Mark Sigal's Blog - The Network Garden

Portfolio Magazine is a Must Read

I read a lot, and when it comes to magazines few capture and hold my attention.  Why?  Because when you get down to it, Forbes isn't that different than Fortune or BusinessWeek.  Time versus Newsweek?  Who cares.  People versus Us Weekly?  Sound bites without substance. 

Previously, only one magazine fit into the "must read" bucket, and that is Vanity Fair (note: VF is still must read).  While those who haven't read the magazine (and only heard the title) would reasonably assume fluff and fashion, VF has a real narrative angle on each of its stories.  Moreover, its stories are varied and feature-length so topics ranging from the threat of Avian Flu to the Bush confederacy of dunces to the somewhat sordid biography of Paris Hilton's parents get breadth and depth.  It is visually appealing with great photography and feels timeless in the way that it is packaged.  Plus, the advertising is half the fun.

Now, I happily add Condé's Nast Portfolio Magazine to the "must read" bucket.  Touting itself as delivering Business Intelligence, Portfolio provides both feature length and sound bite coverage of everything about business and finance, always answering the WHO, the WHAT, the WHY and the SO WHAT with clarity and total read-ability. 

For example, a great article last month covered the conundrum facing the Yankees as its owner George Steinbrenner's health and mental acuity starts to fade.  Another captures the personalities at play in the deal to acquire Warner Music Group (and a subsequent lawsuit).  Others look at how P&G's $57B acquisition of Gillette has played out.  Click on this link or the picture below for an interesting historical lesson on who made money and who lost money buying and selling New York's Plaza Hotel over the years. 

For readers who loved Red Herring in its heyday, it is worth noting that Portolio's managing editor is Blaise Zerega, who was managing editor of both Wired (recently) and Red Herring (during heyday). Check out at least one issue of the magazine, and tell me if you are/aren't hooked.

The paradox of developing new products and services

One of my old business partners, Kedron Wolcott (co-founder of Rapid Logic), forwarded me the following cartoon, which captures the paradox of developing breakout new products and services. 

Simply put, there are so many cooks in the kitchen AND so many definitions of what is the kitchen AND so many ways of defining the customer AND so many ways of defining what the customer really needs that most new products/projects simply fail.

There are good and clear strategies and tactics that one can deploy to mitigate these challenges, though.  Past posts of mine have focused on the methodology of "starting in the middle," the importance of not confusing chicken parts with chicken and the integral-ness of codifying/tracking key metrics of success (and then iterating based on the resulting data).  And this doesn't even begin to speak to marketing and selling side of the equation, which you can read about elsewhere on this blog.

But, to be clear, even on a good day, this stuff is hard.  I am about two-thirds of the way through reading, "Dreaming in Code,"  a book about the (seemingly) ill-fated Chandler project, which spotlights these challenges from a software development perspective.  Plus, I see it in my companies on a daily basis and and of course experience what comes out of the "kitchen" as a fanatical, but pragmatic, consumer. 

Some days you spotlight solution paths.  Others, you shine a light on the impact of negative gravity.  Enjoy.

Karlgaard of Forbes on the Benchmarking Paradox

Rich Karlgaard of Forbes has written a really excellent article called, "Benchmarking Blues," which underscores the paradox of many, many businesses.  Namely, that while you can't improve what you don't measure, very few companies embrace the discipline of benchmarking.

Read the full article but here is an excerpt: 

A flaw common to business and rampant in government is the failure to benchmark. This is not the case with sports, where every contest is a lab experiment in benchmarking. In sports the outcome is just the beginning. Each game or match produces changes in league standings and reams of stats. Performance and relative performance are laid bare for anyone to see.

But in business our instincts are to shut our eyes to benchmarking. We don't want to see. Sure, it's popular to say we do it, and we mouth the words, maybe even convincing ourselves that we love benchmarking. But let me share a secret. I'm often invited to be a speaker at various company retreats. You know, the retreats where the CEO whisks away his top lieutenants and salespeople and traps them at The Boulders or The Breakers for a three-day yackfest about strategy. During the many times I've sat in on these kinds of bull sessions, I've not once heard questions like these:

• What does our competition do better than we do?
• Are our shortcomings rooted in our personnel, our system or something else?
• Which companies that are not competitors now could step in and eat our lunch tomorrow if they wanted to?