Lucia and Mr. Mesero

This past week has been a whirlwind, but I've managed to try a couple of new spots around the Metroplex that are worth noting and passing on to my D/FW peeps:

1. Lucia - We had an excellent meal here with friends this week.  First, I got $10 off by checking in with Foursquare.  Thank you, American Express!  We ordered various antipasta, pasata, segundi and dolci dishes and the ones that really stood out were the crispy pork belly, the gnocchi, and all the main dishes: the pork shoulder, the duck breast, the merluza, and the steak.  All were delicious and well prepared, but the pork shoulder was tremendous.  The only thing they messed up was not having a proper expresso machine to make real coffee.  If the desserts don't float your boat, just walk next door to Dude, Sweet Chocolate and try their home made chocolates, fudges and marshmallows.  Very nice, and you can buy more to bring home after you're done grazing their samples.

2. Mr. Mesero - Mico Rodriguez, of the MCrowd fame (Mi Cocina, Taco Diner, The Mercury), opened a small, excellent taco restaurant in the former location of Burger Girl at 4444 McKinney Avenue in the Knox-Henderson area of Dallas.  We have been back twice, once with the kids, and we have not had a bad dish yet, and apparently others think the same.  We have not tried the drinks yet, as we're both on medication recovering from the crud, but I'll be back again soon to rectify that miss.  I really liked the crispy carnitas tacos from my first visit.  Nice, intimate locale, good service, great guac' and very tasty, unique flavors in the dishes.  It's opening makes up for Café San Miguel's surprising closing.  Mico is awesome.  Go tomorrow!

I've done my public service for my Dallas peeps and those friends who travel here.  Go, eat, and share a nice meal with family and friends.  Heck, invite me!

Loyal, to the End

Loyalty is an incredible element of leading fearlessly.  Clearly, there are limits to which any loyal relationship can be and should be broken, but the leader who can, without hesitation diffuse a situation and stand up for their team is a leader that people will jump through fiery hoops again and again for.

Sometimes loyalty is dealing with bad news and bad performance.  My proudest moment as a manager, to this day, is when I had to give a yearly performance review to someone where they were "zeroed out".  No wage increase.  No bonus.  The message was deliberate: the performance was totally mismatched with expectations.  The employee was a super smart individual but had lost his way.  The discussion was totally awkward, and it would have been easier to just fire the individual.  The harder task was to confront and resolve the situation, to get the individual to agree with the assessment, to recognize and relish the expectations, and to focus on the goals and not the past.

The individual killed it the following year.  The same co-workers who did not want to work with him voted him a top technical resource in the company.  He ranked in the top 20% of employees based on his performance.  I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure he would jump through fiery hoops for me, if he worked for me today.  Not just because of getting a bad review and turning it around, but because of consistent communication and support.  

Clearly, waiting for a yearly reviews is not a great way to deal with performance issues.  Different companies have different paces and styles in regards to such things.  Constant communication about expectations and performance and demonstrating fierce loyalty are ways to make sure that nothing ever deviates far from the intended path, though.  Lead fearlessly, and people will follow with passion.

Easy, Peasy, Fast, and Cheesy

I once had a Director, early in my career, who if nothing else, taught me that, "if it was easy, everyone would do it."  It was a motivational statement for all the hard work we had to put into a product we were working on.  His message was that stuff that is worth it normally takes hard work.  If it's easy to do, likely consumers won't be willing to pay you or pay you much for it.  The reverse is true, as well: if something is free, it has no value.

Barrier to entry is one good barometer when you are thinking about new propositions.  If it's too easy for your competitors to do the same thing, then its only a temporary advantage and not strategic.  Getting there first has advantages some times, but sometimes, being a fast follower offers you perspective of what the first did wrong.

Most great new propositions has some key differentiation that distinguishes them from legacy and the competition.  The differentiation normally adds a lot of value to the consumer and makes it tough for them to switch and tough for competition to match.  Once in a while that differentiation is so good, it disenfranchises the way things have been done historically.  Those are the gems.

Next time you are burning the midnight oil on something important, think about whether you are just running ahead of competition on the same road, or building new roads that they have yet to find or traverse.

Breaking Free

In eighth grade, we had Physical Education at the end of the day.  Mr. McIntyre was my PE instructor.  He was my PE instructor throughout my primary entire education, actually.  Well, towards the end of the school year, we were playing softball, and I was playing shortstop, and there was a popup in shallow centerfield.  I drifted back and called it, but Oliver Krug did not hear me and crashed into my leg, breaking my femur cleanly in two piece.  I heard the crack.  I yelled some obscenities, at the top of my young lungs, and attracted hundreds of school kids to the windows of the school.  I did still catch the ball, I must say, which was the final out of the game.

Plump, with cast and T-Rex arm...

