How to Boost Sales

US executives are turning to reality television to repair the battered image of corporate America, turning a show, in which bosses work incognito alongside their most poorly-paid employees into the most successful tool for restoring brand images.

Undercover Boss was responsible for seven of the year’s 10 most effective product placements according to Nielsen, the measurement company, which looked at how well audiences recalled the brand and how much the show improved their opinion of it. Nielsen’s data show a trend towards such extended features on a single company rather than the traditional highlighting of brands in programmes such as American Idol.

"In difficult times, people are interested in watching TV programmes where there is some recognition of the difficulties they face,” says Stephen Lambert, the executive producer behind Undercover Boss and Fairy Jobmother, a UK import about getting the unemployed back to work. “At a time of great insecurity people like watching shows where people end up in a better place.”

Undercover Boss typically ends with the executive setting up a health scheme or taskforce, and rewarding employees with scholarships, holidays or, in one case, a 7-Eleven franchise.

Read more at Financial Times 

Sir James Goldsmith talks about outsourcing to China

Twenty years ago, Sir James Goldsmith talks about how America will kill its own economy. It is quite horrifying hearing Goldsmith accurately predict today's situation as Clinton's trade agreement GATT gets implemented and the long term consequences unfold. Goldsmith talks about how jobs will get obliterated as they are exported from America and the number of jobs reduced sharply.
Goldsmith asks,"What is the purpose of an economy?" He says it is there to serve the needs of society - prosperity and stability. He adds, "Material wealth would solve our problems and we achieved that. We have destabilized society because the economy is no longer serving us."
"Who benefits from these trade treaties? Major corporations benefit. What is good for GM is good for the USA is no longer true. They are no longer linked to the USA. They farm out their production wherever they can get the cheapest capital and labour."
Charlie Rose is stunned at the suggestion that automobile manufacturing or technology industries would move out of America. I would enjoy Charlie Rose doing a "Stupid Things I Said in the Past 20 Years on my Show." This show is almost painful to watch as a wise entrepreneur who can see the patterns of industry tries to get across his correct vision of the outsourcing of American jobs. Clinton's spokesperson does not listen and just shouts him down. She ran the London School of Economics and boy, if this is the type of "thought leader" leading our universities, the type that refuses to listen but shouts down the opponent, it is not a good trend.
Clinton's aid says. "When American jobs are moved abroad, they add jobs here too."
Goldsmith points out that new jobs are part time and lower skilled. This was back in 1992. We have seen that real income has not risen since 1992. Goldsmith saw the future, here is the interview:

Enjoy your holidays and Happy New Year

Needed Words for Your Strategy

I make every effort to read new business strategy books and articles. In 90 percent of cases, I can dismiss neither the author's thought process nor his or her evidence—but I am always taken aback by the abundance of "clever" and the absence of any discussion or consideration of the ability to implement the suggestions made or implied. There is total silence around the subject. For example, I did a quick analysis of the Index of one "famous" strategy tome circa 2007—words like "people" and "customer" and "leadership" and "implementation" and "execution" were literally missing.

How Deming would have loved Private Equity

Private equity fulfills one of Deming's key ideas - that profound knowledge generally comes from outside the system, or the business, and is only useful if it is invited and received with an eagerness to learn and improve. 
When private equity is invited into a business, the owner-operators are ready to hear suggestions on how to improve. New comments by the Private Equity team will be anticipated and absorbed. This power to influence is one of PE's main differentiators from the public market financing where faceless investors have little impact on strategy or operational priorities.
Deming believed that a system (business) cannot understand itself without help from outside the system, because prior experiences will bias objectivity, preventing critical analysis of the organization. Critical self-examination is difficult without impartial analysis from outside the organization. Also, insiders can rarely serve as hostile critics who speak frankly without fear of reprisals.
According to Deming, the journey from the prevailing management style to quality requires the understanding of systems. A system is composed of interrelated components. Quality is the optimization of performance of the components relative to the goal or aim of the system. Individual components of the system will reinforce, not compete with each of the other components of the system to accomplish the aim of the system.
Surprisingly, a lack of clearly defined purpose is common in U.S. organizations, particularly long-range purpose. Short-term thinking, quarterly and annual performance evaluations, and bottom line thinking forces attention to quick-fix solutions. Even if long-range plans exist, prevailing short-term thinking distracts from long-term behavior toward real solutions.
Quality is a systematic process: 

1. First, establish the aim: vision, mission, goals or constancy of purpose of the
2. system. According to Deming, without aim, there is no system (Identity).
3. Identify the components
4. Map the processes 
5. Examine the interrelationships of the components within the system (relationships).
6. Constantly improve on the processes of the system (Information/Learning/Knowledge.)