The heavy black menus offer no dishes, only a short manifesto from the chef explaining that he will choose what we eat.
Tag: business
I Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore – Dan Pallotta – Harvard Business Review
I was at a Hilton a few weeks ago. They had taken this absurdity to its logical end. There was a huge sign in the lobby that said, “Our goal is to exceed the customer’s expectation.” The best way to start would be to take down that bullshit sign that just reminds me, as a customer, how cosmic the gap is between what businesses say and what they do.
Filed under: bullshit.
I Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore – Dan Pallotta – Harvard Business Review
The long sentence is how we begin to free ourselves from the machine-like world of bullet points and the inhumanity of ballot-box yeas or nays.
Pico Iyer. Here’s mills:
Pico Iyer, in a pleasant Los Angeles Times article noted by Schmudde, defending his use of “…longer and longer sentences as a small protest against —and attempt to rescue any readers I might have from— the bombardment of the moment.”
Iyer chooses two sorts of reduced expression as examples: bullet points, which are the prose of the business world; and the “inhuman” ballot-box, where political expression occurs. It is amusing to note that many believe that it is in precisely these spaces —the professional and the political— that their identity resides, that the substance of their life resides. If not there, after all, where?
Reminds me of an Andrew Potter quote I tumbled from The Authenticity Hoax:
It is hardly surprising to find that the two areas of human enterprise most concerned with sincerity as opposed to truth—namely, politics and advertising—are also the two areas most steeped in bullshit. Or would it be better to say that politics and advertising are the two areas most concerned with the appearance of authenticity? This might be a distinction without a difference.
And another thing I think of and repeat often:
If you write like porridge you will think like it, and the other way around.
Don’t Be A Free User – Pinboard Blog. (via)
Avoid mom-and-pop projects that don’t take your money! You might call this the anti-free-software movement. […]
So stop getting caught off guard when your favorite project sells out! “They were getting so popular, why did they have to shut it down?” Because it’s hard to resist a big payday when you are rapidly heading into debt. And because it’s culturally acceptable to leave your user base high and dry if you get a good offer, citing self-inflicted financial hardship.
Damien Hirst prepares to unleash another round of art for buyers – latimes.com
I like this litmus test that Damien Hirst suggests:
If I put a painting outside a bar at closing time, and it’s still there in the morning, it’s a crap painting.
He also suggests the market for art is bigger than you think, even at his prices:
I remember flying into L.A. at a time when my paintings were 20,000 to 50,000 pounds and looking at the swimming pools here and thinking everyone who has a pool can afford one of these. The market is so much bigger than anyone realizes.
I hadn’t thought about it that way. Also, on the idea of masterpieces vs. ubiquity:
You also have to ask yourself as an artist, “What would be more appealing … to have made the Mona Lisa painting itself or have made the merchandising possibilities — putting a postcard on everyone’s walls all over the world?” Both are brilliant, but in a way I would probably prefer the postcards — just to get my art out there.
All this reminds me of one section in Andrew Potter’s The Authenticity Hoax, a part where he writes about Robert Hughes’ criticism of Damien Hirst’s work:
“The idea that there is some special magic attached to Hirst’s work that shoves it into the multi-million-pound realm is ludicrous,” [Hughes] wrote. But there is a special magic attached to Hirst’s work. That magic is the spectacularly successful brand known as Damien Hirst. And for those to whom the brand is successfully markted—hedge fund types, tycoons of all sorts, generally anyone who happens to be cash-rich but taste-poor—it makes his products worth every cent. […] Some people think a Lamborghini is vulgar, and lots of people can afford yachts. But put a Damien Hirst dot painting on your wall and the reaction is, “Wow, isn’t that a Hirst?” The point is, Hirst is not selling art, he’s selling a cure for rich people with severe status anxiety. Judging Hirst’s work by the criteria of technical skill, artistic vision, and emotional resonance is like complaining that the Nike swoosh is just a check mark.
Damien Hirst prepares to unleash another round of art for buyers – latimes.com
Gamification is marketing bullshit, invented by consultants as a means to capture the wild, coveted beast that is videogames and to domesticate it for use in the grey, hopeless wasteland of big business, where bullshit already reigns anyway.
Ian Bogost (via austinkleon and douglas wolk). I like when I get to use my bullshit tag. See also Bogost’s Gamasutra feature on exploitationware. Naming is a powerful weapon.
Vodka Nation: How the flavorless, colorless, odorless spirit became a billion-dollar business | The Weekly Standard
(via)
The important thing is that we make a great drink. And vodka is capable of that. But it is the chicken breast of cocktails. It is the most boring, least thoughtful, sort of one that you can mix with.
You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.
Jay-Z. Gotta say, I really liked his book. And it was only last December that I started paying decent attention to his music.
Legal disclaimers: Spare us the e-mail yada-yada | The Economist
E-mail disclaimers are one of the minor nuisances of modern office life, along with fire drills, annual appraisals and colleagues who keep sneezing loudly.
Perfect timing, Economist. We had a fire drill yesterday, annual appraisals last month, and this morning *I* was the guy with the sneezing fit.
