Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

I used to have a cat named "Bean", and when I was spending a lot more time at the house in Vermont, she and I would go walking in my woodlot, Bean following dutifully behind me as the afternoon light filtered into the perfectly manicured woods.  For 40 years of living in this valley where I come from six generations of Vermonters living there before me, my motto always has been... "A clean forest is a happy forest".

When I grew up in Greater Boston, we had one "device" in the house, and that was one AM radio in my parent's bedroom.  No Internet?  We would never have even been able to comprehend the concept.  No, no Internet.  In fact, no TV.

An Epic Game!

There's nothing more that I could add to the accolades and the volumes of words, statistics and analyses that have already been written...except to add one word... GRIT !

Broccoli !

The high-antioxidant, nutrient-rich, heart-healthy poster child of new age eating, or the scourge of every child and teenager who has heard the battle cry of “You have to eat your broccoli” ?

The 2 C's:  Curiosity & Comfort

I still remember that Saturday training session as a young associate at Honeywell Computer Systems back-in-the-day when I learned about BANT.

Didn't know that Honeywell made computers?  Well, they didn't do it very well...but they tried to with the wrong product at the wrong time and got smoked by DEC and every other mini-computer manufacturer up and down 128, known at that time as America's Technology Highway-the precursor to Silicon Valley..."back-in-the-day".

To get into the mini computer business, Honeywell bought a young startup, CCC, in Framingham, MA, once again proving that most M&A deals never realize their potential.  Less than 10 years later, Honeywell quietly exited the market after losing hundreds of millions, while up the road in Maynard, startup DEC quickly became the largest computer company in the world for the next 15 plus years...until they also got smoked by that other little startup...Apple, and then everyone else as the lines became increasingly blurred between minis and the ultimate entry of personal computers.  Anyone remember Apple's Newton?

From back-in-the-day, you can throw in Wang, and I guess you could also do the same with Polaroid, and you would have a solid string of "Lessons Learned" of what not to do regarding proprietary, inward-focused businesses to keep in mind as you kick of your own 2017 business planning sessions later this month.

I just pulled the plug on my ISP.  

Big firm, terrible connectivity, and consistently poor service, so I finally made the decision to pull the plug last week since I just couldn't be held hostage anymore.  Lee Drake, superb tech CEO, at his IT support firm, OS Cubed, had been telling me to do this for the years, but I didn't want to go through the pain of disruption. Finally the pain of staying connected outweighed the fear of the pain of disruption. The move happens next week, the process will be transparent, and I could not be happier. The point of this introduction is that when I looked up our background with the ISP, I discovered that we had been with them for 20 years !!  

20 years?!?

20 years ago, the World Wide Web had just been invented.  We moved to WWW using Mosaic from Arpanet where we had stuck it out for years using arcane commands, slow speeds and calling people on our landline telephone to ask if they did in fact receive the email (although it wasn't called email, we did not have html, nor did the words that came through on the screen look like any email that we know today).   

Which brings me thinking about the 2017 concept of "Day 1", and the adoption of faster change in our business, in our sales development, and in my teaching Marketing, and, with this semester, a new course in Sales.  I should have made this ISP switch five years ago, and for some wacko reason, I just stuck it out piling up one wasted hour after another.  2017 is about every day being Day 1 and initiating more rapid change that brings more value to our customers' businesses.

Last week was Not a time for sleep!

In addition to my two "day jobs" of running our firm in Boston and teaching at Tufts, I spent hours and hours last week preparing for and then actually voting in my quirky little NH seacoast town.

More than anything else, standing out in the 35 degree Tuesday morning cold at 8:00 AM while waiting in line and sharing free coffee and hand made pastries from the local PTA, once again, I realized that this election process is a true testament to both "The American Way",...and also why New Hampshire is lovingly labeled "The Live Free or Die State". 

All of this may not be perfect, but, it sure works more than the alternatives.  Both the running of the country and the running of our businesses are fueled by growth, and it's time to put the election process behind us and get back to growing our companies.  

In the rhythm of the seasons, we're right now at the peak of leaf-peeping time here in New England.  This afternoon, I'm headed to my little (population 697) town of Bondville in Vermont along with hundreds of buses from Iowa, Indiana and everywhere else just to get a glimpse of fall color.  

Long ago, I learned from 'The Boys on the Bench' down at the Winhall General Store that the month of October is known as "the money month" by the locals around all of the resort towns in Vermont.

A good example of the quirkiness of Vermonters (me being a 7th generation Vermonter and a perfect example of quirky) is the fact that the Winhall General store is directly across the street from the Bondville Post office.  Vermont calls my town "Winhall", while the federal government calls it "Bondville".  Only in Vermont!

This week began with a Monday front page Wall Street Journal article that started with the comment...