BLOG OF ADAM HARTUNG
Listen to those who don’t love you
Ed Bronfman, Jr. is a scion of the family that used its ownership of Seagrams, and U.S. liquor prohibition, to build a fortune in Canada. Eventually he made a very large investment in Warner Music and appointed himself CEO. Unfortunately, his investment...
Optimism breeds contempt
We are all told to be "glass half full" kinds of folks. We are surrounded by messages that things won't be all that bad, and when bad they will get better ("the storm is always darkest just before the dawn"). Unfortunately, when market...
Pushing on a Rope
We all get so used to running our businesses that it is very easy to miss a significant market shift. We may well be in the Rapids of growth and then within a very short time fall into the Swamp of stagnant revenue and lower margins. Because we are so good...
Drifting in the Swamp
This week Bill Gates officially retired completely from Microsoft (article here), and we also learned the company will no longer ship Microsoft XP (article here). At first blush these two press items seem unrelated, but in fact they should give any investor, or...
A looming recession – and you’re preparing how?
We have a lot of signs that we are in, or on the edge of, a seriously long and painful recession. According to Merrill Lynch today (read report here) the S&P 500 was down 8.7% in June, down 18.3% from the October, 2007 peak. GM is at a 53 year low, and swap...
Competing to Win
We all say we compete to win. But really, many of us just compete to compete. Winning is a lot less important than following "the rules." But in much of life, the rules are designed to favor the current winner. To win, you have to find a...
Last Man Standing?
Ever heard the phrase "the last company left making buggy whips made a fortune"? Don't believe it. Ask the person with such a claim to name the company. Better yet, ask that person to name one company that made high profits by being the...
Misplaced optimism vs. Action
Do you have any doubt that the viability of traditional newspapers is at risk? Every newspaper in America is printing fewer pages today than a year ago (and most fewer than 2 years ago). Young people (meaning under 35 - if that's really young) never got...
What if…..
I was at an executive event last night where the moderator asked the audience "will this current U.S. economic downturn last 12-18 months, or more like 36 months and possibly longer?" By show of hands, clearly 90% expected a short downturn. When...
3 + 1 = 3.5
Everybody knows FedEx (see chart here). Pioneers in air delivery, before the days of email we all used Fedex to send documents quickly. For years the name was synonymous with overnight delivery. But, competitors UPS and USPS figured out what FedEx...
Cost to Innovate, or Not
Here we sit with nearly $150/barrel crude oil. In the USA gasoline is over $4/gallon, and diesel fuel is nearly $5.00/gallon. For the first time since the 1970s, adjusted for inflation we have new highs for petroleum fuels. But we can't seem to break...
Well put
After 30 years with Tribune company, the current publisher of The Chicago Tribune is leaving. It's his second time in the job. Now the company is beleaguered by too much debt in the face of declining traditional readers and revenue - and without a plan to...
Utilizing Big Trends
Yesterday the news services all reported that America's National Center for Health Statistics now has determined the average person born this year will live to over 78 years old (read article here.) White women will live to 81, and white men to 76, while black...
Planning from the past risks
How do you start your planning sessions? Do you talk about historical sales and profit results? Discuss large current customers? Discuss market segments and share? If you do these things, you're planning from the past rather than planning for the...
Solutions by the pound
In the search for better business performance there is a management doctrine that says "measure what you want to improve, and focus on the measurement." If you chart the metric, you'll get better results is the theory. But while measuring things...
When Headlines Say It All
"United to park dozens of jets" (Chicago Tribune article here). "Janesville facing future without GM" (Chicago Tribune article here) [note: Janesville, WI is a 63,000 person town in southern Wisconsin employing 2,200 in a local GM truck...
Merger Mania
Lately, there's been lots of press about mergers. With the economy listing, reports are rife that retailers need to merge to survive. Airlines need to merge to survive. And now we read beer brewers need to merge to survive (read article in Chicago...
Merger Mania
Lately, there's been lots of press about mergers. With the economy listing, reports are rife that retailers need to merge to survive. Airlines need to merge to survive. And now we read beer brewers need to merge to survive (read article in Chicago...
Do you know your lifecycle status?
We usually say we know when someone is dead. But in today's modern world, we've found out that often there are people who are alive now, but we know will not survive more than a few hours or days. We see trees that have rotten roots - but look alive for...
That great big sucking sound
It was Ross Perot who made the phrase "you'll hear a great big sucking sound" famous when he said them during his Presidential debate with Messrs. Bush and Clinton - referring to the impact he felt NAFTA would have on employment as jobs transferred from the...
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