My CEO Life

My CEO Life is the blog of Simon Baker, the ex-CEO and Managing Director of the REA Group. He is now building a new business called Classified Ad Ventures. This blog looks at real business problems and provides real solutions - ones that any manager around the world can follow and implement.

In today’s economic environment businesses are making tough decisions.  They are laying off people at a great rate, cutting back on non-essential costs, and pushing through price increases on their customers, all in an effort to improve the overall performance of a business.  Banks are a great example of this, they are looking for any way to increase their revenues through new fees and charges while quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) laying off people. These businesses, especially the public ones, have no choice.  Their share prices reflect the belief by shareholders in higher and higher returns from these companies.

However, while these changes in an organisation can be difficult for the employees (no one likes to see collegues lose their jobs), senior management often dont cut back on their pay packets or their perks, thereby creating an us and them culture in a business.  If senior management don’t walk the talk, they run the risk of undermining the culture of a business.

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The cold hard reality of life for all businesses is that, from time to time, people need to be let go.

Recently i chatted with one person that was made redundant.  Her description of the process was “I was notified I was being made redundant, and immediately frog-marched out of the building. I wasn’t even given the opportunity to collect my wedding photos off my desk. It was all rather disrespectful.”

The above is an example of a company that is not approaching the letting go of people in the right manner.  How should companies handle this most difficult of times?

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In the late 90′s pundits around the world foretold of the rapid dimise of traditional business at the hands of the Internet.  Of course this didnt really happen as the internet provided more of an evolutionary change than a revolutionary change.  Still, the internet has dramatically changed our economic landscape.

Just take the online real estate advertising business.  Ten to 15 years ago, everything was advertised in the paper.  Now classified sections have shrunk to former shadows of themselves.  If you are looking for a flatmate or a rental, you wouldnt even consider buying a paper, Craiglists or one of the thousands of niche sites out there provide a far better service.  The same is happening with homes for sale … it is just a matter of time before more and more papers either reinvent themselves or just disappear.

Therefore it was with interest that the following article came across my desk from the Wall Street Journal about the Blockbuster thinking about entering bankruptcy protection.   No wonder businesses like Netflix (USA), Lovefilm (UK and Europe) and Quickflix (Australia) are growing at ever increasing rates.

It will be interesting to see which other busniess and industries give up holding back the tide and are swept away by the continuous onslaught of the internet.

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Its been a while since i last wrote however i just couldnt resist writing about a PR event that i am sure Tiger Airways is regretting.  I was kicking back and watching TV the other night when the show Airways came on.  Now i dont usually view these types of shows however i was intersted in seeing how the Australian version of the UK show faired.  Suffice to say, the Tiger Airways, about which the show is about, came off looking amateurish at best.

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A great posting came across my desk ther other day that listed the top 10 CEO’s around the world that never went to college (uni for those in the UK and Australia). All the CEO’s are well known. Of course there is Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on the list. However, some of the other names were a little surprising.

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At the Inman Connect Conference in San Francisco Brian Boreo told the 1,500 strong crowd his top 10 cool new online tools to help any business.

Here they are …

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The story of Canadian Dave Carroll and United airlines is quite amazing. Dave is a country singer and he and his band were on a trip with United from Halifax to Nebraska that had a layover in Chicago. During this layover the baggage handlers at Chicago’s O’Hare managed to destroy his guitar.

Now you would have thought that United would pay for his guitar to be replaced. They didn’t come to the party claiming the Dave Carroll didn’t make a claim with 24 hours. Dave was given the complete run around with United refusing to take any responsibility for the damage.

So what did Dave do, he wrote a song about his experience and that song hit You Tube on Monday last week and has already had over 2.3 million views. Check it out … oh and it is called … United Breaks Guitars.

So what do we learn from this?

Well firstly, United must have some very questionable baggage handling techniques. If you are to going to fly United, I would try to take carry-on luggage or better still, fly another airline.

Secondly, United’s customer service approach seems to be designed to say “no” – no matter how legitimate your complaint is.

Thirdly, the $3k to replace the guitar is cheap compared to the brand damage that this whole episode is causing United. And there is nothing they can do about it now. The cat is out of the bag and will run its own course. In today’s social media world, you never know how poor customer service is going to come back and bite you.

Finally, Dave Carroll and his band have made this an opportunity to further their careers. 2.3 million people is a great audience. Hopefully they will release an album soon to take advantage of their new found fame.

Oh … and if you thought United had got off relatively light? Dave and his band have 2 more songs in the works.

In today’s tough economic market more and more people are losing their jobs and struggling to find new ones. A by-product of this new world is that more and more people are becoming entrepreneurs and starting a wide range of new businesses. Now if you don’t have a job and want to be an entrepreneur you can work from home, rent an office or join the new trend of using coffee shops and cafes as your office – the coffice!

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I recently wrote an article on one of the other blogs that I run in which I gave my view on a market and how the players are performing in that market.  Now the article was meant as a wakeup call for one of those players who I thought had become a little lazy however they took it as a slight against them.

This got me thinking about how you should give feedback and what could happen if you happen to take it as it is meant.

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Everywhere you turn people are talking about twitter and the tweets that are flying around the internet. It is clear that people are signing up to twitter in their thousands and some people believe it can be used as a business tool – just check out the new book by Joel Comm and Ken Burge called Twitter Power – How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time.

However the question still remains is twitter a nice social media fad or can it be used as a serious business tool?

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