Legal disclaimers: Spare us the e-mail yada-yada | The Economist
Marty Nemko: The Un-MBA: I teach the aspiring self-employed the opposite of what is taught in business school
Interesting ideas here on starting a business. Keep it simple. Keep it boring.
Biz schools focus on high-status businesses: high tech, biotech, medical devices, environmental technology, multinational corporations, etc. I teach my clients the opposite: start a low-status business, the grungier the better. That way you’re competing with less capable business owners. Few Stanford or Harvard graduates aspire to owning diesel repair shops, mobile home park cleaning, installing and removing home-for-sale signs from lawns, shoeshine stands, cleaning out and installing cabinets in basements and garages, gourmet food trucks, rehabbing tenant-damaged apartment buildings, carts selling soup, scarves, knockoff designer purses, French soap, or coffee, or placing and maintaining laundry machines in apartment buildings. It’s far easier to compete successfully in such low-status businesses. I teach my clients, “Status is the enemy of success.”
Biz schools focus on intellectually meaty, complex businesses like the aforementioned high-tech, biotech, etc.. Alas, the more complex the business, the more that can go wrong. I teach my clients to choose a simple business, such as those I list in the previous paragraph. Each business location may yield insufficient profit to support a family but, once you’ve refined the concept, as I said, just clone your simple business in another location(s.)
Reminds me of the Warren Buffett stuff I’ve read. See also being smart once, borrowing money, and sticking with what you understand.
Rural purge
The “rural purge” of American television networks (in particular CBS) was a series of cancellations between 1969 and 1972, the majority of which occurred at the end of the 1970-71 television season, of still popular rural-themed shows and shows with demographically-skewed audiences. (via sleevia)
Huh.
Never said about restaurant websites
“Who needs the phone number of a restaurant when you could be enjoying stock photos of food?” (via) See also university websites.
Business clichés: The subtleties of corporate English | The Economist
“It’s terribly important, at least in American business meetings, to be constantly acknowledging the contributions other people have made”. (via) A further rhapsody on “deep dive”:
There’s something athletic, soulful even, about the thought of physically diving into a spreadsheet, kicking around in its dusky deep columns, paddling lazily through the surf of numbers, digging for hidden gems among its pivot tables, and coming up for air gasping but ecstatic, with the decimal points cascading down your forehead.
Business clichés: The subtleties of corporate English | The Economist
What economic laws have worked best for Berkshire?
It is all a matter of trying to find businesses with wide moats protecting a large castle occupied by an honest lord. Moats might be a natural franchise, brand loyalty, or being a low-cost producer. In a capitalistic society, all moats are subject to attack: if you have a good castle, others will want it. What we want to figure out is what keeps the castle standing and how smart is the lord. [Charlie Munger: We also like to look for low agency costs on that lord, economies of scale and “economies of intelligence.”]
Buffett elaborated on the “economies of intelligence”: the idea is to find businesses where you have to be smart only once instead of being smart forever. Retailing is a business where you have to be smart forever: your competitors will always copy your innovations. Buying a network TV station in the early days of television required you to be smart only once. In that kind of business, a terrible manager can still make a fortune. Given the choice between the two (a business where you have to be smart forever or one where you have to be smart once), Buffett advised, pick the great business–be smart once.
Be smart once!
They get one letter from me every couple of years. And basically it says, run this business like it’s the only business that your family can own for the next 100 years. You can’t sell it. But every year don’t measure it by the earnings in the quarter that year. Measure it by whether the moat around that business, what gives it competitive advantage over time has widened or narrowed. If you keep doing that for 100 years, it’s going to work out very well. Then I tell them basically if the reason for doing something is everybody else is doing it, it’s not good enough. If you have to use that as a reason, forget it.
Warren Buffett’s thoughts on building a business work well on a personal scale, too. Build your moat, make it bigger. See also Douglas Adams’ career advice (via):
If you want something extraordinary, you have two paths: 1. Become the best at one specific thing. 2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. […] Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable. You make yourself rare by combining two or more “pretty goods” until no one else has your mix.
Wehr in the World: Fear of death in the workplace
I like that there’s a field of research called “terror management theory”.
I have to look them in the eye and decide whether they love the business or they love the money. It’s fine if they love the money, but they have to love the business more. Why do I come in at 7 every morning, can’t wait to get to work? It’s because I get to paint my own painting and I like applause.
Warren Buffett on choosing good managers.
There’s always been a market for people who pretend to know the future. Listening to today’s forecasters is just as crazy as when the king hired the guy to look at the sheep guts. It happens over and over and over.
Charlie Munger on business forecasting.
The market knows nothing about my feelings. That is one of the first things you have to learn about a stock. You buy 100 shares of General Motors (GM). Now all of a sudden you have this feeling about GM. It goes down, you may be mad at it. You may say, “Well, if it just goes up for what I paid for it, my life will be wonderful again.” Or if it goes up, you may say how smart you were and how you and GM have this love affair. You have got all these feelings. The stock doesn’t know you own it.
The stock just sits there; it doesn’t care what you paid or the fact that you own it. Any feeling I have about the market is not reciprocated. I mean it is the ultimate cold shoulder we are talking about here.
Warrren Buffett on the emotional void of the stock market.
Bibliography concerning Warren Buffett
Books and other writings by/recommended by/about Warren Buffett.
Mark Larson 