photo credit: Alex E. Proimos

In the days before 9/11, our local airport (Glacier International aka FCA) had a mix of mostly Boeing 737/727, prop and regional jet traffic.

Since 9/11, most of our traffic other than flights to Minneapolis are regional jets or props. When I fly Delta to Salt Lake, for example, I’m usually flying some Delta Skywest regional jet (typically a Canadair model) that is codeshared with Delta.

Before much of the economy cratered over the last year, it wasn’t unusual to see two pilots in the cockpit of these regional jets that looked young enough to have just finished Rush Week at a local university.

Now, I don’t mean to put them down – after all, we always flew safely, never had an unprofessional effort by the pilots and the overall quality of the flight itself appeared no different than any other trip with more experienced pilots – still, there was always a comment or two by passengers when they saw a flight crew that looked like they had been shaving for less than 10 years (in the case of a male crewmembers).

With all the shakeup in the economy and airline industry, these regional jets are now being captained by what appear to be very experienced, mostly white-haired guys who are probably old enough to have flown combat in Vietnam.  As the airlines downsize the number of flights, experienced pilots get pushed down the system to the regional jets.

The smart thing that the airlines are doing – at least SkyWest – is pairing these experienced pilots with the younger pilots who were already flying with them. The ability to let these experienced folks mentor the younger pilots is huge – and it wasn’t something the airlines appeared to be doing prior to changes in the economy.

I talked with several passengers about this during my recent trip to Vegas and all of them found it not only smart business – but comforting to have 30+ years of experience in the cockpit instead of the assumption of 5 or 10 years – even if the younger pilot was doing the flying.

How does this relate to your business?

• How are your new staff members learning the ropes? How are they getting “co-pilot” experience with the equivalent of your white-haired, experienced pilots?
• Looking up into the cockpit and seeing a 50-ish white-haired guy brings confidence in the delivery of air travel without saying a word. For all we know, that guy had no more experience than the co-pilot, or came out of a 20 year retirement due to losses in the stock market and might have fewer regional jet flight hours than the young co-pilot. Didn’t matter, at least until we had the chance to find out more. What gives your customers’ confidence about your business’ ability to deliver with safety and high quality? What are you doing to show them the “white hair” or whatever it takes in your line of work?

What if you did the right things and the smart things years before most of your competitors did? Wouldn’t that make life easier?

John Gerzema talks at TEDxKC about the post-crisis consumer (16m 34s), but there are some interesting business nuggets in here as well.

Smart companies, smart consumers

Gerzema talks about a lot of things that make the video interesting from a consumer and business perspective, but 2 things stuck out for me:

1) Some of the discussion is about all the changes that big companies are making to take advantage of the post-crisis consumer’s mindset, even though much of what they are doing are the things that *smart companies* have been doing for years.

They’ve been watching their expenses, tracking their advertising, spending money on investments they can measure, hiring smarter – and they’ve been doing this for years – just like the frugal consumers Gerzema talks about.

2) I found it interesting, and at times mildly amusing, that many of the “new” consumer trends that Gerzema’s team is discovering (presumably in urban areas) have been part and parcel of rural living for as long as anyone can remember. Emphasis on community, volunteering, ethics, “durable living”, not flaunting your bling (had to be said), and the like.

Most small town folks didn’t need the economy to crater to start doing those things.

Those 2 things aside, the 16 minutes is definitely worthwhile, so grab a cuppa joe and enjoy.

What to do next

Now that these things have reached beyond little towns like the ones around me and are reaching deep into urban areas, how can you adjust what your business is doing to get in step with the consumers where you live?

photo credit: aturkus

Millions of people depend on Gmail.

Sometimes it goes down unexpectedly.

Not long ago, people all over the world were “freaking out” and saying the F word (“Fail”) because Gmail was down.

In addition to numerous posts via Twitter and other social media, here’s how Google communicated a problem when they had a major downtime (their description – the downtime was not quite 2 hours).

Think about how your business responds when there’s a problem.

Do you keep it under your hat?

Do you update your clientele frequently so they remain calm, even if things aren’t going so well.

When things aren’t going so hot, it quite often ends up being more important how you communicate with your clientele when there’s a problem.

Here’s an example that’s a bit more serious.

It got worse for the business because they handled communication poorly.

Railroaded

A few months back, Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) suddenly started buying (or trying to buy) pieces of track-side real estate in Whitefish MT (a resort/ski community in Northwest Montana) and Somers, MT (a lakeside resort area not far south of Whitefish).

No reason was given for the sudden interest in track-side land but people started talking. Conspiracy theories were abundant.

Here’s an excerpt from an early newspaper column about BNSF’s behavior:

Burlington Northern Sante Fe is up to something. The railroad giant has approached property owners in Whitefish and Somers, offering to buy their land. No one knows why, exactly, not even those who have been asked to sell. And BNSF isn’t talking – leaving entire neighborhoods apprehensive…

Eventually, residents got wind of BNSF approaching their neighbors and started asking questions. BNSF was mum about it, not even talking details with those they offered to buy out.

