a busy time for most companies and our humble coffee company is no exception. 

 

The hospitality sector is at its peak with the ubiquitous Christmas parties, social nights, after work drinks etc etc etc.  Australia is in party mode and our customers' venues are where they are heading.  All of this work does lead to extra demands on our service resources.  We find that we get an increase in "user errors" as by the end of the day staff don't really feel like taking care of the coffee equipment.  They have already worked a long shift and maintenance is not something that takes priority.  As the festive season rolls on, the lack of maintenance and cleaning leads to...more faults.  Not complaining, we make provision for this as we also enjoy an increase in sales.

 

On the OCS (office coffee systems) front many prospective clients are wanting to get projects finished or initiated before they take a break.  A good time to get decisions.  At the same time our ongoing clients are partying hard and drinking more of those early morning espresso shots. 

 

With just three weeks to do four weeks work, December's customer demand, and the prospect of being on-call over Christmas, this month is looking like a lot of fun.

 

 

2nd Roaster arrived Friday afternoon

There was a particular aroma of excitment in the airs of Milton yesterday afternoon for two reasons.

 

Firstly, Liz was roasting some of her favourite Blend 207 which is our [leading} development blend for release late this year.  The blend has such an interesting flavour profile.  Everyone notices how the roast really matures 5 days after the roast.  This is evident in crema, taste and on the tongue. 

 

Secondly, our new shinny red roaster arrived by air freight direct from Europe.  It is so shinny that it wont be long before we are the shiniest roaster in Brisbane.  It will be another couple of weeks before we have completed the installation and commissioning of this new unit.  In the meantime we'll continue roasting on the original smaller unit.

 

2008 is shaping up to be an exciting year with the release of our new blends to complement our existing coffee range.