Do Business Well

When you hear the words “television commercial,” what comes to mind? A slick, high-budget produc‑tion for a luxury product? Celebrities touting a soft drink or fast food restaurant? Back-to-back special digital effects that scream high-tech? Computer animation or morphing?

You’ve probably seen these techniques used at one time or other. But techniques are all they are—different visual formats for displaying the product. They are not substitutes for ideas. Effective television advertising, like any other media form, relies on fresh concepts that persuade the consumer to buy. Continue Reading »

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If “Your Own Business” is a game, you have to play the game against somebody. And unless you’re Eskom, you’re going to have competition. And your competition is going to be good and it’s going to keep getting better. So how competitive are you? How powerful is your desire to win?

Winning the game of “Your Own Business” means that you have to constantly track the competition, know what they’re doing, do what they do better, and beat them to the customer. At the same time, winning this game means not being reactive to the competition. It means constantly leading the competition and doing things they haven’t even dreamed of doing. Continue Reading »

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The Logic of the Game

To the hotel Manager, the Boss’s game was a good one, so he learned how to play it. It was a simple game, but effective. It was built on the following logic:

Most people today are not getting what they want. Not from their jobs, not from their families, not from their religion, not from their government, and, most important, not from themselves.

Something is missing in most of our lives.

Part of what’s missing is purpose. Values. Worthwhile standards against which our lives can be measured. Part of what’s missing is a Game Worth Playing. What’s also missing is a sense of relationship. People suffer in isolation from one another.

In a world without purpose, without meaningful values, what have we to share but our emptiness, the needy fragments of our superficial selves? Continue Reading »

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The Rules of the Game

As in any game, the “people game” has rules that must be honored if you are to become any good at it.

I’ve included a few here to give you a taste for them. As for the rest of them, you’ll have to discover them for yourself by playing a game of your own. You’ll learn the rules in the process.

1. Never figure out what you want your people to do and then try to create a game out of it. If it’s to be seen as serious, the game has to come first_; what your people do, second.

2. Never create a game for your people you’re unwilling to play yourself. They’ll find you out and never let you forget it.

3. Make sure there are specific ways of winning the game without ending it. The game can never end because the end will take the life right out of your business. But unless there are victories in the process, your people will grow weary. Hence, the value of victories now and then. They keep people in the game and make the game appealing, even when it’s not. Continue Reading »

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