As a result, the residents made the natural move – they got attorneys.

Feeling the heat, BNSF decided to admit what was going on, albeit a bit too late to avoid looking a bit slimy.

By then, the tone had been set. Lying until you get caught is how things were gonna work, even if they were “only” lies of omission.

Coming clean only works in your favor when you do it upfront.

Without Grace

Not unlike W.R. Grace’s behavior in Libby MT (which echoed its earlier behavior in Woburn MA including lying to the EPA about their chemical use), BNSF had set the stage such that nothing they said was going to be trusted.

Before long, the EPA got involved and now BNSF has to do things the hard and likely more expensive way. Just like Grace, at least in Woburn.

While the BNSF and Grace situations are substantially more serious than a mere 100 minutes of Gmail downtime, that really isn’t the point.

Choice

The point is that there are two choices: Communicate in a manner that generates trust, or communicate in a manner that destroys it.

Competition. It isn’t good or bad, it just is.

You either are or you aren’t competitive. Thankfully, it’s something you might even be able to learn, at least somewhat.

On the other hand, it’s hard to teach the desire to drive the QB into the dirt and then stand over him. You just gotta.

Anyhow, on that theme, today’s guest post comes from a rather unusual place – a sports blog. More specifically, Dan Shanoff’s discussion about ESPN’s next entry into local sports coverage.

Filter all the sportiness out of it after reading it once and think about a similar entity entering your local market.

A big, powerful, deep pocketed player. In your market. In your town.

Whaddaya gonna do now?

Shanoff lays it out nicely for a paper. How about your business?

Are you going to wait till they arrive to take the next step? Not a good idea.

photo credit: TheGiantVermin

Normally I don’t do two guest posts in the same weekend from the same person, but Lisa Barone’s “It’s not the recession, you just suck” resonates with a number of things I’ve been passing along to you over the last few months.

As such, I thought I’d let someone else in the PickYourselfUp Choir sing the lead this time.

Here she is.

Look at it this way… if McDonald’s closed, you wouldn’t starve to death. Why would allow a business closure or layoff to starve your career?

GOYA.

photo credit: mhoey

Wednesday, MSNBC reported that John Barry, the former CEO of WD-40 company had recently passed on.

Normally, I don’t spend a lot of time reading obits, but something made me consume this one.

Perhaps it is because WD-40′s branding penetrated our culture so well. Just one indication: when my not so mechanically inclined wife wants something oiled, she says put some WD-40 on it.  Just yesterday, in fact.

Anyhow, I’m reading down through the article about his domain over this product and his company and more and more little signals stick out about how this guy truly understood his focus.

He knew he wasn’t in the oil business. A lot of folks wouldn’t get that. Too many, in fact.

You’ve had some good examples. You wont catch Starbucks management telling people they’re in the coffee business. That’s just one.

As I went down through the article, it just got better and better…. and then the quote:

“We may appear to be a manufacturing company,” Mr. Barry said to Forbes, “but in fact we are a marketing company.”

That is Mr. Barry’s parting gift to you. This is how you have to think of your business and now here’s a very successful CEO opening the curtain and confirming it.

The news piece is here.

I strongly suggest taking a few moments to read it and then consider what business you’re in.

Tech folks (programmers and the like): If this is where you start feeling slimy, get over it. Get way over it.

photo credit: paintMonkey

http://www.theswom.org/profiles/blogs/starbucks-is-ready-to-tell

It’s a nicely done video with just a small rough spot here and there. I like how Howard thanks his staff.

It’s certainly a good example of communicating your company’s values in ways other than organically.

It’s not theft when you give it away

Most interesting is the claim that that indie coffee shops (perhaps more accurately: McDonald’s) are stealing Starbucks’ story. You know, the story about the indie, perhaps even quirky, coffee shop that does it all while you watch.

The story Starbucks gave away in exchange for stock certificates, warehouses and cookie cutter stores.

Back in prehistoric times before there were 4 bazillion Starbucks stores, before conference calls with Wall Street, they did the things that indies have always done.

Now, they compete with McDonald’s for the McCoffee market and they buy, roast and ship prefab coffee around like McDonald’s ships prefab burgers. To their credit, it got a little better when they went to Pike Place Roast, but it still isn’t like fresh roasted indie coffee.

Coffee should be roasted in your shop for consumption that day (OK, I’ll give you a week or so), not in a warehouse in (among other places) New Jersey.

What’s that smell?

To reclaim the indie story, you have to do the things an indie coffee shop lives for (and their clientele depends on):

• roast your beans in the store, in small quantities.
• serve ground-that-moment coffee, not ground-last-month-in-New-Jersey coffee.
• roast coffee till it’s just right (rather than burn it)

The air in a community coffee shop should smell like fine coffee, rather than carry the aroma of stale french fry grease.

Congruence. Do you have it?