Mr. McIntyre came to help me up, and I told him that it was broken, and in classic PE teacher stereotype, he must have said something like, "ah, it's just a scratch", or, "toughen up, Yonker!", or, "broken?  I'll show you broken, now get up!" And, he proceeded to pick me up and let me stand on my two legs, one broken, without support.  My right leg, the broken one, bent in the direction that legs are not meant to bend, and, once again, I yelled those same obscenities, at some higher peak of my lungs that I did not realize, just moments earlier, that I could reach, and attracted hundreds of kids back to the windows of the school, all trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

It actually took me 24 hours to convince anyone that my leg was indeed broken.  Apparently, I cried wolf a lot in my younger years, but once I did, they straightened my leg which had atrophied, wrapped me in a waterproof cast and sent me on my way with crutches.  It was the single most important event in my life that helped me to gain my independence.

You see, I was, and likely always will be, a momma's boy.  I was the youngest.  Always picked on (never a pest, of course).  Only in retrospect, do I realize what a royal pain the arse I was to my mother those early years, but something about that extra challenge of dealing with a cast at the end of school and that summer focused me to do it my damn self!

I learned how to flip off the diving board, with my cast on.  Everyone signed my cast at school.  I walked miles with my crutches, refusing rides from my mom.  I also did not bathe and dry the cast according to Dr. Bartolett's instructions, actually, and when they removed it, I remember my brother's horror at the shriveled, smelly horror that my leg had become.  Either way, it was one of the best summers I have ever had.

Challenges can bring out the best in us or the worst in us.  Keeping an even keel and focus is key to making great decisions in times of need, and perseverance can help to surmount almost any obstacle.  It helps to be stubborn, as well.

Angry Smartphones

I was joking last week, when I saw a poster of an Angry Bird in the window of Barnes and Noble, that read "Birds and Noble", that maybe 2011 was the year that Angry Birds jumped the Cabbage Patch and over-saturated.  Probably not likely, but you can't swing a dead cat without seeing a bird or pig flip flop, tee shirt, stuffed animal or coffee mug this holiday season.  More importantly, however, is the vehicle that drove the birds and pigs to this swank party, the smartphone, and its impressive growth here in the United States and abroad.

Android Biggest OS, Apple Biggest Manufacturer

The Nielsen Company recently noted that Android and iPhones make up 71% of smartphone owners in the U.S. but 83% of the app downloads.  Of the embedded market, 44% own smartphones now, while 56% of new purchases are smartphones.  People want their Angry Birds.

Recently, in the United Kingdom, Kantar Worldwide ComTech found that the pent-up demand for the iPhone 4S accelerated new iOS phone sales shares to 42.8% of all smartphone sales in October.  Smartphones made up 69.1% of all new mobile sales!  It will be interesting to see 4Q numbers to see if the iPhone trend is local or global.  I normally would also not expect it to be sustainable, but the only wrinkle in that opinion is the massive amounts of litigation going on between Apple and Android licensees.  Tomorrow, there is a ruling which could result in an import ban for HTC, for example, and if it happened, that could boost other Android sales, like Motorola's new, stylish DROID RAZR, or maybe give Apple a bump.

Stay tuned.

Confident, Cookies, Cliff, Xmas

The (Short) Weekly Wrap

Tuesday: Xmas

Wednesday: Confidence

Thursday: Cliffs

Sunday: Cookies

Enjoy!

Steep Cliffs

We are all arm-chair quarterbacks when it comes to predicting the past in the digital world.  Of course AOL would tumble because of their reliance on dial-up.  MySpace?!  Seriously?!?  Everyone could see their demise.  After it happened.

I suppose if I had really good advice for predicting such future, I would be retired on a beach somewhere and not writing this blog.  Well, maybe I would still be writing this blog, but I would be more relaxed.  The reality is there is no crystal ball, but the cliffs are steep when leaders fall.  We have a hard time imagining Google or Apple or Facebook not being leaders in their space, but it's almost inevitable that their time will pass, as well.  The great companies are always reinventing themselves, because any combination of market forces, competition, technology, etc. change the environment that made them successful.  IBM did it.  Apple did it.  Nokia was renowned for attempting to reinvent itself every year, but somewhere along the way, they have stumbled and chosen the wrong path.

I once forced myself to read the book The Invisible Computer, by Donald Norman, and at the time, I worked in the computer industry.  The concepts described in this book are much of what makes Apple a leader today: embedding computers in everything, making them smart and seamless, invisible.  The book was published in 1999.  I remember thinking that the concepts that Mr. Norman discussed were interesting, but he ignored the realities of the business aspects of the market and the economies of scale that existed and the advantages they provided to the PC world.  I've learned since that those advantages go away quickly when consumers and businesses vote through their purchases.  It's happening to Nokia, and now Apple is recognized to have the advantages of economies of scale.  It's a prize you receive, if you run a tight, smart ship, when you make good products.

Great strategic leadership can help to identify the cliffs before you drive the bus off them.  Always be aware and never be content.