A good reason not to sue.

How to run into trouble in business.

1. Find a way of creating a cheaper processed food product (think beef).
2. Don't tell the public about it.
3. Sell it to schools, hamburger chains etc who will sell it to an unsuspecting public as 'normal' food
4. Wait for someone else to tell the public about it-especially how it is made
5. Watch someone else make your production process look really really bad
6. Wait for negative public reaction
7. Watch sales plummet
8. Try sue
9. Watch even more negative public reaction

With last weeks news of a worker suing Jamie Oliver for his expose on Lean Finely Textured Beef, otherwise generally called 'pink slime' by its haters, the process has once again been foisted into the limelight. Now people get to read about it all over again, reprocess the feelings of revulsion they felt the first time, and reinforce the decision not to ever buy it again.

How To Avoid Taking Responsibility

Seeing as we are all so good at avoiding responsibility I thought I would help make it easier for you by collecting some of the best ways of blame shifting for us all to use.

Committees, action groups, and investigative boards are a great way to avoid responsibility. Set one up, deliberately do not name a head, give them a vague enough frame of reference (nice technical term that, throwing technical terms around that no one understands is also a great way to shift blame), and when they fail to deliver after consuming a nice padded budget there is no one to blame because the committee will go round in circles pointing fingers at each other.

If you cannot get on a committee or use technical jargon here are a few other ways of avoiding people blaming you for something you should have done. Always have a scapegoat, pick on someone else in the organisation who you can blame, preferably in a different department. Practice the shrug, shrugging your shoulders with a vacant expression on your face is a great way to ignore an issue. It is the non verbal equivalent of “I am not the one” and is guaranteed to send people storming off in a rage, and if they are storming away from you then they are not bothering you are they. Never pick up litter, you did not put it there, you are not the cleaner, it is not your job. Likewise never actually mention to the person littering that the bin is five meters away, again its his litter not yours. Practise the turnabout argument, shift the blame back to the other person like a rapist blaming the rape victim for wearing clothes that were too alluring with an “I raped her because her skirt was too short” type excuse. Blame the equipment, it cannot fight back. Blame Econet/Netone/Telecel, everyone has cellphone issues at some point. Create long and arduous, bureaucratic chains of command. The more steps there are to doing something, the more likely someone else can be blamed. Never, never, never work through a tea break or lunch break to meet a deadline, these are your God given right and must never be sacrificed, you can always blame the poor work hours though cause there is never enough time to do everything.

Acting Out Responsibility

After writing a nice little spiel about taking responsibility and avoiding excuse making I had to put my words into practice in order to hit the deadline. My work internet had crashed for some odd reason so I had to fly to a coffee shop to use their wifi. The irony of writing about a similar scenario and then having to act it out. At least I got a good coffee out of the experience.

Standards vs Expectations

There was a time when having electricity all day was the norm in Zimbabwe, when running water flowed out of all our taps, all the time. That was the expectation and no one questioned it until things started to go wrong. Standards, we all have them. Well at least I think we all have them. For many what passes as a standard is mere millimetres away from not having any at all. There is a difference between standards and expectations. Expectations are assumed, standards are set. Where standards exceed or meet pre-existing expectations then people are happy, where they do not there is work to be done. Standards are the phrases that promise you how the job will be done, the level of quality, the validity of quotes, and the duration of guarantees.
Set standards, then stick to them. Standards create and clarify expectation. One of my favourite “standards” in the country is the department that promises a 24-hour turnaround for a particular service. That is eight working hours today, eight working hours tomorrow, and eight hours the next day. Their ‘24-hour service’ takes three working days to actually deliver (e-mail me if you can guess the department). That is not a true standard. If you can only deliver in three days then advertise a three-day standard, keep to it, and then try to improve on it.

Towards a 97% Sucess Rate

I came across a statistic this week that showed that 97 percent of women would swoon if their boyfriend gave them a mixtape (a personal collection of meaningful music). My second thought (the first being to see if it actually works) was to ask what if 97 percent of your clients had a high-emotion, positive response to your product. Not just a “that is nice” but a “wow that is totally amazing I want it now” response to your offering. Not just one or two of your clients, but nearly every single one. That would be a pretty impressive track record.

Impossible I hear you say. There is the first problem. You think it is impossible.
Realism is well and good, but a lot of our excuses not to do something are not based on realism.
They are based on false assumptions about the way things are done and erroneous perceptions about how people will react. Until you have tested and tried it, do not tell me that it cannot be done. Time and time again, I have been shocked at how successful, an idea that I thought would fail, has actually been.

Doubling Productivity

So I write a weekly column for The Herald newspaper in Zimbabwe. Had a thought this week, if every time I write a column I write a second one at the same time. That way I will have a group of extra articles that I can either publish elsewhere or turn into a book. It just takes an extra bit of time a week and I double productivity in that area.

Emerging Ideas

Emerging Ideas are a group of young entrepreneurs and businessmen from Southern Africa and the USA that get their hands dirty with every investment and startup that they’re a part of. Using local methods and implementing international standards to build ideas and cultivate opportunities. Check them out at www.emergingideas.com

Headed up by the fun and dynamic duo of Tommy Deuschle and Tim Bickers, they are worth a look for anyone wanting to start up a company.